five times gojo thinks of proposing to you and one time he does.
contents. gojo x fem!reader • tooth rotting fluff • a lot of i love you’s • some light angst • in yearner satoru we trust
it’s raining. this is that miserable kind of raining that seeps through the seams of his jacket, plasters his white hair to his forehead and makes the fluorescent lights of the 24-hour convenience store flicker like they’re also tired of existing.
you’re standing in front of the instant ramen section, waddling around because your shoes broke three blocks ago and are heavy with water, shivering in his oversized hoodie that he’d draped over you the moment he saw your teeth chattering. your hair is damp and sticking to your cheeks, and you’re squinting at the different flavor packets like they hold the secrets to the universe.
“spicy or chicken?” you ask him, turning slightly. there’s a drop of water clinging to your lower lip.
gojo satoru, the strongest sorcerer of his generation, a man who has stared down curses that would make lesser men weep, feels his heart do something stupid in his chest. it’s inconvenient, really. he’s supposed to be above this— above the mundane domesticity of convenience store runs and broken sandals and wet hair plastered to sleepy faces.
but you’re wearing his hoodie. you’re standing in a fluorescent-lit hellscape at 11:47 pm on a tuesday, and you’re asking him about ramen flavors like this is exactly where you’re supposed to be.
“spicy,” he says, his voice coming out softer he thinks it does.
you nod and grab two cups, and when you turn back to him, you give him a smile— small and tired and pretty— and he thinks i want to wake up next to you every day for the rest of my life.
the thought is so sudden and so loud that he almost chokes on his own spit.
he watches you walk to the counter, watches you fumble with his card. you’re so ordinary in the best possible way. you’re not a sorcerer, not a clan heir, not someone the world expects anything from except to live and be happy.
the rain drums against the glass doors as you come back to him, holding out the bag. “let’s go home, toru,” you say, your voice muffled by the hoodie’s collar pulled up to your nose.
home. you call it home and he calls it home too. your small apartment, the one with the broken lock on the bathroom door and the neighbor who practices violin badly at 6 am. his home.
his hand twitches toward his pocket, where he absolutely does not have a ring because he hasn’t bought one, because this is insane, because you’ve only been together for a year and a half and that’s not even that long in the grand scheme of things.
but the word home echoes in his skull like a prayer, and he thinks— i could do it. i could ask her right now, in this ugly convenience store, with rain in my shoes and ramen in my hands.
he doesn’t, of course. he’s not that reckless. probably.
“let’s go home, baby,” he agrees, and he takes the bag from you with one hand and wraps the other around your shoulders, pulling you into his side. you’re warm despite everything, and you fit there perfectly, like you were designed for it.
the ring box stays imaginary in his pocket all the way back to the apartment.
it’s not even his injury. that’s the worst part.
gojo is fine— annoyingly, immortally fine— but you’d taken a hit for a civilian during a mission gone sideways, and now you’re behind a set of double doors with a concussion and three broken ribs, and he’s sitting in a plastic chair that squeaks every time he moves.
he hasn’t moved in forty-seven minutes.
shoko had looked at him with something between pity and exasperation when she’d examined you. “she’ll be fine, satoru. stop looking like someone killed your dog.”
but he can’t stop. his leg is bouncing, his hands are clasped too tight in his lap, and every time a shoko walks by he almost jumps out of his skin.
you’re fine. you’re fine. you’re fine.
the doors open and you’re wheeled out on a gurney, pale and groggy but awake, and your eyes find him immediately like they always do; they’re magnets and he’s north.
“toru,” you say. your voice is hoarse and so small that he wants to wrap you in bubble wrap and never let you leave the apartment again.
“hey,” he says, and he’s beside you before he remembers standing up, his hand finding yours. your fingers are cold. “you’re an idiot.”
“i know,” you say with a smile. it’s weak and wobbly and it makes his chest ache.
they move you to a room and he sits in the chair beside your bed, holding your hand while you drift in and out of sleep. the fluorescent lights buzz overhead. the heart monitor beeps a steady rhythm. you look small against the white hospital sheets, smaller than you ever look anywhere else, and he hates it.
at some point, you wake up properly, blinking at him with those eyes he’d drown for. “how long have you been here?”
“you should go home. sleep.”
you sigh, but there’s no real frustration in it. your thumb traces circles on the back of his hand. “you’re so stubborn.”
you laugh, then wince because of the ribs, and he immediately leans forward like he can somehow absorb the pain from you. “don’t make me laugh, asshole.”
“sorry. sorry.” he presses his forehead to your knuckles. your skin is warm now, finally. “you scared me.”
“i’m okay.” your free hand comes up to card through his hair, causing him to make a sound he’ll deny later. “i’d do it again.”
“don’t,” he says, and his voice cracks in a way that would embarrass him if he had any room for embarrassment left. “don’t ever do it again. i can’t—i can’t lose you.”
you’re quiet for a moment. the heart monitor beeps. somewhere down the hall, shoko curses.
“you’re not going to lose me,” you say finally, softly. “i’m right here.”
he lifts his head to look at you. you’re smiling at him like he’s not a mess and it’s not him who is sitting in a hospital chair with dark circles under his eyes and a crick in his neck. like the fact that he’s here and he’s satoru is enough.
the thought is quiet this time, not loud and sudden but soft and settling, like snow. he wants to marry you. he wants legal documentation that says you’re his. he wants to be the one they call when you’re in a hospital bed. he wants to be family, not just boyfriend, not just partner, but yours completely.
his hand tightens around yours.
“what?” you ask, because you always notice everything.
“nothing,” he says. “go back to sleep.”
you do, eventually, your hand still in his. and he watches you breathe, in and out, steady and alive, and he starts mentally calculating how long it would take to get a ring custom-made.
the sky explodes in gold and crimson and you’re standing so close that your shoulder presses against his, your face tilted up toward the light like you’re trying to drink it in.
fireworks have never done anything for gojo. he’s seen more impressive displays of cursed energy before breakfast. but you’re happy— genuinely, your mouth curved into a soft smile, your eyes reflecting every burst of color— and he can’t look away from you.
the crowd jostles around them. children shriek with delight. couples hold hands and take photos. you’re wearing a yukata he’d helped you tie earlier, fumbling with the obi until you’d laughed and pushed his hands away and done it yourself.
“look, look,” you say, pointing at a particularly large bloom of green and purple. “that one’s pretty.”
“yeah,” he says, but he’s not looking at the sky.
you turn to catch him staring and raise an eyebrow. “you’re supposed to be watching the fireworks, dummy.”
“i’m watching something better.”
you don’t deny it. instead, you lean your head against his shoulder, and he feels the warmth of you through the thin fabric of his own kimono. the fireworks continue to explode overhead, painting your skin in fleeting colors— blue, then pink, then white.
a group of children runs past, laughing, one of them bumps into your side. you stumble, just slightly, and his arm goes around your waist automatically, steadying you.
but you don’t pull away, and neither does he. his hand rests on your hip, and you’re so close that he can smell your shampoo— floral, soft, something that makes him think of mornings and pillowcases and shared showers.
the fireworks finale begins, a chaotic symphony of light and sound that makes the ground vibrate beneath their feet. the crowd cheers. someone sets off a sparkler nearby, and the scent of gunpowder fills the air.
you turn your face up toward him, the light catching your eyes, and you’re so beautiful it hurts.
“thank you for bringing me,” you say.
“thank you for coming with me.”
you beam, and he thinks about the ring he’d looked at online last week— the one with the sapphire, because he’d want you to always carry something that resembles him in some kind of way, and he’d thought that’s the one but he hadn’t bought it because buying a ring online feels wrong, feels too impersonal for something that’s supposed to hold this.
but standing here, with your body warm against his and your smile soft in the fading light, he thinks he should have bought it anyway. he thinks he should get down on one knee right now, in the grass, with the last of the fireworks fizzling out behind him.
“hey,” he starts. his voice is strange in his own ears.
he looks at you, properly, intently. the curve of your cheek, the way your hair falls across your forehead, the small scar on your chin from when you’d tripped over his shoes last month.
“nothing,” he says. “just happy.”
your expression softens into something so tender it’s almost too much for him to handle. “me too.”
he doesn’t propose at the fireworks festival. he doesn’t have a ring, and the moment doesn’t feel big enough— not because it’s small, but because he wants more. he wants you surrounded by people who love you, or maybe just the two of you in a quiet room, or maybe something in between. he wants it to be perfect.
but standing there, with your hand slipping into his and your fingers interlacing like they’ve done it a thousand times before, he makes a promise to himself.
that’s the thing about you: you’re steady in a way he’s never learned to be. you take things in stride. you handle his chaos with a patience that borders on supernatural. you’ve seen him at his worst, hollow-eyed and trembling after missions that went wrong, and you’d held him without a single word of judgment.
so when he finds you in the bathroom, sitting on the closed toilet lid with tears streaming down your face, something in him fractures.
“hey,” he says, dropping to his knees in front of you. “hey, what’s wrong? what happened?”
you shake your head, trying to wipe your face with the back of your hand, but the tears keep coming. “it’s stupid.”
“i don’t care if it’s stupid. tell me.”
you take a shaky breath. “that necklace you gave me, your first gift to me. i—i can’t find it anywhere, and i’ve looked everywhere, and it’s gone, and i know it’s just a thing and i have more, but you gave it to me and i always wear it, and—”
you break off with a sob as he pulls you into his chest without thinking. you cling to him, your fingers digging into his shirt, and he holds you as tight as he dares.
“it’s not just a thing,” he says into your hair. “it’s important to you. that makes it important.”
“i’ve been crying for twenty minutes over a necklace.”
“and i’d cry for twenty days if i lost something you gave me.”
you laugh wetly against his chest and he feels the vibration of it, feels the way your body relaxes slightly. he rubs your back in slow circles, the way you do for him when he’s the one falling apart.
“satoru gojo, master of the impossible. remember?” he pulls back just enough to look at your face, to thumb away the tears still clinging to your lashes. “i will find your necklace if i have to tear this entire city apart tile by tile.”
“i’m never dramatic. i’m perfectly reasonable.”
you snort. it’s such a normal sound, that he grins despite the tightness in his chest.
“i love you,” you say quietly, with your voice raw and wrecked and it hits him like a physical blow.
he thinks about the ring in his nightstand drawer.
he’d bought it last week, finally, after weeks of indecision. it’s simple— a thin gold band with a small diamond, nothing flashy because you’ve never been flashy. he’d held it in his palm for a long time before putting it in the drawer, and he’d told himself he was waiting for the right moment.
this isn’t the right moment. you’re crying on a bathroom floor, your face blotchy and your nose running, and you’ve never looked more human, more real, more his.
he wants to ask you. he wants to open his mouth and say the words and watch your eyes go wide. he wants to tell you that he’ll spend every day of the rest of his life finding things you’ve lost, fixing things that are broken, holding you when you cry.
but you’re vulnerable right now and he doesn’t want to take advantage of that. he doesn’t want you to say yes because you’re sad and he’s here and it feels like the right thing to do in the moment.
instead, he kisses your forehead and says, “let’s go look for that necklace together.”
you nod, wiping your face one more time. “okay.”
you find it three hours later, wedged between the bed frame and the wall, and the way you light up when you see it— the way you clutch it to your chest like a lifeline— makes him think that maybe the right moment is just whenever you’re you.
it’s such a mundane thing, such an insignificant thing, but gojo wakes up to the smell of batter and butter and the sound of you humming off-key in the kitchen, and he thinks this is it. this is what i want forever.
the sun is streaming through the windows, catching the dust motes floating in the air. your hair is a mess, sticking up in the back where you’d slept on it wrong. you’re wearing his t-shirt— the old one with the hole in the collar— and nothing else, your bare feet on the cold tile floor.
you haven’t noticed he’s awake yet. you’re too focused on flipping pancakes, your tongue poking out slightly in concentration, and he watches you from the doorway with something so big and so warm in his chest that he’s surprised he doesn’t burst.
“you’re staring,” you say without turning around.
“how do you always know?”
“i can feel your eyes on me. it’s creepy.”
you turn then, spatula in hand, and you’re smiling at him— that easy, unguarded smile that’s just for him. “good morning, sleepyhead.”
“good morning, pancake princess.”
you roll your eyes and turn back to the stove, and he comes up behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist and resting his chin on your shoulder. you lean back into him instinctively, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“how’d you sleep?” you ask.
“had a weird dream about a talking white cat.”
“very annoying, actually.”
he laughs into your neck, and you shiver slightly, and he presses a kiss to the spot behind your ear that always makes you melt.
“i’m trying to cook,” you protest, but you tilt your head to give him better access anyway.
“mm. you’re doing great.”
you elbow him gently, but he just tightens his arms around you, and for a moment the world narrows to this— the warmth of the kitchen, the sizzle of pancake batter hitting the pan, the softness of your body against his.
he thinks about the ring again. it’s still in his nightstand drawer, hidden beneath a pile of socks he should have folded weeks ago. he’s taken it out a dozen times in the past month, held it in his palm, imagined sliding it onto your finger.
but the moment has never felt right. there’s always been something— a mission, a bad day, a distraction. he’s been waiting for perfect, for the kind of moment they write songs about, for something that feels big enough to hold everything he feels for you.
and maybe that’s the problem. maybe perfect doesn’t exist.
maybe perfect is this. sunday morning, bare feet on cold tile, pancakes burning slightly because he’s distracting you. maybe perfect is the way you fit against him like you were made to be there. maybe perfect is the off-key humming and the holey t-shirt and the sun on your face.
“i love you, baby,” he says. the words come out different than usual, heavier with meaning. “i love you so so much.”
you tilt your head back to look at him, and your eyes are soft and curious. “i love you too.”
he almost says it. the words are right there, on the tip of his tongue, three words and a question and the rest of his life. marry me. marry me. marry me.
but then the smoke alarm goes off because the pancakes are definitely burning now, and you shriek and push him away and grab the smoking pan, and the moment scatters like startled birds.
he laughs, watching you fan the smoke detector with a dish towel, and he thinks soon. soon soon soon.
it’s three in the morning and you’re both still awake for no good reason.
the apartment is dark except for the blue glow of the television, which is playing some terrible late-night infomercial about a vegetable chopper that neither of you is watching. you’re lying on the couch with your head in his lap, your legs draped over the armrest, and he’s been absently running his fingers through your hair for the past hour while you scroll through your phone.
neither of you has said anything important in a while. it’s just the comfortable kind of silence, the kind that comes after two years of learning each other’s rhythms, of knowing when to talk and when to just be.
on the screen, a man with too much enthusiasm is dicing an onion at impossible speed.
“we should get that,” you murmur, not looking up from your phone.
“yeah. think of all the time we’d save.”
“we don’t even cook that much.”
“we could cook more if we had a vegetable chopper.”
he snorts. “that’s the most ridiculous thing i’ve ever heard.”
you finally look up at him, and your phone’s light casts strange shadows on your face, making you look like something out of a dream or maybe a horror movie, depending on the angle. your eyes are tired but warm, there’s a small smile playing at your lips.
“you should spoil me,” you say.
“fine. but we’re not buying that vegetable chopper.”
you laugh, soft and sleepy, and close your eyes. his fingers resume their path through your hair, and he watches your face relax, watches the tension melt out of your shoulders.
and he thinks again— this is right.
not the fireworks. not the perfect sunset. not the grand gesture he’s been building up in his head for months. just this: three in the morning, terrible infomercial, your head in his lap, and the overwhelming, bone-deep certainty that he doesn’t want to spend another day of his life without being able to call you his spouse.
the ring is in his pocket.
it’s been in his pocket for three days now, ever since he’d stuffed it there on a whim, telling himself he’d find the right moment. he’d almost pulled it out at dinner. almost pulled it out on the walk home. almost pulled it out when you’d tripped over the welcome mat and cursed creatively.
but he’d talked himself out of it every time. too soon. too cliché. too much.
but now, with the infomercial guy enthusiastically demonstrating the vegetable chopper’s julienne function, and your breathing slowing into something that might be sleep, he realizes that the right moment isn’t something you find.
“don’t fall asleep. i need to ask you something.”
you open one eye. “at three in the morning? about the vegetable chopper?”
“no.” his heart is pounding. his hands are shaking slightly, and he hopes you can’t feel it through his fingers in your hair. “something else.”
you sit up slowly, blinking at him, and the movement makes him lose contact with your hair. your hand finds his instead, your fingers intertwining with his like they’ve done a thousand times before.
“you look weird,” you say. “are you okay?”
“i’m fine. i’m great. i’m—” he takes a breath. “i’m in love with you.”
you raise an eyebrow. “i know, toru. you tell me that like five times a day.”
“i know. but i mean—” he laughs, a little breathless, and pulls his hand away from yours to reach into his pocket. “i mean it in a specific way tonight.”
your eyes widen as his fingers close around the small velvet box. you’re looking at his hand, then at his face, then back at his hand, and your mouth falls open slightly.
“it’s not a vegetable chopper,” he says, and pulls out the ring.
he’d spent weeks looking at rings, had even asked megumi for advice (which had been a disaster—the kid had just stared at him for a full thirty seconds before saying “i don’t know, just pick one”). but this one had felt right the moment he’d seen it.
“i had this whole thing planned,” he says, and his voice is shaking now, he can hear it, and he doesn’t care. “i was gonna take you somewhere nice. do the whole dinner-and-candlelight thing. get down on one knee like a normal person. but i kept waiting for the perfect moment, and it never came, because—” he swallows. “because every moment with you feels perfect. even the ones where we’re watching commercials at three in the morning.”
your eyes are wet. he can see the shine of tears in the blue glow of the television.
“so i’m not gonna wait anymore,” he says. “i’m not gonna wait for the right restaurant or the right weather or the right anything. because i don’t need any of that. i just need you.”
he shifts on the couch, turning to face you properly. he doesn’t get down on one knee— there’s no room, and honestly, he’s pretty sure he’d trip over the coffee table— but he takes both of your hands in his, the ring box pressed between your palms.
“marry me,” he says. “because i want to come home to you every day. because i want to argue about vegetable choppers with you for the rest of my life. because you’re the first person i want to tell when something good happens, and the only person i want to hold me when something doesn’t.”
you’re crying now, tears, rolling down your cheeks, and you’re laughing at the same time, which is such a you thing to do that his heart feels like it might burst.
“you’re proposing,” you say, your voice cracking, “while an infomercial is playing in the background.”
“that guy can be our witness.”
you laugh harder, and you’re nodding, you’re nodding, and he hasn’t even heard the word yet but your head is moving up and down and you’re squeezing his hands so tight it almost hurts.
“yes,” you say. “yes, you absolute idiot. yes.”
he kisses you before he even puts the ring on you. his hands cup your face, and you’re both laughing into the kiss, and it’s messy and wet and perfect in a way that nothing else has ever been.
when he finally pulls back, his forehead against yours, he slides the ring onto your finger. it glints in the television light, catching the blue glow and turning it into something softer.
“it fits,” he says, surprised.
“did you measure my finger while i was sleeping?”
you look at the ring, then at him, and your smile is so wide it crinkles the corners of your eyes. “i love you. i love you so much.”
“i love you too,” he says. and then, because he’s still him, because he’ll always be him: “so… we can get the vegetable chopper, i guess. as an engagement gift to ourselves.”
you shove his shoulder, but you’re laughing, and he’s laughing, and somewhere on the television the infomercial guy is still dicing onions with reckless abandon.
neither of you notices. you’re too busy looking at each other, at the ring on your finger, at the rest of your lives starting right here, right now, in this ridiculous, wonderful, imperfect moment.
and gojo thinks that he’s never been happier to be wrong about what perfect looks like.
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