Across The Hall

Chapter 3

It had not been a great first day for the new teacher. The students all seemed bored by him, and he had a feeling they would not become more interested in what he had to say when he began to teach them about classic literature.

So far, the only potentially good thing about this new job was the teacher across the hall from him, Mr. Anthony J. Crowley, as he had introduced himself. He did not look like a teacher; in fact, Aziraphale was pretty sure he was breaking some of the school's dress codes on a daily basis. He always seemed to wear sunglasses and all-black, tight clothes that left little to the imagination.

When Anthony had made fun of him for his name Aziraphale had immediately jumped to the conclusion that his appearance matched his personality, and it was just a fluke that he had been kind enough to help him with his books. He probably pitied him, that was all. But, when he went back to his flat that night and thought it over, he decided that maybe he had been too hasty with his initial instinct to become icy. He would give the man another chance. And if he was rude again, well, that would be that.

However, he was not rude again. He brought him an apple. Showed him kindness in a time when no one else seemed apt to, all too wrapped up in their own affairs (not that he particularly blamed them, as he was quite preoccupied with his thoughts as well). And Anthony had even carved a little heart into it, how adorable was that!?

But Aziraphale was still wary of the other gentleman. He had not fully proven himself to be a good person. But, when he came into the new teacher's classroom again, on the second day of school, he began to feel less doubtful of the man.

This time he knocked on the opened door, thrice. "G'mornin'," he said as he peaked his head into the room.

"Ah! Hello again, Anthony! To what do I owe the pleasure?" Aziraphale asked, trying to sound calm.

"I jus' wanted to see how you were doing. How did your first day go, yesterday?" he asked, sauntering into the classroom, with his hands presumably clasped behind his back.

Aziraphale sighed, "Lousy. I'm afraid I've been rather spoiled by the students from my old small-town school who all knew who I was and were excited to have me as a teacher," he laughed sheepishly, looking up at the tall man.

"Ah, 'm sorry to hear it," he said, sounding genuinely sorry. Aziraphale made a mental note of this; the man had sympathy for the toils of others. "Hopefully your day will be better today," he said while placing another apple on Aziraphale's desk. Without another word or even a mention of his gift, he strolled back out of the classroom.

"Thank you!" Aziraphale called after him.

He lifted up a hand in a small wave but did not turn around.

Aziraphale picked up the apple, but kept his smiling eyes staring after Anthony until he was out of view fully into his own classroom. When he turned to look at the apple his expression morphed into one of confusion. Why on Earth had he carved a seven into it?

~×~

Anthony continued to visit Aziraphale's classroom at the beginning of every day, bearing the gift of a numbered apple and the promise of some delightful small talk. The new teacher was glad to have a sort of acquaintance who brought him delicious apples (he would never say no to food), but he was perplexed by the seemingly random string of numbers that were carved into them.

He had been jotting them down on a sticky note on his desk, just in case they would be important for later. So far, they just seemed meaningless. Aziraphale had tried corresponding them to the order of the letters in the alphabet, but he came up with far too many F's for it to be a word. Maybe it was in another language? He certainly hoped not, his German was fading from memory, Italian was a blur, Spanish was quite rusty, and to be honest he had never gotten the hang of French. He was still decent in Latin, though, but he doubted Mr. Crowley would be leaving him a coded message in a dead language. Furthermore, he was bad with computers and could not, for the life of him, figure out how to use Google Translate (in fact, he considered it an accomplishment that he even knew it existed).