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Cursed Popstar - 12
🕑 Added 2023-03-28 15:52:42 +0000 UTCChapter 12: 1÷2
Sitting in Circe’s kitchen, Rosalind did her best to copy the sigil just as the immortal witch had written it. It took a few attempts before she got it, but she did, in the end. Partially because it wasn’t all that complex of a symbol. Two circles touching one another with a few bits sticking out of them. The trick was mostly about getting the circles round enough and the proportions right. Even then there was a bit of give.
Teddie watched, having stayed quiet while Rosalind was focused, but now speaking up. “I still… I still can’t believe that you’re actually Romeo Valenti. Like, the Romeo Valenti.”
All Rosalind could think to do as a reply was force a grin that was clearly unnatural. What was she supposed to say at this point? She hoped she didn’t really need to reply any further, and that, at this stage, it was just part of the solidly built woman’s processing, uh, process.
Maybe?
“Well, I think you’re good to go, now. Unless Atlantiades here has something else to request of me?” Circe said.
“Oh, no. I am satisfied, and Salmakis has no interest in staying,” they said.
Rosalind gave a nod, standing and picking up the small mason jar of olive-tree ash-tar. She hoped it was going to be good for her skin, since she was sure she’d be using it fairly often. For her part, Teddie still seemed a bit out of it, but followed along quietly as they left the building.
The smell of fresh(er) air as they stepped out into the hallway was sweet relief to Rosalind’s nose and lungs. Heading down the stairs, she was even more glad to get the fresh air out of the outside… only to become confused by the fact that there was a car parked on the road with both Rachel and Logan waiting there.
“Uh… hey guys. W—what brings you here?” she asked.
“We were worried about what th—that person has wings,” Rachel said, growing distracted by Hermaphroditus as they left the apartment building.
“Oh! Right! This’d be your first time seeing them,” Rosalind said, stepping out of the way. “Very fancy and divine looking, aren’t they?”
“Uh—uh… yeah,” Logan replied, also staring.
“They’re pretty friendly, though. For a Greek deity and all that,” Teddie said. Before whispering to herself, “Oh gosh, that’s Logan Novak.”
“It really says something about my family that such a statement feels like damning with faint praise,” they muttered at roughly the same time as Teddie’s comment about Logan.
Rachel and Logan both nodded slowly, watching Hermaphroditus for a few more moments before turning to Rosalind.
“Ei—either way. Rom—Rosalind… did you… did it not… work?” Logan asked, trying to sound compassionate despite also being clearly confused.
“Did—Oh, the cure. It worked. It’s just… temporary?” she replied. “I have to write a magical symbol on my arm, but the specific thing I have to write it with isn’t waterproof.”
“So… we can get—well… they know, right?” Rachel asked, indicating to Teddie.
“That she’s the Romeo Valenti?” Teddie asked. “Yes.”
Rachel gave a quick nod. “So… you can be Romeo when we need you too?”
“Unless it’s raining,” Rosalind replied with a shrug and a smirk.
“And… we still get to have Rosalind?” Rachel added.
“I’m standing here as a woman, aren’t I?”
That led to a small nod from Rachel. Followed by a sparkle in her eyes that left Rosalind almost certain she could see dollar signs flash.
“Good. Because Rosalind Valenti has a number of obligations she’s signed up for. I called in favours to get you promo’ed again, and I need to rebuild those favour reserves now that people are asking to work with you. Rosalind you,” Rachel explained, marching over and grabbing Rosalind by the wrist. “And there’s also commitments that Romeo Valenti needs to fill, that were in place before you got cursed.”
Rosalind found herself nudged into the car then, in the seat behind the driver. As she sat down and buckled up, Logan opened the other passenger door for Hermaphroditus and Teddie to both get in. Surprisingly, the Erote’s wings didn’t prove impossibly bulky to fit in the back seat of the car, seeming to fold in ways that didn’t seem possible.
Also, the back seat area may have gotten larger? Rosalind wasn’t sure, but that still seemed like it had to be the case to fit those wings, however they folded.
“Wait… how did you guys find us anyhow?” she asked as Rachel and Logan got in the front seats.
“The tracking option on your phone?” Rachel replied as she started the car.
“Tracking option on my phone? What!?”
Rachel stared at her through the rearview mirror. “Yes. I explained it to you when I gave you the new phone in Paris? Along with how to turn it off if you really wanted privacy… you nodded and acted like you were paying attention…”
“I… I may be better at faking attention than most,” Rosalind mumbled.
The car went quiet, then, as they drove through the eastern suburbs of Hammer City, towards the Skyway bridge to Burlington. A quicker route than the trains that had to go around the bay. From time to time, Logan, Rachel, or Teddie would look over her way, everyone seeming oddly concerned about her. Just as they were heading up the bridge, Rosalind noticed a smirk on Hermaphroditus’ face.
And then the deity vanished from the middle back seat, Teddie suddenly seeming so much closer.
“Ley Lines or… something… it’s harder for them to manifest away from Hammer City,” Rosalind explained as Logan spun around with concern.
“Should have warned me… it’s a good thing I don’t spook easily,” Rachel muttered, having managed to drive as if one of her passengers hadn’t just vanished into thin air.
“Sorry. Slipped my mind,” Rosalind replied.
“Uh… s—same,” Teddie added.
-
Arriving back in Toronto, Rosalind apologised again to Teddie about the day going so sideways, and promised to try to meet up again at some point. A promise that raised an eyebrow from Rachel, no doubt due to her plans to run Rosalind ragged with commitments.
Something Rosalind was expecting.
She hadn’t been expecting for it to start immediately, however. Rachel drove them to the studio, dragging Rosalind into her office to help compose a return announcement from Romeo. After some haggling, Rosalind agreed to state that seeing the disappointment of ‘his’ fans, and then the joy brought to fans by ‘her’ release, ‘Romeo’ was reminded that the true goal of an artist was to bring joy and love into the world. Therefore ‘he’ would be returning to performing immediately.
With that done, Rosalind then found herself dragged down to the recording booth, lyrics placed in front of her.
“What are these?” she asked, reading a few lines. It was a pop tune from the nineties that she remembered.
“A song with two singers,” Rachel replied.
“Mhm, I know that.”
“We managed to get the rights to do a cover of it during the tour in Europe. Daddy and I were sending out feelers to see who might want to sing it with you,” Rachel said. “Then we had to pause for a bit when the curse happened… but now you can sing it.”
She looked down at the lyrics again. “Which… which part?”
“Both of them,” Rachel said with a shrug. “It’s not a romantic duet or anything. It’s just a track with both male and female lyrics. So you can do both.”
Just as she was processing that, Logan pulled the rest of the band in. Well, she supposed she needed to get them up to date on the situation. And then, it was time to make music.
-
Romeo squirmed as he sang, annoyed to be told he had to redo a few lines for the female part of the song today. He’d wanted to be a guy all day today, now that he could actually do that again while feeling masculine.
Still, he was a professional. So he made it work, just trying his best not to process how wrong his voice sounded today. How he wished it sounded like the previously recorded male bits (that he’d mostly recorded while feeling weird about that voice instead.)
“Good,” Hank said, with a thumbs up. “That should be everything we need you in the studio for today.”
“Thank goodness,” Romeo said with a sigh of relief, taking off his headphones and starting to head out of the booth. “Time to change.”
“You can change when you get there,” Rachel said, getting up from her own seat behind the mixer.”
“Get…. where?” Romeo asked.
“The More Music interview,” Rachel replied.
“Wouldn’t it be better to change here to hide the magic?”
Rachel stared at him. “It’s a gig for Rosalind. They’re doing a bit for female singers today.”
He failed to hide his grimace, muttering complaints as Rachel led him off to one of the vans. Not that he could really refuse the gig. But he could grumble. He could grumble with the best of them… or the worst, depending on one’s point of view.
“Can I at least dress futch-y today?” he asked, as they neared the TV studio downtown.
Rachel looked about to shoot that down, but Logan gave her a look of a sharpness he rarely used. Rachel gave a slight nod.
“Sure. Yeah. The studio should have a good range.”
In the change room, Romeo managed to scrounge something vaguely punkish and tomboy looking, which seemed the best he could manage. The interviewers noted it was different from ‘Rosalind’s’ norm, but he shrugged it off. It wasn’t that weird for a woman to wear pants, after all. Wearing dresses and skirts all the time had been the more unusual thing.
-
The day finally done and the band back at the studio, Romeo rushed to his dressing room. He applied the sigil he’d been taught and let out a sigh of relief as he grew longer and squarer, no longer feeling squished into too small of a form. He stretched out, embracing it, before heading out to hunt for food. There was a proper kitchen, that catering made sure pretty well always had a bit of a buffet.
The same sort of food you’d get while filming a music video, but enough to tide himself over right now. He was tired, he’d been hungry, and changing had just made him hungrier. Being larger in his birth form meant he had a larger appetite.
Reaching the kitchen, he found Logan, JK, and Jovita seated at a table. The latter two were discussing some board game, while Logan seemed to simply be spacing out. An understandable response to listening to a conversation between those two.
Romeo grabbed a few slices of pizza (from a proper Italian restaurant, not anything greasy and cheap… they were pop stars, they had to eat lean) and then nudged his chair over to sit beside Logan. Close enough his elbow bumped against Logan’s arm.
The violinist jumped slightly as he processed Romeo was back to his old self. Which, of course, meant Romeo was the taller of the two of them again.
“Doing better now then, are you?” Logan asked, wearing a soft smile on that handsome face of his.
“I think so, yes,” Romeo replied. “It’s so much more comfortable like this, right now.”
“Oh, right! I should show you the new game I got,” Jovita said, seeming to confuse JK. “I’ve got it set up in my dressing room. Let’s go.”
The keyboardist gave a small nod, before following her, leaving Romeo and Logan alone in the room. Well, apart from the occasional assistants or technicians popping in for a muffin or whatever. There were other bands that worked with Hank Collins, but most of them didn’t hang out at the studio to the same degree as the Fire Hearts, so it was probable that none of them were around right now.
Still, both guys were a bit too tired to carry on much of a conversation.
“If you need back up with Rachel over dysphoria again in the future, just let me know,” Logan said, after Romeo had eaten about half a slice of pizza.
“Thanks,” Romeo replied with a smile.
Logan was quite a little longer, before speaking up again. “Either way.”
“Either way?” Romeo asked.
“If you’re having girl days and she’s making you be masc too,” Logan explained.
“Oh… right. I didn’t even—thank you.”
“Hey, what are friends for?” Logan replied.
Romeo gave him another smile while chewing on a bite of pizza. They then stayed quiet, being good enough friends not to have to say anything to enjoy one another’s company.
-
As last week or so had been as busy as the three before, Romeo was drowsy as they snuck out of the city. Even if the rush to get gigs for Rosalind had ended up now Romeo also had to make appearances and work on new songs. Today was their first day off since finding relief from the curse, but they didn’t quite believe they would actually get to relax. There was a worry in the back of their head that Rachel would spring something on them as they took the train to Berlin. For that reason, perhaps it was Rachel, more than paparazzi, that they were hiding from by wearing baggy clothing, a baseball cap under a hood, and a face mask.
They decided to drown out the world by tossing on some headphones and listening to favourites from high school. Only, when they pressed play, they didn’t get music.
“You really are terrible at relationships needing commitment, aren’t you?” Hermaphroditus’ voice asked.
“What did I tell you?” Salmakis’ voice added, sounding just a little softer and more feminine. And sitting more in the left headphone than the right, where Hermaphroditus’ voice was coming from.
“I don’t know what you two are talking about,” Romeo muttered, watching Etobicoke slip by as the train sped up.
“As a deity of marriage, I really do need to intervene, don’t I?” Hermaphroditus replied.
Glaring out the window, Romeo mumbled a reply. “I think you’ve intervened enough… let me live my life.”
“Now, now. Being aromantic is fine,” the Erote replied. “But you aren’t. You just need a nudge.”
Romeo’s eye twitched.
