A/N: Thanks, everyone who has followed, favourite and/or reviewed this story. It is all very much appreciated, and never goes unnoticed. Chapter three for you folks.


You're the One


3. birds of prey

The evening had started off normal enough. Titan downtime usually meant a night of fun and games, and each respective team member had their special, assigned tasks.

Cyborg was bustling about in the kitchen, busy preparing the junk food, fizzy beverages, and snacks, all the while humming along to the playlist Beast Boy had created specifically for the activities. Starfire was mulling over the many board games and cards littered around her on the floor, examining each one with a scrutinizing intensity. Robin sat next to her, arms folded over his chest and ready to help explain any slang or terminology the alien princess couldn't quite comprehend. Although he'd never admit it, everyone but Starfire knew that their fearless leader enjoyed seeing the way her features would light up upon learning the rules of a brand new game.

Then there was Raven.

She was an unspoken task, assigned to only one certain, green changeling; the single Titan who could, upon pure persistence, manage to get her out of her room and take part in the festivities.

"Beast Boy, you know I don't like charades." The empath stood in her room, wearing an expression of uneasiness while her closed off body language told him how uninterested she was in any such game.

The younger Titan groaned dramatically. "You say that about every game we decide to play, Rae," he informed her exasperatedly.

"That's because I don't like game night," she replied matter-of-factly.

"Cyborg and Robin are too competitive, Starfire makes up her own rules, you tend to cheat whenever you can, and I'm left to clean up after the mess everyone leaves behind," she elaborated, listing off her reasons one by one on her index fingers.

"Hey!" Beast Boy protested, "I do not cheat!"

A single, dark brow raised in accusation. "Oh? Last time, when we played Pictionary, you got frustrated because no one could tell what you were drawing, so you just started shifting into dinosaurs until Cyborg yelled out Jurassic Park."

"That's not cheating!" Beast Boy retaliated, fumbling for a good comeback.

In a calm voice, Raven reminded him, "Pictionary is a game where you have to draw the categories. Not become them."

"Well," he huffed, irritated that she'd bested him on the matter, "Charades is a game where I'm allowed to change, whenever I can. Cy even said so."

Raven rubbed at her temples with thumb and forefinger, losing interest in the conversation. "I'm still not playing."

Realizing that he was quickly losing her, Beast Boy resorted to his one and only trump card; "So, what you're saying is that you're gonna stay locked up in your room with a book when you could be spending time with me?"

Almost immediately, her expression softened, and guilt swept in among her delicate features. It was low of him, even he knew that, but he needed her there. It was hard enough to come by any sort of alone time with the reserved female Titan, what with all the meditating and book reading she had to do. When she wasn't preoccupied with that, they were off fighting crime or stopping diabolical, evil plans to rule the world. Then, on the nights none of that was going on, their other, pesky teammates were always somehow around, either asking to play videogames or watch a scary movie or have a girls only slumber party.

They both knew how fleeting these opportunities were, and thus, had to take advantage of whatever they could get.

Beast Boy mustered up his best 'hurt' face, drooping ears and all, before turning around and expecting to leave her in the impregnable silence of her bedroom, his question lingering unanswered.

It worked like a charm.

Before he'd reached the hallway, he felt her come up behind him, her cold, small fingers brushing against his gloved right hand. When he turned to appraise her, Raven was looking away in an attempt to mask the reddening of her otherwise pallid complexion with her curtain of cropped, plum-coloured hair. Even though he'd given her reason to appear humbled, she was still wearing a look of annoyance.

Beast Boy couldn't help but beam victoriously at her, clutching her hand in his own before dragging her down the hallway in a hurry. She stumbled after him in surprise before her feet then hovered an inch off of the ground in order to keep up with him.

"Friend Raven and friend Beast Boy! You have finally joined us!" Once they appeared in the common room, Starfire greeted them with a leap into the air, clasping her hands together in merriment.

"I have decided to make the game more interesting by adding in all of our names into the category of 'people'!" She explained to them, grinning from ear to ear.

"So it begins," Raven sighed, being sure to let go of Beast Boy's hand before anyone took notice.

"Sweet! This'll be a piece of cake!" Declared Beast Boy. "Can I go first?" He dashed towards the centre of the living room, not waiting for an answer to his request.

He'd been so elated in the moment that, when he'd pulled up the first card from the table, he couldn't process why his mind had drawn a blank when he'd read the name written in Starfire's neat, pretty cursive.

Raven.

Of course. It was all too ironic that she would be the card he would pick up. Truth be told, he had been hoping for Cyborg or Robin, because they would have been an easy and entertaining mark. But Raven? He was already walking on eggshells with his powerful, half demon teammate. How could he replicate her in action alone without coming off as a total jerk or upsetting her?

"Uh, you good there, Beastie?" It was Cyborg's voice that brought him out of his inner turmoil.

The green teenager glanced nervously about the room at all the curious and concerned faces of his friends. He gulped when he met Raven's dark purple gaze.

Scratching the back of his head, he thought long and hard.

Then it hit him, and that was when the night had decided to take a very strange turn.

His teammates stood gawking at the shape the changeling had suddenly morphed into, startled and unsure of what their friend was trying to hint at.

Beast Boy grunted, cocking his funny looking head to the side. He hopped along on his two feet, allowing them to have a good, long gander at him in his new shape.

"Uh...what kind of...bird is that?" Robin asked, staring at Beast Boy's latest form.

Because it was a bird. A funny looking one, but a bird nonetheless. His green head and neck were featherless and heavily wrinkled, while his plumage was a glossy green so dark, it seemed black. He was roughly about two feet tall, and his beak was short and hooked. His feet, in contrast to his other colouring, were white with the two front toes longer than the others. His eyes were still very much akin to Beast Boy's; black pupils paired with a deep green iris. When he opened his wings, which were as wide as an average sized toddler, and flapped them about, the underside of the tips were noticeably white.

"Looks like some kind of...vulture?" Cyborg guessed, stepping closer to examine Beast Boy's new head.

In response, he pecked at the ground by his friend's robotic foot.

The timer that Starfire had set, ticked on in the background, reminding them that they only had so many seconds to guess correctly.

Beast Boy, currently in the guise of the ravenous bird, strutted about before them, and then made a beeline towards Raven. Using his massive wings as an intimidation factor, he then hissed at the others around her.

"Oh! Perhaps it is a bird relative of a raven?" Starfire exclaimed.

Beast Boy grunted, craning his neck. He then scuttled closer to Raven, easily unnerving his female comrade. "I don't get it, Beast Boy," she confessed with a slow shake of her head.

"How is that a person?" Robin questioned Starfire's guess. The red haired alien girl seemed as lost as everyone else in the room.

Beast Boy stared at the empath with unearthly eyes before choosing to roost beside her, pruning his feathers as he waited.

"Man, this doesn't make any sense, B," Cyborg commented while scratching his forehead, confounded.

"I, too, cannot think of the name of such a person that resembles a vulture," Starfire agreed in defeat.

Robin had his fingers on his chin then, lost deep in thought. The timer ticked down its final moments, seemingly as loud as a firecracker in an isolated room.

"A bird of prey...that seems to like Raven?" the boy wonder thought aloud.

Beast Boy let out another strange noise from his throat, and opened his wings slowly.

The alarm went off suddenly, signaling the end of the round, and Beast Boy once again resumed his green human form.

"Come on, guys! It was obviously Raven!" He yelled at them, frustratingly pointing at the girl in the blue cloak.

The aforementioned sorceress gave him a quizzical look. "I'm a...vulture?"

Beast Boy shook his head vigorously. "No, clearly not! I was a black vulture, which obviously means-"

Before he could finish his sentence, Robin interjected with his own observation; "If you had gotten Raven, why didn't you just turn into...a raven?"

A lull fell over the room then, and every Titan was watching their changeling teammate while muttering under their breath a small form of concession.

Finally, he sighed and slapped his hand over his forehead in annoyance. "A raven was too easy, duh. I was trying to be creative...never mind, just forget it," he told them, fuming at his failure.

The other Titans, shrugging off Beast Boy's peculiar temperament, seemed to have accepted his explanation and were eager to move on with the next round. The green changeling sat on the couch with arms folded over his chest, glaring at nothing in particular. Starfire, in the mean time, picked up a card from one of the four piles, and started brainstorming how she would be acting out the words she'd read. The rest of the team went about as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Everyone, that was, but Raven.

She sat next to her green teammate, examining him carefully from beneath the safety of her hood. "So...," she drawled, breaking the silence between them, "mind telling me where exactly you were going with that whole vulture thing?"

Without removing his gaze from the center of the room, he sighed before correcting her. "Black vultures," a less than enthused Beast Boy started explaining, "they mate for life you know? They're super protective of their loved ones and are actually one of the very rare birds in the animal kingdom that are monogamous...I thought that...I thought that maybe, if nothing else, you'd get it. Because, after all, there's really only one person in this room that any of that could ever apply to...," he drifted off, feeling as if the magic in the gesture would now be forever lost.

Raven stilled beside him, as silent as she always was in these sorts of situations. Then, when no one was looking, her fingers shyly danced along the space between them, and found his. When he worked up the courage to finally look at her, she wore a modest smile and said, "You do know that black vultures also intentionally defecate and urinate on their own legs, right?"


A/N: I never did find that Beast Boy took the easy way out of anything. In his own subtle ways, I think he'd romance Raven, right under his teammates' noses because at this point, their relationship is still new and somewhat of a secret. Thanks for reading. :)