
I'm asexual and Tamaki really doesn't read as one to me. While I appreciate the inclusion of "wanting a relationship that doesn't involve sex", from my perspective this boy is deeply traumatized from being around the abusive partners of his mother. Whether he discovers he can fall in love with Shii or not, the author keeps presenting Tamaki's trauma to us without doing anything to bring the characters forward.
If they're going to have a relationship it has to be based in consent. That's part of the reason why Tamaki can't have sex in the first goddamn place, because he respects when his partner says "no" and is confused why that's the wrong thing to do.
ヽ(`Д´)ノ
Bringing this up a second time, I am asexual and I don't think Tamaki is. I think it's super cool that the author knows about asexuality and has two characters discussing it without being like "omg that's not really a thing", but given the fact that we can see Tamaki's internal dialogue and have context for his actions, it's really safe to say that he isn't ace.
Yeah, that's right. The story is that Tamaki was traumatized by seeing his mother have sex, he views sex as "hurting" someone because his mom used to says stop during sex. The asexual thing was just the sex friend speculating with Shii after hearing about Shii's experiences with Tamaki sexually. We tge reader have thst window into Tamaki's past and we saw how he masturbated after that encounter with Shii, but from Shii's perspective Tamaki is like a puzzle. Like he just said, he knows Tamaki is interested in sex, but won't say so or act on it for some reason.
Ugh... typos:
Say, not says*
The, not tge*
That, not thst*
To add on to my comment: Remember, Shii has never been over to Tamaki's house and only knew Tamaki saw his mom have sex, he doesn't know exactly what the trauma is. It's that he feels sex is "bad" and "abussive". "Bad" as in it's a trait his mother doesn't like, so she'll hate him and "abusive" in the sense that he thinks it hurts the one taking.