Be Who You Are

📅 April 2018

【ᴄᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛ-sʟᴜʀ / ᴛʀᴀɴsᴘʜᴏʙɪᴀ, ᴀs ᴡᴇʟʟ ᴀs ғᴏʀ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ʜɪᴠ/ᴀɪᴅs ᴀɴᴅ ᴅɪsᴄᴜssɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴘʀᴏsᴛɪᴛᴜᴛɪᴏɴ】

Anarchy tried to hide his impatience as he waved goodbye to Mila and Xenith at the end of his shift, eager to head for home. His day had been fortunately uneventful but long enough to drag; in the recent weeks since Chey’s reappearance, work really seemed to have taken to snailing along. Anarchy had never thought of his job as a chore before, but he and Chey had seven years to catch up on, seven years to make up for, and bartending or bouncing was eating up time in a frustrating manner. He wasn’t more than a half-step out the door when that frustration melted away into the April air.

“Oh, good, I’m on time!” Chey beamed, them having nearly collided. “Thought I’d come keep you company walking home. K-O says I have a gift for conversation, so, might as well use it.”
Anarchy reflected Chey’s contagious smile back and pulled him into a swift hug.
“God, it’s good to fuckin’ see you,” Anarchy said, though he couldn’t help but raise an incredulous eyebrow as they stepped apart; “K said you had a gift for conversation, though? That sounds...unusually nice of him. Are you two getting along now, then?”
“Well, his exact wording may have actually been more like, ‘I’ve never met someone as incapable of shutting the fuck up as you,’ but...” Chey smilingly bit his lip and shrugged one shoulder; “I’m reading between the lines.”
Anarchy managed a laugh, though his worry about Kohao’s venomous tendencies strained it and cut it short.
“I’m glad you’re not letting it get to you,” he said, rather apologetically; “I really swear he just needs some adjustment time; he’s been through a lot. I’ll talk to him though, I—”
Chey cut him off with a smile and swift head-shake. 
“Don’t worry about it, ‘Key,” he said earnestly; “I can tell it’s just how he is for right now. I like him; we’ll work it out. Tell me how your day was!”

Relief and appreciation for Chey’s understanding overcame Anarchy’s disbelief; he clapped a grateful hand to Chey’s shoulder and they melted into easy conversation as they started walking home, occasionally bumping against one another when dodging passers-by; unwilling to step apart.
Anarchy’s eyes were fixed on Chey when one of his buoyant laughs abruptly dissolved into wide eyes and a startled, sour frown; he stopped in his tracks.
“Ah, shit,” he breathed, hunching his shoulders.

Anarchy turned his head to try and spot whatever he was looking at at the same moment that a man walking in their direction down the sidewalk moved to the side as if to pass them, then did a double-take and stopped short at the sight of Chey.
“Oh. Cheyenne,” he said stiffly to Chey, who pursed his lips but forced a polite nod.
“Hello, Eli,” he offered. The tension in the air was palpable.
The man—‘Eli’—turned toward Anarchy and gave him an impassive up-and-down.
“You the one putting him up these days?” Eli asked curtly, jerking his head in indication of Chey and letting his lip curl as he looked over him; “Hmph. Word of warning my man, the fuckin tranny’s got AIDS.”
Chey flinched at the slur, but his eyes flashed like police lights off ice as he tensed back up. His hand swept towards his pocket on apparent muscle memory.
“I never hid anything from you—” he started to retort, but Anarchy couldn’t settle for bystanding  and stepped forward, in front of Chey.
“Do you wanna have a problem, here, man?” Anarchy asked, lacing his tone with challenge and lifting his chin. “Because you’re acting like you wanna have a problem.”
Eli was a couple inches shorter than Anarchy, with half the muscle mass, and appeared appropriately intimidated; he took a step back and scowled in a direction away from eye contact.
“Naw, man.” 
“No? Good. Keep walking before I decide I wanna have one, then.”

Eli ducked his head and power-walked past them; Anarchy watched him slink down the street and vanish into the night. When he was finally out of sight, Anarchy let his shoulders relax and turned back to Chey, who still glared out into the distance.
“...Chey, you don’t carry your switch anymore, do you?” Anarchy asked. Chey’s fingers twitched at his side.
“...No, I lost it.”
“You still have the hand drift,” Anarchy said. He frowned at how cold Chey’s tone was, how unfamiliar. “...Who was that?”

Chey kept staring down the neon-lit street and chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, his tense shoulders failing to relax.
“...That was Eli,” he said finally. He paused again, his disconcerted expression deepening, then looked back to Anarchy. “...You know I slept with people for living space. He was the most recent one. It…all of it is a weird fucking situation to be in, with that. It’s different from turning tricks. You know how people, like, when they’re paying you for a night, it’s sort of a role for the night. And normally that role is still some disconnected, no-strings-attached fantasy...thing. It’s like they know you’re an object to them.” Chey looked back down the street. “...it’s different when there’s not much direct money involved.”
“Different how?” Anarchy prompted gently. Chey let out a small sigh and hugged his arms to himself. The sight was too vulnerable to stand; Anarchy reached an arm across Chey’s thin shoulders, glad to feel him relax slightly into the touch as they resumed their slow walk towards home.

“Some of these guys, I think, don’t quite put it together that it’s still a performance they’re paying for,” Chey explained; “The first guy was...fine, I guess. Treated me like a roommate during the day, kinda, just...had his stuff for me to do other times. Kicked me out when I didn’t wanna deal with that anymore. But Eli was real bitter about me calling it quits. He was like, ‘but I let you live here, but I buy your meals, but it’s been months…’ He was pissed. Hurt, I guess, but how could anyone even think about trying to build a functional relationship out of ‘I’m fucking you so that I don’t freeze to death in the gutter’? ‘I pretend not to have any opinions of my own so that I can eat’?” 

Chey frowned sharply at the ground; anger blazed in his light eyes again. “...‘tranny with AIDS’...HIV-positive demiguy, asshole,” he spat. “And it’s not like he was in the fucking dark—‘word of warning’ my ass—I was 100% transparent with him, I showed him my viral load results, it’s been undetectable for four years—”
“No, yeah, he was just trying to stir shit,” Anarchy quickly affirmed. The subjects felt too fragile, both of them, even in his hands, and he hesitated to address them directly. 
“...I’m not something dirty to be warned about,” Chey said. His defiance wavered with a voice crack and Anarchy squeezed his shoulders.
“I know, Chey. You’re not. You’re a fuckin’ awesome...‘demiguy,’ apparently?” Anarchy offered a tentative, curious smile, and tried to steer the conversation towards smoother waters. “I’ll be honest, I dunno what that means. I can learn, though: Tell me about it. It’s a...transgender thing?”
Chey waved a hand and glanced away. “Don’t worry about it, ‘Key, it’s like...barely any different from me being cis. Still he/him and everything, so.” 
Anarchy tilted his head, frowning at the self-dismissive tone.
“...It was important enough to say. Even if there’s basically no difference, I wanna make sure it’s right how I have it in my head. Because it’s you, ya know? It’s about you being you. I want to have you…right. I wanna think about you as who you are. And that’s a...demiguy. Not a cis guy. Even if everything else is the same, like, pronouns and all that, your identity matters to me.” 

Chey gave him a touched, almost incredulous look that quickly became a shy, hopeful smile. Even after having been apart so long, it still felt surreal to have Chey be shy around him, and Anarchy couldn’t wait for it to fall away.
“...D’you already know a lot about trans stuff, then?” Chey asked. “You talk like you’re, ya know. Educated about it.”
“Ah, not really, I just know a couple people,” Anarchy said casually. He didn’t want to ‘out’ Aetos, if that information wasn’t out in the open yet—and felt the same about Mila; he’d be better off just introducing her to Chey and letting him be...how he was. She’d like him. “So I guess I know, like, maybe more than your average straight gym bro? But not a lot.” 
Anarchy pursed his lips at the end of his sentence, suddenly second-guessing his wording; uncertain whether it sounded like he was lumping himself in with ‘straight gym bros’ or separating himself from them. He also wasn’t sure which way he wanted it to sound. Thankfully Chey was able to pull him back out of his head.
“Well… ‘Demiguy’— it’s a nonbinary identity,” Chey explained; “There are a lot of labels, and a few different ones fit, but I feel like a guy most of the time. Y’know how ‘demigod’ is like…part god? Demiguy...part guy. So that’s the one I use. It’s easier to explain, anyway.”
“Okay, gotcha.” Anarchy nodded, trying to take in what he was being told. “So...most of the time you feel like a dude. The...The rest of the time do you—you have to hit me or something if I'm being a jackass, I'm not trying to be—do you feel like a woman the rest of the time, then?” he asked. Chey laughed.
“I'm not going to hit you! And no, not...not really? It’s...not binary.” He smiled. “I have days or moments or...time, I guess, where I feel more feminine—or 100% in the middle; both, neither, all of it? It varies. I played around with the ‘genderfluid’ label too, but...even if it technically fits...I feel like a guy most often, and I definitely identify with he/him pronouns. It’s kind of...fun and nice when people get mistaken, because...then I feel like I look right? But it still feels like they’re mistaken. I never feel like a woman through and through. Sometimes I think it would be nice to have wider hips, or...breasts, even, but other days I know I’d feel dysphoric if I did.” 

Anarchy tried to wrap his head around it and couldn’t, not fully, but it still managed to make sense for Chey; like instead of having to change how Anarchy thought about him, it just ended up making more sense of how he thought about him—even if he couldn’t quite picture Chey with tits.
“...Okay, yeah,” Anarchy said, nodding again. “I’m not gonna say I get it-get it, but...it sounds right for you. Like...it just sounds like you’re you, and labels caught up.” He paused and smiled. “Thanks for telling me about it. It’s cool.”
Chey grinned up at him, his eyes seeming to shine. “‘It’s cool,’” he echoed. “...Do you know how incredible you are?”
Anarchy blinked at the praise and shrugged one shoulder, self-conscious but still smiling.
“You’re my best friend and I thought you were cool from the day I met you. I’m just consistent,” he said. Chey shook his head.
“One day you’ll get it,” he said softly. “One day you’ll see you’re not ‘just’ anyone.”