Authors: Jade Allen
****
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 us 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 due 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.
****
“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.
“Journos sneak into hotels,” Ron pointed out. “They stake places out.”
“Why the hell should we be secretive about it?” In a matter of moments, I had gone from—if not being against Fran’s idea of openness—wanting to take it a bit slow to perversely feeling like my own band were trying to cock-block me.
They kind of are,
I thought.
They want you to keep shit even more on the DL than you were before—fuck that.
“I mean, I’m not saying I’m going to do a press conference tomorrow and try to bend Fran over the podium or something but it’s not like we’re doing anything wrong.”
“Just—keep it as private as you can,” Ron suggested, looking from Fran to me. “You’re not doing anything wrong but you are doing something that people are going to want to talk about when they know it’s happening.”
“Jules—are you really ready to get a hundred questions about what you and Fran are doing together?” I looked over at Nick; he smiled sympathetically, and I thought to myself that of all the members in either band, he probably understood the situation the best. After all, he’d hooked up with Olivia on our last tour—technically before the tour had started, but they’d hashed out their relationship on the bus together while going from one city to another.
“No,” I admitted. I glanced at Fran from the corner of my eye. “Are you?” She met my gaze and then shrugged.
“Not really,” she said, though I could see there was another answer she wanted to give. “I mean, I don’t want drama any more than anyone else in here does. I just…think it’s stupid to sneak around when we’ve been going at it for two months.”
“We’ve got maybe three weeks left of this tour,” Ron said, looking from Fran to me. “Then you guys are all going to be back home, and working on the EP you’re putting out together.”
“What’s your point, Ronnie?” I crossed my arms over my chest. My groin ached. Having Nick walk in on us had gotten rid of my erection pretty fast—but that didn’t mean it hadn’t ever happened. I wanted more than anything to get a little privacy and take care of my problem; and the prospect of sitting in the rec room of the bus for another hour, debating whether or not Fran and I were doing the right thing, was like being tortured with paper cuts.
“Keep it to yourselves as much as possible,” Ron said. “If you get caught after taking the normal level of precautions you have been—whatever. But don’t take this as license to just…”
“Indiscriminately fuck anywhere they feel like?” I snorted at Nick’s comment.
“Just do what you can to keep from having to do another press conference to explain how you two hooked up and whether you’re engaged or not,” Ron said matter-of-factly. “Because I don’t think either of you would enjoy dealing with the drama of that any more than I would.”
“It’d probably boost sales, though,” Mark said, grinning.
“Enough,” Alex said. “We’ll talk about it more later. Right now I just want to get in my bunk and talk to my girlfriend. Who’s on the same page?” He looked around the room and one by one, the members of both my band and Fran’s nodded. Alex stood and stalked out of the rec room, towards the bunks, and I watched as the rest of my band mates left, too.
By tomorrow they’ll be giving me all kinds of shit,
I thought bleakly, reaching into my pocket for a pack of cigarettes. I shifted in my seat, looking over at Fran, who’d gone quiet—but who hadn’t left with everyone else. Ron had found his way to the office he kept on the bus, Hannah had gone off somewhere, too, and Jaime, Nate, and Kieran as well.
“What do you think of this shit?” I shook a cig free of the pack and found my lighter in another pocket.
“I think I’m never fucking anyone in a supply closet again,” Fran said, turning towards me. “Got another?” I nodded and handed her the pack and the lighter.
“You know what I mean, though,” I said, taking a drag of smoke into my lungs and holding it for a second before I blew it out.
“Yeah,” Fran said, lighting up. “I know.” She sighed, exhaling smoke in a gush around her face. “I just…is right now really the time you want to be talking about whatever we want to call this?” I considered that question.
“Not really,” I admitted. “But I figure you’ve been trying to talk about it for a week or two now; we might as well get it over with, since everyone knows about it at this point.”
“We’ve got two more weeks of touring,” Fran said, taking another quick drag of smoke. “And then maybe a week off and then we’ll head into the studio to make the EP.”
“Maybe we can get them to bump it up to a month,” I said, smiling slightly.
“Even then…” Fran shrugged. “What do you want this to be?” She looked me dead in the eyes.
“I know I’m not really into sneaking around if we don’t have to—not when we’ve already been caught,” I said. I pulled some smoke into my lungs. “But I also don’t want to be tabloid darlings.”
“Me either,” Fran said, sighing. “I just want…” she shrugged again. “I don’t know what I want.”
“You like having sex with me,” I said, making it almost a question—but not quite.
“Well duh,” Fran said, smirking. “If I didn’t I wouldn’t keep doing it.” I snickered.
“You would because—remember—there’s no one else you can fuck on this bus, really.”
“I have Angelo,” Fran pointed out tartly.
“Right,” I said, flicking the ash on the end of my cigarette into the ashtray next to me. “Anyway—you like fucking me. I like fucking you. We don’t hate each other’s guts anymore.”
“I don’t think we actually ever did, if you really think about it,” Fran said. She leaned across the space between us and flicked the tip of her cigarette into the tray. “But yeah. We don’t hate each other.” She smiled slightly. “I actually enjoy spending time talking to you. I actually
like you
. Weird, huh?”
“Who’d have thought?” I shook my head. “What do you want this to be? Just having sex and a good time—or something more than that?”
“I asked you first,” Fran said, raising an eyebrow. I continued smoking for a moment, trying to find a way to answer without actually answering.
“I don’t know,” I admitted finally. “I like how things are right now.” Fran scratched at her scalp with her free hand.
“But you like me,” Fran said. “Beyond the sex part of things.” I pressed my lips together.
“I do,” I said, nodding.
“We probably shouldn’t talk about this right now, huh?” Fran smiled wryly. I sighed.
“Probably not,” I agreed. “Just thought I’d try.”
“Better wait until the actual tour is over,” Fran suggested. “See if we feel…certain, or whatever.” I finished my cigarette and stubbed it out.
“I’m going to my bunk,” I said, giving Fran a wry smile. “You know how it is.”
“I’ll say ‘hi’ to Angelo for you,” she told me, giving me a little grin.