When it finally happened it was unusual, just like everything else about them.
It had been a long week. A hard case, squint drama. Finally, they wrapped everything up and ended up, as they did several times a week, at the diner. They'd been sitting in the same booth, ordering nearly the same thing, for seven years now, almost as long as they'd been partners.
He was, as usual, eating his slice of pie and periodically teasing her to try some. She was staunchly refusing and going on about the squint problems and how irrational the whole issue was, not really needing his response.
It went silent for a moment. The sort of comfortable silence that had become second nature after their first year of partnership. He kept working on his pie, she watched.
Then, she spoke.
"I think I would like to marry you."
Fortunately he'd swallowed that last bite of pie already, but he still managed to choke a little on his own spit. "What?" he exclaimed, drawing looks from the other diner patrons, although the staff had gotten used to their random outbursts.
"I believe it would be advantageous. I believe that your primary reason for not acting on your attraction to me is that you believe I would never marry you, which you find important. We've clearly shown that we can spend our lives together; we've done the spending the nights, the longer trips, we even lived together last year when you were shot again. And, I've already expressed my desire to have your child, but I now think that my child would benefit from having you as a father socially as well as genetically."
"Wow…Bones," he breathed, but she wasn't finished. She started again, and with his knowledge of her, he realized this was the really important part.
"Also, I think I might be in love with you."
"Wow, Bones," he repeated. Trying to pull himself together, he found it hard to breathe, let alone think. The fact was, he'd been in love with her without return for so long it had become as much a part of their relationship as the earlier bickering over pie. To find that she returned it knocked his world off its axis, but she'd opened up, and he couldn't leave her hanging. "Clearly, you already know how I feel, but can I at least take you out on one official date, propose myself, that kind of thing?"
"That sounds fine to me."
They had been unusual from the beginning. Why should the start of something new be any different?