Shinji leans forward without thinking. He can’t believe his eyes…
Woman on Intercom B (right):“Beginning CBL cycle.”
Mr. Tines: The first time when someone looks on jealously at Rei and Gendo getting along in a friendly and informal fashion.
thewayneiac: Shinji is plainly thinking here that Rei gets treated better than he does.
Kendrix: This is probably the first time Shinji saw either of them smiling. He's schocked that they're even capable of such expressions and even more shocked that Gendo is smiling to someone else, but not at him. He just realized that there two aren't people who never smile, but people who reserve their smiles for very few, very special people. Shinji had been wondering why someone like his father who never cared for his own son would get his hands burned to save a stranger - and now, he realizes that HE is the stranger, and Rei is 'family'.
He's watching them from afar, like there in a sphere of their own he isn't able to enter.
Additional Commentary
EvangelionFan: Shinji's expression here is halfway between "What why he is talking to her like that?" and "I wish she would come up to me like that fap fap fap"
