#transsidesweek202

On Friday nights he was always the last to leave his work. He'd take the 11 p.m bus going south towards the heart of the city, far away from his dingy apartment and the dull life of office work to a sea of vibrant colors, of bars and strip clubs and gaiety lining the streets.

And he always found himself at 4140 Rosalie Way, the busiest bar on the block.

Its name was Dionysus Indulgence, and every Friday and Saturday night, posters filled the window with the same face.

They read: "Weekend Show Headliner! Vixen Venus for a 2 A.M Rendezvous!!"

Vixen wasn't actually part of the name, it was just Venus, but for some reason adding that to the front sold more tickets. At this point it might as well be his name.

Roman would scurry into the backrooms, already halfway undressed from the waist up and quick to pick his outfit for the night, organize his set list of songs, do his makeup (his eyebrows were always a bitch and a half to get flat) and find someone to make sure his wig was secure in the back.

Drag was an escape from the real world. Here he wasn't an overworked law intern in dull black or grey suits, he was Venus, Queen of the planet of love, an Empress who took no shit from no man (unless he had change to spare.)

Sometimes in the brief pauses between running, Roman wonders if it were possible to step away from manhood altogether. But there was never enough time to let the thought properly brew.

Besides, he had two hours to get his act together and god knows makeup alone would take up nearly two-thirds of it.

So he never indulged in the thought of transition long, or ever considered it really. He focused on taking in every moment on the stage, surviving on the thrill of cheers and applause from an adoring crowd. Life couldn't get much better than this.

It was yet another Friday night, and Roman tapped his foot impatiently staring at the clock. There was still a hour until he could escape, and time seemed to drag on forever.

His cell phone buzzed, and with a glance at the caller I.D. answered it. "Jay you know I'm at work, can it wait?" he cut in, turning his attention back to the spreadsheet on his desktop monitor.

"Well you've skipped out on my calls all week, I think I can bother you at work for five minutes," a cool voice crackled over the line.

Roman groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Sorry, sorry, this week's just been a lot. Work and all that," he said.

"Which is exactly why I'm calling. You need a break, have some fun," the voice purred. "Listen, I finally got tickets to that drag show downtown, Vixen Venus? You were a huge drama nerd in high school so I figured you'd like drag—"

"Lies and you know it—"

"Whatever. It was a pretty penny to get these tickets for tonight's show, and you're coming with me."

Roman sighed, it wasn't the first time that he'd been caught between reality and fantasy. "Sorry, to burst your bubble Lying McPhee, but I can't tonight. I've got to stay late and get a report turned in, it's going to be an all-nighter situation."

"Oh my god, you are married to that job and it's killing me. Ro I haven't seen you in almost a month, you've bail on brunch with me every Sunday so far, you don't come to game night with the rest of us anymore, you don't go out, you don't take breaks, it's like you're a completely different person after getting this stupid job." Roman pulled the phone away from his ear, letting Janus rant to the air instead of him.

"You need to slow down. You'll burn out at this rate." If it wasn't for how sharp his tone sounded, Roman would almost think Janus really cared.

"Listen," Roman started, but now it was his turn to be cut off.

"No, you listen to me. I am coming to pick you up from your stupid job and you and I are going to go have a good time at this club, you hear me? And I know you get off at midnight so don't even try to flake out on me."

Roman smiled to himself. It seems being a workaholic had its perks, that being no one knew his real hours. Putting on the mopiest tone he could muster, "God, fine, alright, can you at least let me finish what I'm working on then? Because if you're just going to yak at me until you get here then I really will have to stay late."

"Deal. Midnight, outside, and don't you dare try running away."

"Midnight. I promise."

When midnight rolled around, Janus was unsurprised to see Roman no where to be found, but was still a little annoyed. Knocking his head against the steering wheel in frustration, Janus made a beeline for Roman's apartment, banging on the door (and when that didn't work, picking the lock) only to find the place empty.

"Okay, totally not suspicious, he has literally no other hobbies so there's nowhere else he could be," Janus muttered aloud, checking his cell for messages.

Roman's phone buzzed half a city away, where he sat in front of a vanity baking his face. He glanced at it, cringing before sending a hasty text to avoid a phone call.

'sorry!!! forgot today was shopping day and i had some dry cleaning to pick up. another time i promise :('

Janus groaned, stomping out of the apartment and texted another contact saved as V.

'ro bailed on me you wanna go see venus @ the d.i? i got tickets'

'sure lol i'm already at the strip. meet u there in 30 tho i've gotta talk with my bassist'

He sighed, pocketing his phone and heading back to his car. If Roman wouldn't come have fun, that wasn't stopping Janus, he'd make his own goddamn fun.

He texted Vera the spare ticket details before entering the club himself a short drive later, quick to have a drink in hand and relax a bit before the show. It was only 1 a.m., so there was an entire hour to kill before the performance.

Janus was never the type to go clubbing, but he made exceptions for his friends.

Eventually though there came the search for the bathroom, something that generally never went well in a packed club full of drunken strangers. Throwing back the final sips of his drink, Janus made the push to weasel his was through the crowd, finding himself at some sort of stairwell leading to a lower level with more doors.

Not one for asking directions (he knew exactly where he was going, thank you very much,) Janus nosed around downstairs, entirely amused at the flurry of performs in various states of undress, from a younger looking queen yanking on stilettos teetering down the hall, to someone yanking on their wig cap in men's trousers and a glittery sequin top.

With all the confidence and grace of someone lightly tipsy with a resting bitch face, Janus sauntered around still in search of a bathroom, before his ears picked up an annoying familiar voice.

Creeping around a corner, he stood to the side of an unmarked dressing room, peering in through the gap of the unlocked door. It was hard to see, but by the looks of it there was only one person inside, hurriedly shuffling through what he assumed were eye shadow pallets from what Janus could tell. All the while the person muttered loudly to themself, an endless stream-of-conscious sort of ramble.

"….and I've got to get that dumb report turned in by Monday, but I'll be damned if I post-pone tomorrow night I need that show. I should've brought my laptop here, ugh, maybe I can get someone to go to my apartment for me…?"

"Is that so?" In one broad swing of the arm, Janus shoved the door open, blinking in visible surprise at the state Roman was in.

Dressed in a full body black mesh suit from his torso to his hips, red glitter decorated his tights to hide the hip inserts, coupled with thigh-high shiny leather boots with a terrifying heel. His biceps were doused in glitter too, truly there was no part of himself that wasn't glimmering in some sort of fashion. A pair of boob inserts lay innocent on the vanity table, the rest messily covered in well-used make up products with a wig rack propped up haphazardly to the left of it. In his right hand was indeed an eye shadow pallet like Janus had suspected, coupled with a brush in his left held in a white-knuckle grip.

The two stared at each other, Janus' jaw slack in surprise (sure, he'd heard Roman talking, but he didn't really think he'd be in here,) and Roman tight-lipped, a flushed, embarrassed heat rising up to his face.

"Of all the side jobs to have," Janus said, after a painfully long pause, "this is somehow the one that suits you the most that I'd never thought you'd have."

Roman, still pink in the cheeks, slowly lowered the pallet, now fiddling with the brush handle in his left hand. "I— I, you weren't supposed to know." His eyes dragged down to the other's feet, darting across the floorboards.

To Janus, this was alarming behavior. Roman? Embarrassed by something queer and fun? That did not track at all. "Huh? Why? Am I supposed to be bothered that you're living a full and exciting life, not just slaving away at a desk 24/7?"

Still the other did not look up at him, now rolling the brush between his hands. "I don't know, I didn't think you would've… believed me. Like, of all people, I'm the one who couldn't do this. Or, I guess, shouldn't."

Now it was Janus' turn to be embarrassed, taking a spot on the cluttered loveseat decorated with spare stockings. "Of course you could do something like this. You're Roman Astor, you once did pull-ups from the theater lighting rig for twenty dollars and only got suspended for a week. You dressed up in a tutu and plastic fairy wings to run around the school for every SGA donation drive. Hell, you passed the football team try outs and turned down your leading position because practice would cut into the fall theater production."

The stories coaxed a small smile from Roman, and he gradually stopped twirling the brush.

"You've done arguably crazier things for years, why would I think you couldn't be a star?"

Roman turned to look at the wig rack, his wide assortment from years of collecting. "Because even for me, this is out there. And don't even—" he cut Janus off before another monologue could start, "you said your piece so I'm saying mine."

With a nervous swallow, "you can't say that doing some silly stunts when I was sixteen compared to dressing up like a woman and doing aerial inverts on a stripper pole covered in body glitter at 25 are the same thing. I could barely take being gay when I was outed, now this? It's… I just wanted to avoid that conversation," he mumbled.

"Besides," he ranted on, "I have a real job now with serious people that I can't risk losing because of some weird fantasy I have of, I don't know, gender swapping or whatever. It's dumb, and it's not going to last, so I just wanted to make the most of the time I had left before I really am trapped at that nightmare of a worksite. Is that so much to ask?"

From where he sat, Janus felt like he was thirteen again, sitting across his once-enemy in the way only children could, learning for the first time that being queer was something they shared, and something they feared. Something to be ashamed of.

But they weren't thirteen anymore. Maybe the attacks didn't stop, or the self-loathing get much better, but they had survived. And from the few things he'd heard of Roman's performances, and the way he saw him now, Janus knew damn well that this was more than just a hobby. This was Roman's way of living past survival.

He wasn't about to let the other give up on that.

"Six weeks," Janus said.

Roman glanced up at him, confusion tugging him out of his mental spiral. "Huh?"

"It's taken me six weeks to get tickets to this show. That's a testament to how popular you are, and how damn badly I wanted to see you perform, without even knowing it was you. And in that time, I've come to see a couple other people perform, and it seems to me like this is their full-time job, it's what drives them the most at the end of the day."

Janus reached for Roman's hands, clasping them in his own. "You don't have to know who you are or what you want right now. You don't have to ever, really. But this makes you happy, so who cares if you're in a wig or not? You'd look damn good in one," he tacked on, and Roman stifled a small laugh.

"You can be Roman, or Venus, or someone new entirely if you want. So long as it brings you joy, the rest of the world can suck it."

"Then…" Roman bit at his lip, in serious mental discussion with himself. "I want to be Rosalie. Not all the time, just right now. But, in a neutral way? I don't know how any of this works—"

"Girl, neither do I," Janus laughed. "But it's a pleasure to meet you Rose."

Rosalie beamed, their sunny disposition peering through their formerly gloomy, panicked mood. "Jay, you're incredible. I need you to leave."

Janus balked. He was almost pissed. "I just hyped you up so fucking good, and you're booting me? You bitch."

Rosalie laughed, "Jay I have twenty minutes to finish getting dressed and the wig takes ten of those twenty. Yes, I am kicking you the hell out. How'd you even get downstairs anyways, patrons aren't supposed to be down here?"

"Anything's possible with a mean glare and a bitchin' strut," Janus sighed, letting go of Rosalie's hands, popping them on his hips. "You'd better get ready then, I didn't buy front row tickets for nothing."

Janus turned on his heel to leave, stopping at the doorway. "R? I did invite Vera since you bailed, do you want me to—?"

"Let her guess, if she figures it out then you two can come next week for free," they laughed, already back to fixing their make up.

"God, you're more of a money hound than I am," Janus muttered, a matching grin on his face.