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“What’s this?”
“What’s what?” Aziraphale pokes his head out from behind a shelf. “Oh. Crowley, keep out of my desk.”
“D’you know you have letters in here from fifty years ago?”
“Older than that, I’m sure. Now stop it.”
Crowley spins around in the desk chair and gives him a wicked grin. “Why? Is this where you save your love letters?”
Aziraphale rolls his eyes and disappears into the shelves again, calling over his shoulder, “Nosy.”
“Demon,” Crowley calls back. “It’s in the job description.”
“I’m not sure nosiness is a sin, it’s just very irritating.”
“Then it wouldn’t be angelic to hold it against me,” Crowley says. “Checkmate. Ooh, what’s this.”
Aziraphale, presumably thinking that if Crowley doesn’t get a reaction he’ll stop causing mischief, doesn’t respond. Crowley, thinking that if he doesn’t get a reaction he’d better cause more mischief until he does, takes the little velvet box out of the desk and weighs it in his hand. “This is jewelry,” he accuses.
“Put that back,” Aziraphale says, suddenly right behind him.
“Why, what is it?” Crowley asks innocently, and opens the box.
Aziraphale steps forward and sweeps it out of his hand. “Leave it,” he says, and goes to snap the box closed, and stops when Crowley puts out a hand to catch the lid.
“A ring,” Crowley says, stupidly. It’s a dramatic thing, too, a big, square, deep blue stone held in a sharp-pronged setting of black metal. “What are you–-” A possibility dawns on him, one that would explain both the ring and Aziraphale’s strange self-consciousness about it, and he draws his hand back and says, “Oh. Your angel ring-– I suppose you do need a replacement.”
“Mm,” Aziraphale says.
“The blue’s a good color for you. Bit flashy, though, isn’t it? I wouldn’t have pictured you wearing it.”
Aziraphale gives him a long, unreadable look, and then regards the ring. “No, I suppose not,” he says. “You don’t like it?”
“I didn’t say that. I like flashy.” Crowley tips his head to one side. “I’m just surprised you like it. More my style than yours.”
“Your size, too,” Aziraphale says, and shuts the box with a snap.
“Oh, well–-” Crowley starts, and then, “Wait.”
“Not that it matters, really. Resizing a ring, barely even a miracle, if you don’t like it I could always-–”
“Wait,” Crowley says again, more urgently. He’s suddenly very glad he’s already sitting down. Your size. If you don’t like it. “That’s-– it’s for me?”
Aziraphale leans on the desk and puts a hand over his face. “This is not going the way I planned,” he says, muffled, and then looks up again and says, “Of course it’s for you. Who else do you think I’d buy a great ostentatious thing like that for?”
“Angel.” Crowley wets his lips, realizes his tongue has gone forked (it happens, under stress), and hastily pulls it back, hoping Aziraphale didn’t notice. “Is this-– are you asking me-–”
“Well, not now,” Aziraphale says. “I mean-– oh, Crowley, I told you to leave it alone, now you’ve ruined it.”
“Yes, but ruined what,” Crowley insists, aware that his tone is verging on hysterical and not caring.
“Crowley-–”
“You have to say it.” Or I won’t believe it. He reaches out and catches Aziraphale’s free hand, tugs him closer, wanting to reach for the box but holding himself back. “Please, I need you to say it.”
Aziraphale shuts his eyes for a long moment, breathing deeply. Just as Crowley’s wondering whether he’s finally pushed too far he opens them again, and his gaze pins Crowley to the chair.
“I won’t ask you to marry me,” he says quietly, which is crushing for the split-second before he carries on, “I rather think we already are, in the ways that matter. And anyway it’s a sacrament, I’d be worried the whole time that you might catch fire.”
Crowley makes a faint, inarticulate noise, which he means as both don’t be ridiculous and I’d do it anyway, for you.
“I know, my dear. But I-– what I mean-– I do want to ask-–” Aziraphale breaks off, and gives him a look that’s at once anguished and irritated and very, very fond. “This is your fault, you know, I had a whole speech written out, it was going to be very romantic-– Crowley, stay with me. Always.”
Crowley gets up so quickly that the chair goes over backward. “Yes,” he says, low, urgent, reaching out to catch Aziraphale by the waist and backing him into the desk, kissing him. “Yes, I will, I will-–”
They miss their dinner reservation. Fortunately-– miraculously, in fact-– there’s a table free anyway when they turn up an hour late, Aziraphale’s hair still a little mussed and the deep blue stone sparking bright on Crowley’s finger.