AN: I'm sleepy but, hay, people, feedback please. To everyone who writes me on a regular basis, ya'll know exactly how MUCH ya'll rule. To everyone who doesn't, I see the counter, I know you come you reader ghosts... LOL Write me! I promise I'm not THAT scary! inspiredthoughts@hotmail.com ******************** Nightmare of a Lifetime: Chapter Fourteen ******************* “Try not to look so freaking guilty,” she hissed as they slipped backstage. “You look like you’ve just gotten out of prison.” “Yo, what do you want me to do dawg?” Justin winced as she slapped him upside the head, hard. “NO ghetto talk white boy. You’re not black and you’re from Tennessee. I’m risking my reputation enough as it is. I’ll not have you embarrassing me by getting the crap beat out of you. This isn’t Pop Land where you rule a court of easily impressed teenies. TRY to remember that!” He glared balefully at the back of Nicole’s head as she took the lead before turning his head to glare at Bill who was snickering. Justin disliked Nicole Perry because she got on his nerves and made no attempt whatsoever to suck up to him. Justin wasn’t overly pretentious for a pop god, but he was still, for close to a decade, a pop god. It left its mark on his personality. “Oh shut up,” he growled to the camera man. “You’re supposed to be an invisible part in all this.” Bill shook his head helplessly as he repositioned the camera on his shoulder. “Dude, you just make it too easy. And Perry’s right. I’ve covered Ozz Fest. They’ll eat you alive if you aren’t careful.” Justin snorted. “Oh yeah, cause I’m the baby. She’s all of what, two feet tall?” “I heard that!” Both men looked guiltily ahead to where Nicole was standing, loosely curled fists resting on her hips. They might have gotten the expected tongue lashing if, at that moment, a mammoth of a man hadn’t screamed her name from across backstage and distracted her. Or Justin thought it was her name, since she answered to it. “PEAR BEAR!” They jumped at her response. “PUPPY!” They might have laughed if ‘Puppy’ hadn’t been damn near seven feet tall, three hundred solid pounds of muscle, and covered from head to toe in tattoos. Scary tattoos. “Did she just say Puppy?” Justin asked no one in particular as the giant picked up *NSYNC’s small producer and host and swung her around like some kind of stuffed animal, though he was mindful of her cast. Perry was hysterical, laughing, shouting, throwing her arms, as well as she could, around the mammoth’s neck and kissing both his cheeks with reckless abandon and enthusiasm. “PEAR BEAR’S HOOOOMMMMMEEEEE!” the giant screamed as he continued to toss her around. And suddenly backstage, which had been a rather quiet affair with a few scattered fans, groupies, and technicians, was rolling with life in response to the joyous bellow. “Wow,” Justin breathed despite himself as men and women of every look, age, and size, poured, almost literally, out of the wood work to swarm Nicole. He’d never seen her so happy, so alive, so unguarded. He had gotten too used to seeing her sneer and disdain; he had never realized how pretty she was when she smiled. “She really loves this place doesn’t she?” he asked softly, hating the almost protectiveness he felt towards a woman he knew he couldn’t stand and touched, though he had been dragged to Ozz Fest kicking and screaming, upset that his few days of break were being spent in Perry’s dubious company along with Bill and the camera. Bill glanced at the subdued pop star as he filmed before answering back just as quietly. “Yeah, she does.” Justin frowned as he watched and saw, if just a glimpse, of what Lance and JC loved so much about their foul mouthed host. Ozzy Osbourne entered from the side of the stage, looking, as always, rumpled and unsteady. His voice, when he raised it, was querulous and loud. “What the hell is going on in here?” Nicole squirmed away from ‘Puppy’ to face her ‘Uncle’. “Its me Uncle Ozzy…” The Prince of Darkness cursed roundly and embraced his almost niece for all he was worth. ****************************************************************************** Nicole and Justin stayed backstage, away from the quick to rouse crowds who wouldn’t take kindly to the presence of The Justin Timberlake. Nicole didn’t really mind, it gave her more time with Fermented Pain, and kept Justin, and by extension Bill, out of most trouble. And she still got a great view of Ozzy’s performance. “You’ve changed Pear Bear,” Jason Alan, or Puppy as he was fondly known by Nicole and a select group of others, remarked softly as they stood in the wings of the main stage, under the shadow of the side curtains as Ozzy proved once again why rock and roll ruled to thousands of eager fans. She glanced up, and up at her friend, the drummer of Fermented Pain, dwarfed by his nearly seven foot frame, dark lips curled into an expressive frown. “Have I really changed that much in six weeks Jason?” The mammoth man smiled almost sadly and reached down to cup her cheek with roughened and tattooed hands. “They’re not BAD changes Perry. You’re still you, as loud mouthed and opinionated as ever, just as eager to piss the world off. You’re the girl half this tour adores and the other half fears. “You’re still the most bad ass VJ MTV has. And you’re still edgy but some, just a bit, is gone. You were like a knife before and the problem with freshly sharpened knives is you never know who they’re going to cut. I worried about you.” Nicole shrugged away from his hands and stared broodingly out at Ozzy as Jason’s blue eyes watched her with quiet compassion that belied his size and reputation. Jason Alan was hardly noted for violence, but was even less noted for his gentleness. Like many, he granted Nicole Perry respect, praise, and true friendship, that he gave to few others. “I’m not like her Jason. I’m NOT Debbie. I’m NOT my mother!” “No, you’re most certainly are not. You’ve spent every second of your life proving that to yourself. You needn’t prove it to me. But that doesn’t mean that being Nicole Perry doesn’t have its own pitfalls and dangers. You can be jaded without being broken Pear Bear. This tour, as ridiculous as it is, is healing something inside of you I don’t even think you knew needed repairs.” She swallowed thickly and let her eyes be drawn, despite herself, to Justin clowning around backstage with some of the midget extras Ozzy used, with Bill to the side amusedly taping it all. “They’re good people Jason. I didn’t expect that. I kinda got used to thinking that Ozz Fest was the only good people you know?” “Its not like you had too many shining examples to hold up in favor of humanity you know. Living on the streets didn’t exactly provide any for you.” “But now I have some more, even if they are fools. You wouldn’t believe some of the shit that goes on for their tour Jason, the dramatics, the theatrics, the lengths they go through. I feel like I should be treating *NSYNC like freaking royalty. Its insane.” “They make you smile.” Nicole snorted and tried to maintain her frown as he gaze shifted from Ozzy to her left and Justin on her right. The golden boy of the pop world cursed loudly, and vulgarly, as two of the very small extras managed to tie his shoe laces together in a knot that sent all sex feet of him tumbling hard to the ground backstage. The midgets, who were dressed in usually bizarre Ozz Fest clothes that included wigs and masks and frightening stage make up, let out victory war whoops and danced around the fallen idol as he darkly glared and tried to untangle his laces. Perry laughed, unable to help herself, and Jason nudged her with his elbow. “Oh shut up,” she half growled, annoyed by the turn of their conversation and the decidedly deep turns it had taken into her warped psyche, “I just hope Bill got all of that on film.” Jason hugged her so hard it nearly left her breathless. “*NSYNC’s not the same as you; they never will be,” she whispered fiercely into the ear of one of her closest and most missed friends at Ozz Fest. “They aren’t Ozzy and Sharon and Fermented Pain and Kell and Jack…” “No,” Puppy responded quietly as he released her with a tight grin, “they aren’t, but they’re good for you none the less. And you’re good for them too. Now, I think its about time you let me sign this cast of yours Miss Pear.” Nicole groaned but stood still as Jason whipped out the now familiar sight of a permanent marker. “Fine,” she grumbled, “just don’t draw any of your ex girlfriends on the damn thing. Britney Spears is MORE than enough.”