A small exploratory oneshot based in the manga-verse of Evangelion.
Too Close (Lucid Dreaming)
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I was never meant to be in a place like this.
It's a fantasy conceived in that lull; the in-between of sleep and wakefulness, lucidity too poignant to be truly dreaming, and yet, too full of fancy to really be anything but. It's something that visits him often, when he allows himself to think of such things, before words like conscience and propriety reassert themselves and he banishes them (until the next day).
It's always the same thing, anyway.
Ashen hair and ashen lips, too close for comfort. Always too close for comfort. Too comfortably close.
Red, sanguine, fills the space of his vision, and all he can see is blood, welcoming and warm. Too close, and yet not close enough. Only half hidden by fishpale lids and smoky eyelashes, they are everywhere and they are all he can see. Dull red eyes and flesh like a corpse.
The fingers clasping his wrist are cold (corpselike) – he remembers this clearly from the too-frequent brushing of fingertips, of shoulders, from the touches that did not make him as uncomfortable as he forced himself to believe. There are words to go with those touches, words full of fire and cheer that scalds, that is so warm it fills him up to the brim. He overflows, and it is beautiful. He hates it.
The burning inside him is difficult to discern, to understand. He thought it was dislike, loathing, but it becomes an inferno when he gets too close.
Too close for comfort, and the burning isn't quite right. The fire is tainted, threaded with something else. Something too hot, too wrong.
And so Shinji lies in that state of almost sleep, and imagines those too thin, too pale lips coming closer, much closer, and he wonders, if they pressed against his, would they feel chapped, wet, like Asuka's, and would the skin exposed to questing fingertips feel soft, pliant, like Rei's?
Would those cold digits grasp and claw, or would they slide, explore? Would they wrap around his neck and while he mewed in pleasure and snap crack, would his furry neck flop bonelessly, head lolling about his shoulders like a puppets. Stringless.
Snap, crack, like dead branches and scrunched paper and mercy.
And would those red orbs finally glide closed, finally relieve Shinji of that horrible (wonderful) feeling every time they looked straight through him, into him, and held his shame up to examine with a clinical compassion that burned.
Kaoru was too heartless.
And yet, as Shinji inevitably draws out of that half awakened state into full, dull cognisance, he wonders who is more heartless, a boy who kills a kitten, or a boy who kills an angel?