Look a proper headcanon that isn’t me wondering about life and the world and things ^^;;; So we’ve covered Naoto asking Kanji out on a date… sort of. Now it’s time to cover how she proposes… sort of.
Warnings: Completely work safe, MARRIAGE PROPOSALS, girl senpais cooking, smoke detectors, high heels, and MARRIAGE PROPOSALS!
Fun fact: The smoke detector part comes from true facts! One day, it went off randomly in our house because the battery was low, and we couldn’t figure out how to get it to shut up ^^;;;
***
“I believe we should get married.”
“W-what?!”
Naoto Shirogane looks up from where she’s reading a newspaper at the kitchen table. Kanji Tatsumi, her boyfriend since back in high school – how very cliché, but it works for them – is standing at the stove, in the middle of sprinkling shredded cheese into the eggs he had been making for breakfast, “I said we should get married,” Naoto says again,
“We already meet all of the requirements; we might as well make it official.”
Kanji turns the stove off in fear of burning the eggs, quietly setting the pan off the burner. The toasts makes its grand debut from the toaster but Kanji leaves it, letting Naoto’s words fully sink in, “You… want to marry me?”
It’s hard to miss the slightly dreamy edge of Kanji’s voice, a happy smile on his face.
That is, unless, if you’re Naoto Shirogane.
“I already explained that we meet the requirements. We live together. We share the same bed. We participate in intercourse. We-”
Kanji chuckles, “I love it when you say it like that.”
Naoto rolls her eyes but there is a hint of a smile on her face, “My point is we are already married by the normal standards, so we might as well make it official.”
“I… well, yeah-”
“Great,” Naoto goes back to reading her paper, “We should begin making the proper arrangements.”
“… right,” Kanji mutters before he quietly goes back to making breakfast.
***
“Congratulations!”
“That’s great news!”
“We’re so happy for you, Naoto-kun!”
These are the exact reactions she had expected from the girls, each of them smiling and already discussing what kind of wedding the two of them should have. Naoto decides that it’s best to let them talk, quietly sipping her drink as she hears things like what should the dress look like? – Rise – where should the reception be? – Yukiko – who should we get to cater the food? – Chie, of course.
“Oh! Naoto-kun, show us the ring!”
Naoto blinks, looking at the three girls with a confused look on her face, “The ring?”
“Yeah! I bet Kanji-kun picked out a really nice one,” says Yukiko.
“Oh… no, he did not pick one out.”
“He didn’t?” Chie frowns, “He’s supposed to! Want me to knock some sense into him?”
Sometimes, Naoto wonders how Kanji ended up being known as the scary one at school when Chie was always the one ready to knock things into the atmosphere.
“No no, nothing like that,” Naoto says, “I was the one who proposed.”
“Awwww, Naoto-kun that’s so sweet!”
“It is more logical than sweet. We are pretty much married, just not officially.”
Rise’s bright smile starts to falter, both Chie and Yukiko quietly staring at Naoto. Naoto blinks, looking confused, “What?”
“Is… that how you proposed to him?” Yukiko asks.
“Well it is logical. We have been together since high school and-”
Rise lets out a loud sigh, “Jeez Naoto-kun, how unromantic!”
“What?”
“You’re supposed to propose,” Chie says, “You know, down on one knee, with a ring and all that?”
“I fail to see the point in-”
“Poor Kanji-kun,” Yukiko says, “He must be heartbroken.”
“T-that is not even a real thing! Your heart cannot actually break!”
“Actually, I read somewhere-”
“I am not listening to this,” Naoto says, standing up, “The two of us are getting married, that is the important part, it does not matter how I proposed the subject.”
“That’s just it, Naoto-kun, you didn’t really propose.”
Naoto frowns, waiting for Chie or Yukiko to say something, to dispute Rise’s claim of her not really proposing.
When she’s met with silence Naoto turns and walks off, muttering something about her friends being completely unreasonable.
***
“Did my proposal bother you?”
Kanji thinks he should learn not to be around a stove at all when Naoto starts having one of her thinking spells. He turns off the burner, not wanting to be the first man in Japan to burn rice, “Why would it bother me? I wanna get married to ya.”
“No, I mean… the way I executed it. Was it… done poorly?”
Kanji walks over and sits at the table next to Naoto, putting an arm around her shoulders, “Was it Rise?”
“All three of them, actually.”
“Ah.” Kanji is quiet for a moment, trying to find the right words. He’s learned over the years that a lot of things he says can, and will, be used against him – particularly with such an analytical girlfriend (fiancée, he supposes). “It… just wasn’t done in a way people are use to.”
“You mean down on one knee and all of that.”
“I… yeah, that. But it ain’t no big deal, honest,” he smiles and kisses her on her cheek, “I’m just glad to be with ya is all.”
“Ah,” she says, but she’s still frowning, “But… would you have preferred… or perhaps, I should have let you do it…”
“It don’t matter who did it, as long as it was done.”
“Right, but… would you have preferred, you know… romance?”
“I…” he frowns, because he’s also learned over the years that lying to Naoto Shirogane is completely pointless. So he takes a deep breath and chooses his words carefully, “… I guess… it would have been nice, but like I said it ain’t a big deal.”
Naoto nods as Kanji stands up to finish dinner. Despite his words she can tell when something bothers him. His voice gets a bit tight around the edges, his back stiff, and he immediately finds something to do that doesn’t involve looking at her.
Dinner is eaten in silence that night.
***
“There is absolutely no literature on how to romance a guy that fits with Kanji-kun’s mannerisms.”
Rise blinks when Naoto sets down a stack of magazines, each one claiming to know exactly how to “get” a guy in one way or another. Rise can’t help but smile at the frustrated look on Naoto’s face, “Look, you already got Kanji, you don’t need this stuff.”
“But I am not sure how a romantic proposal is supposed to be executed.”
“Well you know what Kanji-kun likes, right?” Yukiko asks. She’s grabbed one of the magazines and has started to look through it, her body shaking in the effort it takes to not laugh hysterically at some of the suggestions.
“Sewing. How do I do something romantic with that?”
“You could make him something. Oh! Maybe like a little doll that’s wearing the ring?” Chie suggests.
“Except I have no sewing skills whatsoever; and if I ask him for assistance he will know that something is up.”
“You can take him out to dinner,” Rise says, “Something really romantic, and you can slip the ring inside a cake. Oh! Or a champagne glass! And then someone can come by and start playing your favorite song on the violin.”
“Right,” Naoto says, “And just where exactly is there such a fancy establishment in this town?”
“Well… there’s Aiya…” when Naoto frowns at her Chie gives her a sheepish look, “Hey I don’t know, o.k.?!”
“What if you make dinner?”
Naoto blinks, looking at Yukiko, “I… suppose I never thought of that. I could find some sort of recipe in a book, I guess…”
“And you can have candles! And flowers! And romantic music! And wear a pretty dress!”
Naoto starts to grow pale at all of those suggestions, but she guesses if this is the key to a good proposal she has to do it, right?
“Don’t worry,” Yukiko says, “We’ll help you. It’ll be great.”
***
By great Yukiko clearly means a complete disaster.
Somehow, both Yukiko and Chie are in Naoto’s kitchen, putting together a meal for her and Kanji. That hadn’t been the plan at all. The plan had been for Naoto to do it herself, but Rise insisted she wouldn’t have time because she needed to focus on looking her best – which Rise was more than happy to assist with.
“Don’t worry,” Yukiko had said to her, all smiles and innocence, “I’ve got a recipe that he’ll love.”
By love she clearly means burn your kitchen down.
It’s not that Naoto hasn’t learned her lesson in the past when dealing with Yukiko’s cooking – and Chie’s unhelpful assistance in said cooking – it’s just that she has a lot on her mind as Rise bullies her – yes, bullies her – into keeping her eyes open so she can apply mascara. So when they smell a very burnt piece of meat wafting into the bedroom along with a rousing chorus from the smoke detector, Rise and Naoto quickly rush out of the bedroom.
Or rather Rise rushes, Naoto has been forced into wearing a pair of high heels and is slowly clanking her way over to her kitchen. She might be comfortable in dresses now – though she most definitely prefers suits but, as usual, has given into Rise’s peer pressure – she definitely does not get along with heels. By the time she gets to the kitchen the entire area is covered in a cloud of smoke, Yukiko coughing as Chie tries to fan the smoke away with a towel. Naoto is the only one who thinks to open the window, Rise covering her ears and screaming along with the smoke detector as if that will quiet it down somehow.
Naoto would ask what happened, but she knows the answer to that already. She decides to glare at Yukiko and Chie who both give her apologetic looks.
“I thought if we turned the oven up it would cook faster!” Chie screams.
“Then we would have time to set the table to make it look nice!” Yukiko screams next.
Naoto sighs and grabs a chair, standing on top of it so she can unhook the smoke detector. Unfortunately, she forgets she’s wearing heels, and her balance is less than accurate in the damn things. Her legs are shaking as she unscrews the detector, but it still keeps squealing in her ear.
“They usually have a back up battery!” Rise screams.
“I know!” Naoto screams back as she works to pop open the back so she can take the batteries out. Her legs are still shaking, and somehow the activity of trying to get a battery out is making her move too much. She stumbles back and she squeezes her eyes shut, preparing to hit the floor.
Instead she lands perfectly in Kanji’s arms.
In the chaos of the smoke and the loud detector he must’ve arrived home just in time to see Naoto about to fall out of the chair. His reflexes when it comes to his girlfriend – fiancée – are always top notch, but now that he’s holding her and not worried that she’s going to hit the hardwood floor his brain can properly process everything that’s going on.
Out of the smoke detector going off, the gray cloud in his kitchen, and the three girls giving him sheepish looks the one thing Kanji finds himself asking is, “Why the hell are ya wearin’ heels? You can’t walk in them things.”
***
“I apologize for this turning out so badly.”
“It’s all right. Not like anything important actually burnt.”
“Right. Just dinner. Thankfully we did not go with the idea of putting the ring inside a cake, then that would have burned too.”
Kanji looks over at Naoto from where they’re both sitting on the couch. The smoke has completely cleared, the girls in the kitchen cleaning the mess – they had wanted to do something, they said, all three feeling bad for almost destroying their kitchen. The smoke detector lies quietly on the kitchen table, Kanji having managed to open the back and pull the battery out.
Naoto hasn’t looked at Kanji since they sat down together, but he can tell from her slumped shoulders that she’s absolutely miserable right now. Dressed in a long, black dress, she’s still wearing the heels, as if trying to hold onto the image she had been trying to create. On the table in front of them is a velvet box – the ring, Naoto had said, but now the scene is ruined so there’s no point in presenting it.
Kanji can’t help but smile as he says to her, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For tryin’ so hard,” he says, “You didn’t have to.”
“Well I botched it up the first time, treating it like some sort of contract. I did not even say that I loved you or anything like that.”
“Well, you can say it now.”
Naoto blinks and looks up at Kanji, “You know I love you.”
“And that’s why ya wanna marry me, right?”
“Well, y-yes of course. You mean everything to me. I am not sure what I would ever do without you.”
That’s when it all clicks inside of Naoto Shirogane’s head.
And with the overwhelming perfume of extra burnt meat lingering in the air, she grabs the velvet case, gets down on one knee, and re-proposes to one Kanji Tatsumi.
She likes to count her first proposal as a failure, so she can take pride in the fact that she, at least, got this one right.