Crash ~Justin Bieber~

Chapter 28 ~ Under His Thumb

(Randy's POV)

Returning to The Ross Hotel was easy. Justin, Rachel and I came back renewed, relaxed and happy. Justin's family made plans to stay at the ski house over Christmas break so the vacation was made easier to leave, knowing that we would soon be back and all together again. Justin told Rob and Ben all about our trip in detail. He showed more excitement about returning to the ski trip then he did about his birthday trip to Miami.

The ski trip had also mended a lot of fences and old wounds. Things were so normal again between Justin I, so normal, that if someone told me I was living in the old days, three years back, I would have believed them.

"Dude - what are you doing?"

"What do you mean?"

The first sign of normalcy occurred when I made the mistake of taking a seat next to Ben at dinner instead of Justin. He looked over at me like I had three heads.

"Oh - sorry - I - yeah - wrong seat"

He patted the seat next to him and forgave me once I sat down. I knew that I had overtaken Rob and Ben and earned my old post as Justin's right hand man, but the simple old habits that came with the job were difficult to remember. It had all happened so fast.

Justin and I had rarely been apart for the last four weeks and after dealing with Peter Pan, drug addicts and twitter wars, we had quickly become brothers again.

"I saw Blaine - he ran away from me" Justin said.

"Why he would tweet all of that crap about you and then not expect to face you once we're back?"

"He's gutless, but we're still doing the diary room thing, aren't we?"

"Yeah"

I had suggested the diary room idea as a way to discredit Blaine. If Justin and I showed a united front in a short diary room interview, then we hindered any plans or possible rumors that Blaine could start up.

We had to be clever about it though, and do it without insulting Blaine or giving away too much information away. We wanted the bully issue to look like nonsense, and to do that we just had to make light of it.

That was easy to do. Humor was our specialty.

We ended up just performing a rap to the cameras that we had constructed over dinnertime with Ben. It was called 'Stop bullying me' and it made fun of the entire petty fight. Separate from Ben and Justin I also made my own move and entered the diary room alone. I gently brushed over the issue again and mentioned how much Justin had helped save me from the previous hotel torment.

Justin thanked me for going to bat for him while we waited in the theatre for the announcement of the new groups. He didn't need to thank me. Everything I had said was true.

"This place is bearable now... fun even. And it wasn't before.

Justin smiled gently. He didn't mention the 'before' often, because I think he felt like it would embarrass me.

"Justin... hi"

Ryan stood nervously on the stairs just outside our row of seats.

Justin frowned and answered "Hi?" back.

"Can I sit down for one second?" Ryan asked.

"I don't own the seats..."

Justin let Ryan sit because Ryan always came with information these days. The other side were talking to him and trying to bring him over. Given that the information was never anything breakthrough, it was something.