@ineffable-writer, need some help on this one. Both in writing and in gayness.
Warlock never expected to see Nanny again. She’d left when he was six. After that, a strange tutor showed up who looked kind of like her, but he’d hated the man. He missed Nanny sometimes.
Which is why he was very surprised to find Nanny perched on the arm of the stained and battered sofa in his university common room. The cold, florescent lights made her look even paler and scarier than usual, but, other than that, she looked exactly the same as when he’d last seen her -- right down to the waves of her red hair and her peculiar pink lipstick. She smiled her creepy, brittle smile. “Hello, dear.”
“Ms. Ashtoreth,” she said in her soft Scottish accent. She smoothed her black skirt with her thin, spidery hand. “I believe we’re both old enough to call each other by our names.”
“Your mother called. She said you were having trouble.”
He blushed. This was a new low for his mom. He’d come out as gay to her and, instead of talking to him herself, she called up his nanny from over twelve years ago to talk to him. Typical, but low. “Look, I don’t know what she told you,” he said, “but it’s not a phase. I really am...” He was cut off by Nanny Ashtoreth hugging him. How she’d managed to cross the room so quickly was a mystery.
“I know,” she said. “You don’t need to explain yourssself, dear. I know.”
He closed his eyes. He never thought he’d find a speech impediment comforting, but the way Nanny hissed her “S”s reminded him of days on the playground, cookies he wasn’t supposed to touch yet, and the few times when she’d argued with his mother over his care -- usually to his benefit. He pressed his head against the shoulder of her black jacket. “What do I do?” he whispered.
She held him out at arm’s length. “Firssst of all,” she said. “You are going to be fine. I have met lotsss of young, gay men in my time and you’d be sssurprised how nice sssome of them can be.”
For an instant, Warlock wondered how Nanny had ever met “lots of young, gay men.” But then, odd tidbits like that had always seemed to follow Nanny.
“Sssecond...” She clicked her tongue, looked annoyed for second, and cleared her throat. “Second, you and I are going to have a nice cup of tea and talk about this. I suspect you have lots of questions.”
He nodded and thrust his thumb to his left. “Cafeteria’s...”
“No, dear,” she interrupted. “At my flat. I want you to meet someone who might be able to help.”
As Crowley drove back to Soho, he couldn’t help but smirk. True, he was off of Hell’s payroll at this point, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t stir up trouble. And what delightful trouble it would be to watch Aziraphale try to comfort their young, gay ward in his time of need.
“I live above a bookshop,” she’d said as she’d handed Warlock a slip of paper with the angel’s address on it. “A.Z. Fell and Co. I shall expect you promptly at six.”
He’d nodded, looking confused. That was the one downfall in his plan, really. Warlock would have to be extremely and embarrassingly confused for at least a minute while Aziraphale put himself back together again. Still, if there was anyone who could give the boy a confidence boost and an overview of the history of gay culture in one fell swoop, it was the angel who had learned the gavotte at a “discreet gentlemen’s club.”
As he pulled over and took the tube superglue out of his pocket, he began wondering what exactly had happened at those gentlemen’s clubs. He quickly banished the images that came to his mind and flipped the rare 2 pound coin in his hand. Like many demons, he was a jealous creature and there were some things he didn’t care to think about. He applied superglue to the bottom of the coin and pressed it against the sidewalk before sauntering over to his favorite café across from the bookshop to wait and watch the chaos.
Warlock was at A.Z. Fell and Co. at 5:43. Nanny had taught him to be fashionably late to everything, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to apply that logic to this. She had said, “promptly,” after all and disobeying Nanny was something only the brave and the stupid did.
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to go inside. Something about showing up early made his stomach turn even more than showing up late. He glanced around and saw a café with a bright red awning on the opposite side of the street. It looked nice and he could probably get some sort of pastry there. (He had no idea what Nanny had in the cook- biscuit department and was a little hungry.) A man with flaming red hair and sunglasses came out of the cafe, froze, turned on his heels, and went back in.
“Must have forgotten his wallet,” he reasoned.
He had noticed a two pound coin on the ground and was about to pick it up when Nanny emerged from the cafe, a small paper bag in hand. She crossed the street without looking, miraculously avoiding a cab, and walked up to him. “You’re early,” she growled before handing him the bag.
“No excuses, young man,” she said. “I said promptly not a quarter of an hour early.”
“Sorry,” he murmured. He held up the paper bag she’d given him. “What’s...?”
“Pear tarts,” she said. She turned her head towards the bookshop. He watched in terror as her jaw clenched. “I suspect I’ll need them.”
For a moment, he thought she was going to scold him for showing up early. She certainly was staring at him.
It was in that moment that Warlock realized Nanny had a type. He had seen her exchanging subtle glances with the gardner when he was little, but he’d been too young to understand. The man sitting at the cluttered desk looked like the gardner if the gardner had managed to get plastic surgery and had wandered off the set of a period drama. He pulled little, round glasses off the end of his nose as they walked in. “Cr- Ashtoreth, I thought you were going to visit your charge at university, not bring him here.”
“Bit of a change of plans,” she said. She walked over to him and put her arm around his shoulders. “Warlock, dear, this is Ezra Fell, my husband.”
Somehow, the news seemed to surprise them both. Warlock’s mouth dropped open. Ezra blushed down to his neck and nearly dropped his cup of cocoa.
“He’s also bisexual,” she explained.
That caused Ezra to leap up from his seat. “Really, my dear, do you have to say such things to a stranger?” he exclaimed. He looked like he was pleading for his life. “It’s not even... Well...”
“Do you or do you not know all of the queer spaces in London?” she asked.
He flinched. “Yes, well... I do wish you wouldn’t say ‘queer.’”*
“Discreet gentlemen’s clubs?” she said, a teasing edge to her voice.
Warlock, up until that point, had never seen anyone turn that particular shade of bright pink. “Yes... Er... But that was years ago. I don’t suppose that anywhere I used to go is open nowadays.”
“That’s ok,” Warlock said. “I don’t really want to go to gentlemen’s clubs anyway. I just want to know how to cope.”
The panicked expression vanished from his face. “Cope?” he said as if the word were foreign to him. “My dear boy, what is there to cope with? It’s hardly a legal matter anymore.”
Warlock could almost see Nanny’s eyes roll. “Ezra, dear, could you keep it to this century please,” she said softly.
“Oh, yes... Terribly sorry, d-darling.”
“Are you two normally this awkward?” Warlock asked before he could stop himself.
The two looked at each other and laughed. He’d never heard Nanny laugh before and was surprised to find that she sounded like a duck quacking. She brushed a tear out from under her sunglasses. “No, dear. I’m afraid I’ve been a little cruel to Ezra by inviting you over like this.” She smiled at him, and for once it didn’t look like broken glass. “He’s not used to people coming over unannounced, much less with questions about sexuality.”
“It was rather a shock,” he admitted. His face brightened and he tapped his forehead with his palm. “Ah! Where are my manners? I should have put the kettle on as soon as you came in. Will Darjeeling do?”
“He’ll want coffee, dear.” She turned towards Warlock. “Isn’t that right?”
He nodded, wondering how on Earth she could have known that. He supposed it was the same way she’d known he wanted pancakes the day before a big exam without him ever mentioning it to her.
“Oh! I have a press for that!” he said with an eager glint in his eyes. “I’ve never used it before. Be back in a tic.”
“Nothing too fancy, angel!” Nanny called after him.
“My dear, it’s just a French press. Humans use it all the time.”
She smiled a brittle smile. “And we’re just humans, as you’re so fond of saying,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Oh.. Er... Yes. I’ve done some fascinating reading on Oscar Wilde,” he said, fiddling with his cufflinks. He gestured with his head towards the shelf next to his desk. “I have some first editions in fact. Very hard to come by.” Sometimes he can’t tell what century he’s in.”
“Yes... Er... I suppose you could call it that,” the man said, clearly uncomfortable.
*Up until the 1990′s, “queer” was a pejorative term for homosexuals. Aziraphale, whose speech is firmly rooted in 1895, would have all the associations with “queer” that contemporary queer people would have when hearing the word “faggot.”
He looked up from his phone. He’d draped himself across the sofa in the backroom as he now did every morning, one leg hanging off the sofa while the other bent into an upside-down “V” along the couch cushions. “What is it?”
“Well, I found... You know how I sometimes keep up with the Dowlings?”
“I think you mean stalk, but yeah.”
He wrinkled his nose. “It’s not...” He sighed. “I found out young Warlock has come out as homosexual.”
“You can just say ‘gay’ you know,” he said, looking back down at his phone. “I know you still think it means ‘happy,’ but that just confuses people now.”
“Whatever the proper terms are, I think you should go visit him.”
He raised an eyebrow at him. “And why in the Universe would I do that?”
“Well, his mother isn’t exactly pleased and his father...” He paused. “I don’t believe they’re on speaking terms at the moment.”
He gave him a look over his sunglasses. “And what am I supposed to do about that?”
“You were his caretaker. Maybe you could give him a little comfort?”
Crowley set down his phone on the sofa and rubbed his eyes. “Angel, I’m a demon. I’m not exactly comforting. If you’re so worried about him, why don’t you go with all your,” he waved his hand at him, “holiness.”
“Because he trusts you. He likes you.”
“And how do you know that?”
Aziraphale flinched and pulled a folded piece of paper out of his waistcoat pocket. “Because he’s written as much.”
As Crowley grabbed the paper and began unfolding it, Aziraphale continued, “Not the best written anecdote in the world, but good for a first attempt.”
It took a few minutes for him to read it (reading had never been his thing), but once he was done, he had his mind made up. “Yeah, I’ll do it,” he said trying to sound reluctant.
“Oh, thank you, Crowley. You don’t know what this will mean to him.”
“Whatever,” he said with calculated flippence.
“Oh, and while we’re talking,” he said, “might you put yourself in a less obs
