Misato's body went rigid against mine. Not the good kind of rigid either. The kind that meant her brain had just caught up to the fact that she was pressed against me like we were slow dancing at prom.
Her hands came up to my chest, not pushing exactly, but creating just enough space that she could tilt her head back and look at me with those sharp lime green eyes. The vulnerability from thirty seconds ago evaporated like it had never existed. Classic Misato defense mechanism: emotional moment over, back to business.
"Thank you," she said quietly. Her voice carried that formal edge she used when talking to faculty. "For listening. For... this."
She gestured vaguely between us, like physical comfort was some kind of foreign concept she needed to categorize and file away. Which, knowing her background, it probably was.
