Chapter Text
Crowley has just miracled Warlock's eighteenth birthday card to him when his phone rings. "Yeah?"
"Nanny?" comes the hesitant young voice, cracking a little on the words, "it's Warlock. Can I- Can I still come home?"
"Warlock!" His voice warms and softens into Ashtoreth's accent. Across the room, Aziraphale catches the name and turns, his own face brightening. "Where are you? I'll pick you up."
"Ohhh." Warlock's voice is definitely shaky as he explains when he's arriving at Heathrow, ending with the hesitancy of a child who has learned that adults don't mean what they say, "If you're quite sure."
"My darling boy," Crowley tells him, gentle as only he can be, "there is a room here for you for as long as you need it. I should warn you that both Brother Francis and I look rather different these days..."
"Don't care, as long as you're you." Another hesitation. "I tried to look you up by name, but nothing showed on the search... Do you have another name I should use?"
"It's actually A.J. Crowley," Crowley tells him. "Ashtoreth when I present female, Anthony when I present male. But I'm Crowley all the time, and that's what most people call me."
"So I shouldn't call you Nanny?"
"Nanny is a title, not a gender. From you, Nanny is fine too."
"Ok. Look, I - I have to go. Boarding."
"Mind how you go, little hellspawn," Crowley murmurs, and the connection ends. He looks up at Aziraphale. "He wants, quote, to 'come home', angel," and Crowley's own voice cracks now that he isn't being strong for the boy.
Aziraphale smiles. "Then," he says, "we'll give him one, you and I."
***
Warlock drags his luggage off the belt and steps out into the arrivals lounge, already bracing himself for disappointment. He reaches up with his spare hand to clutch the charms he wears, and looks around. We look rather different these days Nanny had said on the phone, but she had sounded the same. He looks rather different himself, it's been seven years after all. But then he catches a glimpse of red hair and sunglasses and a black clad arm waving, and his heart aches suddenly.
He drags himself and his luggage across the floor, and Nanny's there, right there, with red hair drawn back in a simple ponytail and different glasses, and jeans, and a neat jacket, and looking - yes, different - but still ineffably Nanny. Casual female presentation, he notes, so she/her pronouns and Ashtoreth. They're the same height now, and Warlock hesitates, swallowing hard as if that will beat down the fears and tears choking him.
Nanny says simply, "Welcome home," and it's enough to make the tears prickle against his eyelids again.
Then the man beside Nanny makes a small sound, and he doesn't look like Brother Francis except for those kind, changeable, eyes, but he's smiling, and he holds out his arms. Warlock drops everything else and sinks into the embrace, because Brother Francis still gives the best hugs in the world. (Nanny cares deeply, he knows, but she's never been much of a hugger.) Brother Francis holds him tight while Nanny rubs a gloved hand up and down Warlock's back, the way she did when he was a small boy waking from a nightmare, and he clings to their comfort for an endless moment before he pulls back and whispers hoarsely, "Thank you."
***
And around them, the world turns onward, because a young man being met and hugged by a mixed-gender couple looking the right age to be his parents isn't remarkable enough for anyone to notice. Even if they are an angel, and a demon, and a once-thought-antichrist, who turned out to be human in the end.