This is a completely unrelated one-shot.
. . .
Game of Riddles
. . .
Raven really didn't know why she persisted in reading in the shared space of the Tower, in the most commonly visited room. The room where she was most likely to be disturbed from her literary trance. The room least likely to offer her silence and peace.
On days when the world without was quiet (read: devoid of villainous activity) she would find herself yearning to soak up a story like she had done during her youth. When she picked up whatever book she felt like perusing she would always begin in her room. By the window, angling her pages toward the light. Naturally she would gravitate toward the bed, where she would click on the lamp as the sun sank lower and she realized she was squinting her eyes to see. Sometime around then on her 'reading days' there would come obnoxious pounding sounds on her door, accompanied by one or more of her friends with news of dinner or invitations to activities she had no interest in, which she would politely decline more often than not.
Except when the caller was Beast Boy, who accounted for an overwhelming seventy percent of the interruptions. Then she would answer with a stiff and decisive "NO" — although the actual words varied depending on his question. They all translated to no, which he never took for her final answer.
Sometime around her second year living in the tower, she discovered there was a way to subvert Beast Boy's unrelenting misunderstanding of her willful solitude. If she brought her reading outside her room, well then, there was nowhere for him to knock.
However, she quickly learned that simply being outside her room wouldn't shut him up.
"What are you reading?"
"Wanna do something?"
"Are you still reading that same book?"
"What do you mean you're reading it AGAIN?"
After he exhausted her small store of patience, she would retreat to her room, making sure he knew why.
But after that he would always come knocking, again, this time quietly and with an apology on his lips. It was infuriating that he could be so annoying and yet so easy to forgive.
And he'd be back the next day as well, knock knock knocking with unending vigor. God, where did he unearth all that boundless energy?
So after the daylight dimmed and she clicked her lamp on, she would read a bit more, stalling. She would glance out at the city and notice the lights had begun to shine out from the skyscrapers, and that she could see Venus hovering over the bay on her astral perch below the waxing moon. Then, with a sigh, she would click off the bedside lamp and migrate to the common room, where the light was far brighter, and pretend that lighting was the only thing that had brought her out here.
Everyone else left her alone while she read; Raven assumed it was because they valued their lives. Beast Boy must not have valued his own very much. She thought that mean thought to herself one night when he was pawing at her feet with the paws of a Doberman, begging her to stop reading and join them for movie night. At first she began to laugh but hastily caught herself. That wasn't funny. What an awful thing for her to think! She abruptly snapped her book shut, and announced she would be joining the team on the couch and requested they make room.
Everyone was pleased, but none so pleased as Beast Boy.
The first time he genuinely tried to get interested in what she was reading, she brushed him off.
The second time, she brushed him off.
The third time she snapped at him. "What do you care? It's not as if you're actually interested in it."
"Maybe I could get interested if you would freakin' let me," he sulked.
So it went that when she clicked off her lamp and brought her book out into the vaulted room, down the sunken steps to her spot on the couch where the light was best, Beast Boy would be there, wondering what she was reading. She couldn't say with all honesty that she hated it; in truth, she was touched that he cared so relentlessly, enough to risk raising her ire, and knew it was only Beast Boy's strange own way of being a friend.
But she also couldn't say in honesty that it didn't bug the crap out of her.
Couldn't he just accept that while she had a place in her heart for friends, there was a different place for stories? That she needed these stories with the same intensity that she needed to eat and sleep and meditate? She valued his friendship and she would never phrase it this way to his face, but there was no video game, no movie, no joke, no anecdote, no anything he could possibly say that would be as valuable to her psyche as finishing this goddamn story.
.
.
"Dragons, huh?"
Raven pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. "Must you read over my shoulder? You know I loathe that."
"I'm not," he shot back with a hint of pride. "I recognize the title. Game of Riddles. That book is about dragons."
Refusing to show her surprise (he just knew he had impressed her because her eyebrow quirked!) she dug her nose back in the book. "So it is."
"You, uh... You like those kinds of books?" He wasn't giving up so quickly today. This was a rare opening and, by Jove, he was taking it.
Raven peered over the top of the book as he slid around the side of the couch to take a seat on the footrest facing her, barely outside her personal bubble. She gave him her best What did I say about small talk when I'm reading look, which he blatantly ignored.
"You know, they made a video game based off that book." For some crazy reason this made him blush, and he found himself unable to meet her eyes. "It's one of those games I'm always trying to get you to play with me... I really think you'd like it, y'know."
"I hardly like when my favorite novels are butchered for the sake of entertainment."
"Butchered?" Beast Boy exclaimed, startling her back an inch as he leapt from his seat, arms waving frantically. "Butchered? Dude, you would not be saying that if you'd just play the game. Man, the part where the dragon tells his riddle when Jei is stuck in the cave? It took me seriously forever to figure out that the answer was a ki—"
"AH—nnng!" Raven went from annoyed and flapping her hands to wide eyed and terrified at light speed, and then just as quickly became embarrassed and slapped her hands over her mouth.
Beast Boy paused, halfway between concern and amusement. "Uhh.."
Raven groaned, slamming her book down on her lap (while careful to keep one hand tucked inside to mark her page). "I haven't figured out the answer yet!"
Oh. "I see. You don't want me to give it away."
She didn't take kindly to the mischievous grin spreading across his face. "If you give it away I will personally see to it that your tofu has a date with the garbage disposal. Every day for a year."
"Yikes, Rae," he scolded, as if she'd offended his honor, "you know I wouldn't do that."
"Wouldn't you?" She crossed one leg over the other in a manner he could almost (almost) call sassy. It was very hard to keep his eyes uplifted at her face when in his peripheral vision the entirety of her long silken legs came into view as her cloak fell to the side.
"No," he reiterated, actually a bit offended this time. "And take away the satisfaction of figuring it out? What am I, a monster?"
"So if you don't mind..." Raven raised her book between them again. The ornate shield illustrated below the title on the cover seemed to mock Beast Boy and all his efforts. "I'd really like to figure this riddle out, because I can't move on until I do. I've been stuck on this chapter for two days."
He was about to ask her why she wouldn't just read the answer, since it was, you know, written into the next chapter, but thankfully he stopped himself. It was obvious why. She wanted to figure it out herself. There was nothing more satisfying than figuring out a puzzle that was troubling you.
Speaking of puzzles...
"Hey, can—can I, uhm...ask you... something?"
All the confidence he'd been building up for the last couple weeks fizzled out with a snap, crackle, pop when Raven looked up at him with genuine curiosity. She blinked a few times, and he felt oddly exposed under the intensity of her gaze, naked, like she was reading his mind. Even though he knew she couldn't do that, his heart skipped a beat. She was putting in her bookmark (success!) and setting her book aside on the couch cushion. Beast Boy finally had Raven's full attention.
He was not as ready for her full attention as he thought.
His real question died in his throat and what came out instead was: "Have you heard this one before?"
Before she could object he rattled it off. "The moonlight wrenched from Neptune's lair, of radiant sheen beyond compare." He'd had to play this one level (from a different game, one with less dragon and more wizard) a thousand times so he had effectively memorized every line from the cut-scene. She was about to interrupt him but he was determined to finish. "A teardrop of cumulus, gentle form, keeper of memories of sea and storm."
Interest sparkled in Raven's eyes. She thought for a moment before speaking. "No, I haven't. That's a good one. Give me a second to think on it." Beast Boy sat silent for an agonizing two minutes, until his fidgeting fledged into downright impatience. "Hold your horses," Raven berated. "I'm humoring you here, so the least you can do is have some patience. I didn't realize you were so interested in riddles anyway."
The inflection on her last statement raised like a question, so he smiled his wry smile and have her a half-answer. "Riddles are cool. They're kinda like jokes."
"Or... not at all like jokes."
Beast Boy seethed, puffing out his bottom lip. "Are you gonna answer or what?"
"It's a diamond."
"EHT, try again."
Only a small twitch betrayed her irritation. "A... star. The North Star?"
"Try harder. You want a hint?" he teased.
"No," she scoffed. "I know the answer. A keeper of memories—it's obviously some sort of container.. But Neptune implies relation to the sea. Maybe a vessel of some kind?" Idly she tapped her finger on her lip while she murmured to herself, her eyes scanning the distant ceiling like she'd forgotten Beast Boy was there. For some reason he grew more and more flustered the longer she pondered. "A teardrop. So it's tiny... But it holds memories? And it shines, like the moon..."
"As cute as this is," Beast Boy teased, ignoring the flash of danger in her eyes, "can I please give you a hint?"
"Fine." Raven threw her hands up, knocking the book askew and dislodging her bookmark. She didn't seem to notice at all. "Just give me a hint already. It's driving me nuts."
Fighting back a snicker, Beast Boy nodded eagerly. Then with the blink of an eye he shifted into one of the silliest things he'd ever shifted into. There he was, tiny and ridiculous on the gray footrest in the middle of the tower, a small green clam, dry and tightly closed and very out of place in the middle of their living room.
He had no ears or eyes in this form, so he never knew that Raven picked him up and turned her over in her palm to get a good look at him.
For all her feigned disinterest, she couldn't say his powers didn't fascinate her. For the life of her Raven couldn't imagine where his mind went to at times like these. She wondered if he knew what was going on in the world without. If he knew who she was—if he even knew who he was. At that thought a strange surge of sadness washed over her, alien and distant, like a seagull lost in the middle of the sea, and she had to quickly squash it with other weaker feelings.
The first to rear its head was innocent curiosity, so she went with that. She ran her finger over the curve of the clam's opening (she really couldn't bring herself to think of the clam as Beast Boy) and idly wondered if it had a pearl inside.
Raven grew suspicious of the way the calm shot open when her fingers touched it, and allowed herself to toy with the possibility that Beast Boy was somehow aware she was there, even without his ears and nose and eyes.
On the inside was a single shimmering pearl. Dark, more the color of crystallized ash than the white of a full moon, and imperfectly rounded—but the pearl caught the light of the lamp behind her and for a split second she saw her own reflection etched on the side, upside down and infinitely small. Angling the clam closer to the light, she examined the shape of her silhouette in the glistening surface, bringing it closer and closer to her face without realizing what she was doing.
Maybe that was where his memories were. Maybe that was where he recognized her. And then, only because she knew he couldn't see her, she allowed herself one fleeting smile before snapping the clam closed.
Wait a minute.
She threw the clam down on the footrest, where it bounced twice before twisting midair and becoming the boy who gave her so much trouble. "Pearl!" she exclaimed, pointing at him like a madman. "The answer is a pearl!"
Beast Boy radiated glee. He wasn't sure why but he felt a little fuzzy, as if Raven had dunked him in carbonated water while he'd been a mindless little clam. Without quite knowing what else to say, his hand migrated to the back of his neck.
Raven seemed to realize her outburst and quickly drew her cloak tightly to herself, as if covering her skin would also cover up the emotion she'd let slip through. She seemed just as lost for words as he was, because she awkwardly avoided his gaze and picked her book back up, bringing the leather binding and the illustration of a shield between them once more.
Beast Boy heaved a sigh of ultimate disappointment. It was obvious this conversation was now over.
But when he passed the arm of the couch as he took his leave, he felt Raven's fingers brush the side of his arm expectantly. He stopped dead in his tracks. She was still buried in her book, but now she was drumming her fingers nervously on the arm of the couch. He raptly watched them as she cleared her throat. Was she blushing?
"Do you think you could..." She squeezed her eyes shut as she gathered the willpower to overcome her pride. "Could you give me a hint for the answer to the dragon's riddle too?" When Beast Boy didn't answer, and didn't move, she took it as a sign he didn't understand. "The one the dragon poses to Jei when he's trapped in the cave, after the rock slide. I... I just can't get it."
Beast Boy's brain was melting out through his feet. There had to be some way out of this one...
He barely refrained from making a terrified eep noise when Raven craned her neck around to look up at him where he still stood frozen like a petrified log behind the couch.
"Oh, so now you don't want to help? When I swallow my pride and ask, you'd rather see me suf—"
"It's not that!" he interrupted. "It's just—" Frantically, he wondered if she'd notice if he just turned and sprinted from the room. "I don't—uh, remember it." Of course he remembered it. Who wouldn't remember one of the most climactic scenes of the game?
Raven, obviously not noticing his odd behavior, grew exasperated. "Okay, listen. I'll remind you. Of no use to one, yet bliss to two. The small boy gets it for nothing; The young man has to lie for it; The old man has to buy it. The baby's right; The lover's privilege; The hypocrite's mask. To the young girl, faith; To the married woman, hope; To the old maid, charity."
When she finished she closed her book with a huff and looked up at him expectantly.
After a few thick moments of silence it became clear Beast Boy wasn't answering.
"Are you going to give me a hint or should I go back to rereading that chapter now?"
"I..."
Her head was only a foot from his, her face tilted upward so innocently. Was she toying with him? Could it be that she already knew the answer? Was she just trying to fluster him? Could she really be that cruel?
Or maybe she really didn't know. In which case his next action would come as a major surprise.
Maybe she was so focused on trying to figure out the answer that she didn't notice the distance between them closing. Didn't notice the light breeze of his breath brushing her cheekbone.
But she sure as hell noticed when the rest of the meager distance disappeared all at once. When his eyes fluttered shut. When he pressed his lips gently to hers, partially opened for her startled gasp. Warm fingertips brushed the side of her cheekbone, pushing up slowly into her hair, and she still hadn't decided whether to throw him out the window or kiss him back when he withdrew, whipping back like a snake, recoiling his hand like she'd burned him, before his palm had ever even reached her skin.
Beast Boy stared in shock, tense, waiting for something. Anything.
Suddenly— "Oh," she breathed. "I see."
"Rae..." Beast Boy paused with his hand half raised, torn between apologizing profusely or laughing it off as a joke or spilling all his guts to her.
Raven blinked hard a few times, like she was ridding an eyelash from her eye or something, and then suddenly grew stoic. "That's disappointing. I've heard better riddles."
Beast Boy balked. "WHA— hey!"
Pages shuffled as she idly fanned them between her fingers. "I guess it makes logical sense, but it's kinda morbid. What a pessimistic view on love."
The word "love" rattled around in his brain, failing to find any purchase. The answer was kiss—he hadn't said really said anything about love. (Emphasis on said.) He felt like he'd been sucking in helium for the last minute. The lightheaded feeling wouldn't fade.
"I—uh.."
"And furthermore," Raven went on, fanning the edges of the pages with increased fervor, "it doesn't even make all that much sense, after all, now that I think about it."
"How so?" In his irritated bewilderment his voice cracked like it hadn't since puberty. He couldn't keep up with her!
Raven scoffed, tossing her answer out like it was the most obvious thing. "Well, it's just too specific. Not every old maid craves male attention. Not every young girl puts her faith in affection. Not every little boy is loved freely. And, moreover, you've never lied to me."
"Not completely true..." Beast Boy admitted. The sound of ruffling pages stopped. Her glare was barely more inquisitive than it was irate. "I mean I was kinda lying earlier when I said that I would never give you the answer..." Raven's lip twitched ever so slightly (the surefire sign she was trying not to show she found him funny) so he knew he'd scored a point. "And uh.. I wouldn't mind giving it away again, s-sometime," he added, stuttering over his words as his confidence wavered.
Something twinkled in Raven's eye—something dangerously poised between flattery and mischief—and she settled for stuttering over unattached syllables, and eventually shut up and tucked a strand of frazzled hair behind her ear.
Beast Boy almost laughed. He'd never seen her so flustered before. It was... It was something. It sent golden butterflies shooting around his chest, exploding against his rib cage like refracted light. Wow, this was a wonderful feeling.
"Y-yeah," she said finally. It sounded like something had caught in her throat. She swallowed thickly before going on, much more calm and collected. "I like nothing more than a good game of riddles."
"Good," Beast Boy snickered, "because I have almost as many riddles as I have jokes."
Raven's face fell into a testy thin-lipped state and Beast Boy snickered more. The tension between them lifted ever so slightly, the familiar harmless banter balancing the scales of their friendship ever so slightly. That wouldn't do. He'd really been liking the direction the scale was tipping. So, to make certain he left things on the right note, Beast Boy reached into his pocket as Raven turned her attention back to the climactic chapter of the novel.
"Hey, you can have this," he ventured.
He nudged her until she held out her hand. Into it he dropped the single pearl, the color of aurora borealis in a sea storm. Her mouth fell open in surprise as it rolled into the crook of her palm.
Before she could voice her hundred questions, he had morphed into an ocelot and slunk away through the door into the hall. Raven was left staring at the pearl in her hand. She had so many questions, but she had a feeling that Beast Boy was going to let her sit on them for awhile. That was okay. After all, she liked nothing more than a good game of riddles.
Couple of fun facts:
This story idea originally began on the notion that Beast Boy would find her reading a dragon book, and he would show her that he'd learned how to turn into a dragon, effectively getting her attention. I just like the idea of BB as a teeny tiny green dragon lmao. Anyway, the riddle idea came halfway through and it was much better.
Second, I'm aware that it takes a metric fuckton of years for a pearl to form in a clam. BB is not that old. I don't think he'd be able to biologically make one. So, little does Raven know, but he's actually been carrying that pearl around in his pocket for months, waiting for the opportunity to impress her. He never dreamed it would actually work out.