LOVE CALLING LOVE: CHAPTER ONE

summary: Shinji gets everything he wants, except the ability to adjust.

Shinji wakes in a world he has never known. The space above and beneath him is warm, soft and yielding. He stirs, moaning almost inaudibly, and moves his hand. Blindly, he pushes up and away, finding himself standing on a hardwood floor. Feeling cold, he shivers delicately. He wants to return to the warm place, but his eyes stray around the room and he finds himself tugged forward by his curiousity.

Personal effects which must be his litter the floor and the the long dresser. He lets the tips of his fingers rest on the dark wood of the dresser, and tries not to think. He's not afraid, he can't be, but what the thump thump thumping of his heart says is something entirely different. He can hear birds singing just outside the window above the bed, except he hasn't looked at the bed so how can he know that the window's there?

A shifting of the sheets and his whole body tenses. "Shinji?" His eyes widen, and his heart is uncharacteristically silent. What happens next, Shinji will later attribute to reflex.

"K-kaworu?"

There. On the Bed with the calm blue sheets is the boy with calm red eyes but the colors somehow manage not to clash at all and Shinji isn't breathing can't breathe because this couldn't, wouldn't be real. Shinji knows when he awakes from this dream, he will cry, like all the times before. He's crying now, but he thinks of it as a head start.

"Shinji," the grey haired boy asks, as he rises from the bed. "What is the matter?"

Shinji will not open his eyes, because when he does, he will wake in a cold room with colder tears.

"Shinji, please." Warm hands gently reach for his cheeks, smoothing away tears. "Tell me what bothers you so."

He lingers in the touch and allows himself not to think, for just a second. "…you're dead," he finally whispers, half of what he says lost because his voice breaks. Kaworu's stroking pauses, and Shinji's eyes squeeze tighter because he knows this is the part where it gets bad. It takes a whole minute, but the stroking starts again and Shinji's nerves are shot. Isn't he supposed to be waking up now? Isn't Kaworu supposed to pull away from him? "Did… did you hear me?" And for some reason, the tears start again, warm rivers that burn. "You're dead. I… I killed you."

"But Shinji, how can I be dead? I'm right here." This moment here is where he should pull away and start screaming until he wakes up, because right now it's just too much to bear. He doesn't know if he can ever allow himself to sleep again after this.

"Never again," Shinji says, even as he pulls Kaworu close to cry into his shoulder. "Never again," he sobs, over and over and over until he is certain that if he opens his eyes, he will see the words burned into Kaworu's shoulder. The world eventually dissolves into nothing, but he's too numb to care.