Drops of Jupiter
Inspired by the Train song of the same name
Enjoy!
2-shadows
Chapter One
It was October 2nd, 4 months on the Julian calendar since Beast Boy left. More accurately, it was 17 weeks, 2 days, 4 hours and 26 minutes after he had flown away as a peregrine falcon, headed north toward Canada, intent on learning more about wildlife to expand his skill set.
Raven couldn't help but wonder when she'd started counting, since it hadn't been her original intention.
June 2nd, 1:05 PM
"Beast Boy, you don't have to do this. You've got encyclopedias, the nature channel. You don't have to see the animals in person to become them. I mean, you've got how many dinosaurs in your repertoire?" Robin pointed out, imploring the youngest member of their team to stay without so many words.
"Not sure. But you're missing the point, Robin. It's not just about finding more animals. It's also about being more capable of understand their mentalities. I know the wolf is a pack animal and that coyotes are singular, but when it comes to less well known animals, I don't always understand the instincts I'm getting when I become them. If I know them better, I'll be able to use them more fluidly."
Raven felt her stomach twist in on itself. As much as she wanted Beast Boy at home with the rest of them, she could tell he'd prepared that response- it was too eloquent to not have a minor amount of foresight. He knew they'd be afraid to let him go.
Steeling herself with a deep breath, Raven stepped forward, "We need to let him go. He deserves this chance." Seeing Robin's jaw clench, she held up a placating hand. "You got to traipse across Asia to learn more martial arts." She turned to Cyborg, who was remaining quiet in the face of saying goodbye to his best friend. Her stomach clenched at the wave of emotion she could feel rolling off of Cyborg, not least of all concern. She turned to address the nervous bundle at her right. "We're all going to miss you. Don't stay gone for too long. Don't forget that we need you." She held up a hand for a good, solid handshake…
And instead found that she had gangly purple and black clad arms wrapped around her. She inhaled deeply, intent on staying calm. Unfortunately for her nerves, doing so gave her a strong scent of him, all of the strange musk and sandalwood somehow causing her eyes to water. She blinked the gathering tears away and squeezed him before stepping away.
"Good luck." She said. She watched as he bid farewell to the others, exchanging a handshake with Robin, giving Starfire a quick hug, and jumping on Cyborg's back to give him a noogie before the much larger Titan pulled him off and gave him a proper embrace. There was a roaring sensation as he shifted to fly away. She felt herself waving, and watched him off. Robin and Starfire went inside, but she and Cyborg remained standing, watching, long past the moment when the green dot faded into nothing on the horizon.
September 1st, 8:59 PM
The ringer on Raven's communicator went off; her book dropped to the floor as she dove off of her bed and opened it before the ring even had the chance to complete itself.
"Hello?" She asked, breathless, trying to ignore the stinging of her left knee. Robin's face looked up at her through the communicator, one eyebrow much higher than normal. She felt her face fall into its typical blank expression and waited for Robin to get to the point. When he kept staring, she raised an eyebrow of her own, knowing he would get the message.
"It's almost 9 and it's your turn for dinner," he said. She almost slapped her hand against her face, more embarrassed at her excitement when she realized it was merely a chore alert.
She snapped her communicator shut and phased to the common room. "And you couldn't come get me because?" She asked aloud, assuming Robin would poke his head over from the couch and give her a sheepish grin. Instead, her communicator rang again. She opened it and saw a mildly irritated Boy Wonder. "AS I WAS SAYING," He snapped, "It's your turn for dinner but Starfire and I are out, and Cyborg isn't there to make sure everything goes well-" Raven couldn't help but to glower at her communicator screen at that. One bad batch of pancakes and suddenly she was the world's worst cook!
Well, one batch of pancakes, three cakes, two chicken salads, three pasta dishes, eight pies and seventeen various fried foods. But she still felt affronted when they didn't trust her in the kitchen.
"- so I wanted to know if you wanted us to bring you home anything." He finished. His mask was replaced by sunglasses, as they always were when he went out with Starfire, and the metallic glint off of them reminded Raven of someone else who was decidedly more metallic than Robin's glasses.
"Where are you?" She asked, hoping to be as cooperative as possible after the damage she had done to his favorite oven mitts last week with her attempt at fettuccine alfredo.
"Dhaba."
"Chicken tikki masala and some jasmine rice, please." She requested, smiling, "Where IS Cy?"
"He's helping Aqualad with some sort of submarine. He should be back in the morning." There was a beat and a fleeting look of dejection passed over Robin's face. "Has Beast Boy called?"
She could only shake her head. He nodded curtly then the communicator's screen went black. Raven snapped it shut and wandered around the kitchen for a few moments, unsure of what to do with herself.
A bright light from the television screen distracted her. On it was a face, a green face she had desperately wanted to see, a boy grinning like a maniac, wild curls flipping away from his pointy ears and the bright fangs shining in the bright daylight of some far-off place.
"Hey, Rae!" Raven could only grin stupidly at the sight of him. Had he been in front of her she would have run up and embraced him. When his grin faltered, she realized she was acting odd.
"Hi Garfield!" She responded finally. "Where are you? Did you find any awesome new animals yet? You need a haircut."
If he hadn't been scared before, he was now. "Raven, are you ok?" She shook her head to collect her thoughts and nodded at him. He sighed and smiled. "Right, ok. I'm in Australia. Got to see a kangaroo up close and I even spent a night as a koala. I already knew about how a platypus has a duck bill and a beaver tail and lays eggs, but did you know that they're poisonous?" he cracked a grin, the serious expression that accompanied his stream of information broken by the familiar mischievous gleam (the one Raven never thought she'd miss) sparkling in his green eyes. "I found that out the hard way." Raven felt her stomach drop. Her face must have betrayed her concern, because he held up a hand and waved it away. "Just a sting, not a deadly poison."
Raven resolved that minute to see if that was true.
"My travels are going faster than I expected. I should be home in the next two months. I still want to do some deep-sea travel." Raven nodded, hoping it was sooner rather than later. While the Titans were making due without Beast Boy, they still felt like they were missing a vital part of their system. She found herself getting injured far more often without the green young man there.
She found that she was unwilling to say goodbye so soon, and they regaled each other with stories, she from home and he from his visits to other countries. When she told him of her attempts at cooking, he laughed until he cried. When he explained the fight he had gotten into with a little kid about whether a dolphin was a fish or not, she actually laughed.
They spoke past when Robin and Starfire got home and gave Raven her dinner. While Raven ate, the other two conversed with the current Titans ambassador about where he'd visited so far. They left shortly and in a hurry; Beast Boy made a gagging noise and Raven giggled. When she yawned, however, he said he had to go, since the next leg of his journey was in flight. He bid her sweet dreams and ended the connection before she had the chance to tell him to hurry home.
October 1st, 5:33 PM
Raven felt a strange sensation wash over her. She stood up, closing her eyes, trying to identify the feeling. On the beach, a familiar personality was leaking into the edges of her awareness.
Not taking the time to note the swirling in her stomach, Raven ran down to the main doors, nearly tripping over herself in her excitement. She opened the door with the keypad. Never before had the automatic feature seemed so dreadfully slow. By the time the door was open and she could see the silhouette of the young man walking up to the door, she could discern even the ragged curls she had seen starting when she chatted with him a month ago, and the ripples of his muscles at his side. He walked in, smiling as widely as ever, and within a second they were wrapped around each other, holding tight. She felt him inhale underneath her arms, and it was all she could do to keep from shuddering as she finally got to feel him again.
Living with Beast Boy had always been a little different. He smelled muskier, more male then other guys usually did; he would traipse around as an animal for hours on end sometimes. There had had been instances where he shifted right out of the shower to a dog. He'd shake off then stay in form and walk about, then later would transform back to human, forgetting he was not dressed in an amorphous suit. She'd never seen anything decidedly male before, although she distinctly remembered the shrieking when Starfire had. It was the emotions that she had missed though. She was so used to Beast Boy's constant extreme- he was always happy OR sad OR angry; Starfire, Robin, and even Cyborg were all mixes of emotions that blurred together like colors. After all the emotions ran together, they felt sort of numb. Without Beast Boy to provide a daily rollercoaster, Raven had been far more aware of her own emotions, an odd though not decidedly unpleasant experience.
There, with him in her arms though, she decided she'd take his emotions all day everyday over her own, especially now that the object of the majority of her positive emotions was home.
Going to wait until I can find words this beautiful again to continue this chapter; it shouldn't take me more than three chapters for the whole story.