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Crowley slithers off Aziraphale's soft, warm body, miracling away their mess as he goes. Sometimes the cleanup is worth the extra effort, but not tonight. All he wants tonight is to curl up with Aziraphale's soft chest beneath his cheek, and his legs wrapped around one of Aziraphale's for warmth.
Aziraphale's hand lies spread across his ribs, the gold of his signet ring glinting in the light from the bedside lamps. The shine of it draws Crowley’s eye, and he reaches to cover Aziraphale's hand with his own.
The ring presses, cool, into Crowley's palm and he cannot resist running his fingers over it. Aziraphale makes a soft noise and spreads his fingers wide, likely intending for Crowley to slot his fingers in-between.
Instead Crowley takes the opportunity to twist Aziraphale’s signet ring around his little finger. Then he turns it again, and again, until he can’t seem to stop himself. A snake caught in a hypnotic gesture of his own making.
Aziraphale turns onto his side after that, wiggling until there’s a little space between them. There was a time when this would have had Crowley’s heart leaping into his throat with fear, but now he knows better. Now he knows that Aziraphale just wants to be able to look at him.
Crowley takes the hand Aziraphale holds out to him, holding it delicately between his own. First he traces the contours of Aziraphale’s hand with soft touches, then follows the lines of his palm with delicate fingertips. Until he returns to twisting the signet ring around and around Aziraphale's little finger.
It only takes a few minutes for the ring to become warm , and for Aziraphale's well-manicured finger to start chafing. The moment it catches, even a little, Crowley stops his twisting and returns the ring to its proper position.
In a moment of panic, he looks at Aziraphale with wide eyes and an apology on his tongue. There must be something in his face that Aziraphale wants to soothe by breaking the silence between them.
"I'm afraid our new life agrees with me just a little too well," Aziraphale says, moving so that Crowley's hand are held in both of his. "Getting a bit small, I'm afraid," he adds wistfully. As if he cannot simply make the ring bigger, or himself smaller, as he so chooses.
Crowley takes Aziraphale’s hand with one of his own, and pinches the ring between the thumb and forefinger of the other like he’s going to slide it off. But first, he looks to Aziraphale for permission, and gets it; an anxious nod, a glance away, and an already cherubic face flushing a pretty pink.
Stretching across the small distance between them, Crowley presses a kiss to Aziraphale’s heated cheek and revels in the flustered huff he gets in response. He tugs gently on the ring between his fingers, twisting it when it catches at Aziraphale’s knuckle before it slips free.
He lifts Aziraphale's hand to his lips to kiss the place where the ring had been, and Aziraphale plucks the ring from his fingers. Crowley sputters a half-formed, incoherent protest, but Aziraphale pays it no mind. He simply turns the ring in his fingers for a long moment, studying it as if it were an ancient book in need of repair.
Aziraphale shifts so that he’s the one holding Crowley’s hand, as if to kiss it, instead. He strokes his thumb across Crowley’s knuckles, urging him to spread his fingers. The first and middle fingers he keeps hold of, pressing a kiss to the space between those knuckles.
He glances up at Crowley, watching his face with silverbright eyes; and slips his signet ring, still warm from his skin, onto Crowley’s ring finger.
Crowley’s heart stops, his face goes white, and starts again, his face suddenly red as his hair. He shivers under Aziraphale’s scrutiny, feeling like he’s been peeled apart, all his inner workings exposed to the light.
“Are you trying to propose to me, angel?” he teases, with far more bravado than he feels, hoping to fluster Aziraphale so he’s not the only one feeling shaken to his core.
Aziraphale appears unaffected, and offers one of his rare, sly, bastard smiles. Crowley’s heart melts at the sight of it, even as it pounds double-time against his ribs.
“Well, supposing I am?”
Crowley feels hot and cold, all at once, all the way down to his toes.
“Well, then I suppose you’d best do it properly.”
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While it’s true he could make the changes himself with a miracle or two, Aziraphale has always preferred his things to be made by hand. And this, especially, seems far too important a thing for something as tawdry as a miracle. This requires something real , and true , not something pulled from the aether.
Aziraphale walks into a small jeweller’s shop. Since Aziraphale discovered it, the proprietor has never lacked for exactly as many customers as he can handle without needing to expand - a thought he had soundly dismissed all through the years of his acquaintance with Aziraphale.
They discuss Aziraphale’s ideas at length, and some time later Aziraphale leaves the shop feeling both lighter than air and more than a little naked without his ring.
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"Angel, why are we in a Tesco car park?"
"Well it was rather more dramatic last time, very misty. You called it damp, actually."
“Mmhm,” Crowley responds skeptically, “doesn’t exactly explain why we’re in a Tesco car park.”
Aziraphale was rather hoping Crowley would catch onto the significance, and the thought of having to explain further left him wrong-footed.
"Well, it's-" he clears his throat, "you see-" fiddles with the rings tucked inside his waistcoat pocket.
Flustered, and a little annoyed to be so, Aziraphale makes a frustrated noise. "You first proposed the Arrangement here, a bit more than a thousand years ago," he says, leaning hard on the emphasis.
At last, Crowley understands, or seems to. Going as red as his hair, he lights up with the sort of quiet joy Aziraphale has started to think of as addictive.
When Crowley moves to cover the euphoric grin spreading across his face, Aziraphale catches his left hand and lowers himself into one knee.
"My dear, perhaps it's a bit silly … 'til death do us part doesn't seem like much of a vow for eternal beings such as we." Crowley's hand trembles in his, with excitement rather than unnamed fear, and Aziraphale glances up at his face.
Oh. The glasses are gone, pushed up into flame red hair so Aziraphale can clearly see the softness of his golden eyes, and the bright sheen of unshed tears in them. His heart leaps in his chest, and he kicks himself for ever having said, or even thought, that Crowley was unworthy of love.
"We were ready to be destroyed for one another," Aziraphale whispers, reaching into his waistcoat pocket. He can tell the two apart by feel alone, though they were made to match. One is very old, after all, and the other only days old.
"Anthony J. Crowley, darling," he says, holding up the ring. It's his own, or was, until he'd had a snake added in silver, curled around the top of the leading edge of the wing. Its head rests atop the old crest, and the eyes are set with tiny, pale blue topaz. "Will you marry me?"
Crowley makes a wounded noise and reaches out to touch his cheek with his free hand. His jaw works, the way it does when he has something to say but finds his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Aziraphale smiles fondly up at him, content to wait for his answer despite the nerves clawing at him.
"Yes, Crowley says at last. "Yes of course I will! What'd you look so worried for? I told you I would if you did it properly, didn't I?"
He hadn't, not in so many words, but Aziraphale is in no mood to argue, for once.
"Do you like the ring, then?" he asks, suddenly insecure about the choice that he'd been so sure of up until now.
"Of course I do!" Crowley snaps, but joyfully. "Are you going to put it on me or will I have to do it myself?"
Aziraphale slides it onto Crowley's ring finger without further delay, relieved to see it fitting perfectly even though he'd known it would.
They grin at each other like lovestruck fools, still in the Tesco car park, for what feels like both a very long time and merely seconds.
Eventually, Crowley tries to pull Aziraphale back onto his feet, but he resists.
"Wait, wait," Aziraphale pleads, still down on one knee as he fumbles his fingers back into his waistcoat for the other ring. "I had one made for myself," he says sheepishly, "if you said yes, I thought- Well I thought it'd be nice if they were to match."
He holds out a ring much like the one he'd already given to Crowley. The wings of this one are silver, and the crest was not modelled after Aziraphale's own but copied from Crowley's ostentatious chair. The snake curled around the wing-edge is reversed as well; golden, with eyes of deep red garnet.
Crowley inhales through his teeth and plucks the offered ring from Aziraphale's fingers, fumbling to swap out their hands so that he holds Aziraphale's left in his right.
He slides the new-made, matching ring onto Aziraphale's ring finger with a quiet, "til death do us part," and tugs Aziraphale back to his feet for a kiss.