It had taken them two days to get everyone on board and then to find the time to have all the key players in one place at the same time. But Rick had succeeded and currently Ryan was squatting on the floor of the front lounge, shooting upward into AJ and the lady's faces.
Dressed in her schoolgirl outfit—which was nothing more than a short plaid skirt and a white button down—Sunday was carefully squirting whipped cream just in front of the lens, so that it rained a filmy froth down into the frame. For art's sake. For her part, Alex was practically draped over the husky pie eater, entirely topless and squirting whipped cream onto her nipples as AJ's eyes nearly bulged out of his head; he had lost all interest in the actual pie long ago.
"CUT!" Rick yelled as he stomped around the space and tried not to step on the other guitarist-slash-filmmaker. "Alex, you can't be naked in this video. It's going on YouTube and our fans are going to see it. Jesus Christ, you have to keep your fucking clothing on for once!"
Seated on the sofa opposite the pie threesome, Chris crossed his long, tattooed arms over his chest and made a face. "Would anyone argue with breasts? Show me a man who would argue with breasts, and I will show you a man who is insane in the membrane."
"Never," Vinny cooed in a voice that suggested he might be stoned. "So much breastusis is so much okay with Twit."
Alex sat up straight, shoving her pert chest forward. "I'm covered, Richard. No one is going to see anything. Why are you suddenly such a puritan?"
Rick raised an exhausted hand to his forehead and rubbed his temple. "During the last take, AJ wrapped his lips around your entire nipple and sucked all the whipped cream off with a loud 'pop' while you nearly had an orgasm on the sofa. Before that, he was smashing pie onto your breasts and licking it off. This is not the content that I signed up for, children. I want a comedy skit not a fucking porno."
"I'm starring in my first porno," AJ beamed, setting the pie down onto his lap to hide his hard-on. "My pops would be so proud!"
Sunday rolled her eyes. "Honestly, this isn't exactly what I signed up for either. I'm getting a little uncomfortable over here. I thought that we were supposed to be taunting AJ and squirting whipped cream onto the pie, not onto each other and our tits. Isn't this supposed to be a fantasy sequence?"
"It is," AJ smirked fiendishly. "It's my fucking fantasy come true! I'm the cream in the Oreo, baby."
Alex stood up and stomped her foot, causing her whipped cream pasties to slowly slither and cascade down her toned stomach. "I don't have a problem showing off my body, I'm proud of it. Why are you all such prudes?"
"Yeah," AJ raised his fist in salute. "Quit being prudes!"
Standing up and setting his camera onto a nearby counter, Ryan sighed. "Look, I see both points of view here—the whipped cream titties are hot!—but I agree with Richard. This content is getting a little too adult for our fanbase and YouTube. Let's put our minds together and figure something out that's sexy without being the next scene on Brazzers."
Alex shook her blonde head and cupped her breasts. "These titties are done, kiddies. Today is a fucking day off and I'm not going to waste it with this crap. Even Spencer and his fucking idle hands are better than this! Sayonara and goodbye."
"They mean the same thing," Rick made a confused face as the petite woman stormed off the bus still completely topless.
"What about a scene where AJ is eating his pie in solitude, and I come up onto the bus, glance around, and ask him why he's always eating pie. He tells me to sit down, snaps his fingers, and Sunday appears and presents me with my own pie." Ryan shrugged. When the group stared at him blankly, he frowned. "Look, that's all I've got."
"I mean, it could work," Rick mused with a finger to his bottom lip. "It's not really all that funny though."
Sunday shook her head. "Just stick with your original idea: he's eating pie, I'm taunting him, and then someone comes up onto the bus and I disappear into thin air. The person asks him why he's always eating pie and he giggles." She paused for emphasis and then grinned. "Keep it short. I know you enjoy making the intros, Rick, but the fans want to see the band footage—not scenes like this. Keep everyone happy and keep it short."
"That's not what she said," Vin quipped and the bus exploded into laughter.
It took a while but eventually the group dispersed to enjoy the rest of their day off, leaving the two guitarists to sit in silence in the small booth in the front lounge. As Rick began editing the footage that they had captured earlier, the silence filled with the sound of familiar voices and laughter.
Ryan sighed, nudging the back of his bestie's Macbook. "We need to talk."
"Does it have anything to do with the googly-eyes that Sunday is making at your camera in all of the footage I am editing?" Rick glanced up and smirked.
"She is not making eyes at me," the bearded man groaned, glancing out the window to his right. His brown eyes landed on the parking lot of their hotel and a gigantic open field beyond. In the midst of all that greenery stood the woman in question, speaking and gesturing animatedly at her boyfriend who did not look amused.
Observing Ryan's quietude, his friend glanced out the window and nodded. "He treats her like shit."
"Yeah," was all the other man said.
"He's cheating on her," Rick prodded further. "Do you know that?"
Ryan's expression fell as he sat up straighter. "He is?"
"With Alex." Rick took a sip from his Starbucks and then carefully spliced together footage of Alex swirling a mountain of whipped cream right onto AJ's tongue. "I caught her—" his voice trailed off and he stopped himself from beginning to gossip. "I feel really bad for Day and I suspect she has no clue."
"The thing is," Ryan jostled himself around in his seat and began tapping out a rhythm on the table. "The thing is that she's so amazing, she's perfect really. I don't think she knows how wonderful she is and Chris definitely doesn't know or care. Women are a dime a dozen for him—they're all fucking throwing themselves at him. Sunday is special, though."
His blue eyes wide, Rick nodded slowly. "Why don't you tell her that?"
Considering this question for a long while, Ryan eventually frowned. "Then I'm the bad guy, right? I'm the asshole that came onto his bandmate's girlfriend; I'm the guy that drove a wedge into the band. I ratted out my best friend and named him a cheater in order to get the girl." He paused and then inquired, "Does that really make me the good guy, or is that really just me being an asshole with the right intentions?"
"I'm not saying that you should go crying to her and tell her that she's being lied to," his friend amended. "I'm saying that you really like this girl a lot, and it's not just a physical thing—you genuinely enjoy spending time around her. You should tell her that! Let her know that you appreciate her as a friend."
"That gets me nowhere." Ryan bowed his head and stared down into his coffee.
Rick shook his head and the corners of his lips turned up into a little smirk. "I disagree. If she knows that you care about her and enjoy the time you spend together, when the shit hits the fan and then eventually everything blows over, your name will be in the back of her mind. 'Oh, that Ryan, he's so sweet and cute!'"
"I don't want to be fucking cute," his friend scoffed, standing up and waving his tattooed hands in dismissal. "Get out of here! I just want—" He dipped into silence and then shrugged. "I don't know what I fucking want anymore."
"I know what I want," the shorter man winked at him. "I want you to get your ass back into that seat so I can show you some of this footage. I think I can salvage this disasterpiece after all."
Tossing himself back into the seat he'd just vacated, Ryan laughed. "Those are some tits though, huh?"
"Yeah," Rick sighed dreamily. "I wouldn't toss those out of my hotel bed. I mean, I would now because of Jaime, but ten years ago I would have had a fucking field day with that body. I probably would have stopped filming, taken her into the back lounge and bent her over the table."
Ryan chuckled. "I couldn't believe when she took her top off and tossed it onto my head. I almost dropped the camera, and I had to think of dead kittens to keep from embarrassing myself in front of Day."
"Speaking of embarrassing yourself," the other man snorted, "I had to crop a bunch of the footage because AJ did just that. He practically put the pie pan on top of his erection and balanced it there."
"That's AJ!" Ryan laughed. Forgetting the seriousness of their earlier conversation, he leaned back and allowed Rick to show him a series of snippets from what they had both filmed earlier. His friend was right: AJ had popped a woodie at the first sight of Alex's breasts and coupled with Ryan's upward camera angle much of that footage was unusable for their purposes.
"I like this part though." His friend pressed play and Sunday sauntered onto the screen. Clad in her PG-13 schoolgirl outfit, her long legs walked across the screen, spun, and allowed just the slightest glance of her cherry-adorned cotton panties. She then smoothed out her skirt and sat down beside AJ, offering the giddy man a slice of cherry pie.
"Makes a grown man cry," she cooed as she pressed a kiss to his bearded cheek.
Ryan actually blushed. "Goddamn."
"Yeah," Rick grinned. "We didn't even need Alex and her bullshit. Sunday totally nailed it on take one."