#danielsnowmans

they had been dating for a year and a half now, and living together for eleven months - eleven months of screwed up sleeping schedules and paint-stained everything; nothing short of chaotic, really, but it was ezra lawson, after all, and estelle delgado had known him for a very long time. they already had spent so much time together that moving in was more a formality than anything; a rite of passage whose symbolic meaning was the most significant thing about it.  ezra had changed. gone were the constant states of intoxication and following hangovers every day; the over-the-top flirtations with other women. (perhaps most importantly, he’d begun to start doing his fair share of chores. ezra’s completion of a load of laundry or washing of dishes was generally celebrated with the uncorking of a bottle of champagne.) baby steps, perhaps, but estelle knew better than anyone that they meant the world for someone like ezra. however, some things would never change - paint stains, rumpled clothing, not sleeping for a week to work on a painting, his need to instagram everything, his fucking fetish for pineapple pizza. (really, all she wanted was one slice. one slice of pizza that did not have some kind of fucking tropical fruit on it.) but those were the things that made ezra ezra, and he was, after all, the man she was in love with.

they’re sitting on the couch, feet tangled, watching game of thrones. estelle munches on a handful of popcorn - slightly burnt, but ezra had made it, so what could you do - while on the other side of the couch, ezra is busy doodling on a sketch pad, with the only pencil he could find, a pink hannah montana thing. (it wasn’t like he was a professional artist who owned dozens of pencils and pens and paints, right? ezra lawson, professional dumbass.) in one corner of his canvas is a half-finished likeness of cersei lannister, with her intricately woven tresses; to the left side, jon snow, windswept; and there, towards the bottom of the page, were sansa and margaery. dominating the center of the page, however, was not lady stoneheart or daenerys or any other character cameoing on the screen, but the brunette sitting just feet from him.

he barely even has to look to sketch out her face, his gaze split between his page and the show, resting on estelle as fleetingly as a startled butterfly. how many times had he drawn her face, the lines and curves of it? how many times had he dreamed of her in the time before, when they stumbled around each other, too afraid to take the leap? how many times had he woken up in the middle of the night and simply watched her sleeping face, watched the subtle movement of muscles beneath skin, eyelids twitching just slightly, hinting at dreams and visions playing out beneath the surface? how many times had his fingers ghosted over the high line of her cheekbone, traced over the shape of her lips? her face was one he knew better than his own; the last memory to leave him even if he forgot his mother, his father; his own name.

he is feathering out her eyebrow, now; stopping every now and then to add a quick detail to a different sketch - a lock of hair in jon’s face, a crease in sansa’s sleeve - but always coming back to estelle. at the commercial break, as he readily continues to draw, estelle inquires out loud as to what he could possibly still be drawing. in reply, he shamelessly shows her his sketches.

“really, ez,” she remarks, fingers running over the paper, “were you paying attention to the show at all?”

“of course i was,” he replies indignantly, pointing to jon snow’s pouting face and windswept hair, “look at that detail! besides, you act like i’m crazy about you or something.” he grinned then, because the both of them knew very much that he was, in fact, crazy about estelle.

she rolls her eyes at him in a spectrum of hazel and green and brown, but nevertheless bequeaths to him his sketchbook, a small smile playing on her lips. after a minute of lapsing into silence, ezra begins to speak. “so, in a purely hypothetical situation…how would you want to be proposed to?” his tone is casual, stance casual, busily sketching away at estelle’s jaw; but estelle knew him too well to buy into that blasé attitude of his. “why?” she asks, tone rife with suspicion.

“it’s a purely hypothetical question, stell. for posterity and all that,” he assures her, but the single corner of his mouth turned up in the smallest of smiles belies his words. “come on, stell, humor me. or i might draw a mustache and devil horns on you. or worse, jon snow. save a bastard. answer a question, and all that.”

she shakes her head at him, but nevertheless answers. (just for jon’s sake, really.) “i’d want something simple. like, at a park, or something. cliché is okay as long as it’s not too cliché. but nothing embarrassing, or too…gaudy. i don’t want people coming up to me and congratulating me like i won a marathon or something. something subtle, ez,” she says pointedly. “and not damaging to the environment, please, for the love of god.”

“i would never do anything like that, estelle,” ezra assures her, “hypothetical situation and all that.” but that stubborn little smile of his begs to differ.

estelle sighs, shakes her head. she knows there’s no use in trying to dissuade ezra from his plans, whatever they may be. and, knowing him, he’d probably burn a hole into the ozone if he ever proposed.  not for the first time, she wondered what on earth she saw in him.

—-

a few months later, they are sitting at a park bench by a pond. the sun is sinking into the horizon, dying the normally clear, pale blue sky in shades of orange, gold, and pink. it’s summer and yet, surprisingly restful; one of the few moments of peace estelle shared with ezra.

“so,” ezra says conversationally, “what’s your opinion on marriage?” “it depends on the size of the diamond,” estelle replies, equally blasé. for the past few months, ezra had bombarded her with questions related to marriage or being engaged - all for purely hypothetical situations, he claimed - but after waiting for the ring and the question that never came, she’d rather stopped waiting, figuring that he’d ask in his own time. the two could have been discussing the weather for all intents and purposes.

that is, until ezra reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small velvet box, placing it delicately on estelle’s lap. “hint: it’s not earrings.”

her slim fingers - not shaking, not at all, really; maybe a little, if at all - pry open the box, pulling the lid up to reveal…

a blue raspberry ring pop.

“oh, for fuck’s sake, ezra!”

it takes him a good five minutes to catch his breath from laughing so hard, and at least two more to regain the feeling in his arm from the shoulder punch he receives from estelle. “wow, you’re hilarious, ez, really,” estelle remarks, her sarcasm scathing. nevertheless, she pulls out the ring pop, slides it onto her finger, and begins to eat it - dickish as ezra’s little prank might have been, food is food.

“okay, okay, that was mean, but you should have seen your face,” ezra says, laughter still etched on his face even as he tries - and fails - to regain composure. upon estelle’s lack of reaction, henudges her, to which he receives a kick in the shin. 

“shit, stell!” he exclaims, earning a disapproving glare from a nearby mother. “alright, alright.” he digs into his pocket, and with a flourish, his unfurled fist opens to reveal a slim platinum band - a plain thing, really, save for the rather large diamond attached to it.

“is that…” she gropes for a word, uncharacteristically at a loss for words, “…real?”

“yeah, but you can try eating it if you don’t trust me. which i would support, because i’m an amazing person. and then i would pay for your dental implants.”

“way to ruin the mood, dumbass,” estelle says, which earns her a glare from the aforementioned mother - and another, deeper one when, despite her words, estelle leans in and kisses him.

and then the sky erupts.

after the initial screams and fervent last-minute, pre-apocalyptic prayers, it was realized that the aerial explosion was neither an alien invasion nor a terrorist attack, but a rather flamboyantly romantic display of fireworks and sky writing. “ESTELLE, MARRY ME?” is spelled out by the fumes, and as all the smoke and clamor cleared out, the formation of the fireworks look very much like the letters “I ♥ ESTELLE.” all around them, park goers are desperately trying to find the aforementioned estelle to whom the extravagant display is for. this estelle looks over at ezra, who looks back at her with the kind of innocent, ‘it wasn’t me’ expression that would have put the mother of god to shame.

“ezra, that sky writing says my name.”

“what an odd coincidence.”

“…and so do the fireworks.”

“so the fireworks might be mine. and possibly the sky writing. or i’ve been tragically framed.”

“…”

“i wanted to have your face in the fireworks, but i changed it last minutes. they couldn’t get your eyebrows right, so you kept turning up looking like a franco brother. ridiculous.”

“you are such an idiot,” estelle informs ezra, but the words are rendered insignificant when she wraps her hand around his, entwines their fingers together.

they do not say “i love you,” but there is no need. three words and eight letters go unspoken against the blushing sky, the letters of cloud and fire; all mirrored off a shining stone on estelle’s finger.