“Keely, Keely wake up!”

Moaning, she just rolled over in the tight space of her bunk, keeping her eyes tightly closed against Marco's voice in her ear. “No,” she said clearly, burying her face into the pillow comfortably, thankful for the sudden seclusion that it brought her.

“C'mon, I promise you want to see this Keel!”

“And I promise you that I want to sleep!”

“Just come watch this, please!”

This time she groaned, flipping over angrily in the bed. Musicians were never known for being quite happy after being arrested, bailed out, two hours of sleep and then dragged out of bed to jump on the tour bus then sleep on those crappy bunks. “One of these days when you wake me up I'm going to punch you in the face,” she told him sharply, kicking of the blankets and pushing herself upright. “Or better yet, I'll get Seth to do it.”

“Seth wouldn't,” answered Marco confidently, his face smug as he held a hand up to her.

“Yes I would,” called the bored voice of the man in question.

Chuckling lightly at the indignant look on Marco's face, Keely grasped the hand he offered, hopping lightly from the top bunk.

But when her feet hit the floor she gave a dangerous sway. Letting go of his hand abruptly, she gripped the edge of the bunk across from hers, attempting to steady herself. She may not have consumed enough alcohol to give her a hangover after her long sleep, but that didn't mean she wasn't feeling rather unsteady.

“Did you get new feet or something there, Keel?” asked Marco, grinning broadly at yet another display of her obvious lack of grace.

Feeling a bit too groggy to scowl, Keely rolled her eyes before moving down. “If you would have let me wake up on my own, like a normal person, I might be able to walk like a normal person too.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

Hiding a yawn behind her hand, she pulled to a stop, looking in the direction of the voice. She found Colton sprawled across the black couch casually, a pillow cushioning behind his back with the remote controller in his hand.

After a moment she came to the conclusion that there would be no point arguing with them, they’d either make her laugh or give her a sudden urge to smother them with pillows. It wasn’t unheard of, truly, she had to fit back that urge quite a lot really. Crossing her arms across her chest, Keely leaned forward, peeking around to look at the television.

Her eyebrows flew up into her messy fringe of ginger hair. “You wanted to show me a commercial for genital herpes?”

“Shit, is it gone already?!” exclaimed Marco, rushing past her at such a speed she stumbled forward.

For a mere few seconds Keely watched the boys as they tugged the remote between them, shouting at each other while attempting to reassure her that everything would be fine, and they could show her their findings in naught but a couple minutes.

Blinking she pulled herself out of the reverie, not appreciating being caught in the stare. Tearing her eyes away from where they had began to wrestle over the remote; Keely caught sight of the back of a dark head sitting at the booth at the front of the bus. Stepping delicately over Colton’s legs that were flung across the small path, she made her way, dodging debris, to the front of the bus.

Casually she leaned her hip against the side of the booth beside him, resting one hand on the top of the bench behind him as she reached over his shoulder, snatching up the coffee that was next to his elbow.

“Hey, rebel,” greeted Seth, tipping his chin back to look at her. Holding a paperback in one hand, he stretched slightly giving a groan in the back of his throat. Keely couldn’t help but bite the inside of her lip, holding the coffee in front of her forgotten as the muscles in his arm and chest clenched, the grey t-shirt he was wearing showing those muscles well.

Gulping slightly, Keely took an enormous swallow of the coffee, gawking had never been attractive on her. Not that she probably looked very alluring in the first place, having just rolled out of bed, but they lived on the same bus, there was no room for modesty. “Reading All Quiet on the Western Front then?” she asked, nodding down to the book.

“Nah, I finished that one,” he answered easily, running a hand through his hair, causing it stick up messily in the front. Why did that have to look so hot when he did that?

“You were only halfway through it last night!” she exclaimed incredulously.

His mouth tipped in that crooked grin. “You sleep a lot.”

Deciding that there was no point in pointing out that it was only two in the afternoon after their night out or voicing her concern that he didn’t sleep, she just took another gulp of his coffee. “So what are you on now?”

“The Birth of Tragedy,” he countered steadily.

Immediately Keely felt her nose scrunch up distastefully as her stomach tightened dangerously. “That doesn’t sound too cheerful.”

Yet Seth just snorted, flipping over the book so the spine bent dangerously as the table held it open while he leaned back in the bench seat. Keely hastily moved her hand back slightly as she thought it might be a bit peculiar if her hands had gotten tangled in his hair, as soft as it looked. “Its philosophy, rebel, it’s not supposed to be cheerful. It’s... you know what? I’ll just lend it to you after.”

She considered it thoughtfully for a moment, but then a frown creased between her brows as she looked down at him. “It’s in English, right?”

Chuckling, he rubbed a hand over the dark stubble that never seemed to grow any longer. “It’s written by Friedrich Nietzsche, so it’s originally in German too, but this is this is a translation. Another reason that I need to learn German, I need to reread all his work.”

Arching an eyebrow, Keely pointed out, “You do know you’re taking this whole lost in translation thing much too seriously, right?”

Before he could respond, Marco’s excited voice called, “Keely, we found it, come on!”

Not turning her gaze away from Seth, she posed the question, “Do I really want to see this? Because I can still remember the Pet Cemetery incident, and as much as I love the song and The Ramones, that movie was just damn creepy.”

“Trust me, you want to see this.”

Letting out a slightly apprehensive breath, Keely handed him back his coffee mug before spinning about to the other two boys. Feeling quite comfortable in her pyjamas of Seth’s baggy black Velvet Underground t-shirt and her habitual shorts, she squeezed herself in between the boys on the couch. “So what are we watching today?” she asked in mock excitement, clapping her hands to their legs to pair with her words.

“Just wait for it,” commanded Marco.

Resisting the all too tempting urge to roll her eyes, she fell back in the seat, resting her hands on her lap as she twined her fingers together. What was so important that they were waking her up? Well, that couldn’t be considered a good question, they’d waken her up so she’d settle an argument over the best Led Zeppelin song, she’d sided with Seth saying there was no way to determine that; the band was just too great. As another commercial came on, this time about bleach, Keely let her eyes wander.

When the tour had first started, the bus had been as close to pristine as humanly possible; the couches shining beneath the lights, the table giving off an almost disconcerting sparkle, the stainless steel appliances glinting brightly from the sun in the windows, and, to top it all off, the scent of pine. But now, after the time spent in it, the bus had taken on a more lived in feel to put in nicely.

There consistently not made beds had tangles of blankets dangling from them. There was a pile of mugs in the sink – very little other cutlery as they avoided that like the plague as using them on their fast food eating habits would just cause more dishes – Keely had implemented a schedule for the washing, but the boys still bickered pointlessly over who’s turn it was. Their clothes were spread everywhere; a sweater of Seth’s hanging off the handle of their mini fridge, what she suspected was Marco’s sock caught on a curtain pole and a pair of her jeans sprawled across one of the bench seats at the table. There were containers from their unhealthy diet strewn across the counters, everything from boxes of pizza to the little white containers that had once contained Thai food. Their music was probably taken the best care of, even though it too was all over the place, a Close All Doors CD sitting on top of a Chamber Brothers record beside Colton on the couch. There were posters tacked on the walls, everything from Seth’s Stevie Ray Vaughn poster to the Wicked flier Keely had nicked from Broadway. Yes, it was looking lived in.

“Here it is!”

Colton’s enthusiastic voice snapped her back to the present and her eyes back to the television. But the moment she saw the familiar put together, and all fake, face on the screen, Keely let out a loud groan. “Really, guys, this is just a gossip channel, do we have to-”

“Shh!” hissed the two boys in harmony.

That managed to silence her for only a moment.

But her throat died in her throat when a picture was shown on the screen.

It was the one she’d been seeing on countless tabloids of her and Seth. The picture that had taken in Vancouver as they sat across from each other cross legged on that small stone wall, acoustic guitars in both their laps with a song book between them.

Yes, that managed to get her attention enough for Keely to sit on the edge of the seat. She wished that she could ignore the gossip channels and magazines, she usually had been able to back in Bellingham, but now she couldn’t help herself. It was rather pathetic, wasn’t it? It did sound rather self-centered.

Yet she still focused on what the woman, whose years of plastic surgery had reduced her to a likeness of an alien, was saying.

“We’ve been seeing these two in the press a lot lately. Seth Ryan of NSR who has been developing his bad boy image from their first album and new cover Keely Staub who we haven’t been able to get a handle on, until now that is.”

The words had Keely’s eyes narrow on the screen.

“They’ve been in the headlines since the beginning of the illicit relationship between them while Seth was still with Rachael Gosling-” that time she just scowled up at the woman “- all the way to their already critically acclaimed writing partnership-” her scowl lessened at that point. “The questions about the two just keep building and building. Never have the two addressed each other in the press. What is going on between them to produce songs like Keely’s latest single Breaking Time or the song from NSR’s If I Have You? Not to mention the scandal of the shared tour bus!”

“Are kidding me?” Keely exclaimed resentfully.

However she was simply shushed again.

“But new evidence has been gathered from their latest exploit together.”

Before Keely could scowl again, two pictures were brought up side by side. It was their mug shots from the night before, how did they even get a hold of those so quickly? Seth happened to be sending the finger to the camera man while she was laughing, pushing a hand through her hair. She was also sure that those hadn’t been saved into the system seeing as she had been forced to take another picture where she was so simply holding the sign and looking at the camera. Shouldn’t those shots been deleted once they were taken?

The woman was speaking again though. “These two have been arrested before, back in New York for a bar fight and underage drinking. But that hadn’t taken on the label of a fully fledged outrage-” Keely snorted crossly, she could remember having to do a photo shoot because of the not ‘fully fledged outrage’ “-due mostly to the predictability of Seth’s actions, how many times have we seen that rock star sporting a black eye? But almost entirely on the almost humorous innocence that Keely’s face had been a picture of in her first arrest.” Her first mug shot flashed onto the screen, broadcasting her wide eyes and open mouth. Keely’s glower just deepened, since when had she been innocent?

“Still it was the video taken by an anonymous source while they were in the holding cell that has shown the destructive path the two are heading down.”

Keely felt her eyes widen as said video took up the screen.

They were singing loudly to With A Little Help from My Friends, the irrational part of her was pleased to note that they still sounded quite good despite all the negative factors pressing against them. The acoustics were good in the cell. As they sang “I get by with a little help from my friends” she dropped down on the bench close to Seth, one leg tucked beneath her and slung an arm casually over his closest shoulder, pulling herself even nearer to him, her mouth almost touching his ear for the line “Mmm, I get high with a little help from my friends” Seth smiling at her with the dimple in his cheek, his eyes almost smouldering in the bad lighting. The emphasis on the word “high” was as clear as they had intended it to be.

And that was what was sticking in even her mind when they sang the next line “Mmm, gonna try with a little help from my friends”. Not even when she sang “What do I do when my love is away?” and Seth took her free hand lightly in his; singing the backup vocals of, “Does it worry you to be alone?” did her attention differ much.

That ghastly woman appeared back on the screen before anymore could be shown. “That’s just a clip of their shocking confession of what has been the path of many rock and roll artists before them; drugs. Has that been what’s been influencing their song writing? It can’t be long until at least one of them ends up in rehab the way they’re going. We’ve even heard from a reliable source that Keely has put her name down for a rehab center for the moment the tour has ended. Which do you think will join the twenty seven club? We have a poll on our website for you all to vote!”

Feeling the white hot rage boil in her stomach, Keely snatched the remote up from Marco’s lap, slamming violently on the off button. When her hand began to shake, she vented some of the angry by throwing the remote down the bus. “What the fuck?!” she exclaimed, digging her hands into her hair.

“I know,” answered Seth’s calm voice. He hadn’t even turned around to watch, just continued to read his book. “They didn’t even play the best lines of that song, “Would you believe in love at first sight? Yes I’m certain that it happens all the time. What do you see when you turn off the light, I can’t tell you but I know it’s mine”,” he recited.

But she just ignored him. “How is that a confession to us being drug addicts all the sudden? We were singing a fucking Beatles song! Yeah, sure they were higher than hell for half the songs from that album, but we weren’t! Since when have I been signed up for rehab? I didn’t even know I was an addict, why didn’t anyone tell me sooner? Because I’m so far such a stoner,” she said sarcastically. “And are they serious? They have a poll over which one of us is going to join the twenty seven club?!”

“You two are about fifty-fifty for that on that one, if you wanted to know,” put in Marco.

Seth apparently couldn’t help but add, “Damn, I wanted to win that one.”

“I voted for you,” volunteered Colton, “But Marco voted for Seth.”

Keely covered her forehead with her hand, staring at them blankly. But the anger in her stomach didn’t dissipate. Getting up from the seat, she stalked away to the back of the bus, grabbing her clothes for the day and beginning to chew on her nail.

Even three hours later, Keely was still furious.

She’d spent the time pacing up and down bus as the boys tried to calm her down, but it was of no use wearing a pair of tattered jeans and another of Seth’s shirts because she hadn’t felt like anything more than stealing his Jimi Hendrix shirt that fell to mid thigh on her. So she was a drug addict now? Keely could only wonder how her father would feel about that one.

Her sound check had been one of the worst she’d fallen victim too. She’d been distracted the whole time, snapping rudely at her backup band that had for once not deserved her anger. The only point where she’d found some soothing relief was when she’d sat down at the piano, playing Georgia On My Mind, her mind giving her the memory of Ray Charles’ version from The Genius Hits the Road, trying to channel one of the best musicians of all time as best as she could. But when the song had ended, The Bitter Rivals had stomped away from the stage and her, making Keely lean her head against the smooth top of the black piano.

For how long she’d stayed there, she didn’t know. She had a sick feeling in her stomach.

But she’d been forced to move when the boys had shown up for their turn at the sound check. She’d fielded the questions of if she was alright, moving away to sit on the corner of the black stage cross legged. If anything could rid her of the pit inside her, listening to them could.

Yet she was soon to find that it didn’t help her any, if only it made it worse when she heard Seth tell the boys to do Simple Man. The steady guitar at the beginning tugging on her heart as she watched those once again dark and sad eyes as Seth moved to the microphone.

“Mama told me when I was young

Come sit beside me, my only son

And listen closely to what I say

And if you do this it'll help you some sunny day

Oh, take your time don't live too fast

Troubles will come and they will pass

Go find a woman you'll find love

And don't forget son there is someone up above

And be a simple kind of man

Be something you love and understand

Baby be a simple kind of man

Oh, won't you do this for me son if you can?

Forget your lust for the rich man's gold

All that you need is in your soul

And you can do this, oh baby, if you try

All that I want for you my son is to be satisfied

And be a simple kind of man

Be something you love and understand

Baby be a simple kind of man

Oh, won't you do this for me son if you can? Oh yes, I will

Boy, don't you worry you'll find yourself

Follow your heart and nothing else

And you can do this, oh baby, if you try

All that I want for you my son is to be satisfied

And be a simple kind of man

Be something you love and understand

Baby be a simple kind of man

Oh, won't you do this for me son if you can?

Baby, be a simple, be a simple man

Be something you love and understand

Baby, be a simple kind of man.”

It was becoming painfully obvious that it didn’t matter how many times she listened to them, they still managed to shock her. But her focus had been purely on Seth, and she had managed to forget about the gossip, and just watched him.