by Meg Ripley
“If anyone had figured it out in my band, I’d have heard about it—I promise that,” I told her. “What about your band?” Fran thought about the question and shrugged.
“No idea. I’d think they’d say something—but they might be waiting for me to tell them.”
“Are you going to?” Fran pressed her lips together. She shook her head after a moment.
“I don’t want to start drama about it,” she said. “We’re going to have to deal with it at some point though.”
“Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said with a shrug.
“It might help if we know what to call it,” Fran said. She bit her bottom lip. “Oh god, I sound like I want to try and make you ‘commit’ or something.” She shook her head. “As far as I can recall, this is just…us having sex, right?”
“That sounds about right,” I agreed. I looked at her face; her cheeks were pink, her eyes dark with worry. “Did you want more? I mean—obviously not, like, in the commitment sense, I guess. But do you want more than what we’ve got going on?” Fran paused for a moment and then shook her head again.
“Not now,” she told me. “It would just make things too complicated with the tour going on.”
“But later?” Fran took a slow, deep breath.
“Later, we’ll figure out the answer to that question,” she said. Silence dragged out between us.
“I should go back to that tour journal thing,” I said. “Good luck with the lyrics.” I stood, feeling awkward and heavy.
“Good luck with your tour journal,” Fran said in return. I went back into the dining room and tried to focus on my work, but it was hopeless. You know what she wants, I thought. She wants to be with you. Not just fucking you. Actually with you. I stared at my laptop screen, deleting everything I had written. It was shit and I knew it. Do you want to be with her? It was obvious to me that Fran had been trying—in a roundabout way—to hint, to get me to say something about what we were to each other without actually asking for it. Maybe she’s scared of it, too. I rolled my eyes; it wasn’t that I was scared of a relationship. Half the band is in a relationship. It’s not doing them any harm. Alex dating Mary had gotten him on the mostly-straight and narrow; Nick dating Olivia kept him from giving us all crabs and gave him more focus since he wasn’t chasing tail all the time. Dan and Mark were kind of their own unit in a way, going after girls or not.
I’d never really been one for relationships of any kind; I’d had a few girlfriends but it always ended the same way: screaming at each other, unable to stand each other’s guts, and then I’d leave, or go on tour, and it would just fall apart. I’d always considered it better by far to just take what I could get in terms of sex, and not look back—not form any attachments. Deal with it later, I told myself firmly. Right now, just get through the tour, keep things from getting crazy. Get this stupid fucking blog post done and go to bed. Nothing more you can do to fix it tonight anyway. I turned my attention onto the screen in front of me and started out on a story about a mishap at the venue the day before, telling myself that at least that would be a little interesting. I kept thinking of Fran, in the rec room, working on her song; I wondered if it was all that wise for me to help her with the track—but I knew I would end up doing it anyway.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Another show had come to an end, and the rest of the band and I piled into the green room behind the stage, at the back of the venue. “We need to go out and meet with some of the fans,” Dan suggested, even as Mark and Nick cracked their first after-show beers, throwing themselves into the seats of their choice.
“Fifteen minutes,” Alex told him. “We’ll head out after we’ve gotten a chance to clean up and cool off a bit.”
“Yeah,” Mark said, scowling at him. “Who are you supposed to be? Ron?”
“I’m just saying,” Dan said, shrugging. “We should probably do some due diligence on that end. We’re not just on tour to promote Juniper Woolf.”
“We’ve done at least an hour of autograph signings after just about every show this tour,” I pointed out to Dan. “I, for one, am fucking tired.”
“We did our turn,” Kieran said. “Besides, I just want to chill tonight. Have a few beers, listen to some tunes that won’t blast out my eardrums with volume, get on the bus and sleep until we get to Boulder.”
“Sounds like a fucking plan to me,” Nick agreed. “Someone put on—what’s it called? Fuck.” He wracked his brain and I looked around the room until I spotted Fran. If she had already done autograph detail, then she should be game to sneak out for a little bit before everyone got back on the bus. The question would be where? Where could we have a little privacy, a little time to ourselves?
Ever since Fran and I had talked about the possibility of getting caught, it seemed like everyone in both of our bands had subconsciously decided to make it happen; we’d only rarely had more than five minutes alone—and even on the bus, everyone seemed to be sleeping lighter than usual, making it harder to get each other off, even if we were quiet about it. Part of me thought that was actually not a terrible thing; after all, Fran obviously wanted—though she wouldn’t admit it—to talk about what we were to each other, and that was a conversation I wasn’t ready to have or even think about.
But to go from regular sex, sometimes a few times in a row, even if it was only every other day or so, to getting turned on but not having the chance to get off, was getting on my nerves. It had to be bugging the hell out of Fran, too; she wasn’t as charmingly flirty as usual. Angelo is probably getting a workout, I thought grimly. For my part, it had been a few times now that I’d ended up curled up in my bunk, jerking myself off because Fran and I had had to pretend like we weren’t doing anything when someone came into a room.
Everybody started to loosen up; they drank a beer or two, and even Dan seemed to give up on the idea of going out and meeting with some of the crowd that had come out. It was impossible to do autographs and pictures after every single show; the shows themselves were exhausting, and the travel between them made everyone too tightly wound to want to hang out with fans for very long, even if we appreciated the hell out of them for coming out and supporting us.
“Julian, you always look like such a sullen asshole,” Jaime told me as he flung himself down onto the green room couch I’d claimed for myself.
“Sorry to hear that, I guess,” I said, managing a little smile.
“It’s your thing,” Jaime said, beaming. “You’re not a sullen asshole, of course. But you look like one from across the room.”
“He does not,” Fran said, plucking a beer out of one of the ice buckets. “He looks pensive. Brooding.”
“Brooding is just another word for ‘sullen asshole’,” Jaime countered. Fran rolled her eyes and shot me a glance, and I grinned.
“Leave Jules alone,” Nick said, leaning against the wall. “He cuts loose plenty; he just has to have the right motivation.”
“I haven’t seen him cut loose with any women,” Jaime pointed out.
“He’s got high standards,” Dan said, chiming in.
“Let’s stop talking about me, how’s that for a fun game?” I raised an eyebrow, glancing around at everyone who’d jumped into the conversation about whether I was, or was not, a sullen asshole.
“Have you worked out a part for that new song yet?” I shrugged off Nick’s question.
“I’m still working through it,” I told him. “I want it to be as good as possible before I show it off.”
“Nothing can ever be perfect,” Fran said. “I think some smart guy I know told me that once.”
“Not perfect,” I said, taking a sip of my beer. “Just as good as I can make it.” After another minute or two, the pressure on me—and the attention—went away, as the rest of the group started to talk about the next show, the next crowd, and all the other things that came along with the tour. I watched Fran as carefully as possible, trying to think of where we could go that wouldn’t leave u
s open to being caught.
She walked across the room, laughing at something one of the crew said, letting Kieran kiss her on the cheek and give her ass a slap, and gradually working her way towards me. I probably should have felt weird about Kieran mauling the woman I was having sex with—but I know how it is with bands. There’d been a long time when most of the press coverage that Molly Riot got focused on how ambiguously gay we were around each other: kissing each other on the cheek, sometimes on the lips, piling on top of each other, hugging each other. It was something that no one could understand unless they were in a tight-knit band, and I’d come to understand that even before we’d gone on this promotional tour with Juniper Woolf.
Fran pretended like she was only pausing on her way to somewhere else in the room, another group of people to talk to, and glanced at me. “There’s an empty supply closet behind here,” she said lowly. “We could make that shit happen.” I pressed my lips together to keep from grinning at her and nodded.
We had a system; one of us would suggest a meeting spot to the other one, and if it worked out, we’d take turns leaving the room. Sometimes Fran would slip out first, and sometimes I would, but the other person would wait a good five minutes before following. That way—we hoped—we could keep anyone from noticing that we happened to be leaving at the same time. Why are we even hiding this? It’s not like anyone in Molly Riot would have a problem with it, and I doubt any of the guys in Juniper Woolf is carrying a torch for Fran. It’s not like we’re doing anything wrong. But somehow even though I knew objectively that no one in my band could have any real, true issue with what Fran and I were doing, the situation would become awkward. I’d have to explain things, and then guys would be talking shit to me about it. Not worth coming clean if we didn’t absolutely have to.
I was the only one who noticed when Fran gradually made her way out of the green room altogether, talking to one group of people or another as she crossed the floor, and waiting until the group closest to the door—composed of Ron, a couple of the techs, and Nate from her band—were all involved in some story that Mark was telling them. She slipped out of the room, and I counted down the minutes until I could go out to her, find the closet she was talking about, and maybe—finally—get off the way a person truly should. Everyone thankfully seemed to be wrapped up in their own private, little world of discussion, so by the time I was able to get out of there, no one was really paying attention to the door anymore. That’s what venue security is for: to make sure no one gets into the backstage area to piss off the talent. Of course, they would probably think the same thing about me and Fran using their supply closet to have sex, but I figured there was no way in hell that we could possibly be the first ones to put it to that use.
I snuck out of the room and down the hall, heart pounding in my chest. It was like I was one of Pavlov’s dogs: even just the thought of having Fran to myself for even fifteen minutes was enough to make me instantly hard. I looked around, making sure that the backstage area was more or less deserted. It seemed safe enough.
I finally found the side-hallway where Fran stood waiting, and grinned at her as I turned the corner and joined her there, right outside of a door marked with a placard saying “storage closet: do not touch!” I rolled my eyes at that and pointed it out to Fran. “Are you seriously talking about not touching things at a moment like this? I am so fucking horny that I feel like I’m about to explode.
We wrapped our arms around each other and started kissing immediately, and after a couple of seconds, I no longer even cared if someone did walk into us. I let my hands wander all over Fran’s body, touching and teasing her, committing her curves to my memory. She was the hottest thing I’d ever seen—so good, so tight, so wet, and so delicious that I almost couldn’t resist being with her more often, or more obviously. But if she didn’t want anyone to know about what we were doing, then I wasn’t about to be the one who fucked it up.
Luckily for both of us, Fran had opted to wear a skirt backstage; it made it so much easier for me to reach my hand up and begin touching and stroking her already-wet pussy. I loved—loved—how wet she got at the slightest provocation. It was, in my opinion, the best thing about having her as a sex partner; there were other things that were just as good about her—I knew inside—that had nothing to do with the sex.
“How long do you think we have?” I pulled open the supply closet door and checked the interior, making sure that we weren’t interrupting anyone else who’d had the same idea, or that there weren’t priceless items like gear or something nearby.
“Twenty, tops,” Fran told me as we stepped into the closet together. I turned on the light and closed the door behind us and immediately went to work on stripping Fran down to the bare essentials; I’d let her keep the skirt on, but I had to be able to touch her breasts, I had to be able to tease her. I moaned against her mouth as the kiss deepened and I started to get more and more turned on with every passing moment.
I could feel Fran writhing and squirming between me and the wall of the closet, I could feel her body heat up, and feel her trembling with the anticipation of what was to come. I wanted nothing more than to strip her completely naked and have sex with her on the floor—but I knew that wouldn’t go over well. The last time we’d been fully naked together, Fran had sneaked into my hotel room, and that had been amazing. But for the moment at least, we would have to make do with what it was that we had, and so I found myself pinning Fran against the wall, putting my hand up her skirt, and kissing her over and over again.
I may not have known what I felt about Fran in a broader sense—at least not at that point—I knew for sure, that I didn’t want her to leave the tour. I knew I’d get pissed if anyone smacked her anywhere else but on the ass, and even that was pushing things. I rocked my hips against Fran’s, rubbing against her hot, wet labia, letting her feel how incredibly turned on I was. Even if I had been hell-bent on lasting longer than the fifteen minutes that Fran had assigned me, there was no way I could hold out for that amount of time right now.
I started stripping off what clothes I could of Fran’s, giving her a bunch of little caresses, exploring her body like it was a topographical 3-D map of the world. Every time that it seemed like Fran would break away to gasp or moan, I’d kiss her all over again; she did the same with me, as we got hotter and hotter by the moment in the closet.
Fran reached down and unbuttoned and unzipped my fly, taking my cock out of my pants and began to stroke it in a slow and steady rhythm. I shuddered against her, so turned on—once again—that I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to hold back if she kept it up for much longer. “Come on,” I murmured against her lips. “Turn around and lean against the wall. This will feel so good.” Fran gave me a quick, doubtful look but flashed a naughty smirk and did as she was told. I lifted her skirt over her hips to reveal the curve of her delicious ass. I reminded myself that looking at Fran’s ass was not what I’d come there to do, no matter how appealing it was, and instead, went back to work to get her even more turned on, sliding the tip of my cock against her clit, and then slowly along her slick folds.
I was just on the verge of thrusting into her when I heard voices outside of the supply closet door. “Do you think she’s got more dope? And if so, where would she go to smoke it? I reached out to grab Fran, to warn her that we were about to be walked in on, but I barely had time before the door opened behind us, revealing Nick. I started to say that it wasn’t what it looked like; but I knew we were busted.
“Well this is interesting,” Nick said, looking at each of us with a huge grin on his face.
CHAPTER NINE
“Okay,” Alex said, looking from Fran to me. “How long have you two been fucking?”
“About two months,” I said with a shrug. Alex’s eyes widened and he glanced at Nick, Dan, and Mark, who’d huddled together at the other end of the rec room.
“Seriously?” Alex looked appalled for a moment and then started to laugh. “You have got to be the
two quietest fucking…” he began laughing harder.
“Fuckers?” Fran suggested, looking oh-so-innocent. I started chuckling in spite of myself, and in a minute, everyone was laughing—even Ron, who had spent the last thirty minutes looking stern and disapproving.
Nick walking in on us in the supply closet at the venue had—of course—broken up the little two-person party we’d had going on. Nobody in Molly Riot went out to sign autographs; instead we’d all piled on the bus, most of us still buzzing from alcohol or other things, and the word had circulated.
“Okay, okay,” Alex said finally as the laughter began to peter off. “Do you guys think you can keep it quiet…” his lips twitched and he had to take a quick breath to keep from erupting into laughter again. “At least until the end of the tour and whatever else?”
“I don’t see why we should have to,” Fran said with a shrug, and I glanced at her; I wasn’t sure that I was in complete agreement with her position there. “I mean—now that you guys all know about it, what’s the point?”
“I just mean from the press perspective,” Alex said, raising his hands to forestall any other comments from anyone else. “I don’t want this to turn into some stupid, schlocky tabloid bullshit thing.”
“Why not?” Nick smirked. “It’s worked out for us well whenever that’s happened in the past.”
“That’s exactly why,” Alex said sharply. “I don’t want our band—or Juniper Woolf for that matter—to become that band that’s constantly in the media for the wrong reasons.”
“The press doesn’t know about it yet,” I pointed out, suddenly feeling tired again. “It’s not like Fran or I are going to go out of our way to get caught by a journalist or something.”
“Security does a pretty good job of keeping the press confined to the ‘approved’ areas,” Jaime pointed out. But from the way that the other members of Juniper Woolf were looking at their lead singer, I could only guess that they were going to be having a pretty lengthy conversation later on—once they were able to get some space.
