1:09 PM

"I think he's alive." Seconds happen. Breathing. A long drag from a short cigarette. The birds have been awake for hours now. "Should I hope he is? I don't even know anymore."

It's a phone speaker is quiet as the person on the other end of the line decides whether or not to respond to that. She smells like beer and talks like a high schooler. Shinji knows who she is before he knows who he is.

"...Am I fucked up for saying that?" He tells her no, but only in his head. She doesn't hear him. She isn't good at reading his thoughts anymore. He doesn't cry in her lap anymore. He's here less often. He's miles away when they're in the same room. He is so, so, so much like her. That's what she hates about him.

"Am I so totally fucked up for even thinking something like that?"

There's a suspiciously vomit-like stench surrounding the area, and it tells him that if she is subconsciously wishing him dead right now, there is a very good reason. Underneath this swath of sweaty blankets, Shinji himself is half waiting to die. This is the script that bad hangovers tend to follow. You have no idea where you are. Everything smells like dead cats. The pulsating in your head: concussion or just a bad headache? Did you fall last night? No, bad question. How many times did you fall last night?

What have you done? Who hates you this time? What, in gods name, have you done?

"So this kid brings him home last night…" Hark, an answer.

"And I'm in the bathtub...What? Yes I was fucking naked, what do you bathe in, an evening gown? So I hear this knock at the door, and I'm like okay, that's weird, Shinji has a key. So the knocking gets louder, and I go out there, soaking wet, this stupid kitchen knife in my hand while I'm somehow still managing to hold up my freaking towel, and...What? Of course not."

And shinji, from beyond his grave of gin and puke, is wishing for the first time since he's known Misato, that she'd finish her goddamn story. But she digresses like she's so good at, and spins off into a secondary tale about skin care or something. He isn't listening anymore.

"It's a nice bathrobe, I'm telling you, hot soapy water and silk are not friends with each other."

But he has to stay dead, is the thing. When, and if he lets her know he's not sleeping anymore, she is probably going to smack him into the sun, if she doesn't just kill him first. Worse than that, she's going to want to talk . A "talk" isn't really the right work for it. He'd rather call it a yell.

"Have I what? Well. I mean...yeah, I checked on him around noon just to make sure he was still breathing, but an hour is plenty of time to die…"

And now, having just been delivered the knowledge that it's one o'clock, he very much wishes that he had accidentally filled his lungs with stomach acid passed quietly. That Indian Civilization exam he had at eight this morning? Yeah, worth about forty percent of his like the last test was. Forty percent. The one that he missed because.

Because why? Because he wanted to?

Shinji throws up a little bit in his mouth for more than one reason, curls up into his own putrid scent, and considers thinking of Asuka for a wouldn't be a good idea, he thinks, as he thinks of the way she's going to look at him later. She won't smell like puke, but the taste will be burnt into her throat for days. Shinji knows about her. There are scars on her knees from shambling home at night. From rugby, she says. Says she was an open side flanker back in her day. Back in her day. Like she's old and wise or something. God.

He swallows and it hurts. It will hurt for a long time.

And then there's this softness on his face. He doesn't entirely realize at first that they're fingers. Or even that his covers, tacky with dried sweat and dried spew, are long gone. His ears are cold now. His sinuses are on fire. The light is sneaking underneath his closed eyes, and into his skin, burning him down into his blood that he swears to god is boiling him alive. It stinks so fucking bad in here. This is so, so, so bad.

And her fingers are cold and she smells warm. Like cinnamon, and smoke, and dark coffee, and stale breath, and the costly shampoo that she locks away from one made with real passion flower, but artificial blood orange. When she catches the scent of it on his shoulders she all but shoots him in the head. She smells like the mother she will never become.

Her fingernail, the overly grown out one that she won't cut, traces down his cheek for just a second. Then she's feeling his forehead again, not knowing exactly what it is that she's doing, but feeling confident because women do this on TV all the time. She doesn't know what to feel for so she just keeps her hand there. He can almost see her trying to be ashamed in him. She breathes in.

"He thinks I don't know he's awake." She says. She's going to have to call you back, she says.

Shinji listens to her cell phone plop into his covers. She offers him a few seconds more of peace while she's deciding what to do with him.

"You're such a bad liar." She says, her voice tired and sort of sweet. "Even when you're not even doing anything you are such a bad liar."

Retreat, he thinks. Back down into the covers he burrows, slamming a stray pillow over his aching head in hopes that maybe just maybe, it will save him from her sense of responsibility. She snatches the pillow in one graceful swoop and contemplates beating some sense into him. For now, and now only, she is a pacifist. He gives her a gravely groan, and in response, she strips him of his shell of covers.

"Out." He tries to scold her out, and she just laughs because there's more danger behind the gates of a preschool than there is inside the gates of Shinji Ikari. She nudges him with her foot.

"Get up. Now. You can still make it to...pre-intro-to-econ 101, or whatever the hell." She's taking another drag and spilling ashes onto his sheets.

"Not worth it." He opens his eyes just a little bit and suffers the horrible brightness of a single lamp that just last week he said wasn't bright enough. He only thanks god that he hasn't replaced it yet. He looks to Misato, who seems a lot more pissed off now that he can actually see her.

"Tough. Move it. Maybe I'll drive you."

"You're not my mom."

And that was a mistake on his part. He doesn't know why. The gap of silence that follows is small, but in it she is about to say something. He watches her lips start to move, and her unmade eyebrows start to meet in confusion or anger or maybe hurt. They grow a part a little.

"You'd better be glad I'm not your mom." She finds her words. "If I was your mother, you would have been out the door at six o'clock. And you'd be limping. This would have been grounds for a whooping."

He kicks at her knee, very much not here for the whole invasion of personal space thing. She doesn't budge.

"That isn't how parenting works." He kicks again. She grabs his ankle and he isn't shocked by how strong she is. She attended the police academy once upon a long time ago. He wonders if she's ever gotten to use her strength for anything other than threatening him into going to class.

"Now." She repeats. The sugar in her voice is melting away at a dangerous pace.

"No." He mutters. "Don't feel good."

And that pisses her off too, if that ugly scoff she just fired off was any indication. She lets his foot go, and punishes him with the window. Any other morning, the term punishment by window wouldn't mean anything. But the thing about sunlight and hungover people is that they kind of don't work together. She zips the curtains wide open and he recoils in protest.

"Hey, you think every time I get blasted the night before work I use it as an excuse to stay home and sleep all day?" She doesn't give him the time to answer. "No. Because I'm a grown up. Because people depend on me."

Totally serious, she says that. Standing here in smudged eyeliner and a kitty-cat bathrobe circa-1998 tanktop, bra who the hell knows where, Misato claims to be a responsible adult. This isn't an argument for today.

"Nobody depends on me." He says, unable to keep his anti-edgy-teenager filter off for the moment. Too early for that.

That seems to soften her up a little, or so he is hoping from his nest of stink and warmth. She looks at him with her mouth turned a little bit downward. Sorry eyes. He used to hate it when she felt sorry for him. Now it just kind of happens, and there isn't anything to do about it, so he struggles to even care anymore. She makes a sad sound. It sort of hurts him a little bit, but time will take that away from him.

"Sweetie." She says. She didn't have anything else planned to console him with, he can tell. It was just sweetie. Anything else is a lie. "If you want people to depend on you, you have to meet them first. You can't meet people in bed."

Well, someone obviously hasn't heard of the internet. He was going to say that outloud. But it wasn't negative enough. He's thinking of something to say while she comes back over to the bed and finds a relatively clean place to sit. She touches his back and he flinches. Not his mother. Not her son.

"I know you're in a funk." Funk is a funny way to put it, he thinks. "I know that. I'm not going to try to force you out of it. I'm not gonna' try to tell you what to do. But…"

There's always a but. There is always, in every safe corner and warm nook, a loophole. Nothing is ever over or free. There is always a catch, and everything has to be difficult. No exceptions. He burrows deeper into the dark.

He doesn't even have to tell her to screw off. Her hand is on his back again. He shakes it off, pushing away her warmth for the last time, not knowing how close she is to giving up on him. Every second she knows him a little less.

He doesn't see her teeth curling into her bottom lip with such an intensity that it summons blood to her tongue. It wouldn't do shit if she did. And she's already decided, anyway. She is officially beyond the realms of pissed off.

"Y'know, Shinji, I really hope you're grateful that I'm as forgiving as I am." Misato, in the simplest terms, snaps. "Do you think...Do you think that if Ritsuko saw you choosing to sloth around in your own vomit instead of pursuing your education she'd let you keep your internship? Do you think she'd even think twice about finding another kid to pop into your place?"

She's yelling now, though she'd easily deny it, and the sun is miraculously here for the first time in weeks at the worst possible time, and the birds are fucking screaming. He wants this to be done. He decides to give her the goddamn dialogue that she wants. Press A to fight back. Press B to give in and shut up.

"No." He says, with the actual enthusiasm of the color grey.

"Then why shouldn't I?" She asks. "Why am I any different? Why should I just let you sit here and be a sad little boy when none of my colleagues would do the same?"

Breathe. "I don't know."

Actual bullshit. They both know it. They both know that this situation, their particular situation, is different. Do they know why? No. A reason would be nice, but this is just the way this is, and maybe pretending to hate it makes them feel a little bit more comfortable with it, but nothing is going to change. She isn't going to kick him out. He isn't going to leave.

They don't know why it works this way. It just does.

So really, in the end, she hasn't a thing in the world to say to him, which is why she's standing there in silence, honoring the wish of every half-ex boyfriend who's ever dared to tell her to shut her goddamn mouth. Shinji makes her quiet in a way that most men will never achieve.

No, she's thinking. Not a man. Not a boy either, but not a man. Something.

"I don't even scare you anymore." She admits. To herself. His attention is a quiet plus side.

When he rolls over, she is reminded that he's alive. That isn't the scary part. The scary part is that it shocks her. His face is shadows and unwanted whiskers and so many other things. She wishes he'd turn over. She wishes, sort of, that he'd go back to sleep.

"You always scare me." He says.

"And you always were a bad liar."

Sometime in the next quiet minute she begins to give up on him. He won't look at her. Tells himself that soon, in a second he's going to get up and slam the door and be the boy in the book who never comes home, who never calls again, and who everybody misses. He will make her sorry in the gentlest of ways.

Not two seconds go by. She gets up to leave. All of the sudden he has never felt so sorry in his life. He doesn't know what for. For being here, and smelling bad, and making her say nice things when she probably doesn't want to. For taking this room in her house when she could be renting it out and giving her jack-shit in return. For that one time. And the time after that. That other time, too.

"Misato." Shinji calls out. Voice like dust. She doesn't pick up. He almost doesn't try again. "Misato? Are you still there?"

Of course, she doesn't say. She has responsibilities here, that she didn't ask for, that she never fucking asked for, but she will try to keep up with them until she can't anymore. And then she will try harder. She will wait for the storm to pass, but unlike most people, will stay outside and fuck with the storm until it goes away. Maybe then she'll go outside. Maybe then the sweet old lady at the grocery store will stop asking her about the bags under her eyes.

"I'm here, sweetheart." He hates that.

"What would you do right now?" He asks, subconsciously promising himself that this will really, honestly, seriously be the last time he asks for life advice from a grown woman who just finished washing her hello kitty underwear in the kitchen sink. "What would you do right now if you were me?"

Probably her favorite question in the world. In the universe, maybe, with the exception of "My god, are those real?" which he has never asked her, though she says people do it all the time. But when she turns around, she is one thousand years younger. Misato Katsuragi has opinions spilling out of every orifice of her body. She is bright again. She is spry. An entire life management team, tied into a killer body and a pair of baby pink slippers.

" Okay. Hear me out." Just four words. The four horsemen of the verbal apocalypse. He hears her out. She nests into the clean corner of his bed one last time, legs tucked under and hands folded tightly like the good girl she doesn't even try to be.

"You know me. I don't wanna' tell you how to live your life. I don't like to meddle." He choke-scoff's and she swats him for it. "But I am gonna' tell you, hypothetically, what I would do if I were you. Hypothetically."

"Hypothetically?" He teases her. Swat number two is dutifully endured.

" Hypothetically. Ass. Hear me out."

So he hears her out, again .

"I would get up and shower. Put my bedding in the wash and ask Misato really really nicely if she'd put them in the dryer for me later." He takes a sniff, dies a little, and feels kind of bad that she had to advise him to shower.

"And then…" She continues, letting her voice grow just the tiniest bit more gentle. "I'd get myself a coffee at the convenience store. And I'd hurry up and make it to my 2:30 class to make this day at least a little useful...That's what I'd do."

She takes a puff from a newborn cigarette that Shinji can't remember her lighting (where did she get a lighter?), and a fresh coil of white smoke is born into the air, only to die in the only slice of sunlight in the house. She has made her peace.

"That's what I'd do if I were you." She says. And how unfortunate it is that she isn't. How beautiful would it be to be someone else. Even someone just like you. Even if just for a day.

He offers her an understanding nod, a small one that doesn't require much neck work. He hopes that it's enough for her because he really, really doesn't know what to say right now. Get out of bed? Go outside? Spend actual, real life money? What do you say to such convoluted and achievable advice like this? Okay, that's what I'll do?"

"Okay." He tells her. "That's what I'll do."

She'd smile at him, if it wasn't beyond her at this point. When he said okay, that was when she didn't need to be the styrofoam, pseudo-mom anymore. She's the cool girl again. She smokes cigarettes at the foot of your bed and tells you what to do. She will never tell you which side of her is real. You will never ask.

"Okay." Ash falls from her hand. She doesn't watch it drop. "Then that's what you'll do."

So that it is. And so that it will be. He hopes that she'll make herself scarce before he tries to get out of bed, purely because he's almost positive that he isn't wearing pants, but considering the amount of times she's accidentally seen his penis, Shinji is sure she isn't conflicted about sticking around. He's about to ask her to leave when he notices that look on her face. That look. A thinking look. She's in the middle of a thought. Her reign of care and terror has yet to die.

"And I would call that boy." She adds. He wasn't all the way awake before that. "And I would apologize to him."

An d that. That is when he gets up. In under two seconds he is up, able bodied, and feeling the fear of god in thirty one million ways, all beginning and ending with "call that boy". Fear, though not typically used in medicinal practices, is a hell of a drug. When you are afraid, you are nothing else. When you remember the boy, the hangover is gone. The boy.

Shinji opens his dry mouth and knows, knows, knows that he shouldn't even ask. He pulls his phone from the crack between his bed and his nightstand, where he knows without fail, it will always be when he wakes up hungover. He almost doesn't even turn it on. And yet, what else is there to ruin? What, in god's name, has he got left to lose?

"What boy?" He asks. His last words before the storm. He thumbs the on button.

Twenty three missed calls. Thirty four new texts. Only about five of them aren't from Asuka. Those five are the only ones that don't start with " fuck you fuck you fuck you ".

12:34 AM, Last Night

Two minutes after midnight, it rained. And it rained, and it rained, and it rained. The word around the ping pong table was that nobody was getting home. The roads were oily slick because it hadn't rained in awhile, and there was hearsay that drunk driving on a road that was pretty much the larger equivalent of the underside of a banana peel was probably dangerous. From cracked open windows, you could smell the trees sweating, and the dirt rising up, and a little bit of oil, and mostly just earth. Kaworu said there was a name for that. Petrichor. He was the first one to go outside.

It took seven other people, and the sweet spitty end of a wine cooler to force Shinji outside. But before that, he watched from the propped open window. He watched them, without shoes and coats, get destroyed by rain and mud and scent and decided that twenty something is the closest you can get to being a kid without surrendering the right to drink and legally buy good porn. He watched them be drunk, and old, and completely fucking broke, and he watched them forget that they were.

He watched Kaworu, who had lost the tinsel behind his ear. Forming a closed daisy chain with two or three other people that he probably didn't know, spinning like an idiot, like there weren't at least seven people in this neighborhood looking for an excuse to call the police on some drunken college kids. When they fell, nobody noticed. They kept talking. Kept being the cool kids. They were a movie, and he felt guilt in knowing that he could watch forever.

And then Kaworu was gone from the circle, and when Shinji tried to look for him, the front door opened behind him. Everyone's outside, Kaworu told him. His hair was this wet shade of honey white and Shinji was drunk enough to ask him whether or not it was natural instead of saying hello. He laughed. Didn't answer. He was soaked in a way that would bother him for hours and hours if he was the kind of person to let it. Shinji would come to know that he wasn't. Come out, he said, or something like it. That was how Shinii became the last person out of the house.

Kaworu was there, in the mess of rain and warm bodies and dirt, but only in small pieces of time. Lost, for the most part. They saw each other in glances, and when people asked Shinji who he was looking for, he didn't know that he was lying when he said no. When Toji kind of materialized out of nowhere and almost broke Shinji's neck with a tackling hug, he abandoned his search in the name of lightening the fuck up.

And he did. He is. He would like to think so, anyway. He looks up from his spot under the old maple, counts exactly two stars, and is okay with the lack of romanticism in the sky tonight. He's here with Toji, who he isn't exactly trying to woo, anyway.

"You know, you've been really un-Shinji tonight." Says his friend, who is being an acquired taste at the moment. Shinji blows an offended raspberry, but isn't really that offended.

"I'll bet you think that wasn't a backhanded compliment." He says. Toji elbows him in a way that comes off as friendly, something Asuka hasn't mastered yet, and probably won't try to.

"I'm serious." Toji searches his pockets idly.

"I'll bet you are."

"Shut up." He says, pulling out a self-rolled cigarette. Shinji didn't even know he smoked. People change with the seasons, he supposes. "I'm trying to be nice. I just wanted to let you know I've noticed, that's all." Shinji nods.

"I don't think I've ever been complicated for being tolerable before." Shinji sort of winces when Toji laughs, because his laugh is ugly, but in an endearing way. His girlfriends probably think it's cute, until they're on the other end of it.

"Get used to it, pal." Toji mumbles through the butt of his cigarette, having a difficult time with the lighter in this wind. "Nobody's ever good anymore. People are assholes, or they're tolerable. If you happen to find another category, gimme her number."

Shinji scoffs, because that isn't even the most negative thing he's heard Toji say tonight. Or in the past ten minutes. He's another question mark in Shinji's weird life. They're friends, and this he hopes will never change, but he sure as hell would like to know why. Not that it matters. He's fine with this. He's fine with maple trees, and backhanded compliments, and a lack of stars that ceased to be disappointing a long time ago.

"What's on your mind, sport?" Toji channels the late Jay Gatsby, thinking he's cool enough to do so.

"Not much." Shinji lies, stops, and reconsiders. "Since when do you smoke?"

"I don't smoke." Toji, the smartest and brightest jewel in the box, continues to smoke. Shinji, mulling over a response, is so very close to begging for clarification when Toji passes the loosely rolled cigarette that Toji definitely isn't smoking over his way. "And neither do you. But it's been a tough week. Been a good night."

Good night. Something bright rolls through the sky. Shinji hears someone nearby call it a shooting knows that it isn't. No one will mention that it's just a small jet, and everyone will call it a shooting star. When there isn't much to like about people, Shinji likes that about them. He thinks of Kaworu again. He's free for another thirty seconds before the thought comes back.

"Did you know that guy?" Shinji asks. "The one that helped me put Asuka to bed? Do you know anything about him?"

Toji stretches a little bit, and yawns at the mention of being put to bed.

"What, the dude Asuka was being thirsty about?" Shinji,though he himself isn't wild about that description, nods in approval. "No. Her yammering was the first I've heard of him. New, I guess. Weird. Wonder who he's friends with to end up around here. Why? You wanna' beat him up?"

The thing is, Shinji has so little experience in actually dealing with his erratic pop-up ad emotions,could very well want to beat this guy up. He doesn't know. He's interested. The reason is yet to be discovered.

But he looks at Toji, who wouldn't understand. Toji who would try to understand, but likely just end up asleep or ready for a subject change by the time the conversation got deeper than boobs and buffalo wings. Shinji sighs a little.

"Yeah." He says. "Yeah, I wanna' beat him up."

At fifty minutes past midnight, it rains again. Hard. It's unforgiving this time. What were once delicate, and even cute little droplets, are now big, and thick, and coming down in little slaps that sting the side of your face when you look up at them. People are flooding inside within minutes of the downpour, and this time Shinji is the first of the movement.

He doesn't love being alone, but he doesn't hate it. It's just that nobody really knows that the basement laundry room exists, so there's a distinct lack of stink and noise there. As well as that, Shinji has never been the kind of guy to sit around in a wet shirt and be cool with it. Not when there are things like dryers, and warm rooms that god didn't create to just sit around and go to waste. So he doesn't feel bad being down here, shirtless in a warm room, alone and unattended. It's nice. Not weird.

Shinji shuts the dryer, and presses a random smattering of buttons and knobs that he thinks won't ruin his shirt, or blow up the house or something. All there is to do now is wait. All there was to do was wait, but now the stairs are creaking, and that means that someone is walking down here, and that means that his hiding spot is kaputz, and that means that it's time for friendly conversation. He rests against the dryer and rubs his head, just now thinking that maybe drinking that much wasn't a great plan.

"Oh, sorry." The creaking stops. Kaworu is here. "I just got sent down for ice, I didn't mean to-"

"No, no. It's- You're good." Shinji stutters. Kaworu is here. Kaworu is here, and he just walked in on Shinji being shirtless and alone in the basement with absolutely no clear explanation in sight. So now he thinks that Shinji is some weird guy who walks around shirtless in people's empty basements. Awesome. Definitely the most desirable outcome of the night.

"I was just...Uh. I was…"

"...Drying your shirt?" Kaworu puts two and two together because it really wasn't that hard in the first place. Dryer. Wet clothes. Come on, Shinji.

"Yeah." He says. "Yeah, drying my shirt. Sorry, I just...Don't do well after mixed drinks."

"Hey, that's fine." Kaworu closes the distance a little bit, and Shinji wonders whether or not they're going to talk again. Like they did upstairs. "No harm in that. Quite the weather out there."

"Yeah." Shinji says, frantically checking the inside of the dryer to see if his shirt is decently wearable yet. Still wet. Shit. He would very much love to have this conversation clothed. "It's...Pretty weathery out there."

That's the end of that conversation. Shinji can safely say he's never been as inept at social interaction as he has been for the past minute. The worst part is that Kaworu hasn't fucked off yet, and the worst worst part is that Shinji doesn't want him to. He had imagined later conversations with Kaworu earlier, after they'd came downstairs. And in those conversations he was clothed, and witty, and always had something interesting to say. He was definitely wearing a shirt. You know you're a piece of work when you fantasize about having normal, successful conversations.

"Hey, do you know anything about an ice chest down here?" Kaworu asks, remembering his mission. It's now that Shinji catches the fact that he's still wet, hair pushed back to keep it from dripping in his face. Probably the last one inside. Goddamn free spirits.

"Uh, yeah." He points off to a janky little ice bin near the garage door. "Right over there. There's a lock on the bottom, so you gotta' undo it first."

"Gotcha." He steps off to complete his task, having none of the trouble with that stupid rusty lock that Shinji has every single time he uses it. He retrieves the ice. He will be gone in a few seconds, and Shirtless McLonely will be solemn again.

"Doesn't that bother you?" Shinji asks, almost unaware that he'd even opened his mouth to speak in the first place. Kaworu is still mostly inside the chest, rooting around as if ice is hard to look for in a freezer.

"Doesn't what bother me?" His sound is muffled by five dollar pizza and freezer burnt popsickles. Shinji feels like he should roll his eyes. And yet. Yet he gives a sort of laughy scoff that only comes off as mildly impatient. Progress.

"Being soaked. Walking around soaked. Not doing anything about it. You're not cold?"

Kaworu, useless kaworu, emerges from the freezer chest with a very artificially red Popsicle, and no ice to show for his small struggle. He unwraps it and sticks the cellophane wrapper into his pocket. He eats it. He shows no remorse for his failed task. Only then does he offer a shrug. When Shinji watches him exist he feels somehow microscopic.

"Oh I'm pretty cold." He says. "It just doesn't really bother me."

"Wish I could share your sentiment." Shinji analyzes his every word. Too bitchy? Too sarcastic? Not bitchy and sarcastic enough? Popsicle boy laughs just a little bit, and it still wakes up the hairs on the back of Shinji's neck.

"I can see that." He observes. Shinji wonders what he's alluding to for a second, before the cold chill sweeping across his naked shoulders slaps the common sense back into him. The dryer hasn't buzzed yet, but screw it. He pulls his shirt from the still spinning contraption, and waves it out a little bit in hopes of shaking away some of the warm, tacky wetness that's still clinging to it. He gives up, and pulls it over his head.

"Yeah, well." Shinji says. For a long few seconds that's all he says. Conversations kind of happen in two parts. The ball is still in shinji's court, and "yeah, well. " is pretty much social code for fuck off. "I catch colds easily."

While the myth about catching sickness from cold temperatures can be disproved by listening to your 8th year science teacher, or literally searching a few words on google, it's certainly better than saying nothing at all. Kaworu, who is sitting on top of the freezer now, gives his two cents.

"Well, that'd be rough right about now. With finals coming up, and whatnot."

Which raises another question; does he even go here? The semester is almost up for every school, so finals are common knowledge. If he's been floating around NERV, why is this the first he's seen of him? Why is he here? What does he have to do with a mostly tight knit group of crime majors and horny band kids? And he almost asks.

There is an accusation on the tip of his tongue, a lifetime of questions begging to slip out and be answered, but then Kaworu is leaving. Not impolitely, of course. He gives some sort of average goodbye, finally retrieves the ice, and as he ascends the rickety staircase Shinji is so sure this will be the last time they speak. Normally he would say nothing. Normally he'd let this all go and black out and let Misato yell at him for it tomorrow. Normally. But he is not himself tonight

"Do you wanna' hang out?" He asks.

Kaworu nods. He says sure. They leave the basement, they return the ice to the girl who plays first chair in the university's orchestra, but feels no qualms in getting sloshed on the weekends. They sit on the outskirts of the noise. They talk. Shinji learns.

His name is Kaworu Nagisa. He knows music, and music knows him. He doesn't drink. He doesn't talk about himself much. He is 5'11, near sighted, and interested in everything . He doesn't drink. He listens well.

His name is Kaworu Nagisa and Shinji does not think that Asuka should do him.

Oh no. In fact, he thinks she should do the opposite. That could be several different approaches, of course. Friendly conversation. A polite shake of the hand, which is neither too warm nor suspiciously lingering. Staying away from him at all costs. He likes that one best. Either or all of these would work nicely, he thinks. No harm done. This is for her, he thinks. The best for her. He doesn't exactly want to say he's too good for her. Walking downstairs with someone, however regal it may have been, doesn't really set up that much of a friendship. But it sets up something that he doesn't see a lot of, and that's a potential friendship. Asuka has a thing for royally fucking those over.

Friendship. Maybe that's what he's been sniffing out in this stranger all night. Even if that hardly feels complicated enough. Even if he keeps sneaking glances over his shoulder to see whether Kaworu looks any different in this lighting. It's around one in the morning. This marks the longest time they've been together without getting lost. Shinji doesn't even know why that matters. Why he keeps thinking about it.

"I don't usually drink." Shinji changes the subject in his head, as if it was effecting things in the real world.

Kaworu doesn't point out the shallow glass of something brown and diluted that Shinji is clutching white-knuckled. Shinji suspects that maybe he's too nice to go around calling people liars.

"I wouldn't call you out if you did." Kaworu shrugs a little bit, letting his back rest coolly on the wall behind them. While he's busy people watching Shinji kills the rest of whatever the hell this is (shochu and coffee? piss?), and shoves it away to pretend like he never even had it in the first place. Crutch? What crutch?

"This is a drinking party, anyway." He continues. "Didn't come here to scold people and lose myself in prayer."

"...What did you come here to do?" Not two seconds pass before he commences backpedaling. "Sorry, that sounded rude, I just meant…"

He waits for an interruption that Kaworu won't give. It's strange. Someone letting him talk. Someone patient enough to wait around for his mind to work. Not batting an eyelash, or tapping his foot to the tune of boredom. He is, so it seems, generally interested. It gives Shinji chills.

"It's just that I haven't seen you around here before." He stops and allows himself a second to think. "...And it kind of sucks around here. I don't know why anybody without a personal connection would come here for fun . Especially if you aren't drinking."

Beyond them, someone breaks a glass. Someone tunes a guitar, a cocktail shaker rattles, ugly laughter, someone's french electro-pop album that they swear is in right now, sneeze, burp, clap, the constant buzzing of an old refrigerator. These are the sounds that your mother warned you about. And then Kaworu's voice again. A special guest track.

"You don't seem like you think it sucks here." He suckles at the stained end of a wooden Popsicle stick. "I guess the fifth shot kind of does that, huh? I think you lost, by the way."

Shinji hadn't even thought about that. Without Asuka to drive his liver to suicide, winning that stupid drinking game wasn't even a B list priority. She was busy dreaming of the slowest, and bloodiest way to murder him, and he was busy chasing the boy she'd been chasing earlier. He was kind of busy. So sue him. Of course, though the drinking game themed chapter of the night was far over, that didn't mean it couldn't still exist to haunt him. Kaworu had seen it, apparently. Sweet.

"Oh my god." He closes his long pause, slinking down into a puddle of self-loathing goo. Head in hands. Brain somewhere beyond it. "I don't even wanna' know whether or not you saw the whole thing."

"Oh-ho, I did." He says. "Flawless technique, for someone who doesn't usually drink. Must be a fast learner."

Though his web of lies was relatively small this time around, it was still sticky as hell, and his face definitely wasn't this red before. Still, Kaworu looks like he could care less. He's looking at Shinji like there's something there to look at, habitually biting at the chewed end of his popsicle stick. His shirt is still wet enough to stick to his collar bones, and he's enjoying the company of a liar. Shinji would be interested in knowing what doesbother this guy.

"If you haven't learned already, I'm a heavy drinker and a habitual liar."

When Kaworu laughs this time, it's big. Not huge, but big. Real, and healthy, and the least forced thing about this entire night. When it slows, Shinji wishes it hadn't. Making people laugh is something, but making Kaworu laugh can only be described as something else. He isn't worried that he's laughing at him anymore. He isn't, for the time being, worried about anything. Odd.

"Shinji." He says, and Shinji's blood goes cold in the best of ways. "You don't have to feel bad about letting loose. You're a person. That's the cool thing about people, they're allowed to make mistakes in the name of evolution. Mistakes are what make people work. Keep making them. For science."

Shinji looks at Kaworu, and thinks that under the right circumstances, there is a good chance that talk like that could have made him cry. He watches. And watches, and watches, and waits, and waits, and comes to the conclusion that this is real life and he is very, very lucky tonight.

"You are so weird." Shinji says.

Half of a smirk curls onto Kaworu's face.

" So weird." Shinji continues, coming back to earth when Kaworu takes his right hand and holds it with both of his own. When his heart starts to beat, he wonders if it's ever actually worked before right now.

"Shinji." He says again, his name fitting into Kaworu's mouth just as perfectly the second time around. "We're hanging out. That means that I'm responsible for at least half of you. And if you don't have a good time tonight, then I'll have done a terrible job."

"...Okay." Shinji manages to say from his new catatonia.

"Do you wanna' have a good time tonight?"

"Okay."

"And do you wanna' go win that game and kick about six different asses?"

"Okay."

"Do you, Shinji Ikari, want to make a healthy dose of bad decisions tonight?"

"Okay."

Kaworu releases his hand, but not him. After all, he is responsible for half of him tonight. When they get up, everything is terrible. The lights here are ugly, and pretty, and the smell of rain and sweat is threaded throughout every last square foot of this horrible world. Everything is alive. Everything awful is instantly beautiful.

"Then count me in." Kaworu says. "I'm glad to have met you, Shinji Ikari."