driftfleet | mk. 07 (text)

Who: Kaworu Nagisa and anyone else
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: he's off on his own, for now.
When: afternoon

It's curious to call a place the way this place is called. "Solace" is a deeply personal concept to any creature, I believe. What brings you that measure of peace is going to be different from what brings it to me. So there's a lot of confidence in naming this space Solace, because how did they know whether this has what you or I are seeking?

But isn't it a little nice, too? The people who created this place must have found their solace in it themselves, and they truly believed it to be a provision of peace for the average heart. Those people have long since passed, I'm sure, now dead and having scattered past all these clouds. But what they believed to be vital, what nourished their well-being, remains here as a beacon of their hopes and endeavors. You know, it's always that way: when anyone leaves the world, their personal truths linger on, a landmark of reality. To the founders of Solace, this was solace. So it remains, whether or not you or I find our peace here.

Oh, anyway, hey, what do you think of this thing?

[attachment: nice72.jpg]

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My own? All right. That's a fair deal. I'll keep yours a secret, if you want me to. I hope you'll keep mine secret, too.

[That's necessary groundwork, but he's stalling, too, feeling like he might not be ready to say it. She's gotten much of that from him, though. Things he was sure he'd take to whatever cosmic grave might someday catch him. Things he meant to keep shut up inside boxes on the moon.

He adjusts his hand in hers. Now it's a little less cradling and a little more of his selfish desire to be touched.

His selfish desire to be touched. He smiles at her.] I'm tired and I want to be hugged.

[...

Three creatures know that, now. The tree near Kaworu's piano, now obliterated for sure; the eavesdropping lizard, sunning here in artificial light; and Asuka Shikinami Langley, against whose hand his thumb is kneading gently. It's a little like a cat with a blanket. That sense of comfort. He's taking real comfort in her, finally, instead of feeling wrung out.] Shikinami-san, my eyes, they don't get tired. I could look at things for days, if I wanted. I've done that. But right now, when I'm looking at you, it's like I'm waking up in the morning, fresh and bleary. Like the dawn, a gift I can't entirely understand. Although I am tired, I don't want to miss out on it.

I make you tired?

[Asuka falters a little-- then she squeezes his hand back. She knows more about how worn out he really is than he'd like her to know. The repeats. Over and over. She can't imagine living even a single year more than once. Just day to day in Eva was a drain on her soul.]

[His poetic way of stringing words together doesn't go over her head, but it does make her silent and a little ashamed. She's about as lyrical as the sleeping lizard, maybe less so. About as earthy, too. She doesn't see the point in waxing on, even when what he says is (pretty) (lovely) nice.]

[But a fresh morning, a morning worth waking up for, is as pleasant a comparison as she's heard. So she lets go of his hand after another squeeze and turns to face him, putting her arms around him. She hasn't hugged anyone but Shinji, and the motion is a little awkward at first, but warm all the same. When she inhales, she can smell his distinct scent, clean and calming. Her heart's starting to pump, no, starting to pound out of its ribcage as her hold on him tightens and she says:]

This is mine.

[And then she turns her head to catch his lips in a kiss.]

[Kaworu is surprised when she kisses him only because he doesn't expect for people to want to kiss him. The exception to that was carefully cultivated. He feels carefully cultivated now, too, worried that she has misinterpreted him, that he has lied to her—not about how he likes her, that has been clearly communicated between the both of them, but if she wants to kiss him, she must be finding good things in him, and although that's what he wants, his constant posturing comes with guilt as well...

At least he's learning, if just pieces at a time, that a thing like this is fine for him. Kaworu had gone from demanding intimacy to basking in it to setting it off to the side, a tenuous hum in the back of his mind. His time with the Fleet has been ridiculous in too many ways to name, but he has at least grown nearer to accepting the desire for intimacy that is constantly itching at his brain stem. So, thankfully, he doesn't reject Asuka's kiss in an act of self-loathing. He stays still in one moment of hesitance, and then he kisses her in return, very gentle, but resembling a man who tries to drink a glass of water slowly.

He doesn't draw it out for too long. Kaworu is still invested in self-denial. But the fingers of one hand are feeling at the ends of her long hair.]

Very pretty, [he says at last, and he talks like she's the only person for whom these words are meant right now.] Your heart is very pretty. Asuka Shikinami Langley— [He says her full name just for his desire to call her "Asuka" at all.] You don't make me tired. You make me feel like I can be, without catastrophe. I'm not allowed that sort of safety, you know.

Don't worry about that right now.

[Asuka's heart is still jittering, still unpretty. Kaworu doesn't know what he's talking about. He... he'd probably say the same for anyone (but he didn't) (but he didn't; he said that for her). So it shouldn't make every fiber of her feel electrified. It shouldn't make her feel a lightening bolt of approval, singeing her insides to bliss.]

[But of course it does. She lets him play with her hair without argument, both her eyes shining. In the back of her head, she'd been terrified of a gentle rejection. Liking things a lot was plenty confusing enough, even for humans, leaving way too much room for interpretation-- and now that she's got some idea of his meaning, now that she thinks it aligns with hers, she's already demanding.]

Worry about kissing me again. Unless you're all done.

That's not much of a worry. It's too nice for that. [Speech like that is Kaworu's way of playing, plus the compliments he likes to pay. He's smiling with less placidity, and much more charm. It could be called flirtatious, just like the travel of his hand, up, up, up her hair, until he's arranging some of it behind her ear.

And yet he's wholly gentle throughout all of it. There's nothing smug about him; it's just that he's enjoying himself.]

Shikinami-san, your body is warm, as if from sunlight. I'm close enough to you now to know that your hair smells good. And your mouth is soft. [His fingers are still charting her locks of hair; he skirts her ear.] Kissing you is like kissing a beautiful flower.

[And when he does kiss her again, it's with the warmth and sturdiness of a gardener.]

mk. 07 (text)

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