Asuka, Shinji and Rei deal with their individual and collective traumas together, with a little help from their friends. For better and worse. Til death do us (not) part.
Also silliness, WAFF, OCs blatantly stolen from other fic, Hikari channeling Prankster-suka, it's all Rei's fault, making it (much) worse before making it better.
Slow burn is slow, but so was canon.
This is the result of a one-shot metastasizing (see ao3) and going "how did they get to ths point?" FFN and SufficientVelocity have the timeline from the start. ao3 has all the pieces written so far at various points in the timeline. I may go back and backfill stories if inspired.
Chapters are generally small, so the chapter count is high here.
The current chronology is:
Preludes: Hikari
* not tied to an episode, at least two months after Asuka arrives in Episode 9
Preludes: Hormones
* not tied to an episode, at least two months after Asuka arrives in Episode 9
Get Out of the Damn Robot, Shinji
* Vignettes over the month of Episode 20
Primordial Soup Leftovers
* The week after, parallel to Episode 21.
Heatwave
* The following two weeks, parallel to Episode 21.
Ao3 has the most up-to-date version of the individual story threads.
Also mirrored to Sufficient Velocity forums for discussion and a few extras.
If you notice any odd formatting, it's probably FFN mangling things.
Feedback, reviews and beta readers welcome.