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It was almost 3am, and Charlie most definitely should not still be awake. Especially on a school night of all nights. But for some reason, he couldn't convince himself to put his phone down and try to get some sleep. For some reason, he just couldn't stop scrolling through post after post on Tumblr, he couldn't look away.
A few days earlier, he'd been having a conversation with Elle over facetime. Originally they'd called because Elle offered to help Charlie with one of his homework assignments, but they didn't exactly stay on topic long. They'd quickly went down a rabbit hole of topic after topic, and eventually landed on talking about trans topics.
Having known Elle pre-transition, Charlie was always happy to listen to her ramble about such things. Not like he wouldn't have been otherwise, but it makes him especially happy after watching her struggle for so long. He can remember countless, tear filled conversations from when they were younger, including the day Elle had broken down and came out to him as trans. He's so proud of the girl she's grown into since then.
"Have you ever heard of neopronouns before?" Charlie paused, the term sounded familiar, but he couldn't quite remember what they were. Elle waited patiently as he wracked his brain for the answer. He liked to think he was very educated on a variety of queer topics, including trans topics, but he was stumped.
"Uh, I think so? But I can't remember what they are, sorry." He explained, a bit embarrassed. Elle huffed out a small laugh.
"Don't worry about it, I didn't actually expect you to know, I was just curious." her reply seemed very genuine, Elle was always a very genuine person, so his embarrassment faded a bit. Now he was just curious to learn what they were. He assumed they had to do with gender or something in some way, the 'pronoun' part of the word gave that much away.
"So what are they then?" Elle seemed to perk up at the question, happy that the conversation hadn't simply stopped at him not knowing. Based on the smile she was sporting, Charlie could already tell he was in for a long, passionate explanation. Which he definitely wasn't complaining about, Elle was one of his best friends, and he could listen to her happy rambles for hours.
"So! Obviously you know what pronouns are- I mean its basic grammar. Neopronouns are like, pronouns aside from she/her, he/him, and they/them. " Charlie nodded along, the more he thought about it, he's pretty sure he'd stumbled across people online who had other words listed with their pronouns in their bios. They must have been neopronouns! "Neo means new, but a lot of pronoun sets referred to as neopronouns, are actually really old! Some sets like ae/aer actually date back almost a century, and were used in books, its super interesting."
"Wait, that's actually quite cool. What other sets are there?" He was genuinely quite curious, although Charlie had never thought much about his own gender or pronouns, something about this new option seemed to intrigue him. Luckily for him, Elle was more than happy to answer his questions.
They'd continued talking about neopronouns for quite a while, Charlie happily sucking up all the info he could get. There hadn't even been a particular reason for the conversation in the first place, Elle wasn't planning on changing her pronouns at all, she simply found them intriguing. But something in the back of his mind told him that this was important, that it wouldn't be leaving his mind any time soon.
So now here he was, Charlie Spring, days later, awake past 3am, scrolling through the neopronoun tag on tumblr.
There were so many cool, and unique sets of neopronouns. Any topic he could think of, someone had made sets related to it. Some sets were based on nouns or just other words in general, while others were completely made up.
Charlie couldn't help but imagine himself using some. None of the sets he'd come across so far seemed to fit, but the idea of new pronouns made his heart jump with excitement. He'd always been content with just he/him -not that he'd even thought of it much- but now his mind was stuck on the possibility of maybe finding new pronouns, ones that he was happy and comfortable with, not just ones he was content with since he was used to them.
Suddenly he paused his scrolling, stopping on yet another post consisting of a list of pronouns. There was nothing special about this list compared to any others he'd seen, it wasn't even a themed list, rather just random sets thrown together. But one specific set caught his eye.
ve/ven. Huh, he liked the sound of those.
"I'm Charlie and my pronouns are he/him, and ve/ven." He whispered into the dark of his room. It sounded right, felt right. "Ve/ven"
Ve just laid there for a moment, imagining his friends using them for ven. He imagined Nick saying things like 'This is Charlie, vens my boyfriend!", Tao saying 'Ve is ridiculous, tell ven how good this movie is.' His heart felt like it could burst.
Completely ignoring how late (early?) it was, he quickly switched over to his texts with Elle. He typed and retyped his message about a dozen times before finally sending a simple message,
'i wanna use neopronouns, ve/ven. they feel right'
Charlie received a reply much quicker then expeccted, ve didn't expect one at all until the actual morning at least.
'First off, I completely support you, second, just ve/ven or still he/him as well? last of all, why are you waking me up at almost 4 with a gender crisis'
Ve felt a it bad about waking her up, but it wasn't like it was intentional. Who wakes up from a single text?
'he/him as well still. and sorry sorry, didnt expect you to wake up aksjflk'
'Charlie Spring you will be the death of me istg, gender crisis over, go sleep'
'ok mum'
'I hate you'
Charlie laughed quietly before putting ven phone down, ve should really listen to Elle and get some sleep.