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Mr. Anthony J. Crowley was the sixth grade science teacher, and beloved by his students.
He made projects fun, did tons of really cool labs, and his tests were super easy. He was the type of teacher the students would come to during lunch and ask questions about other classes. He kept random plants at his desk, always wore sunglasses, and would never hesitate to call someone out if they did something wrong in the funniest way possible. His class motto was, “Failure is fine as long as you can make it right”.
Mr. Aziraphale Z. Fell was a seventh grade English teacher. His students also loved him because he was wise and funny. He was nice, simple, polite, and let students ask him personal questions as they put little bows in his white curls during free periods. He wore tartan bowties, blazers, and tartan socks.
The two teachers were complete opposites.
“Mr. Fell,” a seventh grade girl asked one day, “do you have a girlfriend?”
“No, Maggie, I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Oh.” Maggie grabbed another little pink bow and clipped it to Mr. Fell’s blazer. “Do…do you have a boyfriend?”
Mr. Fell smiled. “Actually, I do. He’s quite lovely.”
Maggie and the two girls she was with, Tracy and Mary, immediately started asking Mr. Fell questions about this mysterious boyfriend.
“Is he hot?” Mary asked.
“By my standards.”
“What does he do for work?” Tracy questioned.
“He helps make an impact on our future.”
Tracy raised her eyebrows. “That’s very vague, Mr. Fell.”
“What about me is clear, Tracy?”
Tracy shrugged. “Fair.”
Tracy and Mary left to go grab a few more bows, leaving a decorated Mr. Fell with the sweet Maggie.
“I have a secret,” Maggie whispered to her English teacher. “I…I have a crush on Nina.”
Mr. Fell smiled at the girl. “Nina? She’s a lovely lady. Would you like for me to rearrange the seating chart to put the two of you next to each other?”
Maggie blushed and nodded.
Word spread around quickly about Mr. Fell’s mysterious boyfriend. By the end of the week, all of the seventh grade and half of the sixth and eighth grades knew about him. Mr. Fell started mentioning his boyfriend more and more in class.
“Mr. Fell, where did you get that pen set?” a boy only known by his last name, Shadwell, queried one day.
“My boyfriend gave it to me,” Mr. Fell replied.
The class silently took a mental note of that to add it to the list of time Mr. Fell mentioned his boyfriend.
Soon, the entire sixth grade had heard about the boyfriend of a teacher they had not had yet.
“Mr. Crowley?” A boy named Adam asked one day in Homeroom. “Did you know that Mr. Fell has a boyfriend?”
“A boyfriend?” Mr. Crowley repeated. “I hope he and his boyfriend are doing well. I don’t see Mr. Fell much during meetings, but we have lunch sometimes. You all are in for a treat next year with him. They say he’s my opposite.”
“My next-door neighbor Anathema told me about Mr. Fell’s boyfriend,” Adam whispered to his friend Brian. “She said that he won’t stop talking about him now that the secret is out.”
“He’s going to be blabbering our ears off next year then, I bet.”
Adam and Brian laughed, and Mr. Crowley couldn’t help but chuckle.
Wensleydale was walking into a bookstore with his mother.
He knew Adam, Pepper, and Brian were all probably hanging out in Adam’s backyard at that time, but apparently his mother needed a book for her workplace. Why they had to go on a Friday afternoon, he didn’t understand.
“You have enough copies of every single Jane Austen book,” Wensleydale heard a voice say. “We don’t need another edition of Pride and Prejudice.”
“But this one’s yellow,” a second voice protested. “It’s pretty.”
The first voice sighed. “Fine. But we came here for a book on Astronomy, and that’s what we’re getting.”
“You have so many of those Astronomy books, I’d think you were cheating on me with someone like Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson.”
Wensleydale peeked into the Classics section to see Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley holding hands. Mr. Fell held a fancy edition of a book, and was turning it around.
“Mr. Crowley, you know he’s dating someone?” Wensleydale asked.
The two teachers turned to look at Wensleydale. Confusion crossed both of their faces.
“Mr. Fell has a boyfriend,” Wensleydale pointed out.
Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley stared at Wensleydale, dazed. Mr. Crowley opened his mouth to speak when Wensleydale’s mother interrupted.
“Jeremy, we’re heading out!” She grabbed her son’s hand, ignoring the two bewildered teachers.
Wensleydale had to tell his friends about this.
“Mr. Fell is cheating on his boyfriend,” Adam whispered to Anathema after his friends had left.
Anathema gaped at Adam. “No way.”
“My friend saw him! He was holding hands with Mr. Crowley of all people,” Adam told Anathema.
“Mr. Crowley?” Anathema repeated. “Why?”
“I don’t know, but I feel bad for Mr. Fell’s boyfriend. Imagine getting cheated on by Mr. Fell of all people with Mr. Crowley.”
Anathema snorted. That night, she told her crush Newton, who told Shadwell, and it only got worse from there.
Mr. Fell had an idea about what Wensleydale would do. He knew the power of tweens and teens. Mr. Crowley, however, schemed over the weekend. (“Just in case”, he told Mr. Fell.)
Mr. Crowley had a free period just after lunch period, and Mr. Fell had a lunch meeting. Normally, Mr. Fell would pack a small lunch to snack on for the rest of the afternoon, but he suddenly, “accidentally” forgot.
“Now, Mercutio starts talking about Queen Mab in this section. Does anyone know what Queen Mab is?” Mr. Fell asked, holding up his copy of Romeo and Juliet. The kids were slightly more patient after lunch, but Mr. Fell was not.
A knock suddenly sounded on the door. Mr. Fell walked up to the door and swung it open to see Mr. Crowley holding a brown paper bag.
“You forgot your lunch at home, so I brought this for you,” Mr. Crowley walked in and sat the bag on Mr. Fell’s desk. “What’s going on in here, angel?”
“We’re reading Mercutio’s monologue about Queen Mab, dear,” Mr. Fell explained. He blushed. “You read this, didn’t you?”
“Oh, I read tons of Shakespeare for school. Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so many more,” Mr. Crowley turned to the class. “You all better get used to that man.”
Mr. Fell gave Mr. Crowley a quick kiss on the cheek, and the whole class gasped.
“Mr. Fell?” Anathema raised her hand. “Are you cheating on your boyfriend with Mr. Crowley?”
Mr. Crowley turned to Mr. Fell with fake shock. “You’re cheating on me? With me? How is that possible?”
“You didn’t know? I think Mr. Crowley is very handsome, so I’m leaving you for him,” Mr. Fell broke out into laughter. “Mr. Crowley is my boyfriend!” he announced to the class.
Every single student’s jaw fell open. Mr. Crowley gave Mr. Fell a quick peck on the cheek as the class devolved into chaos.
“You’re dating Mr. Crowley?” Newt asked.
“I think we’re all a little bit dumb,” Maggie admitted.
Anathema just sat there in shock.
As the class died down, Mr. Fell took out a couple of biscuits and started munching on them.
“Well, the next period is starting soon, so I must get back to the science building,” Mr. Crowley sighed. “Love you, angel, and good class.” Mr. Crowley walked out of the room.
“Love you too, dear!” Mr. Fell shouted. He chuckled. “He’s a lovely man.”
“How long have you two been dating?” Nina asked.
“A couple years, give or take. We became friends in university, and apparently had a crush on each other for almost a decade and a half,” Mr. Fell answered.
Maggie snorted. “I could never imagine that.” Mr. Fell only winked in response.
The next period, students were crowding Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley about their relationship to each other.
They would never admit it, but both teachers were very pleased by the ability to talk about each other all class period.
Christmas break came and went, and everyone returned back to school tired and upset.
Well, everyone, expect two teachers.
Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley both came back to school, holding hands, with big smiles on their faces.
“You’re happier than normal,” Pepper remarked as Mr. Crowley sat down in Homeroom. “Which isn’t really saying much.”
“Can a teacher not find a little joy in life?” Mr. Crowley retorted back.
The announcements sounded on the speakers overhead.
“Good morning students! Today is Monday, January 5th, and welcome back from Christmas vacation! We hope everyone had a nice and relaxing break. Over the break, we had one birthday, Mr. Hastur Maggot. We would also like to congratulate Mr. Crowley and Mr. Fell on their engagement!”
The homeroom looked from the speaker to Mr. Crowley, who smirked at the kids. The class started clapping.
“Do you have a ring?” Brian asked.
Mr. Crowley walked from behind his desk to the desks where the kids were sitting. The group crowded around their teacher. Mr. Crowley placed his hand with his ring on the table.
“So Mr. Fell proposed to you?” Adam looked up to ask Mr. Crowley.
“He did, but I was actually planning to propose that same night,” Mr. Crowley answered. “He also has an engagement ring.”
The rest of that day was filled with “Congratulations” from students and faculty members to both teachers. Even Principal Archer himself congratulated Mr. Crowley and Mr. Fell at lunch.
Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley were happy.
The next school year started way too quickly. The year seemed to slip by, with August peeking in.
It was never expected when Adam walked back into his sixth grade Science class for seventh grade, but he was greeted by his same sixth grade Science teacher.
“Mr. Crowley? Are you teaching seventh grade this year?” Adam asked.
“Just one seventh grade Science class,” The red-head teacher responded. “I don’t enjoy Life science nearly as much as I do Earth and Space science, but I think I’ll be able to manage.”
As the first bell rang, the new seventh grade kids shuffled into their seats. Besides for a couple new students, everyone was glad to see a familiar face for their first class.
“Now, you all might be thinking, ‘Mr. Crowley? What are you doing here?’, and to that I say, I’m no longer the fun and cool Mr. Crowley from sixth grade you all knew.”
The class held their breath.
“I’m the fun and cool Mr. Crowley-Fell for seventh grade!” Mr. Crowley(-Fell) announced.
The class cheered.
“You got married?” Wensleydale asked.
Mr. Crowley grinned and showed the class his wedding ring. “I have a husband! I’m married! To Mr. Fell!”
“So is his last name also Crowley-Fell or is that just you?” Brian queried.
“Both of our last names are technically Crowley-Fell, but you can still call me Mr. Crowley and him Mr. Fell. Or you can call him Mr. Fell-Crowley and me Mr. Crowley-Fell. Or Mr. FC and Mr. CF.”
“I can’t believe you got married,” Wensleydale stated.
“Says the one who saw me with Mr. Fell and immediately thought he was cheating on some other man.”
In Mr. Fell's class, he was announcing the same news to his group of students.
Throughout the first week of school, the newly wed Crowley-Fells got a number of congratulations.
“Congrats Mr. Fell!” Maggie said as she passed by her old English teacher’s room.
“I’m so happy for the both of you,” Anathema and Newt told Mr. Crowley.
“I never thought I would see the day,” Principal Archer told the couple as he passed by them eating lunch. “Congratulations on the wedding. But don’t let it interfere with work.”
“Are you ever going to ask out my old friend that you met at the wedding?” Mr. Crowley had asked. “Bee doesn’t like being pushed aside.”
Principal Archer only blushed and walked away.
And, of course, the seventh grade kids could not help but carry messages between the two teachers.
It was nice. The teachers liked talking about each other to the students, and the students liked hearing about the teachers.
“Do you ever regret it?”
Crowley and Aziraphale were sitting in their cottage, watching some movie they found.
“Regret what?” Aziraphale asked.
“Regret making our relationship so known. Sure, I mean, the kids are great, but we made some parents very upset. And some kids won’t talk to us about anything but the other,” Crowley admitted.
“Crowley, we are kind of a pair. You don’t get one without the other. And I like talking about you.” Aziraphale rested his head on his husband’s shoulder.
“I do too, it’s just…some kids come into my tutorial period just to talk about you when some kids actually need help studying or with homework. And I know you’re the type to be very punctual about helping kids out, whereas I’m the chill and laidback one.”
“I do get the same thing. But, I don’t ever regret making our relationship known. Except those few days where everyone thought I was cheating on you with you.”
Crowley laughed and kissed Aziraphale.
“Another reason I’m glad we’re out is that we helped Maggie admit her feelings to Nina,” Aziraphale said.
“That was all you,” Crowley protested.
Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. “I said before, we’re a package deal.” He paused for a second.“I’m glad we get to be us.”
Crowley smiled. He did that a lot more these days. “I’m glad too.”