"Oh, Tony Stark." Dorian murmured gently as he reached out his hand for Tony's wrist, he held onto it as he examined the stone. He wasn't all that interested in the ring, but looking at gave him a focal point that wasn't Tony, and for a moment he felt he needed that. Just so he could collect himself; find everything that he wanted to say. "You made this, didn't you? It's beautiful I --"
Dorian wasn't sure exactly when he's stopped thinking about what Tony had 'put him through' as something that hadn't been done to him so much at it had been something that they'd gone through together. A difficult time, but an honest one. He did often wish that it had been different -- briefer, perhaps, or that it hadn't caused so much strain on another important relationship in Tony's life, but the pain of it all had diminished with time and happiness, and Dorian knew that if Tony hadn't been able to bruise his heart so completely, he would never have realized how much he loved him; how much he was capable of loving anyone, really. It was like being woken up from a long, muted dream where he was free to do whatever he liked, but was only granted his memory's dim imitation of how anything felt. Nothing hurt, nothing satisfied, nothing mattered and therefore he didn't care about anything.
Tony had woken him up. Brought him back to a world he forgot existed, where people mattered and love was important. Gray slid his hand down Stark's arm to the bend in his elbow and rested it there.
"You -- well. Yes. The answer is yes, of course it's yes. I won't keep you waiting on that, but I have -- I don't know what it is but I want to say something." He smiled as he took his eyes from the stone to look into Stark's equally as blue eyes. "You have done more for me, unselfishly than any person has ever in my life, you -- I was broken, you know, when we met. I was hollowed out and miserable and I had lost my faith that -- that it would ever be any different for me. That I was capable of becoming impassioned, or of loving anyone -- or wanting to. I'm different now, knowing you, and I will always be different for having known you. You are the single most important person in my life."
Dorian exhaled and shifted on the mattress, sinking down into the pillow and nuzzling his hair beneath Stark's chin. He tilted his head to look once more at the ring box, and splayed his fingers against Stark's arm, before he raised his hand so Tony could put the ring on his finger.
There was something so incredibly quiet, so perfectly still that it felt almost as though they were the only two people in the city. It was, Dorian decided, probably one of the most important moments of his life, and it was one of the few that were actually both positive and expected to yield positive results. But what this wasn't, was a moment he'd longed or wished for. He hadn't ever really wanted marriage or became impatient over it. He'd never needed that kind of legal commitment from Tony, his heart and his trust were more than enough.
What he had been waiting for, though, was for Tony to accept who he was, what he wanted and who that made him. Perhaps it made sense that having his foundations shaken. However, Dorian didn't see this proposal as an act to hold on to him or fear facing the collapse of everything -- instead, Gray saw it more like the collapse of an old regime. For so long Tony had lived under the command of an absent father's wishes and struggled with the supposed similarities between himself and a man he never really knew. He hated himself both because of what they had in common and what they didn't. But with the collapse of that, the importance of Howard Stark and his legacy, Tony was more free than he'd ever been to make choices for himself.
And this was his very first one.
"And anyway," Dorian said, turning to run his lips against the rough stubble of Tony's neck. "I'm terribly in love with you."