A/N: Why oh why dear god am I back here doing this AGAIN? I swear, it's like I'm addicted or something. Well, I hope you enjoy it anyways, even if I'm a little out of practice.

Session 1

He was a sly one she had to admit.

Garfield Logan, that skinny-assed good for nothing who called himself Beast Boy, had turned out to be more of an emotional rollercoaster than she had originally expected. Yes, she knew he was immature, egotistical, and too brave for his own good when it came to pestering demon spawn, but that was only the beginning. After watching him shove a spoon of tofu up his nostrils (that had been disgusting) just to see if it was physically possible, well it was hard to replace that flattering image of Garfield with anything else.

Then there was the poking and the never ending assault of bad knock knock jokes which, as he hit puberty, slowly progressed into dirty jokes that had everyone blushing and groaning except him and Starfire (bless that girl and her innocence). She had watched him decapitate, maul, slash, and completely incinerate hundreds of thousands of zombies and other undead creatures which gave her further reason to believe that the child had somehow miraculously been born without a brain and lived, or had sacrificed it to the Gamestation long ago.

He was crude, scratching areas that should not be scratched in the company of anyone, belching loudly, wiping food on his shirt when napkins were out of reach; all of his mannerisms were a mother's worst nightmare. In the morning she could be sure to see him come stumbling out into the mainroom like some blind drunk that just happened to wander inside off the streets. And once alert he would march into the kitchen, hair sticking out wildly, sweatpants slipping off his lanky frame to reveal a green buttcheek, and sentences reduced to nothing but guttural grunts.

He was inconsiderate and slow, throwing out something along the lines of "gee Raven, you're looking a little plumper than usual" and then wondering how the hell he got himself tied to the ceiling fan with his head stuck in a lampshade. It was as if some being had taken everything she hated in a person and combined it all in one neat little green package that ended up on her doorstep.

Now it wouldn't have been so terrible if he just completely avoided her and refused to acknowledge her existence, but unfortunately for her and often for the other team members that had to deal with her merciless wrath and destructive path of doom, he chose to not only interact with Raven but to do it on a regular basis. It was almost like a routine, like brushing one's teeth. She could expect him to come slinking over at least once every day almost like the way she could expect the sun to rise in the morning and set in the evening.

Then there would be the briefest flash of civil conversation, followed by some stupid comment or observation from the hapless changeling which would then be followed by the pulsing vein and trembling hands of an offended empath. If he pushed her hard enough those trembling hands might wind up around his neck, but because Gar like breathing and wanted to keep breathing he more often than not would ease off or at least settle further away from the trembling hands in hopes of diminishing his punishment to another ride on the ceiling fan or maybe a good hard, face to face meeting with the wall.

"I swear Rae, that wall's looking more and more like me everyday." He joked with her once.

But she had to admit that there was a balance between them, however delicate it was, and if she needed to throw him around a bit to keep it stable then she was more than happy to comply. However, she was only responsible for one end of their teetering relationship, and it was not long before she realized that she had absolutely no power over the end he controlled. Sure she could adjust her actions in response to his but there were times when something would happen that she could not counter and then that delicate, teetering thing that existed between then would pitch and roll dangerously.

It was always subtle, always unpredictable right up to the moment it happened. Stupid things that should have been nothing but unimportant words or actions would expand and explode into memories that would leave her disoriented and stunned. It was wrong, wrong, wrong she thought, because he was Garfield Logan, Beast Boy, the not so puny (when had he gotten so tall?) young man who kept her life remarkably unstable.

---

They were 19 now. It had been a long time to spend together, a long time to watch each other grow and change and yet still stay so reassuringly familiar. Raven was pleased to know that she could still see the same old faces in all of her friends that she had known in the beginning.

But an alien-ness still crept up on her sometimes, usually when she was unfocused or spacey. And then she would look at one of her teammates and think, I do not know this person, because the features would be too pronounced and the perspective would look too skewed and it threw her off sometimes to catch the effects of time on her friends. She had changed too she knew, but it had seemed much less noticeable to her own eyes.

It was Gar who won the most stunning transformation award in her mind, no pun intended. He just had this most disturbing ability to go from boy to man in the flicker of a second. He would be Beast Boy sometimes, lying upside down on the sofa talking nonsense to her about how he got beat up by a shoe salesman once after trying on a pair of stilettos and breaking the heel off it, and she would snort and call him all kinds of synonyms for the word moron. Then in the time it took her to blink he would be Garfield Logan, nothing less than a man standing before her, all glistening boyish mischief gone from his eyes, his stance radiating something solid and almost frighteningly powerful.

It was at those times Raven felt she was with a stranger, some being who lived, ate and slept in the same home but that she didn't know or understand in the least. This person was older, smarter, more intimidating in a way she couldn't explain, and it kept her silent and edgy.

He also had the uncanny ability to take whatever it was that defined Beast Boy and fit it into a behavior that unsettled Raven deeply. It was the same pestering, teasing, and funpoking but somehow made to fit the personality of Garfield Logan and she found that it was usually this type of banter that set off the delicate balance she worked so hard to maintain. It harbored something deeper, something slippery and quick that flashed through her mind faster than she could grasp it.

One of the earliest incidences Raven had experience had occurred during dinnertime once. Gar had been happily playing with his pasta, twirling, slurping, and acting like a two year old about it all, when Raven had snapped and told him to cut it out and wipe the sauce off his chin. Then it had happened, right before her eyes he became the stranger, setting down his fork under her glaring supervision before reaching up to wipe his face. Staring down at his place he took his thumb and using the pad, slowly brushed the smudge off the skin right below his lip. She stared entranced as his pink tongue poked out between his lips to lick it off the digit and it was at that moment he looked up to meet her gaze directly.

It happened. It just happened right then and there across the dinner table, sending a shiver up her spine so hard she had to feign dropping her napkin just so she could duck under the table while the pink heat dusted her cheeks.

He was terrifyingly unpredictable, this alien Gar in a way that no throwing and bashing could counter. And perhaps it was this knowledge, the knowledge that strength and violence had no value in the game he was playing, that shook her more than anything. What could she possible do when he might just casually brush his fingers down her forearm, or seemingly unconsciously lean too close to her when he spoke?

Everything he did that made her stomach twist strangely was always done with such suddenness and casualness that Raven found herself unable to retaliate in the usual manner of mauling and manhandling. She felt helplessness grip her, some foreign force taking over her body and making it respond in all the wrong ways. Where was the sharp slap, the quick wit, the silver tongue? It was rendered useless under involuntary shudders and blushes and wide-eyed stares that left Raven doubting herself for some senseless school girl.

After all it was just Gar, the same guy she had spent 6 years of her life with, the same guy she had bickered with, ate with, dealt with day after tormenting day. So then why, oh why Azar did her skin become gooseflesh whenever they brushed arms? Was she cold or maybe just unfamiliar with human touch? Raven kept hearing a certain drawl in his voice that told her no, it wasn't just her imagination, there was some strange static energy that made her hair stand on end and he was most certainly and most deliberately giving it off.

---

"Hey Rae." He breathed, the air barely brushing the back of her neck, making those tiny sensitive hairs quiver. "You were snoring again." She had been sleeping on the sofa, flat on her stomach, arm hanging off the edge of the cushions and face buried in the crook of her other arm. He hadn't needed to speak to wake her. Just sensing his presence so close had automatically set her off like a car alarm, but now after removing her face from the soft, warm shelter her arm created and looking up, Raven found him terrifyingly close. She made a kind of groggy, growling noise somewhere in her throat, still waiting for her sleep filled brain to catch up, impatiently waiting for it to realize that he was kneeling right next to her.

"Dinner's ready and Cy wanted me to wake you. Although," he chuckled faintly ," if I were you I'd just go back to sleep. Star's cooking for us tonight."

She saw the glimmer in his eyes, watched the way his eyebrows slid smoothly up and down with each passing sentence, and it was all very fascinating for no apparent reason.

"Rae hun, you look like you've joined the legion of the undead." Undead? The legion? What was he blathering about? Wait a minute… he called me hun, she thought faintly. He was laughing again, either at his own joke or maybe her slack expression, but either way she was so warm and comfortable at the moment with her mind still firmly wrapped in sleep and for just a second she found his laugh a pleasant sound.

Then it snapped. "Whyayou laughin' twit?"She slurred. This only caused him to grin further.

"Dunno. I just feel like it."

It was so typical of him to keep her guessing like that, but she would never let him know it drove her insane. He'd laugh for no reason, shoot her a wink, a smile, all of them completely worthless gestures that had her looking for a some sign of sanity in his eyes. But when she did bother to actually stop and look, it always appeared as if he were the more sane between the two of them.

Her lips tightened in a frown. "Go to hell." Much to her annoyance he chuckled again, a warm rich sound much different from his usual snickerings. She barely noticed the soft pressure right below her shoulder blades- barely, but she did notice. Something was there making light circles on her back, nice warm lazy circles going around and around on her skin. Raven looked at him thoroughly surprised and shaken by his actions.

He must have noticed her expression. She knew it was written all over her flushed face, but he kept on tracing those damn lazy circles on her back like he had a right to do so and giving her a grin that told Raven he knew exactly what buttons he was pushing. She shivered, once, twice, and managed to squash the third one threatening to ripple up her spine but her body still hummed like a tuning fork.

"Garfield." She meant it to be a warning tone, a don't-fucking-touch-me tone, or at least something that sounded more convincingly dark and dangerous. But her mouth spoke it with a child's tongue, soft, scared, and woefully hesitant. The sound of a timid girl, slowly losing her ground on an unstable platform.

His Cheshire face grinned down at her, as if to say "See! See! I've found a way in!". He was a general gloating over the success of the battle. A battle that Raven hadn't even realized was being waged until she had lost. And now she was paralyzed, mesmerized by the grin and the finger going round and round and round between her shoulders with a soft intensity that felt like 100 tons on her back. She couldn't move, no, she didn't want to move.

He leaned down slowly so his mouth was by her ear, hot breath hitting the acoustic shell in small burst as he spoke. "See you at dinner." That was the message and it shook every cell in her body and in response they shook with nervousness and apprehension. Then the boy with the whispering hot breath and the lazy wandering finger was gone. Her lungs exhaled.

It was Fall, glorious, glorious Fall and the leaves on the trees were- well- falling. In fact everything lately seemed to be falling- falling out of Raven hands unexpectedly or falling off shelves with dark halos around them. She felt like a bundle of nerves. And as the wind howled painfully outside the tower walls and leaves of the trees glowed with the last light of the dying sun, Raven meditated with an unprecedented ferocity on the observatory deck.

She had turned down dinner with a wave of her hand and nobody said anything about it because of the unspoken rule. Everyone but Garfield viewed her actions as nothing more than "just a Raven thing". Part of her resented that, the other half secretly coveted it. She could be as damn enigmatic as she pleased without having to explain herself and often got away with acting like a complete asshole just because she was Raven, and Raven did those things. Did they think it was ingrained into her DNA? That her voice was naturally sarcastic and her heart genetically cold and uncaring?

A fuse exploded somewhere in the circuitry above her, killing the lights.

Well damn them and their theories. Raven's a little off today, Raven's not feeling well, Raven doesn't feel like coming out of her room today, Raven this and Raven that, Raven will tear your fucking head off because she feels like it.

There was a crack and bits of ceiling plaster rained down. She felt the little pieces in her hair and on her legs.

They were all probably sitting there choking down Starfire's cooking with a fake smile and thinking about how it was that Raven got to be so lucky, because if it had been anyone but her to walk out on dinner Starfire would've been in tears for a week. She felt like a petulant child without limits and hated herself for it. And why, she wondered, was it so acceptable for her act in such a manner?

Fear, whispered her mind. They fear you. And alas, she knew it was true, because nobody told a demon to just "shut the hell up and behave" without knowing damn well those were probably their last words.

There was Garfield though, but then again he was never exactly a master of intellect and common sense. He threw fingers, and made fuss when she 'wasn't feeling well', as if to say to the rest of them "don't you see what a complete jerk she's being!" And they all knew that it was true and they all ignored him because they did have some intellect and common sense swirling around in their heads.

Maybe that's why he got to her. He alone was the one person who dared to peel back the flowery wallpaper and expose the ugly truth underneath it, and while nobody liked to see it he still insisted with an intensity that was, at times, blinding. Fool. He was getting his hands dirty digging up all the muck underneath that pristine covering. Didn't those animal senses tell him not to stick his head in places where it was likely to get bitten off?

And now he was venturing farther. Treating her like a person with emotions that reached beyond anger and sarcasm! Hadn't the others told him about the cold heart she had been born with? About how genetics had made her a monster of social inadequacies?

Her hands were shaking now, threatening to clench themselves into fists. She remembered how he had dared to whisper in her ear, to go so far as to touch her with softness like he wanted to wake her with the utmost care.

The liar he is! The manipulative moron!

Breaking her down by building up something strange in her chest- something that was barely alive and weak with human qualities. More plaster fell like rain onto her shoulders and the crown of her head.

And now she couldn't think without feeling those lazy circles tracing themselves on the skin of her shoulders! Her eyes squeezed even further shut and the hands she had been shakily trying to control finally brought themselves into fists. She heard the footsteps as she floated there, head bent, fisted hands pressed firmly to her aching eyes.

"Raven?" Softly, very softly calling into the darkness. The steps came closer.

"Raven are…are you not feeling well?" The catch in that voice made her body tremble then still with a sudden resolve.

"No, Star I am not feeling well." The prescence faded without even a lingering sigh or footstep so that Raven wondered if she had ever been there at all

End Session 1

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