Welcome to Gaia! ::

He does look at her then, finally, with an odd sort defiant look of his own, but only for a half-second before he reaches to put out his cigarette.

In an ideal world this would have gone much, much differently, but if they've learned anything in the past several months it's that they do not live in anything like an ideal world.

His voice is level, unshaken, calm. The same voice with which he'd been saying she's fine all night; the same way he'd asked her if Indian food was OK.

"Would you marry me?" he says. And then, with practicality, as always: "I don't have a ring."

"I still don't see how the ******** it would be any help to you to you have to make time for this on top of everything else you have going on," he says flatly, "so no." He regrets putting out the cigarette. "This is selfish. I'm asking because I want to. I want this. And because I don't want to have to pick you up at a ******** police station again but if it's there or the hospital or wherever the ******** it ends up being I want to be able to shove a ring in their skeptical ******** faces, but that's just a bonus. Would you," he says again, with emphasis this time, the same way he would to pick a fight with her, "marry me."

He does not tell her that she won't die soon, even though he likes to make promises he can't keep.

"OK," he says, reaching for her hand, pulling her over. "And we'll talk about finding a place tomorrow. I've been saving up listings. And we'll go get a ring, whenever you want. Tomorrow, next week. Sorry it won't be a super nice one." He presses his face to her hair and agrees, all his emotion spent but his gratitude and relief immediately obvious anyway: "No takebacks." And then, because he needs to shake the tension out of himself somehow: "You smell like ******** and curry, it's gross."