Her fingers weighed on and between his. He thought, I'll be awake all night.
In fact he fell asleep during a lull in their conversation, so seamlessly he dreamt for some time that they were still speaking.
He was probably dreaming when he said, "I don't know what it's like not to be alone. I don't - I don't remember."
Remember?
"It would be so much easier to choose not to be born," he said. "But it's impossible."
Kaworu was silent for some time.
"There are ways and ways to abolish distance," she said finally, "but those available to you are imperfect. The nature of the human heart is such—"
He woke to dazzling sunlight and the sound of another's voice.
After a moment he turned his head to the side. Kaworu was sitting cross-legged on her futon, doing up her hair and humming through the yellow scrunchie caught between her lips. Her stockinged feet jutted into the space between their respective bedding. Shinji looked away quickly: her uniform shirt was mostly buttoned but that was about it by way of concession to modesty (a concept he suspected was foreign to Kaworu), and from his supine angle he had a unfettered view straight up nothing at all. He curled up on his side and blinked rapidly at the middle distance.
The sound of weight shifting behind him. "Good morning, Shinji-kun," she said, too close to his ear.
If my heart beats too fast it might seize up and I'll die, he thought. At the moment it seemed a fair alternative.
"Good-good morning," he managed.
It was a new day.