A/N: this is an idea that Amazarae left for me in a review and I really liked it, so credit for the idea goes to them. This story was originally intended as a oneshot, but I'm going to leave the status as in-progress for now because I'm thinking of adding a second chapter if I ever find the time. This is also my first AU story, so I hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans.
Raven leaned her back against the kitchen counter. She'd never been to this house before; she barely knew the person throwing the party. The kitchen was quiet with everyone else mingling in the other rooms.
Not a lot of people were still there. It was getting late and the only ones left seemed to be the people not fit enough to get themselves home. With finals almost over, most students had already gone home for winter break. All of Raven's housemates had left, leaving her all alone for the holidays since she wouldn't be returning home to her own family. Not that she was complaining. It was nice to have the house to herself for once, but after everyone had left she began to realize just how boring the break was going to be without them.
She started stacking up some of the used, sticky solo cups from around the kitchen and tossed them in a garbage bag. No one else seemed concerned about the mess. Why should they be? They were happy and drunk; concern could wait until the morning. Raven wished she was at the same level. She had brought wine with her to drink, but had finished it off a long time ago and was now practically as sober as she was when she arrived. Alcohol never stuck to her much. She didn't have as much fun with it as everyone else seemed to. So if she couldn't get drunk, she might as well do something constructive.
A kid from her anthropology class had invited her to this party about a week ago. Less than half the class had shown up for their last session since they were just doing a review for the final, and he had stood up to give the class an open invitation for anyone still hanging around. She hadn't taken his offer seriously when he said it, nor had she even considered entertaining it, that was until the night before when her landlord turned off the heat in her house thinking no one was still there. When Raven had called him about it, he told her he wasn't going to be able to turn it back on until the next morning. So after some quick debating, she decided to go to the party instead of spending the majority of the night in her ice-cold house.
Not a lot was going on. There was music blasting in the other room where people—mainly girls—were still dancing. Some guys were playing videogames in the living room. Needless to say, Raven was unfamiliar with most of the people there and wasn't very impressed with the people she had met over the course of the night. She found one of the remaining unused solo cups and filled it with water from the sink. Maybe she should just leave and go home. She took a sip. It was getting late anyway.
The kitchen door opened and another person walked in. He didn't seem to notice Raven as he seemed preoccupied with finding himself a drink.
"Hi." He said, pulling open a drawer and taking out a bottle opener. Raven wasn't sure he was speaking to her until he finally looked up to make eye contact as he opened his beer. His eyes were a shocking blue.
"Hello."
"Not enjoying the party?" He asked.
"I'm just getting some water." Raven held up her cup as evidence and took another sip. She didn't like other people labeling her as a stiff or a downer, even if she did feel like one sometimes.
"You've been hiding out in here for a while. It doesn't take that long to pour yourself a cup of water."
She looked him up and down, already certain that she was not going to enjoy her conversation with him. She eyed his black, bed-head hair. "You think I'm hiding…"
"You walked in here right before I was going to. I decided to wait until you were finished, but you've been taking forever, so I can only assume that you're in no rush to get back to the party." She didn't respond, but simply swished the water around in her cup. "I wouldn't blame you if you're bored." He continued. "And it doesn't help that we're stuck here from the snow."
She looked up at him. "Snow?"
He gave her a strange look and pointed at the window. "The white stuff falling from the sky…"
She hurried to the window to look out at the back porch. It was flurrying like crazy and had already piled up to a significant amount. "I didn't know it was snowing." She said, a small hint of worry in her voice. The last thing she wanted was to be stuck at some lame party all night. How had she not even noticed it up until now? She didn't even know the forecast had called for snow. "When did it start?" She asked him.
"I think a couple of hours ago."
"I should go." She rushed. Better to get home before it got even worse. She walked into the hallway, grabbed her coat from the pile next to the door, and prepared to trek out into the white wasteland. The icy wind that hit her as she opened the door caused her to gasp for breath and she instinctively huddled into her coat for warmth. The snow was coming down in such a flurry that she could barely see in front of her.
"Where do you live?" The boy asked from behind her. She hadn't noticed that he'd followed her to the door.
"About two miles away."
"You shouldn't drive in this." He sounded concerned as she stepped out onto the front porch.
"I walked here."
Raven pulled her phone out and dialed the only cab service in the local area. She had been planning on walking home too, but the idea of it now seemed almost unbearable. After a short chat with the cab service, she was informed that they weren't running cars at the moment due to the inclement weather. Go figure, she thought, I guess that's what I get for choosing to go to school in a small town. With no other options left, she zipped up her coat and started down the porch steps.
"Wait, wait! You're gonna freeze in this!" She heard him call out from behind her and she turned to look at him. "It's practically below zero out there!"
"I'll move fast."
Unsure of what to do, he began looking back and forth between her and the party, seemingly conflicted. Raven could hear the people inside yelling at him to close the door. "Just … wait there." He pointed at her.
He closed the door, leaving her alone outside for a few moments before he opened it again and came rushing out. His coat had been thrown on messily and he was still attempting to pull his shoe on all the way as he stumbled out to meet her. "Let me walk you home." He said to her.
"What, why?"
"Didn't anyone tell you that it's dangerous for a young woman to walk home alone at night?"
"Yes they did." She droned back. "They also told me to stay away from strangers."
He pointed a finger comically at his chest. "Me? A stranger? After that marvelous conversation we just had in the kitchen?"
Raven was cold. She wanted to go home and she wasn't falling for his gimmicks. "How do I know I can trust you?"
He seemed to think about it for a second. "I guess you can't." He smiled. "You can only take my word for it."
"Exactly."
He began hopping from foot to foot, the cold already seeping into his shoes. "Did anyone also ever tell you that you're kind of stubborn?"
"Look who's talking." She turned and began walking up the hill towards home. She didn't have to look to know that he was already following close behind.
"Alright, well maybe I won't walk you home." He mused as he stepped into the footprints she was leaving ahead of him. "Maybe I'll just decide to walk myself home at the same time."
Raven stopped in her tracks and turned to face him. "And just where do you live?" She asked, unconvinced.
"Up on Wilson Avenue—about a half mile from campus."
"That's not far from me." Her face fell even lower.
He clapped his hands together. "Then it works out perfectly. We're both headed in the same direction anyway." Raven gave him a wary look. "Look," he said, pulling out a wallet from his back pocket and sliding out a card, "here's my ID. Now you know my name, what I look like, and where I live. If I try anything funny, you can tell the cops exactly how to find me." He watched her inspect the card. "I'll even walk a few steps in front of you. But you shouldn't walk alone. Some of these neighborhoods get pretty sketchy at night, even for a small town."
She perused over his driver's license. Richard Grayson. He looked much younger in his photo, but it was him. He must have hit a growth spurt later on. "Alright, come on." She sighed and handed him back his ID. "I'm Raven."
"I'm Rob."
"You're ID said Richard."
"Yeah."
"So isn't Rob short for Robert?"
"In my case it's short for Robin." She cocked an eyebrow at him. "It's a pet name." He explained.
"Wow."
"That's awfully hypocritical coming from someone named Raven."
"…Ravens are smarter."
"Robins are nicer." He smirked.
They walked together in silence for a little while. The storm had lightened up, so they weren't being pummeled with snowflakes anymore, although the temperature remained drastically low. The snow had piled up so badly on Raven that her black hood was now almost fully white. Her breath was icy cold and it felt like her lips were going to crack.
"So do you still have finals?" He asked, attempting to keep his thoughts off the cold with some conversation.
"No, I finished a couple of days ago. I'm not going home for the holidays."
"Oh, why not?"
She was silent for a moment. "My father and I don't really see eye to eye."
"What about your mom?"
"She's not around anymore."
"Oh," His voice lowered to match the quietness of the snow around them. "I'm sorry."
"What about you?"
"My parents died when I was little, but I have an adoptive father."
"I meant about finals."
"Oh," He blushed, but his cheeks were already so red from the cold that he knew she couldn't tell. "No, I'm done with finals, but I have a job on campus that requires me to stay here a little longer than everyone else. I'm going home a little before Christmas."
"To your adoptive father?"
"Yeah."
"Where's that?"
"Gotham."
"Oh, so you're a big-city boy." She smirked.
"I guess so." He laughed and breath came out of his mouth like smoke. "Doesn't really feel like it though."
They crossed Main Street to continue on to another residential road. The crosswalk sign was red, but the town was so quiet that they were at the leisure to completely ignore it and cross anyway. The snow had piled up so much that they couldn't see any tire tracks on the street, just their footprints making holes in the white blanket covering the pavement.
"Hey, wait," he paused after they crossed the intersection, "you want to stop at Convenient?" He gestured towards the shop to this right. Raven shrugged her shoulders, which he took as confirmation before leading her inside.
Main Street Convenient was a 24hour convenient store that was great for late-night munchie runs. The store must have been the only place on the entire street that was still open. The florescent lights inside was perhaps the most visible thing they could make out in the storm. They bustled inside and Richard immediately pulled his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them together. There was no cashier in the room; he must have been in the back.
"I think my fingers and toes are going to fall off." Richard shivered.
"I know. I can feel the tips of my ears without touching them."
Richard walked over to the coffee machine in the corner of the store and began pouring himself a cup. "You want one?" He looked back at her, ripping open a sugar packet. "I thought we could use a pick-me-up before we start the home stretch."
"Alright." She nodded and he poured her a cup as well and handed it to her. "Thank you." She noticed the way his bright eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled at her. She emptied a packet of creamer into her cup and stirred it while they sat against the heater on the back wall. "I'm sorry you left the party for me." She started, keeping her eyes trained on the floor. "You know you really didn't have to do it—I don't think we've passed one other person since we've been walking."
"Yeah, I guess it's too cold even for the creeps. Why were you in such a rush to get home?"
"I just didn't want to spend the night there." She sighed. "I wasn't having fun."
"Yeah, I noticed." He laughed before taking a sip of his coffee. "You looked lonely as soon as you arrived."
She gave him an annoyed look. "What were you doing there?"
"I'm friends with one of the housemates."
"Oh." She felt suddenly guilty. "So you were probably having fun."
"No, not really. Getting high and playing video games is only so much fun when you're the only one still sober."
She nodded in response and they sat in silence for some time, taking turns sipping at their drinks. Raven could start to feel the numbness fade from her hands and feet and her ears were slowly starting to hurt less and less. She wasn't looking forward to going back outside just to experience the effects of the cold all over again. At least she wouldn't be alone.
"Why were you so adamant about walking me home?" She asked after a while. "My friends aren't even as worried about my safety as you seem to be."
He raised his head to look her in the eye with an expression Raven didn't quite know how to interpret. His gaze seemed to pierce through her and she felt suddenly like she couldn't move a muscle even if she tried. "I have a friend from home who was attacked walking down the street alone." He said somewhat matter-of-factly. "She's in a wheelchair now because of it."
"That's awful. I'm sorry."
He shrugged his shoulders solemnly. "I know I must have come off pretty strong about it before, but sometimes it's all I can think about." He downed the rest of his coffee and threw the paper cup in the trash. "Almost ready?" He asked nonchalantly as if he hadn't just changed the subject entirely.
She threw out her cup as well and followed him to the counter where he began pulling out his wallet again. "I got it." She stopped him and pulled out some crinkled singles from her pants pocket before placing them on the counter.
"Thank you." He smiled.
"You won't be when the cold seeps back into your shoes."
They left Convenient with a new sense of determination and continued on their journey. They didn't talk much for the rest of the walk. Both of them were starting to get seriously sick of the freezing atmosphere and focused their energies on walking as fast as they could through the piling snow. The downfall had picked up once again and had started to become very annoying in Raven's opinion. The wind and flakes attacked her face in an onslaught that made it hard for her to keep her eyes open for long periods of time. She pulled her hood down over her face a little more to try and block them, but had little success. Meanwhile, Richard could feel the bottoms of his jeans getting soaked through once again from the snow and his toes experiencing the same icy soreness from before. He felt grateful that Raven didn't happen to live too far from him so he wouldn't have to turn back around on another trek once he dropped her off. Next to him, he could start to hear Raven's teeth chattering and he turned to see her visibly shaking.
"We're almost there." He said in a way that came off as both a statement of encouragement and a hopeful question, and he felt relieved when Raven nodded silently in confirmation.
They turned onto her street and it wasn't long before Raven could make out the outline of her house. "It's there—that's the one." She pointed almost excitedly as if she had made some great discovery. By that time, getting home seemed near the equivalent of finding an oasis in the desert. Unable to stay patient, she began hopping through the snow in an attempt to run the remaining distance. Richard followed her lead and the two jogged clumsily down the sidewalk to her door. Raven fumbled with her keys for a moment or two before finally managing to unlock the door and scurry inside. When she turned to close the door, she found that Richard was still standing on the porch. "Come on, come on." She waved him in quickly.
"It's barely any better in here." He observed as she closed the door behind him.
Oh, yeah. She had forgotten about her heating problem. "My landlord turned the heat off."
"Jeeze, what'd you do to him?"
"Nothing." She defended. "He didn't realize I was still living here over the break."
"You can't just turn it back on?"
She shook her head. "It's not as simple as turning a thermostat. He's got to mess with the big thing down in the basement to turn it back on. I'm not supposed to touch it."
"I can look at it if you want."
"Really? You've kind of done enough already don't you think?"
"Show it to me."
Raven didn't bother arguing with him. He followed her down to the basement where she showed him the boiler and he began to inspect it. Raven tried to pay attention to what he was doing, but knowing that she wasn't going to be of the slightest help to him, she walked back upstairs and made him a cup of instant hot chocolate instead. When she brought it down to him, he was already tinkering with the controls. She handed him the mug and he took a second to look at it and smile. It had a little cartoon of a caterpillar with glasses and the words bookworm in cursive written below it.
"How do you know about this stuff?" She asked, trying to figure out what he was doing.
"I took a lot of engineering classes. You just kind of pick up on how things work."
"Are you an engineering major?"
"I was before I switched to criminology."
"Oh," she paused, "why the change?"
He stopped what he was doing and took his coat off so he could move around more freely. Raven watched him roll up his sleeves and could make out the outline of his muscles beneath the fabric of his shirt. "It just felt like a better fit." He told her. "I could probably make more money in engineering, but I just felt like maybe I was supposed to be doing something else."
"You think maybe what happened to your friend had something to do with it?" She asked carefully.
"Yeah … among other things." She gazed sympathetically at his back while he continued to tinker.
"And you?" He asked. "What are you studying?"
"I'm a double major in anthropology and literature."
"Nice. What do you want to do?"
"I don't know." She shifted. "I majored in them because I like learning about them, but I don't really know where I'm going with it. I don't seem to have the same sense of purpose that all my friends have."
"That's okay. Not everyone has to map out their own destiny."
"Yeah … still wish I didn't feel this lost though."
"You'll find it." He said simply but confident, and for some reason or another she believed him. At that moment the heater kicked back on with a roar and Raven sighed with relief. "Okay," he beamed, "I actually think I got it working." He took a sip of the hot chocolate she'd brought him.
"Thank you so much."
"Don't mention it." They climbed back upstairs and he pulled his coat back on over his broad shoulders.
"You don't have to leave right away, know you." She said, hoping she hadn't come off sounding desperate just then. "You can at least finish that if you want." She pointed to his mug.
"Thanks," he said gratefully, "but I should go. Kind of eager to change and crawl into bed if you know what I mean." She nodded in understanding. "Thanks for this." He handed her the mug and zipped up his coat.
"Wait, hold on." She sprinted away for a second before coming back with a red scarf and mittens. She handed him the mittens to put on and while she wrapped the scarf around his neck. Richard could tell they were homemade—the yarn still fluffy and new. "I know you don't have much farther to go, but it's the least I can give you."
"Thank you." He grinned genuinely at her and once again she noticed the crinkle in his eyes that made him seem so sincere.
"Keep them."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes." She waved. "I knit all this shit and then don't even wear any of it. You'd be doing me a favor."
He gave her one last smile before stepping out onto the porch. She moved to close the door behind him, but he turned at the last second. "You know," he said, "I would understand if you didn't want to, but my dad's house is pretty big. There's plenty of room if you'd like a better place to stay over the break."
It took her a moment to register what he was saying. "Are you inviting me to your house?"
He shrugged. "It's better than spending winter break alone in this empty town. Plus, Raven, I think your heater is practically shot. Just from looking at it, I don't think it's going to last you the entire break, and if it dies you're going to freeze to death in this house."
"I … I don't know." She wasn't sure how to respond. No one had ever invited her to stay with them for such a long period of time. Especially not during a holiday—and especially not from someone she had only just met. "Why are you doing this?"
"You seem like a nice girl. You don't deserve to be alone for the holidays." She didn't give him any kind of credible response, but instead gazed at him with a blank look on her face. "Just think it over." He told her. "I don't leave for another week and like I said, we have plenty of room."
"I'll think about it." She flushed.
"Good."
"Well … goodnight Robin." She tried out his nickname.
"Goodnight Raven. I'll see you around."
She closed the door slowly behind him and stepped to the window to watch him walk down the street towards his own house—his large figure huddled up from the cold, yet his gait and appearance still giving off an essence of strength. Could she really take him up on his offer? She liked Richard. He was surprisingly easy to talk to. And even with all the things they discussed over the course of the night, he was still a mystery to her. She was still curious and craved to know more about him. Perhaps it was because he was so nice to her when so many others were lacking in that trait. Or perhaps it was just because she found him handsome and she was allowing herself to get carried away by her emotions. She liked to think it was a combination of both. Either way, she knew that she would've liked to see him again, even if she'd never admit it out loud.
After his figure disappeared into the snowy landscape, Raven changed into her pajamas and brushed her teeth. She could already feel the heat circulating throughout the house. When she finally climbed into bed and squeezed her feet to warm her toes, she imagined Richard safe at home by that time, doing the same thing to his own feet. She thought of him as someone very different from her, and yet she couldn't help feel that they were alike in so many ways, even if she didn't have any evidence. She tried to convince herself to slow down and not get too caught up in the idea of him too quickly. He was just a man—with flaws like anyone else—and it wouldn't do her any good to mentally pursue her attraction to him so soon. She wasn't a naïve sap, she just didn't have a lot of experience dealing with these kinds of feelings, and never after a first encounter with someone. She decided that she would wait and see if she ran into him again. If they still seemed to get along like they had that night, then she would accept his offer and maybe then she could really get to know him. And maybe, with time, he could really get to know her too.
She closed her eyes, willing herself to go to sleep. She could reflect on this better in the morning. The last thing that flashed in her mind was the image of his lone figure walking away in the snowstorm.