i think genuinely one of the moments in the novel that really stuck to me, was a quiet small moment between kdj, when kdj was talking to lgy about his sponsor and he raises his hand- and lgy flinches. So kdj holds his hand until he stops trembling.
like that moment is just SO TENDER and quietly devastating. Because kdj loves lgy. But he also sees himself in lgy. And he can't love that reflection of himself.
Yet he still does love lgy sm, and when he raises his hand and realizes lgy's fear, he just holds his hand in silent comfort.. and just sits there with him. until he's able to calm down again, kdj just sits with him.
When Akutagawa told Kyouka he was happy for her, when he didn’t attack Atsushi while he was grieving for the headmaster, when he reached out for Atsushi with Rashomon during the fight with Francis, when they worked together to defeat Ivan, when he kept his promise and didn’t kill the man aboard the ship, when he sacrificed his life to give atsushi a chance to escape, when he
i like to think that atsushi picks up some of akutagawa's speech habits the longer they're around each other - and vice versa - and occasionally he'll mean to say "it's no problem!" when a minor inconvenience that annoys him happens and instead he says "i'm sure you have plenty of other problems you caused to deal with, so don't worry about this one" and it doesn't click at All for him that he's more of a passive aggressive dick when he's annoyed until he says something like that to dazai who dumps paperwork on his desk, and junichirou offers to buy him a drink for growing a spine