Playing With Fire: Dragons Of The Darkblood Secret Society

by Meg Ripley

  “But can you do both while our bands are working together?” I smiled.

  “It’ll make it easier that way, won’t it? We’ll work on our stuff in the off hours—we’re going to be renting the studio for like two weeks. There’s no way there’s not going to be time for us to do our own thing in it.”

  “I’m actually kind of more excited by that than by the fact that I can fucking date you openly now if I want to,” Fran said. We both laughed and, acting on impulse, I leaned in and kissed her. If someone took a picture of us, I didn’t give a single fuck.

  “We’ll make it work,” I told her. It was the first time that I had actually said that to a woman; I had always been the person to hear it. I could only hope that I would be better at making it happen than any of the women I’d been involved with who had said those words to me. I kissed Fran again. “Eat your damn sandwich before I do,” I told her, taking another drag of my cigarette and another sip of my coffee. “Then let’s go back to my place. It’s actually clean for once.” Fran laughed.

  “Now that we don’t have to sneak around?” I nodded.

  “We’ll just do whatever we feel like, won’t we?” Fran took a bite of her Cuban sandwich and her eyes gleamed. I knew it was going to be an uphill battle with the label—but she didn’t know that, and I didn’t intend to really tell her. She’d find out soon enough.

  ****

  It was late. Half the band had gone home—or in Mark’s case, out to a bar—and the other half, save for me and Fran, was packing up. Our weeklong break had ended, and we were in the studio, ostensibly working on our EP together.

  “You guys hanging out?” Alex gave me a dubious look from the door. I shrugged.

  “Fran had something she wanted to work on for a bit, and I’m not tired,” I said. No one—in either band, as far as I could tell—had said anything about what had happened in the tabloids regarding Fran and I being discovered. We hadn’t said anything about it either; just gone about our normal lives. I knew a lecture from Ron was coming, but as long as I took care not to be alone in a room with him, I was pretty sure I could stall it out. For a while, anyway.

  Alex gave me another long look, but then turned and left; he had Mary waiting for him anyway. I glanced at Fran, seated at the studio’s piano. “You ready to work on this?” Fran met my gaze and half-smiled.

  “Is it weird that I feel nervous?” I shook my head.

  “Not at all. I still get a little nervous the first couple of tracks I try to record with the band,” I said, picking up a guitar and checking the tune. “And it’s not like you’ve recorded with me before.”

  “No virgin jokes,” Fran told me quickly. I snorted.

  “None,” I promised. I looked up through the window into the control room. Les, the sound engineer, had stayed behind because I’d asked him to; Dave had gone home.

  “Okay,” Les said over the intercom. “How do you guys want to do this?”

  “You’ve got the demo track, right?” I sat down in a chair next to the piano, made sure I was still plugged in.

  “Yeah, I’ve got it,” Les confirmed.

  “Can you play it back?” Fran glanced from Les to me. “We’ll use it as a scratch track I guess.”

  “Sounds good,” Les said levelly. “Give me about a minute and I’ll do a count-in.” I looked at Fran and smiled to myself; I could tell she was almost as nervous as she’d been the first night out on tour, when she’d been preparing to go out to one of the biggest crowds that Juniper Woolf had ever played to.

  We’d spent about half the day setting up, making sure everything was the way it was supposed to be for both bands. The way the label wanted it was that we’d record six songs: two each by Juniper Woolf and Molly Riot, and then two that we did together. If it seemed to do well, there would be videos to make, but only one for each kind of song—hopefully. And then, both my band and Fran’s could get to work on separate albums. No one had said anything about Fran and me working on side projects together—but then, no one had said that we couldn’t.

  I put my headphones on and listened for the count in. I’d shown Fran the night before what I’d worked out for the song—and she’d told me that she’d worked out a piano part to go with it. Now we’d see how our ideas meshed together. It was a damned good thing, in my opinion at least, that there were no stakes in recording it; a few times the guys and I had tried a similar approach and it had been a hot fucking mess.

  But when the track counted in, I started on my part, and I heard Fran’s piano playing coming through the headphones at the same time. I almost stopped—stunned—but made myself keep going. It actually sounded really, really good together, over the drum machine and the acoustic she’d already laid down. It was more melodic than anything I’d ever done with Molly Riot, more structural and flowing at the same time.

  We got to the end of the demo and stopped—first me and then Fran—and I felt that pit-of-my-stomach lurch of not knowing whether what I’d just played was genius or shit. The intercom—patched in through the headphones—crackled. “Sounds good, you two,” Les said, and Fran and I looked at each other with grins. “Let’s do it one more time and then we can talk about what else you want to do with it.”

  We played it through again; I knew what Fran was going to do, and adjusted my part to hers just a little, adding some emphasis to the fills that looped around her piano part. It was like a conversation between us, and I grinned to myself as we came to the end of it.

  “Fucking nailed it!” The recording had ended—I was pretty sure I was in the clear. Fran started giggling and turned on the piano seat to face me.

  “We did, didn’t we?” I nodded.

  “Come on in here and listen to the playback,” Les suggested. I set my guitar aside and Fran leapt up from her stool, and we practically raced each other to the control room to listen to the track we’d just recorded. “I’m going to strip out the acoustic in the demo, since I don’t think you actually need that at this point to get the idea,” Les told us, pressing buttons on the board and adjusting levels. “You might want to re-record that bit later, with better equipment and microphones, but for now, let’s just listen to the drums and what you two laid down.”

  The music flowed through the speakers and I had to admit it was a big departure from anything I’d ever done in my life before. I looked over at Fran as the song progressed; it was quieter than her usual stuff, more melodic. I could hear the lower-quality recording of her voice, but it wasn’t jarring—it sounded pretty good still, even wrapped around with the better guitar and the piano part. It was pretty amazing, when I really thought about it.

  “What do you two think?” Les turned to face us and I took a breath.

  “It’s her song,” I said, gesturing in Fran’s direction.

  “Right, because I totally wrote that guitar part you just played,” Fran said, making a face. “I think we can agree at this point that it’s our song.”

  “Is it?” I raised an eyebrow. Fran gave me a slightly nervous look and bit her bottom lip. She’s so fucking cute when she does that. I wasn’t sure when all the little things that used to annoy me about her had become so damned endearing, but somehow, they had—I couldn’t wait to get her alone again.

  “I think…” Fran licked her lips and exhaled sharply. “I think I want you to do the vocals with me.” I stared at her. I’d done a few backing vocal bits with Alex on Molly Riot songs, but never really did anything that could be called a duet.

  “You sure?”

  “We can try it, right?” Fran looked at Les.

  “We have the set up, since you and Alex were supposed to be working together on vocals for the EP,” Les said matter-of-factly. “So it wouldn’t be hard.”

  “I don’t even really know the lyrics,” I pointed out.

  “Do you want to do vocals on it? If you don’t that’s one thing.” I shrugged.

  “I just…” the thought of bringing the song to either of our bands—especially as unsett
led as things had been since TMZ had posted about Fran and me being together—gave me a bit of a pause. It was one thing to record my own stuff on the side and post it to SoundCloud. I’d never really taken it seriously. But in helping Fran with a song of her own, building a part for it and her handing joint control to me, it felt like I was doing more—it felt like it was something I couldn’t quite dismiss. “Let me think about it.”

  “Take your time, but we’re only in here for another week or two,” Fran pointed out. “Want to work on one of the songs you showed me?” I rolled my eyes.

  “It’s not going to be as good as that,” I said, shaking my head.

  “If you’ve got the recording, I can throw it up and we can play with it,” Les suggested. I hesitated.

  “Come on, Jules—you worked with me on something. Let me work with you on something,” Fran said, giving me a flirty grin. “It’s only fair, right?” I took a breath and exhaled.

  “Let’s get a beer and a cigarette and then we can do it,” I said, looking from Fran to Les.

  “I’ll take a break,” Les said, shrugging. “Shoot me the track in an email and I’ll pull it up on here.”

  He left the control room and I walked over to the mini fridge. Normally we didn’t drink all that much when we were recording—it tends to make everything sound like shit—but I definitely needed a beer. “You okay?” I looked over my shoulder at Fran. I shrugged and grabbed two beers out of the fridge and opened them before I plunked down in the seat I’d left a moment before. Fran handed me a cig and I handed her a beer and thought about the situation.

  “I just don’t want either of our bands thinking that we’re like…going off on our own,” I said.

  “You mean you don’t want Molly Riot to think you’re going off on your own with me,” Fran told me, lighting up her own cigarette. “You didn’t have a problem with working on my song.”

  “I did a guitar part,” I pointed out, taking a sip of my beer. “I’ve done that with other acts, too.”

  “But doing vocals…or working on one of your own songs with me; those things make it different somehow?” Fran raised an eyebrow.

  “Of course, they do!” I wasn’t even sure why I was irritated about it, but I was. “It makes it more…” I shrugged. “It makes it seem like I’m not satisfied with the band.”

  “You’ve been writing your own songs for what—years?” Fran set her beer down and gave me a level look. “If you weren’t satisfied with the band don’t you think they’d have figured that out by now?”

  “It’s different doing my own songs in a studio like this instead of at home,” I told Fran. “You’re the lead singer of your band. They fucking expect you to have other irons in the fire.”

  “You’re a talented goddamn musician and you obviously have other things that you’re capable of doing,” Fran said, scowling at me. “What the fuck does it matter if you record something off hours with me?”

  “It matters, okay?” I took a quick breath and downed about a third of my beer. “It matters because ever since Alex took up with Mary, we’ve all been a little…” I shrugged. “It’s been weird. And what’s weirder is that no one is fucking talking about what happened between you and me.”

  “I thought you said that Mark or whoever gave you shit about it? Wasn’t there a betting pool?”

  “Not like that,” I told her, shaking my head. “Like…no one is talking about the fact that the tabloids have practically guaranteed that you and I are going to make an album together in the next two years.”

  “They have?” Fran’s eyes widened and she stared at me in shock. “What the fuck? You’ve been reading the tabloid shit about us?”

  “Of course I have,” I said. “You haven’t?”

  “I’ve been fucking ignoring it because it’s bullshit,” Fran told me. She shook her head. “So, because some magazine or something says we’re going to put an album out together, you’re afraid the rest of the guys are going to think it’s true?”

  “I told you,” I said, picking up my beer again and taking another long pull from it. “I fucking told you, shit is weird in the band right now. I don’t want them to think that I’m going to jump ship or something.”

  “And working on one of my songs isn’t going to make them think that?” I shook my head.

  “Working on my own stuff with you—instead of on my own, or with them—or doing it professionally, that’s the shit that’s going to make people uneasy,” I said. “Working with you on something just looks like I’m doing my new girlfriend a favor.” Fran’s eyes widened again.

  “When did I become your girlfriend?” she crossed her arms over her chest, barely managing to avoid burning herself with the lit cigarette in her hand.

  “If you don’t want to be then just say so,” I told her. “I thought that’s what you were getting at all along—but if I was wrong, fucking tell me so.”

  “Right now, I don’t know what I want,” Fran said, shaking her head. “Especially since I’m apparently not good enough to help you work on a track and record it with a half way decent sound system.” I groaned.

  “You’re not—it’s not about not being good enough, it’s about being too good,” I said. “It’s about it looking like I’m taking it too seriously. If you were shit, then having you help me work on it wouldn’t make a bit of fucking difference.”

  “We need to be done for the day,” Fran said, shaking her head. She picked up her beer, drank down about half of it, and set it down once more. “I don’t know where the hell your head is at, but you need to get that shit straight or we’re never going to get through this goddamn EP, much less anything else.” She took another long drag of her cigarette and stubbed it out. “Tell Les that I’m gone for the night.”

  ****

  Alex came into the live room and threw himself down onto the couch. “All right, Jules: talk.”

  “About what?” I looked up from my phone and flicked the half-inch of ash off the end of my cigarette.

  “You know what the fuck I mean,” Alex said. “Talk about it.” I rolled my eyes.

  “The thing with Fran?” Alex nodded, fumbling with his pack of smokes before shaking one lose to light up.

  “It’s a thing,” I said with a shrug. “Maybe was a thing.”

  “Was?” Alex leaned forward and pulled the ashtray closer to him. “Fuck, man. Did you screw that shit up already?”

  “It’s my business,” I told Alex.

  “Fuck that noise,” Alex said, shaking his head. “You fucked her while we were on tour. You brought the band into it when you stuck your dick into the supporting act.”

  “Get the fuck out of here with that shit,” I said. “We had sex a bunch of times, we talked about shit. It’s what the fuck happens on tour. Nick fucked a journalist and you didn’t give him shit over it.”

  “He started up with her before the tour,” Alex pointed out. “It’s not like he screwed anything up in the process.”

  “I didn’t screw anything up! Besides, it’s fucking personal, man.” I stubbed out my cigarette and lit another one. My lungs were going to be wrecked at the rate I was going, but I didn’t care.

  “We’re a week into recording and you and Fran haven’t been in the same room alone in all that time,” Alex said. “You don’t even look at each other when you’re in the same room.”

  “We worked on one of her songs the first night,” I admitted. “She wanted to work on something I’d written, and I told her I didn’t want to make the rest of the guys think that I’m trying to go my own way.”

  “Fuck. Jules—you’ve been writing your own shit for years.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Not that you’d notice,” I muttered.

  “I noticed,” Alex told me sharply. “If you want to work on it with Fran, why the fuck should I care about that? Or Nick, or Dan, or Mark?”

  “You guys have certainly made it the fuck clear that you’ve got issues with me doing anything at all with Fran,” I told Alex. “
So forgive me if I thought you’d get pissed if I did more than just fuck her and play the occasional game of fucking Scrabble.”

  “You’re being such a fucking baby, Jules,” Alex said, shaking his head. “What the hell do you even want with her? Do you know?” I closed my eyes and took a long drag from the cigarette in my fingers.

  “Fuck, man.” I shook my head, opening my eyes to look up at the ceiling of the live room. We were almost certainly not supposed to be smoking in there, but nobody gave enough of a fuck to enforce the rule; they’d just clean it after we left anyway. “I just want shit to stop being so complicated. If you’ve got an issue with me doing something with Fran, then fucking tell me. If Fran wants to be my girlfriend or just a steady lay, she should fucking tell me, too.”

  “You want her to be your girlfriend, don’t you?” I opened my eyes and looked at Alex. He was staring at me steadily, his lips twitching just a little bit with the start of a smile. “You always fuck shit up in your relationships. It’s no fucking wonder you ended up banging Fran; I think you actually want your relationships to crash and burn.”

  “Man, ever since you started dating Mary, you psychoanalyze fucking everything,” I told Alex, shaking my head again. “It’s not even important.”

  “She didn’t land a decent take all day today,” Alex told me matter-of-factly. “I want to get this EP done so we can move onto real shit. If she can’t pull out a performance, then we’re going to be here for another week. Which means it’s going to be another week before we can get to work on our own fucking album. It’s sure as shit important to me that we get this done.”

  “Fine,” I said, scratching at my face with my free hand. “What do you want me to do? Apologize?”

  “Apologize, or take her into the lounge and fuck her brains out and make it all okay, or do—something. Jesus, Jules.” Alex sighed. “Just fucking fix the situation, okay? Get your shit together and fix it.” He stubbed his cigarette out and looked at me for a long minute. “We’re on a break. Talk to her, do something to fix it. Everyone’s coming back around two.” He stood. “Fran’s in the lounge.” He turned and left and I watched him go.