In retrospect, the few of them who were willing to actually look back on that night were amazed at how drunk Margo hadn't been. By anything that might resemble logic, it ought to have taken vast quantities of alcohol for her to agree to such a stunt. What they would have later cause to recall was that Margo had always had a fondness for playing practical jokes, even allowing herself to look foolish for a little while for the sake of making someone else look even more foolish when all was said and done.

Years later, when they were reunited for drinks, memories, and ceremonies, Nykesha would reveal that she had in fact tried to get Margo drunk as part of the scheme, but she had forgotten to take into account sheer body mass. Margo was skinny, but at seven-two, there was still a lot of body mass to absorb the alcohol. "Of course, it worked out kinda better that way, 'cause then she didn't fall over, but I couldn't believe she'd do it sober," she would admit sheepishly, trying not to look at Margo, whose mischievous, slightly cynical smile was only a little more knowing than it had been during her playing days.

It started with a round of punning from a relatively sober Katie, a slightly tipsy Erin, and a completely soused Lindsay. The wordplay was getting more complicated and more convoluted, since Erin's accent and the way Lindsay was slurring her words allowed for a far wider range of puns than the original subject of the conversation would have allowed. No one was sure how they'd gotten to the topic of stripping, but it wasn't as if most of the team minded the discussion coming from the three of them. It gave several of them lovely mental images, and gave Nykesha an idea. Careful applications of alcohol left Erin, Lindsay, and Margo very suggestible, so when the conversation, as it was sure to do as long as it stayed on that topic, turned towards pole dancing, Nykesha was ready. "Any of you ever wanted to try it?"

"Maaaaaybe," Lindsay said, waggling her eyebrows as if imparting a dirty little secret, but she went on just a little too long and looked rather ridiculous doing so. The lopsided smile on her face didn't help either.

"Well…" Nykesha trailed off suggestively. "Not like we have anything better to do tonight, right? Not like you get too many chances to try it, either, and look at us with a nice tall pole in the room for tryin' that kind of thing out. Seems almost like destiny, don't you think?"

Erin looked at her very oddly, the kind of eyebrow-lifted skeptical expression that the group was more used to seeing on Lindsay's face. "What're you on about, Keesh? We don't have a pole in here. Not much in here except the drunken lot of us, in fact."

Nykesha grinned. "See, that's where you're wrong." She pointed at Margo. "See? Pole. Very tall Pole, in fact. People make a whole big point of her being really tall. I say we do something more interesting with that than just lead the league in blocks and rebounding differential. Margo, what do you think?"

"I think that if I did not want to do this, you could not force me to do it," Margo said in a surprisingly reasonable voice, her accent coming out a bit stronger than usual because of the alcohol.

Nykesha nodded. "See? When are you ever gonna get another chance like this? Take it. You know you want to. I promise I won't tell anyone."

Lindsay giggled, a sure sign that she'd had way too much to drink. "Yay! I wanna try first, I wanna go first!" As she squealed this, she stumbled towards Margo, unsteady on her feet. Margo caught her just before she fell, causing another spate of giggles. "Thassa real smart safety thing you got there! Never saw a pole do anything like that before!"

"Ah, but I am not your ordinary Pole," Margo reminded the point guard. "Hold on. No, don't worry about hurting me. I am not so easily broken. There. Yes, you're fine. Feel free to- oh, that feels very nice. You can keep doing that if you want to."

Lindsay's flexibility didn't surprise them, since they had seen her stretching time and time again. It was more amazing that she was able to keep her balance with her legs wrapped around Margo's waist and only one hand on Margo's shoulder to stabilize herself. Nykesha, personally, was wondering exactly where Lindsay had learned some of the more complicated moves; either Minnesota was a lot more interesting than she had thought or Lindsay had been taking in some of Mohegan Sun's racier entertainment. She certainly seemed comfortable even on their rather improvised pole, gyrating in ways that no small-town conservative should have been even vaguely aware existed.

Equally surprising, Margo didn't seem to object. Clearly, although the core of their team had been together for a long time, there were still a lot of things they had to learn about each other.

As Lindsay twirled and gyrated, Erin watched the show, topping up her drink a few times. Though her tolerance was clearly higher than her teammate's, she could feel the alcohol taking effect as her senses fuzzed over and everything suddenly seemed a lot more hilarious than it had any right to be. Granted, the fact that one of her teammates was pole dancing on another was pretty funny, but under normal circumstances, she would never have considered it to be a good idea for anyone much less herself. Tipsy and rapidly approaching drunk, though, Erin seriously considered joining in, and when Lindsay finally fell off after trying something a bit too complicated, she made her move. "Oi! Think I'd like to give it a try, if Margo doesn't mind."

"As long as you are a bit more careful than Lindsay became at the end, I will allow it," Margo said, putting a hand over one particularly ugly-looking bruise in what had to be a rather sensitive spot.

"No worries. I'm very careful!" Erin said, and though she didn't giggle, she sounded like she should have. She got a running start, slightly more stable than Lindsay's, and let Margo catch her so that she could get into position. It wasn't nearly as hard as she had thought it would be, and her poses became even more daring than Lindsay's. At one point she hung upside down, her legs wrapped securely around Margo's waist. Most of her teammates were laughing, because it was a rather peculiar scene, to say the least.

Of course, she was turned around the wrong way when Laura came into the room, looking for who knew what. Whatever it was she had been looking for, she wasn't interested in it any longer when she saw Erin up against Margo. "What the bloody hell is going on in here?" she demanded sharply.

"I'm pole dancing, what does it look like to you, you daft woman?" Erin replied just as sharply, spinning around until she faced Laura. "Come on, have a little fun, would you? Loosen up a little bit. You're being awfully uptight. You're giving the rest of us a bad name, you know."

"You've got your legs wrapped 'round her waist and your trousers are half undone. What else am I supposed to think you're doing with her? Doesn't matter much, anyway, except that the lot of us in the next room over are getting tired of the racket you're making, so if you could kindly tone it down a little, we'd be much obliged, all right?" Before waiting for an answer, she turned and walked out of the room.

Somehow that sobered Erin up like nothing else could. "Pardon me. I think I have to make some apologies. I'll be right back if I can, all right?" She disengaged herself from Margo, patted the tall center on the shoulder in friendly fashion, and chased after Laura. "Oi! Laura! Wait a second, would you?"

"What's there for you to say?" Laura countered, but she did stop for a moment and let Erin catch up to her. "I saw what you were doing. Wasn't that complicated, you know."

"It was just a little fun, that's all. Did you honestly think I was interested in her? Come off it, you know I'm not into blondes." Erin nudged Laura suggestively, but Laura wasn't receptive to the suggestion.

"Pull the other one, we both know you don't care what color the hair is." Laura let out a breath that wasn't quite a sigh but had many of the earmarks of one. "If that's the way it is, then that's the way it is. I just wish you'd told me before, that's all, so I could understand the ground rules before I got too involved."

"Oh, bloody-" Erin stopped, concluding that the situation called for stronger language. "Fuck, I've made a right cock-up of it, haven't I?" Without waiting for an answer, she turned to the wall and started beating her head against it. "Stupid, bloody stupid, stupid, fucking stupid, stupid, bloody fucking stupid…"

"Stop that!" Laura grabbed Erin by the shoulders and pulled her away. "I don't like to see you hurting, so it's certainly not acceptable to do it to yourself in front of me."

"I… look, you got the wrong idea about me and Margo. We were just messing around, that's all. I don't even think she's interested, truthfully. It's just that we had a bit to drink, and then we started punning, and somewhere along the way Katie made mention of pole dancing, and the next thing we all know, Whay's got her legs round Margo's waist and off comes her shirt. I never thought she was quite so flexible. Thought she'd been hurt too much, you know? Looked like more fun than it was, to be honest. She's a bit bony." She stopped and raked her fingers through her hair, although it remained unclear what effect she expected that to have on her wild locks, since they were just as on end afterwards as they had been before. "I swear, if I had thought it would hurt you the way it has, I wouldn't have been foolish enough to get on."

"Never change. Sometimes I like it when you don't think too much." Affectionately, Laura leaned down and kissed the top of Erin's head. "Right. You lot clearly had some powerful alcohol if Lindsay got pissed, and I think I deserve a share after what you put me through. Come on, let's get back to the main party."

They walked back down the short hallway to the hotel room, where Erin used the key so graciously granted her at the beginning of affairs to open the door. The two Aussies stood frozen in the doorway at what the party had progressed to. "If you hadn't sobered me up, this would've for cert," Erin whispered to Laura.

"Reckon Katie's happened to slim down from last season?" Laura replied just as quietly.

"Don't believe she did. She had no reason, after all."

Laura's eyes widened even further. "Oh, Margo's going to feel that in the morning for the next two months. And I- wow. On second thought, I think I'll pass on this level of the party. Mind coming back to my room?"

Erin grinned. She tossed the keycard to Nykesha, who caught it without taking her eyes off the show, and exited with Laura.