As the Drama Brothers began saying goodbye to their fans for the night, Nicole and Noah sat together on the tour bus after another successful concert. Normally the band took an hour or less to greet fans post-show, but tonight they were taking longer than usual.
The tour was a smashing success, and most nights had standing ovations due to fans demanding more. They always spent some time outside of the arena saying hello to whoever waited for them, and word went around quickly after the tour's kickoff that the boys would do this, making their exit from the arena longer and longer each night. Nicole and Noah sat together on the tour bus, waiting for the boys to wrap up as usual, but tonight's goodbyes were taking longer than usual. Before either of them could say something after almost two hours on the bus alone with the bus driver, the bus doors opened to an open-tension match between Justin and the rest of the Drama Brothers. Noah moved out of his seat and went behind Nicole as everyone entered the bus.
"I can't believe you did that, Justin. That was creepy." Trent exclaimed as he took his seat next to Nicole.
"What was creepy?" Nicole asked him. Harold and Justin were right behind him, but instead of Harold sitting with Justin as usual, the two were dramatically sitting rows apart. Everyone was speaking over one another, getting their own opinions in about something happening backstgae, and Greg behind them motioned for the bus driver to start driving away from the building.
"Relax. They were totally digging it." Justin gave a cocky smile as he sat on his knees and rested his arms on the seat in front of him, talking to Trent as he turned over to him.
"You do this shit all the time, and I'm sick of it." Trent exclaimed. Nicole had attempted to calm Trent down by pressing his shoulders to lower him back into his seat, which he did as Greg attempted to deescalate the situation he had just walked into.
"Woah, woah, woah." Greg stood up at the front of the bus. "What happened?"
"I do it all the time, you guys never say anything-" Cody waved his finger behind his back, not wanting Justin to speak for himself at the moment. Cody was sitting next to Noah, who was watching him intently as he sighed and began to tell the story of the arguing going on.
"Justin invited these two girls backstage at the end of the show, and asked them to come over to the hotel for a 'private concert'."
"Seriously, what's the bi-" Trent shushed him, and Cody kept going.
"They said no and then asked if he could 'at least' lift up their shifts and sign their chests." Cody explained.
"Ew. That's nasty." Noah said.
"We've talked about getting a bodyguard to bring girls to you." Harold said. "That's not his job."
"I do this all the time! Why this moment? And not for nothing, but we never had a conversation like this when Cody invited Noel and Noah backstage in Toronto last year."
"It's Nicole!" Nicole spat, her arms crossed as she listened intently.
"Whatever. How should I have known they wouldn't take up my offer? Other chicks normally dig me." Justin said as he adjusted his shirt, still oblivious to what the issue was. Trent was beginning to get angry again and looked behind him to Justin.
"They were sixteen!" Trent interjected.
"So now I'm supposed to know every girl's age by looking at them?" Justin replied, trying to defend himself. Nicole knew it was no use trying to calm him down, and let the conversation happen.
"You're supposed to not hit on girls!" Cody yelled.
"You can't police me." Justin told him. Before another argument could come out, Greg lowered his arms to quiet everyone down.
"All right, settle down. Can't we talk about this at the hotel?"
"No, Greg. We need to talk about this. This all ends now." Trent explained as he looked back at Justin. "Throughout our second and third tour, you've hooked up with all these girls. How many of them do you think felt pressured to say yes? You've used these girls, and I'm tired of turning the other cheek to this behavior. What you've done is sexual harassment on a minor, and we could bring your ass to the cops."
"The cops? Trent, you're being a little crazy."
"I'm being crazy?" Trent exclaimed. Before anyone knew it, Justin and the rest of the Drama Brothers began speaking over each other again, with Greg trying to listen to and play both sides in order to stop the fighting. Noah watched in silence, but after a few minutes of this, he couldn't take it anymore and knew he had to step in. He sat on his knees and looked behind him.
"Stop fighting!" Noah screamed. The boys calmed down as Noah looked towards Justin and spoke towards him. "Justin, you've always been a sick pervert. When you met my sister, the first thing you did was hit on her. All you do is talk about the last girl you went to third base with, and whenever I'm with Cody or Nicole's with Trent, you just make stupid, sarcastic jokes about our relationships and it's not funny." Cody, Trent, and Harold watched Noah intensely and nodded in agreement.
"That is slut-shaming and I will not tolerate it." Justin yelled as he crossed his arms. All of the boys were on their knees on the seats and facing each other, while Nicole was sitting at her window seat watching everything unfold. "Come on, Harold, tell them."
"No. The way you treat women is unacceptable, and I'm not going to sit and watch this go on anymore." Justin looked at the angry eyes of the Drama Brothers and Noah.
"I don't want to work with someone who tries to sleep with minors." Trent said, crossing his arms and sitting back down in his seat.
"Agreed." Cody said as he sat down.
"Same here." Harold said as he sat down. The three boys began to face the opposite way of each other, and Greg began to feel panicked, not knowing what to do next.
"I don't need this band. I'll just go back to my modeling career." He sat back down as the bus driver took this as a sign to begin moving. During their silence, Greg desperately tried to figure out a way to get through this madness.
"Nobody is quitting. Surely there's a way we can all forgive and forget." Greg chuckled nervously. The boys did not seem to want to make a compromise, and they remained silent until Cody spoke up with an idea.
"If we continue without Justin, maybe Noah can fill in!" Cody said. Noah's heart stopped a beat as his face went red.
"What?" Noah screamed. He didn't expect Cody to say that.
"Yeah! I like that a lot." Trent agreed. "He's been with us every rehearsal, every performance."
"He knows all of our parts forward and backward." Harold noted.
"I am not being replaced by Noah of all people."
"Excuse me? What is that supposed to mean?" Cody screamed. Before Justin could reply, Greg stood up.
"Nobody is getting replaced!" Greg exclaimed. He looked at the bus driver. "Stop the bus, please." The bus driver obliged and turned into the nearest rest stop. Greg lowered his voice as they parked.
"I need to talk to you all about life after the summer tour, so let's put this behind us for a second, okay?" This got the boys' attention, so they stopped bickering to listen to their manager. "The record label loves you guys! They want to extend the tour into the fall."
"The fall?" Harold repeated.
"Yes! It would just be a Canadian tour until November, hitting the stops we didn't hit last year. We'd be done by the holiday season and can get into album number four by next year! They're even talking about a year-long European and North American tour!"
"Wow. That sounds like a great opportunity for us." Trent said. His voice indicated otherwise.
"It sounds like something is on your mind, Trent." Greg said.
"Well, I enrolled in university. Starting next semester." He said. "I'll be going to school with Nicole." He smiled over to her, and she smiled back.
"I have a confession to make, too." Harold said, standing up. "Leshawna and I were asked to come onto season 2 of Ridonculous Race. We start filming right after our summer tour concludes. The news was going to break in January when the show premiered." Greg seemed dissatisfied and shocked, as he had never heard this before. These were all things they discussed as a band but didn't expect to have to let Greg know until after the tour.
"And you guys were just planning on keeping me in the dark? You can't stop doing the band." Greg said, sounding desperate as he interrupted their conversation. "You're at the height of your popularity, you can only go up!"
"Now wait, we never said anything about stopping." Trent clarified. "If we're all busy this year, maybe we should just-"
"Just what, Trent? Don't even say it." Greg said as he pointed his finger at him. "You're going to say 'let's take a break'. Right? Except in the music industry, a break is never a break. A break is a break-up, and fans will play your music for a few years, but then in fifteen years your music will only be played at car dealerships and doctor's offices." Greg emphasized his words, each with increasingly more stress, which made the boys and Nicole worry about his own self-sanity.
"You're right. A break really is never a break." Trent said slumping in his seat. "Total Drama has been over for a while now. We're lucky we've been able to stay this relevant, let alone re-form Drama Brothers, and it's only a matter of time until we burn ourselves out." He paused as he looked over to everyone. "I don't want to fight like we used to, so maybe now is a good time to put an end to the band." He looked to Cody and Harold, who nodded in agreement. Justin was still ignoring them.
"If that's how you feel, I'll talk to the record label and we'll make the announcement." Greg said, sitting down defeated. "But if you're kicking Justin out of the band, we have to fill his spot for the rest of the tour."
"They're not kicking me out of the band!" Justin yelled from his seat as he crossed his arms and leaned on the window. "I quit!" Trent paid no mind to him and looked towards Noah.
"Like Cody said, I think Noah should take over." Cody put his hands on Noah's shoulders and faced him.
"Trent's right! You know each of our steps inside and out. You know all of our songs, you're practically like our biggest fan." He said, smiling. "I know you can do this."
Greg allowed the bus driver to start their drive to the hotel back up, and he exited the rest stop. Noah felt the pressure build up inside of him as he looked out of the window to the night sky, and he began to tense up feeling everyone looking at him for an answer. Noah, with his head leaning on the window, rolled his eyes over to Greg.
"Can I give you the night to think about it?" Greg began to groan and threw his hands in the air.
"Am I cancelling the rest of the tour or not?" He asked. "I already have to tell the execs that you won't be extending the tour, let alone the decision to not renew your contracts. I need an answer right now, Noah."
"It's three weeks." Nicole noted to him.
Noah thought about it some more, weighing out the pros and cons in his head before finally agreeing to it as they pulled into their hotel stop. "I'll do it."
Justin was the first to get off of the bus so he could pack up his things and take the first flight home. The rest of them watched as he left in a hurry, then when he left and the bus doors closed, they all cheered as Cody hugged Noah at his side.
"Thank you for doing this. I'm so excited!"
Everyone began unloading out of the bus and into their hotel rooms for the night. Noah was still spooked as they walked looked around for their room. As soon as they headed in with Nicole and Trent, who shared a room with them, they all breathed a sigh of relief as Cody headed to the shower as he always did after a night of rocking out on stage. He sat on his bed across from Trent and Nicole, who sat on their own bed, and stared briefly at them as he began to overthink the possible scenarios between now and the next show.
A/N: Phew! What a chapter! Just like the last chapter, I started this in August out of sheer excitement. One thing my co-writer and I had always talked about was the idea of Noah joining the Drama Brothers early on (before the tour). I wasn't sure about Noah joining the Drama Brothers early on, but I needed some sort of drama, so I did this. I put little clues among the way to show how much of a womanizer I wanted to make Justin, like how he always talked about the female fans in a promiscuous way, how he would have a lot of one-night stands, and also how he tried to make a move on Nicole when he first met her backstage. (Fun fact - he calls her Noelle in this, which is one of the names we toyed with when making Nicole!)
The Drama Brothers tour arc ends in just a few more chapters - but I really don't know how many chapters it'll be, tbh. Maybe 4 more? This and the next chapter were originally going to be 1 giant chapter but I wanted to keep the suspense so I split it! Over the last few weeks I have been planning out the plot of each chapter and I can tell you that The New Noah will have 30 chapters all together, maybe more, which I'm excited about! I also am going to be posting a little concert poster/headshot edit I made of Yazmin on my Tumblr, same name as my fanfiction handle, so go check that out!
Thanks for reading and please leave a review if you liked it!
~Sami
