Going Viral at Tomorrowland - Chapter 7
by Zmeydros
(edited by Tiliquain and Journeymanic)

"Hell no, I'm not going to take over your set! You worked your ass off to get here and I'd be a bad friend if I let you give up now." Athena's sharp face was more stern than I'd ever seen.

I put my hands in front of me helplessly. "But it's too much pressure when I'm sick and dealing with all these changes."

She put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. "You won't be alone, I'll be there in case you need to run off to the bathroom or rest backstage."

"I don't want to be on stage. I don't want everyone to see me or my--" I looked down at the obvious masculine topography of the crotch of my jeans. "And then have it trend on social media so people that don't even know what my music sounds like are just thinking I'm some famous chick who lacks self control and slutted herself out to people who had the tail virus."

"If that happens, I'll tell them that I accidentally infected you."

"They're going to ask how and then you'll be in big trouble," I said. "I want the option that doesn't tear one of us down. If I report I'm too sick to perform and you take over my set, you'll get good media attention and I'll get sympathy."

"You're missing the point, hon." Athena spread her hands indicating the tent around us. "You're at Tomorrowland, everyone here just wants to hear your music. They don't care whether you have a brand new pecker or not. They love something you created and want to see you perform it live. If you do an awesome set, the music news networks will focus on how awesome it was and not your dick. Sure, you might get interviewed about having the Tail Virus, but you'll be able to control that narrative. All you need is a good publicist. There are ways to steer interviews and so you can make sure you talk about what you want to talk about."

"What about the tabloids, CBS, ABC, other news networks that broadcast stuff to the general public about celebrities? They have a bigger reach, they're what random people in the supermarket listen to. They're the people I see in airports." I wrung my hands, feeling sick to my stomach. "What if they look at me and shake their heads because they heard about me being out of control and not family friendly?"

"You can't control that. You can't control what the world will remember you for. The truth is that it doesn't matter what idiot news items the general public hears. Don't focus on the general public. Focus on your fans, the people who came to Tomorrowland to see you perform." She hugged me.

Now I felt like I couldn't perform and I couldn't not perform.

I buried my face in her shoulder and just started crying, emotional to the point that my mind was on fire. The fact that I shouldn't be so upset about what the general public thought frustrated me. My inability to control myself angered me. All my life, I'd thought my problem was that no one knew who I was. But now I was famous and the problem was that too many people knew who I was. I couldn't help thinking about my comparison between the number of people in the Women's March and the number of people who had listened to my most popular song. People filling the streets like flood water...The weight of all their thoughts was crushing me.

"Hey, hey, now. You're going to make me cry." Athena sniffled.

It felt like the tears were an entity trying to get out of my body. They just kept coming, soaking Athena's shoulder. She was wetting the top of my head with some of her own. "You've been through a lot." She patted my back and swayed softly. "Cry all you need."

I did, I cried for another few minutes until the sense of drowning in public opinion passed. Then I let go of her and stood back while trying to wipe away my tears. "Sorry."

"Apologize to your mascara, not me." She chuckled. Walking over to the shelf to grab another towel, she said, "You look like you got caught in a hurricane."

She'd described the result of my bawling perfectly. My reflection in the full-length mirror near the door looked like someone whose head had been dunked in water. I laughed when I saw Athena's face. She looked like a clown with matching black streaks running from her eyes to her chin.

Her attention jumped to the mirror so she could see what I was laughing at. "Hello, goth me, nice to see you again." She grabbed another towel and started wiping the streaks off. "Goodbye goth me."

"You were a goth?" I asked as I wiped my ruined makeup off.

"For like one year until I got sick of smelling like cigarette smoke." She had her face mostly clean, but both of us were going to need to use makeup remover and start over.

"Neon Kelp is allergic to cigarette smoke. She can get sinus infections from being around it too long," I said.

"She'd hate the small pubs around here. The law in Belgium is that people can smoke inside as long as the bar doesn't serve much in the way of food." She grabbed her backpack and sat at the makeup counter. Then she took out a small bottle of makeup remover and obliterated the mess on her face.

I sat next to her and started doing the same. "Yeah, she'll be avoiding those when she comes, hopefully next year."

"Another reason to do your set. If you do a good job, they'll likely ask you back." Athena got up and wet a paper towel using the water cooler next to the table and chairs. Then she washed off the remnants of the makeup remover.

As I used her makeup remover, I said, "I'm feeling a bit less overwhelmed by the idea of performing, but I don't want to analyze that for a bit."

"Understandable," Athena said.

We put on the bare minimum of makeup just in case people snapped photos of us. Then we made our way out of Tomorrowland while I dealt with the weird sensation of having balls. Mine weren't any larger than the average guy's, but they still bounced along with every motion I made and sat awkwardly between my legs. This pair of women's jeans had a bit of extra room in the crotch, but it still felt claustrophobic to have them in there with the short wrinkly tube that was my flaccid horse dick. The part I liked least is that my clit was big enough that it rubbed lightly against the back of my sac. Had I not gotten off, I might have gotten wet from it.

After we got back to my room, we relaxed and watched the Dragon Prince because Athena wanted to be able to gush about how much she liked Rayla, the assassin elf character. If Athena had been in a fantasy setting, I could imagine her being a lot like Rayla, complete with her penchant for putting her foot in her mouth.

The next day, we didn't get together. I spent the entire day finishing  a second track I'd been hoping to debut at Tomorrowland. It was a bit flat, so I ended up putting a surprise drop in it and adding some synthesized lo-fi cellos. It was now pretty epic and would make people who liked both dubstep and synthwave happy. Taking that whole day to just do my own thing left me feeling recharged when I woke up the next day, Thursday.

Athena and I got together lunch and, after we had some very satisfying sex, I showed her the ins and outs of all my music equipment. Then she showed me how to use her Ableton Push, which was the Ferrari of interfaces for music production and live performances. It was covered with square buttons and knobs and had two little, but very informative, displays. My Novation Launchpad had a lot less functionality, but cost one fifth the price.

Once I knew how to use a piece of equipment, I was reluctant to upgrade, but after seeing her play around with the Push, I wanted one. For live performances, it was utterly fantastic. Sounds could be edited and intricately manipulated for use in a performance. I was getting the idea that Athena had a lot of equipment and that I'd be like a kid in a candy store when I saw her studio in Vegas. We’d planned for me to visit in late fall right before all the Thanksgiving craziness.

Friday was the first day of the second Tomorrowland weekend and we spent a couple hours dancing and getting noticed by fans. It was basically the same as what we’d done on Sunday, except for the fact that I was deeply concerned that my dick would be discovered. This came to a head when we were off to the side of the stage which was made to look like a giant polygonal conch shell. I was half hard because I'd been watching Athena shake her ass at me to some very erotic music. 

While I was thinking about how much I wanted to stick my prick in her, a muscular herm shark mosaic walked up to us with an obvious bulge in her tight shorts and looked directly at my crotch.

My hands immediately covered my tent as I said, "Hi!"

"Always nice to see other mosaics like me." She gave a toothy grin. The way she was looking us over told me she knew who we were and she wanted to have some groupie sex with us. There was this very specific type of confidence people had when they were trying to pick someone up. The music had died down as the DJ finished his set. Lulls between sets were always breeding grounds for conversation.

"L-like you?" I blushed in embarrassment wondering what she actually meant.

"Yeah." She put her hands on her hips and looked at each of us. "We herms gotta stick together."

I didn't realize I was swaying on shaky legs until Athena grabbed my upper arm to steady me.

Athena said, "You and me, yes. But not GingerKrave, here."

The shark's eyes widened as if she heard more in Athena's statement than I had. "Oh, she's not out?"

Athena gave me a look as if I could tell her how to respond to that. Instead of giving her direction, I turned white as a sheet.

Motioning for the shark to follow, Athena led us away from the crowd that was starting to dance to the next DJ. Once we were far enough away that we only heard the bass, Athena said, "No, she's not out. She doesn't want to have the news break right in the middle of Tomorrowland because this is her first Tomorrowland and she wants her music to be the main news item, not her recent Tail Virus infection."

The shark looked confused. The simple hookup with famous DJs she wanted was now a complex social situation. "Why would coming out as a herm be a bad news item? Is she ashamed of being one?"

That hit my buttons and I glared at her. "No! I just don't want to be outed yet. I'm out on my own in Europe for the first time in my life and playing the biggest festival of my life. I don't want to add more stress!" My voice had a pleading tone to it.

"On your own? Wait, you two aren't a couple?" The shark got out her phone and opened Tumblr and then searched for "Katethena" tilting the screen so we could see. Images of Athena and I from last Sunday and some from today showed up. "I was shipping you two so hard!"

Athena burst out laughing. "We just met last week! She hadn't even heard my music before."

The shark said, "Well, you two seem really happy together, so you might want to put more thought into the couple thing." She pulled up a set of three pictures someone had tweeted. "I mean, have you not seen this?"

The text of the tweet said, "@GingerKrave and @AthenaPolar are #Tomorrowland's cutest couple!" The first image was of me standing on my tiptoes to steal ice cream from Athena's ice cream cone while she held it just out of my reach. The second image was of Athena laughing so hard her eyes were closed with her arm no longer fully extended. The third image was of me licking Athena's ice cream while she watched with an amused smile, still making me stand on my tiptoes. 

In all the images, Athena's bulge was obvious. The shark started showing us all the comments. Some of the comments were lewd or jokes, but most of the comments about how cute we were. The lewd comments drew far more attention from me than they should have, however. One said I was a size queen when it came to bass drops and ducks. 

I laughed while feeling a bit vulnerable. Clearly, autocorrect had gotten in the way of that poster's actual meaning. After that point, almost every other comment was either a parody of the "bass drops and ducks" comment or telling that person their comment was inappropriate.

"Wow! This is a lot of retweets and comments!" Athena said.

"I'm surprised you two hadn't seen it yet," the shark said.

"We've been busy preparing for Kate's show." Athena shrugged.

The shark chuckled. "And hanging out together."

"Yeah...hey!" Athena said.

"I knew it!" The shark squeed, seeing Athena's slip up as confirmation.

I was still processing the implications of Athena and I being a couple. We’d gone at it at least ten times and spent nearly every day since we met together. We didn't seem to fight, we could speak our minds to each other, and we shared a ton of interests. "Holy shit!" I said out loud.

Both of them looked at me.

I put my hand over my mouth. "Nevermind, it's nothing."

Athena went back to the most important topic. "Hey, can you help us out by keeping Kate's secret until a month or so after Tomorrowland?"

"I meant what I said about herms needing to stick together. Of course I will, but you two better get her a pair of compression shorts to put on under her jeans or something. Someone else might not be as nice as me," she said.

"Compression shorts?" I asked.

"Athletes use them to improve blood flow. No idea if they work for that, but trans women use them to hide their bulges," she replied.

"Thanks for the tip!" I said.

"No problem!" She spread her arms. "Hug?"

She'd been so awesome that I hugged her without any misgivings. Her hug was nice and firm. And she smelled really good, like sun-baked sand. After she let me go, Athena hugged her and said, "Thanks so much!"

"Don't mention it, now get out of here before someone else notices." She shooed us with her hands.

"Feel free to spread the rumor about us being a couple!" I said pulling my backpack off and holding it in front of me to hide my groin. "We don't mind!" I grabbed Athena's arm and started walking toward the exit with her.

"Not a rumor!" the shark called after us.

As we walked out of Tomorrowland, Athena said, "Brilliant idea to have her spread the rumor about us being a couple! Celebrity romances get way more attention than people coming down with the Tail Virus."

"I thought you might be annoyed since news about us being a couple kinda leads to me borrowing your fame," I said.

"Ha! I think both of us will get more mentions. It's a win win, plus, I'm excited that you're not afraid of people thinking we're a couple."

"Why would I? Hiding it would be very hard at this point, and it's not inaccurate."

She spun around and looked me in the eye. "Are we really a couple?"

I kissed her on the lips, holding my backpack firmly in front of me. "Yes! Though, I should talk to Neon Kelp before we go too far with that."

"Of course!" She beamed. "I know I'm in the clear because I talked to my poly family this morning and they're fine with me exploring things with you. Wasn't sure if we'd end up a couple this morning, but twitter has spoken." She laughed.

I chuckled. "Yep, we don't want to upset team 'Katethena.'"


END OF CHAPTER 7

I’d like to acknowledge my $20 patrons, Navajo Demar and Warialinth for helping make all this possible. Thank you! Thanks to all my other patrons as well. Every one of you rocks!