Asuka watched Shinji cooking, familiar smells, familiar movements, her mind in turmoil.
Once Rei had left, she'd taken her calm with her, leaving Asuka alone with the boy she'd admitted she needed, who one of them had said she loved. As a friend? As family? As more? She wasn't sure. And even less sure she wanted to know.
"What's wrong Asuka?"
A month dissolved into LCL and he was more concerned about her. Baka.
'Nothing. Everything. Nevermind. I don't know.'
What was she supposed to say?
'I need you to hold me'?
'Rei thinks I should do that naked'?
'I need to go to bed with you so I can sleep without nightmares'?
'I need Wundergirl to hug me every day or I fall apart'?
Rei made it all seem so simple. "Just ask". 'Ha! Like that would work with baka-Shinji.' Or her. It had taken a month of Rei coming to her, consistently, reliably, and the idiot coming back before she'd risked being the one to ask Rei.
She'd just had ... two months of living with the idiot? or was it three months? Between boring school, irregular angel attacks and the lack of seasons in Japan's endless summer, it was hard to keep track of time, and the last month obviously didn't count. Two months of weird synchronisation issues. Two months of sleeping the same hours. Two months of occasionally crawling into his bed and lying next to him just to be able to sleep. Two months of watching him be better than her, but only if he was in an Eva. Two months of him cooking for her. Two months of fighting Angels together. Two months of him taking care of her. Of caring for her? He smiled at Rei. And he wouldn't even look at her. And she couldn't talk to him without calling him an idiot.
Rei was good for calm. Calm was rarely what she felt around her baka.
Her baka. She'd screamed "mine" at him, at the Eva, at probably the whole of NERV.
And the very first thing she'd done once he was back was to literally push him into Rei's arms.
"I've missed your cooking" is all she eventually said.