"Though we feel let down
By the same old autumn breathing
Winter's curse is just around the bend."
- The Motion City Soundtrack

There's a party inside the bar, but we're out in the alley, squaring off like we're about to have a fist fight. Her cold blue eyes are boring into mine and her jaw is clenched like a bear trap. I can see her weighing her words, which isn't a common thing for Asuka to do. This must be important.

She looks off to the side, and ashes her cigarette on the ground next to her. She lifts it up to her lips and is about to take another drag when she begins to speak instead.

"You know I'm not someone who… talks about these things a lot. I don't have a battle plan for this. It might be sloppy." She shakes her head and lets the flame drop out of her hands. She crushes it underneath her foot and fixes me in her gaze again.

"I like… this. I like us. I like what we've found here," she gestures around. "Things have been rough lately, you know that. Jesus Christ you're pretty much the only person I can talk to about it. Those assholes in there are just…" she trails off looking for words.

"Friends?" I offer. She snorts.

"Barely. Some maybe." She takes out another cigarette and moves to light it.

"Asuk-"

"Fuck off, Ikari. They're my lungs, I can do what I want with 'em." She inhales again, and dies a little more.

I had a conversation with Asuka when she started smoking, about how it worried me and the like, but there was no convincing her. Once the Eva battles ended, Asuka took it the worst. It was her identity, and sure we'd saved the world, but she'd rendered herself victoriously obsolete. Honestly, all things considered, she could be doing much worse things to her body than smoking. Heroin, I guess. Any number of other stupid things.

It's not like I could stop her.

A memory:

"I'll die from this," she said, holding a pack up of red Gauloises for me to see. "I know you probably don't understand, but I like knowing that."

"Why?" I had asked.

Click. Light. Drag. "Because it's my choice."

Now:

"But they're not real friends, Shinji. None of them lived through what we did. No one understands, really. I don't… I don't know if they could." She studies the ground. The crushed tobacco under her feet.

Inside the bar, someone spills something and there's a massive uproar of laughter. It might be a fight, I can't really tell.

I sigh, "Look, if you don't want me here-"

"That's not what I'm saying, just… let me talk, for a second." She's groping for words again. Saying what she feels is rarely a problem with the Teutonic fury in front of me, but she's using the German part of her brain. She's picking words like clockwork, making sure they're in their places before unleashing them.

'You have to think like that, with German,' she told me once. 'It's harder to be stream of consciousness. English and Japanese flow more like water, but with German each word is a cog, and if you miss one, the whole meaning falls apart.' It had something to do with the way the sentences were made and verb conjugation. I didn't really understand it at the time, but the older and less impulsive Asuka's gotten the more I've seen that German side come out in her.

She lines her cogs up and speaks:

"I need you, Shinji." My first name drops like an atomic bomb. No honorific after it emasculating me, and not the more common 'Ikari'. I don't remember the last time I was just 'Shinji'.

She continues: "I need you to be near me and to help me with this mess."

"You mean the thing with your father?"

"Yes! That, college, these people, all of it. Nobody gets me like you do. You've seen me at rock bottom and you're still here and I need that… probably more than I even know I do," she smiles ruefully. "I'm too smart to think I always know exactly what's going on in my head, so."

"So what?"

"So problem is this," she holds up a finger. "We know what we are as friends. We're closer than we've ever been, and yes," I think she's blushing, but it's hard to see in the lower light. "On some level I'm certainly..." she mumbles something, but in the din I can't hear it. She lacks tape reviews?

"…on some level you're what?"

"Oh come on!" She tosses up her hands, sending ash everywhere. I watch her turn towards the brick wall behind herself and gently tap her head against it.

"I couldn't hear, Asuka! The bar is-"

"I'm attracted to you, okay?! I like you! I find you attractive! Jesus, Ikari, what are you, stupid?!" She's certainly blushing now, and I feel my face heat up as well. "Why do you think we spend so much time together?! Why do you think I choose you to study with?! We're rooming together for Christ's sake, do you think it's because you're such a good cook?! I can order food if I need it, it's your company I want!" Asuka stands, hands at her sides, face red from screaming. She looks away, deeply embarrassed. I think she said more than she meant to.

"You just wanted to hear me say it twice, you perv." She mutters to herself, barely audible from where I'm standing. I can't help but smile at it.

I look down at the ground, shoving my hands in my pockets. Unbidden, I think of the first time we kissed, all those eons ago.

"Asuka, I… I like you too, you know?"

"Yeah," she says, quietly turning a deeper shade of red. "Yeah, I know."

I shift my weight and I force myself to look back up at her face.

"Well, maybe we could give it a shot then?" I say, trying to keep excitement out of my voice. She leans against the bricks with a sigh.

"We really shouldn't."

"Why not?" I spread my arms, "If we both want to, then why would we ever not? What's holding us back?!"

"Because what happens if it doesn't work, huh?!" She there's fire in her eyes, and all of a sudden I'm fourteen again and falling in love with a girl who hates me. "It changes things, Shinji! And I don't want them to change… I can't have them change, not when we've finally found what we're supposed to always have been."

"Which is what?"

"This! Us! Talking! Saying things we actually mean and not some passive-aggressive fourteen-year-old bullshit!" She's screaming now. I'm happy for the ruckus of the bar, for once. "People in relationships lie! They end up wanting things that aren't there, and they get bored and they fuck other people, and I'm not gonna have that happen, Ikari! Not to you and not to me!"

She looks away, relighting her nearly forgotten cigarette. Inside, I see Touji waving to see if everything's okay, and I wave him an 'okay' as convincingly as possible. No one needs to know this is happening. The last thing I want right now is an audience.

"So what," I ask, throat dry. "we're not even going to try?"

"No, we're not." There's a note of finality in her voice that crushes something inside of me.

"That's… pretty damn cynical, Asuka." She laughs.

"Yeah, well. You're the one attracted to it." Her eyes are mocking. She's shoving me away again, trying to kill the mood as much as possible, and I hate her for it. You self-destructive jerk. Cigarettes and booze and crushing your own happiness before it starts. Something boils up inside me.

"You're pathetic, you know that?"

Anger flares in her eyes, and she tosses her cigarette at my face. It flies over my shoulder harmlessly, but I felt the heat as it traveled past my ear.

"Get off it, Ikari. I bet you just wanted to fuck."

She starts to head back towards the bar.

"Oh, so did you," I mutter, and for a moment, she stops in her tracks. Her back is to me, the doorknob is in her hands, and she's standing there like a statue.

I think she's trying to come up with a retort – a final word she can snap back and 'win' the conversation with – but she's too busy thinking again. Finally she looks at me, and she's smiling again, but it's a sad smile this time. There's regret everywhere in it.

"Oh come on, Shinji," another atom bomb, straight to my heart. "I think we both know that's not true."

And then I realize she's thought about it as much as I have. She's stayed up at night and wondered how it would feel to consummate our friendship, if it would be angry, or cathartic, or even… sweet? Would we 'make love'? She's wondered how I taste, as I have with her. She's said those three words to herself with my name at the end, just to try them out.

Suddenly I'm not angry anymore, and neither is she.

Asuka steps forward, and takes me in an embrace. She nuzzles into my chest and squeezes a little too tight. It almost feels desperate.

I kiss the top of her head, long bereft of sync clips, and I breathe in her scent. It's a little smoky now, but I love it. I've come to associate the smell with her, which frightens me a little. We're both changing, and there's nothing we can do about it except hold on.

"We would be a great couple, Asuka." I mention, feeling her against me: the tight grip of her arms and the gentle push of her breasts into my torso. Even through her coat I feel her warmth like fire.

She leans back and looks up. "You know, we probably could," she giggles. Asuka giggling. What a night of firsts this has been. I place my hand around her waist.

"But we won't?"

She shakes her head decisively.

"Not a chance, Baka-Shinji," and for once, it sounds like a pet name instead of an insult. It sounds like something a lover would call me.

"So what are we then?"

"We're us. Like we always have been," she's smiling now, her fingers lace through mine and lead me towards the doorway. "Because you know what happens to couples that will never happen to us?"

"No, what?"

"They end."

AN: I don't know what exactly this is, but it was interesting enough to upload.

On a related note, if you never discovered Motion City Soundtrack's album "Commit This to Memory" in high school, find it now and etch it into your heart. All my worst memories have that cathartic beauty under them. Well, that and "Pinkerton" by Weezer, but you should really have that one already.

This will probably continue, but I'm so shitty at making updates that I won't lead you on by promising you that. I'm really sorry about being awful.

And self-pity. Haha! Enjoy guys.