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ooc; i'm gross as hell
i know we already went over a lot of this shit but i just want to reiterate it since a lot of it is so good and so spot on and accurate and argh. like shinpachi being dog IT'S JUST THE BEST METAPHOR FOR IT. he's clingy without realising he is (with the way he's constantly dragging her out to have fun but that's just.. how.. he is... and how he sees the world like wouldn't anyone want to go out and have fun isn't that normal??) and he does that guilty dog thing especially when they're married or whatever she just comes home and he's sitting there with that expression and she's like oh my god what is it this time. happens all the time. and she can never help but forgive him all the same in the end because he's too dumb and lovable to not do it and look at that face.
but i think at their core is mostly what you said before - shinpachi cares too much and rei cares too little, i think that's the best way to sum up both of them. and you think that being the complete opposite of each other in that sense would make them not get along at all but it's actually the opposite?? because the exact fact that shinpachi cares too much if what gets him involved with rei-- he doesn't see her a woman (of course he knows she's a woman, but he doesn't see her as a woman as in "he didn't start talking to her just since he wanted that booty) but he just sees her as someone he really just wants to make happy. because even if he didn't know her at all at first, he's really just not the type who can just ignore someone's unhappiness without making an effort to fix it if he can help it. shinpachi cares so much and he's just so full of life and energy and urgh, he just wants to bring some of that into her life since he doesn't realise (yet) that her lack of caring is a conscious choice rather than just her not knowing how to have fun or something. so that's why he'll just drag her around until she realises how much fun life can be and then she'll smile and honestly that's just his dream vision of how this whole thing will go, even if it won't.
because of course the truth is that rei doesn't give a shit about life (even if she might not seek out death actively, it's still sort of an "if a car was speeding my way right about now i don't know if i'd bother getting out of the way" kind of deal) and.. i don't think it's something shinpachi can even comprehend, probably. even though her going home with him would basically play out pretty much like hijikata's route does with chizuru (complete with the stupid romantic incompetence although shinpachi's a little more adorable than just downright loserish hopefully...) with all of his friends dying and everything he's lived for being taken from him, but the difference is that hijikata just really wants to die in his route and shinpachi would never want to. you can take everything from him he loves and make him miserable but he would never want to give up on life, he just doesn't believe in that sort of thing. he'd always find some way to keep going. so if he'd hear rei doesn't want to live he'd just be so.. confused, probably?? like why would you want that, why would you want to give up when there's still so much shit for you out there, when stuff can still get so much better. LMFAO HONESTLY i think he might just only get more determined to show her that life's worth living...
(and then he tells her that life's worth living right as he dies in her arms after protecting her i mean :') )
or he might just get mad at her and actually fiercely say that tough luck he's not going to let her die as long as he's around even if it's selfish since it's obviously against her wishes. but idk he just cares about her now since he - sort of without realising at first - made it his personal task to try and make her happy somehow so even that knowledge wouldn't be able to stop him since he's already set his sights on his goal. and it's why he'd protect rei at any moment it's needed, take hits for her, even die fighting for her if he'd have to-- not as a conscious choice, but if she was in that much trouble and there was no other way, he'd probably jump in the way all the same since he already can't stand seeing innocent strangers die in front of him let alone someone he's somewhat stupidly fond of. the more she'd push him away the harder it'd be to get rid of him I MEAN LIKE WE SAID IF SHE'D TRY TO AVOID HIM AFTER HE'D GET HURT FOR HER HE'D LITERALLY JUST FOLLOW HER AROUND WITH THAT GUILTY DOG LOOK LIKE WHAT DID I DO WRONG.. :( REI......!!
god he's such a pain in the ass. i don't know how she puts up with him. but then again maybe it's also since getting shinpachi into your life is sort of like a tornado, you just get caught up in it before you know it and it's not difficult to get caught by shinpachi's boundless energy. and it's not like sh ewouldn't do anything for him either - in a couple kind of situation i can definitely see her grounding him a little like you said, making sure he doesn't do things that are just too downright stupid and just... idk post canon she'd really give him a reason to live (to draw out that hijikata route parallel i guess) because he would have lost all the things in life that made him happy before except for her. and then he just acts like a clingy dog and blah blah blah we've seen it in that meme thread just lying on top of her.
in fact he probably does that whenever he can get away with it with them as a couple LMFAO... not too much in public of course since while he doesn't give a shit about embarassing himself he wouldn't want to embarass her but like when he gets drunk he totally does it no matter where they are. and when he's sober he does it all the time at home or when they're lying in bed he's like a total dog too and just making sure that either he's lying half on top of her or she's lying half on top of him since he's just the kind of person who really appreciates that kind of closeness of just being there without necessarily even doing anything.
(shinpachi's just really used to people being there in general tbh like that's why he's so upset in the divorce scene in sano's route he just doesn't even.. consider the possibility that people might not be there anymore one day, that's just something that doesn't happen, he doesn't even think that sano would ever leave so when he does it hits extra hard
and in that sense it would totally apply to rei too since idk he has fun with rei and he doesn't think that'll end even if they're more like casual aquaintances/friends rather than his total brodom with sano but even so he can't imagine her just not being there anymore suddenly so when she says she wants to die it's
yeah
sort of a slap in the face right there PEOPLE DON'T LEAVE THAT'S NOT A THING THAT HAPPENS DAMMIT REI YOU'RE GOING TO STAY ALIVE)
especially when he learns she turns to dust since h.. ah... rasetsu.... if there's anything that sets this guy off it's that so he'd be so goddamn protective of her and she'd tell him to stop since there's no need to protect her and he just. wouldn't even listen. although he'd probably at least apologize and tell her sorry that she's stuck with a selfish and stubborn guy like him but despite the self-awareness he just wouldn't give up and keep protecting her until the very end
and yeah sano's staring would just completely go over his head like ??? why you looking at him like that man he's just helping someone out
not even "helping a woman out" or w/e since rei is just rei to him as sappy as that sounds.... like i said he cares so much for.. just about everything, shinpachi's the type to throw a fit about tons of stuff exactly because he cares so much and it's why he latches onto something completely random like rei's unhappiness too because he cares way too damn much about another person's happiness. and by now he's honestly in too deep to quit LMFAO especially since he keeps feeling like he has shit to make up for and yeah.
one day he'll make up for it by getting horribly injured protecting her sorry for your ptsd rei.