Chapter Text
5 June
It was raining the day Crowley first met Aziraphale. Not just your typical London drizzle, but a thick, torrential downpour. The kind that seeps through your raincoat and sticks the damp sleeves to your skin. The kind that makes your shoes squeak and squelch on the vinyl tile floor of the hospital hallways.
The very confusing and confounding hospital hallways, which turn you round and round in relentless circles as you desperately try to pull up the bloody blueprints on your phone, which slipped through the gap between your bed and the wall and shattered on impact with the ground last night. Medical school never taught you anything about the complexities of hospital layouts, Crowley realized glumly. It was also a Monday. Crowley loathed Mondays.
He tossed his bland bagel into the trash; it was all damp and smushy and gross, a sickly and disappointing reflection of the soggy London air. It wasn’t even an interesting bagel, just some bland plain cream cheese slathered onto a mulchy, bready surface. A war time ration parading as a bagel. Blegh. He made a mental note to never return to the bagel stand across the street from St. Thomas’s Hospital.
It was like this, hunched over his spider-webbed phone and lamenting the rainstorm of nearly biblical proportions and its unfortunate effects on his first day, that he bumped into something -- some one -- most ungraciously, and nearly dropped his phone again.
“Pardon me,” the man said as he stumbled back a bit, “watch where you’re going, will you? You nearly knocked me over.” He had very light curly hair and very blue eyes and the pretentious aura of superiority dripping off of him and landing in a sour puddle at Crowley’s feet.
Crowley hated him instantly.
“Stay out of my way then, you posh bastard,” he spat.
The man was opening his mouth to say something else in that stupid accent, but Crowley plowed ahead and turned a corner and hoped to God that he hadn’t just mouthed off to one of his superiors. Wouldn’t that be on brand for him, getting fired on his first day as a surgical intern for running his idiot mouth. Shit. Fuck. His wet shoe slipped as he turned another corner and he caught himself heavily on a shelf, elbow smarting and heart pounding and his hopes of ever being good enough slipping down the drain with the rest of the hellish rain.
It was a quick interaction. Fleeting, even. There was no reason for it to lodge itself soundly into a very prominent portion of Crowley’s brain, no reason for it to light up and demand such attention.
But it was raining, the day Crowley first met Aziraphale, and it would continue to rain for a while yet.
Finally having found the intern locker room, Crowley burst through the door just as -- fucking hell, the chief of surgery -- began to speak to the gathering of attentive interns. The door banged shut behind Crowley and he felt his face twist into a grimace as the entire room shifted their focus onto him.
“Thank you for joining us,” the chief said, his words so dry they were parched, and Crowley felt something drop like a brick into the bottom of his stomach. His career, most likely. “As I was saying,” the chief continued, (Doctor Gabriel, Crowley reminded himself, an expert in neurosurgery, and the man who essentially held Crowley’s future in his very skilled, very steady, very intimidating hands), “this won’t be an easy job. It requires work, dedication, and punctuality.” Doctor Gabriel stressed this last word and punctuated it with a heavy pause, broken only by a few stifled snickers. Crowley was fairly sure the tips of his ears matched his fiery red hair by that point.
“This is real life. You’re not in school anymore. You had the grades, and the extracurriculars, and the stunning ability to pass your multiple choice exams.”
Another pause. Big fan of the dramatics, Crowley thought. And sarcasm.
“But med school is like child’s play compared to this. You will fail and you will fall, and no one’s gonna be here to hold your hand through it. Believe me when I tell you, you’ve never felt as alone as you will for the next year of this internship. Because your peers, standing next to you here today? They want you to fail. They want you to fall. Because you won’t all succeed. In fact, none of you might succeed, and when you don’t, it will be on you, nobody else. No more professors to walk you step by step through a lab. No more extra credit opportunities to save your tanking GPA, okay?” He smiled, a wide, ugly thing that split his cold face harshly, unnaturally, and clasped his hands together. “With that being said, welcome to St. Thomas’s surgical internship program!”
What a pleasant man, Crowley decided as he made his way across the room to his locker. The thick anxiety in the air nearly stuck to him, and he hurriedly changed out of his soaked clohes and into his scrubs as the rest of the interns broke out into nervous chatter.
His first day was off to a flaming, dumpster fire of a start. He’d gotten drenched, blew five pounds on a shitty bagel, had a newly broken phone to deal with, got lost, ran headlong into a very pompous man, and was late to the introductory speech by the literal chief of surgery. And it was a bloody Monday.
Crowley made his way to the back of the hoard of interns as they began the trek down the hall, chittering excitedly about who their assigned resident would be. His shoes continued to squelch and left a muddy trail of London rainwater in his wake. Why didn’t he think to bring a change of shoes, like everyone else evidently had? He kept his gaze fixed downwards as they continued to walk, and tried not to think about the long fourteen hour shift ahead of him.
He really was insane, wasn’t he, for thinking he could do this. Luke had always told him so and his mum had always agreed, the way she always did with Luke. She’d cling to his rough hands that stamped dark blue splotches onto her pale canvas, and would nod her head almost violently when Luke told Crowley he was too thick to be a doctor.
But he’d made it this far, hadn’t he?
Besides, best to not think about his mum. Look where Luke had gotten her, alone and confused with no one but her 'thick' son to take care of her.
After a few more confounding twists and turns down the hallways, (who designed this hell of a maze, anyway?) they came to a stop before a woman with a clipboard held firmly in her grasp and hair cut relatively short, slicked back at the sides, and piled up in a perfect nest of brunette curls upon her head. She stood with her back so stiff she was nearly bent backwards. Everything about her screamed discipline and order, and Crowley was momentarily so distracted by her rigidity that he didn’t realize she was speaking.
“With Doctor Taylor, I have Martin, Jones, Fernsby, and Lewis. With Doctor Evans, I have Sallow, Wilson, Clark, and Miller. And with me, I have Uriel, Dagon, Sandalphon, Fell, and Crowley,” she said.
The group of interns split into their respective groups at her command, and Crowley hoped he could at least make a good first impression on her, if not Doctor Gabriel. Good first impressions were important, and he was severely lacking in them historically. He lifted his chin and straightened his back a bit, to match his resident’s; his mum always whinged about his slouching. He set his jaw and began to walk towards her. She looked like someone who appreciated professionalism, maturity, and respect. Crowley could do that, no matter what Gabriel or anyone else thought. He’d graduated first in his class in med school, he wasn’t above a bit of arse kissing.
He was opening his mouth, a greeting on his tongue and about to raise his arm for a firm handshake, when someone stepped in front of him and fucking beat him to it. Crowley recognized the pale curly hair, and could do nothing but stare.
“Doctor Michael!” The pretentious prick from earlier said, his voice a pitch higher than before and laced with something that made Crowley’s stomach turn. It was unbearable. “I’m Doctor Fell, and I’d just like to tell you that I’m honored to be working with you.”
Of course. Of course he was also an intern, and of course he was assigned to the same resident as Crowley, and of course he beat him to the stupid handshake. Because if there was one thing that Crowley was absolutely, positively, one hundred percent certain of, it was that God hated him.
Crowley found quiet consolation in the slight curl of Doctor Michael’s lip and the look she gave Fell, as if he was dirt on her pristine scrubs, or a brunette curl out of place.
“First thing’s first,” she said, “there will be no arse kissing.”
There went that plan, then.
“There will be no resident’s pets. I’m not your friend, I’m a fifth year resident, so you can imagine I have more important things to do with my time than spend it with a band of interns that don’t know their arse from their elbow. Each of you, take a clipboard.” She handed them each a clipboard with a packet of information attached to it; some rules and more in depth details on their schedules, Crowley determined after a quick skim through. A map. Thank fuck.
“After me, then,” Doctor Michael said, and started off at a brisk walk away from the front desk they’d been congregated at and began to lead them down a hallway, spouting off rules and hospital policies and loads and loads of things Crowley tried to pay attention to.
Answer your pager immediately. Fill the boat. Eat when you can. Sleep when you can. Don’t suck up to Doctor Michael. For that matter, don’t suck up to anyone, because you’re an intern and, therefore, the absolute bottom of the hospital hierarchy. Ant, boot, all that. No one likes you, unless you're that intern from last year, Doctor Wong, who pulled off his first appendectomy without a hitch. God, wasn’t he great? He could suck up to people and no one minded. Everyone missed Doctor Wong.
Crowley thought that Doctor Wong did other kinds of sucking to Doctor Michael, too.
He paid close attention to the room numbers and signs throughout the tour; he wasn’t planning on humiliating himself by getting lost again. Trauma center on the first floor, next to the ER. Cardiology on the second floor along with the ICU. Neurology, Gynecology, Oncology, Radiology, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
As the tour drew on, Crowley felt himself grow a bit more relaxed. The layout wasn’t that confusing now that he wasn’t drenched and confused, and while Doctor Michael came off rather harsh at first, she didn’t seem all that bad. She certainly knew her stuff, which was all Crowley could really ask for. As an added bonus, Doctor Fell seemed thoroughly embarrassed by his unsuccessful introduction and had been keeping his pretentious mouth shut.
Things were going so smoothly, in fact, that Crowley nearly forgot why he was there.
“Right,” Doctor Michael said once they circled back to the front desk. “Doctor Fell, you’ll be on Doctor Bee’s service today. Doctor Uriel, you’re on scut. Don’t make that face at me. Doctor Crowley, you’re on Doctor Hastur’s service, and Doctor Dagon and Doctor Sandalphon, you’re both with me. Don’t embarrass me on your first day. Or any day, for that matter. Alright?”
Crowley blinked a few times. Doctor Hastur. General surgery, right? Or maybe trauma. No, he was pretty sure that he was general. But it could be--
“What are you all just standing staring at me for? Lives need saving! Go!”
Feeling a bit like a school child who’d just received a sharp rap on the knuckles, Crowley stumbled off down the hallway that he was fairly certain led to the general surgery wing of the hospital.
Doctor Hastur reminded Crowley a bit of a lizard. He had dark eyes and hair a bit like hay, and his hands were so dry they were scaly. He barely looked up when Crowley approached him at the desk where he was doing some sort of paperwork.
“You’re my intern for today?” Doctor Hastur asked.
“Yes, sir,” said Crowley.
Doctor Hastur looked up, then, and tossed the paperwork onto the desk. “You’re late,” he said, “this paperwork is your job, not mine.”
“Oh, right, sorry, I was just -- I came as fast as I could, I mean, it’s my first day and Doctor Michael just finished the tour,” Crowley said, vaguely gesturing in the direction he’d just come from.
Doctor Hastur stood and was far taller than Crowley expected. “When your patient dies,” he began, “and you have to tell their family it was because you were late because of a tour, how do you think they’ll feel?”
Crowley resisted the petulant urge to cross his arms. “When my patient dies and I have to tell their family I was late because I was lost, how do you think they’ll feel?”
Doctor Hastur’s face twisted into what Crowley could only describe as a snarl, and it would’ve been a bit funny if he wasn’t so terrifying, standing at full height with those dark eyes and a considerable amount of power at this hospital.
“You’ll be on my service all week,” he said. Crowley considered keeping his mouth shut in the future.
Crowley made it through the paperwork relatively easily. It was just some discharge forms, anyway, and after asking one of the nurses near the station a few clarifying questions, it was smooth sailing. The nurse had been kind, really the only kind person Crowley had met so far that day. He found he liked her quite a lot, which wasn’t exactly a common occurrence for him. He really tried to steer clear of the overarching human race, unless they needed immediate medical attention, obviously.
The nurse had said her name was Anathema Device which was a bit of a mouthful, and asked Crowley to just call her Anathema. She said that hospitals were already cold and distant enough as it was, so she preferred patients and everyone else using her first name. Crowley thought that she was lovely. She sat next to him, doing some paperwork of her own and babbling about any old thing. Everyone in her family had been doctors, but the pressure had been too much for her and she’d dropped out of med school, getting a degree in nursing instead and moving to London to get some space from her parents.
“I’m sort of the black sheep of the family,” she said. “Bit of a let down.”
Crowley knew how she felt all too well. “Rubbish,” he said with a shake of his head. “Nurses are the glue of the hospital. They couldn’t do it without you.”
She nudged him with her elbow, a bit of a smirk in her voice as she said, “Well, clearly you couldn't, anyway, you didn’t even know where to deliver the discharge forms.”
“Cheeky.”
“Thanks, though. That does mean a lot. Some of the doctors here act like we’re invisible.”
“That Doctor Hastur seems like a right prick,” Crowley said as he flipped a page. “I’m on his service all week.”
Anathema grimaced in sympathy. “Yikes. How did you manage that?”
“I may have talked back to him.”
“Great start to the day.”
“Can only go up from here, right?”
Anathema laughed and stood, joints popping in rapid succession. Crowley distantly thought of twisting bubble wrap at Christmas. “You’re cute,” she said. “I’ve got to go check on some patients, but I bid you farewell and good luck. Hope to see you around!” She gave a smile, the kind that reached every corner of her face, and maybe even reached Crowley, too, if the faint tightening of his cheeks were anything to go by. It had been awhile since he last smiled, but he continued to do so as he made his way through the last of the paperwork, and realized he’d just made a friend.
As soon as he finished the discharge papers and handed them off to the nurses’ station, Crowley began his hunt for Doctor Hastur. He hadn’t seen him for the past hour or so, since he left him with the stack of paperwork, but figured he had to still be around here somewhere. None of the nurses had seen him, and when Crowley ran into one of the other interns -- Doctor Uriel, he was pretty sure -- he was rudely brushed off as Uriel muttered something about some labs she needed to collect. The hospital suddenly felt much bigger and Crowley felt much younger. He figured he ought to go find Doctor Michael, then.
After getting turned around once or twice, Crowley found her in the pit, examining a patient and being flanked by two wide eyed interns; Dagon and Sandalphon, although he wasn’t sure which was which. He suddenly saw just why they were so wide eyed, and forgot his question until Doctor Michael snapped at him, too busy staring at the butter knife sticking out of the patient’s thigh.
“Doctor Crowley,” she repeated, and Crowley forced himself to look away. “The aquarium is a five minute walk down the street, if you’re going to continue to stand there with your mouth gaping open like a bloody fish.”
“Er,” he began, “Do you know where Doctor Hastur is? I just, I can’t find him, only, and-”
“You’ve lost your attending,” she cut him off flatly. Crowely tried to ignore the familiar, disappointed tone of her voice, tried to push those thoughts of his mother deep, deep down into the crevices of his mind until they became dusty and layered in cobwebs.
“Looks that way,” he said.
She rolled her eyes and turned back to the patient, but relented. “I believe he had a colectomy scheduled around this time. Check the OR, and if he’s not there or anywhere else you’ve looked, he might be in the break room.”
“Oh,” Crowley said, a bit shocked at the lack of belittlement or yelling. Although, he supposed she’d been in his place once too, despite how difficult that was to imagine. “Right. Thanks.”
“Don’t embarrass me, Crowley,” she called out after him as he left.
“Right,” he called back over his shoulder, and stepped onto the elevator.
The doors were nearly shut when a hand flung itself into their path, forcing them back open. Unfortunately, there was a person attached to that hand and, even more unfortunately, it was Doctor Fell. He froze for just a moment as their eyes met and Crowely could see the disdain pass over his face like a curtain blocking out the light in a room. Good. At least they were on the same page, then.
Doctor Fell pushed floor five as the doors slid firmly shut, this time. “Lost your attending, did you?” He asked.
Christ, Crowley couldn’t stand the prick. Of course he had to overhear. Crowley clenched his fingers around his clipboard until his bones ground together and the plastic creaked. Something hot and fierce crept up his neck, blossoming in his cheeks, rushing down his arms, and pulsing in his throat so violently he nearly choked. He took a breath, and another, but the fire only cooled when he stepped off that bloody elevator and heard the doors shut behind him.