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BTR’s latest song that will be funneled into their first ever album was officially polished, thanks to their songwriter Veronica Clark. Of course, Gustavo would say he did all the hard work because legally it was his song. But that wasn’t the point, nor was she going to argue with him over it because she could very well write a billion other songs for herself that he would never get to touch unless he stole her notebook. Then again, her notebook had very little security. It would be easier to write in a songbook with a lock if she didn’t want anyone snooping. And the guys were always snooping since they wanted just a glimpse of what goes on in her head when she writes their music. Ronnie also didn’t want to argue because she felt very disconnected from the songs she wrote for the guys.
The music faded with the conclusion of the track. Carlos whooped and accidentally fell over. The boys were excited with wide eyes and big smiles.
The record producer in his very nineties-esque tracksuit got up and opened the door to the studio. When Kelly followed after them, Ronnie haphazardly got out of her chair and trailed behind.
“Gustavo, the song is great!” Kendall beamed.
“Of course it is, I wrote it!”
The blonde rolled his eyes and groaned. Their record producer had been stone-faced the entire time while Kelly and Ronnie were bobbing their heads to the beat. Everyone seemed to enjoy the song.
“But the band isn’t great! What’s missing is the secret rock and roll ingredient.”
Ronnie had yet to actually get used to the way Gustavo spoke, whenever he got loud or emphasized certain words she could hear her heartbeat in her ears. He was always yelling, and was generally a loud person even when he was supposed to be quiet. Ronnie couldn’t exactly acclimatize herself properly because she’d been around quiet people for her entire life so far.
“Hair mousse!” James grinned, as if this was a guessing game.
“Chocolate mousse!” Carlos gasped. The boys hadn’t eaten yet, of course he was hungry.
“Spandex?” Logan’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head. “Please, don’t say spandex.”
Gustavo swiveled and put an arm around Logan’s shoulder, startling him.
“The bad boy!” He patted Logan on the shoulder, who seemed to be put at ease. Did he have some fear of spandex? “The ill tempered rebel with a flare for synchronized dance.” Gustavo clapped a hand on both Logan and Carlos’ shoulders, slightly shaking them.
“One of you has to be it.” Gustavo popped up between the other two. “I say it’s Kendall.”
If anything, Kendall did not look happy about that. Kelly shot him with a finger gun and a wink. Ronnie assumed he was radiating annoyance and irritation in waves as the other guys broke out into whines and protests. To be completely fair, as an outsider in all of this, Kendall already seemed like the pseudo-leader. He stood in the front and had the most lines, which wasn’t her intention upon writing the music. Gustavo had the power to change it any way he saw fit because he was their producer. Ronnie tried to evenly split the lines between the four of them.
“Gustavo, why do we need a bad boy?” Kendall asked.
James furrowed his brows and crossed his arms. He did not look happy to get the short end of the stick again. Gustavo, quite dismissively, pointed to a picture of Griffin the RCM CBT CEO and a phone that Kelly was holding.
“Gustavo, it’s Griffin. The band needs a bad boy. Bye.”
“He’s driving me, crazy!” Gustavo snapped as he took off his blue tinted sunglasses.
It always drove Ronnie insane, the fact his mutton chops didn’t connect to his goatee. Whenever he wore sunglasses it wasn’t that noticeable but once he took them off it certainly was.
“But he’s also right, because the bad boy is a rock and roll tradition.”
“This is a boy band, not a rock band.” As their songwriter, and as someone who religiously listened to 90s rock because of her older father, Ronnie couldn’t not say something. “Boy bands sing pop music and love songs to teenage girls who want to feel like someone cares about them.”
“You shouldn’t be talking.” Gustavo strolled over to the poster on the wall with four boys wearing construction uniforms in front of what she assumed was the Los Angeles cityscape at night. One of the previous failure boybands, Boy Quake. “The one with his back turned to the band. Bad Boy!” He pointed to the one wearing orange.
Then he walked over to another band that was wearing leather. Each boy had a distinct color. “Notice, the back turned, the dark clothing, and the scowl. Bad boy.” He pointed to the only one not facing the camera.
“But there can only be one bad boy per group.” Kelly moved to take away the Boy Blast poster. “As learned from the bad boy experiment of ‘95.” Gustavo looked down and shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Didn’t sell a single CD.”
“But we’re best friends.” Kendall chimed in. “We never turn our backs on each other.” Logan, Carlos, and James agreed without protest.
It was a little weird not knowing what their background was like, especially when she was going to be working with them for a couple of years. Then again, that was a perfect amount of time to get to know them as people instead of as the faces of a boy band. But as of right now, Ronnie only knew them as the faces of a boy band. She had no connection to them, at least not one that runs deep in comparison to just being their songwriter.
“Then let me let you in on a secret.” Kelly turned to face the guys as Gustavo spoke, she had her arms crossed and an unimpressed look on her face. “The bad boy is the most popular, makes the most money, and dates the hottest models.”
There was a pause after he relayed that information, and Ronnie opened her mouth to say something but then James, Logan, and Carlos were pushing past each other.
“I could be bad!”
“No, I could!”
Their voices overlapped as they shoved each other. Ronnie sighed and shook her head, slapping her palm against her forehead.
~~~
At the palm woods, Mrs. Knight was looking around for her daughter, Katie. The girl may be young but she managed to get herself into all sorts of trouble without trying, and Mrs. Knight half-considered it being Kendall’s fault. She was an impressionable girl and looked up to her big brother, and Kendall got into a lot of trouble with his friends.
“Katie.”
The little girl wearing sunglasses and pigtails was sitting at a table surrounded by adults. It may seem like she was innocently playing cards, but a mother always knows. Wads of money were pushed begrudgingly towards her little girl, and one guy even tried to give her his watch.
“No, no. Take back your watch. Keep your money.” Mrs. Knight smiled politely and pushed it away, prying to watch from her daughter's hands.
She took Katie by the hand and led her away, taking off her sunglasses and getting down to her level so they could be face to face. Katie had a slight pout, and blinked her eyelashes as though she didn’t do anything wrong.
“You need a friend.”
“Why? I have you, the guys, Ronnie, and the house keeping staff.” Katie gestured over her shoulder to the adults that were playing cards with her.
“You need a girl type friend, your own age. Someone you can play with dolls with.”
Katie gave her mom a weird look.
“Someone like that new girl Molly.”
Out of nowhere, someone who was the complete opposite of Katie, popped into her line of view. She was blonde with bows in her pigtails. Her plaid pink dress had frills, and her shoes looked so dressy. And she was holding one of those comically big lollipops with all the colors swirling together.
“Hi! I’m Molly. I saw you earlier, right? I just moved in and I would love to play with you.” The girl had such a sickeningly sweet smile on her face, one that seemed too fake to be real. Mrs. Knight almost had a matching smile.
Katie kept looking back at her mom. Was she serious? Did she pay Molly to hangout with her? What was going through her head?
“How about tonight after homework?”
“Sounds swell! See you there!” Molly waved goodbye and quite literally skipped away.
Katie was too stunned to speak. Watching her leave, annoyance and irritation swelled up inside her tiny frame. She had never wanted to chop off his ears this badly.
“I don’t like her.”
“Sweetheart, you can’t judge people without getting to know them first. That can really hurt people.”
In the distance, they heard someone scream. Mrs. Knight spun on her heel, ready to run in to help or protect her baby girl. The repair man, Buddha Bob, with his plaid shirt and the beard that made him look like he’d been lost on an island for decades, was holding an axe with what looked like blood on it. Then she noticed the guy on the floor beside him. When he licked the axe, Mrs. Knight screamed and grabbed her daughter. Her first instinct was to get Katie out of there.
Butters popped up from behind the table, holding two halves of a jelly donut.
“Why would you even think to do this?”
“You said you wanted half.” Buddha Bob shrugged.
Back at apartment 2J, Katie wasn’t really confused or fazed by what happened. The groundskeeper did a lot of weird things that she noticed since she liked to observe people more than interact with him. Though, she had the survival skills of a leaf because she opened the door when there was a knock. Two police officers stood in the hall.
“Hello, is your mother home?”
“Bathroom. Talk to me,”
The men looked a bit shocked, but it wasn’t the craziest they’ve seen.
“We checked around and the axe wielding murderer your mom was talking about is the grounds keeper, and the blood on his axe was a jelly doughnut.” He held up the evidence bag, trying not to laugh.
“Okay, so my mom gets to scold me for judging people but then she goes and judges some guy as an axe maniac when he’s really a plant cutting doughnut eater?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” The cop shrugged.
“Thanks,”
Without as much as another word, Katie slammed the door in their faces.
“Was that the police? What did they say?” Mrs. Knight came running from the bathroom.
“Axe boy is still on the loose.” Katie laughed evilly, her mother gasped and held her hands over her mouth.
There was about a moment of silence as Katie walked back to the orange couch in the living room to watch TV since her homework was finished.
“Whassup mama knight!” Logan greeted her with sunglasses and a new, really weird attitude.
Carlos and James whooped as they walked through the door scaring her. She put her hands on her hips and shook her head. What were they doing now? The three of them were wearing dark clothing and were not acting the way they usually did. Typically James, Logan, and Carlos were polite boys.
“Gustavo says one of us has to be a bad boy.” Kendall answered his moms silent question. It was almost like he was trying to apologize for them too.
“But you’re all nice boys!” And suddenly their composure crumbled.
Ronnie pointed and laughed at them. She had started accidentally chewing on her plastic straw when they were in the elevator. She and Kendall bought pink smoothies to help deal with the idiots that have become their friends.
“Oh– I am so glad you’re here!” Suddenly his mom was grabbing Kendall but the shoulders. “There’s an axe maniac on the loose!”
Ronnie tried not to spit out her drink. Katie pointed to a convenient sign she made that read: No there’s not.
“Oh, well… We’ll be extra careful then, Mom. We promise.” Kendall said awkwardly, reassuring her. Katie gave him a thumbs up and a smile.
“We want pizza, now!” James, Logan, and Carlos demanded like they suddenly owned the apartment they were living in. One look from Jennifer and their facades crumbled and they backed away, profusely apologizing.
“Yeah, no. Bad boys don’t disrespect moms.” Ronnie joined Katie on the couch, sitting cross-legged and burrowing into her yellow hoodie. “Nor do they disrespect girls.” She glared at James, and only James.
~~~
Unfortunately, their antics lasted for the next few days. Ronnie was spinning around in one of the desk chairs because apparently as an unbiased party, she had to judge the boys' performances. She trilled her lips, not hiding the fact this was boring and she didn’t care. The last thing Big Time Rush needed was a bad boy. Especially not a fake bad boy.
“This is such a horrible idea.” She groaned and covered her face with her notebook. “You already said you think Kendall is the bad boy, even if he doesn’t want to be.”
“The band needs a bad boy!”
“Quiet, they're coming.” Kelly nudged her boss.
Logan, Carlos and James sauntered down the hallway with new outfits. Kendall trailed behind them with his arms crossed and a sour expression on his face. This whole thing was stupid. Logan had an oversized hoodie, sunglasses, ripped jeans and black sneakers. His flat cap was tilted and the rim was pointing sideways. Carlos wore skinny jeans, a tee-shirt with a skull, a black jacket, and boots. James somehow looked the most ridiculous with his ripped jeans, black sneakers, black sweatshirt, skull shirt, and a black bandana around his head. In fact, the way he walked made him look even more stupid than he dressed.
Kendall was to the side, sitting on one of the white arm chairs in a blue shirt and his usual jeans and sneakers. He didn’t need to dress up for this because he wasn’t participating.
Carlos held up a wooden board and showed it around as though this were a show and promptly used his head to split it in half, only to fall down after.
“Next!”
“B to the A to the D, that’s me! A bad boy!” It turns out, James could be even more of a goof when he flashed a smile to show off his fake grill that gave him such a horrible lisp.
Ronnie cringed and pulled her hood over her head, blocking her view.
“Really? A grill?” Gustavo narrowed his eyes. “Logan!”
Unfortunately, while Logan could rap, he was not the best at beatboxing.
“Okay!” Gustavo got up and walked over to the blonde sitting to the side. “Kendall is the bad boy. You’re going to need to start wearing black clothing, and talking deeper and slower.” The record producer clapped his hands and turned on his heel.
“You mean be fake?” Kendall tilted his head.
Kelly laughed.
“We just don’t want anything fake about our band.”
“Your band? Your band? Your band!” Gustavo shouted, getting in the teens face. “This is my band! Have you forgotten I own you, I own your image!” His face was getting red. “You can’t just ignore me, or Griffin, or the record company. That makes you a bad boy!”
Kendall sighed, but he didn’t accept defeat like the record producer hoped.
“Get Griffin over here.” Gustavo sighed.
Kelly called Griffin, leaving Ronnie to usher the boys into the recording studio after changing out of their ridiculous clothes. Kendall scowled and stuffed his hands in his pockets.
“You do make a convincing bad boy.” Ronnie chuckled. “It has to do with your moodiness, and your problem with authority.”
“I don’t have a problem with– Oh.” The first thing that came to mind was when he started yelling at Gustavo during James’ audition because he said James had no talent. Or actually, Gustavo yelled that he had no talent.
“You’re just a natural bad boy.” Ronnie shrugged. “But I guess you have one of those cringey hearts of gold.” She fake gagged.
“Hey.” Kendall nudged her and laughed.
The boys lined up in the studio for Griffin. It was hard to tell if the CEO was ever happy about anything, he always looked like he was going to fire them if they breathed wrong.
“Why isn’t his back turned?”
“Because he won’t do as I say!” Gustavo snapped, jabbing a finger in Kendall’s direction. “Which makes him the bad boy.”
“And I don’t turn my back on my friends.” Kendall shrugged.
“That’s good, I respect that.” Griffin walked up to him. “But I said I wanted bad.”
“You want bad?” James asked, and fished his grill out of his pocket.
“A bad boy is someone parents would never let their daughters date.” Griffin sighed and shook his head. He turned to Gustavo. “I would let my daughter date any one of these boys, which is bad.”
“You can solve this, or I will. Wait– I already did.” Griffin had a ghost of a smile, but there was this evil twinkle in his eyes. He really loved ruining Gustavo’s day.
“Say hello to Drake Parker.”
His ginger hair was spiky with gel. He had a jean jacket filled with patches and pins, his jeans were the skinniest they could be, and his band tee was black. He wore boots, and had this devil-may-care look in his eyes.
“You guys look like bigger losers than my brother Josh.” Drake scrunched his face up and grimaced. “God, girls are supposed to swoon for you?” He winked at Ronnie who looked away, completely unfazed an unimpressed. His cologne smelled horrible.
“Give him the contracts.” Griffin snapped his fingers. Abdul thrusted the black folders into Gustavo’s hands.
“Hey, Drake, I’m–”
“Wasting your time.” Drake put his hand up to stop him. “I’m not here to make friends. This band needs some serious help and you can either cooperate, or be left behind.” Drake shrugged and started texting on his phone. “I uh– There’s this cool party in Hollywood. Deuces.” He shouldered past Gustavo on his way out.
“We don’t like him.” The guys said in unison.
“Yes. You do.” Gustavo flipped the contract closed. “You all do. He’s the bad boy, and he’s staying at the PalmWoods. So, be good boys, and make friends with Drake.”
~~~
“Go Drake! Go Drake! Go Drake!”
The Jennifers, who told BTR they needed to be famous before thinking about dating them, laughed and cheered Drake on as he lifted the bench they were sitting on like he was at the gym. Kendall, Logan, James, and Carlos stared on in confusion and disgust.
“First he steals our band without our permission.”
“Then he steals our girls, who have no interest in us. But still,”
“And that’s why we’re going to get rid of them.” Logan whispered back. “Kendall, get rid of him.”
“Why me?” Kendall was the only one not actually whispering. For some reason the other three were whispering. It was a public area, they didn’t need to.
“Because he scares us.” James pouted.
Kendall stood up and faced his friends. “We are a band, and we’re going to do this together. “Because we are not afraid of some loud mouthed, swagger walk, poser– Who’s right behind me, isn’t he?”
Kendall turned around to see Drake standing there with a very bored expression. He stifled a yawn with his hand.
“Look, dude, I get it. You’re not the pretty leader anymore. It’s okay. Girls will still love you, after me obviously.” Drake had a dopey grin on his face.
“Yeah, we’ve decided there's room for only four members of Big Time Rush.” Now the guys stood behind Kendall. Carlos tapped his helmet twice.
“Great!” Drake clapped a hand on Kendall’s shoulder and pulled out his phone. “This makes things so much easier!” He dialed a phone number and put it on speaker. “Hey, Arty, the guys agree five members is too many.”
“Sounds wonderful. I’ll stop by the studio tomorrow to see which one goes.”
And Griffin hung up.
James screamed.
“See, the contract, which your manager didn’t read unlike mine did. Says that I’m guaranteed to front a band, and I pick this one.”
“We’re so scared.” Kendall rolled his eyes.
“It also says I get a posse.” Drake snickered and snapped his fingers and a group of giggling girls came out of nowhere, they cooed over him and whispered over each other. “So, I think I have every right to take this band from you.” He jabbed his finger at Kendall’s chest.
Ronnie was standing off to the side with another girl who had curly red hair. She had one of those blue smoothies and a pair of green framed sunglasses.
“This won’t end well for anybody.”
“A disaster in the making.” Ronnie sighed and shook her head.
The guys ran after James when he screamed and ran away crying that he should be the only pretty one. Ronnie groaned and threw her head back. She didn’t have to follow them, but she could not put up with that group of girls surrounding Drake. It made her skin crawl.
“Do you want to watch them ruin their career?”
“Sure.” Ronnie shrugged and sat in a lounge chair next to the redhead.
A little while later, the guys were sneaking around the pool area of the PalmWoods with tree hats. Hiding by the bushes and watching Drake with that group of girls that followed him. James tried to curb his jealousy, but that should be him! James wanted nothing more to be famous and surrounded by a punch of girls.
“What are you guys doing?” Ronnie asked, It wasn’t like they were expertly hidden, everyone could see where they were. The guys screamed which made her flinch.
“Don’t sneak up on us like that!” Carlos hissed.
“You are literally out in the open.” Ronnie deadpanned. “What’s with the tree hats?”
“We’re watching Drake.” James narrowed his eyes.
“You’re spying on Drake?” The redhead turned and tried to hide her laugh behind her hand. “There’s seriously nothing special about him.” She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. “He’s the classic self-absorbed lead singer of a band he formed in high school.”
“How do you know this?” Logan raised a brow.
“Because I went to high school with him.”
“What?” The four guys gasped.
“Yeah, all he wants is a band of his own so he can be famous. He’s not even a great bad boy either, not if he’s with his brother.”
“His brother?” Kendall grinned, this glint in his eye.
“Yes, his brother.” She raised a brow. “I’d like to knock him down a peg or two.” She muttered to herself. “I mean, look at this dweeb.” The redhead pulled out her phone and pulled up a video. “Granted, this is a long cut of all the pranks Megan pulled.”
The guys, and Ronnie leaned in close to watch the video on her phone. There was hope at the end of the tunnel, they just needed to find the right person who had all the information.
“Oh, sweet. The embarrassing videos of me that Megan posted online. Everyone already knows about them.” Drake shushed the girls hanging off his arms.
“Parker,”
“Still hate me, Marnie?” Drake pouted and batted his eyes. “Look, I can kick anyone I want out of the band as long as I convince Griffin to get rid of them.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “And honestly, I want to get rid of you.” He pointed to Kendall. “The funny thing is you can’t stop me either.”
“Once Gustavo sees this–” Drake interrupted Carlos.
“Gustavo isn’t going to be able to do anything about it, Griffin has all the power.”
“Oh, please. This isn’t really bad boy-ish.” Marnie scoffed and waggled her phone in his face. “Megan glued your phone to your face, convinced you to put your hands and feet in lizard pee, not to mention you got your shit rocked by a girl–”
“You, stay out of this.” Drake huffed and turned on his heel.
As soon as they could, the guys rushed to Gustavo. Security already knew who they were when the guy at the front desk saw four boys shoving past each other and shouting.
“You have to get rid of Drake!” James screeched.
“He wants to get rid of Kendall.” Ronnie had her hands shoved in her pockets. “You can’t let him kick Kendall out of the band, he’s a titular part of it.”
“Really? I would have bet on Logan.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that!” Logan covered his face with his hands.
“I can’t do anything against Drake.” Gustavo went rigid and walked out of his office, five teenagers trailing after him.
“You can’t let Griffin tell you what to do with your band.” Kendall knew the right buttons to poke.
“It’s not my band,” Gustavo turned slowly. “It’s Griffin’s.” He sighed and took his yellow sunglasses off. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I haven’t had a hit in a while.This band is my ticket back to the top.”
“But that doesn’t mean you have to be a sellout!” Ronnie didn’t mean for it to be louder than it was in her head.
“We’ll team up.” Kendall suggested.
“No.”
“Gustavo, we can come up with a plan.”
“No plans!” Gustavo yelled. “I don’t want you hockey heads pulling any of your schemes or shenanigans that are going to get me in trouble with Griffin and the record company.”
“I thought you owned Rocque Records?” Ronnie asked quietly.
Gustavo messily scribbled names on lyrics sheets and handed them to the guys aggressively. He wasn’t going to tolerate any more talk about it. This was it. Big Time Rush might as well be over.
~~~
The guys were in the studio with Drake who was standing front and center. The music was playing from the speakers but they were waiting. James, Carlos, Logan, and Drake were the only ones in the studio at the moment. Ronnie hugged her knees against her chest and bit her nails. Griffin was sitting right there with Kelly and Gustavo. This was it.
“What are we waiting for?”
“We’re missing Kendall.” Kelly laughed awkwardly.
“So you got rid of Kendall?” Griffin leaned forward and pressed a button to project his voice to the guys. “My money was on Logan.”
“Let’s hear my new bad boy band.” Griffin had an inkling of a smile.
But just as the guys got ready to sing, Kendall came waltzing in. He was dressed in all black wearing a leather jacket, a black hoodie underneath, black skinny jeans, boots, and even some guyliner.
“Yeah, let’s hear it.” He struck a pose.
“Oh no.” Kelly put a hand over her mouth.
Drake dropped his headphones and the two got in each other's faces.
“It’s a bad boy off!” Carlos gasped and shook his hands excitedly.
“A bad boy off…” Griffin nodded slowly. “That’s interesting.”
“One thing I know about bad boys is, they like breaking stuff.”
Whoever knew the reason why Gustavo had a sledge hammer, the world may never know. Though Ronnie, as much as the adults, wasn’t expecting Kendall to take a sledgehammer to all of Gustavo’s golden records on the wall. The record producer groaned and fell out of his chair.
“He’s right, they like breaking stuff.” Griffin approved with a smile.
“Oh, really?” Drake huffed and grabbed the mic stand that Kendall was using as a sledgehammer and continued to abuse the poor records on the wall much to Gustavo’s dismay.
“Round one goes to Drake.” Griffin was full on grinning. Abdul pulled out a bell and rang it. “What’s next?”
Then it was on to rapping. Admittedly, both of them were pretty bad at it, so it was technically a tie. Or well, when Kendall insulted Gustavo the CEO just had to give him the point.
“Round two goes to Kendall, I can’t wait for round three.”
Unfortunately, round three involved wrecking Gustavo’s office. Except Kendall was the one destroying it while Drake was mysteriously absent. And he locked the door. Though, when he emerged from the office, the ceiling was falling, everything was broken. Literally everything. Kendall had this smug look on his face that was the clear sign he won this. Gustavo screamed and fell to his knees. There was even smoke and electrical buzzing coming from his precious office. Then Gustavo rushed in to hopely save everything.
“He peed in one of my drawers!”
Ronnie scrunched her face up and gagged.
“What? Bad boys go where they want.” Kendall scoffed.
“That’s a new one and original. Unfortunately, without Drake here we can’t see what he’s done.”
“Yeah, where is he?” Carlos asked with a mischievous little smile.
“Oh, we can all see from this camera I set up.” Ronnie giggled and pulled out her laptop.
The camera was positioned at the top of the closet. It may have been completely out of view, but it had the perfect view of Drake making out with Marnie instead of participating in this bad boy off. Griffin tutted and shook his head.
“And that, is not what bad boys do.” Regardless, he didn’t look too unhappy. He got what he wanted and couldn’t ask for more. “It appears Big Time Rush already has a bad boy.”
Griffin took his bodyguards and walked away.
James, Logan, Carlos, and Kendall all cheered and hugged each other. The band was saved and no one got kicked out.
“When did you find time to install that camera?” Kelly asked.
“Oh, it’s always been there.” Ronnie shrugged and closed her laptop.