Your Bittle siblings AU is so precious. I love this idea so much. Each and every one of them are precious (except for the picture of mullet!bittle which will probably haunt me for the rest of my days), but just the idea of Frankie and Bitty growing up with someone like that in his corner warms my heart so much
thank you so much! :) i just really, really want bitty to grow up with someone who knows and who is like him, so i’m glad you love frankie too! (i won’t apologize for the clay/mullet!bittle tho, i had too much fun making that edit lol)
hello your monster haus is the greatest. mermaid lardo blessings on you and your family
Thank you! Blessing on your family as well. I told my mom you said so and she asked me when I’m moving out.
I know this wasn’t exactly a prompt or maybe it was but either way IM GOING WITH IT.
For the Monster Haus AU. Featuring Mermaid Lardo.
Lardo was not her name. Larissa wasn’t even really her name, but they were both things she was called. It wasn’t that she disliked either name, quite the contrary really. She liked having a sound that humans and witches and werewolves could pronounce, a sound that meant her and her alone.
It was a good sound, but that sound was not her name.
Lardo’s name, her real name, couldn’t be said without a mouthful of salt water, and a tongue made to push through it. She had said it once at Samwell, submerged in the deepest part of the Pond alongside three other mergirls from campus. When she said her name it hadn’t sounded right, no salt in the water to form the sounds properly, and it hadn’t echoed right in the algae and rocky bottom, but they had understood her well enough.
They were nice, the other mergirls. Two were freshwater creatures, with smooth and soft skin made for bathing along riverbeds. The other was East Coast saltwater, with dark hair that went down past her hips when she chose to wear legs. They were all nice, and she liked swimming with them when she could. But it wan’t the same.
Right now though, Lardo was floating.
She had no idea how deep she was, no way of knowing how far down she had reached. All she could tell was she was in the Deep. The weight of billions of gallons of water was pressing down on her, keeping her from lifting back up through the water, from floating all the way to the surface. Under her she could feel the same, the same horrendous pressure keeping her from falling. Her tail was curled beneath her, idly drifting back and forth, pressing through the heavy weight of the water.
Water was rushing down her throat, in her ears, pressing on her skin and into her eyes. It was where she belonged.
She loved her boys, adored every member of the men’s hockey team with a ferocity she wouldn’t have thought herself capable of, but it still wasn’t the same as this.
This was right though. This, the Deep ocean with nothing but the press of water and the call of a far off whale to keep her company. Here she could think.
She wasn’t sure where her family was, but if she focused she would be able to find them easily. They couldn’t be more than a mile off, two tops. That distance was nothing, not down here. She could swim that in five minutes if she really wanted to. She didn’t want that though, she was content to be alone. Just her and the Deep. Nothing but-
“LARDO!”
Lardo shot up with a start, gasping as her gills receded back into her neck and her lungs sprung back to life. She gripped the edges of the bathtub, trying to ground herself back in reality. She was not in the ocean, she wasn’t even in a river. She was on the second floor of the Haus, and had fallen asleep in the bathtub. Her iridescent tail was hanging over the edge of the tub, the tips of her fin dripping water onto the floor in a quiet and gentle rhythm.
Raking her claws through her hair she tried to bring some semblance of order to it, knowing it was hopeless.
“LARDO,” the call came again, accompanied by a pounding on the door. The door barely muffled Holster’s booming voice. “Bits made…okay I don’t know what it is, some type of pizza? He said it fancier, but it smells great and you gotta come get some before Ransom eats it all.”
“Why you gotta come for me like that?” Ransom demanded from somewhere down the hall.
“I’m coming!” She assured, trying to press down the hallow feeling in her chest as she reached for towel.
It took Lardo few minutes to shift herself back, to swing her tail over the side as the tub began to drain and let her legs reform. She watched with a blank stare as the purple and blue scales shifted back into the smooth tan of her legs. When she pushed herself up to stand on the cool tile of the bathroom floor, it felt like needles on the bottoms of her feet.
She threw on the same clothes she had been wearing, a tee shirt too big and an old pair of shorts and made her way down to the kitchen. Her face was impassive, the surface of the sea on a calm day. Lardo knew better than anyone any calm of the sea was a lie, but sometimes a lie was for the best.
Before she was even halfway down the steps she could hear the commotion from the kitchen. Mostly a chorus of curses and declarations of love for Bitty. She thought she might have heard a marriage proposal in there.
No one noticed at first as she crept up behind them, glancing over Chowder’s shoulder at the pizza pan on the table. Other than a few drops of red sauce and some dabs of cheese, it was empty. Usually this would have brought a chirp from her, or maybe she could have snatched the half eaten slice out of Holster’s hand, but instead she just sighed quietly to herself.
“Here.”
Lardo glanced up, suddenly finding herself with a piece of pizza an inch from her nose. She leaned back, accepting the plate from Dex’s outstretched hand before she had time to think.
“I saved you a piece before they destroyed it all,” he told her casually, unable to look her in the eye and the tips of his ears going pink like he was bracing himself for a chirp.
“Muhf,” Nursey complained, his mouth full of pizza before he swallowed. “I saved Lardo a piece.” He pulled another plate from behind him on the counter, sending an accusatory glare at Dex.
“Shit so did we,” Ransom jumped in, also holding an untouched plate.
“I was saving two in the oven.” Bitty bent over the open door, pulling out two more slices on a smaller wooden pan. “I didn’t want it to get cold,” he told her, a frown worrying his features.
Suddenly faced with five slices of pizza, Lardo wasn’t fully sure what to do. Not with the pizza necessarily, but with the sudden weight on her chest that felt just like being miles under the water and nothing like it at all.
“I KNEW it disappeared too quickly!” Chowder yelled, turning around to shoot Lardo a grin.
“Don’t your feet hurt when you stand too long?” Tango asked, suddenly appearing at her shoulder. There was a concerned tilt to his usually upright ears.
“Yeah, Lards.” Holster kicked his feet up on the table, ignoring Bitty’s noise of disgust, and patted his thigh. “Best seat in the Haus, saved just for you.”
“It’s true, he stopped Ransom like five times from sitting on him.”
“That did not happen.”
“It was a difficult and trying journey, but I made it for you Lardo,” Holster told her, eyes full of fake tears as he shoved Ransom away with the hand not holding his slice.
As Lardo seated herself on Holster’s thigh, mumbling a quick thank you to everyone who saved half the pizza for her, the conversation went back to normal. Ransom said something and Lardo smacked Holster’s leg to stop him from laughing and nearly dislodging her.
Nursey inevitably ended up with a slice cheese down on his lap, groaning as Dex and Chowder descended on him in a tornado of chirps. Bitty glanced at his phone once and all attention was shifted onto him. Someone texted Jack and then half the conversation was happening in the group chat.
Lardo laughed as she leaned back against Holster, starting in on her second slice. She was miles from the ocean, hundreds even from her family home. There was no salt water pressing in on her, she was perfectly dry and the endless expanse was far from the cluttered kitchen she was currently seated in.
It wasn’t the Deep. Not even close. But it was her home, and she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
Behind the cut for those who would rather not see me roll around like an awkward panda in all the attention.
(Why do I do screenshots? So I can keep the original asks IN MY INBOX FOREVER because i am greedy.)
glamwell, thank you so much! Someday (probably after the election) I may return to it and flesh it out into a loooong fic. But I’m so glad you enjoyed what I’ve written so far!
scandalmuss, and everyone else who named me for fanfic author appreciation day, it’s an honor. I have said this before and I will say it again, to be able to create is one of the deepest honors of my life and the fact that people enjoy it is humbling beyond belief. Thank you for letting me play in this sandbox, and thank you for making me feel special and loved, especially among such illustrious company. I hope to continue making more enjoyable things for you :)
