S-Duality: A Marauders Novella (8 page)

He'd gotten drunk with Jane once, just the two of them, and she'd told him about when she met Trudy. How Trudy had been forcefully casual about sex, that she'd almost used it as a way to punish herself. She'd had some part in changing Trudy's mind about it, and he had to admit that it was probably thanks to Jane that Trudy had been ready for a relationship by the time he met her. Even capable of loving anyone at all. When he found out, it had made perfect sense to him that Trudy'd chosen Jane as the first one to have sex with them.

He noticed Trudy's breathing getting heavier.

“Go to sleep, baby,” he mumbled and kissed her forehead.

Trudy actually came along with them for a few days on the tour. There were a lot of Spinal Tap quotes about girlfriends following on tour. Trudy gave back by constantly making remarks about their drop D tuning being the whiniest of all keys—which was a spin on another quote from Spinal Tap. She also made the band some animal masks and a paper Stonehenge to have on stage.

Once she'd gone home, they kept nagging about how his girlfriend was a lot more fun than he was and also asked how the hell he'd managed to catch a girl like that.

He had to admit it, you didn't catch girls like that, they caught you.

“Make it a collect call,” Trudy said when she heard it was him calling.

It had been another three weeks since she'd visited them, and from what he could tell he'd be on tour with Riot Act until Christmas—at least. She'd taken the news in her stride but had said she wanted to come and visit him at least once a month. They could afford it, and the other guys were okay with it. But this was new; she'd never asked him to call collect before. He usually called from some scrappy club's payphone, and it was more to check in and hear her voice for a few minutes than to have an actual conversation.

“Okay,” he said and hung up.

He lit a smoke and then called her back. She accepted the charge and then he heard her voice.

“Jane said she didn't want to do it without you even if we didn't think it was cheating, she said it felt weird. But she was okay with us doing it and you listening in, so we're both in the bed, buck naked, and on speaker. Wanna listen to us having sex? Sort of like group phone sex.”

“Oh, shit,” he mumbled and looked at the door to the phone booth.
It wasn't glass, it could work. So he propped his foot against it, leaned his back against the opposite wall, and started on his belt buckle. “Fucking hell, I love you, baby.”

CHAPTER SIX:

-
o0o-

Present day, Greenville, Arizona

FOR SOME REASON, SISCO
still saw Bucket as one of the young guys, but he'd actually been in the club for quite a few years. The guy was over forty, but to Sisco he still looked like an innocent little kid. It might just be that he was getting old himself, but some guys also had that look. It didn't matter how old they got, they were still scrawny and had a roundness to their cheek that just screamed 'twenty-something.'

Bucket had gotten married a few years earlier, and they'd had their first kid, too. The woman wasn't one of those who spent a lot of time at the club, hardly ever in fact. Obviously Bucket had learned his lesson when his first girl had tried to push up on Mace in an attempt to get higher up in the hierarchy. She'd been thrown out on her ass that very night, and Sisco hadn't seen her since.

It had taken Bucket a long time to tell them about his wife, Stacie, and she hadn't been to the clubhouse at all the first year. When their kid was born, the others had welcomed it at the hospital, just like any other club kid, but Sisco'd known that the baby wouldn’t be a kid like Brick or Bear's kids, who'd had their second home at the clubhouse. It was a boy named Adam, and they'd taken him to the clubhouse to show him off a few times. Stacie had managed to look proud and uncomfortable at the same time.

He'd asked Bucket about her, but he'd kept quiet, just smiling. Mech and Bear kept their Old Ladies on the outside, too. Mech had always done it, probably because she'd been his wife before he was a Marauder, and even if Bear's woman, April, showed up at times and was pretty fucking friendly when she did, she wasn't
in
the club the same way as some of the other Old Ladies.

April'd helped out a few times when someone was injured, too, since she was a nurse, and she didn't seem to have a problem with the club or what
they did at all. He guessed it was a thing between Bear and her.

Bucket's woman seemed mostly shy, though.
Or worried. He'd asked Bucket how she felt about the club business, and he'd admitted she didn't know much about it. She was mostly upset it meant he had to spend nights away when they were on runs. Sisco assumed some women did find it annoying or upsetting when their men were away.

Trudy never really did. At least not as long as she got to come and see him once a month, and she'd loved the traveling and opportunity to see new places.

-
o0o-

Seattle, Washington

THE TOURING CONTINUED ALL
the way up to Christmas. Then they had a few days off, but were back on the road on the 27
th
. New Year's was celebrated with another gig as support for two bigger, more successful Seattle bands, and Trudy was with them.

When they all went into the bus, a guy came running after them yelling about how Haven's album had hit number one on the Billboard. Haven was
another Seattle band, and it felt fucking surreal. For a second, Sisco thought it would never be the same again. It would never just be friends hanging out doing some gigs. Shit was for real now. They had things to prove, both to the world and to each other.

They kept touring all the way through January, and it might not have been friends hanging out, but he was at least making proper money. A surprising amount of mon
ey, and after the January shows he and Trudy moved to a better house. It wasn't bigger, but it was a slightly higher standard. She loved it and was so eager to re-paint and fix everything in it she didn't even care that he left for Europe for a month and a half.

The label had wanted the band to replace him with a more experienced tour manager for that leg of the tour, some guy who used to work with the hair bands of the late eighties. After making sure Sisco was okay with it, Pete and Jonah had told the label to go fuck
themselves. They wanted people they knew and could trust around them. They'd seen how the big labels' men treated the up and coming bands on the New Year's Eve gig.

Sisco'd had good experiences when he toured squat-gigs
in Europe, but he quickly realized touring regular venues was a completely different thing. Everyone was trying to fuck them over, and he was glad he knew as much about finances as he did because he quickly got into going through the promoters' budgets at the end of a show to make sure the band got their negotiated share.

But there were still a lot of fights, and not all venues and promoters were all that helpful. One venue had forgotten to mention there wasn't anywhere close to park the damn van, and at another they fully expected the band to pay for beer despite signing off on the rider
beforehand. And whenever he got pissed, they all of a sudden didn't understand English.

The worst was the place
that'd booked them without even having a proper fucking stage. He'd totally flipped, but the band had said they'd just do a small acoustic gig instead, and it was one of the best gigs they'd done.

But throughout the tour,
he had regular fits, and he missed Trudy the entire fucking time. They didn't talk on the phone that often; it was just too fucking expensive to call her. He sent her letters, but it wasn't as easy for her to reply.

Being away from her had made him once again decide she was the most perfect person he'd ever met, though. Despite the fights, they were perfect together. Most of all, he liked who he was with her. He was the kind of man he wanted to be when he was with her. It was as if calm had been chasing him and caught up with him when he met her—since that very first night. What she'd said and done should've freaked him out, but it hadn't. She said the same
thing, that the intensity should've scared her, but it had really just been right.

The two of them just knowing they were right was most likely the main reason why other people in bed with them had never been a problem. They shared a look now and then, he stroked her hand or the other way around, and that was it. They were okay.

He had ten days off when they got back to the States, and he spent them with her in bed. Sometimes they played with Jane or with Laurie and Casey, but most often it was just the two of them.

They managed to have a few fights during those days, too. The kind of fights that included Trudy screaming, him screaming, Trudy throwing things, him screaming some more, Trudy attacking, and the two of them fucking on the closest surface.
Often the floor.

Laurie and Casey had just left, and Sisco had taken Trudy into the bath. He was leaving two days later, and they'd decided to be alone until then.

She was leaning against his chest, and he gently kissed the side of her neck when he noticed a hickey on her shoulder.

“Did I do that?” he asked, and she shrugged. “You okay?”

She'd been quiet, and it didn't seem to be merely her being tired. She took his hand and interlaced their fingers, giving his knuckles a kiss.

“Would you marry me?” she asked out of nowhere, the way she often dropped similar bombs on him.

“You want to get married?”

She turned around and stood on her knees between his legs, caressing his face.

“Yes. I want... I want to know it's you and me.”

“It is.”

“I know, but when we do this, and you stroke my hand, I want two rings there. Or to see a ring on you and just know it's you and me.”

“Baby, if this is starting to bother you, we stop.”

“It's not. I know here, that you're mine,” she said and tapped her
over her heart. “But I'd like something visual that says it, too. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, it does.” He grabbed her cheeks and pulled her in for a kiss. “I'd still stop if it's bothering you.”

“It's not, you know it's not,” she said, and wrapped her legs around his waist. He gently kissed her chest and gave each nipple a lick. She smiled. “I love you.”

“I love you, baby,” he mumbled and embraced her tight.

They'd been together for years, he loved her, he'd fucking do anything for her, but she'd never, not once, asked him to do something he wasn't comfortable with, and he hoped she felt the same way.

“Will you marry me?” he mumbled into her ear. “I don't have a ring, but I'll get you one. Any ring you want.”

“Yes, I'll marry you, if you promise to not tell anyone I asked first.”

“I promise. Let me know how I proposed, and I'll let everyone know,” he laughed. “I would've eventually asked.”

“I know, but it takes you a week to throw away old milk or five months to paint a wall. I didn't even want to imagine how long it would take you to buy a ring and ask me.”

“Ye of little faith.”

She pointed to the left side of his chest. “Would you tattoo my name here?”

“Can it say Trudy instead of Gertrude?” he asked with a grimace.

“My name is Trudy, because I'm your Trudy.” She leaned forward again and gave him a kiss. “I knew that I'd hit the jackpot when I found a guy who'd taken a pee on a chapel.”

“Was that it?”

“No, it was your laugh. I love your laugh.”

“I know, baby.” He cupped her cheeks. “Do you want a big, white wedding?”

“No. I want it to be just you and me. Just us two. It's for us, and no one else's business.” She kissed the palm of his hand. “You have May off?”

“Yeah. Wanna get hitched in May?”

“Yes,” she smiled.

“Okay,” he said and gave her another kiss. “Sore?”

“No.”

“Good. Because if
we just decided to get married I wanna have sex with you.”

She laughed and got out of the bath, holding out her hand. “You better fucking dazzle me with the ring.”

“Told you, I'd get you whatever ring you want.”

“Where's the fun in that?” she asked and pulled him, dripping all over the carpet, towards the bed. “If you're the right guy, you can get me the right ring.”

He bought a plain, thick wedding band for himself, and he got her a set. An engagement ring with engraved flowers and a plain wedding band to go with it. She loved it, but said she didn't want to wear the engagement ring until they were married. She didn't want anyone to know, but they both
went to get tattoos the very next day. He got 'Trudy' tattooed on the left side of his chest, and hers said 'Sisco,' because that was who they were to each other.