Nonbinary!reader OC
For @sexuallyconfusedspacedragon456
I'm not dead! I can't apologize enough for the ridiculously long hiatus. I know anything I say at this point will just sound like excuses, so all I'll say is life is crazy, grad school is hard, keep wearing your masks, and Black Lives Matter. Now onto this amazing headcanon!
- While there is no word yet for how they feel, they’ve know in their core their entire life that they’re different from the people around them
- When they finally try to explain all of this to their parents at fourteen, their parents are at first dismissive at what they call “teenage silliness”
- Once their parents realize how serious they are, their parents are horrified, immediately worrying about what society will think of them
- At first P.T. is utterly confused when the family shows up at his office, seeing no physical uniqueness in the child, and fully believing that parents should let their children express themselves however they please
- Once he gets a whiff of how this child will likely suffer under such judgmental and strict parents, however, P.T. agrees to take them in
- P.T. creates a colorful, gender neutral costume for them and has them help O’Malley sell merchandise after the show
- While he fully trusts the cast of the circus, P.T. figures the child might not feel comfortable living around adult strangers, so has them stay with him and his family
- They end up becoming a bit of an older sibling figure for Helen and Caroline
- The cast is a bit confused about the random kid hanging around, they have enough experience with being different to know that they child will open up when they’re good and ready
- A few months later, when everyone is milling around, a slightly buzzed Tom loudly asks how he should refer to them
- Everyone immediately shushes Tom, but the child surprises them by saying it’s ok, and that they don’t really feel like a man or a woman, and they’re most comfortable just being referred to as “them”
- Both Lettie and the Woman in Gold end up taking on a huge mentoring role, both having different experiences with not fitting into their assigned gender roles in one way or the other