Hey everyone - This is my longest story yet, so I'll say if you're just here for some kinky women-spanking-men content (and there's plenty of that), it starts about halfway through this story. I've always found the context makes things hotter, and anyway, there *is* sex in the first half too, so I think you should read the whole thing, but what do I know?
I'm also going to add that I actually really have a soft spot for emo-pop-punk music, which this main character hates so much, and I think our differences on that made it a little easier to write him as a jerk who gets his comeuppance. Regardless, everyone's over 18 as always, and this is just fantasy but...let's hope it's filthy fucking hot fantasy.
***
The Depraved-Heart Murders suck. Even after everything that happened, I'm still going to stand by that. They were never a good band and they still aren't. Too serious for a simple pop-rock project but not quite hard enough to be considered actual punk, they live somewhere in the middle -- in that whole late 90s early-aughts sugary punk-pop-emo crush of bands that had, unfortunately, populated the soundtrack of my miserable middle school experience. Just in case I had needed one more reason to hate middle school, which I never did.
But the thing about The Depraved-Heart Murders was that they weren't selling records when I was in middle school. Hell, Charlotte Aaltonen was in middle school back then too, listening to the same drivel as the rest of us, except she apparently liked it. Well enough to put together a band making the same shit 15 years later.
And sure, whatever, it's her thing. Listen, I know the reputation male music journalists have, all right? Stuck up edgelord douchebags who are willing to pan an entire album on the damning criticism of it being "too mainstream."
A lot of that criticism is true. That's not where I'm coming from with this, I promise. I truly don't think The Depraved-Heart Murders is a good band. All the reviews saying Charlotte Aaltonen sings out her range too often are correct I think: she has a good voice and I never understood why she didn't just stay with what worked well for her.
That and I think Sasha Cholmondeley is an awful drummer, just in general, and I actually *do* have room to talk there. I've been drumming for more than half my life and I can knock out any of her parts on a first take. I actually did that a little while back -- there was a video up of it, but Sasha has since demanded I take it down. And it's in my best interest to keep Sasha -- and Charlotte, and the rest of The Depraved-Heart Murders -- happy these days.
Anyway, I wanted to preface all that before I got into the really off-the-record stuff, the parts where I fucked up and the parts that really changed my life. For better or for worse, I can't tell yet. It's really only been six months since all this started.
And that's wild to see written out, but yeah, all this did start about six months ago, I think. Back then I was still on the pop music beat, covering that for The Swing Note. I'm still at The Swing Note, by the way, just switched to doing metal music reviews now.
A big reason for that was Daria Rains, simultaneously the most helpful person in my life back then and also my biggest problem. Daria and I had clicked just about instantly. She was fun, flirty, smart. She called me out on my shit which, if you've read this far, you can probably imagine is an important quality in anyone I'm with romantically. More to the point, we had *fun* together. Daria had been to more shows than I'd ever imagined one person could have been to, and she always had more stories about them. We had enough musical tastes in common to where we could talk about that for hours, but we both stuck to our guns on our weird pet favorite bands too, even when we were jokingly given each other shit about them. I tracked down some of the stories she'd written as a reporter and they were pretty badass too. She'd been a government reporter, really doing some muckraking and knocking on the doors of people in power, before she'd gotten sick of being the Enemy of the American People for $15 an hour and found something better. She had been a better reporter than I'd ever even aspired to be.
There was only one problem though.
Daria Rains was -- is -- The Depraved-Heart Murders' public relations specialist. As in, puts out the press releases, schedules the interviews, manages the social media accounts, handles any sort of crisis or bad headline. And Charlotte Aaltonen and Sasha Cholmondeley and Morrigan Padilla would trust her with their lives. That's true now, and it was true six months ago when all this really amped up.
Back then, The Depraved-Heart Murders was based in Acidalia, just a half hour or so from Galina City, and they played Galina City pretty often. It gave Daria and me an excuse to hang out on a fairly regular basis. By the time everything happened, we'd been doing this maybe half a dozen times; getting drinks and shooting the shit, making out in her car or mine, maybe going further than that. We hadn't hooked up, although that was very much Daria's decision, not mine. Daria was the hottest woman I'd ever met in my life, I knew, even back then.
And I *know* this is the cardinal sin of journalism, hooking up with a source. I *know* that. It's why I switched beats. The Swing Note put some new kid, fresh out of college, on the pop music beat to avoid the conflict of interest. He wasn't any good at the job, but at least we'd solved the ethical problem, much as it hurt to see my old beat go to shit in the hands of someone who really didn't care about it much.
Anyway, the night all this began, Daria and I agreed to meet up -- like usual -- at the Cavalcade. We liked it because it was the last place anyone would think to look for us: it was probably the biggest dance club in Galina City, the kind of place where you could feel the beats through the soles of your shoes as you stood outside in the line to get in. Plus, it was dark enough to where we probably wouldn't be recognized if someone did see us here.
I got a drink that night and then caught sight of Daria already there, in one of the corner booths where the table itself cast a vague neon blue glow. It made the contents of her drink -- whatever it was -- luminescent.
Daria was out of my league, just cooler than me in most ways, but fashion especially. She didn't overdue it -- she'd opted for a black long-sleeved shirt and a pair of torn jeans tonight -- but it was the little touches (the black ribbon choker at her throat; the blond pigtails) that made that otherwise unremarkable look striking. A heavy black leather bracelet adorned her right wrist. I'd thrown on an unbuttoned flannel over a black t-shirt and jeans (it was a *nice* flannel though, all right?) and called it good.
She smiled as I approached.
"Hey you," she said, and kissed me as I sat down at the glowing blue table. "Been a minute."
"A few weeks," I said with a wink.
"That's getting to be a while for us," she said. She clasped her hands together beneath her chin and gave me a wide-eyed look. It was a Daria-only look, the kind that just about made me rock-hard on the spot. "How are you? Tell me everything."
I smiled and sipped the drink, then raised my eyebrows. The Cavalcade never skimped on alcohol content.
"It's been good," I said. "New beat's working out well. Writing about metal is fun."
She nodded. "I bet. How's the kid doing who took over your job?"
I shrugged, looked away at the gyrating silhouettes on the dance floor. "He's...learning."
Daria laughed. "He sucks doesn't he?"
"He really sucks, yeah," I told her. "Just not really putting in the effort. I feel like I have to hit him over the head with story tips. But..."
I leaned back and shrugged. "It's not my beat anymore."
"I can tell it still drives you crazy though," Daria said, her grin widening.
"Guilty as charged, it does," I told her, and sighed. "But come on Daria. How are you? You guys are getting ready for a tour right?"
Daria sighed and nodded. "Yeah, we are. Still a lot I got to do to get ready for that, but it's coming along. I think I told you, but Galina City is our first show, a two weeks from now."
I nodded. "Yeah, you did."
She smiled at me. "I take it you won't be there?"
"You know how I feel about The Depraved-Heart Murders, Daria."
"Would you do it for me?"
Fuck. Daria loved to do this shit. "In this scenario are you Work Daria or Fun Daria?"
She laughed at that. "Work Daria isn't fun?"
"I think you know what I'm getting at."
She paused, pursed her lips, and seemed to be thinking about something. Then she gave me a devilish smile I felt deep in my gut. She leaned across the table until she was kissing distance from me, her denim-clad knees on the bench beneath her, elbows on the table.
"Can I tell you something off the record?" She whispered, barely audible over the beat incessant EDM beat in the Cavalcade.
Just then it ranked as maybe one of the hottest things Daria Rains could have said to me.
I kissed her. I felt her laugh against my lips as she did.
"Stop it," she said, and giggled, pushing me back into the booth and keeping her hands on my shoulders. "This is serious shit, Nolan."
"Yes you can tell it to me off the record," I said.
"The Depraved-Heart Murders has a new album coming out soon," she said. "We've got a date."
I swallowed hard because even I knew what that meant, and it didn't matter how much I hated The Depraved-Heart Murders. They were the hottest band in rock music right now. They had been for a few years. Their fans were rabid, and you ran into someone speculating about the contents of this album -- and its drop date -- just about every 12 feet on the internet these days. The general consensus was that The Depraved-Heart Murders was going to drop the album overnight with no warning.
But if The Swing Note could get ahead of that -- might be able to find out when, for instance, the album would be released, or what would be on it, or its name, or anything like that -- it would be a major story. Just the thing the kid who took over my old beat needed.
"You...you do?" I repeated.
"Yeah," Daria said.
"And when might that date be?" I asked. "Or what might be the working title?"
"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to discuss that with members of the media just yet," she said. "But. If you do come to the show in a few weeks maybe I could be...persuaded."
I rolled by eyes and shook my head, but the rail spike in my pants hadn't gone down at all yet. Nothing she'd said helped with that particular situation.
"Really?" I asked.
She sat back in her seat and smirked. "I think so, yeah."
"And in the meantime you wouldn't tell anyone else?" I asked.
"This would be a scoop for you," she said, and sipped her drink. "I'm willing to do that. Plus, it sounds like the kid who took over your beat could use the help."
I couldn't argue with her there.
She raised her glass. "Deal?"
"Deal," I said, and clinked my own glass against hers.
***
Later, making out in my car, my hand under her shirt she paused as I landed kisses all up and down her neck, through the hollow of her collarbone, beneath those cute blond braids of hers.
"There's...there's one more thing," she said, as I ran my hand across the toned flatness of her stomach and down over the insides of her thighs over her jeans. It drove her crazy when I did that, she'd told me; the touch so close, separated by a single layer of denim.
I didn't look up, my senses full of the smell of her hair and her skin, her shampoo and the faintest touch of her sweat.
"When you show up for the concert in a few weeks," she told me.
"Mmmmm," was all I could manage. I didn't want to talk business just now. The ache in my balls was ridiculous by this point, and Daria had given me no sign she wanted anything other than a good fucking tonight.
I was more than happy to oblige.
"There's one...fuck..." she whispered, and leaned her head back against the window as I put my hand in her pants, rested it on her sodden panties. She breathed out, and started again. "There's one other thing you need to do when you show up at the concert."
"Yeah?" I asked, toying with her with my fingers in a way I knew she liked. "You want to talk about this now?"
"I do...yeah," she said, eyes still closed. "Fuck. You're going...you're going to have to do something...for me."
OK, I thought. Hot.
