#i pirated some fucking program years ago but could never really get the hang of it

[current-mcr-news]

Casual Interactions 10: Full Transcription

John: Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey and welcome to Casual Interactions. I'm John "Hambone" McGuire, and today we've got Frank and the Future Violents here in an airstream trailer outside of the Asbury Lanes, and we're gonna talk to you about the album Barriers and a little behind the scenes action about Frank's upcoming video for Great Party, as well as his summer tour that's going on right now. Now this is a little bit different than your traditional episode of Casual Interactions. Unfortunately, Shaun could not be here with us to hang out, he is here in spirit. And Frank, Shaun, and I will be back in the fall with more episodes of Casual Interactions as promised. This is just a little something to get you through the summer blues and hopefully to get you excited to go see Frank on tour right now. Check it out. This is everyone's first time playing at the Lanes since they've redone the lanes.

Everyone: Yes.

J: Anyone play here before?

Everyone: Yeah.

Frank: I've been here before. Yeah, Thursday did a couple shows here.

Tucker: Four nights of it, yeah.

F: Oh damn!

J: No big deal. Sold out every one. 

T: In a row.

F: Did you say fortnight? 

T: Fortnight, yeah. Two weeks worth. 

J: Put me on the guest list, I appreciate it. 

F: Hey, what are you gonna do? 

T: I'm always gonna do that for my friends. 

J: It's a Jersey thing. I call him up, I say.

T: I got a guy down there.

J: "I know your mom." 

F: Thursday, playing on a Wednesday. 

T: (unintelligible) 

F: Oh man. Alright, so flashback to about 20 years ago. 1999, say.

J: -ish, yeah.

F: Ish. Pencey Prep signs to Eyeball Records, right? It's a band that myself and Hambone were both in. At that point, Tucker's in Thursday still, and you guys are on Eyeball. Waiting is coming out, or just came out?

T: Just coming out, I believe. It was like, that day or something, it feels like. I remember it being simultaneous. 

J: You know, for the longest time I thought that that album was actually called Porcelain. Yeah.

F: Originally?

T: I think it might've almost been called Porcelain. 

J: Yeah. It definitely wasn't called Porcelain. 

F: I remember though, being at an Eyeball party. I feel like the best thing about Eyeball house and Eyeball parties, was that every time you went there, you were gifted the new release. 

J: Yes.

F: Even if you had it already, you were still given the CD. So I got Waiting and I remember then going on vacation and listening to it nonstop.

J: Right.

F: In Long Beach Island, and thinking like, "Oh my god, this fucking record's amazing." And then meeting you at a party later on, and being like, "Alright, I wanna be in a abdn with him."

J: It was a game changer, for sure.

F: Yeah. And then shortly after that, meeting Matt because Murder By Death, or at that time, Little Joe Gould.

Matt: Right, it was still, yeah.

F: Was touring, or you guys met them on tour?

T: We met them on tour at a coffee shop together. 

M: No, it was the stinky Anarchist bookstore. 

T: Same thing.

M: Close enough. Much worse smell.

T: Potato / potato.

J: I've heard it both ways. 

M: It was called The Secret Sailor but it was actually known as The Stinky Pirate. 

F: Weird.

J: Where was that?

M: That was in Bloomington. And at that point, Full Collapse was recorded but not quite out yet.

T: Yes.

M: And our friend who had booked the show said, "Hey, this band needs to jump on," and we were like, "Okay." And I think it was Geoff, was like, "I got a friend in Jersey, he's gonna put your record out." We were like, "Nice to meet you, you guys are great, we'll never talk to you again." 

F: That's actually called the Jersey role. That's what we usually do. We always make some plans, then we'll never see you again. 

T: It usually means, "Get away from me," or "Let's actually do this."

M: Turned out it was "Let's actually do this thing."

F: So then I remember, flash forward a couple months later, being at the Eyeball house and Alex who ran the label, and Mark, got a card from you guys in the mail. Like, a handmade card because they had signed you, or said they were gonna put your record out. I mean, at that point it was just handshake deals, but got a card saying, "Thank you. We're so glad to join the family," and everybody was so excited, and then we heard your record, and everybody was like, "Oh my god, we need to get better right now." Because I remember everybody at the label being like, "Oh, we all thought everybody on the label was good, but this is the best record we've ever put out. This is the best record."

J: Banger.

F: Yeah.

T: Aw. 

F: It's true.

J: And then we actually saw you live and then everyone actually started practicing. 

F: Yeah yeah, totally! Yeah.

J: Because, I don't know if you recall when, the first time they came around to the area, they just got thrown on a show at the Loop Lounge. And this is a little ways after Great White burned the club down, but still early enough that Carl and Bruce would let you light things on fire onstage, so Little Joe Gould at the time had a stage show where they'd be blowing fire. They had a little keyboard player, Vincent; a small, unassuming, meek little dude who would actually spit Gene Simmons fireballs, and then the old drummer Alex would light the cymbals on fire. And this is a small club with not the highest ceiling. 

F: And the ceiling's covered in just shit on the wall, Applebee's type things. There's a motorcycle, and there's dust on top of that, and a fish tank with dead fish in it.

T: And all of it was on Alex's head. 

M: Yeah, but stuff that wants to be on fire.

F: Oh yeah, probably, yeah. He's burned me.

J: Almost took out the disco ball one night.

M: We had some close calls in those days. I remember playing at the Fireside Bowl in Chicago and the guys came up and they're like, "Listen, we don't wanna do this, but we have been told if you do the setting shit on fire thing, we're supposed to kick all of your stuff over and blast you with fire extinguishers and you don't get paid." We're like, "That's probably bullshit, but point taken."

F: Yeah, "gotcha."

M: "Cool, we'll take the night off." 

F: Alright. So let's stop there, and go to the weird other thing that happened was Kayleigh, you at this point are in upstate New York.

Kayleigh: Yes.

F: Right? Alright, in college?

K: Where are we going? 

F: Well, you took a class.

K: Oh yeah! Okay! 

F: And Tucker, yeah.

K: I was like-

F: I'm sorry!

K: "At what part of my life am I in upstate New York? What's happening?"

J: Real long way to go to get a superhero origin story.

F: Watch though, this is crazy. So, you're-

K: I went to college at Fredonia State, which is a very unassuming college in western New York, but it's really great for, at the time, it was one of the only state schools that was offering music business as a major. So, I went there to study music business and get a degree. I was touring in a band at the time, and my parents told me if I got a degree, that after I graduated I could come home and tour. So, went to school for music business, and the thing about Fredonia that's really cool, is that it has a great sound recording program because Dave Fridmann lives in Fredonia. So, all the time, there's also this awesome bar called BJ's who everybody used to play there, but all of Dave Fridmann's bands when they were recording would also usually play at this tiny dive bar. Because they'd be working on new material, or just finished a record, or whatever, so I saw MGMT, I've seen Explosions in the Sky, all these- Sleater Kinney.

F: That was like your Wayne Firehouse, basically.

K: It was the coolest little place, and yeah, one day I went to class, my music business class, and Thursday was the guest speakers at my class.

J: And this class was, "Don't take a handshake deal at a party house."

F: "Never sign a man named Matt from Indiana and bring him to Jersey."

T: I just remember going into this class. It was Geoff and I, and you know, everyone looked like babies to me, because we felt like old people in there, but everyone was like, "Get out of here. We don't care about a single word you have to say, you hacks."

F: "Go cry about it, emo kid." 

T: "Shouldn't you be partying instead of teaching this class?"

K: But I think that's also funny. It didn't dawn on me that that actually happened until we were rehearsing at your house. And I said something about Fredonia, and you were like, "Oh, I've been there," and I was like, "Oh my god, you have. And I was there too."

F: I like how Fredonia also sounds just like a place that Dave Fridmann would make up in his head of like, "If I were the ruler of a kingdom, it'd be Fredonia and I would have a music school there and I would bring Thursday in to talk!"

T: Exactly. Fridmann, Fredonia. 

F: Come on.

T: His name is Dave Fredonia.

J: Writes itself.

F: Just saying. 

M: It also sounds like a medication to get you off of something else. 

F: Oh yeah, that too.

M: Like, "I gotta run this cycle of Fredonia."

T: In the commercials, people are riding bikes through a really green field, you know?

Evan: Side effects are deathly diarrhea. 

T: So much diarrhea in one of those two bathtubs on the hill for no fucking reason. That's the one.

J: Yeah, but you know what? You could climb mountains and kayak.

T: Probably after the diarrhea. You do what you gotta do.

J: One would hope.

F: Alright, last circle of weird coincidences. So, My Chem goes on tour and Murder By Death plays with us at Club Krome, right?

M: Yes.

F: With Vox.

M: That was the Halloween show.

F: Halloween show. And Evan is at that show. That's also the first, I don't know if that was the show or the venue where your first band, On Arms, we had you guys open for My Chem.

E: That's right.

F: Was that the same show?

E: I don't think so. I don't think that was the first one.

F: But it was the same venue.

E: It might've been Starland. 

F: Oh shit.

E: It was right when you guys released Three Cheers, I think.

J: No, it was neither one of those clubs. It was the Birch Hill Nightclub.

F: No, we never got the play that because Otter took a shit downstairs and it blew the fucking pipes up. And then they flooded the whole room and no one could, you couldn't play there for months. It was crazy! It was like the dead of winter. Alright, so in the dead of winter, we show up and it's a long drive, it was like 20 minutes or whatever, so Otter's like, "I gotta go to the bathroom." So he runs down to the downstairs and he takes a poop, and he flushes and it blows the- it explodes the entire pipe system at the venue. So it floods the entire downstairs and they have to close the club down.

Geoff: Hey guys.

F: Hey Geoffy.

J: Hey buddy!

F: We're talking about history.

G: Oh I love history.

J: And poop stories!

F: So yeah, for the longest time, you couldn't play Birch Hill Nightclub anymore, and what was the venue attached to it?

J: That's what I was thinking of.

T: Was it Stingrays?

J: Stingrays, yeah.

T: There was a two room deal.

J: What was the show that we did I Am A Graveyard before My Chem, when Gerard came out and did the big Winston Churchill Iron Maiden intro?

F: Yeah, that was weird. That was a one-off thing I think.

J: Either way, at that time, Otter was subsisting on a diet of nothing but Popeye's fried chicken so you can understand how what was gonna happen, was gonna happen.

F: And Fredonia. High dose of Fredonia. Oh man. So that's over 20 years, that's how this band is kinda starting to form, right? And then, I guess flash forward to 2017, 2018? No, alright, let's flash forward to 2016 because we get into an accident, and then shortly after that, we ended up starting touring again, and we go on tour with Dave Hause and the Mermaid, and that's how we really meet Kayleigh. And our first show is in Williamsburg, a music hall in Williamsburg. I remember watching Dave's set, especially seeing Kayleigh playing and how she sings and all that stuff, playing basically everything on the stage, she would just run around and play everything. I was like, "Holy fuck!" These are the types of people, getting to see Thursday, getting to see Murder By Death, and the way that these people in thsi room thought about music. How it wasn't just like, "Oh, I'm just following a guitar part," you know? You see a performance where it's like, "There's three guitar players onstage. They're all playing the same thing. That's so weird. Okay, I guess nobody wanted to sit down." But you know, the idea that you're creating a soundscape with a bass, you know? Or you're playing a melody on the drums that's like, that's the hook of the song. Even though it's very rhythmic, there's a melody there. Same thing with Kayleigh, her solo records and the stuff that she was doing with Dave, that's the stuff that I saw, it was just like, "Whoa, these people think on a different level," you know? So, I started those other projects and had Evan in with the Cellabration and the Patience, and I always knew if I can, I never wanna be in a band without Evan again, you know what I mean? So that's just always gonna happen. But how do we fill this out, how do we do this, get to the next step, next level, and have people in it that are really pushing the envelope and inspiring you on a daily basis? And it just so happened that at the end of 2017 or beginning of 2018, everybody was going to end up being free to do some songs. Or at least Tucker and Matt and Evan were, and then we found out later on that Kayleigh might be free to come in and write some stuff with us.

J: It's awesome. I know from an outsider perspective, watching you go through the different bands. I'll tell you, Evan's great because no matter what band of guys you got backing you up, I always know it's Evan playing guitar. 

F: Right, yeah.

J: You're like the secret weapon. You know? He's like the secret sauce. Like the In 'N Out sauce except we can get you on the east coast which is nice. You know? But I mean it's a cool thing because having written a record, I've written a bunch of music with you, and then watching you write the songs for My Chem, because you were pretty writing them in my apartment.

F: That's true.

J: I know what it was for you to strike out on your own and do the Cellabration and do the Patience, but always kinda having that really nice constant which is Evan. 

F: Yeah.

J: And then I also remember sitting there over breakfast, me, you, and Shaun. By the way, Shaun couldn't be here tonight, he had something else to do. Anyway...

F: He got him so good, look at him!

J: We were having breakfast and he was telling me, he's like, "Yeah, I'm starting up a new thing," and I'm like, "So who you got?" And he goes, "Well of course Evan. But I think I can get Tucker, I think I can get Matt," and I popped. I was like, "Really?!" And I've compared it to getting the stacks rhythm section, like the MG's backing you up. And I was psyched.

F: And the MT's.

J: Yeah, the MT's.

T: I came in cheap, four million.

J: Print some t-shirts, make some money together.

T: Five grand.

J: And I mean, I heard the songs too. I came over to your house and we hung out.

F: That's right! You sat in on one of the early recording sessions.

J: I sat in on one of the early writing sessions. And he's like, "There's this girl, I wanna bring her on, I think it's gonna be the difference maker," and it was. You came in.

F: I agree.

J: Like the secret weapon.

F: That was the final brick in the wall. It was like, "This is really something awesome and special, but I know what it can be and how incredible it can be," and that was bringing Kayleigh in. 

J: And I'll tell you the Stomachaches and Parachutes both are incredible records.

F: Thank you.

J: But this is the first record that I've heard you do in a while where I feel like you were writing with other people. Other people who were not just sitting there being like, "Alright, you play this, you play this, you play this," like everyone brings their own their own unique, special thing to the party, and it's fucking awesome. 

F: I agree. That's the thing too is like, this is the first record where people are writing in a room, they're familiar with the songs, they're writing the parts that they wanna play, and really knowing what the song needs, you know? So like, they're writing for the betterment of that song, and then going into the studio and they're the ones that are playing it, live in the room, to tape. That, we've never had before. You know?

J: Now how many songs did you have written before you started bringing other people in? Not counting Evan because you guys work together a lot, but you know, how many skeletons did you have before you started bringing people on board?

F: Well I had a list of like 21 skeletons, a lot of which we never even touched. And then that would kinda be filtered out. I'd bring one in, I think the first one we worked on was Moto Pop. And that was, "Alright, we're on a roll here." There's songs like Medicine Square Garden that started as a kind of an idea I had written down on paper but I couldn't, I didn't have the full idea of what the song should look like. I couldn't be like, "Oh it's E, F, G," it wasn't like that. It was more like, "I had this idea of a song where it feels like this, and the guitar line sounds like this and follows the vocal but it doesn't make sense so I can't just write it down."

J: So what was the song when you brought everyone in, where you're like, "Fuck yeah, this is it, we got something."

F: I think Medicine was the first time it was like, "Whoa, we did it."

T: That was like the end boss, that song.

F: Yeah, I agree.

T: It was like, "If we can conquer the initial structure of that one."

F: "Then we can do anything." Yeah.

M: I think the first time I came over, I think Young And Doomed was one of the first ones that we worked on just because it's like, we can get something mostly nailed down with that but when we got into Medicine, I remember that one was giving me fits, because it was like you were describing it and I don't know what my part of that is yet. And for the first couple of days it was like everything I tried to play sounded like Livin' On A Prayer by Bon Jovi or something.

F: Yeah yeah yeah!

M: And this is not what it's supposed to be, but it's the only thing my stupid hands do.

J: You are in New Jersey.

M: Right.

J: It's contagious.

M: Maybe I'm trying too hard to sneak in under the Jersey radar.

T: The gift that keeps on giving.

M: But when it clicked it felt like such a victory, you know? It was like, "Okay, we can do it."

J: How about you, Kayleigh? When was the moment for you?

K: I think that what Matt was describing was pretty much my entire- because I came in late to the project because I was busy for the first half of the year and then-

F: She's been on tour for three years straight.

J: Oh yeah, she's a musician's musician. You're even sneaking off to do a show on one of your days off.

K: I know. Surprise, yeah. Surprise show.

J: That's fantastic.

K: But doing multi-instrumentalist work, I think it's I'm a glutton for punishment in the best and worst ways because I kind of approach this project like I don't know what- not only do I not know what to play, parts wise, I don't know what instrument would be best for this song. And also kind of trying to figure out the groundwork that was the bones of all of these songs was already so put together, and so awesome, that I was almost- it really challenged me where I was like, "I can't fuck this up, what am I gonna- what kind of sprinkles am I gonna put on top that's gonna make it, can I make it better? Am I gonna make it better?"

F: What's funny I think is you tread carefully on that stuff because you don't want to step on toes like that, but you're initial instincts are always so great, and make, at least me, think about songs in different ways, and that's why it was so amazing having you come in. To jump forward again, having a new band play old songs is kinda crazy. And then also bringing in musicians that play different instruments is like, "Wow alright, now you have to really reinvent songs off Parachutes and Stomachaches for the live show." So like, she'll be like, "Oh, I was originally thinking violin on a song like Veins," and I was like, "Wow, that's so fucking crazy!" I never would've thought to do that. But now, I can't not hear that song without that instrumentation, it's crazy.

J: So let me bring it back a second. You know, a lot of musicians play a lot of their songs and their hits for years and years and years, and it's almost taboo to kinda try to reinvent that. I mean, we remember the Bob Dylan incident at the Tropicana where we didn't remember-

F: That was so weird.

J: We didn't know a single song until he got to the choruses, but how does it feel for you to have new life being breathed into these songs.

T: He just grazed right over that, by the way.

F: I love it.

J: I'm good at what I do, Tucker. I'm a goddamn professional!

T: You really are!

F: I love it. That to me, having that ability and opportunity to be creative on the road as well as in the studio, that fucking rules, you know? To know that- here's the thing that I attribute that to, that Lou Reed thing where he would put out a record and then you'd go see him, and that shit was different already because he was already onto the next thing. I think that you have to do that type of shit.

J: Now are you pulling out some songs that maybe you would not have played on this tour because it's more fun now with everybody?

F: Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I've put together a list of songs that I thought would be really fun to do with this band, and that's what we've been doing. But I think now, seeing how those things have changed and how much better we've made then, I would like to kinda go back and look at other stuff. But also at the same time, you run into this project, all you wanna play is new stuff.

J: Of course. What old song do you think is the best, is better now having the new crew?

F: Man. I like Veins with the violin in it, it's fantastic to me. I think Let You Down, now Kayleigh's playing an acoustic on there, I've always wanted that rhythmic section to that. We've been doing this rendition of Miss Me with just acoustic guitar and violin and I think that's really really fun. 

E: Viva with the violin too sounds incredible.

F: Viva, oh my god! Yeah, that might be my favorite.

J: Kayleigh, how many instruments do you play?

K: Pretty much violin, guitar, piano. But then the mandolin is the same as the violin, so that makes- that adds that to it. I play the ukulele but who doesn't?

J: That's right.

K: And then there's that whole assortment of keyboard based instruments that if you know how to play piano, you can pretty much weasel your way around.

J: You would think that ska bands would've figured out getting a multi-instrumentalist years ago, instead of having like nine guys.

F: Eight guys, and one guy dances.

J: Four dudes, Kayleigh, and a dancer who also sells merch.

F: But yeah, I don't know.

T: The Merch Pit.

F: I'm having so much fun, seriously. I will say this too. In addition to the playing, which is beyond anything expectation I had, I've never laughed more than in this band.

J: That's awesome.

F: It hurts your lungs.

T: Oh totally.

F: It's kind of amazing, yeah.

J: How was the first leg of the tour, speaking of people you're gonna laugh with, with James Dewees?

F: Oh my god.

E: He is such a character. 

J: Did he make you watch a lot of Seinfeld?

E: Well, we were going to originally! I actually brought-

K: I'm not sure who wanted to watch Seinfeld, James or Evan.

E: That's true. Apparently, James had all of the episodes on his iPod. 

F: Yes.

E: He would just watch them on his iPod. Which a screen of an iPod, old school iPod classic, is what? Two inches by an inch and a half? 

J: Yeah.

E: And he still watches all of them?

J: All the TV he needs.

F: I feel like James has pigeon sight, where he can see in 360 and everything looks big. I think like an iPod screen, that's fine. 

J: I think all the candy he eats helps him focus.

E: Yeah exactly. But I had brought all of the episodes on DVD with us, but of course, this bus that we just had didn't have a DVD player!

J: That's old technology.

E: I know!

T: This stack of shit would just get moved to this side, to this side, to this side.

J: It was a lot of seasons!

T: Yeah.

J: Oh man. So that first leg was James, this next leg of your tour, you're going over to Europe first with Laura Jane Grace.

F: Yes. Yeah, and The Devouring Mothers. Yes, we get to hang out with Atom and Mark Hudson, it's gonna be fun.

J: And then when you're back in the states hitting the west coast, it's when Geoff.

F: Geoff, yeah. Who's actually playing tonight as well.

J: Fantastic. 

F: So we're going to do the UK. We got a couple of festivals actually happening next week. We're going a UK festival, we're going a couple of shows in Russia, Kiev, and then a Czech festival, and one other that I can't think of.

E: Back in the UK.

F: Another UK. And then we'll be back here to do a festival in upstate New York.

J: Cool.

F: With Taking Back Sunday and the Menzingers. 

K: Oh, that's right.

F: And Glassjaw, right? And then we do the west coast Warped Tour, and then we do our shows with Geoffy, and then we go back to the UK to do it with Laura Jane. And then, well, before that I think, our video for Great Party is gonna come out.

J: Oh cool!

F: Which I'm really excited for because you're in it too.

J: I'm totally in the video! 

F: I know! And it's really good.

J: Yeah. It's a super fun video and we super top secret did it Memorial Day weekend, right? 

F: I know. Which I can't believe we got the venue for it. We did it at a Masonic Lodge in Clifton on Memorial Day weekend, and I feel like, even though that's not tied in with veterans and stuff like that, I feel like those things are usually rented out.

J: I thought those guys would be at barbecues, to be honest with you, but they were like, "Yeah, we'll clean up after you guys. We made coffee."

F: It was rad. 

T: They were like, "We'll watch you clean up."

F: But I mean the directors, David was amazing, and our friends from Surfbort came out, Sean and Dani.

J: They were amazing.

E: Yeah, they were awesome. 

F: Dude, that was the thing too. When I wrote the treatment for the video, the thing that I saw in my hand was Dani's face, really, setting this bomb off.

M: And if you don't know what that face looks like, it'll all make sense when you do.

F: Yeah exactly. That smile, it's all about that devilish grin, it's awesome. It's beautiful.

J: It's gonna haunt your dreams.

F: Yeah, she's so unique and just so amazing.

J: Have you seen the finished product yet?

F: I have, yeah. It's done. I think it comes out on the 18th or something, or the week of the 18th. So yeah.

K: Awesome. 

F: I'm very excited.

J: Very cool. I mean, I'm not sure what this day this is gonna drop, but it's gonna drop something around then. So you're either going to get excited because the video's coming out, or be excited because now you've seen the video and you know what we're talking about, and you've seen the face.

F: My kids are excited too because they're in it, but for a split second, so they were really excited to be in it, and then they saw it and they were like, "What the fuck! I'm not in it for long enough!" I was like, "Well, it's not your video." 

J: "They cut out my stage!" 

T: "You write a song."

F: Yeah.

J: "I thought the kids stayed in the picture! Not this one."

F: "Hey, I told you to clean up your room."

T: They did write a song, Best Friends Forever and it's pretty good.

M: Write another one.

F: Another one!

T: "It's not even on an album, that's on an EP." 

J: I think their college funds have been doing fine on royalties.

F: "Write an album track. See how easy it is."

T: "Bring me a single."

J: Alright, so this was Casual Interactions with Frank Iero and the Future Violents. Definitely check them out if they're coming to your town on tour. You will absolutely not regret it. You're gonna have the time of your life. 

F: Sick. 

J: Party on, dudes.

F: Great job.

E: Love y'all!

K: Thanks!

T: Thanks, Hambone.

J: Bye! 

#frank iero #hambone #kayleigh goldsworthy #matt armstrong #tucker rule #evan nestor #casual interactions #10 #casual interactions 10 #full transcription

[pumpkins-s]

What if Loraine was still alive and went to Kerberos with Sam, Matt and Shiro? What if she's kicking galra ass and part of space pirate crew an year later??

(On AO3 as Prison Toys)

Pidge gets used to not talking about Kerberos.

Mostly. Somewhat. Little bit.

She has her moments, when it all gets to be too much, and she doesn’t think she can sit through another five minutes of talk about where Kerberos went wrong and what we can learn from it lectures in class without screaming. When she snaps and fights back with sharp words off a barbed tongue of barely controlled grief against Iverson or whichever asshole has opened his mouth on that particular day. But for the most part, she learns to keep her mouth shut.

For the one, it’s a necessary evil to put up with their excuses, their lies, in order to protect her identity. Katelyn Holt could throw a fit and threaten a Garrison officer for talking shit about her family, for leaving them to rot in the cold depths of space. Pidge Gunderson cannot.

Pidge Gunderson, for all intents and purposes, is just a single child from a nice, Midwestern family, with a private school education and an interest in radios—on paper, at least.

Still, what’s on paper is all Pidge has left anymore. She knew the consequences of her mission, and accepted them as a necessary sacrifice. All that she was is now obsolete, and she must become the illusion to the best of her ability.

Besides, it is…tiring, not to be believed all the time. The Garrison, her former friends, even her mother, none of them would listen. Why waste time now arguing with people who won’t ever understand, when it will be easier to prove them wrong.

Which she will, she’ll prove them all wrong. She will find the truth if it kills her.

She thinks about them a lot lately, especially now that she’s here, in the Garrison. Her family, her father and brother, are of course never far from her mind, but the others too—Shiro, who had been Matt’s friend so long he was practically family himself. And the woman, Pidge’d only met her a couple times, but she’d seemed nice enough. She remembers her mentioning having a little sibling around Pidge’s age, someone who looked up to her, someone to come back to.

None of them deserved—do deserve—to be abandoned like this.

She will bring them home, all of them. Bring Matt and her father back to herself and her mother, and the others to their own families.

As far as she knows, all Shiro’d really had was Keith, in terms of family or close friends outside of Matt or…whatever that was. Regardless, they’d been important to each other, and that’s about as far as she cares about it.

Pidge’d only seen Keith the once, after Kerberos. The same day she’d broken into the Garrison, and had been dumped in the waiting room of the commander’s office while Iverson called her mother to come pick her up, already working on her plan to get back in as she sat stewing. She’d stared at him from across the room in their respective plastic chairs, at the scowl on his face and the large, fresh bruise spreading across his cheek, and wondered just what had happened to the kid she used to know that followed Shiro around like he’d strung up the sun.

“What the hell happened to you?” she’d asked bluntly, and he’d snorted.

“McClain’s brother punched me.”

McClain. Lieutenant McClain, Shiro’s co-pilot. The one with the starry smile and the little sibling she’d been planning to take photos for in space.

“Why?”

Keith had shrugged, looking mildly uncomfortable and almost guilty, and her stomach had churned. “Some new report came out about the pilot error they think might have caused the crash, and I told McClain it must have been his stupid sister that was driving the damn thing when it happened, because Shiro would have never made mistakes like that.”

She’d tried to imagine what it would be like if the world was saying the crash was Matt’s fault, and shook her head. “That’s just cruel.”

“…I know,” he’d said, and she decided the undirected misery in his eyes made him look like the most pathetic creature alive. “But I just needed someone to blame. I don’t want it to be Shiro’s fault.”

“Do you really think they’re dead?”

“I don’t know,” Keith shook his head. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

From the next room over, through the window, she’d seen Iverson hang up the phone, and she’d stood, sneering. “If you refuse to go looking for answers just because you’re afraid of what you might find, you’re nothing more than a coward.”

It wasn’t until after Iverson had come back, and led her to the door, that she’d heard Keith whisper. “Yeah, probably.”

After that, he’d just been another non-believer no longer needed in her world.

She’d not heard anything about him until long after that, when she’d returned to the Garrison as Pidge, and realized the position in the fighter class her new teammate had just inherited had been Keith’s previous one. He’d been expelled, apparently. Some combo of telling his Garrison-assigned therapist to go fuck herself, threatening an officer, and breaking into the file room to look through the Kerberos records.

Well, at least he’d done something.

It didn’t matter either way, she’d decided. Keith wasn’t her problem. They’d never been particularly close to begin with, and she’d realized discarding her identity meant leaving all things, including former interpersonal relationships, behind. Katie may have been sort-of-friends with one Keith Kogane, but Pidge Gunderson was not. If they ever met again, they’d be nothing more than strangers.

Besides, she didn’t—doesn’t have time for friends, now. The mission is more important than anything else, no matter what that anything else may be.

Which is something she kind of wishes her new teammates would realize, because they really…really haven’t.

On some level, she understands the desire to try and get along with your teammates. Her father had always stressed that team cohesion is key to a mission’s ease and success, and so as far as that logic extends she can get why one might try to build a rapport with the people they’ll be stuck working with for at least the next year or two. But at some point, you have to be willing to accept when someone doesn’t want to be your buddy, and move on. A memo her beloved teammates have not gotten, apparently.

It’s mostly the engineer, Hunk. He talks in this loud, booming voice to try and fill up the empty spaces between the three of them, hands always fiddling with one another and eyes twitching nervously to the corners of each room as if looking for some inevitable danger. When he speaks to her, he always seems to instinctually look well above her head, as if expecting someone else to be walking with them as their third, before correcting himself and dipping his head to see her. Pidge doesn’t belong here, that much is obvious to her, but it doesn’t stop Hunk from clinging. Mostly to their other teammate, but to her as well, always ready to shuffle up to her side and follow her walking path one step too close behind. It’s infuriatingly like how her mother behaved towards Pidge after her father and brother went missing, as if she expected her to vanish at a moment’s notice, and it leaves her with a sick feeling in her stomach that only makes her hate it all the more.

Hunk’s not a bad person in the slightest, even given his annoying habits, but he’s too soft. Too warm and well meaning, and all the more likely to get cut on the barbed wire of her hate-riddled soul. He doesn’t deserve the mess Pidge is looking to make of the Garrison, and so she pushes him away at every opportunity. Running from kind, ramblings words and unsteady smiles, leaving him to care for his other self-proclaimed ward.

Said ward being their team’s pilot. Lance. Lance is—well, she doesn’t know quite what to make of him, honestly.

He’s all these mismatched, odd ends. Sewn together with rough twine that cuts the hands and salvaged thread of all colors that can’t quite keep him together.

Sometimes he’s loud and boisterous, posturing grandly and bouncing off the walls with all this excess energy and not a second thought. Other times he’s serious and methodical, all narrowed eyes and a sharp, steely focus that could cut with just a glance.

Mostly he’s just…quiet.

It’s his eyes that get her. They’re a dark blue that look as if they should sing of the ocean, of crashing waves and salt-kissed lips and birdsong. But, no matter whether he’s the enthusiastic force of the tides, the single-minded focus of the sniper, or the silent shadow at Hunk’s side, his eyes always just seem…dead. Like the life was sucked out of them an eternity ago and he just kept moving regardless.

Broken, she decides. He looks broken—in all the ways she might look, if she wasn’t wrapped up in layers of clever lies and anger-made chainmail to protect herself.

Lance tries, occasionally, to be nice to her. The first time they met, he was in one of those firecracker moods, vibrating with enthusiasm, until he turned to see her, and she got her first glimpse of those dead eyes. He’d frozen in place, completely silent—something she later learned was just a thing that happens with Lance— and Hunk had smoothly taken over introductions. Following that, he’d been almost overly friendly, but after the first couple times she made it clear his presence wasn’t wanted beyond when it was required, he mostly left her alone. Now he just watches her with shrewd, wary eyes she can’t quite puzzle out, and doesn’t bother her so long as she keeps up in simulations.

He’s got a kind of unwavering dedication to the program, to climbing the ranks as soon as possible, that Pidge just can’t understand. Maybe once upon a time she wanted to go to the Garrison out of genuine interest and a desire to further the world with her work, but after everything that’s happened, all she feels is disgust for this place. It’s built on a foundation of rigorous hierarchy and self-preservation that she can’t stand with a loathing that runs deep into her bones.

This is the place that sent four innocent people into space and then left them to die. The only reason she’s here is because she has to be; she’d never willingly follow their rules of her own volition.

And—okay, yes, most people don’t have the reasoning she does, but Lance is almost unnerving. He sits through every lecture about how they’re just not cutting it, each hurled insult about him being the replacement pilot, with the same polite smile fixed in place, those empty eyes always present.

If he knows genuine anger, he doesn’t seem to show it. To Pidge, who has coated herself in her own righteous fury as both sword and shield, he is an enigma. A glitch in the code that is the Garrison she should be able to understand and manipulate perfectly, free from the consequences of her old life and name.

Hunk isn’t much better, in all that unnamed, terrified grief she can’t quite make sense of, but at least she can get some genuine read on him when she looks at his face, on how he’s feeling and what he might be thinking.

She tells herself she doesn’t care, one way or another. So she has a couple weird teammates. She severed herself from everything else—from Keith, her friends, her school, to her own mother—so why should this be any different? Pidge can’t afford to get caught on the spikes of whatever the hell it is Lance and Hunk are dealing with.

All that matters is the mission. The high-range broadcast equipment she smuggled into her room under the guise of Pidge Gunderson’s documented high school radio interest, and the photo of Matt and herself tucked under her pillow.

All else is secondary. All else is meaningless.

Pidge only sees Lance snap the once—after she picks a fight with another cadet, a real fight.

She doesn’t mean to. Normally she knows better, she’s not Keith for God’s sake. She is usually controlled, keeping an iron-tight grip on the lid of her simmering pot of anger, but it is one of those days where she could not sleep without Matt’s imagined screams in her dreams. Where she stood silently between Hunk’s fidgeting and Lance’s blank stare through another of Iverson’s lectures, and felt the fury of a daughter without a father and a sister without a brother coil in her chest.

It’s one of those days where it’s all just too much, and when she hears some idiot from the cargo-level training class talking shit on his phone in the otherwise empty hallway about how stupid the Kerberos crew must have been to crash a Garrison ship, when the simulators built to match are so easy to fly, she just…breaks.

She’s on him before she can think, kicking and hitting everything she can reach and screaming until her voice runs raw and jagged. For a moment, Pidge feels like the storm, crashing down on those that would dare stand in the way of her pain, of her righteous vengeance in the face of what she’s lost.

And then Lance and Hunk yank her off and away from the boy.

Pidge comes back to herself in a rush, the shame boiling over—not at her actions, because that prick got what he deserved, but at her loss of control. Only then does she notice Hunk’s shaking hands where they grip her arm to keep her from attacking the boy again, the tight dig of Lance’s nails into her shoulder that she doubts is intentional but bites regardless. She looks up to them, and Hunk is ashen and trembling, as she might expect, but Lance…his eyes are narrowed at the cadet they just yanked her off of, and for the first time they look not dead but freezing with a kind of hate she never expected from someone like him.

Suddenly, she feels not so much like stormy water itself as she does the child dragged under by its currents.

Perhaps they’re both the two of them, herself and Lance, more broken than she gave them credit for.

They end up in the commander’s office, awaiting a disciplinary hearing, unsurprisingly, and Pidge finds herself sitting in the same chair Keith was, all those months ago. She figures it’s appropriate.

Despite Hunk and Lance being the ones to break up the fight—if it can even be called that—they all wind up in front of Iverson’s desk. They weave a lie of how the boy shoved Pidge first in perfect unison, not even hesitating, and she sits through the rant of one more incident, boys, one more incident and you’re out with her nails digging into her palm. She bites her tongue so hard she tastes blood to stop herself from screaming at him, and she decides to count that as a success.

Where’s my family, her heart whispers despite it all, where the fuck is my family you absolute bastard. She shoves it down where it cannot be heard as they’re escorted out of the office, and tries not to meet her teammates eyes once the door into the hall shuts behind them.

Lance turns on her instantly, those suddenly alive eyes cutting into her. “What the hell was that? Are you trying to drag us all down with you?”

She sneers on instinct, wanting nothing more than to go back to her room and just not think for a while, the sooner the better, even if it means being cruel. “It’s not like I asked you to get involved, fuck off.”

Pidge turns to leave, and Lance grabs her arm. She shakes it off with a scowl, wheeling around to face him again, and the hurricane descends on her. “You’re not the only one with something at stake here,” Lance snarls. “We’re a team, Pidge. You may not care about whether you ever graduate or not, but I do, and I’m frankly not in the mood to wait while they try to find us another communications officer because you’re trying to get your ass expelled! I need this to work, ok?”

“What would you know?!” she screams, and the blood in her mouth tastes like grief. “What the hell would you know about why I do the things I do?”

Lance straightens up, and the anger in his expression is gone, lost to a cold indifference that leaves her feeling tiny. “Not all of us have the luxury of time or circumstance to defend echoes that can’t hear,” he says. “You may be one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, but if you can’t be bothered to do a basic Google search on your own teammates, then you’re an idiot. What the hell do you even know about me?”

He’s right, Pidge has to admit, and she shrinks beneath his gaze. She’d never wanted anything to do with the two of them beyond what is necessary, and has studiously avoided trying to learn any of the details of who they are. She knows the names they’d given her, their speaking habits, and their grades in class, and that is the extent of it.

She hadn’t wanted the attachment, hadn’t wanted to care. The less of a life she has as Pidge Gunderson, the more of Katie Holt she can save within herself, even if she may never be able to reclaim it as her own.

Lance scowls, and turns. “C’mon Hunk, this is a waste of time.”

He makes it five steps, Hunk trailing unsurely behind him, casting glances back at Pidge all the while, before she breaks.

“They’re not dead!” she screeches, an echo of the question she’d asked Keith, and she doesn’t quite know why. “I know they’re not dead.”

Lance stops.

“You’re right,” he says, and Pidge’s world shatters.

No one has said this to her before, has acknowledged the lie as Pidge has known it for the better part of a year, and it takes her breath away.

“You’re right,” Lance repeats quietly. “They’re not dead. I’d know if they were, trust me. But—“ he glances over his shoulder at last, and those sea-storm eyes are filled with a kind of sympathetic understanding that makes Pidge want to claw her skin off. “You can’t get what’s missing back with scanners and radios. If you want to find a lost thing, you have to go looking for it yourself, and you can’t do that stuck on the ground.”

He disappears down the hall, dragging Hunk with him, and Pidge is left standing there, lost in her own head.

Later that night—much later, after curfew when the lights have been shut off—she powers up her laptop, and hacks the Garrison student records. It’s the work of five minutes, being so low down on the security priority list that she enters with full confidence of avoiding detection, and she pulls up the fighter-class simulation teams in order to sort by her own and find Lance’s file.

When she does, the realization that she’d never bothered to learn Lance’s last name, hadn’t even considered, hits her like a train, and her world rewrites itself as she stares down at the tiny letters glowing on her screen. Silently, she closes her laptop, and crawls into bed, trying to ignore the words swimming behind her eyelids.

Lance. Lance. Lance effing McClain.

Objectively, she knows that she needs to get some rest, that they have simulation testing tomorrow, and she cannot afford another fuck up—still she tosses, still she turns.

Across the room, illuminated by a sliver of light from the window, the poster of the Kerberos crew that she’d tacked up as a reminder of why she’s here is thrown into sharp relief. Moonlight dances across a picture of a young woman with blue eyes, a smile of stars, and the name below her.

Loraine McClain, co-pilot.

Sleep doesn’t come for a long time after, for neither Pidge Gunderson nor Katelyn Holt.

The next morning, dead eyes, nervous fingers, and barbed wire hatred go back to work, same as usual. They don’t talk about it, for better or for worse.

It is what it is, after all.

Everyone always wants something they can’t have back. That’s just the way of their world.

#Pidge #Lance #langst #voltron #my writing #the SLAOS AUs #I r e a l l y liked this concept #sorry if it's not quite what you were going for there lol #Anonymous #asks #questions for Nik #Prison Toys (Voltron)