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Kaworu is a phantom limb. Shinji knows the sensation of his touch, misses it as if it were as much a part of him as his arms and legs. His fingers all feel wrong when he remembers the smoothness of piano keys under them.
~
“We could be kindred spirits,” he’d said, moonlight in his hair and the weight of promises better unmade on his tongue. He spoke so simply – statements never sweeping, but instead hanging light in the air, as if they were well-learned facts. “I am bound to you, Shinji,” he’d said. Whispered it into the night as if it took no courage, closer to a quiet confession than a declaration of love.
He’d touched his lips to the calluses on Shinji’s fingers and Shinji had felt his chest swell and crash like the tide. Where others would push and pull and heave, Kaworu had been soft. Two kind hands that asked for nothing, that didn’t search for the world underneath Shinji’s skin but rather believed that his weight on the ground was enough.
~
One night they’d hidden away at an old beach and Shinji had exhaled, shoulders falling as he truly breathed for the first time in a long time.
“You’re calmer in the dark,” Kaworu said.
And Shinji had gazed at him; direct, unafraid. “I don’t question my heartbeat at night.”
Kaworu looked straight back, an unmistakeable, ancient sadness clouding his eyes. “Why is that?”
Throat tight, he’d steeled himself. “Before…everything here was alive; the sky and the ground…all the people. And now it’s gone, dead. This is nothing but wasteland. But at night, it all looks the same, exactly like it used to.”
Kaworu would find hope in weeds, cracks in the pavement, Shinji’s pulse thrumming away under his wrist. “Nothing is ever truly dead.”
~
He’d taken Shinji back to the same beach in the daytime, watched Shinji’s lip curling downwards in the beginnings of distrust.
Too red, this water would burn; eat at his bones and wash him right out. “Kaworu, I don’t want to be-“
Hand gentle around his own and a slow smile as he led him to the shoreline. Shinji had watched in disbelief as he shucked his shoes, before kneeling to untie Shinji’s shoelaces, fingers brushing his ankles before pulling away.
“It might be wise to take off your shoes,” he’d said, rolling up the legs of his trousers.
Reluctantly, Shinji had followed suit, his stomach turning in discomfort. Kaworu smiled at him, a small patient curve of his lips, before shifting again towards the horizon and walking straight into the water. Shinji stood back, terrified of being left behind, until Kaworu turned in his direction, smile wide enough for a peek of his teeth.
“The water is wonderful!”
Hesitantly, Shinji trudged forward; the rhythm of his footsteps stuttering but pressing onwards nonetheless. First his toes, then his heels and closer, closer until he stood next to Kaworu, water at his calves.
Baby waves lapping adoringly at his skin. We’ve always been here, they said.
And Kaworu, right by his side. Lips brushing against his ear as he whispered “See, still alive.”
The water hadn’t burned; neither hot nor frigid, instead, cool enough for Shinji to believe that long before, it might have shone blue. He could feel emotion constricting the column of his throat, hot tears welling in his eyes as his heart pounded strong and clear.
~
Shinji had thought that if Kaworu were to die, he’d dissolve straight into stardust, drift away in the wind as easily as he came.
But instead, he dies just as flesh and bone would. The fan of his eyelashes and the strands of his hair are a relief; cold silver, but it doesn’t last. Soon, there is nothing but blood, Shinji imagines that there is enough to flood this universe once again.
And it does; seeps straight into newly formed cracks and paints everything anew.
~
He wants to see Kaworu in the night, find him in the sleepy glow of the moon and the tiny clouds his lungs push into the air.
But Kaworu bleeds right into the daytime – red, shining bright and relentless. Eventually the air stops smelling metallic, instead kissing his skin. It beats down, hot and unquestionably real.
Alive.