The Queens of Death Metal VS The Queens of Scene

From the time they had been backstage to the fifty minutes on stage, the girls were sweating as they pounded, strummed and screamed their way into this crowd's hearts. Holli looked at the crowd as they closed the second to the last song of their set.

"'Ello, mates! Welcome to the show where mystery resides! Basically, in ten minutes, you will be surprised to see who you came for—Bring Me the Horizon!" Holli paused as the crowd cheered, they slowly began to die down and she again spoke. "Well, they're backstage right now with their girlfriends so, we're gonna sing another song, if you don't mind." Holli laughed as Cassy began the chords of "Riot" by Three Days Grace.

"This one isn't ours, but we're going to sing it anyways..."

"If you feel so empty, so used up, so let down,
If you feel so angry, so ripped off, so stepped on,
You're not the, only one, refusing to back down,
You're not the only one, so get up...."

As the chorus began, Holli and Cassy jumped into action, jumping around the stage, getting the crowd, very, very involved. Especially in the second chorus when Holli jumped off the stage and into the crowd, still singing as she crowd surfed on her back. She finally reached the back and jumped out of the crowd and made her way back to the stage through the screaming fans, singing the whole way.

"Thank you very much people of Helsinki!" Savage Artemis began to walk off stage as Holli continued to stay on stage. "Hey guys, the boys in the back are having some issues, so they wanted me to tell you guys a story." Holli sat on the edge of the stage

"When I was a little girl, in Sheffield I knew a special group of boys. But....this story is NOT about these boys. It's about them leaving me, on a Finland trip that we went on together, many years ago.

"Ok, well, the guys decided while in Finland they really wanted to go to a pub, so we went. No objections here, I love pubs. Now the drinks kept flowing, and eventually, I thought I lost my dance partner, but another body filled in his place, so it was all good. We danced, and I will say it was very provocative..." the crowd cheered and Holli laughed.

"Well, I was with my boyfriend and his friends, and it turned out when I turned for it to be Ville Valo, who also turned out to be none other than my godfather." She paused as there were more hoots and hollers for the native rock star. "After that shock, the drunk fuckers I came with tried to start a bar fight and eventually got some of their asses kicked....but we all turned out to be pretty good friends."

"Well, my wonderful godfather decided it was a wonderful time to start hitting on one of the guys in my group—my boyfriend. It took a while, but finally Ville figured out that he was mine..." Holli started laughing even more. "Except when he tried to rape Oli in the bathroom...." oh shit. Holli realized what she had said to the packed Finnish venue. She looked over to the side stage and saw the wide eyed looks of Carmen, Candice, Cassie, and Mysha. "Um, have a nice night have a wonderful time listening to Bring Me the Horizon!"

Holli backed up, meaning to leave the stage only to run into the one she was attempting to avoid—Oli.

"Oh, sorry..." she whispered, trying to get away, but he grabbed her arm.

"Holli..."

"Not now Oli, not now..."

"I still love you." She resisted the urge to look into his eyes and instead, ran off the stage in haste, straight into the arms of her fellow band mates.

"It'll be alright." Carmen said, stroking Holli's hair as the vocalist fell apart in her arms, the tears she had held back for years came streaming down her face, smearing the makeup she had worn on the stage. Carmen looked up at the other girls, the fear in her eyes reflected in theirs. Holli was always their stable rock, and now, she wasn't they were having to be stable for her.

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It took Carmen thirty minutes to stop Holli's tears from flowing and ten for Candice to reapply her makeup. That left another thirty minutes for Bring Me the Horizon to finish their set and for the girls to sit down for a meet and greet.

Holli took another breath before stepping out into the lobby where the fading sunlight was shinning through the glass windows of the venue. She smiled at the crowds of people who could still here Oli's ravage screams from outside the building; it was like a free concert out there.

Holli braced herself as she sat at the white table that was allotted for their meet and greets. Mostly all these people would rush up and throw pictures in their faces so that the girls would sign and autograph, and if they indicated a camera, you better believe that pictures were going to be taken, and most likely posted to the girls' myspace.

As the sun went down and the crowd got smaller, Holli began to loosen up. All of her tension was released, and by time they were done and Bring Me the Horizon was packing up, she knew that she didn't want a huge after-party, not that Savage Artemis ever really partied.

"Hey, what if we just go hang out at a pub? Get a few drinks then head back to the bus?" Holli asked the tired girls. They shrugged their shoulders.

"I know I don't care. It's all good with me, I just want to get a little drink then go to sleep, I didn't realize how tired I would be." Mysha said, pulling on her discarded jacket that she had grabbed from backstage.

"Sounds good to me." Cassy said, not really in the mood to party big time.

"Good; I know just the place." Holli smiled, once again the lead of her four favorite girls in the world.

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"The after party won't get started 'til bout three or four..." Candice laughed at Cassy's drunken slur as she tried to remember the rest of the chorus for The Higher's "Insurance?"

"Stop singing that bloody song!" Holli yelled at Cassy, who had repeated the chorus almost fifty times now, trying to remember what can after that. She looked around at her friends, most of them drunk from the alcohol they had consumed, the same alcohol that was barely affecting her. Then she caught Carmen's glare directed at her for bringing them all here, but Holli just smiled. It wasn't that Carmen was made at her band mates, but more so, Max; who was even worse off than Cassy.

"Ok, come on, bed time." She told him, grabbing his arm as he tried to grab Cassy and exclaim what came next in the song, which would just start Cassy off again, once again, forgetting what he said before getting to that part in the song. And it was only one line.

"No! Don't take Party Maxy away from us!" Candice and Cassy grabbed him, pulling him back, and their combined power over powering Carmen's one person stand. She just crossed her arms in defeat and came to sit by Holli.

"It's ok Carmen, you're gorgeous and he's not that drunk." She reassured Carmen, her drinks still not showing, even as she finished her sixth shot of tequila, compared to Cassy and Candice's three. Putting her arms against the bar and turning around, she got a perfect vision of everything happening in the loud pub. The music was pounding, but not as much as a club; where she would have been if she was still the merch girl of Bring Me the Horizon.

The entrance to the pub was soon opened to reveal five very familiar guys and four girls dressedlike hookers to impress. One girl was less than slutty, while the other four were way past.

"Oh damn, Holli's glazed!" Nicholls exclaimed, looking at his sister and seeing Audrey nearly jump on Oli at the sound of Holli's name.

"Oh lay off of him Audrey!" Hanna yelled; the less than slutty looking on of the four girls. Hanna practically yanked Lee's arm out of socket pulling him up to see Holli. "Hey Holls, you must have an effect on that boy, Audrey's all up on him!" Hanna smiled at her friend, and then she noticed the pretty blonde beside her. "Oh, you must be Carmen, I'm Hanna, nice to meet you!"

Carmen smiled at the girl, she was still unsure of whether or not she could be trusted, seeing the other girls she had come with. Holli could see this so she spun around in her chair and leaned over to Carmen:

"She's not like the other girls. She's actually cool."

"Body shots!" Curtis yelled, grabbing the back of Holli chair and shaking it violently, almost making her drop her shot glass.

"Not tonight Curtis, maybe in a few dates?" she tried compromising.

"Nope!" Curtis yelled again, pulling Holli out of the chair and dragging her to the BMTH table, crowded with everyone.

"Curtis, I don't have a partner!" Holli yelled as Curtis continued to pull her.

"Yea right, you'll always have Oli..." Curtis stopped advancing as what he said hit him full force, but he was already in front of the table. He turned to face Holli pale faced. Her cheeks were beginning to blush.

"It's ok, Curtis. Let him do his shots off her." Holli indicated Audrey who turned had grabbed Oli as the orange headed vocalist approached the table. She turned to walk away, not just to cover her scarlet cheeks, but also to cover her eyes that she knew would begin to water if she didn't get away. But every step she took shattered her already broken heart even more. He's with her now, not me.... She walked past the bar and outside to lean against the security of the stable brick wall.

This is what my glamorous life has turned into, me crying my eyes out about someone who doesn't care about me anymore...even though I'm the one that ran away...with good reason..

"Great. Now I'm talking to myself. I need a cigarette." Holli sighed, she knew she couldn't have a cigarette; one of the multiple chemicals in it would be fatal to her even if she took one drag. And she knew it, from experience, lucky timing and close proximity to the hospital was all that had saved her...and Oli.

"Too bad you can't have one." Oli's voice seemed to materialize out of no where, scaring Holli into jumping off the wall in surprise. Oli laughed as he approached her, "When did you get so jumpy Holli?"

"What do you want?" Holli sneered, hoping he would leave, but of course he didn't. Instead, he came right over to her, digging his hands into his pockets.

"To see you, why else would I be out here?" he asked her quizzing. Holli steadied herself against the wall again, trying to resist the powerful lull of Oli's voice and the familiarity associated with it.

"Oli, look you have Audrey..."

"She's fake." Oli shrugged, not wanting to be reminded of the pink haired girlfriend he had. He stepped towards Holli again, trapping her even more against the wall. She began to feel a mixture of pleasure and disgust as he got closer to her face. He's going to try something and I have to be prepared to stop him. But at the last second he veered towards her ear.

"She's not you Holli." Oli whispered. Holli's head turned to look at him, and he brought his back to face her more comfortably, but much closer.

Holli could see into his eyes and all she had known and felt three years before came rushing back to her in a blur of memories, coating over her new memories as Kyle Avenue and making them seem ancient. Damn his eyes! Holli silently cursed Oli even though she knew the truth. She liked being around him, and she loved him being close to her like this.

Slowly, Oli leaned down, closing the small space between their lips. Holli knew she shouldn't, but she did. She wrapped her own arms around his neck, forcing Oli to come closer. Even more slowly, Oli separated from her, a smile playing on his lips, that was mirrored on Holli's face. She moved her arms back to her side and that was when the fog cleared from her mind.

"Audrey...{" she whispered and Oli's own smiled only faltered for a second.

"She doesn't matter." He murmured, pulling the thin gold chain Holli had noticed earlier out of his shirt to show Holli what he had continued to wear.

"Oli, you kept...?" she asked as the gold band became visible on the chain. His smiled was wider than ever before.

"Of course I did...Holli Sykes."