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It doesn’t start out sounding like trouble. It starts out with Aziraphale asking innocently how the wedding planning is going, and Anathema letting out an agonized groan and saying, “Don’t, it’s so stressful and at the same time it’s so boring, trust me, if you ever get married just elope.”
Crowley, recipient of several minor awards for infernal contributions to the wedding planning industry, makes an unconvincing sympathetic noise. Aziraphale makes a more sincere one, and then says, “I am glad we don’t need to worry about it. Unless we do some sort of vow renewal, I suppose.”
Anathema blinks at them. “You’re already-–? Huh. For how long?”
“Gosh,” Aziraphale says, “nearly two thousand years now,” at the same time as Crowley says, “1966, was it?”
There’s a brief silence, during which Anathema diplomatically vanishes into the kitchen, muttering something about a fresh pot of tea. Aziraphale says, “Please tell me you don’t mean the year 1966.”
“‘Course I do,” Crowley protests. “Masquerade ball thingy. One of your writer friends threw it. You were mad for it, you said it reminded you of the fifteenth century.”
“I do miss those masked balls,” Aziraphale says, wistfully. “No, of course I remember the party. You wore the loveliest dress, and you got absolutely sloshed. So drunk you forgot how to sober up. But-– a wedding, Crowley?”
“Well, not at the party, obviously. After. The details are a little...” He pauses, suddenly alarmed, and says urgently, “That was you I left with, wasn’t it? I mean-– masks-–”
“Good grief, of course, I wasn’t letting you go off alone,” Aziraphale says. “Not in the state you were in. Anyway, everyone there wanted to be seen, the masks were mostly just decoration.”
“Right,” Crowley says, casting back in his rather blurry memories of the night. “Right. Yours was lace, I do remember that. White lace.”
“I can’t imagine you remember much else.”
“They brought out trays of spaghetti and meatballs at midnight and I thought it was the happiest I’d ever seen you.”
Aziraphale goes pink and says, “Well, one can’t drink all night on an empty stomach.”
Crowley grins at him, though it comes off more indulgent than teasing. “Very sensible,” he says. “Anyway, it’s all a bit of a blur after that. But when I woke up we were-– well–-” This part is harder; he’s not sure how to say it, doesn’t like the idea that Aziraphale doesn’t remember it the same way. But he thinks two thousand years, two thousand years, he thought it was old news, that’s all and stumbles only a little as he carries on, “I had your ring on, your old angel-wing one-- it hardly fit and I knew I’d have to give it back, but I thought I remembered you putting it on me. And you were asleep with your arms around me, and lipstick all over your face. And I heard rumors, afterward, something about a scandalous elopement, and I just-– I assumed it was us.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale says, softly.
“I hadn’t realized I was so late to the party. You don’t really mean two thousand...?”
“Well, I mean.” Aziraphale looks a little sheepish. “It must be close to that, but it’s like yours, I don’t remember exactly. It was someone’s wedding party, you know, romance in the air to start with, and they just kept bringing out more wine, long after I thought they’d have run out, and the wine kept getting better-–”
“Are you talking about when we were in Cana,” Crowley interrupts, staring at him in frank disbelief.
“Were we? It was so long ago, I don’t know how much I’d remember even if I hadn’t been drunk.”
“That was the first time I’d really seen you drunk, I think.” Crowley smiles, remembering. “Can’t have been the first time you got properly drunk, they’d been making wine for millennia already, but I’d never been with you to see it. You kept setting your cup down and losing it, and you thought everything I said was just enormously funny, and when I took you off to put you to bed you kept asking if I’d stay, and making all these silly-–”
He breaks off suddenly. Silly little promises, only-- only if Aziraphale’s thought for two thousand years that they–-
“I meant all of it, you know,” Aziraphale says quietly. “Even back then, just as much as today. I’m sorry I only said it the once.”
“Angel,” Crowley says, and leans into him, and stays there for so long that, in the kitchen, Anathema gives up on diplomacy and shouts, “I’m coming back out there, do not let me catch you making out on my sofa.”