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The best part about this whole social distancing thing, Aziraphale admits, is the ample amount of time he and Crowley are afforded to cuddle in the morning. Crowley's usually such a heavy sleeper that he'd doze through all seven of his alarms (and Aziraphale yelling in the shower for him to hurry up, Crowley, Beezle will have your head! ), that when he'd woken up properly, he'd only have time for a bit of toast and a kiss before he was out the door.
Now that they both work from home, they stay tangled in bed far longer than they need to in a shape Aziraphale often lovingly thinks of as happy. And Crowley, well. Crowley did love a good cuddle.
So it rather shocks Aziraphale when, in the midst of their early morning cuddle, Crowley suddenly bounds out of his arms. He stops just short of the door to the bathroom, turning jerkily right back around, a hand on the pocket of his pajama bottoms. "I g-got-" He ruffles his dark red hair, frustrated. "That- wouldn't you- it is... work time, yes?"
"Y-es?" Aziraphale replies unsurely.
Crowley must have caught that last bit of uncertainty -- his shoulders hike up to his ears, eyes sliding away from Aziraphale’s to the floor, to the bed frame, their small window, and then back to the floor again. “Yes, have to be all ready for… for the office. Can’t give Beezle more reasons to sack me, eh?”
“I suppose…”
“Yeah, I- I’ll go shower! Good warm place, the shower!”
“I’ll share with you,” Aziraphale offers, throwing his legs over the side of their bed.
“No, no no no no no.” Crowley waves his hands, frantically. “It’ll be faster if we go separately!”
Aziraphale frowns. “Would it?”
“Yes! No, er,” Crowley casts his hands about, as if he’s expecting Aziraphale to cotton on faster than he seemed to this morning. “You know. No naughty showers.”
“But we never-”
“See you later, angel!” Crowley ducks into the bathroom, shutting the door firmly behind him and leaving Aziraphale sitting gobsmacked in the mess of their tangled sheets.
Work is dry, social distancing or not, but it proves a great distraction. Aziraphale has no space in his head for cuddle troubles or strange redheads in the midst of editing a very salacious autobiography from their town’s resident medium, and if Crowley casually kisses him on his temple as he passes by- well. Maybe that whole thing in the morning was a fluke, a little blip in their otherwise perfectly happy-shaped mornings.
At eleven thirty, Aziraphale stretches his arms far above his head, cracking his neck side to side. Turning to Crowley -- who quite likes sharing a table with him even if it’s a bit cramped -- he asks, “Lunch? My treat.” The joke is that Crowley always pre-makes their lunches on the weekends and Aziraphale is usually the one to pack them. Aziraphale is a horrible cook.
Crowley smirks over his own sleek little laptop. Aziraphale doesn’t really know what he does for a living, but he’s sure it involves a lot of pensive looks and angry typing. “Oh, and how are you paying for this lunch?”
“I don’t know,” Aziraphale says coyly. “I’m not sure if the chef would prefer other modes of payment.”
“This perks the chef’s interest.” Crowley closes his laptop. “Have you got any options?”
Aziraphale hums. “I do special requests,” he decides, “but a lunchtime cuddle would suffice, no?”
Crowley’s smirk melts into the soppy little smile Aziraphale so dearly loves, before he suddenly jolts upright. “I- actually ,” his eyes dart around, unable to meet Aziraphale’s, tucking his hands nervously in his pockets, “I’ve got too much work, I can’t make it to lunch.”
Aziraphale frowns. “Well, I suppose I can wait-”
“No, no, no,” Crowley interrupts, opening his laptop quickly, “you go on ahead, angel, I know how hungry you get.”
“Breakfast is never enough,” Aziraphale grouses.
“Hah, yeah.” Crowley smiles at him again, fond and not a little bit nervous. “I’ll eat later, yeah?”
“If you’re sure…”
“I’m sure.”
Aziraphale sighs. “Alright.” He stands up and skirts over to the other side of their small office desk to kiss Crowley gently. “Don’t work too hard, my dear. I love you.”
“I love you too,” Crowley says with Aziraphale’s favourite smile.
As he leaves their little makeshift office, he hears Crowley call someone, whispering frantically to whomever is on the other side. The small pit of dread he’d tried to ignore in the morning slowly blooms.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” Crowley says as Aziraphale is describing, in detail, Madame Tracey’s sexual explorations in her office while various psychic paraphernalia are scattered about. It’s all so unsanitary , he had been saying, and it was probably a breach of confidentiality if any of her little ghosts were listening in . It is a breach of confidentiality that Aziraphale’s decided to complain about her yet to be published autobiography to Crowley, but his boyfriend does so love his stories.
Aziraphale straightens from his comfortable slouch. Their sofa is large -- large enough to just fit inside their small apartment’s even smaller living room -- but Aziraphale likes to curl up as close to Crowley as possible. “Oh.” He laughs awkwardly. “Sounds serious.” The thing about dread, he thinks idly, is no matter how much you try to squash it, how much you try to contain it, it spreads slowly, planting thorns that hurt more the longer you nurse it.
Crowley allows a quirk of a smile before he smothers it. “It is, actually.”
“Oh, well, I-” Aziraphale fusses with his collar, his sweater vest, in want for something for his hands to do.
“I- I guess I-” Crowley huffs frustratedly. “I- I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this, actually. For a long time now.”
“Oh dear, is it something I’ve done?” Aziraphale frets.
“No, no, no, I’m afraid, it’s all on me,” Crowley says. “I know I shouldn’t’ve waited for so long to tell you, but I- I couldn’t- I don’t know quite how to tell you.” He laughs self-deprecatingly. “I suppose I still don’t.”
“I… Is everything alright?” Aziraphale asks.
Crowley takes his hands. “Please stop fussing, it’s-” He kisses Aziraphale’s hand. “You- We- we’ve been together for so long now and…” he trails off.
“Too long,” Aziraphale quips even though what he really wants to say is just spit it out already!
“Yes and I-,” Crowley’s voice catches, but before Aziraphale can reassure him, he blurts out, “ I’vefallenformyofficemateandIwanttomarryhim! ”
Aziraphale’s heart is pounding so hard and so fast he imagines they can both hear it. “I’m sorry?”
Crowley breathes in and out slowly. More confidently, he says, “I have fallen for my office mate, and I want to marry him.”
He rips his hands from Crowley’s grip. That dread fully grown, is now a thorny rose where Aziraphale’s heart once lay. “How long,” he asks shakily.
Crowley’s brows knit in confusion. “How long what?”
“How long have you and this… this officemate been together?”
“Aziraphale-”
“This morning!” Aziraphale gets up, pointing an accusing finger at him. “This morning, you told me you loved me. Was that a lie?”
“I- what-”
“Is that who- who you were calling earlier?”
Crowley reaches for him. “Aziraphale, that was Ana-”
He moves slightly out of reach. “Are we not- not-” His eyes well up with unbidden tears, although he tries to will them down. He refuses to cry. “Are we not happy-shaped?”
Crowley’s face falls. “Happy… shaped?” Aziraphale opens his mouth to say something, but his lips tremble, and he finds that saying something can be quite hard. “Oh, darling.” Crowley lunges at him, catching him in a tight hug. “You’re my officemate, you daft nutter,” he says softly in Aziraphale’s ear.
“Oh,” Aziraphale whispers. “ Oh .”
“Yes, oh,” Crowley mocks him, although he hugs him tighter still. “As if I’d fall for someone else, what with you being around.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale says again.
“Anathema has been hounding me about this and I-” Crowley releases him, although he keeps his hands on Aziraphale’s round shoulders. “Please say something. I fear I’ve broken you.”
“You want to marry your officemate,” Aziraphale says, dazed.
Crowley nervously steps back, a hand in his pocket. “Yeah.”
“ I’m your officemate,” Aziraphale continues.
Crowley nods.
“You want to marry me.”
“Yup.”
“ You want to marry me ,” Aziraphale repeats in wonder.
“I’ve wanted to marry you for ages ,” Crowley says gently, carefully. “Look, I-” he fishes a box out of his pocket, the edges of it worn as if it’s been handled with care for a long time. “Remember our little trip to Paris?” Aziraphale nods.
That was just shortly after they'd begun dating. They’d been bored that weekend and so decided to take a quick train down to Paris. In the spirit of having gone so impulsively, they’d agreed to stay at the first hotel they’d come across -- which so happened to be a dingy little one across from a strip club. It’d been nasty and gotten too loud in the evenings, but it had been wonderful to be there with Crowley.
Everywhere with Crowley is wonderful.
“Two years ago,” Crowley says. “We bought some bread and pastries from that boulangerie you liked, and we were going to eat by the river.”
“But we were going to be late for the train.”
Crowley nods. “We were going to be late. So we just ate all of those bakes in the train, joking about how romantic it was to eat while there was total darkness out our windows. Still technically near a body of water , you said.”
Aziraphale hardly remembers saying so but he nods all the same.
“And I’d thought,” Crowley swallows, “I’d thought, I could marry this man . And then two days later it was, I will marry this man . Bought this ring the very next day.”
“I-” Aziraphale bursts into tears.
Crowley’s face crumples. “Oh, angel.” He hugs Aziraphale again. “I’m sorry if you’re not ready I- I can wait, this isn’t-”
“Yes,” Aziraphale says between embarrassingly loud sobs.
Crowley pauses. “Pardon?”
“Yes!” Aziraphale says louder, “Yes, I’ll marry you, you wonderful man!”
Crowley hugs him even tighter, burying his face in Aziraphale’s curls. “I love you,” he says, “I love you so much.”
Aziraphale pulls back to kiss him. It is gross -- too wet and salty -- but Crowley kisses him back even more enthusiastically. Aziraphale can feel his smile on his lips and he thinks oh , he’s marrying this man.
Later -- much later -- when they’re both wrapped up in each other in their bed, Crowley confesses in the dark, “I’ve been carrying that box for a year.”
Aziraphale cards his hands through Crowley’s hair, tucking himself closer to his- oh, it’s fiance now isn’t it? “How embarrassing,” he teases Crowley, nudging the side of his head with his nose.
“How dare you,” Crowley says without much heat. “Here I am, being all- all nice and sweet for you, and you mock me like this?”
Aziraphale tsks. “Darling, I believe you have a horrible crush on me, and I insist you must desist.”
“Is that so?”
“I’m to be married now,” Aziraphale says haughtily. “A kept man. I can’t possibly carry on in an affair with my officemate .”
Crowley snickers. “Bet he’s a tosser, waited too long to ask.”
“The loveliest,” Aziraphale pulls back to kiss his eyelids, “funniest,” a kiss on his long nose, “and most charming tosser I’ve ever known.”
Under his lips, he feels Crowley blush. “Well, if you put it that way,” Crowley says, “I guess I haven’t really got a chance.”
“No.” Aziraphale taps his chin. “Although… a kiss could change my mind, I suppose.”
Crowley laughs, tackling him into another deeper kiss.
Aziraphale sighs, content as Crowley buries himself deeper into his arms. His red hair tickles the other man’s nose, and Aziraphale huffs in amusement. “We’re going to be late,” he murmurs, opening his eyes to the hazy morning light. It is soft still, blurry all along the comfortable edges of their room.
“Nghh,” Crowley protests.
“Beezle will have your head,” Aziraphale tells him unconvincingly.
Crowley murmurs something against Aziraphale’s chest.
“I’m sorry, I can’t quite catch that my dear.”
Crowley, gets up on one arm, looming over Aziraphale in all his sleepy glory. “I want,” he says, voice sleep-blurred, “to be the little spoon.”
“Is that so?” Aziraphale smiles, amused.
Crowley flops back on the bed, turning his back to Aziraphale. The blonde obligingly tosses an arm over his middle, drawing closer to him so his nose is comfortably nestled where Crowley’s long neck meets his shoulder. He pauses to admire the glint of his new ring in the morning light before he closes his eyes again.
Absolutely perfectly happy-shaped.