#actually sent the screenshots of this to sunnnfish the other day. i love you sunnnfish

[dirtbra1n]

need psychic beams to be real because sometimes I’ll go on tangents about the hanzawa to tashiro scene in my head that is THAT scene and it’s like. I don’t remember if I’ve put enough information out there for anyone to know what I’m talking about. but anyway going to basically copy paste this other tangent Re: the themes that come full circle and also following through on the Getting good at loving someone. THAT scene. the first crime scene for tashiro to witness. eyes open and manic. that scene. masato says SO many things and they’re all SO revealing and they all clearly point in big bright red neon signs to masato’s ugly beating heart and there’s just no way that tashiro doesn’t understand (he sees things as they are) what he’s seeing and hearing and feeling but the ONE thing that masato DOESN’T say is “I like you.” he manages to skirt around that number one problem phrase by the skin of his teeth. so masato finishes his ace attorney breakdown and splats cartoonishly at rock bottom, and tashiro goes home with a lot to think about. like he’s gathered that hanzawa senpai likes him, eventually, when he toes his shoes off at the door and is like Wait. and he sits there right next to all the shoes as he debriefs. and he’s getting this big feeling of deja vu, because, like. isn’t this exactly like when he was chosen to be the next club president.

tashiro’s hard to nail down because he’s so simple, and goes with the flow so naturally, but there are things to take hold of. he goes with the flow, but doesn’t want to take on responsibility when he feels someone else would be better with it. he wants a relationship, but isn’t so desperate to force it.

(he and shirahama went to that group date; neither he nor shirahama got a date out of it. shirahama was upset, he wasn’t.)

tashiro goes with the flow, but he doesn’t compromise himself. he is himself, always. but he does want a relationship. it doesn’t consume him, and doesn’t really affect his day-to-day, but it’s true.

and hanzawa senpai said EVERYTHING but that one key phrase.

hanzawa senpai chooses him to be the next president like it’s natural. hanzawa senpai, evidently, likes him, and he seemed kind of angry about it, but tashiro doesn’t think it was any one thing he did that caused it.

anyway, tashiro doesn’t have terrible self esteem, and it wasn’t any sort of deeply seated festering or anything so dramatic, but for just a second, both times, the thought flickered across his brain behind his eyes like, But why me?

and the rest of the story, in tandem with hanzawa masato’s neurotic unraveling, serves to answer this question.

because, as it’s plain to see, masato didn’t choose to fall in love with tashiro when the backlighting seared his image into his mind, but he did choose to fall in love somewhere between here and there, and he even decided that he would be halfway good at it.

so eventually, when masato decides he has to confess plainly, decides he owes tashiro that much at least, eyes open and handsome face even more so, tashiro places his hand over his mouth and says, “I know.” because he does. he does know. how could he ever not know. tashiro sees things as they are, and has seen an awful lot, and all of those things point right at this foregone conclusion. he knows.

masato, possessed, takes hold of tashiro’s hand, wrenches it halfway strugglingly away from his own mouth, and presses it to his cheek. his cheek is on fire. masato is on fire. masato’s eyes are wide open and he’s looking up at tashiro and he’s damn near humiliated but he doesn’t falter and he doesn’t look away and his stomach churns with so much something and tashiro feels it, and brings his other hand to masato’s other cheek, and urgently, gently, pushes masato’s face so that it faces away from him. tashiro himself looks up at the ceiling, wholly out of his depth. masato feels almost sick with relief. “hanzawa senpai,” tashiro starts, almost conversationally.

“yeees?” masato replies, grasping desperately for his composure and some semblance of control over himself.

“let’s not do that.”

a vague instruction. he understands completely. “roger that, tashiro-kun.”