#nonbinary sol tozer

[boilyerheid]

Buttons and/or pearls for Sol Tozer's continuing gender adventures?

"Oh," Sol's roommate is always awkward, but extra awkward when he walks in on them trying to get a frock on. "Sorry!"

"Nah it's- Ned! 'Ey, come back!" He's disappeared so fast that Sol has to shout to get him to come back into the doorway, blushing and averting his eyes like Sol's a lass in a state of undress. And doesn't that just fill them with warmth, the fact they've shared a room with Ned for a year but now he knows they're them he's suddenly got shy. It's validating in its own way, because he does treat Sol like a lass now but only sometimes (in contrast to the way some of the others have well-meaningly but wrongly started behaving like he's a delicate maiden in the team's midst), and that's exactly what they want. "Can you help me with these buttons? Dunno who designed this shit but you can't get into it solo."

"Oh, er. Yeah, sure." Ned comes over a bit easier than Sol had expected him to, and grabs the back of his dress with more surety than they'd expected from the shy midfielder. Ned must catch the question in their expression, because he twitches a smile in the mirror. "Got four sisters, very used to dress shenanigans. Breathe in."

Sol does, and Ned manages to get the buttons done up with a minimum of swearing on both their parts. It's a costume for a mate's drag show - Sol's not ready to just wear dresses, if they'll ever be - but it feels right as Ned finishes off the bodice and then gives his friend a once over (swiping away stray threads, fluff, and general detritus as he goes) before deeming them fit for public consumption.

"You look great, mate." He pats Sol on the shoulder, just like he would after a match, and Sol has to swallow a stupidly ecstatic grin at the mundanity of it all. They're wearing a dress, their teammate helped them into it, they'll both be on the pitch swearing and trying to kill each other tomorrow. Is this euphoria? Is this what right feels like? How the fuck should they know? Does it matter?

"So if I get stuck and have to wake you up at arse o'clock to get free..." Sol unsuccessfully hides a grin when Ned drops his face to their shoulder with a groan. "I'll sleep in it. Love you, mate."

[boilyerheid]

Prettiest Girl at the Party (aka Sol Tozer has a case of the genders)

Billie Gibson is tall and willowy, all angles aside from the poofy blonde curls tossed over her shoulder in a haphazard ponytail, and weirdly intimidating. Hickey hunts her out as soon as they get to what seems to be the student union's dingiest function room, dragging an unsure Sol inside without giving him a chance to hesitate. They find her next to a folding table bedecked with a sorry assortment of Asda's finest own-brand snacks, sorting out a sign-up sheet of some sort.

She glares at Neil as he approaches, but softens when she notices his hand held tightly in Sol's white-knuckled grip. He's done this before, then. Sol hasn't been his only charity case, chivvied into questioning something about himself by Hickey's ability to find a crack and worry at it relentlessly until it splits all the way open.

Sol's not all the way open yet, doesn't know if he wants to be. Doesn't know if there's anything to open, just knows there's a crack.

[Ch4: in which Neil drags Sol to a queer meetup and it goes about as well as expected]

[boilyerheid]

15. “Just say yes.” for that hickeytozer AU with the makeup, please?

Sol reads the flyer slipped under his door as if it's a taunt. A cruel little I know something you don't want other people to know. He's relieved he got to it before his roommate noticed the gaudy slip of paper sitting on the dingy carpet (because Edward has a boyfriend, yeah, but he's quiet about it. Not hiding it but not shoving it in anyone's face - one of the lads, like. not a fucking pansy wearing makeup), and waits anxiously until he can corner Neil between class and training when they won't be missed.

"What the fuck is this?" He shoves the ratty little bastard into the nearest supply closet, thankful that the campus sports centre is furnished with an unending number of the damn things and this one doesn't hold anything they'll need for football. Neil watches him from where he's landed against a stack of cracked judo mats, looking a lot steadier than Sol feels as he brandishes the crumpled invitation with as much vitriol as he can muster.

"It's a flyer, Sol. I know the academic requirements in this shithole are minimal, but-" Sol's hand viciously twisted in the front of his shirt cuts Hickey off with a squeak. Sol's jaw is set hard enough to start giving him a headache (like a man, he's handling this exactly like the kind of man his dad is, and doesn't that say a lot), and Neil starts talking as he stares him down. "It's just a meetup. Thought you might be interested."

"And why the fuck would I be interested in that?" Trans, nonbinary, and marginalised genders, the flyer said in a cheery script, questioning folks welcome! It did something very weird to Sol's stomach when he read it, sent him into a spiral between anger and anxiety that he's not sure he's pulled himself out of yet. He's not a-. He's just-. He's not. "Bit of bleeding eyeliner doesn't mean I'm... You said you weren't fucking making fun of me."

"I'm not making fun of you," Neil's face twists quizzically and he does that thing again, moves like he's certain Sol's not going to smack him for it, and reaches up to set his slight hand under the hinge of Sol's stubbly jaw. Sol doesn't know how he feels about not being feared when he's trying to put the fear into someone, especially doesn't know how the fuck he feels when Neil softens his voice to speak again. "Hey, angel, I'm not. I just think-"

Sol shoves him back into the mats and steps away in a flash of panic, because when he talks like that Hickey somehow makes him feel so... small. And he likes it, and it's the last thing he should like, because he's a big, tough lad and that's a good thing, it's what he's born to be, so that's how he is.

"Stop doing that! Stop talking to me like I'm-" he spits, chest suddenly heaving for a lack of air in the close little room. He wants to punch something, he wants to run a hundred miles away from here, he wants Neil to touch him like he's delicate again so badly he could puke. And he does want to puke now, gripped with a crushing doom because he knows he can't put this genie back in the bottle, now he's realised he wants to be treated like a lass he can't...

"Shit, okay, sit yourself down before you fall." Sol is vaguely aware of Neil talking, but it seems very far away from the terrifying spiral inside his head.

He's stuck inside himself for a long while then, feeling like he's dying and overcome with a deluge of images crashing over each other - his sister's lip gloss, the eyeshadow palette hidden in the bottom of his sock drawer, his lipstick on the corner of Neil's mouth in their dingy bathroom. His dad's disappointed face, his mum's disgust, the rest of the team laughing at him for being such a...

"I think you should go," Neil says quietly, when Sol's out the other side and breathing almost steadily with his head on the lad's whippet-thin shoulder. They've both missed training by now. Sol's not sure he could face being told to man up by the coach today, anyway. "It might help."

"Nothing to help with," Sol mumbles, very aware of the fact he feels like a wrung-out sponge and that Neil's had his arm around him for the past god knows how long. The soft, rhythmic rub of his thumb on Sol's shoulder is far more comforting than it should be, especially when he's got nothing to be falling apart over.

"Just say yes, eh? I'll go with, if you want." Neil drops a kiss to his hair, far too bloody familiar for whatever the hell they have going on here, but it makes Sol feel smaller, cared for, and he's run out of space to deny that he likes that after this evening's display. "Me ex runs it, Sol. I'm really not making fun."

Sol makes a noncommittal sound in way of answer, and Neil scoffs quietly like he's caught between annoyance and affection. It makes Sol feel a bit better sitting in the stuffy supply room, like they're getting back onto the familiar ground of giving each other shit, but then Neil mutters something playful about bloody women never make up their mind, and suddenly Sol's sobbing into his mate's shoulder without being able to find a single word as to why.

Shit. Maybe he'd better go and see what this group are all about. Just to shut Neil up, he tells himself, even as the lad strokes his hair and tells him that things going to be okay where Sol's soaking his shirt. Be a bit hard to humiliate himself more at this rate, anyway, what would a little investigation hurt?