The thing about California is that it sneaks up on you sometimes. At noon you'd expect heat and you'd expect the weather to be uncomfortable. Today, though, it was soft. California kissed Raven's cheek with a soft wind, and for once the world seemed very quiet. As a whole, it had gone silent to listen to what the empath would tell the changeling.
Jump City rocked on it's toes like an expectant child, eyes wide when she walked towards him as an answer to his silence.
Everyone but the two of them knew about this. Eyes were on them at all times. Maybe, maybe two years ago it hadn't been that much. It'd been friendly banter. But this was two years later and things had changed drastically.
Beast Boy, he thought about Raven right before he fell asleep. She was his goodnight kiss, he thought of the map of her face and an atlas of how her hair fell over her shoulders. What was so appealing was hard to pinpoint - maybe it was her distance, the fact that he would most likely never be able to trace his finger down the road of that map, press his face towards the crease of the atlas.
He had watched her in weak moments, played them over in his mind as his goodnight kiss. Moments where she admitted to herself that continuing to cut her hair was something to be bridled against. He saw the fabric of her cheeks rumpled when she woke up without sleep. Saw the deep ridges under her eyes, like forgotten valleys, when nightmares kept her up. He understood when she passed substantial food for tea - tea calmed a nervous stomach, food only mucked it up.
It was difficult, but Beast Boy never mentioned these things to Raven. In his mind, staying quiet was like making a compromise to her. It was a sort of promise, and maybe it would throw him in her good graces.
Sometimes he really hated that he wanted to be there so badly.
In two years, he had become taller than her. His wiry body grew a bit more wiry that first year, but his muscles finally caught up with his frame in the second. His hair was unmanageable, his nose sharp and his eyes emotive. That snaggle tooth, that fang, it finally was hidden in his jaw, only peaking out from his bottom lip when he smiled exceptionally.
In two years, Raven's hair was a few inches below her collarbone. She was still the same height, but her body had curved a bit more. She was still a petite girl, but compared to the Tamaranian stick, she was a stormy sea. Her faux-callousness had fallen down a bit, and she could be caught with an awkward smile now and then. Her eyes were deep and her fingers long, and spiderlike. Her joints were knobby and when Beast Boy smiled exceptionally, she let her hair fall in her face so she wouldn't have to see.
Beast Boy may have understood how he felt about her, but Raven kept her emotions locked up in the truest sense of the word. If she had feelings for him, they were trapped down in the maze of her mind and were being refused any acknowledgment.
That was how they both entered this moment.
Sitting next to him, she let the silence sit down too, a welcome third party between them. It lounged comfortably as Raven fished for what to say.
A few seagulls clamored on the rocks below.
She noticed Beast Boy's emotions were mixed. There was the scurrying fear again, like mice running around her feet and up her legs. Apprehension swooped in and out of the space between them, and there was some other emotion that was too shy and small to show it's head to Raven. It hid in the boy's sternum, and she didn't probe to see what it was.
"You know I can tell how you feel," she finally said, and the dustiness of her voice had gone away. "You might as well tell me why you feel that way."
Her blatantness surprised Beast Boy, and he wished he knew why. He turned over an introspective, new leaf for life, but that didn't increase his brain capacity at all. He didn't know himself very well, and sometimes he suspected he hid as much as Raven did.
She didn't like to share about herself, but maybe if he let his tongue fall out of his mouth then she would do the same.
Thoughts for goodnight kisses seemed empty and he would like words to match with them.
"You know... It's just..." he made a fist with his hand, put it on his knee. His eyes were closed, "I'm an animal, Rae." His voice was as small as the scurrying fears, and she rolled her eyes at the nickname.
Their teammates could get away with calling her that (even an occasional Rae-Rae from Cyborg) but she held Beast Boy to different standards.
"I'm an animal, animals like sure things - solid things. They like familiarity, you know, they like earth stuff."
She was tempted to make a comment about how he was so good at conveying his thoughts, but she bit her tongue. He was opening himself up to her, voluntarily anyway. She already knew exactly how he felt before he spoke, but it was nice to hear his words.
"These things give me the total creeps, dude." A bit of his comedic side was coming out with the 'dude'. Being serious made him nervous and nervousness made him fearful so he'd decided to nip that in the bud. Beast Boy gave himself fake shivers and let one eye slit open to see Raven's reaction.
She noticed, and cracked a diminutive smile for his benefit.
"He just pulled the desert right out of asphalt, and that portal was trippy. To say the least." His smile was brighter now, not an exceptional smile, but a nice one. He sighed, after.
"It's scary. Just knowing that they're from somewhere else and I mean," he placed his hand on the back of his neck, looked at his ankles. "I know we've dealt with baddies from all over the universe but we always knew something about them. And I wasn't comfortable then, either..." he trailed off, but there was another thing waiting on the tip of his tongue.
He knew he didn't have to say it.
I'm afraid.
"Cy's half robot, Star's an alien and Robin just has no self-preservation. I feel like I'm the only one with my tail between my legs."
He left the girl next to him out on purpose; she was half demonic, she herself was that tear to another planet. She had harnessed numerous rips to everywhere.
These two were her element, she mused.
Raven made a life changing decision in that moment, and let her smile grow wide. Beast Boy turned, and laughed a little. He was thinking that smiling like that was a foreign thing for the empath and he didn't even know her muscles could exercise themselves together to make a shape that even resembled a smile.
(But he liked it.)
"You didn't count me," she said softly, and the words were not the accusation he had already braced himself for, "and arguably, I'm the same as these two. So, what's so scary about that? They're a lot like me."
She had meant to be comforting, but all the sudden Beast Boy broke into a jagged grin and his laughter exploded from his lungs. She frowned as he held his sides together and leaned over the edge of the tower. He was laughing so heavily he couldn't catch his breath again.
Kind person that she is, Raven swatted him harshly on the back. Beast Boy wheezed out a breath as his arms flew out and about for balance. Inevitably, he fell off the ledge, but soon swooped back up as a crow. He landed next to her before shifting back.
"Rude much?" Laughter tugged at his words, and Raven just glared at him. "No offense Rae, but you're probably the most terrifying thing ever. For your sweet sixteen, the world ended."
That nickname again.
His tone changed then. "You're the most powerful person on the team," he looked down and suddenly was very sheepish, "the most powerful person ever, probably."
Raven was still perturbed, and furrowed her brow.
"With the way you talk to me though, clearly you aren't afraid. I'd blast you to Chicago and back with one more sly comment." Typical eye roll.
That fear though, it was already very far from his mind. To the public, he was one of the best and the brightest, but to her Beast Boy was as dense as a brick. This time was no different. Fear had finally scurried away, silence was long gone and the emotion that had buried itself between Beast Boy's ribs was swelling bigger and it made her feel seasick.
"You're totally scary, though." He'd inched closer to her, and she stared at him dubiously.
All at once she regretted her thirst for kindness and every word she had said because it was Raven's turn to be afraid and he was closer and she was suffocating. A fish out of water, her heart flopped uselessly in her chest, splaying it's gills that hardly felt. A rush to her brain, this is not okay.
This was the reason she kept her eyes closed at nights. There was a fire behind her navel, a full moon where her third eye should be and she was always very, very afraid. His snoring calmed her down but his regular breathing sped her up and he was very close now. Her thoughts ran onto each other like a tragic intersection collision. Every organ in her body was a casualty.
Bump, bump, bump. Her heart was the chaotic motor, the one that had turned everything else into wrecked metal and anguished screams.
He was lucky there was almost nothing to break, but very unlucky that he was the one thing she could've broken. Everything was reined in suddenly though, and Raven chided herself knowing that she had almost let everything run wild and amuck.
There may have to be another visit with Knowledge and Wisdom and more answers that she already knew to questions she didn't have to ask.
Beast Boy's eyes were opened, and he studied her cautiously, knowing that she was about to clamor away. What he didn't know was that his clumsy fingertips had already grazed her hidden heart and she hated him for it.
"We should pack then, if you're not scared." Her voice was a dry challenge, and she stood up abruptly. His eyes scanned her's worriedly, hurriedly, trying to take in all that he could before she disappeared again. The raven's shadow folded over her again and casually, easily, she fell through the floor to her own room.
There went his pumpkin carriage and his princess; she hadn't even left a shoe for him.
Silence sat back down next to the shapeshifter, and he let out a trademark, anguished teenager sigh.
A/N:
So I really hadn't planned on having two chapters posted today (I'd feel really bad if you guys expected me to update like this all the time and then I let you down!) but I was in a totally blissed out mood and find writing scenes like this pretty easy so I just sat down and went to work.
Most people who've read my writing remark that I lend a daydream-esque appeal to what I present. It wasn't evident in the previous chapters, but it probably is here. I like writing stuff like this, and I tried very hard to be true to their characters. Woooo. I just comfort myself knowing that this pairing is endgame. Otherwise all this would probably make me want to pull my hair out.
Useless author's note as always!