#lardorans

It makes them closer. They find themselves spending more time, just the two of them, because they can be jealous of Jack and Bitty without anyone calling them petty, because that really isn’t it. They are genuinely happy for them and glad the two of them are happy, but it’s also hard sometimes to see people get what you so badly want.

Spring semester goes on, and Lardo starts spending time in Cambridge again, but this time she actually has fun. Because it’s Lardo and Shitty like they used to be, without the pressure or expectations they’d been putting on their relationship in the fall.

But while things are getting better for Lardo, they’re getting worse for Ransom. As med school gets closer he’s spending more and more time in coral reef mode, until one night Lardo asks, “What if you didn’t go to med school?”

He stumbles through an answer about how he has to, something about his parents and his sister and how he’s good at it. And then she tells him a story she hasn’t told anyone at Samwell before: a story about a girl who was always good at math, a girl who everyone thought was going to be an engineer. Ransom’s confused, because he’s pretty sure Lardo never took a single math class in college. “I was good at it, and it made my parents proud, but it didn’t make me feel alive.” And then she asks him, “What makes you feel alive?”

The answer isn’t medicine or science or school, because all of those sometimes make him feel like he’s dying, so he says, “Hockey, my friends, Holster, Haus parties… You.”

He look her right in the eyes when he says it and she knows what it means. She’s been feeling it too. So she leans in to kiss him.

She nervous, of course she is, she doesn’t want to ruin another friendship by trying to make it something more. But when the kiss it’s, easy, and it’s good, and fuck, he makes her feel alive too.

They don’t tell anyone at first, not by some spoken agreement but just it’s nice to have it just be them for a little while. (And it’s nice to not get fined for making out at kegsters since that’s something they did before).

But one day they’re lying together in Lardo’s room and Ransom says, “I think I need to tell Holster.” Lardo nods, it’s time. “I should tell Shitty too, before Holster tells everyone.”

She’s nervous to tell him, but it turns out she shouldn’t have worried. She tells him and he nods. “You’re good together?” Shitty asks, and Lardo nods, even though she feels like an asshole. He just smiles, even if it looks a little sad. “I’m happy you’re happy,” he says and that’s the end of it, they’re good.

Things are great for them for a little while. The team doesn’t make it that far which is sad, but they throw a party for both of their birthdays and afterwards, when it’s just them, Ransom kisses her like it means those words that neither of them have quite said yet.

But then Ransom starts talking about moving in with Holster since they’ve decided to go into consulting together. She’s happy for him, but all at once Lardo realizes she doesn’t know where she fits into Ransom’s post-grad life.

But a couple weeks later Ransom asks her, “You and Shitty are good, right? He’s actually ok that we’re together?” Lardo nods. And then he asks, “Holster and I were talking, and I guess he’s been talking to Shitty, so maybe all four of us could rent a house in Boston together when we graduate?”

He looks nervous, but hopeful when he says it, and Lardo wonders why she was ever worried about him leaving. They both laugh when Holster jokes about them moving in together after only a few months, because they’re excited and happy and have been living together the whole time.

Later that night, when he’s smiling up at her in her bed, she manages to push aside all her fears and say those words.

He says them back.

The year rolls to a close and Lardo feels better than she would have anticipated in November.