Work Text:
Years later people would assume that it, it being The Proposal, happened during an adrenaline fuelled fight, in between shooting bad guys and shooting off one-liners. Or while both of them were three sheets to the wind, winding down in some back alley dive bar after a particularly bad mission. Most people though would assume, and not entirely without reason, that it happened in the throes of passion, the question tumbling unbidden from his mouth as he buried himself deep within her. They were all wrong of course.
Firstly, he had not been the one to pop the question. A friend had teased him about it once, but Hunter had merely shrugged it off. One did not direct, dictate, or plan anything in a relationship with the Mockingbird, one simply held on for dear life. Besides, if his manhood could handle five-inch stilettos, and always being bested in combat (he did not mind that one bit, his sexuality was basically Bobbi Morse beating the shit out of people. A thing of fucking beauty, it really was), it could handle him not being the one to bend his knee (not that there had been a lot of knee bending). He had nothing to prove on that account at least.
Secondly, there had been no bad guys, no alcohol (aside from half a bottle of London Pride that had ended up on the floor, adding a golden hue to the already stained carpet), and no sex. Or at least the sex had not been the precursor to the proposal.
It had happened on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Except it hadn’t actually been Sunday, the couple in question had simply decided it was.
They had touched down in London just 14 hours prior, and between them they had managed a sunburn, three bruised ribs, a colourful assortment of scrapes and contusions, and maybe 20 hours of sleep in the past week. Not to mention a couple of new demons to add to their ever-growing menagerie of Technicolor nightmares.
Hence, they had named the Wednesday honorary Sunday and gone on to ignore things like laundry, groceries, and basic hygiene (neither one of them had felt up to doing battle with their boiler that morning); which was why Lance was currently yelling at the football wearing nothing put a pair of pink polka dot boxers (some sort of SAS in-joke Hunter had said, Bobbi hadn’t been paying close attention at the time. A statement of just how badly they needed to do laundry), and Bobbi was lazily draped across the creaky Winchester pretending to read a book, when she had in fact been watching Lance and contemplating Them.
They had been living in their London flat for about four months (actual time spent there was closer to four weeks). The one that had been the size of a shoebox, and filled with furniture liberated from various dumps across the city, because who the fuck could afford furniture with London house prices?
Cartons of half-eaten takeout, yesterday’s dinner, littered the surface of the small coffee table between them. Hunters ever more elaborate curses echoed of the walls letting Bobbi know that Liverpool was not performing. She was in love, with this, with them, with this perfectly imperfect vision of domesticity that allowed her lounge around in an extra large Doctor Who t-shirts (his) with greasy hair.
She was in love with Him. This him, slouched, beer in hand, with stubble that had crossed into the beard territory three days ago; the deadly him, the one that made the hard calls, and always had her back; the angry unreasonable him that brought out the worst in her, and the loving him that saw only the best.
She was in love with all of him, even when she absolutely hated him. He could be a bit of a dick at times, but then she could be a downright cunt, so it worked for them. Mostly. And when it didn’t there was always the make-up sex.
She wanted more with him. She wanted everything, which was scary, because Barbara Morse had never been that kind of girl; the domestic kind.
Years later after they imploded and what was left of their marriage had slithered down the drain a part of Bobbi had felt oddly vindicated (perhaps she really was a bloody madwoman). But then, right at that moment she had wanted it all, the action, the sex, the arguing, the laundry, and the few and far between lazy as fuck days like this one.
“Marry me?” It had just sort of slipped out. At first she wasn’t even sure she had said it out loud, or at all. Then a pair of slightly startled hazel eyes had found hers.
“Huh?” (She had not chosen him for his amazing command of the English language, the accent though…)
She got up from the chair slowly (and rather gracefully, like a cat, or at least that is how Hunter tells it), and stalked toward him, blocking his view of the telly, lifting his chin and asked him again.
For a second there was nothing but them looking at each other, then a hollow thump and fizzle, and then it was all tongues, hands, skin, and hot heavy breathing.
***
“So did you get me a ring?” Hunter’s voice breaks through her post coital haze as he kisses his way across her shoulders.
“Wha’?” She moans as he hits a particularly sensitive spot on her neck. Her brain is having some issues connecting the dots. Hunter always claims he shagged her brains out, she always denies it, no point in inflating the insufferable man’s ego even more (he totally did).
“A ring.” He rambles. “Or maybe you were just luring me into your bed with false promises? You have always been a bit of a cad, and now you have ruined my reputation. And made me miss the game.”
His voice does that thing it does with the tone. She can’t help but smile into the futon.
“You weren’t complaining.”
“True, but that really is playing dirty.”
Bobbi had somehow managed to turn around during his rant (don’t ask her how, she honestly doesn’t know, they should have ended up on the floor. No really the futon wasn’t that big). His eyes are dancing with mirth, and she knows this is her opportunity to just forget the proposal ever happened, to just laugh it off. He was giving her an out, an excuse to blame it on sleep deprivation, and her own insatiable libido (the proposal was the one and only time she ever managed to distract him from a Liverpool match). However, there was something else lurking behind the joke, fragile but hopeful. He wanted this too.
She didn’t want to laugh it off. Even if it was the single dumbest thing she had ever done (even during their darkest times, and trust me those were dark, they never regretted this moment. Not really.). She wanted to give him a ring. Her brain was working a million miles per hour, trying to find a way to prove to him that she had meant it. That she wanted this. Him, that she wanted him.
Her eyes landed on her keys, on the floor, and suddenly she was pushing Hunter off of her body, half falling, half crawling across the space to reach them. It may have been the single most ungraceful thing she had ever done, but it awarded Hunter with a great view of her ass, so he never complained. Then she was back on the futon, peeling her keys of the chain one by one, before grabbing his hand and pushing it onto his ring finger, with a triumphant “There.”
“Eh… Bob, that’s a keychain.”
“It’s a key ring, and if you don’t want it….”
“Nooo.” He whined, pulling the small metal contraption towards his chest, stroking the small metal plate emblazoned with the name of a small bar in Mason Georgia (It had belonged to her father, the last thing he had given her before getting himself shot during Dessert Storm). “No, I want it, I want you.”
He smiled at her then, all teeth and love and joy. He looked like Christmas morning had just rolled around, and in that moment she had a very clear picture of what their children would look like on Christmas.
She kissed him, hard. And then he vaulted across her, across the table to fix his new ring to his keys. It would stay there with him through countless fights, and endless nightmares, the small bundle of keys reminding him of their love. Till that one morning in August where he handed it back to her along with the signed divorce papers thinking they were done.