Wow, this one's rough. I didn't really know what to do with this one, so it's kind of random and weird.
This is the most snapshot-type one yet—it really is just a scrap. I wanted to make a whole oneshot out of this, but I have an absolutely INSANE workload to finish before school starts on Monday. You wouldn't believe how much work. The idea wouldn't leave me alone, though, so I just kind of squeezed out something random and fast between the commercial breaks of the Olympics.
Since it's rough, I didn't establish what was going on. Background info: The mayor of Jump wanted all the Titans to come up with some inspirational stuff/words of wisdom, which they would later present in a speech for the kids of Jump. Speedy and Raven are at Titans West, bouncing ideas for their quotes off of each other.
Again, it's rough. But I seriously need to make a dent on that work.
Also...Thank you so much for your wonderful reviews, everyone! I love you guys to death. And I promise that at the end of this rainbow mini-series, I have a super-special surprise for you guys. Since, you know, you're awesome.
P.S: Thanks to Tim for letting me steal his phrase 'fem-Nazi'. Not that I actually asked, of course. But whatever…
Love and cupcakes,
--Phina
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Prompt #11: Green
"Here's one," Speedy called over to Raven, who was making tea in the kitchen. "'Don't be afraid of failure. Even I failed once in my life, and look how I turned out!'"
Raven snorted. "Way to show the little kiddies how to be modest, Speedy. I'm sure their parents will be just tickled when their offspring come home even more egotistical than you." She glided out of the kitchen, bearing a tray with two teacups on it. He accepted one with a nod of thanks. Looking down—green tea: fragrant, cloudy and a little sad, like the smell of damp leaves burning in fall.
Hmm. Suspicious? Or not?
He was comfortable enough with Raven (for Christ's sake, they were both Titans, after all), but they had been bantering for over an hour now, and he wasn't quite sure if he trusted her to not poison his tea. Even as a joke. She did have a sense of humor, after all. It was just…subtle.
Was poisoning a teammate's tea subtle?
Hmm.
He just wouldn't drink it; that was all. Even if Raven looked like she was actually enjoying hers, curled carefully at the end of the couch, slowly sipping it while leafing through her notepad thoughtfully.
The silence made him nervous, so he interrupted it. "Okay, okay, I got another one." Speedy harrumphed a little—his voice was starting to break (barely noticeable!) but it was enough to make Raven smirk every now and then—and shook out the scrap of paper he had been doodling on. "How's this: 'Winning isn't everything: the person who has the most fun really wins.' Profound, yeah?"
Raven graced him with another snort and flicked past another page of her notebook. "Could you be any cornier? You're making Beast Boy look like he's of an average IQ right now."
He laughed and glanced down at his pad of paper again. "Okay, here's a good one. What about, 'Life's a bastard and then you die'?"
Raven frowned a little. "Who says life's a guy?"
"Who says it isn't?"
"Mother Nature's a woman," she shot back, and Speedy couldn't help but grin.
"Fine, fem-Nazi. 'Life's a bitch and then you die'. Happy?"
She gave him her vampire smile—that cold, creepy one, the one that had Dr. Light begging for mercy whenever he saw it. "Enough to jump over the moon." She sipped from her teacup, posture angular, movements graceful. And when she let the smile slip away, carefully arranging her face into a composed mask again, he felt the sudden urge to see her smile again.
She noticed him staring at her. The defensive walls came up—her posture tensed, her face closed off, and she subconsciously moved away from him on the couch to perch on the arm of the sofa. The arms crossed.
Like a wounded animal. Never trusting.
He felt a pang of sadness. That she had to be this way. That she couldn't just sit on a couch with a teammate and not feel threatened.
To lighten the mood, he pulled another quote at random from his notepad. "What about this one? 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. If you fail again, hire someone to do it for you.'" He looked back up at her, grinning, and was relieved to see a tiny smirk playing at the corner of her mouth.
"Gee, Speedy. You sure know how to set an example for the 'future of Jump City'." Her fingers formed graceful air quotes in the air.
Speedy looked genuinely wounded, at least for a second. "Fine, smartass—tell me one of yours." He settled back on the couch and thumped his steel-toed boots on top of the table, accidentally kicking the remote to the floor in the process.
Her posture immediately tensed again, as if she were withdrawing into herself. She pulled her cloak tighter around her body. "I don't have any."
He returned her snort from earlier. "Come on, Raven—we've been at this for an hour and a half and you don't have anything? You're a worse procrastinator than Aqualad when it's his turn to clean out the fridge."
Raven shifted, just slightly. Maybe she was just uncomfortable from her precarious perch on the sofa arm, or maybe she was—dare he think it—actually embarrassed?
"Fine," she snapped, and he wondered if he had maybe been imagining the embarrassment. Her dark eyes scanned her notebook, glancing over the words so quickly that she couldn't possibly be reading them, could she? "'Don't date someone unless you're going to marry them. And if you do, then make sure they're the person you really want.'"
He couldn't help it—he laughed. A lot. "What was that?" he managed to gasp between chuckles. "Words of wisdom on the subject of dating? Do you know this little pearl because of your fantastic track record of significant others?"
Her eyes turned cold, and the hint of a snarl curled the corner of her mouth. "And this is coming from a man who obviously has so many successful relationships under his belt. Exactly how did Donna break up with you again? Wasn't it something along the lines of her throwing you out of your apartment into the snow and then screaming back at you that she was having an affair with your roommate anyway?"
Whoa.
Wait—hold up.
Did she just…was that…did he hear that…was that really…did she really just say that?
His eyes widened in shock even as his fingers clenched so hard around the tiny handle of the cup that a small crack appeared on the glazed surface.
Yeah. She did.
That stung. That stung like hell.
It was a sarcastic comment at best. But it hurt even more because Raven had actually gotten it right.
Raven.
The only one on the whole frickin' team that was supposed to know when to stop.
Speedy dropped his eyes and turned back to the sheet of paper, pretending to scrawl something down on it. He took a sip of the tea to distract himself, forgetting that he wasn't supposed to, and felt the sad taste of autumn leaves whispering inside of him. Reminding him. Taunting him.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Raven's expression soften, and a flicker of regret flitted past her face.
"I'm sorry, Speedy. That was cruel of me."
"Nah, it's cool," he said breezily, playing it off as one of those blasé, I-don't-give-a-crap, rip-out-my-heart-and-tear-me-to-shreds-with-your-eyes-to-see-if-I'm-alive kind of moments. But the mood of the room had changed, and if he could sense it, then Raven definitely could. It was charged, now: the sharp—if playful—banter had been erased by something bigger. Something badder. Something he still didn't want to think about, even years after the fact.
He knew it was just her defense mechanism—he insulted her, so naturally she fired back.
But it didn't stop the hurt.
He glanced down at the eggshell cup in his hands, looking down at the cloudy green of the tea, and watched numbly as the green surface shimmered with his painfully beating heart.