Shinji is leaning against his bedroom wall and trying to work out what he's feeling.

Once Asuka had started heading home he had made the same meal for the three current members of the household. That way if Asuka really didn't want to eat she could give the rest to PenPen who certainly wouldn't mind. He doubted she would, she'd been eating a lot more recently, so even if they had eaten together on their date - sorry, Pilot Soryu's Preliminary Skills Evaluation of Pilot Ayanami - she would still be hungry. At least Misato wasn't around to make inappropriate jokes about Asuka "eating for two".

At least he knew that wasn't the case. The only people Asuka let near her were himself and Rei. Asuka only let him touch her to keep the nightmares away, and whatever Rei's strange biology involved he was as certain she was functionally a girl as he was going to be without a much closer inspection than he was even going to think about.

Whatever Asuka's mood would be when she finally came in, he either didn't want to spoil it by being there, or didn't want to be in the blast radius. Not that he'd escape, but giving Asuka even a few minutes to calm down was the safest option whenever it was available. PenPen appeared to have agreed and had disappeared back into his freezer as soon as the door had opened. Asuka knew exactly where he was of course, so she could come and get him if she needed him for anything.

He hadn't needed to stay around for whatever "how to end a date" instructions Asuka was providing. Either he would get the same thing tomorrow or they were Rei specific and it didn't matter. It was better to be safely out of the way. That didn't mean Asuka's voice hadn't penetrated as far as his room clearly enough for him to hear her when she corrected Rei's mistake. Even if she hadn't raised her voice, that particular tone was inescapable.

He had spent enough time around Rei, and the things she did and did not say, to make it exceedingly obvious that what Asuka had objected to was that Rei had not asked her properly before kissing her, not that she had or how she was doing it. Going by the current silence and that Asuka was still in the entryway five minutes later, he was assuming Rei had asked correctly the second time.

So one of the things he was feeling was a slight curiosity as to what exactly Asuka had said that Rei had found a way to interpret as kissing her. Asuka certainly wouldn't have asked Rei any more than she'd ask him, which wouldn't happen even if they were the last two people in the world.

The other thing he was feeling he had managed to work back from his expression again. Once he'd worked out what it was it had confirmed his earlier decision not to have Asuka see him when she finally stopped kissing Rei. It was almost the same expression Rei had had when Asuka accused him of staring at her girlfriend's ass. Rei's slightly smug expression had an almost imperceptible hint of Asuka's possessiveness in it that his obviously did not.

He wasn't sure what to call it. Certainly Rei had done far more to earn the slight variation in her smile he'd interpreted as smug that he had. Asuka too for that matter. Though if it took him dissolving in his Eva to get them to talk to each other at least he'd done something. He'd do it again if he had to if them being happy together was the result.

Asuka was lying on Shinji and trying to work out what she was feeling.

In terms of calming her to the point she could think clearly, Shinji was a poor substitute for Rei.

Better than lying alone in her room had been and at least he was not going to try kissing her. She was safe from that. He also wasn't a girl. She could confirm that just by moving her knee, not that she needed to, they were already settling back into sync. She didn't like girls any more than she liked boys, did she? A few of them were cute in ways boys other than Shinji weren't. But none of them, as Hikari had so crudely put it, made her panties wet. Not that Rei did either, but she could imagine kissing Rei again ... her train of thought was derailed for a while as she did exactly that ... she couldn't imagine doing that with anyone else.

The boy she was lying on was going to be the one kissing the girl she had just kissed in a couple of days. She was surprisingly unsure how she felt about that. She'd certainly imagined that often enough but instead of the swirl of confused emotions wrapped in fury she expected she was ... she was worried he'd screw it up so badly that Rei would be put off kissing entirely and she'd never get kissed again. His track record of kissing anyone had been even worse than hers. Which no longer consisted only of the disastrous kiss with the semi-conscious boy whose skin was a few centimetres from her lips.

She went back to thinking about kissing Rei. It was somehow less confusing.

Asuka woke in the middle of the night from something part of her sleep-addled brain insisted was a very enjoyable dream. Utterly impossible of course, she couldn't imagine either the circumstances or physical arrangement of bodies that would result in Rei kissing her while Shinji stroked her hair.

Which is what he was doing. Except he was also wrapped around her so tightly she could barely breathe and was gasping for breath.

What the hell new nightmare was this? And couldn't he have had it during one of her own or something, not while her dream-self was making out with Rei. Which she was going to stop thinking about any minute now.

She tried to pull away but couldn't. Dammit, he really was stronger than he used to be, even if he didn't look it. Her struggles had not woken him. She couldn't move her legs enough to knee him in the groin, which would probably have worked. The half-awake part of her brain suggested kissing him the way it had been kissing dream-Rei, but she thrust that aside with the thought that the most that would achieve would be to suffocate him when she threw up on him.

She ended up biting him in desperation. That worked. For the definition of "worked" that meant she could breathe again and he was awake. Not in any way coherent, but awake.

It felt like a very long time before they both fell asleep again, Shinji only relaxing again once she had her head back on his shoulder and her arms draped across him, Asuka wishing she could ask him to stroke her hair again and that her mouth didn't taste of his shoulder.