If Only Until Morning

You'd be amazed how much havoc two people can reek in such a short time as two weeks. True, anyone who spent more than ten minutes with either of us-- and that usually meant both of us-- would describe us both as "alarmingly devious" and "too smart of everyone else's own good." We could be nice when we wanted; we just liked laughing at other people's mild misfortune.

Hell, Beth and I started planning pranks and mayhem from her first day on tour. Although, convincing the rest of the band to let her stay was the hard part.

"Hell no," Matt had declared vehemently. "You're bad enough on your own, Angie, but her? We'd be thrown off the tour!"

"They wouldn' throw us off the tour," Sean chided mildly, stretching upwards from sitting in the booth for so long. "I highly doubt they'd do anythin' seriously dangerous or illegal." He looked between us both. "Righ'?"

"Of course!" I agreed angelically. "How could you think so lowly of me?" Beth leaned on my shoulder and smiled toothily at him; she didn't like any of my boys on principle, but she disliked Sean the least. He at least had shown improvement. I think the accent had something to do with it as well.

Matt, however, was resilient as ever. "Why would I ever want to live with a girl who could have possibly made me incapable of having kids?"

"Keep talking, kid, and it won't be possibly," Beth muttered in my ear. I suppressed a smirk and nudged her.

"And what would she be doing?" Matt continued, rambling. "Because she sure as fuck has to pay her way if she's sleeping on our bus."

Aromi was filing his nails in the corner. "Merch girl," he said simply. To him there was no contest; he adored Beth.

"We have a merch girl," Matt argued warningly.

Beth straightened up and swept her head around searchingly. "Really now?" she asked, looking at Matt. "Then where is she?" Matt opened his mouth to argue, but realised that he didn't have an answer, because he honestly had no idea where the hell Ali was.

I smiled. "I'll make up the extra bunk," I suggested happily.

That was day one. Since then, we'd hit possibly every single band we were in acquaintance with, and considering the social butterflies half of our team were, that was a lot of bands. And don't take that to mean that Beth didn't like anyone and inspired me to do the same. I was mischievous by nature. And Beth liked certain people. They all were tall, skinny, and had great hair, but they existed.

But there were two people she absolutely abhorred and did everything in her power to make them miserable. The ironic thing is that she did it out of love. The first was Alison, and how could you blame her? Revenge is a dish best served cold, so lots of our punishment pranks had to do with ice. And water. And glue, but that's beside the point.

Beth did one good thing for Ali, though; she introduced her to the concept of a tip jar and, gods forbid, tips. You know, getting extra money for being helpful and friendly and generally awesome merch people. Ali seemed to have never seen one before.

The second person Beth nearly-hated was one whose pranks I had nothing to do with: Ryan. Sure, if we were hitting all of Panic! I would certainly take part, but I never singled him out. In spite of everything, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Beth said she understood why, but I really think she still wanted me to loose some pent-up aggression and anger against him.

I thought this was a terrible idea. For the both of us.

But the most amusing thing about having Beth around wasn't all the joyous pranks or conversations on my intelligence level or even having someone else with whom to tease and excite the boys of tour. It was the effect she had on Jesse.

He got over his phase off trailing after her like a puppy floating on a cloud incredibly fast, once he realised that would get him exactly nowhere. Apparently innocence is dead. Who knew? I felt sort of sorry for the guy; Jesse seemed to have the worst luck when it came to relationships. Need I remind of his last boyfriend? Although, that one seemed to give more bad luck to me.

Jesse would try to be subtle, defending her when arguments over random shit occurred and excluding her from mockery. But once she showed that sniping was not only fair play but encouraged, he gave up being the goody-two-shoes fifties-style perfect bring-home-to-Mom potential-boyfriend guy and started acting more like himself: a complete smartass who liked to have a good time and hide how brilliant he was.

Too bad. I thought they were perfect for each other. Unfortunately Beth showed no interest in him from what I observed; in fact she pointedly ignored him. Whether genuine or not, she seemed more taken with Shawn or William, much to the chagrin of Jesse (for obvious reasons), Carden (because he thought she was manipulative bitch), and Ali (who, after Ryan, had her sights set on Bill).

I avoid drama like the plague it is. So when the hell did my life become a soap opera?

But maybe there was something I was missing, because they certainly had things in common. Language, for instance. The guys never really had a pattern of whom woke up latest (unless hangovers were involved), but somehow it was decided that Jesse was last to get up one morning. The rest of us were hanging out, lounging on each other, eating breakfast if we were so inclined.

Jesse, hair sticking out in all directions while still managing to look attractive and only having managed to pull on some plaid flannels, wandered out to us and stopped short, eyes going wide for a moment. Then, shaking his head slightly, he continued towards the refrigerator, muttering to himself in French and rubbing his eye. I couldn't understand enough to decipher what he said, but I heard the words "blonde" and "magnifique."

Beth, leaning on my shoulder, arched an eyebrow at his bare back. "Silence, tu ne sais pas de quoi tu parles."

The rest of us looked at her in bewilderment while Trill froze and turned slowly. "Run that by me once more?" he requested, blinking at her. Well, at least that was enough to wake him up. Beth, however, simply gave him a placid look, which for some reason made me glare accusingly at me.

"What?" I asked innocently. He simply shook his head and muttered again in French, something about justice, I think. Beth retorted conversationally with something that flew completely over my feeble grasp of the language. If I hadn't been staring between them like there was a ping-pong match going on, I wouldn't have noticed how her eyes trailed after him as he disappeared from sight.

However, I lost my train of thought when Matt groaned loudly. "Oh God, you two are just going to be talking over our heads from now on, aren't you?" he complained.

"It's French," Beth contested, rolling her eyes, "Not a dead language."

"But none o' th'rest of us speak it," Sean reminded her, peering into his mug of tea. "Dead languages we 'ave covered."

Jesse came back with a bowl of cereal, garbled something that would have been barely discernible in English, and sat down across from us. Beth nodded solemnly and voiced her agreement. Matt sighed. "This so isn't fair."

That sparked the mini-argument by Beth that French wasn't difficult to learn if you're so inclined but Matt disputed that he already knew three languages, and on and on from there. Crikey, but those two could argue for their country.

In the meantime I could entertain myself with the fact that Ali had just sidled up to my half-naked guitarist. "Jesseee," she whined, flitting a hand across his shoulder and chest. "Teach me French."

"I'm eating," he pointed out shortly around a mouthful of cinnamon Life. Ali made a face, and Beth even stopped airily correcting Matt to cringe at him. Trill caught her gaze of disgust as Ali moved away to Matt, swallowed carefully, and said, "Je suis desolee. Mon defaut."

And to my complete astonishment, Beth smiled slightly at him and casually went back to leaning on me. I think if anyone else had tried that, she would have quipped back with something along the lines of "Damn right."

Later that afternoon we stopped in a hotel, and as usual it took a while for everyone to get settled in their rooms. Thankfully, having Beth around meant she and I were sharing-- along with Ali, who kindly buggered off to spend the night with some unnamed person, presumably male and easy.

I don't remember whose idea it was, but after dinner it was decided that we would gather up some friendly individuals and play strip poker. Needless to say, I protested verbosely, and needless to say, I was outvoted. Even by Beth. I think she just wanted to see all the pretty musician boys naked.

So we split up from the boys' room to recruit players. Somehow I got stuck getting dragged by Sean to Panic's room, despite threats on his life. But I swore to be polite. Nice even. What the fuck was I thinking?

Sean knocked, which was sort of ridiculous seeing as the door was standing wide open. I rolled my eyes and strode past him, greeting Spencer, Jon, and Brendon all sitting on the couch. "Who's up for strip poker?" Sean announced with a grin. Well, no one's serious all the time.

And the three definitely seemed in favour. Apparently something about their clothes made them want to lose them all. A slightly awkward moment passed when Ryan walked out of the bedroom and found the male population of the room talking in competitive excitement and me standing in the middle, smirking at them knowingly.

"What's happening?" he asked with a note of suspicion as the guys fell quiet.

I smiledshyly politely at him. "Ryan, do you want to play poker with us?"

Ryan raised an eyebrow. "Is Beth going to be there?" he asked tersely.

"...You're going to be incredibly high school about this, aren't you?" Apparently he wasn't crazy about her either. I don't blame him; that paint must have taken forever to get out of his hair.

"Angie, I smelled like beef jerky for four days!" Oh right, and there was that too.

"Think of it this way," Brendon interceded, calming us both down before we got into another fight. "Now's your opportunity to beat the pants off her." He grinned. "Literally."

I couldn't help but grin as Ryan's eyes widened in confusion. "Oh. I forgot to mention that. It's strip poker."

He laughed shortly. "Yeah, that's not happening," he declared.

Spencer slung an arm over my shoulders. "Pen, we're from Vegas. It wouldn't be fair on everyone else." Spencer failed at not grinning deviously when he was faking humility.

Luckily, I knew things that he did not. And my return smile screamed that information. "We'll see, Spencerface. We'll see."

Sean took this as the sign to make our way out and turned back in the door when the others had passed. "So yeh in or wot, Ross?"

After a moment'shesitation thought, Ryan shrugged with unnatural nonchalance and strolled after us. "Sure, why not?" he decided. "It's not like I'm morally against nudity or anything." He shot me a smirk, which I combated with a doe-eyed look, and pulled me along by the waist as we walked, kicking the door shut behind him. "Plus, it's been a while since I've kicked ass at poker."

"Need I remind you, Ry, that I have exactly zero skill at poker?"

That smile remained. "I know, Rhi."Fuck, I missed that.

Four rounds into the game, I'd only lost my hoodie. Which was convenient seeing as it wasn't even mine in the first place. Give up for wearing other people's merch! Beth was on the same level as I, now merely barefoot, but the rest of the guys were complaining.

"You bitch, you said that you sucked at poker!" Zack accused, laughing. Zack, who along with his drummer had opted to stay out of the game and watch the rest of their friends lose all their clothes.

"Normally I do," I replied, genuinely surprised at how well I was doing.

"Then you've gotta be cheating," Jon said, sitting comfortably in his boxers and plain white t-shirt.

"She's not cheating," Beth scoffed.

"One of you is!" Jack insisted, shaking his cards at me, but not enough for me to see. "You've got to fucking be! There is not enough exposed female skin in this room!" He shouldn't have been losing as badly as he was, but Jack definitely liked to over-bet. That's how I won his shirt. And how Beth won his pants. And Jack wasn't wearing much else.

"Being smarter than you is not cheating," I said with a smirk, returning to my cards.

Ryan won the next round hands down-- I admit, he was pretty damn good-- and all the guys insisted that Beth and I take off legitimate clothing. We looked at each other, shrugged, and stripped off our shirts. Not that it was much different, both being in tank tops in the first place.

But the boys seemed to enjoy it. Not that I noticed. I was more preoccupied by the fact that Alex had lost completely and was now sitting among us butt naked. The scary part was that he seemed completely unfazed by it.

"How did you lose so quickly?" I demanded amusingly as the rest of the group laughed and made fun of him. "We've only been playing for fifteen minutes!"

"I'm an aggressive better!" he argued, grinning that stupidcute grin of his.

"Fuck that, you just like being naked," Jesse laughed, throwing a pretzel across the table at him.

Another ten minutes passed and I suddenly found myself surrounded by naked guys. With Beth having won the last round-- I folded, abandoning my leggings but still retaining my short skirt-- Ryan pulled out all the stops, bet all in... and lost. Poor boys. He was their last hope.

"You girls are..." Rian drifted off, looking between Beth and me and unable to think of a suitable adjective or comparison.

So I supplied one with a sly grin. "Straight up hustlers, I believe is the phrase you were looking for, my dear Dawson."

"Have fun walking back to your rooms," Beth cooed with a sweet smile as she pulled on Jesse's striped hoodie. I burst out laughing as they looked at each other; apparently that thought hadn't occurred to them. I never wondered before, but I discovered that several guys on tour had very... well, to be blunt, really nice asses.

My language skills are dwindling. I'm spending too much time with teenage boys.