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Shinji knew where they kept him. He’d followed Ritsuko down to the lab where he was preserved for experiments or something more sinister later. Shinji wasn’t used to acting on his own and maybe that’s why he made his way back there unharassed. He was afraid. Afraid of getting caught, of repercussion, yes. But, he was afraid of him, too. Afraid to face him. Afraid to face himself. Afraid of something he couldn’t name, that hovered behind his every move like a ghoulish manifestation of subconscious foresight. That fear couldn’t keep him from the lab, however.
The room was dark and eerily quiet, the ambient hum of strange machinery the only sound throughout. Shinji’s skin crawled and he couldn’t help but feel pupil-sized pinpricks of sensation along the back of his neck. Paranoia burrowed into his skull and settled on his mind like a blanket of dread. Still, he persevered. He knew which box was his to find and opened it like a gift, greedy hands shaking with anticipation and adrenalin.
Kaworu was there, just as Shinji knew he would be, and he smelled alien and ripe. There was a sharp, chemical scent, like LCL and formaldehyde, but even that couldn’t mask the stink of decay. Shinji’s insides turned restlessly and his pores opened, adrenalin beginning to peak as he reached into the box with sweaty palms and grasped now-brittle hair. Kaworu, whose hair had been ephemerally soft. Kaworu, with glacier-white skin now splotchy in watered-down blues and purples. The cut was clean where the head had been severed, flat skin and bone painted in gelatinous blood, congealed around white fat and tissue. Shinji clutched him to his chest and buried his face in his hair, which felt fake, like straw. Shinji cried into a dead scalp that smelt of rotten flesh, stench accosting his nasal passage, fumigating the back of his throat.
The tears came without reprieve, unapologetically wetting Shinjji’s face and Kaworu’s and he felt like he should apologize for the intrusion. He apologized for something different altogether.
“I’m sorry, Kaworu,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Because even though it was Unit 001, it was him just the same. He’d felt Kaworu’s bones break in his grip, the memory of a smile bouncing through his pupils, fragmenting and reflecting on the back of his eyelids. Shinji slid to the floor, shoulders shaking as he hugged Kaworu tight to his chest. He realized briefly that maybe he was squeezing too tight, that maybe he would crush him again and Kaworu wouldn’t even tell him to stop. He relaxed his arms and turned the head to face him. There was a cut along Kaworu’s forehead from when he’d hit the ground that had been cleaned and was now dry and bruised, with a little sour yellow around the edges. Other than that, Kaworu looked just as serene as he had in life. Despite being weighed down by death, his facial expression was frozen in calm acceptance and Shinji thought that if the afterlife looked like that, he wasn’t afraid to die.
The longer they sat together, the more aware Shinji became of the stirring inside him. What had at first been an electrical current of adrenalin and fear became a tide of anxiety, ebbing and flowing inside his stomach. It was like a sentient being was awakening inside him, uncurling from a fetal position to stretch throughout the rest of Shinji’s body. Forlorn hands reaching up to grasp his heart and lungs; long, spidery feet tip-toeing his loins. His shivered with sensation and trepidation -- knowing, so clearly what he wanted yet unwilling to get caught. The promise of interruption by Ritsuko or one of her lab jockeys became more and more feasible with every passing minute, yet that did nothing to quell the manic beginnings of desperate temptation.
Kaworu’s lips were chapped and dry and Shinji pressed his fingers against them, feeling how stiff and spongy they had become. He pushed the digits with minimal force between them and felt the dry bloat of swollen tongue, the tantalizing edge of teeth. His other hand worked fast at his belt and fly and he was shaking, wracked with determination and terror and the slow burn of arousal that was impossible to ignore. He was already hard and it both surprised and disgusted him. He avoided looking at his dick, although for once grateful for its lack of size and girth as he forced it between Kaworu’s necrotic lips.
It was hurried. A flurry of rocking, jutting movements up into an unresponsive vessel and when Shinji pulled on grey hair he felt a bit of the scalp give with the force, so he resigned himself to pressing his fingers against the dead, bulging veins sitting beneath the thin skin of Kaworu’s temples. He realized that he was sullying an important specimen, something holy, something otherworldly and relevant to the universe -- relevant to something greater and far more powerful than Shinji could ever hope to understand. But more than that, perhaps more enticing and equally horrifying, was the idea of Kaworu. The idea of friendship, of trust, of another’s love, wrapped dead and lifeless around his dirty cock. Shinji killed. He killed and what was worse, he made beautiful things ugly; the idea that he was dismantling something so flawless and beautiful was personal to him. Like breaking his favourite toy and regretting it immediately after, crying when he couldn’t piece it back together because it was so shattered it could never be whole again.
“Kaworu,” he choked on the name, disgusted with the sound for even materializing in his throat. He said it again. Again. kaworukaworukaworu. The syllables burst like fireworks in his throat, the heat of them pervading his brain and chest.
He was burning. Kaworu’s mouth was cold. He was burning. The back of Kaworu’s throat was boyant. The stench grew stronger with every thrust and Shinji thought about it sticking to his skin and his dick, of not showering just so he could smell this as long as possible. Terror gave him the willpower to pull out just as he was coming and spurt thick and warm into his hand. It wouldn’t have been good to leave any evidence behind. If anyone found out…
He stared at the mess in his hands and clenched his fist, feeling it squish between his fingers and the valleys in his palm. He felt nauseous and every pulsating aftershock brought a stab of guilt. He arranged Kaworu neatly back in the box where he’d found him and didn’t look as he shut the box. The journey back to his room must have been uneventful, but Shinji couldn’t remember a single step he took. On the surface of his bed he felt a scream rise in his throat along with the sting of bile, but he swallowed them both and felt his stomach rumble with discontent and nausea.
The ceiling stared down at him, judgemental and familiar. He looked over to his bedside table and saw the cassette player there, pondering it for only a still, silent moment before reaching for it. The earbuds were snug and the click of the PLAY button routine and therapeutic. He closed his eyes as Bach rose in volume and the orchestra pierced the hateful, constant static of his thoughts.
disgustingstupidpatheticpervertuselessweakidiot.
He lifted the palm of his hand to his nose and inhaled. It smelled like rot and semen.
disgusting.