A/N:

HNG.

I hope you guys have a banging year, and that y'all had banging holidays.

13. Hollowed Out

"If it weren't for her, there would never have been an empty space, or the need to fill it."

— Nicole Krause, The History of Love

Red's eyes glazed against the words inked black onto the page. The book was held firmly in his hands, but his mind had once again wandered.

He had never thought of himself as sentimental, and yet these past few days he often caught himself thinking about the chimes in a certain demon's laughter, the smooth curl of her hair — the air buzzing tentatively when they had flipped through Van Gogh's artworks –– the air buzzing sweetly when she had leaned forward and asked if she would see him when she waked.

His eyes refocused onto the print, but every other letter coiled into a purple thread and his chest welled with irritation and rapture.

He had never thought of himself as sentimental, or lonely, or lovestruck — but it seemed parasites came with infections.

Infections and secrets.

But of course, he was not a better man. If he came upon a secret, simply folded in half, he would unfold it — Raven's letter was no exception.

Her smooth script was etched into memory, addressed to Robin:

I'm safe. Be back soon.

— Rachel

It was simple. It was silent.

Why not say more?

Or perhaps — perhaps she had. Perhaps his suspicions had been right: she had carved Red's secrets with magic, and only her leader could see it.

When his eyes had refocused, he found that he had stepped to the bedroom, leaning against the doorframe to stare curiously at her impassive expression. She had stopped floating by the time he had come back from the tower. At first, he had panicked, thinking that something went wrong when he had left, but the more he had observed, the more he realized that it was a good thing, that the worst of her injuries were probably healed.

Some color had returned to her skin — as much color as her grey complexion allowed. Her breathing was steady, and the bird never returned to call to him for help. All that was left was to wait. He had done as much as he could.

Despite the thought, it had been four days since his completed mission and she still had yet to awaken. The portal had brought him to Starfire's room. She must've brought the mirror back to her place, realizing that if she stayed any longer in Raven's room, the others would've become too suspicious. Red thought he didn't give the alien girl enough credit. The room was dark and empty when he had been transported back; he figured the heroes were out on duty, but he had managed to find scented paper and gel pens in her room to scribble a quick note to let her know of his return.

It was shorter than Raven's message to Robin. He had only written, Back, and left it on the mirror, but his wasn't wrought with secret messages and pseudonyms and clues.

Rachel.

Why that name in particular?

Why a name at all? Why not just R?

Why to Robin?

Red shook his head; he was being ridiculous. He had forgotten that sentiment came with problems. He had left Starfire's room without having explored the tower freely, something even the most basic and novice criminal would've done had they been in the same situation; and now, he was thinking about Raven's letter in the all the wrong perspectives.

Why Robin?

Why wouldn't it be Robin? The leader of the motley crew?

Were you fucking her?

Wrong question.

He was getting soft. She was making him soft.

This wasn't what Red had wanted when he had scooped her up from the trash bins. To be fair, he hadn't thought about it at all when he had saved her. He just did. And he kept her, and he nurtured her, and he protected her — and he saved her again, this time with full intentions to do so.

She had warned him about chest infections, and yet it had happened anyway.

Raven.

I think I could love you.

Do you think you could?

"I…"

Red eyes, not purple, smiled at him. "We could," she said. "I can."

Then, it was all groans and touches, all sparks and sears; and it didn't matter that her eyes were the color of oxidation rather than amethyst; it didn't matter that this version was more demon than witch, not when his hands were uncovering her skin, not when she shook and shivered beneath every coarse caress. She whispered his name, a chant, a hex — he could accept this — Raven but not, and yet Raven still — and then, because he couldn't win even in his dreams, she faded into smoke, and his arms collapsed in on themselves, aching with a delicate emptiness he hadn't felt in a long, long time.

Red frowned. He had tried making a pro and con list earlier, but it had proved to be useless, pausing when his line of thought ended up reaching rather useless pointless lines.

Pro: Sex.

Con: Demon sex.

Wait — should that be a pro?

He returned to the couch, shifting his mask that sat awkwardly and uncomfortably on his face, or maybe it was because he had pulled it off in her mind and his fingers twitched to do it again, out here in open air.

"Will I see you when I wake?"

Unfair that she had said it without knowing what it entailed.

Unfair that she made him care, that she made him grieve — that he was lonely for her — that he was lonely.

Unfair that his world of grey needed hues of white, but hers wanted nothing of him.

"What's unfair?"

He opened his eyes — Raven was standing on the other side of the room, near the hall.

"Are you reading my mind?" Red asked.

She rolled her eyes. "You were talking out loud."

"Was I?" he mused. "Well, then I was just talking to myself."

Red didn't know what to expect. He had known she'd come back, wild and fierce as black fire was. She fought him savagely to stay in her dreams; he was sure she'd fight just as strongly to leave, once shown the truth.

And now, after four days of waiting, she had returned.

At first, he had been scared that he'd felt the ache to hold her, to welcome her back with human touch — he had accepted this oddness she had cultivated in him, but it didn't mean he understood it. It was normal for thieves to dance along wires, but this wasn't a line he was sure he wanted to indulge.

She was here now, but he felt no clichéd tears, no throbbing of his skin, no urgency to rise to his feet and rush to her.

Just a soft exhale, held not too many seconds long. Just a gentle relaxing of stiff shoulders. A tired tilt of the head. A full, full chest.

"Welcome back, Raven."

There was a quick hesitation that she tried to hide.

"Thanks," she said quietly. "It's…good to be back."

The words sounded as foreign to his ears as it was for her to say, he was sure, and yet he still smiled beneath the mask.

"Are you…?" Red let the unfinished question linger.

Raven shook her head. "No," she said, sounding disappointed. "Not yet. But I feel stronger." She sat onto the usual armchair, away from him, and said, "It should be any day now. Soon."

"Good…" he murmured.

He caught her odd glance to him.

"Yes…" she said.

A silence settled between them then. It was not the first, and it wouldn't be the last, but it was an awkward quiet that they weren't used to — awkward, but not uncomfortable.

Red didn't know what it meant, what the lack of words, the absence of noise — not even the sound of his breathing — all meant; he didn't know if he wanted it to mean anything. He felt as if he was standing feet away from the line, and she stood on the other side, not noticing him, but he noticed her (his eyes finding her figure easily, his ears trained for the light songs interlaced through the lilt of her voice), and he heard the thought as if it had come not from his mouth but from deep inside him, deep in his bones, his marrow, to the place where the infection first flourished — I think I could love you.

He looked away — there was a sudden fear that he would not have the willpower to do so again.

"X."

"Mhmm?"

"I asked you what happened."

For a moment, Red thought she was referring to the change in atmosphere between them, but when he looked back at her, taking in the way her arms were long and elegant and smooth, wrapped around her knees, he realized that she had been referring to the gaps in her memories.

"You don't remember?" he asked for clarification.

"I remember bits and pieces," she admitted. "Azarath, my parents…"

Me?

"That's it?" he asked casually.

"Yes," she said.

Was he relieved? Was he hurt? Was it possible to be both, and more?

"It's hazy," Raven continued. "A lot of darkness, a long darkness, and then… I woke up here, again."

He snorted at the way she had said it. "Trust me, babe — that's the best case scenario."

Red had expected a snarky remark about how that was severely incorrect, but she only looked at him with unreadable eyes. He wondered what she was thinking; he wondered if Raven truly didn't remember — but what would be the point in lying?

"What happened?" she asked again.

"I saved you," he replied.

She stared at him expressionless, but there seemed to be something happening behind the eyes; he just didn't know what. But then, before he could analyze further, she averted her gaze and brushed stray strands of hair out of her face, and his fingers hummed with the memory of it, a harsh betrayal by his body. Raven shifted in her chair — the chair, he corrected with a wince.

"Why?" she asked suddenly, echoing the sentiment and situation of that night several weeks ago.

It was nearing three weeks, and yet it seemed as if she had been in his life for the last three months, and in his dreams for the last three years.

It was important to stay indifferent, he reminded himself. Stay on the other side of the line — or dance along it — whichever — but it was imperative that he not let her know. He could see her like the sunlight, but it would have to be from the shade, hidden. Whatever was being created, whatever he was on the verge of nurturing, he'd take a look at it first before letting it bask in warmth. Maybe he wouldn't even want it to breathe, in the end. Maybe he'd end up suffocating it before it could feel golden warmth.

Red stretched, making the act as obnoxiously nonchalant as possible. "Like I said before," he said. "You have a nice set of legs."

However, she wasn't sidetracked.

"X," Raven growled irritably. "Please be fucking serious for once." She went on, "How does this only look out for number one? You're not getting immunity. Why not just let me die?"

"Hmm." Red tapped his chin as if he was deep in thought, when really he just wanted to dig under her skin. "Why not indeed."

The first time he saved her from the dumpsters and from Golem's greedy eyes, he could only chalk it up to whims and impulses — just because.

He didn't save her this time just because, though.

This time, there were reasons. He could accept that there were reasons.

While he had been free of her spirit, he had still been haunted by her terrified eyes as she sank into darkness. He saw his own skull mask reflected in purple shadows, begging for human touch — and it wasn't cheap to want human touch.

Red had found her in his dreams, and he had meant what he said, sincerely, even if he had only meant it for a moment, even if it had been said in the midst of mist and fog, brought on by sleep taken after too many nights of staring at tomes and towers.

He couldn't tell her any of that, though.

He couldn't tell her that he understood, that he got it, that he had come to terms with the fact that, perhaps, he was lonely, that he had been lonely, that she had shown him the empty space vibrating inside, waiting to be filled.

He couldn't tell her that he found her fascinating. He couldn't tell her that he liked her fire and her flesh, her hesitation and her breathing, her scowls, her dreaming.

And the problem wasn't that Red liked her purple eyes or snarls of disgust or quick and vibrant smile under a fading sun; it was that he had dropped everything to save her — it was that he saw her still in his head — it was that he was trying to find a way to tell her all of this: that this, whatever this was, had been happening slowly to him over the course of three weeks, and yet looking back, he thought it had happened too quickly — so much like the shifting of the night sky into day, gradual, and yet it descended all at once, eating all that intimate darkness.

He couldn't explain any of it, and he couldn't tell her any of it, and he wasn't dying to, but maybe part of him wanted to, and maybe part of him just wanted her to tell him he was crazy.

All of this confusion in only three weeks. He almost laughed.

"X," Raven urged, and he was pulled back to the moment. She was waiting impatiently for an answer and he was getting lost in the maze.

"I saved you," he said. "Let's just leave at that."

She wouldn't. Of course she wouldn't. Her face scrunched up into frustration, annoyance. "But why?" she asked.

"Why does it matter? I'm a good Samaritan."

"You're not," she said.

He looked at her. She was serious.

Right. Right, he thought.

"Yeah," Red said. "I'm not."

The silence returned. Raven was staring at him, but he shifted into a more comfortable position, face pointedly not angled at her, and then he turned on the television and surfed through the channels until he came to some old cartoon.

"I don't understand," Raven muttered after a while. It sounded as if she hadn't meant to say it out loud. Maybe she hadn't even realized that she had said it aloud, the way she was staring at the coffee table with furrowed brows.

"Who are you to me?"

He turned the volume up.

Finally noticing the pile of books stacked beneath the windowsill, Raven asked, "Are those mine?"

He glanced over to the pile and thought that books made them seem casual in nature, when in actuality, they were hefty and scholastic and utterly pointless.

"Yup," Red said.

"You went into my room?" She only sounded partially annoyed. Was she trying to make small talk? Had she noticed that there was a strangeness between the two of them now, and she had wanted to start a conversation, any conversation, to bring it back to what it used to be before, flaring with aggravation and angry uncertainties, rather than quiet unknowns?

"You went into the tower?" she demanded.

He kept his eyes on the screen. "A necessary evil. Let's keep in mind that I saved you by going there."

"For my tomes…" she finished. Then, as if she realized what it meant, she raised a brow at him. "You understood what was written?"

"Oh, no, your books were completely useless. It was your wack-ass mirror that sucked me into your wack-ass brain."

"What?"

"Yeah, that's how I saved your sorry ass," he continued. "Went into your room, got sucked into the mirror, pulled you out of your Azarath illusion or whatever, and here we are, four days later."

"Pulled me out how?" she said in disbelief, as if he was incapable of saving people.

He frowned, and then shrugged. "Just talked. Nothing crazy."

"What'd you say?"

Red didn't growl or swear in frustration, but his head fell back against the top of the couch. Why was it that he had missed her again?

"Nothing," Red said. "I said you were in an illusion and you didn't believe me. I said it again, and then wham, bam, thank you ma'am, I convinced you and all was good."

"That's a sexual phrase," Raven pointed out.

"Is it?" He tilted his head. "Hm. Well, we just talked, unfortunately for you. You'll have to take me out to dinner first. It's a rule I have."

Raven glared at him, probably wondering why she was stuck with him of all people as she returned her gaze back to the television screen. His eyes lingered longer on the line of her jaw, but then he, too, returned to the screen, telling himself that he was content in the awkward quiet.

But then he caught her looking at him, and this time, he groaned aloud.

"What now?" he said.

She looked ready to lash out at him, but she held back and instead, asked, "What happened to your suit?"

Red tapped his finger against his thigh, impatient. "It's in the shop," he replied. He picked up the remote and surfed through the channels again, thinking that, maybe if he looked busy and intrigued with something else, she would leave him alone. Hopefully, she'd take the hint and go into the bedroom to mope or read, anything than this, a harassment of questions he had already received mentally. He had done enough confusing questions over the last few days. Now that Raven was safe and sound, he could do with some mindless cartoons.

But she was still looking at him.

Of fucking course.

"Why?"

His eye twitched beneath the mask, another moment in which he wished she could see the aggravating effect she had on him. "You're quite talkative today, little bird," Red noted, though it was said with a long twang of irritation.

"You're quite cryptic today, thief," she retaliated, just as irked.

"No more than usual."

"You've given me next to nothing about what happened," Raven snapped. "I was out for four days and all you can tell me is wham bam? And when I'm trying to get any kind of information, you suddenly become so sensitive?"

"It's been four days since I saved you — you've been out of commission for a little longer than that. And I'm not sensitive, but seeing as how I thought I had a dead Titan in my apartment for the better half of a week, I think I deserve a little R and R."

Raven didn't respond, but she didn't need to, as he could tell that she was seething without even looking at her. He could feel her power swelling, suffocating the atmosphere. The time for her to leave really was soon.

With a sigh and the thought that he needed to do better at resisting pretty faces, he leaned forward, feet dropping to the floor.

"Alright," Red conceded tiredly. "Let's play a game."

"I don't want to play a stupid game," she said tightly. "I want you to actually answer my fucking questions."

"Then you're in luck." He rested his elbow on his knee and his chin in his open palm, fingers curling around the unfamiliar mask. "Because the game I want to play is a question game. You ask a question, I'll answer a question; then I'll ask, and you answer. Simple, just like before."

"How is this any different than what I've been trying to get you to do?" she fumed.

"Easy." He tilted his head in that hateful way he knew pissed people off. "My way's a game and yours is an interrogation."

"What the hell are you — "

"So! Man of the house goes first," Red interrupted. "Dearest Raven, who is Rachel?"

Her face went slack for a moment, surprised, but then purple eyes narrowed and a silent indignation replaced shock. "You read the letter," she accused.

"You wrote a letter," was his response.

"You expected me to play prisoner?" she sneered, his antics stoking the coals of an old and familiar fire. "Roll over without a fight?"

He could handle this. He could understand this, the rattling of the cage; but he'd never stick a finger between the bars.

When she was done with her glowers, he pressed forward, asking, "Well?" and Raven folded her arms stubbornly.

"Why should I answer?" she shot back.

It was true. She didn't have any need to answer. He had nothing to threaten her with, nothing to tempt her with; they weren't even playing a drinking game.

Red shrugged in the end. "Sounds good, toots," he said smoothly. He kicked his feet back up onto the coffee table and looked back to the glowing screen, knowing her eyebrow twitched at the pet name and the sudden change in demeanor without having to look at her. "Guess I don't have any answers either."

There were a lot of questions he could ask, and the first ten that came to mind where things he didn't need to know, things he shouldn't want to know, but things he'd ask anyway. It was better this way. Yes, the separation in space and conversation was necessary. Once she left, things would return to normal — even if the thought rang hollow and false, he could do with a little normalcy.

Then, she suddenly announced, "I dropped Rachel and picked up Raven," and Red glanced to her in surprise. Her arms were still folded, and she was glaring at him despite the calm in her voice, but she was looking at him and she had answered — and God knows why she answered.

"When I came to Earth," she clarified.

He wanted to try the new sounds out in his mouth, feel how it would form, but he held back. Instead, he grinned, and ignored the prickles along his arm, and said, "Game on."

She didn't hesitate in pulling out the big guns. "Why did you save me? Twice?"

He rolled his eyes. "This again?"

"You never answered."

"I told you I was a good Samaritan," Red offered.

"And I told you no fucking way," she scoffed.

"Is it really that hard to believe?" he sighed. "I came back from a heist and you disappeared into a weird fucking swirl. What did you expect me to do? Laugh and say, 'good riddance?'"

Raven had said it immediately: "Yes," and then they were looking at each other without any ruffled feathers or presumptions. They looked at each other in confusion and discomfort, and he knew and she knew, even with the mask, that they were staring at each other from across a clearly marked line.

"Yes," she repeated. "So, why didn't you? You could've brought me back to the tower, left it for the Titans to deal with. I didn't have any information on your hideout. It was an easy solution." The ferocity in the way she had held her arms crossed waned in time with her voice, monotonous and tightlipped, but cool, soft, hushed. "It was your ticket out, X. You didn't take it."

His chest was constricting, but he counted out the seconds as he breathed so as to not give anything away.

"…What do you want me to say?" he asked quietly. "You called out to me. I wasn't going to let you die."

"You could've," she said.

"No," he said. "I couldn't."

Red turned back to the screen, but he couldn't pay any attention to it, worse than before. Raven didn't even bother to hide the fact that she was still staring at him, trying to pick him apart, trying to see what was beneath the X — trying to remember what was beneath the mask?

Seconds became long minutes, and then the hours began passing quickly as the settled into an old routine that still somehow felt unfamiliar. They had gone through several episodes of old sitcoms in silence, and when he finally found Spongebob, Red sprawled himself out on the couch, his legs over the armrest while his head was propped up by his arm, pressed into the cushions.

Maybe he could've said something else.

Maybe that was the opportunity he was waiting for, and he had passed it by.

But what was this mystical opportunity for? What was he waiting for? What did he want?

"X — "

He groaned dramatically, rolling over to face the back of the couch as if giving her a cold shoulder. He was getting bombarded by questions verbally and internally; Red had never known how hellish this was.

"Come on, Raven, seriously? More questions? I'm still trying to catch up on sleep, babe."

"Last question," she declared.

He closed his eyes. "Fine, go, what is it?"

"How's your chest?"

Was it clichéd to think that she was full of surprises?

He smiled.

"Fucked up worse, if you can believe it."

He heard her snort in reply.

"I told you to breathe deeply," she snapped, but he didn't taste any poison.

"That you did, Raven," he murmured.

Sleep took him slowly. He tried to hang on to the sound of her breathing. As he slipped deeper into dark currents, he felt the couch shift, not realizing that his hair tickled her thighs, that she was sitting so close because she was stepping into his dreams.

A/N:

Hope y'all enjoyed!