VALERIE WAS SITTING on the couch in the tour bus, her head resting in Freddie's lap. He was messing with her hair, singing quietly to her. The peacefulness was almost enough to make her fall asleep, if it weren't for the intense game of Scrabble occurring nearby.

     "Bullshit! You cannot put down Uranus because you spelled it wrong! And it's two words!" Roger hissed at Brian, who was pinching the bridge of his nose behind his glasses, shaking with laughter.

     Valerie opened her eyes and glanced the way of the two of them. "Roger, Uranus is a planet. You're pronouncing it wrong, idiot." She said, as kindly as one could.

       Roger shot her a look and took a puff from his cigarette. "Kids today." John sighed as he sat down on the chair next to the couch. His comment made Brian snort with laughter, and Roger shot him a look.

    "I might remind you, Richard, that you are the youngest of the band." Roger said as he angrily looked at his letters.

       "Ah yes, Meaddows , but what good does it do when you're older and have less wit than your inferior?" John shot back, sipping his drink as he raised an eyebrow at Roger, who scowled.

      "Expanding your vocabulary, John. I'm impressed. If only your superior were the same way." Valerie said quietly, earning a hit in the forehead with a tiny wooden Scrabble piece.

       "OW." She said very loudly and dramatically. Freddie simply chuckled and rolled his eyes, continuing to mess with Valerie's hair.

She lightly tapped Freddie's knee as she sat up. Freddie got up from the couch and went to the mini fridge to get him and Valerie a drink.

"That's quite a nice braid Freddie's done." John mused, watching Valerie sit up, her hair (having been done in an odd half french braid) fell in her face slightly.

"Like you could do any better." Valerie told him as she ran her fingers through her hair to detangle it.

     "Oh, I can." John replied, going right over to where she was sitting and sitting behind her, the crown of her head resting between his legs.

     Roger and Brian were silent, the two of them exchanging looks. Roger had to try with all of his might not to make a sexual innuendo, so instead he turned back to the Scrabble game he and Brian were playing.

    Without a word, John started to braid Valerie's hair almost flawlessly; Freddie came back with his and Valerie's beers from the mini fridge on the bus and handed one to her.

     After about five minutes, John was done braiding her hair, and she was in awe.

     "Now where did you learn to do that?"

     "He's got magic fingers, Val. Take him to bed and see what else they can do." Roger said, unable to resist, earning a kick from Brian underneath the table.

     "Oh, shut up. I've got a sister. I had to learn how to braid hair pretty early on." John laughed, and Valerie smiled at him, moving to sit next to him on the couch.

     "Well, I think I just found my new hair stylist, then."
*****

"So, your parents are both artists?" Freddie asked. They were sound checking all their equipment, and everyone decided to suddenly just ask Valerie questions.

     She was fiddling with a camera John Reid had given her as an early graduation present, which was a kind gesture, but she didn't know how to use it. She looked up at Freddie and nodded. "Yup. My Mom is Irish, and my Dad is Spanish, but I grew up in Mexico, which is where they met. They both studied the Latin art there."

      "That's where you get your drawing skills from!" John exclaimed from the drum risers, where he was tuning his bass.

      "Well done, Columbo!" She said, grinning a bit as she looked through the camera lens, pointing it here and there.

"Latin art? How fascinating." Freddie said, watching Valerie as she focused the lens on John. Freddie was more intrigued, now, seeing as he was an art major.

"Yup. My mom got her masters in it, and she's a professor at one of the colleges in Spain. My dad, however, is a painter - John, look here! - and I really love his artwork." Valerie gushed to Freddie, interrupting her sentence to tell John to look at the camera.

He ended up making a kissing face a the camera when Valerie snapped the picture. "Damn it, John, I wanted that crinkly smile of yours." Valerie said as she set the camera carefully on one of the amplifiers.

"Sorry, Val." He called as he played a few riffs on his bass. Valerie rolled her eyes as she sipped her water, going over to talk to John Reid, and to thank him again for the camera.
*****

      Valerie had gotten very drunk at the concert. They band had been planning to go out for drinks and dinner afterward, but they scrapped that idea and were making their way back to the hotel.

     Valerie was singing, not obnoxiously, but also more than usual. She was getting quite handsy with the band, too. Especially Roger.

She had taken a drunken attachment to him, and the two were flirting a bit too much for anyone's liking. Roger wasn't even drunk, but he went along with it. It was very much like him to do so, but it astounded Brian that he would go along with Valerie, one of his best friends.

Brian supposed that Roger didn't regard Valerie in the same light he did, which was as practically a sister. Either way, Brian knew Valerie wouldn't remember the harmless flirting she and Roger were doing then the next morning.

Freddie suggested they all play Scrabble, but that idea too was scrapped when Valerie had become too tipsy to stand properly.

"I'll go tuck her in, yeah? Maybe then we can play Scrabble?" Roger said as he lit a cigarette.

"Sure, you do that, Rog." Freddie said as he fell onto the couch in his room. John sat and propped his legs up on the coffee table, watching Valerie mess with Roger's hair and fawn over him, fiddling with the buttons of his shirt.

He felt this unexplainable surge deep inside. He wasn't sure, but he was almost positive it was jealousy. For reasons he couldn't explain, John was almost jealous that Valerie was messing with Roger and not him.

As Roger walked out of Freddie's room, he noticed that Roger went the direction of his room and not the room Valerie and Brian shared. John could only imagine where that would lead.

As he took a cigarette from a nearby packet in Freddie's room and lit it, he began to wonder why all of a sudden he felt this way about Valerie. Sure, he had known her for four years, but he had always simply regarded her as a friend. So, why the sudden jealousy?

Maybe it was protectiveness?

"John, want something to eat?" Freddie asked, covering the mouthpiece of the phone, snapping John out of his thinking process.

"No, I'm not hungry. Thanks." John said, smiling weakly at Freddie as he said goodnight and retreated to his room that happened to be right next to Roger's.

He was trying to ignore the obvious moaning of Roger's name emitting from the room, but he just couldn't, eventually getting up from his bed and deciding to go back to Freddie's room to play Scrabble and take him up on the food order.

     He knew slamming the door behind him wouldn't do anything, but he did it anyway.

     Freddie didn't even bother asking for an explanation when John had come back into the room and wordlessly sat down before asking for cheesecake.

     Freddie already knew what was wrong.