Work Text:
The tube was miraculously quiet.
It was awful.
Bag in his lap, Warlock Dowling waited for more passengers to shuffle in and suffocate his mind with a distracting, insufferable presence that never came. He had to think about it, think about everything, and that was the worst.
“I understand the concept of gay people, Thad, but the ones who say they're attracted to men and women? I think they're confused or just following a fad.”
It had been the casualness of the chat - the casual idea of only men and women being an option - which bothered him most, trying to eat his dinner in peace with one earbud in since, apparently, two was rude. At least two drowned out stupid things like “confused or following a fad.”
“I guess I'm just confused, then!”
That impulsive snap had gotten him two sets of eyes, but only briefly. The Senator in Thad's messenger was more important than his son. They always had been. They always would be. Mom's sigh had rattled through his head, that tired precursor to the bare minimum.
“Sweetie, do you not think I've never looked at a girl and thought she was pretty? Or that your father's never looked at a man and found him handsome? You're clearly too young to understand, but that's not the same thing as being attracted.”
No amount of convincing or explaining his feelings - trying to explain, more like - had gotten him anything more than an exasperated, “Don't upset your father.”
Of course he'd stormed up to his room. Of course he'd locked the door behind him, taken snacks out of his mini-fridge that would go down easier than the smoked ham their chef had prepared. They didn't get it. They didn't get any of it, highlighted most by a return to the miserable subject at breakfast the next day when Harriet had exasperatedly demanded, “So you'd have sex with another boy?”
The fact that he'd stared at her with a dropped jaw - he was seventeen and not too keen on sex with anyone at the moment, let alone talking about it with his mum - was apparently not a good enough answer. How should he have answered? How did one tell a mother already grimacing and uncomprehending something as intimate as that? When she wasn't listening to the words he'd already said, for that matter. He'd called himself pansexual, not panromantic.
“Sweetie, I just think this identity you've chosen for yourself is basically straight. I don't understand why you think you need a label.”
The tube stopped. No one entered his compartment.
He didn't think he needed a label. In fact, a big part of him didn't want a label at all. “Another boy,” she'd said, as if that's what he was. And maybe it kind of was? He just didn't feel the things people said he ought to feel as a male. It wasn't like he ever felt feminine either, though he wasn't against wearing a cool eyeliner or the few skirts he had hidden away. Had hidden away. They were in his suitcase now. He had everything that was important in the suitcase.
If he could hide away in one himself, he would. It was just that he felt like one sometimes. A wide open thing where other things got stuffed inside until the zipper just wouldn't shut. Tons of those labels his mom said he didn't need.
Boy, loser, imposter, American, British, rich, useless, reckless, rude, standoffish - why could everyone else give him labels, but he couldn't claim ones that felt right? He thought of one as an anti-label. An erasure of something he'd been assigned at birth that needed nothing in its place. A blank slate. Agender.
He hadn't tried discussing that with his parents. Not when he had to hear the same words about trans people trying to play the sports connected to the gender they felt best reflected themselves. There were only so many times he could hear “wrong” before he internalised it and made it something he pushed away. Two earbuds on those nights.
Maybe that made him a coward. Another label.
A negative one that didn't make him feel the way Hellspawn once had. Even at her most reluctant, that had always been a term of endearment from the nanny he'd spent his earliest years with. A single word that made him feel like maybe someone in the world actually gave a crap about him. Even if her lullabies were technically horrifying and it was a wonder he'd ever fallen asleep to any of them.
He still thought of her even though she'd left him one day, resignation turned in right alongside the gardener's. Not so sneaky, those two, even while no one had ever been able to figure out what they saw in one another. Warlock had known. The few times they'd all shared shade and a sweet cooling treat or two, it had been so relaxed, so easy, so easy to crave. He'd quit a job to share a thousand more private moments just like that, so he couldn't blame Nanny Ashtoreth.
And he couldn't blame her if she didn't answer the old phone number she'd scribbled into a Going Away card. She had been the one leaving, but he hadn't been old enough to give her a card and, well, he wouldn't have thought to anyway. It was pristine still, the ink as bold as if it'd been written that very morning. (Both the day he rode the tube and the day he'd tried coming out to his parents.)
He'd called and a man had answered. “What?”
Warlock had hung up.
Seconds later his phone had rung again, the same number, ringtone singing through his room like a mockery until, very much against his will, his phone had answered. “What do you need, hellspawn?”
So a man, but not a man. Not a woman either, his former nanny had said with some amusement. And to Warlock's breathlessly whispered, “Me either,” there had been such a pause. Such a long one before the person Warlock had once called Nanny Ashtoreth had sighed, ended the call, and texted him an address in Soho.
Maybe packing the suitcase had been hasty. Maybe the note he'd pinned to his pillow had been stupid, but would his parents see it? Probably not. At least not until a servant brought it to them.
When the doors opened next, he walked through them and others flooded on. It brought an itch of a thought to the back of his mind, faded memories of things just happening around Nanny and the gardener. Like broken things not being broken after all.
Maybe, if he wanted to get extra about it, that's what he was looking for. Somebody to look at him and hear his thoughts and not call him broken - or confused. It wasn't confusion that made him feel this way. He just did, and that should be enough.
As Warlock left the station, he kept his head down and dragged his suitcase along. The streets were crowded, but no one kicked his bag or tripped over it or even bumped into him. They were things that had never happened to him, something taken for granted that had only started to seem odd as he'd gotten older and more aware of himself. More aware of the world beyond himself, really.
The address he eventually reached was on a corner, door framed by thick columns and a sign faded with age but still legible. A bookshop. A bookshop that had a Bentley across the street, the old car bringing up faded memories of drives to parks the gardener just happened to be at too. They'd gone to the zoo once.
“You're stalling,” someone said.
Warlock looked up at Nanny, but not. They leaned against the door jamb, eyes masked by dark sunglasses and red hair short and coiffed. Very modern, very slinky, very masculine and yet... There was an air about the person that said they could be whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. It was enviable. Knuckles white on his suitcase, Warlock didn't know if he was angry or happy.
“Leave him be,” another voice piped up, equally familiar but not. The accent was different and, when the ginger was shooed away from the door so it could be opened wider, Warlock saw the teeth were different in his smile. “Hello, young Warlock,” he greeted and it took him several long seconds to say,
“You were the awful magician I had on my eleventh.”
Even though the man's spine seemed to snap straight, the other began to cackle uproariously. Memories again - shared laughter, looks. “I still say his rudeness is entirely your fault, Crowley.”
Crowley. It was Crowley now, not Ashtoreth, and they didn't seem to mind the accusation in the slightest. “Come on in, hellspawn. Let's have a chat.”
“If he has a suitcase,” his friend (partner?) replied quietly, “it's likely to be more than a chat.”
Crowley squeaked and squawked whilst Warlock pretended his ears were clogged the way he did when his parents argued, but they didn't start arguing at all. Instead, he heard, “C'mon, angel, he spent the first eleven years with us. Few more can't hurt.” He was surprised when Crowley angled their head in his direction. “Oi. Still he/him?”
Warlock felt his mouth go dry, the opportunity to make that sort of a choice brand new. “I... think so? I don't really care, though. I guess I'd be okay with any. Just no one's ever tried anything else.”
“Right. So she wants to stay a bit or maybe we find somewhere else for them. Won't be too hard.”
There was a lot in that one sentence to take in, but it didn't feel wrong or strange to hear different pronouns. They were all Warlock. Knowing who they were talking about was enough. Knowing these were the same beings who had loved one another while presenting vastly different from how they did now was enough. There was something freeing in it, something that eased the tight, hot ball of uncertainty in his chest.
Seeing them made it okay, and Warlock hoped to hold onto that no matter what anyone else might say.