"No. I didn't actually ever dictionary crack you, just—save scum once."

Nod.

"So later that day you started pretending to have difficulty with the ice and even though I was feeling kind of upset I couldn't resist it and I had to walk you to your mum's car."

"Upset about the - arm's length thing?"

"Yeah. I didn't know what I'd done wrong but I felt like I must've horribly hurt you somehow."

"...when'd you realize?"

"Later that day you kinda told me. You'd spent the day practising with Yamanaka while I went raiding a military base and a police station for weapons to copy, and when I was done I talked to you in telepathy and we talked about—something inconsequential, I don't remember—but you hooked into asking me about how the first loop went and I'm completely certain you were angling for finding holes in what I'd been telling you. God, and I'd been trying so hard to hide it, it was such a waste, and of course you were smart and attentive enough to figure it out—what I thought is irrelevant."

"I am not uninterested in what you thought, it's just not the - central thing here."

"I know, just—if I let myself I'd wax poetic about how everything about you is perfect and we already know I think that so it doesn't super have any content. Plus I keep noticing this impulse to flatter you because I know you like flattery and I don't want to—give in to those impulses."

"Definitely noticing that I like flattery," Haru mutters under his breath.

"Do you want me to tell you? What you like? In uh. These terms? I don't know if it'll help or hurt that I'm conscious of it but..."

"I want to know."

He nods. "You like flattery. You like—being the center of my life. You like how much I like you, how devoted I am to you, how much I'm clearly head over heels for you. You like how effortless it is, you like that you don't need to do anything and you can just be yourself and in the course of that I'll go crazy with wanting you. 

"You like how attentive I am. You like that I open doors for you and I carry you to the bed and I dry your hair after a shower. You like how much attention I pay to you and how much I try to anticipate your needs and wants. You like how much I know about what you like and try to give you it. 

"You like how much I've shaped my life around you. You like that I have a whole list of restaurants that I want to show you without repeats, you thought you didn't really care that much about food but that was more because you hadn't really had delicious food before, I'd actually been planning on trying to learn how to cook to please you. You like that I'd die for you. 

"You liked it when I saved your life. You liked how angry I was that something dared to hurt you. You like how protective I am. 

"You like that I'm very serious about what I care about. You like that I've been so single-minded about saving Tokyo even when it's hard, you had—a much higher opinion of me than I did, honestly, I wasn't doing it because I'm a good person—but I do admittedly take things seriously, a lot more than I thought I did. 

"You like—should I pause here before I talk about the sex stuff?"

Oh god is Haru going to start fucking crying to mourn this relationship that he supposedly had that was founded on a web of lies just because it - okay that "just" can fuck off, that doesn't belong there. Is he going to mourn this relationship he can't remember where he was cherished and worshiped and adored and protected and doted on, yes, he fucking is, and whether that involves tears is maybe an open question. How about not right now, okay, eyeballs. He blinks. Finishes the phrases he's jotting down. He will have a completely unrelated problem if they talk about the sex stuff and he'd like to have a completely unrelated problem at the moment. "Go on."

"You like that I'm hot. That probably wouldn't make or break anything but the fact that I'm hot goes on the plus column.

"You like being kissed on the back of your neck. Like, a crazy amount, so much so that when we first started making out but before we'd had sex you would eventually ask me to stop because it made you start to forget yourself. 

"You like being selfish in bed, and you like that I genuinely want you to be. Getting you to actually believe that you just telling me what you wanted was hot for me, getting you to actually believe that I really didn't particularly want reciprocation and really did just want to do whatever you wanted for your own pleasure without having to worry about mine, it was still a work in progress, but it's true.

"You like getting blowjobs, you really really really like getting blowjobs, and you extra like that you don't need to give me blowjobs, that I can and do get off from sucking you off. You kept—it was like you couldn't conceive of the possibility that someone could get off on you getting off. The first time we had sex I—I guess now that I started talking about it I should keep going—I came from making you come, you didn't need to do anything, just from me sitting behind you and touching you and jerking you off and kinda pressing myself against you. 

"You're vers. When you bottom you like it when I'm behind you and can kiss your neck while I fuck you, and when you top you like me to be facing you so you can see my face and we can kiss."

If Haru cares to look he might see that Yutaka is visibly aroused.

Nope he is studiously keeping his eyes on his notebook while he jots that all down as clinically as possible which ISN'T CLINICALLY ENOUGH. He was so right about having a completely different problem! He is sure having that completely different problem now!! "Mm-hm," he squeaks.

"Anyway, yeah. And I'm a really selfish and self-centered person and I just can't stop—wanting you—so I keep finding myself slipping into—saying things I know you'll like to hear, acting in ways I think will endear you to me—and I keep trying to correct away from that, but I'm—sorry. For when I fail. I don't want you to—I don't want to do the mundane version of dictionary cracking you, of figuring out the things to say that'll get you back to me. It's why I'm trying to just—stick to answering questions. Because if I start doing things that I want then—there's really only one thing I want—I'm doing it again God fucking damnit shutting up now."

Ahaheheh selfish and self-centered, he says, after explaining that his kink is somehow - okay no there was other content there and Haru should stop thinking about Yutaka going down on him actually now. He can think about that later! When he is alone!

"There's -" There's two things keeping us from being boyfriends right now and one of them is your various ethical failings and the other one is that I don't remember anything but those could both be solved separately and you're making lots of headway on the both of them independently probably. Is that true? Pin in that.

"I -" like it when you talk to me like that, except obviously Yutaka knows that and thinks that's the whole problem, is Yutaka actually too wrapped up in guilt to want - to endorse? - to be interested in hypothetical ethical ways to achieve? - getting back (?) together, should Haru not be tempted to problem-solve this at all -

"Um." Just a space-filler.

"...we've been skipping around, can you cover the rest of the month."

"Yeah, though, uh, at the rate we've been going it might take—a week," he says, looking at his watch.

"...yeah. You can cut down on the depth some, I don't need, like, a restaurant list or whatever."

"Okay. ...this one is probably important though because it was one of the times I rewound you. You wanted me to tell you stuff about you, how much time we actually spent together and how memorable it was." He laughs that little humourless laugh of his. "I flirted, I said of course you were memorable, hadn't I been making that obvious? And I told you about how the first month went in very general terms, even more general than the letter I gave you, and I tried to make it sound like we were closer, to make it sound like our date was later than it actually was so that the fact that we never had a second date was less suspicious, tried to cover that suspiciousness even more by adding speculation, talking about how I was fucked up by my near death experience and then the wish thing, saying that I was kind of distant. With—what I know now about who you are as a person—my guess is that if you'd liked me on the first loop you wouldn't have let me just 'be kind of distant', you'd at least try to ask me what gives, or something like that, and the fact that I didn't include it in my summary must mean that you didn't care that much and the fact that I hadn't said anything obvious that'd make you not spend time with me must've meant that I was trying to cover it up.

"You were correct about all of that, obviously. At one point you expressed mild confusion and when I asked you said you kinda wish you could ask your original timeline self some questions and that you didn't usually need to reconstruct your own motivation from secondhand reports. I told you about my wish, and told you that part of the motivation I had for it was that one of the regrets I had was that I was not great to you and I'd pushed you away and never got to really spend time with you. You asked what I meant by not great. I deflected, you were trying to—not be obviously suspicious, I think, you said you couldn't figure out why you hadn't followed up but given that apparently you hadn't it made sense for me to not invest too much in you. I asked point blank if you thought that if you'd liked me you'd have acted differently. You said it was weird that you didn't tell me why you weren't going for a second date. I asked—something, I don't remember—you said that you think I'm not telling you everything and you're acutely aware of how if I find out what exactly tipped you off I could try again with a better story.

"I did exactly that, I stopped time and freaked out and concluded I was obsessed with you for some reason and then rewound, and that time I told you the truth. ...most of the truth. I think I overplayed how interested I'd been in you the first time around, I was really very interested then but the first time around I was—hung up on you but in a different way that I still don't really understand but which wasn't just straightforwardly liking you."

Now Haru isn't having any problems except for living in a doomed Tokyo. Great job not polishing your speech too much and coming off too endearing, Yutaka. "That would've been a pretty good time to instead have your ethical revelation. How'd that happen, anyway?"

"How'd—what happen? The ethical revelation?"

"Yeah."

"It wasn't a revelation. It was just—feeling guiltier and guiltier over time about hiding stuff from you, about having done that to you, robbed you of your memories—I actually lied to myself for the longest time about that, I was sublimating my guilt so much it was making me physically nauseous, until I couldn't really sit on it and pretend I didn't know—and just—exposure, I guess, to you, to someone who could be—so unwaveringly good, there wasn't any specific individual thing, it was just obvious eventually that I had been wronging both of us for a long time and I'd rather not have any relationship at all than one that was predicated on lies. Even if I knew that I'd—even if I guessed what that'd do to me."