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She found him, as she often did, sitting by the window of their bedroom, in the company of his many potted plants. Like him, they angled themselves toward the late afternoon sun, soaking in every ray. His bronze skin was cloaked in his favorite petal pink robe, and his hair was tied up in a sloppy bun, something he never would have let anyone else see.
She was hesitant to disturb him. But curiosity won out.
“Niran.” Satya spoke his name softly as she entered the small room.
He turned partway. She realized his eyes had been closed.
“Ah, Satya.” His lips curled into the faintest smile when he saw her. “I’m doing my homework, I swear.”
Satya looked pointedly around at the total absence of books, pencils, or anything other than two empty bags of tortilla chips tossed on his bed. “Clearly.”
“It’s true. This is my pre-homework meditation.” He was sitting on a cushion swiped from their couch. In an instant, an identical second cushion appeared beside it. Niran gestured for her to sit.
Satya shifted the object in her hand, rubbing its scratched surface with the pad of her thumb. Then, after a brief consideration, she sat down at his side.
The world outside their window was sterile and civilized, the perfect white walls of adjacent dorms all perfectly-spaced on the horizon. Sunlight was the only natural force Vishkar allowed to roam wild on its campus. Everything else was by meticulous design.
“So how were your classes?” Niran let his eyes close briefly again. In the short few months they’d known each other, he’d become entirely comfortable around her. Though she would not admit to it out loud, Satya felt much the same way with him.
That made it all the harder to bring up uncomfortable topics.
“My classes were fine,” Satya murmured. “I learned some interesting new things.”
The downside to getting too close to someone was that they learned to read you, whether you wanted to be read or not.
“Is everything all right?” Niran leaned just a hair closer, his smile fading into a frown of concern.
Satya shimmied away from him. “Yes. Fine.”
Niran tilted his head. His long hair tumbled down over his shoulders, glimmering in the sunlight that bathed him.
She could have dropped it there. He couldn’t force her to say anything. She could throw away the thing she’d found, and he’d never have to know she’d even seen it.
When she looked him in the face, though, she knew she couldn’t do any of that.
“Niran...” she began, not sure where her own sentence was going to go. “I was taking my laundry out of the wash, and I...found...something. In the machine.” Her eyes flicked down to her fist, nestled in the lap of her dress.
Niran caught on that the thing was in her hand. His eyes fell to her closed palm, now as curious as she was.
Satya opened her fingers. The sunlight caught on the scratched surface of a small, round button pin. It was a simple design, plain white with a rainbow border.
In the middle of the white was simple black text that read SHE|HER.
Niran stared down at it for a while. Satya left her hand out, unsure what else to do.
Finally, Niran cleared his throat. “I must have forgotten to take that off when I washed my clothes.”
Satya extended her hand out a little further. Niran took the button, then set it down on the windowsill beside his plants.
“I mean this as non-judgmentally as possible,” Satya said. “Why...do you have that?”
He turned his attention back out the window.
“I just wanted to try it.”
“Do you...want me to call you that?” It felt awkward to ask, but it was more awkward to ignore and move past it.
Niran rose up from the sun-faded cushion and wandered behind Satya, over to his work desk. Satya watched as he pulled open its single drawer, fished around in it for a minute, then came away with a handful of something.
He brought that handful over to Satya, who tried not to make her curiosity too obvious. He then opened his hand to reveal a whole slew of pronoun buttons. HE|HIM. THEY|THEM. HE|THEY. EY/EM.
Satya raised an eyebrow. “How many pronouns does one person need?”
Niran burst out laughing at that. “You know me,” he said, striking a pose. “I just have to have one of everything.”
She couldn’t help but join in his laughter. He sat back down beside her, and they nudged their cushions a little closer, sharing in the comforting warmth of the sun and each other.
Of course, once the laughter died down, it left the two of them saddled with an uncertain silence. Satya toyed with the gold bangles on her arm, while Niran returned to studying the plants in the window.
Finally, Satya said, “So, what would you prefer me to call you?”
Niran glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “Oh, I’ll accept anything. ‘Handsome’, ‘gorgeous’, ‘hilarious’, ‘ingenious’-”
“That’s not what I meant, you buffoon.”
“Ah. My apologies.” His grin defied that apology. “Well, I suppose you can call me whatever you’d like. Except maybe for when you call me a lazy, spoiled rich boy.”
“I’ve never called you that! ...Out loud.”
Niran’s grin was contagious. Satya hid her mouth behind her hand, but it didn’t go unnoticed by Niran, who playfully elbowed her.
She could have sat there for the rest of the afternoon, soaking in the sun and enjoying the way the plants in the window came alive in the light. But things needed to be done, and she wasn’t the type to fritter away time.
Niran’s relaxed posture tightened when Satya stood up. “Aw. Leaving already?”
“I have to finish folding my laundry. I’d rather not look like one giant wrinkle for the rest of the week.”
“Ah. Fair enough.” Niran shrugged his robe on a little tighter, trying to hide its multitude of wrinkles.
On her way by, Satya paused just long enough to tap him on the shoulder. “Oh, and...”
He craned his neck up at her. “Hm?”
“In addition to the button in the wash, somebody also left her over-fluffed towels in the dryer. Again.”
Niran’s cheeks flushed pink. “Right. I’ll go get those.”