yarrie-writes

[yarrie-writes]

Thisness

Chapter 1: A Rose by any Other Name

They called it "sublimination," because there was always a nice way to describe terrible things.

Lance had never seen it happen before, but that was just a fluke, a stroke of luck, a - a sign from the universe that he was meant for something, maybe, because in a tiny brick elementary school of 128 students, he'd been the only one sick at home the day that a fifth grader went up in flames and brought the whole school down with her.

People said, afterward, that no one could've known that it would happen. That it could've been anyone. That she hadn't done anything wrong. That there hadn't been any signs of magical affinity in her or her family, much less fire affinity...until she exploded, anyway.

None of that sounded particularly reassuring when you lived five minutes away from a building that had been charred so horribly that the brick was scorched black and the windows were crystalline puddles on the ground. Lance remembered wandering over there once, just once, and getting the shit smacked out of his ass when his mama found out. But he'd had a reason for going. His neighbors had told him, soft and low like it was a secret to tuck into his pillow and sleep on, that somebody in town had been sneaking past the patrol and smuggling out handfuls of ashes for the families who'd lost somebody, and Lance had asked, soft and low because he was in awe, who would do that, but nobody knew, because they went when it was dark and they went fast and they didn't tell no one but God. So Lance had gone looking, and he probably would've kept going if his mama hadn't caught him.

But aside from that one brave soul (and Lance), nobody in town would go near the place. A small colony of government workers migrated down for the summer to scrape charcoal and bone ash from the streets and rebuild the school, but it didn't do much good. Fear was a powerful thing.

In the meantime, Lance went to a school one hour away, and everyone even slightly related to him breathed a sigh of relief when he graduated from it before construction was done.

They called it "sublimination," because there was always a nice way to describe terrible things - and if there wasn't, somebody could always be hired to find one.

And for the last five years, Lance had been that somebody.

Maybe that was overstating his importance, a little bit.

In reality, Lance was a tiny gear in a huge machine. In reality, he was sort of a nobody, even if he was a nobody with a mouthpiece. In reality, his job could rightfully (if rudely) be summed up as propaganda-pushing.

And maybe in another reality, Lance would give a fuck about the ethics and morals of what he was doing. In this one, he didn't have any fucks left to give.

"Good mornin', Pasadena, how was your beauty sleep?" he crooned into his microphone, pulling his mouth into a smile because you fake it til you make it and he desperately wanted to make it. "This is Lance McClain speaking, here to remind you that the sky is blue, the earth is round, the stars are bright, and I'm free for dinner if you're lonely tonight, so hit me up, ladies and gentleman."

On the TV in the corner of the recording studio, he saw Pidge dropping his head onto the desk with a muffled groan, so he pointed finger guns at his techie coworker half-ironically. Pidge could use a fake-it-til-you-make-it smile, he thought. Pidge could use any expression that wasn't exasperation or homicidal rage.

He kept the finger guns up until Pidge gave him the middle finger, then he gave Pidge two middle fingers back, and not once did he stop talking during the entire exchange. "Now then, tonight's topic is the total catastrophe with the protesters at the Gates of Justice yesterday! I mean, seriously guys, if you haven't been following the news you better turn on your TVs. It was a madhouse. Lots of people fighting lots of other people, 'cause no better time to duke it out with security than when you're supposed to be protesting peacefully, right?"

He made a very exaggerated huffing sound. "Now, I'm the first to defend freedom of speech and all that. I love freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is my best girl. It just seems...kinda dumb to get so riled up about it that you go around punching people, y'know? Words don't have feelings, guys. People have feelings. People have lots of feelings. Play nice while you're flaunting your freedom of speech, that's all I'm asking.

"But this isn't just about me, guys. Hit me with your opinions, 'cause I know everyone and their mother has one about this stuff - my facebook feed tells me so. As always, the number to call is 626-555-5567! We'd love to hear from you."

In the corner of his eye, he spied Pidge and Hunk fielding the first callers of the day before he was even finished reciting the number.

Well, that didn't take long.

Seconds later, names and descriptions were scrolling down his screen, and he picked one at random, because he was a brave, brave man, the kind of brave that was often mistaken for stupidity but was actually closer to stubbornness.

"Man, you're chomping at the bit today, Pasadena, aren't you? Mr. Adam Smith, how are you doing?"

"Good." Mr. Adam Smith's voice was soft, and raspy, and absolutely not radio-friendly, which could be blamed on either the inherent quality of his voice or the obvious lack of quality in his phone. There were cars in the background, which helped not at all.

Lance winced a little. Just this once, couldn't his first caller be somebody with a good microphone? Whatever. Rolling with the punches. "You rolling in traffic, sir?"

"Not even rolling, unfortunately. But you know how it is."

A sense of humor, he could work with this. "Man alive, I wish I did know how it is. Maybe I'm lucky that this job forces me to wake up too early for rush hour, but I sure don't feel too lucky when my alarm sounds."

Mr. Smith uttered a dry, dry laugh.

Lance caught the annoyed undertone of that laugh and winced. It was an impersonal sort of annoyance, like Lance had simply nudged an underwater iceberg free and now it was floating to the surface of the sea and causing chaos in its wake. Impersonal, nothing to do with him, but that didn't mean it couldn't get ugly.

On paper, his job was actually pretty simple - all he had to do was talk, and piss the right people off, and not piss anybody else off. And Lance was good at talking, and really good at pissing people off. He might be a little shaky on choosing who to piss off and who to let go, but he was getting better at it. And right now, his hard-won instincts were telling him to bail.

"Alright, alright, while we've got you captive in traffic, my good sir, what's your take on the protests?"

"Well, actually, I think their hearts are in the right place. We all saw what happened in Kerberos, and given the...background...of the terrorists, you can see why people might think that there's something deeper going on."

"Sure, sure. But the question is, do you think that there's actually evidence that there's something deeper going on?"

"I'm not ruling it out."

"Of course not. There's no such thing as ruling it out, right? I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that I know what actually happened. That way madness lies. But what about actual evidence?"

"The tape - "

"Yeah, the tape." Lance sighed. "Not gonna lie, I've listened to it, and I am un-im-pressed. I keep trying to hear the screaming that everybody's talking about, but all I'm getting is feedback. And this is from a guy who talks into a microphone all day for a living. Thanks for talkin' back, though - good luck with traffic!"

The man tried to call back a few minutes later. Wanted to finish the conversation, Pidge's curt notes told him.

Lance sighed and picked someone else.

It would be easy to string his haters along until they stumbled. They always did, sooner or later. Lance wouldn't consider himself the smartest or cleverest or meanest person in existence - he wasn't even the smartest or cleverest or meanest radio personality on his channel - but he was incredibly good at dragging people down to his level, and that was all he needed to do, most of the time. People didn't judge arguments by how good the reasoning was. It was all in the delivery, and Lance was good at delivery.

It just...it would be easy to string his haters along, but he didn't like doing it. Didn't like shining a spotlight on people until they burned from it. Didn't like humiliation. It just wasn't in his blood, his bones, his too-soft heart.

"Today sucked," he said with feeling, curled around one of Hunk's glorious cookie-cake masterpieces.

"Tough topic," Hunk nodded. "Tougher crowd."

Pidge snorted and nibbled on his piece of cookie-cake without commenting.

Lance groaned. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I was there."

Pidge snorted again. It was an ugly, harsh little sound, like a high-dose injection of condescension.

Lance was pretty sure Pidge didn't like him. Then again, Pidge didn't seem to like anyone. Except Hunk, but everyone liked Hunk.

That was not precisely true, he reflected later, as all three of them were berated in Iverson's dusty office for 'gross negligence of their duties.' Lance had tuned him out after he realized that this was about the same old stuff. Iverson was ex-military, and it was written all over the squareness of his shoulders and the straight line of his back and the way he expected his employees to respond well to beration. He gave off this overwhelming sense of what he called patriotic dignity and what everyone else saw as overcompensation.

Plus, he didn't like Hunk, and everyone liked Hunk.

"Dismissed," Iverson barked suddenly, and the only reason Lance even heard it was that he'd been listening for it.

"Freedom," he whispered to Hunk and Pidge. Hunk smiled weakly at him, looking a little nauseous.

Pidge, being Pidge, just snorted again. "You might wanna actually pay attention when he goes off on you. He wants to fire you, you know."

"Okay, first of all, he wasn't just going off on me, he was going off on us."

"Pretty much only you, though."

"I heard Gunderson in there a couple of times."

Pidge scowled.

"And secondly, this is a government position. We're technically government employees. Nobody ever gets fired from the government. That's why Iverson's still here."

Hunk chuckled weakly, recovering a bit from his Iverson-induced panic.

Score.

Pidge opened and closed his mouth. "...you...okay. That's fair."

Score! Lance crossed his arms behind his neck and let his head rest there, soaking in his victory. "The worst thing that can happen is that I'll get promoted into a position where I can't do any more damage," he said conspiratorially.

"Oh how terrible for you," Pidge said, dry as sandpaper.

Lance grinned. "I know."

Hunk sighed and sighed, worry creasing his forehead, but it was a familiar worry that was no longer contagious, because he and Pidge were immune by now. "What do you want for dinner, Lance?"

"I was thinking burgers." Lance half-turned to Pidge. "You?"

Pidge blinked large owlish eyes at him. After a moment he realized why - ever since Pidge turned them down for dinner that first day, he hadn't asked. Maybe their lack of friendship wasn't entirely on Pidge.

"Pidge?" Hunk prodded gently.

"Oh," Pidge said, flushing ever so slightly. "Sorry. Not today, but...raincheck?"

"Sure, sure, Pidgeotto," Lance said cheerfully.

Pidge stared at him. "Was that supposed to be an insult? Pidgeotto's awesome."

"You're awesome," Lance fired back, on instinct, before he realized that yeah, that really wasn't an insult at all.

Pidge giggled, downright giggled. Behind him, Hunk threw him a thumbs up sign.

Lance groaned. "Let's pretend that didn't happen. You're Pidgey now."

"Too late," Pidge said.

"I canceled your evolution, you're Pidgey."

"Too late!" Pidge grabbed his bag and gave them a half-hearted backward wave. "Have a good dinner!"

"Thanks, see you tomorrow, Pidge," Hunk said.

Lance glared at Hunk.

"What?"

"Traitor."

"Pidge is cool, bro."

"Cooler than me?!"

"Lance, I love you, so I'm not answering that."

When he got home he put on the television. He always did, no matter how much shit the television was spewing about the state of the world. It was a horrible habit that he needed to kick, except it made him better at his job, while also making him better at hating his job.

Today the topic of choice was some gun-toting fool with the Remember Kerberos movement, which made him think about that stupid tape again, which made him listen to the stupid tape again, trying his damnedest to hear something in the background other than an increasingly sharp voice on the radio asking for someone, anyone to check in.

Some people listened to the static and heard screaming. Some people listened to the static and heard breathing.

Lance had been listening to this tape ever since it came out, and all he ever heard was static.

Wishing don't make a thing real, his mama always said.

The next day was more of the same. The protests up in Washington had escalated. Again. There were pictures of tear-gassing and water hosing. Again.

Lance was already sick of it, but he did his best not to show it, because he was a fucking professional, and it wouldn't be very professional to ask his listeners why they felt the need to express their opinions on the radio instead of taking those opinions up with people who actually mattered and could get something done.

"Mr. Tom Cain, what's your take on - "

"Madam Euphemia Lowe, how about you - "

"You're up next, Mrs. Efemena Ayodele - "

And so on, and so on.

Until - "Annnnnd here's Mr. Kitty Rose, here to pitch in his two cents!" Then Lance paused for a long moment, successfully pulled out of his own headspace for the first time all day. "Um, please tell me that's not your real name. Actually, no, wait! Please tell me that it is your real name, 'cause I love it."

"...Hello?" came the voice from the phoneline.

Lance nearly cooed at how confused the poor thing sounded. He'd bet an arm and a leg that this was the guy's first time ever calling in to a radio show. It was kinda flattering. Who was he kidding, it was really flattering. "Hello, Mr. Kitty Rose! You're on air right now. How you doin'?"

"...I'm...I guess I'm good?" He didn't sound any less confused.

This time, Lance did coo. "Awww, just good? Not great? Not dazzling? Not awespectacular?"

"What the hell is awespectacular?"

Lance grinned with wild abandon, because the setup was way too perfect, and he probably shouldn't push a new caller like this but what the heck. Being called by a guy named Kitty Rose was the best thing that had happened to him all day. "A lot of things are awespectacular! Me, for example. Specifically, certain parts of me."

There was silence...then the sharp, unmistakable click of a phone hanging up.

Lance pouted, even though no one could see him. He'd always believed in the power of making faces to give his voice that extra emotional oomph. "Well, guess he didn't wanna stay and chat, ladies and gents. Next!"

Awkward-cute or not, Mr. Kitty Rose (seriously, was that his name?) slipped out of his mind completely within half a minute. He was too busy with his other callers, some of whom agreed with him, some of whom didn't, and some of whom really didn't, but it was all in good fun - on Lance's side, anyways - and arguing was the best part of his job, so he wasn't exactly complaining.

So it was weird when Pidge came into the recording studio, afterward, and said with utmost casualness, "So. Mr. Kitty Rose?" like it was meaningful and shit.

"Dude, if that's actually his name..." Lance started laughing again.

Pidge grinned slightly - which was mindblowing to see on Pidge, King of Angry Scowly Faces - but it was a grin of the shit-eating variety. Lance braced himself, and good thing he did, because the next thing Pidge said was, "Didn't stop you from flirting with him. What, you aspiring to be Mr. Rose-Mclain?"

Lance laughed messily and ignored how his neck felt a little hot. He was never going to get used to the fact that batting for both teams was treated so casually here, but that didn't mean he didn't appreciate it. "No way, dude," he chirped out at last, "Mr. Mclain-Rose sounds way better." 

Pidge gave him the sharpest little grin he'd ever seen on a human being, and mockingly saluted him on his way out.

"I think Pidge and I are becoming friends," he mused out loud as he and Hunk sat in a sleazy bar with two orders of burgers with cheesy fries for the third time in a week. Who needed healthy arteries, anyways?

"Pidge is cool, I told you," Hunk said, around a mouthful of fries.

"You think everyone is cool."

"Pidge is actually super cool, though. Did I tell you that he managed to install some kind of internet radio app on our computers? I didn't even think they were capable of running anything more intense than Wordpad."

"Hey," Lance said, pouting.

Hunk blinked at him. "What?"

"You listen to radio stations other than mine? I'm feelin' betrayed, Hunk! Abandoned! Gutted! Hung out to dry!"

"Dude," Hunk said, snorting with laughter, "we gotta listen to something when there aren't any callers and we're waiting for commercials to pass."

"Hung out to dry, Hunk!"

Later at home, when his landline started ringing, Lance cursed wildly and had a battle of epic proportions with his remote to turn the TV off, because he knew who was calling and he knew what she would have to say about watching the news again, mijo?

"Hola, mama," he said, curling his tongue over the soft vowels of his native language.

"Hola, mi amor," his mother said warmly. "Two rings and you pick up, how punctual."

"I'm very punctual, mama," he protested, grinning. "I always do things exactly when I intend to do them."

"Does that mean that you haven't called me this week on purpose?" her voice turned gently chiding.

"Oooph, mama," he said, wincing a bit.

She laughed, forgiveness and love all in one bell-like sound. "I was listening to you the other day."

Oh shit. "Which day?" he asked, trying for lightness.

"The day you were talking about cereal," she said, and thank god, thank god, because he knew how sad she'd be if she'd been listening yesterday or the day before. Politics and laws were not up for discussion in the McClain household. His brothers and sisters would get fired up on their respective choices of social media, where his mama's sphere of influence did not extend, but Lance kept himself firmly, firmly out of those arguments, even when they tried to draw him in. Sometimes, when he came home for dinner and the table topic landed on how he was doing at work, he'd look up and his siblings would be looking at him plaintively, like they didn't understand how all the pieces that made up Lance McClain could possibly fit together into a cohesive whole. It sucked knowing that at least some of them were disappointed in him. It sucked, but he dealt with it, because he was disappointed in himself, too.

Small mercies, he reminded himself. Always be thankful for the small mercies, because you've already filled your quota for the big ones.

Things would get better, he thought, clenching his phone in his hand. Things had to get better.

Things did not get better.

He'd gone to work, spirits bolstered by his mother's warm, easy affection, and Iverson was waiting for him, and it was way too early for an Iverson lecture, fuck the universe. When it rains, it pours, he thought grimly.

"Look at this," Iverson said, thrusting a paper into his face.

Lance just barely managed to prevent himself from snapping back, "I am looking at it, but you might want to take it back a couple inches if you want me to actually read it." Instead, he said, "Yes?"

"Look at this, and read it!"

"Yes sir," Lance said cautiously, and that seemed to be what Iverson wanted, because he harrumphed irritably and stopped looming.

"This is your last warning to shape up," he said, because he only existed on a spectrum from upset to very upset. "You're not here because you're good at your job. You're here because the last man who had your job turned out to be a thief. Don't push it!"

Lance pulled the paper away and read it.

It was a fucking gag order.

When it rains, it pours, and pours, and pours.

"This sucks, man," Hunk murmured, looking over the stupid piece of paper with a critical eye.

"Yeah."

"I feel like - like we're doing everybody a disservice. This is basically self-censorship, right?"

Lance sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, but - hey, it's not like a random radio talk show in Pasadena is going to change the course of history."

Hunk frowned and looked sad.

Lance winced. "Look, I don't like it - but I don't wanna know what they do to me if I break rank, either."

Hunk chewed his lip. "You have to be careful, Lance. Maybe, this year - maybe you should try to get transferred to the tech side."

"The dark side, you mean?" Lance waggled his eyebrows.

"...we do have cookies."

Lance laughed. "Hunk, you already make me cookies all the time."

Hunk looked properly pensive. "If I stopped doing that, would you turn techie for the cookies?"

"Hunk, my man, I'd die without them. You don't want me to die, do you?"

"No, I really, really want you to stay alive," Hunk said, and wow, okay, this conversation was becoming Way Too Serious.

Pidge piped up, making them both jump, "I didn't know you could do any tech stuff. Aren't you always saying that you and computers have a mutually assured destruction thing going on?"

"Pidge, Pidge, Pidge," Lance wagged his finger at him, "I was a technician here before Hunk was."

"I mean, he wasn't a very good one, but - "

"Hush, Hunk, I'm trying to make a point."

Pidge snickered. "Consider your point unmade. And probably unmakeable."

"I'm feeling so attacked right now," Lance muttered.

"Good," Pidge said, and there was a grin on the little guy's face, and Lance felt weirdly better.

Then Hunk sighed and ran his hand through his hair, ending the moment. "We need a game plan. Pidge and I, maybe we need to screen the callers more? Make sure they're not gonna be trouble?"

"I don't mind trouble," Lance said, "s'long as they don't mention anything on the unmentionable list."

"It's gonna be hard finding someone who won't mention Kerberos or protests or anti-magic regs." Pidge wrinkled his nose.

"Give me an hour of Kitty Roses, then," Lance said, sighing.

Pidge snorted. "You sure you want that kind of trainwreck on your hands?"

Lance looked at Pidge, stern-faced and serene. "Bring it."

He should not have said that.

He should not have said anything.

Pidge was going to be insufferable.

Scratch that, Pidge was already insufferable: next to the little label with Kitty Rose's name, Pidge's note read, Ask and ye shall receive! With the next refresh, it also said, BTW I told him you were gonna answer his call, so if you don't, I guess he's just gonna think that you're a coward.

Pidge was going to suffer.

"So," he said, as sweetly as he could while simultaneously imagining a painful, humiliating death for his traitorous technician, "Mr. Kitty Rose, back again?"

"Hi," the other man said. "...I guess I am."

"You definitely are, my man. Do you actually have anything to say this time, or...?"

There was a pause. "Wow, you're kind of a jerk. Why do people take time out of their day to listen to you?"

"Heyyyy. I'm just gonna point out that you're calling in for the second time, which means that at the very least you've listened to me twice."

"And both times were a waste of my time."

Pidge was going down. Pidge was so going down. Lance leaned in and uttered in the cheesiest cartoon-villainiest voice he could manage, "How dare you."

"How dare I, indeed."

"Yeah, exactly. How dare you listen to my step by step instructions and call me."

"It's almost as though you don't want listeners."

"What, are you a listener now, Mr. Both-Times-Were-A-Waste-Of-My-Time?"

"You know that feeling you get when you pass a car accident on the road and you want to slow down to see what's going on?"

"Yeah?"

"Your radio show is the verbal equivalent."

Lance found himself laughing, hysterically, helplessly. Okay, so maybe Pidge didn't have to go down. "Seriously, man, did you call in just to tell me that I'm a jerk?"

"That's my story and I'm sticking with it."

"You don't have any pearlier pearls of wisdom? That's all you've got for me?"

"...okay, I got another one: cereal, then milk, is the only acceptable order to make cereal in."

Lance gasped. "You heathen."

"But I'm right."

"I'll have you know that I'm a cereal expert, buddy, and milk is always first."

"I bet all your cereal bowls are mushy at the bottom and dry at the top."

"You take that back, my cereal bowls are perfect, thank you, because I know how to treat my dates right."

"That sounds awfully pathetic."

"Why, why I oughta, you're pathetic!"

"What a comeback. I'm quivering in my boots."

"You should be!"

"Yes, yes. That doesn't change the fact that you're wrong."

"How could you possibly put milk over the cereal? You're just making it soggy faster!"

"It's too messy pouring cereal onto milk. Gets everywhere."

Lance narrowed his eyes. "I'll have you know that cereal is my second favorite thing to eat in bed, and unlike the first thing, I've never made a mess in my sheets with it!"

There was silence. Then, very quietly, "Um, what's your first favorite thing then?"

Oh. Oh my god. Oh my god.

He didn't get it.

This was the best day of Lance's life.

With a huge shit-eating grin, he settled down on his elbows and sing-songed, "Nothing, nothing at alllll. Hey, by the way, I'm thinking of having a cereal party soon, wanna come?"

"Uh, no, not if you're going to eat it wrong."

The best. Day. Of his life.

"Hey, man, if it matters to you that much, we can try it both ways." Lance wiggled his eyebrows. "I can bring the milk if you bring everything else."

"Er, no, I'm not drinking your milk."

Hook.

"Why? Don't you trusssst me?"

Line.

"No. Plus, I'm lactose intolerant, so double no."

And sinker.

"Oh, Kitty," Lance purred, "nobody's making you swallow."

Lance was floating on Cloud Nine, and counting, the rest of the day. He'd never been more disappointed to cut a caller short so that he could start music hour. Or more disappointed, in general. He'd already eaten four of Hunk's cookies to chase the high of that incredible call, and now he was eyeing the plate for his fifth.

Next to him, Hunk was shaking his head, the flush of secondhand embarrassment fading at last. "Dude. Dude. Did you have to?"

"Dude. It was necessary."

"So necessary," Pidge agreed.

Lance turned to Hunk. "See? Pidge agrees with me! And Pidge never agrees with me."

"Never," Pidge agreed.

Hunk sighed at both of them. "I guess we did a good job today, though."

"Good? Good? Hunk, my man, my bestie, my homie, that was more than just good. It was amazing, it was incredible, it was - it was - "

"Awespectacular?" Pidge suggested, rolling his eyes.

Lance pointed to Pidge emphatically. "YES."

Hunk looked resigned to his fate. "Right. That. Anyways, good job. I don't think anybody noticed that we didn't talk about the unmentionables."

"Thank you, Kitty Rose, savior of us all," Pidge said.

"Hey. I'm the savior here. Kitty Rose is, like, the DVD Disc 1 villain who helps out during the final battle against the actual villain."

"So not a villain at all," Pidge said.

"Well - "

"And also probably the most important person during the final battle."

"I - "

"So basically the savior."

Lance screeched. "Okay, whatever. What-ever. And here I was, wanting to invite you to our bro dinners, but I guess you don't wanna go - "

Pidge sucked on his soft drink. "Nope."

Hunk frowned. "Awww...."

Pidge flicked his eyes over to Hunk and heaved a sigh. "Yeah, sorry. Still need a raincheck."

"When's the end of your shift today?" Hunk asked.

"6 pm."

Lance wiggled his eyebrows. "And you don't have time to grab dinner with us? Does someone have a hoooot daaaaate?"

"Oh my god, Lance," Pidge muttered, smacking his head.

"That's not a no, Pidge!"

"I take it back, no raincheck."

Pidge, because he was a boring, boring person, turned out to be headed for the library at Caltech after his shift.

Lance, because he liked poking boring people until they lost their boringness, and because he still felt a little guilty about making Pidge the third wheel to his and Hunk's awesome bro relationship, tugged on Hunk's sleeve until Hunk agreed that they should accompany Pidge to the library because you know it's not a great idea to be walking around alone at night, Hunk!

"It's surprisingly quiet around here," Hunk said, warily, twisting his head this way and that, and Lance almost felt bad for appealing to his best friend's protective/paranoid instincts.

"Were you expecting it to be loud?" Pidge asked, raising an eyebrow. "This isn't exactly party central."

"Well, no, but I'm surprised you don't have protesters camping out anywhere."

Pidge snorted. "There were, for a while."

Lance raised an eyebrow. "What happened? Mace? Batons? Dogs?"

"Deadlines and exams," Pidge said flatly.

Hunk cracked a small, wry grin, while Lance outright laughed. "Oh, jesus. You serious?"

"Yep. There were We Will Never Stop Looking signs abandoned all over the courtyard as soon as Hell Week started."

"Ironic."

Pidge smiled at that, but it wasn't really a smile-smile, and it didn't even reach all corners of his mouth, much less his eyes. "Yeah. There are definitely better places to start a revolution than a school of engineers. Not enough of them care, and the ones who do care don't care enough." Was that bitterness? It sounded like bitterness. But maybe Lance was hearing things. It wasn't like Pidge to be bitter - or maybe it was, and they just didn't know Pidge well enough to know that.

"Maybe they have the right idea," Lance said cautiously.

Pidge looked really hard at him. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I don't think most people are cut out for revolution."

Pidge looked even harder at him. "For such a loud, bossy guy, you're actually really cynical," he said finally.

Lance grinned at him. "Hey, gotta hope for the best but expect the worst, right?"

Pidge shrugged, quiet and blank-faced. He wasn't glaring at Lance, but he wasn't agreeing with him, either. Which was normal. Everybody in the information business talked big game about the moral imperative to inform the masses and change the world and shit, but it wasn't human nature to walk the walk unless you were already headed in that direction.

Lance was a coward, he'd be the first to admit it - but at least he wasn't a hypocrite.

Unbidden, the image of the wreckage at Kerberos Station popped into his head. He winced.

At least he wasn't dead.

Kitty Rose showed up the next day, too.

They had to table the cereal debate, though, because Kitty dropped a bombshell about not being able to cook, which derailed them for a solid fifteen minutes.

He also found out that Kitty liked running and kicking balls around but didn't like team sports because of the team part, and that his favorite color was the same red as canned cranberry sauce, and that he thought pineapple on pizza was disgusting, which was so, so wrong that Lance was compelled to inform him, "You're disgusting!" before hanging up.

Then Hunk and Pidge completely and utterly betrayed him by sending forward an endless line of callers who agreed with Kitty on the pineapple issue, and he vowed not to speak to them ever again.

Kitty Rose also, apparently, thought that Raisin Bran counted as a cereal.

Lance curtly informed him that this lost him the cereal debate by default.

He also, reluctantly, began speaking to Hunk and Pidge again, seeing as his silence didn't have a lot of emotional impact when the alternative was engaging in interpretative dance moves to get his message across.

Also, Hunk gave him more cookies, and those cookies made up for all kinds of shenanigans.

Two weeks after the gag order had been thrust upon him, Lance took inventory of how he was doing and thought that, all things considered, it could've been worse. Iverson was still yelling at him regularly but it was with his usual, baseline hostility. Pidge still wouldn't come to dinner with him and Hunk, but at least the awkwardness of their duo becoming a trio had mostly rubbed off. And Kitty was, weirdly, becoming something of a friend? Lance had no idea what was going on there, only that Hunk and Pidge thought that something was, and they kept making these faces whenever Kitty called and it was actually super embarrassing. And his mama was still checking on him and his siblings were still weird about his job and the McClain house was still a no-politics zone.

So life was - not good, but okay. Really, really okay.

Or, at least, that's what Lance had thought.

It turned out that there was a difference between thinking that things were settling down, and the actual process of things settling down. A small part of Lance's brain had solidified in early childhood and never really changed after that, and it was this part of his mind that fooled him into thinking that turning his eyes away from the world shifting on its axis would somehow make it stop.

So he was just doing his usual bedtime routine, his brushing and flossing and face mask and shampoo and conditioner, when the television noises in the background stopped sounding like weather report noises and started sounding like news report noises. It wasn't a big difference, but he felt it like a cold front crashing down, chilling him to the bone. Some animal instinct told him to pay attention, pay attention so he did, plodding slowly to the living room and sinking into the couch of his living room, staring glassily at the television screen.

" - currently receiving reports of a flash flood in Washington D.C., right at doorstep of the White House. At least forty civilians, many of them protesting the recent changes in the Magical User Registration Act, were caught in the flood - "

"Authorities suspect that the flood was caused by an act of magi-terrorism or a sublimination event...witnesses say that there was a white light before water came rushing from the steps of the White House. No suspects have been - "

"This just in, the flood has started rising again, still not a cloud in the sky - "

" - massive explosion at the White House. Authorities say that its blast radius was dampened significantly by the flood - "

" - White House Correspondent, on the line now - the prevailing theory we've heard tonight is that whoever raised the flood knew about the bomb, what are your thoughts?"

"These horrific events are the doings of terrorists - and I do not use that word lightly - aligned with the magi-militant group Remember Kerberos. We all know there is a time for tolerance, a time for patience, but we have been tolerant - we have been patient. There is also a time for action, and that time is now. I call upon every member of this group to surrender to the nearest authorities - "

It also turned out that both he and Pidge were a little wrong about engineers, because Caltech was on fire the next morning. Metaphorically.

They weren't the only ones, either - the news was full of footage from nearly every major city in the country. Pasadena fared better than most, but there were still riots happening, honest to god riots. Half of lanes on the highway were blocked off because someone had moved the road partitions. There was broken glass everywhere around the 7-11 across the street from the studio. Lance actively feared for his car's structural integrity if he parked it any lower than the roof of the garage. By then, he was almost forty minutes late. 

Hunk called him while he was running up the stairs, saying, "Dude, I packed you an extra sleeping bag. Have you seen the streets? We might not be going home tonight."

"Fuck," Lance said, blearily. "That's a good idea, thanks, I'm at the studio - "

"How is it over there? I'm gonna be late, tell me how it is - "

"It's..." Lance looked around, and was nearly run over. By the time he managed to find a safe spot, he laughed weakly. "It's a madhouse, man. There are papers all over the hallway - new carpeting, hey? I almost got run over by a super short lady. And she almost got run over by a slightly taller lady. People are everywhere, and it's - uh." He peered out the window and stared. And stared. And stared. Then, without moving his gaze one centimeter, he whispered, "Hunk?"

"Lance? You okay?"

"Yeah...yeah, I'm okay. Listen. I still have a change of clothes at your place, right?"

"Multiple changes of clothes, actually." Hunk, bless him, was still so Hunk through this mess.

"Can you bring them over? I think maybe the studio's safer than our apartments right now. Kind of. Maybe?"

"What do you mean? What's going on?"

"There's, like, twenty soldiers right outside the door."

"Is that..." Hunk said cautiously, "a good thing?"

"I don't know, man." Lance laughed, only a little hysterically, "I don't know anything anymore."

"Good morning, Pasadena," he said, a pale imitation of his usual cheer, "how was your beauty sleep?"

The words felt like cotton in his mouth.

He didn't ask for callers - no techs meant nobody to screen the callers, so it would've been a lost cause anyways. It was still depressing to look at the empty tech room and watch the phones flash, ringing into the void. He had the ridiculous thought that he should keep watching, regardless, because what if Pidge called in? What if Kitty did? Surely he'd know that it was them, even without sound, without anything but the telegraphed trill of an impersonal ringtone.

The studio felt deathly still, now. Pidge was still nowhere to be seen, and the other people in the building had been leaving - he tried not to think evacuating - one by one all morning until it was just him. He hadn't even seen Iverson all day, and this was probably the only day of his life that he'd feel happy catching a glimpse of the old grump. But no one was there, so Lance stayed huddled in the recording studio, talking about nothing at all, because he didn't know if Hunk would be able to find him otherwise, and he really, really didn't want to be alone.

Halfway past nine, Hunk finally showed up with their sleeping bags and bottles of water and a generous snack stash, and Lance could have cried, he was so glad to see him.

"Where's Pidge?" they both asked, at the same time. Then they looked at each other, and looked at Pidge's empty chair, and Hunk made this...noise of distress. "Okay. Okay. I think Pidge can take care of himself. So let's take care of ourselves, first."

After he was properly fed and watered and hugged within an inch of his life, Lance started taking callers.

Pidge wasn't one of them. Neither was Kitty.

He tried his best not to think about that.

The smoke alarm went off at 4 am and woke them up. Hunk couldn't find a way to shut it off completely, but he did manage to dismantle the one in the recording studio, and they were both tired enough to go back to sleep in spite of the distant ringing. By the time they woke up again, it was all quiet. The street outside didn't look any different from yesterday, which was comforting because it meant nothing big happened and not-so-comforting because no one had come to clean up the 7-11 and the glimmer of glass on the ground was like something out of a horror movie. 

"Okay," Hunk said after they ate a dry breakfast of granola bars, "Let's regroup."

"Hunk, buddy," Lance said, wincing, "two people does not a group make."

Hunk ignored him. "A, things are kinda going crazy out there."

"Yep." Lance resisted the urge to put his hand on his forehead. No facial cleansing routine meant he had to be extra careful -

"B, Pidge is missing."

"Yep." Lance put his hand on his forehead.

"C, Your radio boyfriend is also missing."

"Why is that C? That should be, like, X or something." He paused. Then, frantically, he added, "Also he's not my boyfriend, what the hell Hunk - "

"D," Hunk continued serenely, "I'm pretty sure Pidge knows him. Like, actually knows him."

Lance shut his mouth and stared.

Hunk huffed a bit. "C'mon, man. You said it yourself, Kitty Rose just can't be his real name. But he hasn't corrected you either, right?"

"No," he said slowly.

"Well," Hunk shrugged. "Pidge is the one who screened him. And, um, while we're at it?"

Lance made a go-on gesture.

"It seems way too coincidental that Pidge - like pigeon - and Kitty are both animal names, right?"

Lance stared at him. "Oh my god. Why did I not see that before??"

Hunk, ever humble, shrugged. "So it just makes sense that they actually know each other - but also, um. I tried to find Kitty Rose in the logs, and there's nothing. No phone numbers, no call records, just...nothing."

"Pidge?"

"Pidge. Probably." Hunk scratched his nose.

Lance nearly screeched. "Pidgeeeee. Whyyyyy."

"Don't worry, don't worry!" Hunk grinned at him, and held up a fifth finger. "E, I bet they're still listening to you."