Flowey stood outside in the back garden, thinking.
Thinking. When he wasn't playing with Frisk or Papyrus or doing his schoolwork, he was always thinking. Usually it was about Chara, or Frisk, or all the things he had done when he'd had the power of determination, or something equally serious.
Today's thoughts were serious, but in a different way than usual.
Flowey heard the back door slide open, but he didn't turn. The loud clomping footsteps on the deck were enough to tell him who it was.
Papyrus came into the dirt and plopped himself down right next to the flower. "Hello, Flowey!" he said brightly. "You look deep in thought today."
"Yeah, I kind of am," Flowey admitted.
"Anything the Great Papyrus can help with?"
"I dunno… maybe." Flowey fell silent and wiggled a bit before sighing. "Yeah, maybe you could actually."
"What is it?"
"Well… first I have to ask something. What's up with the sign on your bedroom door? 'No boys allowed, no girls allowed, Papyrus allowed'—is there a special reason for that, or is it just something dumb?" Flowey asked.
Papyrus suddenly looked very secretive. "Well, Flowey... the truth is, many boys have 'no girls allowed' on their bedroom doors. And many girls have 'no boys allowed' on their bedroom doors. But you see—" Papyrus looked very proud suddenly— "the Great Papyrus is not a boy or a girl! So he must put both 'no boys allowed' and 'no girls allowed' on his bedroom door!"
It was exactly the kind of logic Flowey had expected from Papyrus. "So I was right in suspecting, then. You're nonbinary."
"That is the label some choose to put on, yes! Though I prefer genderless or agender. I've just never really felt like I've had one," explained Papyrus.
"Yeah… okay, cool. Well, back to what I was thinking about…" Flowey sighed. "For a while I've thought I might be nonbinary too… like, even before I became a flower. I tried to talk about it to Chara a couple of times, but they were never keen on the subject of gender for some reason." Flowey made an odd face and then continued. "So… I dunno, how did you figure out you were agender or whatever?"
"Hmmm…" Papyrus put his hand to his chin and thought about it. "I seem to recall, when I was a child, meeting certain monsters who were born agender or nonbinary, and I thought it was very interesting and cool. The concept seemed familiar to me in an odd way. I believed I asked Sans if monsters could change their gender, and he said they could, and that they could even always be a gender but just not know it yet. So then I asked if a skeleton could be genderless, and he said he'd never heard that they couldn't be. I very much felt like being a boy had never suited me, and this 'nonbinary' label felt very nice when I started using it! Eventually I got more specific and took the agender label instead. And that's how I figured it out!"
"Huh… nice." Seemed straightforward enough. Flowey's first experiences with nonbinary genders had been similar, though now he wished he'd been smart enough to just ask his parents about it when he was still a monster. "So… I can be nonbinary?"
"Absolutely! If you feel that's right for you!" Papyrus smiled.
"Okay… what about pronouns and stuff? You still use he and him and stuff, I notice."
Papyrus shrugged. "I tried others, but nothing made me feel as good as the ones I'd always been using."
"So it's okay if I keep using he and him, too?"
"I would say so!"
Flowey thought again. "What if I wanted to use more than one? Say I wanted to use they and them, too?"
Papyrus nodded. "I know some monsters like that!"
"Oh… cool." Despite his relaxed outward demeanor, Flowey felt a little excited inside. Things were starting to make sense in his mind now! "So…" He straightened up, standing tall. "I guess I'm nonbinary, then."
"You really think so?!" Papyrus's eye sockets sparkled, if that were even possible.
"Yeah. I'm nonbinary." The more he said it, the more confident Flowey felt.
"Yes!" Papyrus put his fists up to the sky. "Flowey's nonbinary!"
"I'm nonbinary!"
"We're both nonbinary and we're PROUD!"
"I'M NONBINARY AND I'M PROUD!"
They shouted it over and over again until some neighbor yelled at them to shut up. Flowey grinned. "Hey, Papyrus?"
"Yes, Flowey?"
"Thanks."
"You are very welcome, my petal-imbued friend."
Flowey kept smiling for a while afterward.
This label made him feel good.