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Here’s the thing.
Now, Scout had been around the block a few times, alright? He’d knocked around South End back when he was still in Boston and jumping between jobs, held one for a solid couple of months washing dishes at some little bar just off the main cluster of things, and so he knew a thing or two about a thing or two in regards to—
To—y’know! To people who were... different. Not in a bad way, not at all, because it wasn’t even like Scout himself hadn’t had a couple questions before—
Well, the point being that Scout had a pretty solid knowledge on stuff that maybe some of the other mercs—the older ones especially—might not be... as cool with. Knew plenty of guys and gals that swung the other way, or a couple of ways, or all of the ways, or none of the ways, or didn’t really know or it kinda depended or whatever. Hell, he ended up surrounded by mostly that sort. People banded together like that.
And, yeah, he kinda knew some stuff about people who were... well, guys who didn’t dress like guys, or girls who didn’t dress like girls, or guys or girls who’d only figured out they were guys or girls when they were a little bit older.
And exactly once he’d known someone who was, like, a guy and a girl, which had him all kinds of confused and really sorta kicked off a series of questions for himself when one day he met a real cute girl and she’d given him her number and the next time they saw each other he instead looked like a real cute guy and man had that taken a minute for him to figure himself out. He still wasn’t entirely sure he had things figured out, honestly.
But, anyways, at least that all meant that when he met Pyro, he had a passing knowledge on what was going on. Why Medic stumbled awkwardly where he’d usually preface with “Herr” in regards to most of the mercs and “Fraulein” in regards to Miss Pauling. Why Sniper would say “blokes—and, er, Pyro”, and why Heavy carefully avoided saying “little man”, and why Pyro never showered with the rest of the team.
So, well, he figured that it was a similar situation to the last person he’d come across who was like that. Except not exactly the same, because with that other person, he’d been given some visual cues on what words he should be using at any given time—words like Miss and her and lady and she when she dressed one way, words like Mister and man and him and dude when he was dressed the other way, with a pretty clear distinction between the two. And Pyro only ever wore the flame suit, so he wasn’t totally sure how he was supposed to tell.
Well, Scout decided, he’d just... he’d just sorta switch back and forth. Half the time he’d say she, the other half he’d say he. He’d switch between them equally, every other time he’d change which one he used.
“Where’s Pyro?” Scout asked one day when he finally figured out what to do. “He’s supposed to be washing dishes today, but I haven’t seen her since he got that guy off my back before the end of battle, she kinda ghosted after that. His room’s empty, too.”
Nailed it. The guys were giving him kind of a weird look, but hey, that was fine. He was okay with them looking at him weird. He could be uncomfortable for the sake of making sure Pyro was comfortable. Because Pyro is his teammate and his friend! And he kept it up, a nice switch back-and-forth about it, only stumbling once or twice before he got used to doing it and it became second nature in every conversation.
That is, until Engie brought up something.
He didn’t remember what exactly they were talking about. He remembered showing up at the workshop to bug the man, and starting to talk about something, and Engie did that thing where he pulled a hatch and nut and bolt or whatever from his “odds & ends” bin he used to help with cleanup and handed them over, and he remembered fiddling with them for a little while until all at once Engie was choosing his words very carefully during some conversation about something not very relevant.
“You know, Scout,” he said, and Scout looked up at the change in tone. “Some people are like that as well. Where they aren’t really one thing or the other thing, they’re both, or neither.”
“What, like, having two jobs?”
“Or when they don’t necessarily feel much like a man, or much like a woman. Instead they’re both, or neither, or some space not-so-neatly in either of those two boxes.”
“Yeah! Yeah, I knew about that,” Scout said, tone a little muted just in case Engie was about to go on some old tired tirade about how kids these days were using any words in any order and were ridiculous or something like that.
“Some of those people,” Engie said next, talking pretty slowly now, “don’t use the word he or she, or his or hers, when talking about themselves. Instead the correct word might be they.”
Scout considered that for a second. “What, like, so you’d say... instead’a “he got his ass kicked” it’d be “they got their asses kicked” or somethin’?” he asked, confused now.
“No, singular, one person,” Engie corrected patiently.
“You can do that?”
“You already do that. Let’s say you’re buying something at the store and the clerk up front asks for your ID. What do you do?”
“Well, I’d give them one of the fakes we’ve got, right? Aren't we supposed to do that?” Scout asked, more confused than before at the change in conversation.
“See, just then you used “them” but about a single person,” Engie pointed out, and Scout blinked. “It’s just like that.”
“Oh. Huh! Guess I never thought of that,” Scout said, nodding to himself. “So, what, who’s that for, then? Who does that?”
“Anyone who asks,” Engie shrugged, eyes back on his work.
“Oh. Okay. That’s pretty neat,” Scout said, going back to his own fiddling as well.
It was only later when it started to sink in, what exactly it meant that Engineer was saying that to him. Now he had to figure out how to incorporate a third word in with he and she. Shit. Fuck. Okay, he could do this.
It took a little practice—mostly just Scout practicing sentences in his head a few times before he said them—but he damn near seamlessly managed to integrate in the use of “they” alongside “he” and “she”. Some stumbling, and admittedly he had to get a little creative with sentence structures, and a lot of practicing in the mirror, but he fucking nailed it.
Then, halfway through a conversation with Heavy about colloquialisms that didn’t translate, he was alerted once again to some new information.
That there were often issues translating words into neutral pronouns, neither masculine or feminine. The fact that, actually, there were so many neutral pronouns, which Heavy was determined to eventually learn once his grasp on some other more basic rules of English and common vocabulary was steady.
How many, Scout had asked, dismayed.
Heavy shrugged, said he wasn’t sure, didn’t ever take the time to count. But many, many indeed.
He went to the library, checked out some books. Talked to Medic, then Demo, then eventually Spy. When he burst into the common area one day to face Pyro, they looked up at him from their place scribbling at a piece of paper with those big, reflective lenses of theirs, and were met with the sight of Scout holding a sheet of paper, on which—from the light filtering through—they could tell was written a list.
“He and him, she and her, they and them, e and em, ey and em, fae and faer, it and its, per and per’s, ne and nem, ne and ner, ny and nys, phe and per, xe and xer, ze and zer, ve and ver, zie and zeir, xe and xyr!” he listed off, and looked up at Pyro, sure his eyes were probably a little wide, a little fretful. “Did I miss any? Are there any more? Did I say all those right?” he quickly demanded.
Pyro laughed a little, and gave him three answers in succession. “Yes, yes, and yes,” they said.
He whipped the pencil from behind his ear and quickly scribbled that down. “Yes and yes, what, would that be yes’s or ye’s then—?” he quickly asked, glancing between them and the paper.
“No!” Pyro was quick to gesture, and moved to unlock their mask so they would be slightly more comprehensible. “As in yes, you've missed some, yes, there are always more, and yes, you pronounced all of them correctly.”
“Okay. Uh, okay.” He tapped his pencil rapidly against the edge of the paper, looking down at the list. “Because see the thing is I’ve technically got seventeen of these but some of them use the same word and spelling and everything for certain words or are pronounced the same and all so I’m gonna really need to take care to how I use ‘em, I’m gonna need a couple seconds before I talk to just make sure I’m not repeating anything and which ones I’ve been using more than any of the other ones, y’know? So I’m just tryin’ to figure out how I’m gonna track that, how I’m gonna divide that up so I don’t end up weighing way too heavily on one word that I leave somethin’ out on accident, and how I’m gonna try and tell which ones I’ve used, and I thought maybe I should start carryin’ around a chart or something that I mark off on which ones I’ve been using but I also don’t know if I’d check in on that on the daily or just on the weekly or if I should tally it up every individual conversation and I dunno how the guys are gonna react if I’m standin’ around writing shit down on a clipboard while we’re all just stood around talking and shit—“
He cut himself off when he heard Pyro chuckling. “Scout, you uh, you do know that you didn’t need to go to all that work, right? You can just stick to “they” if you want?” they asked him, tilting their head.
“Huh?” he asked, blinking.
“I appreciate it, it’s really nice of you to go through all this, uh... all this effort, but really. You could’ve just come talked to me,” they said, gesturing quizzically.
“Well, I just, I didn’t wanna be a jackass, y’know? I know I fuck up with stuff a lot, I just, I didn’t wanna... look, I dunno!” he said defensively, flushing.
“If you had, I could’ve just told you, you can just... pick one, and, uh, and stick with that,” Pyro shrugged. “I don’t really care much what people call me, as long as they’re not being rude on purpose.”
“What?” Scout asked, blinking again.
“You can use any one of those, instead of trying to use them all. I promise I won’t get mad. And if anything changes, I’ll tell you,” they explained. “I mean, “they” is nice around new people because then they get that there’s a special situation and all, but besides that, it really, honestly isn’t a big deal to me. You can call me whatever as long as you’re being polite.”
Scout considered that for a long few moments. “Well fuck, now I look like an idiot,” Scout said, just a little indignant.
“I already told you, it was sweet to try and uh... do whatever that whole thing was. Clearly you worked really hard, and I appreciate it a lot,” Pyro was quick to say. “Just... I mean, I thought you’d want to know.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I... yeah.” He looked down at the sheet of paper, frowning for a few seconds. “...So, just “they”, then?”
“Sure. I, uh, I don't really mind either way.”
“...But you said there’s other ones?” he prompted after a moment.
“Definitely.”
“...Well, like what? C’mon,” he prompted next, sitting down across from Pyro and picking up the pencil again. “Now you’ve got me all curious.”
Pyro laughed, rolling their eyes a little at his antics, the motion only trackable through the roll of their head. “Well, first of all, some people use one and one’s...”