A/N: Sorry for not updating sooner, second last week of class = insane amount of work! Hope you guys enjoy this chapter! :)
She is in the kitchen when he walks in the door, and he can't help but stop for a minute and watch her. She's wearing a summer dress, a beautiful blue that brings out her eyes, and she is staring out the back glass door. Her hair is gently curled around her shoulders, her hands curled around a cup of iced coffee and a lost look to her.
He closes the door just a little too sharply and she flinches, looking up at him. "Oh."
He smiles wryly. "Hey, Bones."
She smiles back at him, guarded, watching him as he walks towards the counter. His lope is too forced, as if he's trying to look carefree but still too tense to really be okay. He pours himself a glass of water, and she watches as he tilts his head back to gulp it down. Her eyes trace down his neck, watching his adam's apple move up and down as he drinks, and her lips tingle as she imagines kissing his neck, moving down to kiss the hollow of his collarbone. Clenching her hands around her own cup, she turns away to resist the urge. She can kiss him later that night, after she's fixed this. Not now.
"So," he says. He sits down across from her, mirroring her position: shoulders turned inward, hands curled around a glass, eyes looking up shyly from beneath eyelashes. "I, uh, made reservations for us."
She looks up, surprised. "You did?"
He smiles, proudly. "Yeah. At a Thai restaurant."
Her mouth opens in a little 'o'. "Um," she says. "I, uh, I did too."
His eyebrows raise. "You made reservations at the Thai restaurant?"
She blushes, looking back down. "No, I meant...I made reservations. At a Chinese restaurant. They, um, they have a babysitting service. The kids stay in a playroom. Christine could stay there and we..." her cheeks are a deep red now, and she clears her throat. "She could eat with us and we could do something more...romantic afterwards."
He is watching her steadily now, his shoulders not as hunched now. This is a side of her that he's seen before, but that rarely ever comes out. Tilting his head, he thinks. "Yeah, I like that idea. The Thai restaurant doesn't have babysitting and, uh, I kind of wanted a more romantic dinner too."
She looks up, smiling slightly. "So Chinese it is? Seven o'clock?"
He smiles, a slightly cocky tilt to his lips. "Yeah. It's a date."
It is five-thirty, and he can hear the shower in their bedroom. He is sitting in the living room, laptop on his thighs, Christine leaning against his legs as she watches TV. She giggles every once in a while and he will detach himself from his research to give a quick glance at the TV. There is a Sesame Street marathon, and he can't help but laugh every once in a while along with her.
He knows he should have started this sooner, but now is no time for regretting, and he knows, because she is a woman and because he has been through this a thousand times over, that she will be getting herself ready for another hour. At six-thirty they'll switch: she'll get Christine ready, and he'll take a quick shower and get dressed. The restaurant is only five minutes away, so they'll leave at six-fifty-five and be there on time.
As it is, he is using the internet to find out what benefits marriage can give. The pro/con list on his Word document includes a much longer pro list than a con list, and he looks over them again, trying to commit some to memory so he can tell her. They include: visitation rights, the right to make medical decisions, some property and inheritance rights, the ability to create life insurance trusts, tax benefits, and visiting rights in jail. He laughs a little at the last one but adds it anyways, hoping she'll get a kick out of it and not think he expects her to wind up in jail.
The shower turns off in the bedroom, and he looks through his list one last time. The benefits, the cons, the proposal he is writing up in his head. Why I Should Marry You. He's proud of himself for it, even though it was hard for him to write it up.
He remembers the time he asked her to walk in his shoes, and how she learned from it. It was this memory that prompted him to write a rational proposal in the first place. He figures that if he saw the world from her eyes, it would be easier to understand.
She doesn't see romantically, the way he does. She sees marriage as a piece of paper. She sees it as a document that says "these are your new rights", and that's all. There is no deeper connection for her. He knows she loves him, deeper than anything, anyone else in the world, even Christine (she loves Christine, but the love she feels for her is a different love). Marriage, however, is just a ritual for her, one she might be happy to participate in but one that will not hold meaning to her.
That being said, he understands now. He still believes she was wrong. She should have understood the way he sees marriage. She should have understood his romanticism, the meaning it holds to him. But he was wrong as well. He shouldn't have turned her down because she wasn't able to see the romanticism in marriage like he could. He should've accepted her 'proposal', because it was still a proposal. It was still her telling him how she felt. She wanted to get married. Wasn't that what mattered?
He couldn't just tell her that now, though. The time for simple apologies had past, and he understood that. What he had to do now was show her that he understood. And what better way to do that than propose in her language?
She pulls her fingers through her hair, luxuriating in the pull of her scalp, the water that drips down her wrists. She feels cooler now, calmer, collected. She doesn't bother with a hair dryer, unwilling for the burn of hot air on her skin, hoping Booth won't mind.
As she stares at herself in front of the mirror, carefully applying eyeliner, she thinks over her plan. She'd spent all her free time writing up her proposal in her head. She was used to writing in her head, as she didn't always have a paper and pen handy, and she had learned what was too detailed and what was too vague. She thought of the main points of the proposal and left out the details, allowing the rest to bounce around her head.
She understands the way Booth sees the world, and she knows he thinks in a very romantic way. She doesn't understand the way he views marriage, though. She doesn't think a couple should need a piece of paper to prove their love, especially considering how many marriages end in divorce these days. She knows she loves Booth and that she will never leave him, and she knows he feels the same, and to her marriage would be nearly useless, in terms of love. She won't feel happier or more in love just because they are married. She will feel the same. What matters to her are the legal benefits.
However, Booth doesn't see it like that, so she understands the compromise. She has gone over the thirteen years they've shared, and has written up what she considers to be a romantic proposal. She was thinking of it in his mindset, so she assumes he will think it romantic as well.
She smiles a little at the ideas in her head, the various points of their history that have changed her for the better, and twists her hair into a knot above her head. She will make this night perfect for him.
He deserves that.
