I can't believe this came out of my mind. But, well…It's a gift for Sylver, who is the queen of crack!ships. And it just so happens that I had a headache and needed some way to fit something to the word "Rope." So, yeah, it's probably OOC and yeah, it would probably never happen.
Bu this is what I thought of – so I took it and ran.
Be afraid, loves. Be very afraid.
--
Prompt #15: Rope
Suggested by Tennisgal495
(And also a gift for SylverEyes, who will never be without some kind of crack!ship. :D)
--
"Well, Star, I think we've definitely reached the conclusion that you're…er…flea-free."
"Yes, I believe so."
"They're definitely not on your stomach."
"No, nor my arms. And the tiny insect invaders are most certainly not located on my feet."
"But…you know…I don't think we've checked…everywhere…"
A pause.
"I believe I quite enjoy this 'checking' business."
"Right back at you."
"In fact, I believe we should have started much, much earlier."
"Oh, yeah."
--
Raven was roused with a poke.
It was not simply a poke, though. No, it was far more violent than that. A poke signified annoyance, or amusement, or in very rare cases, an I-really-really-really-need-to-pee-so-can-we-please-stop-listening-to-depressing-poety-about-heathen-idols-and-go-kneel-in-front-of-the-white-ceramic-god-of-the-latrine-instead?
This was like being jabbed in the side with a broom handle, she mused groggily, before the sharp pain in her side came again.
"Uhn," Raven mumbled into her pillow, shifting away from the broomstick-handle-thing instinctively.
"Raven?" The voice was high, trilling. "Are you rejuvenated?"
Raven mumbled something that sounded like "leemee uh luhn" into the comforter of her bed.
The whatever-it-was dug into her rib cage for the third time, and she finally mustered up enough irritation to crack her bleary eyes open. Starfire's fiery hair swam into view, her eyes wide and slightly terrified in her heart-shaped face. Her finger was poised to poke Raven again, and Raven immediately knew that she was going to be sporting some lovely bruises the next day.
"Raven, I am aware that you do not like to be woken so early in the day, but I found myself in need of a 'girl talk'," Starfire whispered. She dug her long, thin fingers into Raven's comforter, the charcoal gray contrasting strangely with the smooth orange of her skin.
Raven hoisted herself up on one elbow, figured that she was far too exhausted to maintain that position for any length of time, and sighed, flopping back onto the bed. She dropped a throw pillow over her face, shielding her sensitive eyes from the light streaming through the windows. "Can this wait, Star? I was up all night – I think Silkie went insane last night because he kept thumping against the walls of your room."
There was a pause.
"Um…Raven…this is what I…wish to speak to you…about."
Another sigh.
Raven stifled a jaw-cracking yawn and pulled the covers over her head, her mind foggy from tiredness. "Did Silkie get into the Zorkaberries again?" she mumbled, and yawned again.
"No…"
There was a thick silence.
Raven peeked out from under the covers, her eye a slit of liquid among the blankets. "Is something wrong, Star?" The alien's emotions were twisted – she couldn't make head or tails of them.
Starfire hugged one of Raven's pillows to her chest and buried her face in it. Her words came out muffled – but far, far too clear for comfort.
"Do you remember the time we conversed about…physical…relations?"
The tiredness evaporated from Raven's brain. She removed the pillow from her head, eyes narrowing sharply in her pale face – and then the realization of the words hit her like a baseball bat to the face.
"No," she whispered, her mouth dropping open.
Starfire shifted awkwardly, but a smile broke out on her face. "Yes."
"No."
"Yes!" Starfire cried triumphantly, her face glowing.
No. Freaking. Way.
They sat like that for a while, Raven's heartbeat loud in her ears. Finally she stirred, coughed, and sat up slightly in the bed. "I can't believe I'm asking you this, Star..." She shook her head slightly, her dark eyes incredulous that this absolutely pathetic, clichéd sentence was about to come out of her mouth.
"Well...who'd you do?"
A small giggle escaped Starfire's mouth.
--
"Guys, you're not going to believe this."
There was a dramatic pause in which Cyborg and Robin looked up from dismantling the DVD player in the living room to see Beast Boy, slouching against the doorframe, looking far, far too pleased with himself.
"Best. Night. Ever."
--
"You didn't."
Starfire giggled again, the sound slightly hysterical, if overjoyed.
Raven scooted farther up in bed, her back pressed against the headboard. She smiled slightly, then looked furious at herself, and then let her face fall into a shocked expression.
"You and...Beast Boy?"
Starfire looked as if she were about to die from happiness. "Yes!" she squealed, accidentally hovering a few feet in the air from joy.
Raven blinked, amazed. "How did...how...how did that even...happen?"
Starfire shrieked with joy, then calmed herself and gave Raven a death hug. "Oh, friend, we were checking our skin for fleas after our out-camp..." She squealed again.
Oh. Yes. The camp-out. Raven did remember, now – they had been organizing it for weeks.
Starfire cartwheeled in midair a few times before bringing her hands to her face and laughing giddily, and then, oddly enough, her heart soaring for her soul sister's happiness, Raven found that it was all she could do to not laugh along with her.
--
Beast Boy sprawled out over the couch with all the arrogance of a king. Which, in fact, he was – at least in Robin and Cyborg's eyes.
"I can't believe it," Robin muttered, his entire face awed.
Cyborg nodded fervently. "BB got the girl."
They looked at each other, eyes wide, and then said together, "BB got the girl."
Beast Boy grinned, altogether too pleased with everything in his life.
Robin adjusted his position on the couch. "I can't believe I'm about to ask you this..." His face flushed slightly, but Cyborg nudged him in the ribs. Robin seemed to draw inner strength from the deepest, darkest corner of his soul, and he closed his eyes, eyebrows pulling together intently.
"So...how was it?"
--
Fifteen minutes later, Starfire seemed to have burned off most of the giddy energy, and Raven found her voice.
"You're...okay, right?" She eyed Starfire anxiously, half-afraid that the girl – no, she was a woman now, Raven reminded herself – was hurt somehow.
Starfire shook her head joyfully and smiled, clasping Raven's hands. "I am well. Better than well. I am...glorious." A shining smile. "But...thank you, friend. You are being so very kind."
The alien's eyes watered from happiness and she gave a soggy sort of giggle. "I...I...I'm just so happy," she whispered, and the glow on her face made every critical word on Raven's tongue vanish as quickly as sand on the wind.
But she couldn't help but ask.
"It was...that good?" she asked, unable to keep the disbelieving note out of her voice. (It was Beast Boy, for Azar's sake! Beast Boy! Beast Boy wasn't supposed to be good! He was supposed to be the little kid of the group!)
There was a silence.
The glow faded from Starfire's face and her eyebrows scrunched together, her voice confused. "The first time...I...do not know." She looked at her hands, vivid green eyes puzzled. "It was...strange," she said slowly. "One moment I thought to myself, 'Kori'ander, this is it! This is what all of the talks have been about! This is what all of the excitement is about!' And then the next second, I had no thoughts at all."
Another silence, this one longer.
Raven looked bewildered. "I don't think you did it right."
--
Back in the living room, there was a charged silence before Beast Boy laughed. "How was it? Oh, man. It was..."
He stopped at the expressions on his friends' faces. They didn't want him to spill his guts about his feelings. They didn't want him to tell them that he was totally blissed out, or that he wanted to sprint over to Star's room and get down on one knee and beg for her to marry him and ride off into the sunset with her – or something cheesy like that – or even that he was absolutely, indescribably, unspeakably happy.
They wanted short, simple, and to-the-point.
At least, that was what they said they wanted. Their posture told it all: They wanted the physical, not the emotional. They were hanging on the edge of their seats, ready for a blow-by-blow, no-adjective-too-colorful, give-us-the-dirty-details guy talk.
And so, with a grin hovering around his face, he decided to torment them.
Beast Boy stretched luxuriously and propped his head up on his elbow, staring at them with a grin that refused to go away. "It was...well, you know," he drawled, eyes glittering mischievously, and then he did could do nothing but laugh when they belted him with the sofa cushions.
--
Starfire let the frown melt off her face. "But that was only the first time," she said brightly. "I believe it was truly on the second that we...how do you say it? Hit our stride."
Raven sighed. "How many times, Star?"
Starfire twisted her long fingers together and looked at the chipped pink nail polish on them, smiling. "Thrice," she giggled, the wide smile on her face deliriously happy.
"Well, that's not that bad..."
--
"Six. Times."
Cyborg and Robin gaped for a second at each other, then turned their awed eyes on Beast Boy again.
"I didn't know he had it in him," Robin mumbled into Cyborg's ear.
"I didn't know his hardware had it in him," Cyborg muttered back, and then they both collapsed into a fit of laughter.
--
Raven looked at Starfire appraisingly, and judged that she was emotionally stable enough for a question-and-answer session. She squirmed deeper into the covers and, involuntarily, a blush crept up her neck. "So...Star...Are you going to tell me all of the..." She swallowed hard, willing herself to say the words, even if it was just for the sake of Star's happiness.
"...scandalous details?"
Starfire adjusted the long white nightgown she was wearing, looking mortified as she stared at the white cotton covering her lap. "Well...there was some rope involved..."
Raven started choking.
Starfire instantly looked both terrified and guilty and started banging her on the back, alternately screeching "Breathe, Raven, breathe!" and muttering long strings of Tamaranian that might or might not have been suitable for young children to hear.
--
Beast Boy was halfway through describing the intricate procedure of blindfolding when he was interrupted with some of the loudest shrieks he'd ever heard in his life – and they were coming from Raven's room.
"YOU WHAT?!"
"It only occurred during the second time, Rav – oh, X'Hal, put your head between your knees!"
There was a shell-shocked silence for a second or two before Cyborg snickered into his hands. "Looks like your woman's spilling the beans, BB."
Robin grinned and rested his hands on his knees, pointing his chin towards the door. "Might want to go check out the damage," he said teasingly, before his words were swallowed by a giant black hand encasing the living room door and flinging it to the side with an almighty crash. Raven, eyes wild, hair tangled around her flushed face, stood in the doorway, her chest heaving with exertion.
"Beast Boy –"
"RUN!" Cyborg yelled before he and Robin collapsed into another fit of laughter.
Beast Boy took one look at the furious Raven, her hair sheathed in a crackling sheet of black power that made it stand on end, and glanced past her to see Starfire waving timidly at him as she peeked around the demolished doorway.
He felt a giant wave of affection rise up in his chest and blew a kiss to her, grinning when she pursed her rosy lips and blew one right back.
And then, as they all heard a glass tinkling to the ground (presumably from a broken window somewhere), he wisely took his friends' advice and ran, the sounds of crashing, Raven-borne objects and laughter floating in his ears.
And even as he morphed into an eagle and flew as quickly as he could across the bay, he felt a giant smile spread across his feathery face, tinged with the sound of a giggle in his ears and widened by the thought that, despite Raven's best intentions for her soul sister, he and Star were going to have all night, and all day, and…who knew?
Maybe they'd have forever.
--
Merry Christmas, Sylver. :D
