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He’s crying again.
They’re not so much as cries, Kaworu notes pensively, trying to decipher those melodic sounds of distress rattling the space between his ears. The more he listens, with his eyes closed in a vain attempt at sleep, the more he realizes that those sobs are too sharp to be classified as cries. Too angry.
The yawps of anger ripple against steel. They’re muffled, slightly, by his bedroom door - if one would give these cubicles such personal descriptions - but it seems that locks cannot confine vehement like they can bodies.
“Let me out.”
Kaworu opens his eyes. He sounds like an animal, he thinks.
The banging starts.
A caged animal.
The rhythmic succession of desperation echoes down the hall - bang, bang, bang - and ricochets against Kaworu’s chest. Pure adrenaline pumps at the clattering sound, and his heartbeat mimics the call.
Concern eventually pricks his body upright - bangbangbang.
It hurts. It hurts so much to helplessly listen as vile anger manifests into self-inflicted pain. Kaworu knows how the other will look tomorrow morning, with knuckles bruised and eyes rimmed - not an ounce of animalistic fight left in him. Every nerve of that quiet boy will become bloodshot, and they’ll both pretend not to notice the trembling dancing across the ivory keys.
Wails shatter out of melody. His scraping voice tips between pitches, and cracks between octaves, musically raw and redundant. Emotion is tumbling out of him faster than he can vocalize - he isn’t coming down. Crescendo.
Kaworu moves. Gently, and with those characteristic steps he’s cursed with, he crosses the floor. The swish of fabric is nothing compared to the swish of inhales the crying boy emits, preparing his lungs for another threat. As promised, it arrives in the form of a scream, and Kaworu’s door opens with ease.
He’s spent far too many lifetimes aching.
The cries become self-aware, self-inflicted, as that familiar helplessness takes route. Wounded fists deflate into weak tendrils - no longer weapons, simply just skin and bone - and thus the banging stops. A tan forehead rests against the door in sudden exhaustion.
“Shinji?”
A thankful gasp ripples out of his throat, “Kaworu.”
The shadow beneath the door is still, eerily so, as his midnight ghost reeps this tragedy. “I can’t let you out, Shinji,” he says, guessing what that crumpled boy will ask next.
The anger returns, hot and heavy but insufferably fleeting. Shinji can’t muster up the will to fight anymore, and his head lolls against his chest as he slumps down further.
“Kaworu,” he whimpers, finding solace in nothing but the name. He drags out those vowels and consonants of comfort, sounding like a stray dog kicked in the ribs. “Kaworu.”
His composure cracks, “Shinji.”
And then those cries start up again, though thankfully less vicious than before. They’re gentle, little mewls of emotion dripping off the bridge of his nose and onto his cheeks. He sounds like a mourning dove, now. Cooing into submissiveness.
Beautifully melancholic.
He’s locked in there because he’ll run, Kaworu knows. He’s alone because he has to be.
“Kaworu.”
But he can’t bear this helplessness for another life.
“I can’t let you out,” Kaworu mumbles, as soft and grounding as can be through the steel door. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t come in.”
There’s a pause of understanding, a contemplative tremor of tears. It stretches on.
“May I-?”
“Please.”
The door immediately gives way.
He doesn’t ask how, doesn’t ask why, simply looks up at the approaching boy with a soggy plea. His eyelashes are glossy, face red and flushed, and he’s warmly enveloped by a flash of pale limbs and hair.
Arms wrap around his neck. The door traps them both inside.
Shinji succumbs.
Because he’s so goddamn scared. He’s so scared that it hurts. Neither the world, or his father, or the geometric angels sent down as God’s reapers scare him as much as his own existence does, and it seems that these self-deprecating thoughts aren’t so easily feigned at night. He can’t run away from himself.
“I’m going to feel like this forever,” he weeps in realization, “Let me out.”
Kaworu presses up against him.
Let him out of what, he isn’t sure. His room, his body, his mind - nothing will ever suffice. All Kaworu can do is pray that one day Shinji will be let out of this universe to try again. He wants him to keep trying.
“Kaworu.”
Shinji Ikari is a blessed being, Kaworu thinks, one that is burdened with the fragility of humanity. Everything he feels and does is so beautifully human - fueled by nothing but emotion and drive - that it makes this growing boy resemble glass. The kind that decorates churches and casts kadelisopce shadows against the wood.
Shinji Ikari is broken stained-glass, needing to be put back together before he can be worshipped. How enchanting he’ll be when the sun shines through - he’ll light up the world one day, Kaworu is sure of it.
But what he realizes, then, as Shinji cries his pretty little tears, is that these shattered pieces are still beautiful. He doesn’t need to be fixed in order to catch the light - brokenness does not change a window’s intent, merely disrupts it.
They both just have to keep on trying.
“Do you want to lay down?”
Shinji sniffs against the other boy’s shirt, a bruised fist clinging to the well-ironed fabric. He nods, weakly, as his panicking settles and is replaced by insecurity.
“Sorry,” he slinks, thighs cool from the floor below. His room is pitch black - a sign of another frutle attempt to keep this boy contained and submissive - as he wearily blinks around. His voice is hoarse and bloody. His cheeks are damp as he swipes at them.
Kaworu doesn’t humor the apology, for he knows that if he denies it, Shinji will only find a way to feel even more remorseful. So he settles for a hum and a stand, hands outstretched to let the other up. His pristine hair catches what little light the room has managed, and Shinji practically floats to it like a beacon.
He lets the other boy take his shaking hands and lead them to the bed.
“Can I sleep here?” Kaworu asks as he settles a hiccuping Shinji to bed. He’s sporting his regular tone, a hint of amusement in the knowingly invasive question.
Shinji nods.
So, “Right or left?”
This successful attempt at domesticity deserves a weak smile. “Left,” Shinji cracks and scoots over. He liked being pressed against the steely wall while he slept.
Kaworu eases in beside him, forearms still wet with the tears of a mourning dove. The sound of the sheets shifting beneath him is stark against Shinji’s breathing, and it’s hard to imagine that this quiet boy was shouting just minutes earlier.
Occasionally, once Kaworu settles, a ripple of breath is stolen from the other’s chapped lips, but other that, it’s silent.
Eerily so.
“What are you doing?” Shinji mutteres, teeth chattering slightly. Kaworu takes a break from his humming to indulge.
“Track twenty-five,” he explains, “Don’t you recognize it?”
“Of course I do.” A pause, a boyish simplicity slipping past grief. “But why?”
But why, he asks. Kaworu smiles, “Because it’s wonderful.”
When another silence takes up space, Kaworu turns his head to the left, eyeing the shattered pieces of his religion from across the bed. Surprisingly, Shinji is already looking at him, doe-eyes blown wide and weepy. He’s nothing more than a silhouette, shadowed and restless against the night, and yet the way in which his lips tremor is blinding.
“Let things be wonderful, Shinji.”
Shinji Ikari takes a deep breath, subconsciously trying to appear more composed than he obviously is. “Okay,” he sighs, “Okay.”
Because he understands. Or at least he thinks he does - for now. Kaworu closes his snow-dappled eyes and smiles, happy at just the idea of mutual clairvoyance between the two.
His hand, soft and slender and perfect for straining those well-off chords, reach forwards in invitation.
Shinji takes it.
He’s trying.