Disclaimer: I don't own Neon Genesis Evangelion or anything associated with it. Gainax created this world, I just play in it.

Amazing, I'm only a week later than projected in finishing this story.

Hope you enjoy this.

Second Kiss

"Hey Shinji," Misato called from the kitchen. Dressed in an ultra short pair of denim cut offs and a short, blue and white button up tank top that was missing the top two buttons, she sat cross legged on a chair ruffling her shower dampened hair with the towel clutched in her right hand. In her left she held an ice cold can of beer.

"Can I ask you something?"

"What is it Misato?" he asked innocently as he stepped into the kitchen to retrieve another glass of ice water. Rather than his usual attire of his school uniform, he was wearing a pair of dark blue shorts and a loose, red and white t-shirt. It was a another hot, humid evening and the air conditioning was having trouble keeping the apartment below the sweltering level.

"I was curious about something," she began.

He instantly began to dread what was coming. She had that mischievous look in her eyes again. Well, it was always there really, but the intensity varied and right now it was high. He actually thought it made her look even more attractive than she already was, but it was tempered by the certain knowledge that something of a teasing nature was about to befall him. Then again, he certainly could have worse things happen to him than be teased by his gorgeous housemate. Still, he tried to brace himself for the inevitable.

"Have you ever kissed a girl?" she finished.

Wham! There it was, just like a two by four across the back of the head. He could feel the rising heat as his face turned red and he knew that he must look somewhat like a deer caught in the headlights of an approaching car.

"W-what?!"

Misato giggled. He may be nearly eighteen years old now, and well over three years removed from thwarting Third Impact, but she could still make the saviour of the world blush brightly. With his days as an Eva pilot behind him he had settled into living a normal life and had slowly begun to emerge from his shy and troubled shell. It was just the two of them now, along with PenPen, since Asuka had returned to Germany in a huff two years earlier. She claimed that she could not, and would not, continue living with a pervert and a drunk. It just meant that Misato finally had Shinji all to herself again.

"Have you ever kissed a girl?" she asked again before taking a sip of her beer. "It's an innocent question."

"With you, there are no innocent questions," he muttered as he turned to the fridge and dropped a couple of ice cubes in his glass.

'The game is on,' she thought to herself triumphantly, as she smirked at his comeback. Not only was he growing up and filling out, late bloomer that he was, but he was also starting to get comfortable with shooting back at her when she teased him.

"Are you insinuating that I would be asking out of anything other than simply curiosity?" she asked with mock indignation.

"In a word…yes," he answered as he refilled his glass and returned the jug of cold water to the fridge.

"You're mean," she said as she lowered her eyes and stuck out her bottom lip, favouring him with her best fake pout.

He rolled his eyes at her exaggerated behaviour. "That's not gonna work Misato."

"Ahh you're no fun," she scolded playfully as she raised her beer can and touched it to the side of her head. The feeling of the cool aluminium against her too warm skin was nothing short of delicious.

To Shinji, it was something else altogether. He watched in hormonal fascination as a couple of beads of moisture dripped from the can to the bare skin of her collarbone. From there they rolled slowly downwards, curving over the swell of her left breast and disappearing into her cleavage.

Now Misato was an observant woman, her military training had seen to that, so she didn't fail to notice the look on Shinji's face or why it was there. She rolled the can slightly as it still rested against her left temple, making it shed a couple more drops of condensation, which followed a similar path to their fortunate predecessors. He was staring and blushing hard now and she suspected that his brain was struggling with mixed signals as to where to send the blood flow. To his face, and possibly out of his nose, or somewhere considerably farther south.

"Why Shinji-kun, you look a little distracted," she said innocently as she subtly rolled her shoulders back a bit, making her breasts stand out a bit more. She knew that she probably shouldn't be teasing her now hormonally awakened housemate like this, but he was just so cute, especially when he got all flustered.

Although, she had been noticing that he had been noticing her a lot more lately. She knew that he didn't think she had noticed that he actually looked at her now when they were talking, or that he now made eye contact with her, even if only for a few seconds, before averting his gaze as his cheeks began to colour.

There was something different in his eyes when he looked at her now and she really didn't mind at all. Not a look of lust or perverse intentions, but more of a look of admiration or maybe adoration, and the element of a young man's fascination with a woman he found to be attractive. And she knew for a fact that he did find her to be attractive.

A few weeks earlier over dinner, she had asked him if there were any girls at school that he was interested in. After some lengthy and teasing banter, he made 'the slip' and said that 'none of them are as pretty as you are.' It had surprised her and she actually found it kind of flattering. After all, it wasn't everyday that you heard the cute, shy, invincible baka-kun Shinji, say that he thought you were pretty.

"Earth to Shinji-kun," she called to him, her amusement evident in her voice.

He jerked slightly in surprise, not realizing just how spaced out he had been. "Sorry," he responded in little more than a whisper. He turned away with a look on his face that had become more and more familiar lately. It was a look that said he was ashamed of himself for looking at her like that, and that he was ashamed of the thoughts that must have been going through his head.

"You never answered my question," she reminded him before he could make good his escape. Never taking her eyes off of him, she took a sip of her beer. He felt himself becoming distracted again as her tongue slowly traced her top lip, lapping up a couple of stray drops of the amber fluid after she lowered the can.

'I think I'm going to need a cold shower. Again,' he thought. He sighed in defeat and leaned back against the fridge. "You're not going to let this go are you?"

"Not a chance," she admitted with a bright, almost victorious smile. "And I won't even tease you about it."

"Uh huh," he muttered, clearly not convinced.

"I promise." She went back to pout mode. "Pwease Shinji-kun? I'll be good."

He smiled lightly and just shook his head at her antics. "I doubt that," he said before taking a drink of water and setting his glass down on the counter. "But I'll tell you anyway."

"Goodie!" she cheered. "So, have you?"

He paused for a moment. "Yes, I've kissed a girl," he answered, with little in the way of enthusiasm.

She was prepared to continue teasing him, despite her promise not to, until she heard the tone of his response. It seemed that the playful mood was about to take a turn for the serious.

"That's doesn't sound encouraging," she observed. "It wasn't good?"

"It started out okay," he said with a shrug. "But it kind of went down hill real quick."

"Who was she?" she asked.

He sighed. "It was Asuka," he answered quietly.

"Wow," she said, a bit surprised. "When was this?"

"It was in the evening after my last trip to my mother's grave with my father," he explained. "She said she was bored and she goaded me into it. She said I was scared to kiss her on the anniversary of my Mom's death, that I was afraid she was watching me."

"And you took the bait," she surmised.

"Yeah," he smirked. "I got brave for a minute. I marched right up to her and told her to pucker up. And it was nice too, until she said my breath was tickling her and she pinched my nose shut. I damn near suffocated."

"That…sounds like Asuka," Misato said. She was a bit lost for words.

Shinji took a drink of his ice water. "When it was over she rushed to the bathroom and started rinsing out her mouth, yelling all the while that she'd never kiss to kill time again."

"Unfortunately, that sounds like Asuka too," she sighed.

"Well, at least I can say my first kiss was a memorable one," he joked.

'God, even his first kiss was messed up,' she thought. 'It should have been something special that he would always cherish. Why do even the simplest things in his life have to end up going sideways on him? I feel like a real idiot now.'

"I'm sorry Shinji, I shouldn't have brought it up," she apologized.

"It's okay Misato, you didn't know," he told her. "And I've learned to be able to laugh about it."

However, that wasn't the look she saw in his eyes, or the tone she heard in his voice. What she observed was a tinge of sadness and regret and it always made him seem so alone when he was like that. It triggered within her some feelings that she had been trying to repress. Feelings that she had been trying to deny for a few weeks now and which were probably bred out of her own loneliness.

The night he made 'the slip', she had been forced to finally admit to herself that she had feelings for him, and had for quite a while. But she didn't act upon them. She kept those feelings from him because she felt it was foolish of her to think that he would want someone of her reputation and age. As much as it might hurt her and cause a resurgence of her loneliness not to tell him, she was willing to sacrifice her personal feelings so that he would be free to find someone who made him happy and who would be worthy of his love.

But it had been getting increasingly difficult to keep up that façade, and she knew now that that was exactly what it was. They had gotten along well right from the start and she had always felt that there was something different about their relationship, but she had never been able to put her finger on it.

She wasn't one to believe in fate or destiny, but maybe there really was some sort of an inevitable connection between them. That, or the recent heat wave had gotten to her brain and turned it to a thick sludge and she was imagining things. Either way, she decided to take the risk of letting down her self imposed barriers and see what would happen. Right or wrong, she couldn't hold off those feelings any longer.

"Do you want to kiss me Shinji?" she ventured.

His eyes locked onto her in disbelief. 'She can't possibly be serious,' he thought. "I thought you weren't going to tease me about it?"

"I'm not," she answered quietly as she fidgeted in her chair. "I'm serious. I wouldn't ask you something like that if I wasn't. I wouldn't do that to you Shinji."

He could tell by the tone of her voice that she was serious, and he could see it in her eyes. He also knew that despite all of the teasing she did, she wouldn't set him up like that just to have a laugh at his expense. He could feel his heart beating faster at the mere thought of kissing her. It wasn't lustful thinking, despite how he seemed to be unable to take his eyes off of her as of late. He respected Misato and he always felt guilty when his mind would wander off into thoughts of a sexual nature regarding her. Of course, it didn't help that he thought she was irresistibly sexy and the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

However, he couldn't deny that he had some very strong and deep feelings towards her, feelings that only seemed to grow the longer he lived with her. Sure, she was a slob, she was lazy, and she drank more than she should, but she was also a lot of fun to be around and she was one of the very few people in his life who genuinely cared about him. They had a lot of things in common, considering all that they had both been through in their lives, but he felt that somehow there was more to it than that. He felt as if they were connected somehow, if that made any sense. Then again he could be wrong since he seemed to be running more on hormones than common sense these days.

He managed to look into her eyes and not turn away. "Do you…" he started. He had to take a swallow of water to relieve his suddenly dry throat. "Do you really like me that way Misato, or are you looking to replace a memory for me? If that's all it is, I don't think I…"

"I think I do like you that way," she cut in, her voice sounding nervous. "Could you feel that way about me Shinji-kun, or am I just being a lonely, dirty old woman."

"You're not dirty or old Misato," he answered softly. "You're beautiful and I think I love you. I've never been in love before, but I think that's what I'm feeling."

"So...do you want to kiss me Shinji?" she asked again, a slight, hesitant tremor creeping into her voice.

He paused for a moment, his equally nervous gaze never leaving hers. "Yes," he answered quietly.

She slowly got up from her chair and he tentatively stepped away from the fridge, meeting her halfway. For a moment they just stood there, nervously staring into each others eyes as if they were trying to read the jumble of thoughts and feelings that were coursing through their brains.

Was this right? Could they truly admit their love for one another and push away the loneliness that had been such a constant in both of their lives? Did they care what other people might think of them being together? Did they dare to take a chance to be happy?

Neither of them looked away. Eventually, they grasped each other lightly by the shoulders and slowly bent towards one another until their lips finally met.

The kiss wasn't chaste, but it wasn't ravenous and hungry either. It was warm, it was soft, and it was lingering. It said to them everything that they couldn't put into words. It practically shouted to them that this was where they both belonged. This was who they both belonged with. This was who they both belonged to.

When the kiss finally ended, they wrapped their arms around each other and silently stayed that way for a long while. It felt good and it felt right, like this was how it was always supposed to be.

Shinji had always hoped that his first kiss would be special, and this one was. Even if it was really his second.

A/N: Shinji/Misato stories seem to come out of me a lot easier than anything else. Besides, I needed a fix of fluff. Sue me.

Hopefully this gets me back on track. I've been woking on another story involving Rei and I'm only about six friggin weeks past my self imposed deadline. My concentration has been so screwed up lately. Probably due to all the coffee I've been mainlining.

I hope you liked this and I hope you'll leave a review.

And by all means, check out my other stories, you know how to find them.