It was a rare day when the Titans were able to go to the park, and not just go to the park, but stay there all the morning and afternoon and enjoy a day off. It was rarer still that it would be such a lovely day out when they got the chance. Perfect, warm weather with wisps of clouds in the sky, children laughing, criminals all locked up or taking the time to enjoy the weather. In fact, the communicators never even gave the quiet vibration of minor crimes police could handle, such as unarmed robberies and shoplifters. The only crime of the day was the obscene amounts of beef and mustard consumed by Cyborg and Starfire, possibly scarring a young, watching and wondering girl for life.
But, aside from the scarred girl, the day was perfect. Cyborg, Robin and Starfire were tossing a football around. Though, due to the unearthly amount of children gaping, as if a children truck had tipped over and spilled children everywhere (to put it in Beast Boy's words), no powers were allowed, nor even major contact. They limited themselves to touch football and, when Robin came up with the brilliant idea of using napkins, flag football.
This meant Raven had time to sit under the shade, not needing to be the referee today, and take a nice break by diving into one of her favorite books. It was nothing horrifyingly dark, not Poe, not some morbid, angsty, sad poem, but an adventure story written with her type of magic in mind. The witch was the hero, and, granted, she was not half demon, but she was prosecuted as such and on the run from some government officials while at the same time attempting to slay a real, honest to goodness one of Trigon's work buddy kind of demon.
She thought it was rather realistic of hero work. Though the witch (the witch in the story, not Raven herself) often did save the small towns from big dangers, things would be destroyed in the process and people would be mixed with their approval of the heroes. Some were fanatically obsessed with their hero, some were more concerned about the damage done, and others were the socially inept who really didn't give a flip either way because they had cows to slaughter and sell.
And where was Beast Boy? Beast Boy had started out playing flag football, but halfway through caught the whiff of some non-dairy, non-egg, all vegan cookies that were warm from the hot summer day in a hot little basket like they had just come out of the oven. As all sweet addicts know, there is a huge difference between the way a cookie smells and tastes when hot and warm rather than cold and crunchy.
Beast Boy desired those cookies, and he searched all over the park in hopes that he would find such a treat.
Yet, his trip brought him back to where he began when the family with the vegan cookies (such a sweet, vegan mother who somehow thought that he, yes he, was somehow cruel to animals because he could transform into them) who, after a pleasant conversation turned ugly, threw a glass of soymilk in his face and sent him scampering off in dog form to lick himself clean and nature his poor, wounded pride.
And that was when he discovered the most horrifying turn of events of all, much worse than being called cruel to animals or having soy milk thrown at him (mostly because such things had happened in the past, and he was much more of an "in the moment" type of guy) was that the violet haired witch had a vegan cookie in her left hand while her right hand was propping open a book. Not only that, but she dishonored the rarity of such an animal friendly cookie by paying more attention to the story in hand than in the sweet taste of that snickerdoodle cookie!
He ran to her with arms waving and pubescent voice cracking, trying hard to totter into the depths of manhood but too discombobulated with animal DNA to quite make the leap yet. She, used to the display of teenage fervor, sighed quietly to herself at the time that would soon be lost; as she already knew they would be discussing the cookie, and memorized the page she was at in her book. She had a feeling this conversation would not be a short one.
"Raven! How did you get that from the psycho mother lady?" he asked, arms still waving as if such enthusiasm needing a spinning generator to be produced.
"Well, I was walking by and their daughter told me I was her favorite superhero of all time, aside from Bumblebee from Transformers. She asked me if I would like a snickerdoodle. I said yes, and she gave me a snickerdoodle. Then I came back here, settled down, and began reading my book." She held up the book to demonstrate. "And you smell more like soy than you usually do. You'll take a bath when we get back to the tower, right?"
"The psycho mother lady threw soy milk on me, Raven! Soy milk!" he screamed, pointing in the direction one would have to assume the psycho mother lady was.
"That's strange."
"I know!"
"I didn't think most vegans had the strength to throw since they lacked so much protein." To annoy him further, and she did so love to annoy him, she flipped open her book and stared at the page she knew she would not get the chance to read. "That's why we don't try to make you lift weights in the gym anymore. You lack the protein necessary to build muscle."
"Not cool," he mumbled, blushing. He held out his hands. "So, since you don't want it, can I have it?"
At this, he finally did manage to make her pause. She closed the book and set it beside her, then took the chance to stare at him directly in the face. "Who told you I didn't want the cookie?"
He shrugged. "No one, but I know you don't want the cookie. You're Raven. You're all dark and creepy and magicy, and that means you don't eat cookies, especially cookies made with soy stuff. So, instead of wasting it, you should just give me the cookie. I'll take care of it." He patted his stomach to demonstrate how he would go about taking care of the precious cargo.
"And what does me practicing magic have to do with hating a cookie? I enjoy sweets, I am half human, and as such my body craves all the typical things it needs to survive. I enjoy fatty foods and sugary foods because my survival instincts demand it, just like I will occasionally salt my pizza whenever I need a bit of sodium chloride." She paused to look at Beast Boy's wrinkled up face, and continued with a twinge of annoyance, "You are not about to tell me that you don't keep a close track of biology."
"When I started turning into animals and totally wrecking the Law of Conservation of Mass, I kinda figured out that science probably doesn't know too much. Besides, we're getting off topic. Everyone knows I'm not the world's biggest fan of reading, but it's pretty weird that you like cookies, Raven." He tapped his chin carefully. "I think it's because you're so different from the cookie. Everyone loves cookies but…wait, that's not what I meant. I mean, you know, cookies are sweet and nice and…no, that's not what I meant either!" He plopped his head into his hands and moaned.
Raven looked up at the branches above, taking two deep breaths to slow down the heart rate that had started from "everyone loves cookies" and had been getting progressively worse ever since. It was those two deep breaths that allowed her to calmly continue, "And opposites only attract in magnets."
"No!" Beast Boy exclaimed. "They attract in real life too like…like your book!"
She raised an eyebrow.
He blushed and shifted anxiously in his spot. "Alright, so they made a video game out of it and that's the only reason I know the plot, but you have to read when you play the roleplay video games because if you don't you can't figure out what's going on, so I sorta read it. Plus, it was the first game I ever kicked butt in as a girl!"
"Congratulations."
He missed the blatant sarcasm in her deadpanned voice. "Thank you. See, the girl and the guy in the book, they're opposites, but they keep bumping into each other. The girl's name was Mary and the boy's…isn't it, like, Jonathan?" She offered him neither a confirmation nor a rejection, so he nodded to himself and agreed, "yup, those are their names whether they like them or not. We've got Mary the witch and Jonathan the bounty hunter."
She sighed. "It's close enough. Make your point, and try not to spoil the end for me."
"Alright! Okay, so they keep bumping into each other! And since you're more than half way done, you already know that Mary's got a crush on him, and ever since he let her go she's been wondering if he likes her back. But they're complete opposites! He's all," Beast Boy dropped his voice to a much manlier octave, "I'm Jonathan and I'm saving the city from anything that's abnormal or different because I'm a total prick," his voice then raised to a very fake feminine tone, "and she's all like, I'm Mary and I'm nice and saving the citizens and I think that there are even demons that you can befriend and live happily ever after."
"Those were beautiful impressions," she praised, dripping a little more sarcasm in hopes that he would get it this time.
He did, and stuck out his tongue at her. "But, like I was saying. They're complete opposites and they…may or may not like each other depending on how the book ends. The thing is, like a rubberband, the farther you pull the more it pulls back. Eventually, you can't hold it anymore and it just crashes back together. If you try to get away from something, eventually you're gonna get pulled right back. You can't run away forever."
"And if you break the rubberband?" she insisted.
He snorted. "You can't break the rubberband."
"But every rubberband has a breaking point," Raven argued. "There's nothing in this universe that can't be broken."
"I can name a few."
"Well, let's say this hypothetical rubberband could be broken, or had an unbelievably large stretching limit, to the point where you'd have to cross a galaxy to cause it to snap. You could just keep walking away, couldn't you? You would never get pulled back. So, opposites could quite easily be yanked apart."
"But you've just proved my point, Raven!" he exclaimed with a proud grin.
Her face tightened and wrinkled as she tried to understand what he meant. Her mouth opened once, thinking she had gotten it, but shook her head as dismissed it with another bout of her own logic. She turned the cookie over and over in her hand, brows furrowing even closer together before she looked up at him once more. He was waiting for her response, and she gave it as intelligently as she could manage. "East is East," she said, "and West is West."
"And if they go far enough West and East," he countered, "they eventually run right smack into each other."
"The Earth is round," she concurred quietly. "You may have a point, Beast Boy. You've proved yourself right and wrong at the same time. Due to your own hypocrisy, you first stated that I couldn't like this cookie because it and I were so different. A few moments later, you stated that opposites attract. I think you'll have to pick a side now, Beast Boy. The former says you get a cookie, the latter says the cookie is mine. Which do you choose?"
"The latter," he said confidently.
"And why, oh hypocritical one, would you choose that? I thought you were after this cookie?" She waved it in front of his face.
He grinned. "Well, you can have the cookie because I don't think you'll let me have it no matter what I say, but also because I think opposites can attract even outside of science. I've seen it firsthand. Besides I…" At this, a shy expression began to wander over his feature, and he dropped his gaze to the grass. "I'm kinda hoping that I'm gonna pull hard enough that something's finally going to snap it together."
"Don't worry; I'm sure you'll eventually run into it like a wrecking ball to a building." She held up the cookie, and broke it in half, offering the larger half to him with the smallest flicker of a smile. "I'll tell you what, Beast Boy; I'll even race you there."
Disclaimer: What? I don't own Teen Titans? What a shock. I fear I must cry myself to sleep. Pity.
Well, that was my first shot at a BBRae relationship, a subtle hint of it, I suppose. This was from RabulaTasa's list of Title's Without Stories, whom I thank for a nice flex of some Teen Titans muscles that needed major flexing. I hope I didn't really screw it up.
As for the cookie, I was in as surprised as whoever reads this probably is. I was musing on this little title, and my imagination chirped, "It all started with a cookie!" and I asked, "A cookie?" and it replied, "Hells yes." And, as we all know, when your imagination says "hells yes" you can't argue with it. Hence the snickerdoodle…ta da!