"Butterfly Hum"

Dante leaned over the counter, carefully dragging the glitter brush over his cheekbones. He heard the doorknob turn and glanced in the mirror, his mouth pulling down in a frown when he saw their manager.

“How much longer are you going to take, Dante?” Jerry asked, sounding exasperated.

“As long as I need to, Hitler,” Dante said. “This is our biggest gig. Everything has to be perfect.”

“Perfect includes the lead singer coming out on stage when he’s cued,” Jerry said. “Don’t talk to me about how big this gig is, I booked it.”

“Go bitch at Mae and Cyrus, and while you do make sure they aren’t fucking in the bus,” Dante said, picking up his eyeliner for some touch-ups.

Jerry spun around and stormed out, slamming the door, and Dante straightened up from the mirror. “Jesus, he doesn’t have to be such a dick.”

Rain looked up from where he was plucking out a line on his bass. “Don’t be a prima donna tonight, Dante. That’s the last thing we need.”

Dante turned and spread his arms, changing the subject. “How do I look?”

“Sparkly,” Rain answered with a grin. “Even more so than usual.”

“It’s our biggest show,” Dante pointed out. Butterfly Hum was a new band, just breaking out into the scene, and this was there first headliner. “What do you think the others will say?”

Rain rolled his eyes. “Maelynn will say you look great. Cyrus will say you look even more like a queen. Solo won’t say anything, and Jerry won’t care.”

Dante tossed his blonde, turquoise-streaked hair over his shoulder with a huff. “Bitches. They don’t pay attention to me. What if I couldn’t sing?”

“Then we’d sure as hell pay attention. Don’t pull anything, retard. How many minutes do we have before we go up?”

“Fifteen,” Dante answered promptly. “I know; I was just being theatrical.”

“You had better,” Rain said. “Or so help me I’ll hook up a playback and you can lip sync out there.”

“Yuck!” Dante said, making a face.

“Then don’t even think about sore throats. That’s the last thing we need, understand?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Maelynn burst through the door then, standing for one second perfectly outlined by the light from the hall. Then she bounced into the room and over to Dante. “Are you as excited as I am?”

“You know it, girl,” Dante said, but pulled away when she tried to hug him. “You’ll sparkle like nobody’s business if you hug me.”

“Like I don’t already?” Maelynn curtsied, the light flashing off the glittery fabric of her skirt, her fake butterfly wings and her shoes.

Cyrus leaned against the doorframe, his denim jacket and torn jeans a contrast to everyone else’s glam. Even Rain, who dressed conservatively compared to Dante and Maelynn, shimmered a little, and his black leather trench coat was his biggest stage touch. Solo looked in over Cyrus’s head, his own costume glittering.

“Dante,” Cyrus said slowly, “You look gayer than normal. And I wasn’t even sure that was possible.”

“Eat me, Cy. At least I have fashion sense.”

“You dress like David Bowie did in his Ziggy Stardust phase, only with more black. That wasn’t taste, that was tacky,” Cyrus countered. “Besides, someone has to look normal onstage.”

“God he’s a downer, huh?” Maelynn said. “Where’s Rain?”

“Here,” Rain said, fiddling with a tuning knob.

“Whoa, man!” Maelynn jumped back with a hand over her heart, theatrically. “You’re quiet! What’s up?”

“Yeah… you have been quiet. Are you okay?” Dante raked his hand through his hair, eyeing his best friend.

Rain nodded. “Yeah, I’m cool. Just not worked up.”

The short silence that greeted that statement was only broken when Rain looked up with a scowl. “What?”

“Not worked up? Rain, you’re the one who used to pass out thermoses of coffee to get the rest of us up to your level of hyperactivity. And you’re not worked up? This is the first show where you haven’t been bouncing off the walls.” Dante walked over to stand in front of the couch Rain was lounging on. “You okay, man? Did something happen with your family?”

“No, it’s not that,” Rain said, keeping his eyes fixed on his bass.

Dante paused. “Is it the band?” he asked. “Is it losing its spark?”

“No! No, it’s not the band! How – this is our biggest gig –”

“Exactly! And you’re all – quiet.”

Maelynn made eye contact with Solo over Cyrus’s head, who nodded and grabbed Cyrus by the back of the jacket, hauling him out of the room. Maelynn smiled brightly at the two of them. “I just remembered I’m not wearing my Butterfly Hum necklace, and that’s not good because this is our first headliner, so Solo and Cyrus are going to help me look for it okay bye!” she backed out of the greenroom and shut the door.

“Now you ran them off,” Rain muttered.

“I’m trying to figure out what’s up,” Dante said. “Is it something I did?”

“Not – really. Just… could you maybe not… hang all over me, like you usually do?” Rain still wouldn’t look at him.

Dante blinked. “You never had a problem with it before,” he said. “It’s our shtick, that I’m gay it’s –”

“I know!” Rain said. “But can’t you drape yourself on someone else? Cyrus?”

Dante laughed. “Cyrus? It’s a toss-up whether he’d kick me in the balls or whether Mae would drop her guitar and claw my eyes out.”

“Solo, then,” Rain said.

“Solo’s the drummer, Rain. I’d fuck him up.” Dante paused. “Rain, does it bother you that I’m gay? I only do it to you because you told me you were fine –”

“It doesn’t –”

“And why won’t you look at me when I’m talking to you? Christ! What’s your deal? Are you getting ashamed of me, is that it?”

Rain looked up, angry now. “You want to know what’s the matter?”

“Yeah! I want to know whether my best friend has been lying –”

And then Dante had to stop speaking, because Rain had risen from the couch and kissed him. Hard. And it wasn’t a little peck on the lips, either, this was a full blown makeout-worthy kiss, complete with tongue.

Dante’s hands shook, and he pressed a little closer, starting to return it.

Maelynn chose that moment to open the door. “Dante, Jerry says if you don’t – holy shit.”

Rain pulled away from Dante suddenly, his eyes flashing with something like fear, and then grabbed his bass and ran out in a swirl of trenchcoat and brown hair.

“Judas priest,” Dante said, running a hand through his hair.

“What the hell was that?” Maelynn asked. “Why didn’t you tell us you two were together?”

“It’s a recent thing,” Dante snapped. “Like, in the last five minutes.”

“…What are you going to do about the thing? The gimmick?”

Dante winced. “Don’t call it a gimmick, Mae, I think it just got serious.”

“You’re not going to take him up on it –”

“Why not?” Dante asked. “Tell Jerry I’ll be there as soon as I fix my lip gloss.”

The door to the greenroom burst open, and Maelynn and Dante bounced through, tangled in a wild hug and squealing at the top of their lungs. The rest of the band followed a little more sedately, although Cyrus and Rain had bounces in their steps, and Solo was grinning a mile wide.

“Fan-fucking-absolutely-tastic!” Dante said, flopping backward on the couch. Then he sprang up again, grabbing Maelynn’s hands. “You did it! You were perfect on every riff!”

“And you hit every note!” she said. She spun away from him and tackled Cyrus, placing a long kiss on his lips. “We’re going to go celebrate!” she declared.

“No you aren’t,” Jerry said from the doorway. Maelynn scowled and looked up, about to tell him exactly where he could shove it, but stopped when she saw the camera crew in the door. “Fuse wants an interview.”

“No way,” Dante said.

“Sit down on the couch. All of you. Just get comfortable while they set up, all right?” Jerry said, waving the camera crew and the reporter into the greenroom. Dante sat down on the couch with an almost audible thump. Solo flopped down next to him, Cyrus and Maelynn draped themselves on him from the other side, leaving the space next to Solo available for Rain.

Dante fidgeted. “Jerry, did you know they were going to be here?” he asked.

“Sure I did,” Jerry said. The camera crew plugged in and set up, the reporter primping her hair a little. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you were going to freak out.”

“You suck, Jerry,” Maelynn said. The camera crew contained their smiles and signaled that they were ready.

“Hello to all our viewers out there! We’re back with this week’s up-and-coming special on the brand new glam-punk band, Butterfly Hum. As you saw before the break, these guys have got a unique sound that’s been taking over America.” She turned around and snagged a chair next to the couch. “For all our less-familiar viewers out there, why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us what you do in the band?”

Dante smiled nervously. “I’m Dante, and I’m the lead singer.”

“I’m Maelynn, and I’m the guitarist and backup vocalist.”

“I’m Cyrus, keyboards.”

“I’m Rain, and I play the bass.”

“Solo, drums.”

“And I’m Jerry Harper, the band’s manager.”

The reporter scooted to the edge of the chair. “So how did Butterfly Hum get started?”

Dante glanced sideways at Rain to see if he would answer, but he seemed content to let Rain sit in the limelight. “We actually started out as a two-person band, just me and Rain. I did keyboards and he did guitar, and we used a drum machine. Our old stuff sounded really lame, probably because I suck at keyboards.” He laughed, and Rain grinned a little. “We knew Solo already, so we asked him to play drums, and then we got to know Maelynn through Solo. Cyrus and Maelynn were already dating back then, so we shuffled everyone’s instruments around.”

“And then Solo took over the sound,” Maelynn said with a laugh.

“So, Solo is the creative force behind the band?”

“He’s the brain, all right,” Dante said. “I can’t write my way out of a wet paper bag.”

“What’s the creative process like for you, Solo?” The reporter leaned across to him, only to get a blank look.

“I just write,” he said.

“You aren’t going to get much out of him,” Maelynn said with a grin. “We don’t even get much out of him. He’ll come to Rain and I with some lyrics and a melody, and then we’ll sit down and hammer out the rest. Cyrus’ll tell us if something we’ve plunked out is too hard for him-”

“-you mean, impossible for any human being to play,” Cyrus said, deadpan. “Solo here is like Zappa in that respect. He has an ear for what sounds good together, but it’s getting him to tone it down to something playable that’s hard.”

“So if Solo’s the brain, where do the rest of you fit in?”

“Dante and Rain are the heart and soul, respectively,” Jerry said immediately. “They started this thing, and they keep us all going.”

“That’d make me the hands, I guess,” Maelynn said. “Because aside from Solo, I’m the most involved in actually writing.”

“And Jerry’s the legs. He moves us,” Cyrus said.

“You’ve left yourself out,” the reporter pointed out. Cyrus got a slightly evil grin on his face, and Maelynn covered his mouth.

“What he would say can’t be repeated on national TV,” she said dryly. “He’s a pig.”

“I guess that brings us around to our next question,” the reporter said. “With the stage presence that Dante has, and the fact that your music tends to cater to the gay and lesbian crowd, your relationship with Cyrus tends to fade into the background. What’s it like being a straight couple in a gay-oriented band?”

Maelynn made a face. “It’s not really a gay-oriented band. The music is more about equality and acceptance than anything, and I think the fact that we’re pretty mixed up, sexuality wise, represents our image more than anything.”

“So Dante, you really are gay? It’s not just a show for the cameras?”

“Of course not,” Dante said indignantly. “That’s cheap. I’ve known I was gay since before Rain and I first started Butterfly Hum. I got a lot of flack for it in high school, more when I started dating Solo.”

Solo glared over at him, and the reporter smiled. “So that’s how you knew each other. What happened with that?”

Solo shrugged and cut Dante off before he could do any more damage. “Noisy. Kept talking while I was writing. Creative differences.”

Maelynn laughed. “That kind of sums up their entire relationship in a nutshell.”

“Rain,” the reporter said, and the tension level in the room spiked. “With all the contact between you and Dante on stage, the fans have been speculating about the real nature of your relationship. Are you together, or is that just showmanship?”

Rain looked frozen, like a deer in the headlights. “I-”

Jerry elbowed Dante in the back of the head, where it wouldn’t be seen by the camera’s and Dante blurted, “Not the whole time the band’s been together.” The rest of the members on the couch stared at him, but he couldn’t stop now that the camera was focused on him. “It’s kind of recent. Like, in the past week or so recent.”

Rain stopped glaring at him as soon as the camera skipped back over to him. “How does it effect your relationship that so much of it is out on stage, or has been on stage for so long?”

Rain hesitated a moment. “It gets a little frustrating, sometimes,” he said. “But Dante is all about the limelight, and I just have to live with it. It’s part of him.”

The tension left as abruptly as it had come.

“One final question,” the reporter said. “Has the band come up against any kind of serious discrimination because of its open sexuality? You mentioned that you were discriminated against in high school.”

“Really the only thing major we’ve run into is hate mail,” Dante said. “And while there’s a lot of that, it’s more fun to burn than it is to read. We’ve heard that in some places our CD is being banned, but that’s more ridiculous than anything else, and it hasn’t been affecting our sales too much.”

“Thanks for your time – I’ll let you all get changed out of your stage clothes now.” The reporter turned back to the camera. “You heard it here first – Butterfly Hum, the newest sensation to hit America. Their self-titled album is in stores, and tickets for their tour are on sale now. This is Fuse saying see-you from New York.”

The cameras turned off and the reporter flipped her hair again. As soon as they had come in, the whole crew left.

Rain got up abruptly from the couch and started to leave the room, only to be caught by an earnest-looking Dante before he managed two steps. “Wait,” Dante said.

“‘It’s a recent thing?’ Couldn’t you have said something else?”

“What else was I supposed to say?” Dante asked. He was dimly aware of the rest of the band retreating quickly from the greenroom. “You weren’t going to say anything!”

“You could have just said we weren’t together,” Rain said, pulling away.

“I didn’t want to give you the wrong idea!”

“The wrong idea about what? Our non-existent relationship?”

“Maybe I don’t want it to be non-existent!” Dante grabbed Rain by the shoulders again. “You could have just told me, you know.”

“Dante, everyone noticed. Mae was dropping hints left and right.”

“Mae is like, the queen of gaydar, man. Her gaydar has country-wide range.”

“Solo noticed.”

“Solo’s bi. They have instincts about that kind of thing.”

“Dante. Cyrus noticed. So did Jerry.” Rain pulled away again and sat down on the couch.

Dante paused. “Okay, so maybe I was a little dense. But man, you’re my best friend. You really could have told me something that important. I mean, you knew I was gay.”

“I know,” Rain said. “I was afraid you’d just start hitting on me because I was here and available, and that’s not-” he stopped.

Dante walked over to him and knelt in front of him. “That’s not what you wanted. What do you want?”

“I-” Rain looked down at Dante, and reached out to brush some of the hair away from his face.

“Oh,” Dante said quietly. “Oh. You’ve got it bad, man.”

Rain’s cheeks turned red and he started to look away, but Dante caught the front of his jacket and dragged him into another kiss.

This one was calmer than the first, less desperate and more exploratory. Rain slid off the couch into Dante’s arms, pressing himself closer with a small sound that was almost needy.

“Are you two killing – oh.” Maelynn turned around and left as abruptly as she had burst in. “Sorry! Continue!”

Rain looked up at the door. “Jesus,” he said, and started to stand up.

Dante pulled him back down. “Rain, would you be my boyfriend?” Rain jerked like he was going to run away again, but Dante kissed him before he could. “Please?” he added.

“You aren’t – I don’t want this just because I’m gay,” Rain said.

“You’re stupid, you know?” Dante said. “You’re my best friend. You have been for as long as I can remember – and I’m not going to lie, I’ve had a crush on you for almost as long. But I could swear up and down that you were straight, so I didn’t do anything.”

“You’re stupid. If you had just made a move-”

“I didn’t want to run you off,” Dante mumbled. Rain kissed him this time, lingering, before standing. He pulled Dante down on the couch with him.

“Go to sleep. We’ve both had a long day.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I – wait, is that ‘yes?’” Dante looked up from where his head was pillowed on Rain’s chest.

“Yes it’s a yes, stupid,” Rain said affectionately. “Go to sleep.”

The camera flash woke them several hours later. “Maelynn!”