Getting Grown

Hey little boy you got a lot of stay

You have to fall inevitably

And I've sure come a long way

The road up ahead is so unclear

Back slidin down the bottom of beer

Nobody knew if I would make it here

Sweet music set me free

From the statistic that I started to be

I wish my mama was alive to see

The memories of pain have scarred

And when I fall it's usually hard

But I get up and keep followin' God

Hey, I'm Gettin' grown

I'm Gettin grown

I'm gettin grown, hey

I never won't be perfect I know,

But workin on it is worse than I know,

Life is just learning as you go

Been selfish once or twice

I had to how learn to sacrifice

So here's to my late nighters be nice

Every day that goes by I find

It either hits me or robs you blind

Gotta owe ya this life of mine

I'm gettin grown

Oooo, time changed but it feels the same,

There's no tellin what tommorow will bring,

Even if I could I wouldn't change a thang

Hey, Lord I know I'm not here to stay

But thanks for wakin' me up today

Prepare me for what may come my way

Say, young man, there's no need to cry

Because I know you will get by

Look your destiny in the eye

Everyday my heart burns to try

You got to walk before you learn to fly

And we all got to earn to die

I'm gettin' grown

Four days passed and the 4th never came as Shinji and Rei anxiously awaited its arrival. Every day was spent hovering around the Geofront and making excuses as to why they weren't going home. Rei had yet to pass her reactivation test but what else did she have to do other than visit with Shinji and keep him company? After four days of this and countless conversations as to the whereabouts of Shamshel, they finally decided to let their guard down. This was mostly due to the fact that their actions were starting to raise suspicion. They couldn't just say what they were doing and you can only lie for so long and make it believable. In fact people were already spreading rumors about all the time they were spending together.

Endlessly frustrating as it was to hear silly little comments about first love and the like when you're fourteen, try it when you're 54. They decided right off the bat that fighting it was pointless because denying it would just make it seem all the more likely to them, so they simply ignored it. To her credit Misato never brought it up; when Shinji asked why, she merely said that if he ever wanted to talk to her about it he would bring it up. He wanted to praise her for actually acting like an adult but simply thanked her and nothing more was ever said about it. The next day, though, when he got back home there was a box of condoms on his bed and he could hear Misato laughing from across the house.

Joke was on her, though, he kept them for when Asuka would eventually show up.

Three days later, the last of Rei's bandages came off and she was given a clear bill of health. To celebrate freedom from daily checkups at that hell hole of a hospital, Rei wanted to take a trip above, the first since their arrival. The request had to be signed by the commander and he hesitated at first, seeing no reason for them to leave the base. It took Misato speaking on their behalf before he begrudgingly accepted the request; Gendo really was the king of bastards. They, of course, would have their usual barely-hidden escort, but it was doubled for this particular topside journey. Shinji mused that with it doubled now they would only be half useless.

When discussing their trip and its destinations Shinji had a definite idea brewing. But all he told Rei was to bring cash and make sure she had plenty of spare time. The following Saturday, which was two days after her release, Shinji showed up at her door with a large duffel bag and a big smile. It was too bad the rest of him wasn't as pleasant to look at.

He was wearing an orange polo with light orange shorts. He looked decidedly goofy, but had never cared for "modern fashion", or seemingly, matching either. After Rei was done injuring his pride by laughing at his ridiculous "outfit" he complimented her getup, a pleated blue green skirt and a sleeveless shirt with blue and white horizontal stripes. They both knew that would make her feel bad about poking fun at him, so she apologized through her stifled laughter, and set out.

He refused to answer where they were going or why he needed that large a bag until they had finally arrived at their first stop, an art supply store. Rei had narrowed down their destination during the trip to only a few places, not many things made Shinji as happy as he appeared.

Shinji only had three real loves in his life other than his kids, and those were art, music and cooking. Seeing as how he had made Misato pick up actual cooking utensils, spices and food not long after he moved in, it had seemed unlikely that he was going up for them. That only left art and music. He had mentioned how annoying it would be having to rebuild his massive music collection, but since he really didn't have anything to spend his money on, it seemed he had decided on a useful outlet. Shinji was currently collecting a Lieutenant's salary, as was Rei, since NERV had claimed them to be such. To keep the UN off their back, some money had to go somewhere. What else was a 14-year-old going to spend 40K-plus on? Answer for one S. Ikari would be art supplies and tons of CD's.

As they walked around the store talking about various subjects, they purposefully neglected any topics about work. They mused about Asuka's call and how good it had been for Shinji to talk to her. She had apparently called Shinji again on Thursday while Rei was getting her checkup. She had told him that she had been questioned how she had gotten his number, why she called him and why she had even known of his existence. In all his years of knowing Asuka he could accuse her of a lot of things but never of a lack of wit. The way she told her story without telling it marveled Shinji, especially after her faux pas in their first conversation. He could really tell she had meticulously planned out what she had wanted to say, he had to admit that he was proud of her for that.

Her flirting had all the grace of a heard of elephants, yet again another clever ruse. It's easy to explain long and frequent calls between a lonely young girl and the guy she had a blatant crush on. Asuka was a conniving little bitch in every move she made. As they talked, Rei had been honestly surprised as well at how quickly she had adapted to this new game they were playing. To her it seemed much more likely that Asuka would rather just assert her will over the situation rather than work with them.

As for the former emo kid, on his end of the deal no one had mentioned or even hinted at anything weird about their conversations. Either they suspected nothing or they were playing it cool, letting them hang themselves with evidence before his father or his lackeys made a move. Either way having semi-constant contact with Asuka had visibly calmed Shinji.

As the day's conversation shifted back to 'school' related issues, Shinji mused how in the time since his 'encounter' with Touji things had been a bit strained at school. But a few days ago, Touji approached Shinji before class started that day and asked him why he was avoiding him. The utterly perplexed look on his face only confused Touji more. Hikari spoke on his behalf, saying that since their fight was over that Touji assumed that things were OK between them now.

Ken interjected that Touji had even started to wonder if Shinji was holding it against him and plotting some sort of revenge. His words earned him a half-assed elbow to the chest from Suzuhara. Shinji computed this and to him it made little sense, but then again he had never again in his life had a friend like Touji. In reality his time with Touji had been short, only a few months. He put it down to some sort of hyper masculine personality, marveled at how simple it seemed to make things, and made a point of talking it over with Touji at his earliest convenience.

Since that odd little pow wow, things had picked up for Shinji. Kensuke was of course as easy to get along with as always, so that fell right in to place nicely. Hikari had been more difficult, Rei had said it was because to Hikari, Shinji had made a bad first impression. Shinji thought it had something to do with Touji. Rei won that argument, as could be expected. So although things were slow in some aspects, with Shinji having an entire lifetime of knowledge about Hikari and a much higher maturity level than Touji, things were quickly swinging back his way. As Shinji beamed about how quickly things were looking up for them, Rei flourished as well.

As she tried to get to some semblance of her preferred speech pattern back, she found a distinct schism between people in her class. There were those very happy to see that Rei seemed to finally open up and act more 'normal,' while, although a smaller group, some thought that her new bravado was a byproduct of the war starting and her position as a pilot. Something about trying to act like she was better than everyone now, utter rubbish is what it was. Oddly enough, Asuka's former best friend had been one of her biggest advocates and now tried to invite her into every social situation she was in.

It was something Rei had never witnessed, even in her old life. Her best guess was that at this point in time, and maybe in the old days, Hikari had been far more isolated than she let on. She had Ken, Touji, and later on Asuka, but really Shinji and Rei could never remember her visiting with any other people. True, it had been a very long time and the haze of decades past was thick, but they remember her as an incredibly outgoing person in college and after. Shinji remembered a mostly absent father and a younger sister she basically had to raise on her own. Her older sister was a typical teenager and spent as little time at home as possible and so between them they decided that perhaps her home life was dragging her down.

Rei was more than happy to take Asuka's place until she arrived.

As they neared the store of Shinji's preference, the only actual art supply store still operating in town, they noticed a large liquidation sign across the front of it.

"Oh this is great, it's my lucky day. I'll clean this place out for cheap," Shinji said hurriedly as he dug a densely folded list out of his pocket and began to read it out loud.

"Wait a second, how are we going to get a couple dozen canvases back to your place? I don't really think Section two will be thrilled about hauling your stuff home," Rei interjected into his merry rambling.

"Oh, I got that covered; Misato told me that I could have it shipped to this place that's basically our drop off point for mail. It's right next to one of the Geofront's entrances', and from there it will be delivered to Misato's. Should take a day to do all that but that's fine by me." His point made, he made his way into the store and his personality did a 180. He went from hyper and anxious to super picky and discerning. Rei hadn't been this bored in weeks. After the fourth time Shinji asked her what she thought about two colors she couldn't tell the difference between, she left his side and randomly wandered the store so that she wouldn't scream at him.

She had never seen him this anal about anything, she knew he was serious about his work, but damn, this was ridiculous. After he spent nearly four hours in the store he left with at least three metric tons of crap. Rei for her part was asleep outside on a bench and had been so for a while. As he gently nudged her awake she gaped, wide-eyed at the fullness of his bag.

"How are you going to carry that all the way back to the Geofront? I swear, Shinji, you really need to learn about moderation. Did you have to have all of that stuff right now? We could have made a second trip tomorrow." Rei got to her feet and stretched for a long time, yawning deeply when she was done

"This is nothing. Besides if I waited 'till tomorrow someone might have come and gotten all of the good stuff. Besides, we still have one more stop so I'll be lugging this around for a while. The sacrifices I have to make, I swear," he said, faking exasperation. It earned him a disbelieving shake of the head. Mission accomplished. Slinging the duffel over his shoulder as a soldier should, he began to walk deeper into what was now, after the N2 strikes, the new middle of town.

"Hey, I was wondering where you got that cute outfit," Shinji asked in passing as he shrugged his shoulder to get the bag back into place.

"Well, you know how we had been talking about Hikari and her home life?" Getting an affirmative nod from her companion she continued on. "Well, I asked her if she wanted to come with us, to spend some time above. After a few minutes when she got over the shock of me asking her to do anything, she unfortunately told me she couldn't come today, because of, you guessed it, family stuff."

"That poor girl," Shinji said with all the presence of an old man talking of perhaps his granddaughter.

"Well, she asked if I had anything nice to wear for our trip. Of course she was trying to refer to it as some sort of date. Rather than blow her off or get mad I realized that I didn't have anything but my uniforms. I'm not really sure how that had escaped me but I sure as hell needed to rectify that situation." She let her words hang as she studied Shinji and his bemused look. "Oh, what's so funny about that, mister?" a tinge of annoyance slipping though her words.

"Oh it's nothing Rei, you were saying?" he said pitifully trying to cover for himself.

"That won't work on me, Mr. Ikari, I've known you for too long to let that slip by me. Say what you were thinking," her intonation now one of humor at her putting him on the spot.

"Well, I was just going to say that you sounded just like Asuka when you were talking about your clothes. I don't know how many endless hours I had to spend sitting with her as she tried on every outfit in a store, just to end up buying nothing. I swear some of the times I threatened to kill myself if we didn't leave; never worked, though. That's all it was Rei, don't worry. Go on with your story." Shinji was now all smiles as he continued to trudge on towards the destination only he knew.

"Well, when I told her I didn't have anything she invited me over to her place to look at some things."

"Really?" Shinji gave away his honest confusion at that statement instantly.

"Oh, I was surprised too, but I think she was just so happy that someone invited her out to go do something that she went overboard. Well I went over to her place and picked this thing out. When I was leaving I asked her if she wanted it back tomorrow or Monday at school and she just told me to keep it. I couldn't believe it. So I promised her that next weekend the two of us would come up and go shopping and I would get her any one outfit she wanted. I swear Shinji, she lit up like a match. It was the oddest thing. I guess that this time she has it way worse than we imagined. I showed her a little bit of affection and she latched on to me like a lamprey." By this time they rounded their last corner to their final destination, CD World. It as well had a liquidation sign on it.

"Damn, everyone is making like rats on a sinking ship. I hope the two of you can even find a place to shop next weekend," Shinji said as he held the door open for Rei to enter. "But I'm glad for not only her, but for you. It will do you some good to have a female friend that you can do stuff with, cause I'm sorry Rei, I love you but I hate shopping." He earned a baleful glare.

"For clothes and stuff, what do you want from me?" he exclaimed as he held his hands in front of himself defensively, a smart move for any man. She snorted at him and rolled her eyes as she passed him, a stay of execution earned.

"What I was going to say, before I was rudely interrupted, was that while I was with her I accidentally slipped into my normal voice. I guess I was just so comfortable with her that it seemed the natural thing to do. The odd part was that I don't think she noticed. She never mentioned how I was speaking, not a word or an odd look or anything. So maybe sooner rather than later I can get to being myself, which I got to tell you I can't wait for. You have no idea how hard or annoying it is to speak in such a proper and measured fashion. I don't know how you put up with it for so many years." Rei had been talking the entire time she and Shinji had been making their way through various isles. Picking up items here and there and throwing them into a hand basket that Rei had picked up upon entering the store.

"Well, personally, I just learned to ignore most of what you said," Shinji said as he put an ever increasing amount of distance between himself and Rei, finally rounding a corner and making a break for it as soon as he finished his sentence.

"Stop acting your age!" Rei yelled at his ever diminishing back, paying no mind to the stares cast her way. About an hour later they made their way out of the store, Rei pleased that they didn't waste the ENTIRE day looking around stores. Shinji intermittently complained about the weight of his bag in comparison to his still slight frame. Rei paid it no heed and merely gave him the old you reap what you sow message, some sort of revenge for his previous transgressions.

"Well, it's way past lunch time," Shinji mused as he checked the time on a street side clock. "How about lunch? My treat."

"You just want a chance to put down your bag for a while and not make it look like you're tired," Rei spoke to herself, of course loud enough so that he could hear it. Seeing his shoulders fall she covered her mouth with her left hand and vainly tried to suppress a laugh. "Sure, Shin, but only if I can pick the place." Taking her chin in hand she tried desperately to remember what was around Tokyo 3, a hard feat since it had been so long. That and when she had last lived here she hadn't exactly been a social individual.

As he finally dropped his bag due to a total muscle failure, Shinji turned to regard the deep-in-thought angel. "OK two things right off the bat: first, you can only call me that if I can still call you Blue or some other nicknames I come up with in the future; second, good luck with trying to pick out anything, everyone's hauling ass out of here and with how different things are we don't even know if anything we remember even exists." As he spoke he counted off his points on his fingers in an exaggerated manner, a condescending move that annoyed Rei, which was of course its intent.

"Asuka's right, you are a stick in the mud, you know that?" Feigning annoyance, she crossed her arms under her breasts and shifted all of her weight to her right leg.

"If you were a man, I'd throw you the finger, so you're lucky, Ms. Ayanami." While talking he, with his last shred of energy, swiped at the air in front of him, the intention meaning 'go away.' Walking over to his side, Rei grabbed his bag but before lifting it spoke.

"Well, since you seem to be wiped out, let's just go to the nearest place. Sound good to you?" He didn't know if her current tone was pleasant because she was taking some sort of perverse pleasure in his suffering or if she was just smug because yet again she was right about something. He responded with a thumbs up.

Ten minutes later they sat looking at the menu of a bistro of moderate quality. Lunch went as lunches usually do: small talk here and there, enjoying the company of the people you're eating with. Shinji tried to extend their stay because in his own words "I think that my spine is about to snap, I mean c'mon, don't I already look shorter to you?"

The most noteworthy thing that came out of their conversation was that on Sunday Shinji was supposed to go to an arcade with 'the stooges' as they had once been called. While spending time with them would be an odd mixture of fun and lingering weirdness it was still something he wanted to do. Not for the games, he had long ago lost his lust for gaming, not to mention that these games would be archaic by his standards, but for the time with his old friends. Hanging out with people so young when you are so old is a definite form of culture shock and a constant effort to try and not strangle them for acting stupid. But really from time to time who doesn't want to let out their inner child? An odd combination for what he knew would be the most odd of days.

Hell, Shinji still couldn't figure out why there was an arcade in the Geofront, Commander No Fun really didn't seem like the gamer type. The best he could figure was that someone had slipped it through when he was on a spree of signing papers. Maybe it was there so that NERV could recoup a portion of their paychecks? But really who cares so let's get back to our main cast. It was there one way or another and apparently Touji and Kensuke were well-loved patrons.

As lunch ended and they made their way back to the Geofront's entrance B13, one of the two of them almost waddling by this point. Their day together over they bid each other a farewell and went on their separate ways. Four days later, Rei's reactivation test was successful; neither of them felt like celebrating that occasion.

AN: This fantastic song is sung by a very talented man, Thomas DeCarlo Callaway, AKA Cee Lo or Gnarls Barkley whatever you want to call him. All rights and et cetera for this song go to him, his label, and all respective copyright holders. I own nothing.

Got a pic up of what they wore on their trip into town. Ignore those girly shoes Shinji is wearing, in my mind he was wearing flip flops. As always pics are on Evamade, the link is on my FFN front page, name is Random Char clone.