Asuka lay on her bed wondering what she'd just done. She'd talked herself into kissing the baka is what she'd done. And it had gone the way she'd expected their first kiss to go. Then she'd criticised him, this was supposed to be a lesson after all. But instead of apologising, he'd told her off, then told her to be herself, with all the anger and pain that came with that. Then he kissed her and ... and it wasn't quite enough. The way him holding her that night hadn't been enough. Stupid baka. Why can't you either have all of whatever it is I need or none of it?

She spent an unknown amount of time lost in thoughtless memory and circular thoughts.

Shinji stood in the doorway wondering what the hell had just happened.

If he'd put any thought into what kissing Asuka would be like that would absolutely not have been what it would have been like. The occasional nightmares of hurting her again had been more than enough to persuade him it wasn't an option, even if Asuka hadn't threatened him with dire consequences. Asuka was just Asuka, always beautiful, often complicated and frequently incomprehensible, but not someone you thought about kissing. Just holding in the dark until the nightmares faded and the tears stopped.

If it had just been her words, he'd have thought this was another of Asuka's poor taste in jokes, that Rei might ask him to kiss her.

That Asuka had insisted on making sure he knew how first... that made even less sense. It's not something Asuka would do even if Rei asked her to, and if Rei actually wanted to kiss him, why wouldn't she just ask?

Was this some weird sort of give him something else to think about attempt by Asuka? That didn't fit either, Asuka had no problems using embarrassing thoughts of Rei to try to distract him, but she'd never even attempted anything involving herself.

Even if it wasn't meant to, it certainly had. In as much as he could actually think while thinking about it. Asuka had somehow broken the synchronisation when she let go, not to the point where he didn't know where she was, but enough that he was a lot more aware of the lingering memory of her pressed against him in a very un-sleeping-on-you-to-avoid-nightmares manner, the weird double sensation of her fingers in his hair, his hair in her fingers, his hand on her skin, her skin under his hand...

... and he was suddenly very glad they weren't in sync any more.

Perhaps Rei had asked Asuka about kissing him for comparative purposes after Asuka had kissed her. That would make more sense and the sort of thing Rei would do. But what would happen if Asuka could feel that?

Dinner. What was he going to make them for dinner? Did they have enough to make something without him going out? He did a mental inventory of the cupboards, that was distracting enough. No, that wasn't distracting enough.

He closed his eyes, but all he saw was a very naked Rei the moment before he fell on her.

"Wark!" interrupted PenPen.

Shinji looked down gratefully, "Sure. I'll get you something now."

Thankfully Asuka remained in their room until he'd fed PenPen and was almost done making dinner.

Dinner was unsurprisingly really awkward. Neither of them wanted to bring up the end of the are-we-still-not-calling-it-a-date-after-that, or whether it changed anything, or ... or ...

Eventually Asuka broke the silence, "Play something for me after dinner."

Shinji opened his mouth to respond, but before he could say anything, Asuka interrupted.

"No apologising!" She stabbed her fork in his direction, "I don't care if you aren't perfect. Just play something."

Shinji nodded, obviously Asuka was checking to see if he was good enough to play for Rei yet. He could do that. It would help provide a distraction from the other thing he was apparently good enough at.

Shinji watched his Asuka as he played the only piece he knew she liked and let the music calm them both. The muscle memory was there, eventually the finger callouses would be again too.

His Asuka? No, that was wrong. He was Asuka's. Her cook. Her housekeeper. Her kanji tutor. Currently her musician. Her pillow. Her defender from nightmares, and only nightmares. The Great Asuka didn't need him to try to defend her against anything else. That was more absurd than Toji defending Hikari. Admittedly that had actually happened, and Hikari had actually seemed to like it, but Hikari could have actually solved things with just a look. Anyway, Toji was Hikari's boyfriend, he was Asuka's? What? Friend? Did friends scream possessively at giant robots? Did friends sleep together? Or know where each other were at all times? Or...

He missed a note and tried to work out where he was in the piece. He could almost literally play this in his sleep, but apparently not while thinking about kissing Asuka. Who did not appear to have noticed the missed note based on her calm expression, so that was a relief.

He certainly wasn't Asuka's boyfriend. Even if today somehow qualified as a date, that was entirely the wrong word. He wasn't sure if any word was up to the task of describing whatever it was, but "boyfriend" was entirely insufficient for how he felt. Not that he understood that any more than he understood Asuka.

Anyway, Asuka wasn't his, Asuka was Rei's.

Asuka is lying on the couch with her feet up, ignoring the voice in the back of her head reminding her that however much she wants to she can't lean on Shinji while he's playing. Which he's just stopped doing.

"Do you know anything else?" He must, that's not exactly a beginner piece.

Shinji manages not to apologise, "I thought you liked that one. I didn't want to ruin your evening by playing something I'm not good at."

'Tone' reminds the Asuka reading from the recently updated 'what would Rei do?' manual.

"I wouldn't have spent an hour listening to it, twice now, if I didn't. Just play something different next time. Some variation's good for you."

Asuka rolled over and rested her head on Shinji's shoulder in her usual position. The contact test didn't seem necessary. She didn't want to think about that right now. There were a lot of things she didn't want to think about right now.

That didn't stop her brain noting the fact that she could lift her head and kiss him again and maybe it would be enough this time. Except how could it be without Rei? Would feeling Shinji kiss Rei feel different than kissing Rei directly? Was kissing both of them wrong? It hadn't felt wrong, it had felt … she stopped thinking for some time.

"Not until after your date with Rei."

She felt him nod in acknowledgement and relaxed a little. How she felt about that was an even more confusing tangle after today.

You'd have thought going to bed that evening would have been awkward, but somehow it wasn't.

This was still his Asuka that he protected from nightmares, and as long as he didn't think about kissing her and kissing Rei at the same time, or feeling her kissing Rei, or Rei feeling her kissing him, he'd be just fine.

Instead he ran through the pieces he could play that she might like if he practised enough and tried to resist the urge to run his fingers through her hair the way she had his. Eventually the music let him disconnect from himself as if he were actually playing, or listening to his SDAT, and all he could feel was Asuka's gradually slowing breathing.

He was still playing music in his head when Asuka pulled him down into sleep.