(A/N) If anybody actually reads this, I would appreciate one comment. If you already see one comment, you can ignore the previous statement. I couldn't find my own fic on unless I set all the sorting parameters a certain way. Remember, flames are welcome cause everybody could use a little pyrotechniques in their life.
Secondary note – The rating was changed just to be safe because of upcoming story events.
Disclaimer – I don't own the Teen Titans, some guy with lots more money than me does. Lucky punk.
Tamed – Chapter 2 – For Want of Plumbing – Wherein we learn of the hardships of superheroes roughing it and see just how good Beast Boy is at tact.
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Raven had just finished putting the last of her things away in her little hut, as Beast Boy liked to call them. She looked out of her door and saw that Beast Boy was still pulling his things inside, trying to decide if he should just throw certain things straight onto the floor or if he should put them in some drawer or another first. She smiled inwardly to herself at the silly things that he kept muttering about keeping himself entertained.
"Man, a video game and a tofu burger would have been sweet tonight. I wonder if Cyborg is gonna tape my shows. Do the Beast Boy, dun dun dun duh dun duh dun dundun, dun dun dun duh dun duh dun dundun." He had sung the last bit to himself while reaching for his last little duffle bag when he caught Raven watching him from her doorway. "What's up, Rae?" He said with a smile as he slung his bag over his shoulder.
"Just watching you trying to figure out if being messy now is better then being messy later. Kind of a slobs dilemma I guess." She quipped as she smirked very slightly.
"Yeah, but one that no slob can escape. Eventually, you just hit a point where everything is totally clean and folded and it's easier to put it away." He smirked even more broadly as he added, "Plus, this way I can revamp my whole slob system."
"Sounds like a lot of work. Too much maybe?"
"You're thinking of procrastinators and lazy people, us slobs got plenty of energy to put into our craft."
Even Raven couldn't deny that this was a pretty good comeback and smiled at it. She walked back into her room, letting Beast Boy get back to his craft, when something hit her like a ton of bricks. She quickly walked out of her hut and over to Beast Boy's door. "Um, Beast Boy?" He turned to her, and as they looked deeply into one another's eyes she said, almost in a whisper, "Where's the bathroom?"
Beast Boy's eyes widened with his smile. "We kind of have to put it together still." He paused, trying to think of what to say next as he saw the slight panic in her eyes. "Uh, Cyborg said it would be easy and that we wouldn't have to know how the parts go together or anything, just that we would have to dig a little and that the toilet and the shower weren't going to be anywhere near each other."
Raven just stood there with a look of firm disbelief as she realized the full meaning of the word uninhabited. No plumbing whatsoever. Not a faucet, not a drain, not a single hose to anything. "What about laundry and dishes and cleaning our food?" She was starting to get upset.
"It's covered, all the washing happens at the closest fresh water source we can find. The toilet gets set up close to our huts, and any water we want here will have to be carried here. It'll be strange at first, but it's not like real camping or roughing it, we have everything we need and stuff we want too."
His little explanation had not totally satisfied her. "And, will it be hot water for the shower?"
At this Beast Boy felt like he was being targeted like a plane would do to an enemy fighter in one of his video games. He knew now why the enemy fighters tried so hard to keep this from happening. "Uhm, I think so, but he didn't say, and I kinda shower in cold water anyway."
Raven worked hard to calm herself down, she knew it wasn't Beast Boy's fault he didn't know, she had let Robin make all the preparations and left herself out of it so that she could think more about what she had been asked to do. "Well…" she said finally relaxing into a more calm, yet disgruntled state. "Lets get everything set up soon, I kind of need to use the bathroom."
Beast Boy blinked and then kicked himself into action. "Well, the crates that have all that stuff are over here." He walked over to a stack of four wooden boxes set slightly back from the clearing near their houses. Each one had some blocky-stenciled caricature representing what was in it. Beast Boy changed into a gorilla and lifted one of the top crates off the one with a toilet stenciled on its side. Pulling the top off with ease he changed back and looked inside. "Well, it's just some little doohickey with a button on top and a piece of paper that says we gotta put it on top of a three foot wide by three foot long by six foot deep hole and that we should keep it at least fifty feet from the front doors and windows of our huts but at least a hundred feet from any fresh water.
"So, where do we put it then?" Raven felt weird asking Beast Boy about what to do when he normally seemed like the most clueless one of the group, but she admitted that he seemed to have talked with Robin more about how to actually manage in their temporary home than she had.
"Well, first we need to find out where the fresh water is, and that means not just in one direction, but all of them. We can find out where the closest water is and then put the toilet in the opposite direction so that we don't have to keep going past it when we want a drink or whatever."
"How did you figure all this out?" She asked as a cloudy thought came into her mind.
"Huh? What do you mean?" He had slurred his second question so that the only reason she understood it was because she had been around the green titan enough to hear the actual words in his sometimes overly shortened speech.
"Well, you know about all the domestic things we need to do, you know where best to put everything, you know what we have and that it's made so that we can get it all setup easily. You know about everything that isn't directly our mission here. I want to know how come you can do that kind of stuff now, but not when we're tracking down whoever back in Jump City."
Beast Boy knew that she was going to call him on this sooner or later, Robin had told him so and they had talked about what to do when it happened. Robin liked a plan for everything Beast Boy thought as he smiled to himself. "Uh, didn't you say you needed to use the bathroom?" Hoping that he could put off the uncomfortable thought of being grilled with questions from Raven by reminding her of her full bladder.
"Yes, but that still doesn't change the fact that I want to know."
Crap. "Well, uhm, then let's start looking for water and I'll tell you as soon as I'm able."
"What do you mean, as soon as you're able? Why not just talk while we look?"
"'Cause I kind of have to change to be able to smell the water so that we can find it faster and I can't talk while I'm not human 'cause only some birds can talk, and they do it a different way then us, so I can't even really do it then. Besides, I'm not changing into a bird, deer can smell the water better." He held his breath to see if she would allow him to do it his way and not just tell him that she'd rather hear his answer and walk.
"Fine, but as soon as we're done, you're telling me what's going on with you and all this." She glared at him, annoyed that he looked relieved at her words, and when he didn't do anything she got a little snippy. "Well? Change all ready."
Beast Boy shook off his relief and quickly formed into a deer. He sniffed high over his head and caught the smell of water on all sides of him. Some was strong and salty, so he knew that that was the ocean. Some was clear and crisp and smelt light, so that was probably the river. The small different smell off across from the clearing was clean and had a whiff of algae and moss to it, so that was standing water, probably a lake or some bit of the river that bulged out away from the main flow.
Raven watched as the tall stag turned towards her after it had finished breathing in the surrounding air. And, although she knew it was just Beast Boy, she still felt awe struck by the way the creature moved. She could tell why so many people had found them worthwhile to watch. Breaking out of her inner thoughts she saw Beast Boy jerk his head a couple of times in the direction that he wanted her to follow. He started to trot off as Raven lighted off the ground and flew silently after him.
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Beast Boy rummaged through the rations that they had been given grabbing a few different cans out as he shuffled them around to see everything. After having grabbed his choices he headed over to the little campfire that he had going. He had decided that if he was going to tell Raven what she wanted to know then he wanted her as calm and content as possible. A good meal sitting in front of her and a nice campfire to stare at would help.
Raven walked back into their campsite and was surprised to see Beast Boy walking towards her with a cup of tea in his hand. "Uh, thanks. You didn't have to cook for me." She said as she saw the plate sitting on a folding tray next to a similarly built chair.
"I just wanted to do something nice for you. That's not bad or anything…is it?" He said looking a little disquieted about more then just their current conversation.
"No, nothing bad about it at all. Um, thanks." She sat down and ate a little of the canned spaghetti and meatballs. "For canned stuff, this isn't too bad. What are you having?"
He sat down at his little tray and chair, which was about a quarter way around the fire. "Uh, mostly just veggies and a couple of fruit cups I think Star snuck into the stuff for me. Guess she doesn't know they go bad if you keep them out of the fridge for too long." He chuckled a little at this as he ate, trying to not wolf everything down so that Raven would be comfortable.
Even though he was doing very well at not swallowing his food whole, Beast Boy still finished his dinner before Raven. Setting his plate and fork aside and making sure he had some water nearby in case his throat ran dry out of fear he asked Raven the question he had been dreading asking her all day. "So, what did you want to know…uh, you know, from earlier?"
Raven had felt that she couldn't feel any more cozy with her surroundings then she was feeling when he had asked so that at first she didn't grasp what he was asking. She looked at him for a little bit when it finally came clearly back to her. The water, the places to put everything, everything that had been sent with them, everything, he knew everything about how they were going to be able to survive on the island and not just barely survive, but comfortably. Still feeling cozy though, she asked her question in a much gentler tone. "How did you get so well prepared on everything in so short a time when you've never done anything like that before in all our missions?"
Beast Boy looked into Raven's eyes and seeing that she was just looking for understanding he decided to answer in full this time. "It's kinda complicated. Your question's got a lot bigger answer then I think you really want, but if you'll let me answer. I mean, the whole answer, and you have to promise not to get mad before I'm done…" He quickly interjected. "…Then I'll tell you all of it."
Feeling like she might have opened a bigger can then she had meant to, Raven decided to still press forward and give Beast Boy his chance to explain everything. "OK, I promise. But, if I need something explained in greater detail I get to ask about it."
"That's fair. I mean I do that almost every time you guys start talking about anything more complicated than a video game controller." He replied with a smirk. His smirk faded though as he went back into the mindset he felt he needed to answer her.
"Well, first I have to tell you something about Robin."
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(A/N) Yeah, yeah, I know. Everyone hates the whole cliffhanger thing. In my defense, I'm not used to writing in chapters. I've only ever done one shots, and they're always of the long variety. I like how the story is progressing personally. Like I said earlier I'm writing this so that at least I enjoy it. I hope some of you do too, but if not, well…it was meant to be liked by me first and you second. I don't know any of you well enough to write for you, so I gotta write for me. Oh by the way, please review, it would be interesting to see if I was on a similar wavelength with anyone else.