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"Is this seat taken?"
The students discreetly guarding Dr Fell saw Dr Crowley glance up from staring into the duckpond. He waved a lazy hand in invitation at the other end of his bench, and Dr Fell seated himself primly, brought out a small bag, and began to feed those same ducks. They all saw the way Dr Crowley turned his head to watch Dr Fell as intently as he had previously been watching the ducks. For his part, Dr Fell seemed oblivious to the other man's gaze, and their voices dropped to a murmur of sporadic small talk, too low for the students to make out the words.
"I wonder if they realise they're reflected in the pond," Crowley muttered, not glancing at the students.
"I doubt it, dear." Aziraphale pitched a pea perfectly under a duck's beak and saw it instantly gobbled up.
Crowley's mouth twitched very slightly upward on the side turned away from the students. "Protective little things, aren't they. Stubborn as anything. Learned it from their professor no doubt."
Aziraphale huffed wordlessly and hurled another pea with more force than aim. His eyes flicked briefly to meet Crowley's through the dark glasses.
"If I dig out that pair of sunglasses shaped like bat-wings, and wear them," Crowley mused, "does that mean I'm batting my eyes at you? Or do I have to dress up in fancy clothes and shiny shoes to do that?"
"Crowley!"
"Whaaaat?"
"If you must know..."
They finished in muted unison, "...it was the crepes."
Crowley looked away, exposing the long line of his neck above the open jacket. "Speaking of which, there's a new cafe in town that's rumoured to do decent crepes, want to try it at the weekend?"
Aziraphale positively lit up at the thought (and the view), forgetting his pose.
Crowley gave him an utterly indulgent smile, leaving at least one of the watching students stunned from the shock of it. "Until we meet again, then," he said, bracing his hands on the seat back and seat arm to push himself upright again. Their next meeting would be tonight, of course, going home together in his car.
"Mind how you go, dear."
Crowley's path to the greenhouse took him through the guarding cluster, and he told them dryly as they scattered out of his way, "Show's over, folks."
***
There were more meetings over the following weeks, all apparently accidental, and the students gradually relaxed about them. Dr Crowley gazed at length, kept his hands to himself, and landed a few dryly witty remarks that made Dr Fell smile, or otherwise light up around him. Clearly Dr Fell knew and liked him back, though the students couldn't think why.
Someone looked them up on the website and discovered that "A.J. Crowley" and "A.Z. Fell" had started at the university about the same time, and both been teaching there for years. Obviously they were long term colleagues, which explained the knowing each other, if not the liking part.
As relaxation set in, the guarding of Dr Fell dwindled away, though all the students kept an eye out for their poor innocent professor, clearly bedazzled by Dr Crowley's attention.
The few who suggested it might be the other way round - that it was Dr Crowley who was bedazzled by Dr Fell's kind attention were brushed off in favour of other rumours and theories. After all, how starved for affection must you be to fall for the first person who offers common, everyday, kindness, the sort that even a stranger gets? It just, the general consensus insists, isn't credible. Dr Crowley is bad, sayeth the rumours, and should be treated as such. The fact that Dr Fell likes him, or at least likes the attention he gets from him, is a point of mild confusion. Clearly, the rumour mill knows better than to be fooled and the students will be there to pick up the pieces when Dr Crowley inevitably reveals whatever nasty trick he's playing.