Disclaimer: I still don't own Jack. I wouldn't want to own Jack. I like Jane. I could dig Jane. Jane Lane.
4 Months Later
"You know what? Its strange. Your only really serious around me. You still joke a lot, but your never as serious with any of the other Titans." Raven says. We are on the couch and my head is in her lap. The TV is on but the volume is a hair or two above mute.
"Well… that's because you're my girlfriend." I say.
"I get that…no I don't. I don't get it at all." She says shaking her head for a second.
"How did you get to be this serious and I didn't even notice it?" she says looking from the TV to me.
"Well, I had to become a little more serious. Around you specifically because I figured that you wouldn't have thought I was being truthful if I had just been joking around about it. Plus, well, lets just say that I was so nervous at just the thought of talking to you with words of love, that I felt very unfunny." I tell her, hoping it makes sense.
She laughs at this, knocking her head back onto the couch cushion. "Unfunny?" she says looking back down at me.
"Yeah, there was a ball of fire in my core, and I was filled with intense nervous energy. I could have run a 100-meter dash a couple times with that much energy. If I had tried to tell a joke, it would have been way too fast for you to hear it."
"How would you know you said it too fast?" she said looking back at me.
"Don't think I didn't practice my approach before I came to you that night. In fact, even though I practiced a lot, I still almost chickened out with fear. All my energy was waiting to explode out of me. I even had to hit a wall with my fist to drain all of that energy." I say looking up at her.
"Huh, I remember that your hand was bleeding that first night." She said with a cocked eyebrow.
"Well it worked so I didn't complain." I smile and look at the TV again.
"So I take it that when you really want something, you become pretty serious?" she said.
"No, just around you."
"Well how----"
"Whoa! Chill with the questions for a sec Rae. I got one of my own for ya. What made you change your mind about me in the end?" I say shifting my view to her face again.
"Hmmm, that's a good one?" She says smiling looking away from me.
"Come on Rae, if you tell me I'll be your best friend." I saw with the most pathetic smile I can muster.
"I don't need another friend. I need a boyfriend!"
God I love hearing her say that. Anytime she refers to me as her boyfriend I can't help but smile. It's involuntary. I can feel a foolishly large grin across my face. It's making her grin. I just love it when she refers to me as hers. She posses me, and I am really happy about that.
"Well, it would have to be disgust." She says turning the television off.
"Yo! What's that? Disgust? I'm not following." I say suddenly nervous as to where this conversation is going.
"I'll tell you about her tonight, after we go out." She says pushing me into a sitting position.
"It's a her! Come on, we gotta talk about this now." Though I really want to avoid this conversation all of the sudden.
"No no no! It'll have to wait until tonight." She says laughing. She laughs a lot more often. It makes me laugh a lot more often if that's possible.
"Well, what do you want to do until the concert starts?" I ask her.
"What do you want to do?" she says half interested.
"Make out on this couch." I say resting my head on the couch cushion.
"No way are we making out on this couch with Star and Robin in the kitchen."
"I didn't say it was with you did I?" I'm smiling again.
And then she hits me lightly. I so saw it coming but I couldn't resist, she was just asking for it.
"Seriously, what do you want to do?" she asks again.
"Okay, if we can't make out, can we at least spoon here?"
"I got an idea! Follow me okay." Rae says energetically.
And she gets up and starts to make her way out of the house. I'm following close behind her when I reach around her waist making her stop as I rest my face against her face and inhale deeply with my nose to her neck. Vanilla... Good God I love vanilla, she knows I love vanilla. The perks of being a boyfriend, its better than I ever imagined. I see her smiling in the mirror on the door to the house as she puts her hands up around my neck. I wish I could take a picture of this.
She pulls my hands from around her waist and says something about me distracting her from her great idea. And we are walking again and before I know it we are outside on the edge of the island.
"Okay, so we are going to race to the city from here using whatever abilities we want. Sound cool?" she says to me, smiling at her own idea.
"Not at all." I say disinterested looking over the water.
"Come on! It'll be fun!" she says.
"Fun for me after I kick your ass. But I fear that you won't be much of a challenge." I tell her.
"Tell you what, if you win, then we will go back inside and make out on the couch until the concert?"
I didn't even hear the rest of that sentence. I was already in the mind zone of winning when she said couch, and by the time she finished that sentence I was in the water.
I freaking flew! It was a thing of beauty. I was gliding in and out of that water with such grace that you would never guess that I was anything but a water animal. I switched between water animal and flying animal once just to see Raven's pacing with me. I was winning by a landslide, so I broke into a mad dash for the other shore to just completely smoke her. Damn…
She freaking beat me. I was completely distraught beyond words. I couldn't even put together the words of pity she threw at me. I could tell by her facial expressions and hand movements that she was making fun of me for saying that she would be no challenge. Damn…I can't believe this happened to me. Somebody up there is working against me.
When we got back to the house she dried me off with a huge towel as I sat in a wooden chair in the kitchen trying to make sense of what just happened. She dried my hair for me and it suddenly hit me that the loss wasn't all-bad, she was drying me off and wrapping her arms around me. Again, I cannot describe the heaven I was in. This was being just as close to her as kissing her, so its not a bad runner up prize. Then she stood me up and pushes me into my room to, ironically, take a shower for the concert that will begin shortly.
"Who are these guys again?" She asks me.
"Trans-Siberian Orchestra!" I yell at her. It took me a month of training at Cyborg's favorite game to whoop him and win these tickets off him. Couldn't have been at a better time either with the Christmas season here already.
"Is it almost over?" She yells at me.
"No way, its only a half an hour into it!" I yell over the sounds.
"Can we please go?" Rae asks with a pained look on her face.
I really hope my disappointment doesn't show on my face. "Sure." I say and we make our way to the exit. It takes us half an hour to get out of there and we just hang outside of the building, her against a rail, and me on a step of the building. We have a couple of hours before Cyborg is supposed to pick us up and take us to see Anberlin perform at another club in town.
"You okay Rae?" I ask her.
"Yeah, its just a little loud you know? I love the music, but it hurts to listen to it at that volume with all of those people."
"Don't worry, I have the CDs so we can listen to them whenever we want."
"I hope I didn't ruin the night for you?" She says and I can see something in her eyes.
"As long as you're here with me, it can't be called a bad night."
She walks up to me and kisses me, and then wraps her arms around me, resting her head against my chest. It's a good thing I'm on this step or else the lack of a height difference between the two of us might have ruined this moment. I pull her away from me a little to see her face, but not enough to disengage her arms from my body. I pull her face into my hands and kiss her again, this time a little longer. My mind melts and I can't tell time anymore. When we pull apart, I'm coming down from a major high, but I feel a weight in the air.
"Like I said, it was Disgust that brought me to you. Disgust within me, disgusted with myself."
I don't say anything, I just wait for her to get this out.
"You ever had a moment of perfect clarity? I mean a moment, in which you come to complete realization about something, or you ask yourself just the right question to put things in perspective?"
I nod, not wanting to break her momentum with any kind of sound.
"Well, Disgust, one of the divisions of my emotion Shame. Wait, I should tell you, I have a huge hierarchy of emotions. There are the basic emotions, and within them, there are smaller, more specific emotions. Well, Disgust resides within Shame, who resides within me. Disgust had seen all that you had went through for me. She noticed all the small things about the things you did, how you shuffled from side to side at moments. How hard it was for you to look me in the eyes. She saw how much of yourself you offered up for me, and how much you promised to take care of me, and not reject me. And she became disgusted with me. My fear was holding me back from you." Rae tells me. Her head is still resting against my chest so I can't see her face, but I can feel the direction of her stare.
"She asked me, "What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?" And she asked me in such a way that that was all she had to say. Everything came tumbling down. It opened the door for me and you." Rae says as she pulls her head away and looks me in the eyes.
"That's how me and you became one." She said as she stepped away from me. She looks at the ground, obviously, a really interesting spot just appeared in the gravel.
Well I don't know exactly what to say now. Its good to know this information, but I don't know how to approach her. So I do what I do best, react without thinking.
"We're one, eh?" I say as I catch her hand.
I love her smile.
"Yeah, we're one. Why?" She said as she caught my other hand.
"Nothing, its just a really good description of us." Its true. It's a great description of us. I love saying US.
"You know, I don't wanna share your presence with a bunch of strangers tonight, how about we go home and listen to that Trans-Siberian CD?"
"Sounds great," she says as she hugs me again. Such warmth. "Could we also watch some Christmas shows?" she asks.
"Sure, think of some while I give Cy a ring." I call Cyborg on my cell and tell him that he won't have to pick us up.
"Let's fly home quick okay." Rae says looking in the direction of the Tower.
"Let's take it easy Rae and just relax."
"I'll make you a bet," she starts.
I promise you, I'm going to beat her home this time.