Shinji opens the door to his apartment to see it concealed in shadow, none of the lights are on. Maybe the girls are still out. Stepping from a metallic to wooden floor, he passes the threshold to his home. He doesn't say his normal announcement that he has returned home, on the off chance they called an early night. At six-forty? "I hope she's just out with Hikari right now. But why would she tell me to be on time? Maybe they went out for pizza- no. Stop. Don't go down any rabbit holes, Shinji. You have a mission." He thinks to himself as he hangs his outgrown coat.
He silently slides his shoes and jacket off and tip toes onto the floor, wincing at every creak.
On his third step a light clicks on, revealing Asuka in a loose yellow, fuzzy bathrobe and pajamas. The lamp was moved further from its usual spot, most likely to hit a more theatrical lighting angle, which had a perfect Rembrandt triangle, actually. She's sitting in an armchair from across the room, staring at him with a single eye, she's wearing her old eyepatch and leaning intensely towards him as if she's been there all day. Shinji stands like a deer in headlights, his arm still resting on the coat hanger.
"Yo." She finally says after a moment of silence, "It's been four years, Shinji."
Pen-Pen waddles to the front door to investigate the commotion, to come in between the stare down going on between the two teens. Bored and desensitized after two years of their dramatic dynamic, he walks past them over to the fridge to crack open a beer.
"Asuka…" He blurts out, finally. She raises her eyebrow, "What happened to your eye? Is it acting up again?" Asuka slumps back to the chair and groans. "I can go grab your eye drops from the-"
"What? No, genius. I'm Hobo-Eren." She gestures to the robe. Shinji nods at her mindlessly "Ohhh… Yeah it's uncanny." Asuka flings the eye patch at him with sharp accuracy, hitting his forehead.
She shoots up, moving to put the light back in its original place, talking as she sets it by the couch. "To think I set up a whole bit for you." She doesn't plug it back in.
"Wait, how long were you waiting here for?" He's still standing by the door.
"I was watching you from the balcony because I thought you wou-" Her eyes shot up for a second, as if she realized she was too candid. "Did- did you get my goddamn volume 100 or not?" She crosses her arms.
Shinji curses at himself internally, but doesn't break eye contact with Asuka, "Well- they were sold out. I couldn't even find Ken's One Piece." She glances up at him with a raised eyebrow. "Real smooth, Shinji, real smooth."
"Figures. I knew I should've just gone for the leaks."
"Yeah…"
They both stand in the middle of the living room for a moment, Shinji smiles and nods while Asuka stares suspiciously. Inside however, Shinji's mind goes into overdrive.
"Why is she staring at me? What does she want? Maybe she's mad that I didn't get the new volume? Or does she know I'm lying? Perhaps from this distance she can smell the-"
"Why are you staring at me? Are you gonna cook that pizza or what?" She tightens her bathrobe.
"The pizza! Of course." Despite his better judgement, he didn't sprint out the door and find a place to hide until morning. Rather he kept his feet planted wide and firmly to the ground. "All right Shinji, just play it cool. You can do cool."
Shinji snaps his fingers and points a finger gun at her. "Pizza time."
"Nice."
Asuka peers at him suspiciously, "Are you sure you didn't like, hit your head on something on the way here? I'm not sure it was even possible but you sound dumber than usual."
"Keep the ball rolling, you got her on the ropes." He reassures himself, "Oh contraire, Asuka..." He strides over towards the kitchen, heading towards the drawers. Asuka raises an eyebrow and follows him with her eyes, unamused. He pulls out a large kitchen knife, "...I've never been sharper." He taps the tip of the knife.
"What, you're gonna roll the dough with that?"
"No. I'm going to roll- cut the mushrooms with it first." Shinji sets the blade down and pulls out the cutting board and bowls for the vegetable portions. He opens the fridge to pull out the mushrooms and in the process, pulls out onions, spinach, mozzarella and feta cheese. And comes back for the salami. All the while holding his breath.
He lays out all the ingredients on the countertop and without rinsing the mushrooms as he usually does, begins slicing the mushrooms slowly, thinly, painfully.
Asuka watches from afar, at first speechless from his stilted, robotic movement. Normally, even on a bad day the kitchen is his happy place, not that he seemed down. He looked more like an alien that mimicked human movement from a sitcom and thought it was a documentary"...Why are you being weird?"
After another chop, he slowly turns his head to Asuka and stares at her. It takes about five seconds to formulate a response. "Maybe you're being weird, Asuka. And you're just projecting onto me and my normalness."
She shakes her head. "I can't hear you, blockhead, speak up!"
"I said: You're projecting-" Shinji smacks his lips, "Sorry- My mouth is just really dry."
Asuka takes a step close up to him, inches away from his face and takes multiple sniffs, like a bloodhound. "Why do you smell like febreze?"
"Oh shit, think of something, something smart." "I was uh, pooping."
"Where?"
"Public bathroom." Shinji turns back to the fridge to grab the dough he prepared in the morning, he smacks it on the counter and grabs a rolling pin.
"You hate using public bathrooms."
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck." "The need was great."
She nods her head slowly at that. "The need was great." She turns towards the faucet and fills up a glass of cold water, sliding it towards him on the counter. "You must be real thirsty, huh?"
Shinji glances at the tempting beverage, calling to him. "Wait. She must know about cottonmouth. Don't give in." He shrugs and starts rolling the dough. "No thanks, I don't need it."
"But you just said-" She throws her hands up for a moment and then grabs the glass, she chugs it, leaving only a bit of water left. "Whatever, I'm gonna go see if anyone's posted good leaks yet."
Shinji shrugs and keeps rolling the dough, she turns and leaves to her room. As soon as she leaves, his eyes turn to the near empty glass. He grabs the glass and chugs it greedily, smacking his lips and going back to the faucet for another top up. He preheats the oven while he's at it.
"So far, so good, Shin-man. She doesn't suspect a thing. Or does she?" He shakes the thought from his head violently and goes to shred the cheese and lay out toppings.
Suddenly, the unmistakable sounds of Asuka's bare feet angrily stomping towards him send him into high alert. He turns to see her eyes locked on him like she was about to deck him. Despite his nagging paranoia from earlier, something in him made him stand his ground. She grabs his hands and pulls them close to her face. She sniffs them deeply, she's not a blood hound, Shinji realized. She's a German Shepard K9. It dawns on him.
He forgot to wash his hands.
"I knew it! You smoked weed, didn't you?"
Underneath his droopy but clear eyes, Shinji came up with a defensive strategy to call her bluff.
"Yeah, so what if I did?" Her jaw drops lower that he thought possible and scoffs.
"Oh. My. God. I can't believe it! You're a pothead!" She says, half amused, half disgusted.
"Well, fuck it. The jigs up." He crosses his arms, "Yes, me, Toji and Rei tried it. Who cares? We used to inhale LCL on a daily basis. What are you gonna do, tell NERV? Oh, that's right. They're defunct. Who can you even tell?"
By some sadistic will of the universe, the front door hisses open. Both their heads whip to the door.
"I'm home, guys!" Misato Katsuragi calls out. Pen Pen warks joyfully and waddles towards the door. Asuka slowly turns her head to Shinji with a massive grin on her face.
"You wouldn't dare." Shinji warns half-heartedly.
Her grin only widens at that as she takes in a deep breath. "HEY MISAT-"
To her and Shinji's shock, he covers her mouth with the palm of his handle as Misato stumbles to the kitchen tiredly. He slowly removes her hand from her mouth, revealing her beat red face and shallow breath. They both stare at their guardian.
"Someone call me? What's up guys?" She murmurs.
Shinji opens his mouth but Asuka cuts him off. "Shinji forgot to buy beer again." He turns in shock to Asuka, who shrugs.
Misato lets out a loud groan. "B-but don't worry! I'll get some tomorrow and Pizza's almost ready." Shinji adds.
She yawns in response. "Yay." Misato heads over to her room. "I need to go… die for a few hours. Wake me up when it's done, kay?"
Both nod enthusiastically in response as she sadly shuffles away.
Shinji turns to Asuka, admonished. "I wasn't actually gonna rat you out, blockhead. I just wanted to mess with you a little. I don't think she'd even care." She replies in a hushed voice.
He didn't know how to respond to that. "Just please don't tell her. Or Hikari, she'd kill Toji. Besides, even if Misato didn't care, I don't want her to think I'm… y'know. Stupid."
She sighs, "You're not… stupid. But you're gonna be if you keep trying that crap, blockhead. What, did that monkey pressure you and Ayanami to try it? Cause it doesn't make you cool-"
"I know it doesn't." Shinji grabs the pizza tray and slides it in the oven. "And no, we both wanted to try it."
Asuka nudges her foot against the over door. "That was the secret, wasn't it?" Shinji doesn't respond. "You coulda invited me."
Shinji looks up in surprise, "You want to try it too?" His voice is still low.
"What? Fuck no. But it would've been nice if you asked. I'd never try that stinky crap."
He drops the hushed tone. "Good grief, what is with you!? You never even tried it, why do you hate it so much anyways?" Shinji stares her down and she responds in kind.
She looks down as if considering giving an honest answer, then she pouts. "That's not your business! As if I'd tell you."
Shinji scoffs and turns to the oven, still feeling on edge from earlier. "Whatever, don't tell me."
Asuka stands there, surprised, as if she didn't expect that response. "Fine."
He shrugs. "Fine."
"Fine!" She turns around and stomps to her rooms, emphasis on the stomps. Her sliding door slams loudly, Misato makes a strange groaning sound in response. Shinji sighs and leans against the counter, watching the heat make the pizza rise. The high was completely gone by now, overpowered by his agitation. Maybe he really was over thinking how potent it was. Shinji grabs a toothpick to check the dough.
As he opens the oven door, the sliding door to Asuka's room opens again and he hears more stomps, this time quieter, as if embarrassed or hesitant.
"Do you really wanna know why I hate it?" She mutters.
Shinji shuts the oven door and looks up, he almost wanted to say no out of spite. But the pounding sensation in his chest reminded him that his strange, volatile roommate almost never opened up to him. With a strange sense of eagerness he nods his head quietly.
She sighs and leans beside him on the counter, avoiding eye contact but also close enough they could feel the heat radiating off each other in the cold climate.
"I… tried it before. In college. Like a lot of it, at once. A lot, a lot." She almost never talked about her college years, he nodded again. "I really wanted to look like an adult, so I went to a lot of parties. I thought I was the coolest one there, but I probably just annoyed the hell out of everyone." She scoffs. "I always tried to outdrink everyone and would puke my guts out. They'd clean up after me, some were nice, a lot of them were assholes. One time, all these guys were surrounded by this weird glass thing you smoke out of, I think they called it dabs. I kept nagging them to let me try it, saying I could out smoke all of them there. I guess they thought it would be funny to fill it up to the brim. I was probably eleven years old at the time."
"Asuka…" Was all he could muster, she laughs again, but clutches her arm. "I probably coughed for an hour. Probably hilarious to them. The little shit who thought she was smarter than everyone else hacking out a lung. I ended up outside with them, following them around everywhere even though I could barely walk in a straight line. I just remember my head feeling like it was in a vice grip and all of a sudden, I lost them. Or they ditched me. I just sorta ended up wandering around. I think it took two days for the police to find me. So… yeah." She lets out a nervous chuckle. "There you go, that's why I hate it."
They were quiet for a few minutes, watching the pizza slowly inflate.
Shinji spoke up, "You know, that's probably the most you ever told me about your past." To be fair, he hasn't exactly been open either.
"Yeah, well don't get used to it." She looks back at the pizza.
"Those guys sounded like real assholes."
"To be fair, I wanted to be there."
Shinji shakes his head. "No. You were just a kid, they should've looked out for you." She grunted in response, her way of agreeing. "When I was trying it, there were these two other guys that sort of… made fun of me. If Toji and Rei weren't there, I would've had a really bad time. I guess it's important to have that. Friends who will look out for you when you're trying things that scare you." Asuka whips her head at Shinji. He chuckles, "Not that you're ever scared of anything."
He could've sworn he saw the faintest smile from her. Seeing that stirred some static embers into something stronger. A similar way he feels when he needs to protect his sister. But this was different, the same feeling he had when Denki made that comment about Asuka. "You know, I would never let anything happen to you, right?" He regretted those words as soon as he said it. The person he wants to be and who he was two years ago are vastly different.
As he expected, she snorts. "That's rich coming from you." She glares at him, as if expecting him to shrink and apologies, then things can go back to their tense, albeit familiar sense of normalcy. But he didn't look away. For some reason, she did. She looks back. "No. I know." They held eye contact for what felt like a minute, but was most likely only a few seconds.
He nods and looks back at the pizza, she does too. "It, uh... might take another ten minutes." Shinji looks around, desperately thinking of a new topic.
Asuka pulls out her phone. "Wanna watch the new chapter while we wait?"
"Watch?"
"Soulmadness already animated the motion comic."
"Man, that guy works fast."
"He really does." She looks back at the phone.
Shinji nods at her, "Yeah sure, let's watch it."
There was that millimeter of a smile again, "Okay."
She leans close so they both can see the loading video. Shinji takes a deep waft of the pizza.
He was starving.