Chapter 4: Chapter 4: Jetlagged Dysphoria

Red eye flights were the worst… even having gone business class, Romeo had gotten barely any sleep. The discomfort on his chest hadn’t helped either. The whole time travelling he couldn’t wait to get home and get the awful double too small sports bras off.

Only, now… he wasn’t sure if it was the 20+ hours of travel, the way he’d only had about 3 hours sleep in the last 37 hours, the way it was now barely noon and he shouldn’t crash immediately, the fact he was home and everything was more real, or the honeymoon period of simple curiosity had worn off, but… he really didn’t want to be aware of having his chest right now.

All the confusing gender from the day before was gone, as he watched the towers of Mississauga rise around them in their descent into the airport. He felt the dysphoria Logan had been warning him about, and tried to hide away from the world by slipping deeper into his hoodie.

Not that that was very plausible. The laws of physics were sadly conspiring against his efforts.

Sighing in defeat, he filed out of the plane with the others, making his way through the sprawling Toronto airport and towards the baggage area. Not that he was stopping there. Jovita, JK, and Frankie would handle the baggage while Rachel and Logan dragged Romeo off to grab a taxi out to the studio. 

Romeo was fairly certain at least one paparazzi photographer lurking in the airport snapped their picture, but he was hopeful it would be too poor quality for anyone to figure anything out. Or they’d assume a body double before jumping to the ‘magic’ option. 

He had to keep reminding himself that, as big of a secret as he was sitting on, it was also an improbable secret. No one would guess it first. Or second. They’d probably need several tries before going for ‘magically turned halfway into a woman’.

As the cab ride stretched on, Romeo squirmed in his skin, wondering how he’d felt so comfortable earlier. He tried to take his mind off it by looking out at the city, seeing if there were any new cranes up from the last time he was in town. As well as how much the building that had been going up had changed in the past few months.

That was one thing he liked about coming back to Toronto after a decent time away. So much managed to change in so little time. He didn’t know much of anything about construction itself, but it was neat to see the city grow.

Finally, they arrived at the studio, tucked away on a side street not far from Kensington Market and Chinatown. Still outside the ever expanding sea of towers that was downtown, but the forest of condos grew closer with every visit.

He was sure Rachel’s father was watching the expansion with excitement himself. The man no doubt planned to flip the studio property and buy a bigger one out in the 905 somewhere the moment he got the chance. Maybe in Hammer City, Barrie, or Berlin if he felt like staying urban (or if there was a better deal to be made).

Not that Romeo judged him for it. Hank Collins liked money, yes, but he was the sort of person whose love language was showering people with gifts. The man clearly felt that the more money he had to spend on those he cared about the more love he could show. Hank also had an amazing memory for what people liked, keeping his gifts from feeling impersonal.

He’d honestly been the closest thing to a fatherly figure Romeo had had in years, which had the current victim of water induced sex-swapping nervous how Hank would react as they walked upstairs to the office section of the building. 

Romeo found Hank pacing about his office as they stepped in, the grey haired man lighting up with a smile as the trio walked in.

“Rachel! Romeo! Logan! There you are. I—are you all feeling alright?” he asked.

“Fine, daddy. Just tired. We did travel across three continents in two days,” Rachel said.

Romeo and Logan, being rather jetlagged, took a moment to remember that yes, Turkey was technically in Asia. At least most of it.

Hank nodded, before turning back to Romeo. “And how are you holding up with the whole… curse thing?”

“I think it’s finally hammering home,” Romeo replied. “Not thrilled with it.”

“Now that we’re back in Toronto I can probably find him more resources, though,” Logan explained.

“Mhm. I’ll try to see if I can get you a shrink. Discreetly, and only if you want it, obviously,” Hank offered.

“Thanks. Right now I think I need the strongest coffee you can find and to throw myself at music for a bit,” Romeo replied.

Rachel and Logan both agreed to the idea of coffee, Hank making a call to one of the gophers to make a coffee run. With the reminder to go to ‘somewhere decent’ instead of Ron Horance’s unless they wanted to be blacklisted from the entire Toronto entertainment industry.

Romeo made his way downstairs, heading to his dressing room. He was pretty sure he spent more time in this room than his apartment, so it was ‘coming home’ enough for him to relax. He half fell and half sat down on the couch, refusing to lie down lest he fell asleep and kept his sleep schedule ruined. After trying to let out a sigh, he realised he couldn’t unwind with his chest being constricted, and reluctantly pulled off the sports bras, flopping them on the couch beside him.

The amorphous shape of the hoodie hid his new chest fairly well, but he still knew what was there. There was also the mirror across from him, reflecting this new face at him. The face that had seemed so pretty just yesterday, but now felt so wrong. 

He sneered at it while waiting for his coffee, being annoyed at how cute it still looked despite the angry expression.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were actually a woman,” Hermaphroditus’ voice said, before the winged deity stepped into sight in the mirror. 

Romeo glared.

“I don’t do much of the whole ‘cursing mortals for their hubris’ thing, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d accidentally given you a blessing,” they said, wearing an annoying smirk.

Romeo didn’t really want to talk about it, but had to admit there were questions that needed asking. “So the spring doesn’t affect your gender? Just your body?”

The deity shrugged, wiggling their hand in a ‘so-so’ gesture. “Swimming in it changes your body. Regularly drinking it affects your mind. But the mind is so much harder to change than the body, so that can take months or years.”

Romeo shivered at the idea. Changing what your body was was one thing, but changing your spirit? Who you actually were and wanted to be? That was terrifying. 

They clearly noticed his reaction and gave a small nod.

“It’s part of why we—why I locked it away in that little pocket realm. It was never supposed to do that in the first place. Aphrodite and Hermes must have hit it with too much magic,” Hermaphroditus mumbled, actually looking guilty. 

He supposed that was a good sign. If he was dealing with the only Greek deity with a sense of guilt it meant there was hope he wouldn’t be stuck like this for too long. 

Possibly.

When he turned to ask something else, he found Hermaphroditus was gone.

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He definitely passed out for a few minutes, but the assistant bringing coffee woke him back up. He downed the black and bitter coffee, not really feeling more energized, but knowing he wasn’t going to sleep any time soon. Which was what he needed.

Another assistant then called him to a recording booth. Hank and JK were at the soundboard, and sent him in to go sing. They all wanted to know if careful editing and modulation could make his new voice sound like his old one. While it was obvious he couldn’t go on tour like this, being able to still release music would definitely buy them time before the secret had to leak.

He sat down in the booth, sliding headphones on and closing his eyes, letting the music be everything. The deep and rhythmic force of Jovita’s taiko drums started it off, a sign of what was coming. This was music to dance to, like everything his band did. After the moment of drums the rest of the instruments hit, Logan’s rapid violin pushing to the front. Romeo bounced his head along, waiting for his cue, the violin stepping back to give the lyrics their space.

Then he launched into singing. The lyrics weren’t deep, but bouncy. It was meant to be fun. 

“Baby, you’re my galaxy,

Baby, you set me free~ee.

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Baby, won’t you dance with me?”

He couldn’t hear his actual voice, with the way he wore the headphones, but he didn’t want to right now. He knew it would be wrong. Either he’d end up focusing too much on trying to match his normal pitch and lose the rest of the performance or he’d simply get thrown off by the wrongness. Instead they’d work on the audio with the mixers. 

Hopefully it wouldn’t sound like an autotuned mess.

After a few minutes the song was finished and he headed over to the mixing room with the others. Rachel had joined her father and JK, and they all seemed rather quiet as they thought things over.

“So, how does it sound?” he asked.

Hank was the first to respond. “Honestly, your new voice is just as incredible as your old one. Especially with the way you sing.”

“Mhm,” Rachel added. “It’s interesting hearing such a female voice singing in such a male way. The way you’re singing in your chest more… some of the different choices of emphasis you use…”

“I almost wish we could release your singing as is,” Hank muttered. 

Romeo found himself rather uncomfortable with the idea. All the compliments on the wrongness of his current state felt like backhanded insults. Even if he knew they weren’t meant to be.

“That’s not what we’re doing, though,” JK said, before fussing with some settings.

His focus provided Romeo with relief. Until he pressed play and Romeo had to listen to his new voice. 

At least it was only a few minutes of cringing at the too high and feminine sound. They pitched it down on the next play through, though it did indeed sound overworked on the first attempt. A bit more finagling made it sound more natural, but it still wasn’t right. 

After several passes, they had pushed his voice deeper than his normal one had ever been. Yet it still sounded feminine, somehow. Romeo stared at the soundboard, confused and frustrated.

“How goes it?” Logan asked as he walked in.

“Poorly,” Romeo muttered.

“We’ve made it sound fairly natural while dropping the pitch, but it… well, it sounds like a woman’s voice with the pitch dropped, not a man’s,” Rachel added.

“Can I hear it?” Logan asked.

Romeo shrugged and pressed play, Logan closing his eyes to listen. 

“It’s too smooth,” he said, as the song was half over. “It definitely reminds me of a pre-T trans guy, pushing his voice as deep as possible, but… Testosterone doesn’t just make a voice deeper. It makes it gravelier. There’s a roughness you’re missing here, and that makes a bigger difference than most people think.”

The others blinked, before jumping into a debate on how to add gravel. There were audio filters they could toss on. Or they could modify the mic. JK briefly tossed out making Romeo sing for a few hours to wear his throat out, which Romeo had to admit sounded plausible but unpleasant to do.

In the end they went with a filter, one they usually used to try to cover up the rare times they had to over-tune when they couldn’t get the right take. After some fudging the filter did its job, and it was clear they had the vocals way deeper than needed. Pitching them back up most of the way to where they’d started, the voice finally sounded like Romeo. 

He let out a sigh of relief. It wasn’t perfect, but for their first day of experimenting it was good progress. Unfortunately, he lacked the energy to go any further with it today, as did the rest of his bandmates. 

Realising they weren’t making any further progress, Hank excused himself to attend to other things. JK slipped out shortly after. 

Logan stayed a while, trying to make sure Romeo was doing alright. 

“I can tell the way you’re squirming, today’s a rough one, isn’t it?” he asked.

Romeo let out a sigh. “I hope a good night’s sleep will help.”

“It might. Some days will be better than others,” Logan replied. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Right now I think I just want greasy food and something to drink while trying to ignore it, if I’m being honest,” Romeo said.

He also worried that venting about some of the things he was feeling would end up leaving Logan feeling insulted. Something he really didn’t want to do.

“Mmm, well, don’t make too much of a habit of it, but… from time to time it can be nice to just forget,” Logan replied with a soft smile. 

Romeo returned the smile, and tried to ignore memories of Hermaphroditus calling him out for avoiding his feelings for those around him. A relationship with Logan would just risk drama that could hurt the whole band. Plus, he was sure Logan didn’t feel the same. 

Instead, Romeo said goodbye, watching Logan slip down to the garage. He always left his car at the studio when they went on tour.

Romeo called a taxi himself, heading to wait for it near the front entrance. Only to find Rachel waiting for him.

“When you’re miserable like this you get drunk, and when you get drunk you always do something dumb unless someone is keeping an eye on you,” she said, before he could protest. “So I’m going to keep an eye on you.”

“I was just planning to watch some movies,” Romeo protested. 

“I don’t doubt that’s what you plan now, but, even if you stay home, you could get into a twumblr fight with someone, giving me a headache as your public relations person. Or… knowing your need to show off, I wouldn’t be surprised if you posted a picture of yourself in a bra to brag about your new figure,” Rachel countered.

“Trust me, I’m not planning to do anything like that right now,” he grumbled. 

Not that it seemed to matter, she followed him into the cab as it pulled up. The short ride to the building with his condo was filled with a tense quiet, the cab driver’s few attempts to lighten the mood falling flat. Romeo was feeling rather sorry for the man until it was time to leave, and the driver said he hoped ‘you two ladies can work through it’. 

His tone was kind, but being read as a woman was not what Romeo wanted right now. He fumed quietly as he walked into the building, heading down to the basement level connected to the rest of Toronto’s underground tunnel network. There was a grocery store down there, and he wanted to grab something from the wine section before he headed up to his apartment. 

He wasn’t much of a drinker normally, not wanting the calories to get in the way of his maintaining a good set of abs. So he didn’t have anything in his kitchen. 

Rachel followed him, and ended up taking over the selection process. She knew wine better than him. Her uncle owned a vineyard in the Niagara Region after all. Romeo decided to roll with her choice, paying before heading up. He looked up the menu of one of his favourite Chinese places on his phone as they took the elevator up. Rachel insisted she wasn’t going to eat much, but he ordered one of the dinners for two all the same. 

Romeo was a bit too impatient to wait for the food before opening the wine and… well, the night turned into a bit of a blur after that.

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