Disclaimer: The Teen Titans animation is going to party like it's your birthday, and it also does not give a quack it's not your birthday. It's also the property of Glen Murakami and Warner Bros. Animation.

She was never a big fan of parties.

Or noise.

Unfortunately, with four other teenagers living in the same house as you, these sorts of things were not avoidable.

Ever since the events on her last birthday, however, Raven was slowly trying to make herself more...accessible.

...Probably not the right word, but it was hard to focus with a party hat on your head.

She snapped the rubber band over her hood, twirling the paper hat in her hands. Unbeknownst to her, her friends had throw her a surprise birthday party tonight. After almost blowing Cyborg up when he descended from the ceiling with streamers all around his body, they had enjoyed the refreshments that, thankfully, Robin and Cyborg had made. After a hard day of kicking the butts of Dr. Light and the remnants of the H.I.V.E., it was sort of nice to relax and unwind.

Of course, Raven couldn't help but notice that Beast Boy seemed a little distracted. Sure, he joked about Cyborg's cooking ability and his affinity for meat, and also made fun that Raven was getting up there in age (despite only being a year older). However, it seemed like a halfhearted attempt.

Which was actually better than most of his jokes.

As per usual, she was able to live with a party, but she insisted that she not receive any gifts. She didn't have a need for things other than her own belongings. Raven didn't feel that she deserved anything, really. Her own materials were sufficient enough; anything extra was merely unnecessary.

Raven turned the corner to her room as she stifled a yawn. The rest of the team had retired after the festivities, leaving Beast Boy downstairs with his GameStation playing. She didn't really mind; even though her room was the closest to the common room, he usually kept the volume to a minimum.

She went to open her door when her foot smacked into something solid. She looked down to see...

A box.

A regular box with red ribbon and black wrapping paper.

Raven raised her eyebrow. It wasn't every day that random boxes just appeared at your bedroom door.

She picked it up and examined it. The first thing she noticed was that it was rather heavy. Not wanting to drop whatever was inside, she let herself into her room.

The box was set at the foot of her bed, and Raven took a second look at it. The bow was simple, and nothing appeared like there would be a Stankball erupting from it.

She took off the lid and took a look inside. Nope, no Stankball, just-

Hmm.

Raven began to take her contents out one by one. There were a variety of candles, all in pillar and luminaria form. She took a sniff of one of them, and the scent of lavender filled her nostrils. This would certainly help with her late night headaches.

Especially ones caused by Beast Boy.

A couple small bottles of oil were next extracted. She brought the tiny containers up to the light. Both of the oils were green, one light and one dark. She recognized both of them: eucalyptus and bergamot. Their uses were widely-ranged, from relieving anxiety to masking the scent coming from Beast Boy's room.

The final items were a complete set of meditation stones. Raven took the largest one and examined it. It was a deep purple, tiny fractures refracting the light all around her.

Charoite. The one stone she was never able to get on her own.

Wait a minute.

She looked around at all of her presents. There was only one person who would have gone specifically against her on this. It was the common denominator.

She muttered a simple incantation to lock onto her teammate's signature.

Yup. He was still downstairs, no doubt enjoying his late-night game fest.

Raven smirked.

"High score!"

Beast Boy threw his hands triumphantly in the air. Finally, the record is Hyper Monkey Extreme 4 was his! He would have to let Cyborg know in the morning that he stunk at video games.

He enjoyed his little sessions in the main Tower room late at night. No one to interrupt him as he laid waste to all of his best friend's best scores. No Robin and his training regimens, no Starfire and her still-alive cooking, no Cyborg and his constant complaining, no Raven and her...

Wait, what did she do? Read? Be quiet? Occasionally insult his intelligence?

Guess that's tolerable.

Beast Boy leaned back into the couch and closed his eyes. The midnight hour was approaching, he still had three other games to go through, and without any witnesses, nobody would be any the-

"I thought that I told you I didn't want any gifts."

Beast Boy's face slammed into Raven's open palm, stationed right above his head.

"Also, you need to stop being so surprised when I show up. You should be used to it by now."

"Mmm fmmph."

"Oh yeah," Raven monotoned. "You need to breathe."

She let go of his face so that Beast Boy could sit up proper, waiting for him to gasp enough air so that he could talk like a human again. He whirled around to face her, his voice already set to throw the higher heavens into a tizzy, but Raven smacked a finger on his lips, cutting him off.

"Need I remind you that everyone else is asleep, and your obnoxious yelling is going to make Starfire punish us both with midnight snackleborks or whatever she calls them. So it would probably be best for you to be quiet."

Beast Boy nodded silently. She slowly took her finger off of his mouth.

"What was that all about?"

"The box that was left at my door."

He smiled triumphantly at her. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Stop being stupid, Beast Boy. I know it was you."

"You can't prove it."

"Then how about I hang you up from the rafters, take Cyborg's streamers, and shove them in your-"

"OK, OK!" he said. "Fine." He shrugged his shoulders, still with the grin on his face. "I may have gone down to the mall right before your party and gotten you a couple of things. You know...the usual."

"I wouldn't exactly call leaving mystery boxes at my door 'the usual'."

"Well, what did you want me to do? Not give you anything?"

Raven crossed her arms. "I'm pretty sure that's what I've been saying for a while now. And yet you don't think the rules seem to apply to you."

"Raven," Beast Boy started, his hands in front of him, "I took my money and got you something. Cyborg didn't even force me to do it. I did it all on my lonesome."

"You know how I feel about people giving me things."

The green-skinned teen gave her a quizzical look. "Actually, I don't. Care to enlighten me?"

"Not really."

"You're going to tell me nothing? Any particular reason? Your birthday is so bad that everyone has to be shut out from you again?"

"No, and yes." With that, she turned to head back to her room.

"Well, that can't be true."

"Doesn't matter if it's true or not," Raven retorted. She arrived at the common room and entrance, and was ready to go back...

"Does it remind you of your dad?"

Raven stopped walking.

"My father has nothing to do with it."

"Oh, really? It has nothing to do with the fact that every year on this day, you have to be reminded of the terrible person/demon/overall bad guy that is your dad? That he almost took over the entire world last year? You have any weird flashbacks about people turning to stone or-"

Raven whirled around, and Beast Boy immediately knew that he had just crossed a line.

"Listen, you," she spat, jabbing a finger into his chest, "Don't try to go all Freudian on me."

Beast Boy's face morphed into a look of pure confusion.

"Don't go all psychoanalytical on me," she corrected.

"What?"

"Just...stop," Raven waved her hand. "Stop acting like you know what goes on in my head. There are things that I have to deal with that you couldn't even begin to comprehend. What my father did was just one of them."

"Raven, what does that even have to do with a simple present?"

"It's not-" Raven almost raised her voice, but caught herself at the last minute. "You know what? I don't have to explain myself to you. I'm going to bed."

Beast Boy's face started to get red as Raven walked away. "I know that you kept it."

"Because I walked straight down here from my room."

The door swooshed open.

"I know that you're a fan of all of that stuff."

"Those do help with the meditation."

"Then why-"

"Beast Boy."

He looked up at his teammate, her silhouette visible in the doorframe. "What?"

"Don't act like you know me."

"I don't! That's why I got it for you!"

CLANG!

He had not meant to yell that. Nevertheless, the sound of the door being forcefully stopped confused him momentarily. He had brought his hands up to his face at the crash, only peaking through his fingers to see Raven, a magical hand grasping the edge of the door.

"What?"

It wasn't her usual tone of non-emotion or sarcasm or ridicule. Not even close. It was a genuine, confounded "What?".

Raven walked back into the room as she dissipated her energy arm. "What do you mean by that?"

"What do you think I meant by that?" Beast Boy took the opportunity of Raven's confusion to start on his tangent. "You're all mopey and unemotional, even after that everything has happened all this time, and guess what? I still don't know that much about you. So I've...I've been secretly giving you gifts for the past few years."

"..."

"Uhh...You know that teddy bear that your number one fan gave you the month after we moved into the Tower together?"

Raven glared at him. "Yes..."

"That was me."

"How many other things are we talking about here?" she said methodically.

"The perfume, the flowers, the chocolate that they said was assorted but it was really only like two coconut pieces and the rest were-"

"Beast Boy. Your point."

"Right." He steadied himself for his next sentence. "That was all sort of gifts leading up to the gift."

Her stare was still boring through his brain.

"Which was going to be given to you last year."

Her eyes widened.

"And then...your dad happened."

Raven's mind couldn't come up with anything to say.

"After everything that happened, with your dad enslaving the world and turning the Tower into his own personal recliner, I figured that ticking you off would be the last thing I would do before you buried me at see. So...I skipped it. That's what any sane person would've done, right?"

Raven still wasn't thinking very clearly, but at least she could speak now. "I though I said-"

"You say a lot of stuff that I don't pay attention to, Raven. The ones that may cause me to lose a limb I do. Everything else I don't."

The spellcaster began to ball her hands into fists, and magical energy started to emanate from her body, two facts that were not lost on her teammate.

"Oh my gosh. This is the day." Beast Boy jumped back over the couch, slapping a cushion over his head. "This is the day she's going to murder meAAAHHH!"

A tentacle of magic wrapped itself around his ankle, dragging him out into the open again. In an instant, he was back in front of Raven.

"You should probably stay here," she muttered.

He was scared stiff, his brain unable to make his body move. She was inches apart from him, no doubt ready to blast him into kingdom come.

He steeled himself...

Only to feel the weight of Raven's arms around his neck.

He opened his eyes to see nothing but the back of her hood.

She was hugging him.

Wait...this didn't feel like murder at all.

Beast Boy didn't really know what to do. It wasn't every day that Raven displayed genuine emotion. Heck, there was barely a day she did that.

He took the opportunity to pat her ever so slightly on the back of her head. "You OK, Raven?"

"You're really stubborn, you know that?" she muffled into his neck.

"Yeah. It's a habit."

Sighing heavily, Raven straightened up, wiping the moisture from her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been angry. I'm just..." Her voice trailed off, looking away from him. "I'm just not used to getting anything from anyone."

"Everyone's entitled to have a good birthday, Raven. Even you."

She smoothed out her cloak nervously. "Thank you for the gifts. I really did like them."

"You're welcome."

"I'm going to go back to my room."

"You do that."

"Are you coming?"

"In a little bit."

Raven walked up the steps to the entrance. "Don't expect me to go easy on you from now on."

"I wouldn't expect you to," Beast Boy replied.

She had to grin at that one. Ever the troublemaker, he was.

"So, same time next year?"

She turned her head back to him, the silliest of grins plastered on his face. Even with the threats of violence and mood swings, he was still there for her.

Who would've thought?

"Sounds good."

"Oh, and Rae?"

"Yeah."

"...Happy birthday."

AUTHOR'S NOTE: There exists a friend of mine. It's a person that I had the pleasure of meeting ten years ago along with her sister. A person that was introduced to me by our common passion for Teen Titans.

And even though Teen Titans is not on anymore (at least in its previous incarnation), the friendship that I've made with them over this past decade is something that I would never get rid of for anything. So it was the very least of me to write a story about her favorite pairing.

A lot of happened in those ten years. Shows have come and gone, tears had been shed, shoulders had been bruised.

Actually, a lot of body parts have been bruised. Mostly because of stuff I've done to piss her off.

The alternative would be murdering me. But there are laws about that.

Or something.

The point is that this person is someone whom I have grown to care about very much. I honestly cannot imagine where I would be without this person's wisdom, intelligence, and sarcasm.

Oooh, the sarcasm.

You could say that she reminds me a little bit of Raven herself. A person that doesn't always shows her hand immediately, but is perfectly willing to do so once you get to know here.

And before anyone says something smart in the comments, the Beast Boy in her life is already taken by someone most admirably. No, I'm merely the Cyborg if anybody. A older brother figure of sorts, someone to merely give her that occasional little nudge in the right direction.

Of course, I'm also not black and covered with metal on 90 percent of my body, so maybe I'm don't have as much in common with Cyborg as I thought. :)

As I'm finishing this up, I'm getting ready to drive down to her house to celebrate her birthday. I may mention that I wrote this for her. I may not. Someone may stumble upon this and tell it to her. I will guarantee that if she does read this, she'll do one of two things.

She'll either hug me.

Or she'll murder me.

And after ten years of jokingly threatening my life...this may be the one year she actually does it.

Happy birthday, Ariel.

Read and review, if you like. Until next time, people.