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Nobody calls Tsar by his first name.
This is good, because he hates it. Valeriya — stupid name. The diminutive form, Lera, is even worse. He remembers back when his parents had custody over him. It was all Lera, Lera, Lerusha, Lera, Leka. His hair was long back then, and it took hours to brush every morning. Usually his parents were too hungover to do so, so he would spend the day with it tangled and knotted. His parents were too hungover to do a lot of things. That was why he was taken, eventually.
His grandmother brushed his hair the morning he was to go to the doctor's. Frequent checkups were not a thing his parents had ever cared to do for him. He couldn't remember ever having gone, and he was scared. His grandmother kissed his head and told him it would be alright. Tsar loved his grandmother.
At the doctor's they said he was malnourished and underweight. His grandmother didn't look surprised, but she looked sad. Then they made him strip, and examined him, and the doctor said something about masculinization and something-melagy. It wasn't as if he understood those big words, really. He was only four. They took his blood after that, and it hurt, but his grandmother took him out for ice cream after.
A few days after that, she let him cut his hair. The barber she took him to thought he was a boy, and cut his hair accordingly. His grandmother was surprised, but Tsar was delighted. He never ended up growing it out much longer than that.
She was the one to nickname him by his surname. "Little Tsar", she called him, as if being the runt of his family made him some sort of prince. Well, he might have been a prince in her eyes.
They all call him Tsar now. Everyone from the teachers at school to his few friends. At the shrink they often miss the memo, but he doesn't go to the shrink much, since it's — well. Duh.
Tsar is lucky that people call him by the right name. He is lucky that teachers look the other way when he wears the men's uniform to school. He is lucky that Arthur is always watching, ready to leap to his defense.
"What's congenital adrenal hyperplasia?" Tsar asks Arthur once. Arthur shrugs.
"No idea, why?"
"They mentioned it when I was at the doctor's."
At the orphanage they get two checkups a year, and they're always rushed. The last time Tsar spent more than ten minutes in a doctor's office, it was when he broke his arm. That was embarrassing. He'd been climbing a tree to prove he was no chickenshit girl, and fallen right out.
He'd still climbed higher than the other guys, though. So.
Tsar feels like he always has to prove that he's a guy. Whether it's by feats of stupidity or a mouth full of swear words or taking a drag on someone else's cig. It's what he's gotta do to measure up, and he's gotta measure up. If he couldn't prove his masculinity, his manhood — he thinks he'd die. Really. He'd die.
It's nice to make friends who don't know him from school, who don't know his first name. Vanya, for one, Tsar's not sure Vanya is aware at all of how Tsar was born. Ain't like he ever told him, and ain't like Vanya's exactly the brightest bulb in the box, so the odds of him puzzling it out are low. Yana's only ever known Tsar as a dude, too, and though she patronizes him a lot he thinks it's more to do with his age than anything. Yura's an asshole, but he's an asshole to everybody. And Sanya? Sanya looks at him like he's not just a guy, but a cool guy. She comes to all his shows, she's declared herself the band's number one fan. Yeah, okay, he like-likes her. Not like it matters. Not like he stands a chance.
He's terrified of her finding out, though. Terrified that one day he won't do well enough binding, or he'll wear clothes too tight, or his voice will come out wrong, and she'll know. What would she think? Arthur's fine with it, but not everybody's like Arthur. Most people aren't like Arthur. That's the whole damn problem.
It's fine. Whatever. He'll never get close enough for her to know. There's not much of a point in getting too close anyway. She doesn't like him like that, she likes Yura, it's plain to see. So, whatever. He doesn't care. He'll get over this stupid baby crush soon enough.
He writes some angsty songs about it, though.
Music is a good release. It really is. When he sings his guts out, he doesn't feel like he has a girl's voice. Just a musician's voice. He can scream out every pain and grievance and leave the crowds clamoring for more. He can take the ugly and make it beautiful. Fuck, that's cliche. Oh, well.
When he performs, everyone thinks he's just a guy. Nobody knows what the V. in V. Tsar stands for. That one bouncer Arthur's friends with fistbumps him every time, always greeting him with a "Hey, bro!". It's nice.
Contrast that with the psychs, whose go-to greeting is "Hello, Valeriya, how are you doing?".
God, Tsar was a dumb fucking kid. Insisting he was a guy even at the asylum — all that got him was a nice little diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and annual checkups to see if he's gotten better yet.
Whatever. He can play the tomboy. It sucks, but he can do it. Better that then the electrotherapy he's heard some kids get.
Valeriya. Fuck. It's such a dumb name. Whose idea was that? He can think of a million better ideas. Vadim. Valentin. Vitaliy. Vladimir. Hell, even Valeriy. Man, he looked up that disorder he found on his files a few years back. Some sort of sex condition. They decided whether he was a girl or a boy by a flip of a damn coin, he bets. Unfair. It's so unfair.
And he's just gonna have to fuckin' live like this, isn't he?