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One of the many marvellous things about life on Earth, is that it is as full of pleasant surprises as Heaven had been tediously predictable. An angel might, for example, be sitting on his second-favourite armchair thoroughly absorbed in re-reading ‘Persuasion’. And then, just before he finally gets to the best bit1, he may suddenly find a devastatingly handsome demon draped round his neck.
“Mine,” Crowley declares, sounding very pleased with himself.
“I might have to put a bell on you like a cat if you keep creeping up on me like that. But yes dear. I’m yours.”
Crowley takes the comment in good humour, eyes twinkling as he wraps himself even tighter around his beloved. “Mine!” comes another confident assertion, this time muffled due to his face being buried in Aziraphale’s jumper.
“Feeling a little possessive are we, my sugar plum?”
Mischievous amber eyes lock gaze with Aziraphale, as Crowley raises his head and very gently takes a sliver of the skin of the angel’s neck between his every-so-slightly-pointy front teeth. His eyebrows raise questioningly.
“I really would prefer you didn’t bite me, sweetling, if that’s quite all right. I’m sure you can come up with some other way to mark your territory.”
The aura of a demonic miracle shimmers briefly in the air, but Aziraphale is soon distracted when Crowley shimmies round to face him and sinks to his knees, his face level the angel’s crotch, his eyes round in appeal. “That’s more like it,” Aziraphale murmurs, hastily fumbling with his zip.
It’s only when the demon’s mouth forms a O-shape of horror, that Aziraphale belatedly registers that he possibly has got the wrong end of the stick. That Crowley is not in fact on his knees, but down on one knee.
Holding something concealed in his palm. Something small and box-shaped.
“Oh,” the angel gasps.
There is a very long, incredibly awkward silence.
Aziraphale clasps Crowley’s other hand. The one without the ring box in it. His mind whirrs. What would Wentworth do?
“I’m so sorry, my sweet cherry blossom, my love, to have spoiled this moment with my foolish carnality,” he says fervently.
Crowley scowls fiercely, unsuccessfully trying to suppress his laughter until it escapes with a sudden, loud snort. He collapses, quivering with mirth, at Aziraphale’s feet. “Foolish carnality!”
Aziraphale doesn’t entirely understand why that phrase should be the source of so much amusement, but seeing one of the demon’s rare fits of laughter soon has him giggling too.
“How long had you been planning it?” he asks, once they’ve both settled down a bit.
“Um. Well. About five seconds? When you said about marking territory, I thought, maybe I can give him something to wear that has something of both of us on it, so I miracled this…” Crowley opens the box. Inside sits a platinum ring crafted to have the appearance of an ouroboros, and distributed along its back are tiny topazes each the exact colour of Aziraphale’s eyes.
“Darling… yes! Oh, yes, I will be your husband! Er, that is, if you’ll still have me after I mixed up your proposal with an offer of fellatio…”
“S’pose that gets me out of having to come up with a speech,” deadpans Crowley. “Yeah, all right. I’ll still have you. One condition.”
“Anything!” A pause. “Except letting you redecorate the bedroom again. I still have nightmares about those paintings.”
“Thought you liked culture,” mutters Crowley sullenly.
“Yes, but ‘Hell’ by Hieronymus Bosch? Really?”
“Do you want to hear my condition?”
“Well my sweet pea, we’ve already had a hopelessly romantic gesture, an awkward misunderstanding and some light bickering, so I suppose we should probably have a silly ultimatum if we want to make this proposal really ‘us’.”
“It’s not an ultimatum. We’re not doing those any more, remember? It’s innuendo. But we have to do it again now. Stay focused this time, angel” says Crowley sternly. He clears his throat, which sounds a bit like a sack of boulders being dragged across corrugated iron.
“I’ll still have you. One condition.”
Aziraphale sighs. “Anything.”
Crowley waggles his eyebrows. Subtlety is not his strong suit. He nods meaningfully in the general direction of Aziraphale’s flies. “Well,” he says, with a shameless cheesy grin, “While I’m down here…”
1. Wentworth’s proposal letter, of course return to text