This story has been completely done for literally four months. I have no idea what took me so long to publish it. (Laziness. Whoops.) All it needed was some editing. Anyway, here it is. Stole the underwater bubble idea from this story to use for Birds in the Rain, if you've read that. If you haven't read that... well... what are you even doing here... go read it... jk. But seriously lmao I put 4000x more effort into that story than any of these one shots. ;)

ANYWAY. ENJOY. This one's a real romp.

xoxo

. . .

Two for One

. . .

"Please Robin, you must be the immovable statue or my work will be for naught."

Robin made a low groaning noise that devolved into a laugh. "I'm trying my best here, Star."

"Only a few minutes more. I am almost finished!" she crowed, adding a few of the spiral sea shells a civilian kid had brought her around the base of the sand castle. Robin's bare feet stuck out comically through the drawbridge. The main body of the castle spanned around his middle and the turrets were beginning to obscure his view of the ocean as they steadily grew in size. As Starfire flew around the back side to add some finer detail on one of the turrets, Cyborg took the opportunity to snicker with impunity in Robin's direction.

"You done soon, tinman?" Robin growled at Cyborg, borrowing with glee from Beast Boy's vocabulary.

Cyborg only snickered more and turned down the gas on the portable grill. "You can't rush these things, Rob. It takes time and finesse to cook the perfect hotdog."

"You have remembered to bring the tofu dogs, correct?" Starfire called over her shoulder.

Cyborg gagged but nodded. "Yeah, yeah. Gross," he muttered as he flipped over Beast Boy's colorless food on the grill. The one in question was currently down in the water with a group of civilians. Every couple minutes a roar of cheers and laughter went up in the air, echoing up the beach toward the other Titans. "You'd think this was SeaWorld," Cyborg joked, shaking his head as a green orca breached the water a quarter-mile out to sea and a few dark specks that looked suspiciously like people fell splashing into the water below. "You gotta admit," Cyborg said to no one in particular, "the kid sure knows how to make the people love him. You know," he tacked on thoughtfully, "you could stand to take a page from his book, Raven."

Raven looked up on the other side of Robin's sand prison and tucked a bookmark in the collection of short stories she was chugging through. "Excuse me?"

Cyborg fidgeted, busying himself at the grill, but then answered anyway. "I mean, you could make yourself more accessible to people. That's why everyone loves B so much. Your powers would be just as entertaining as his if you let people see and experience them outside a battle setting. Besides, it could be fun!"

Raven brought her book unnecessarily close to her face, leaning back into the makeshift sand-chair she'd crafted with her powers two hours earlier and had not left since. "I'm not playing SeaWorld with a bunch of kids."

In the middle of making a flag out of a clam on the tallest turret, Starfire paused to size up Raven. "You have not left your reading crevice all day," she observed. "We ventured all the way to the other side of the bay to enjoy a day of summer fun together. Will you read all the while instead of playing?"

A warm breeze fluttered Raven's cloak around her legs and she flattened the fabric to her skin, drawing tighter in on herself with her book. "I like reading," she countered. "For me this is the epitome of summer fun."

Starfire shot upward, spinning in the air, leaving Robin to hastily re-erect one of the towers before she saw she'd knocked it over. "But Raven," she keened. "The weather is fine and the water is pleasant and the sun is glorious! We do not often see such days in the Jump City Bay. You do not wish to enjoy the splashing in the ocean? The warm sun on your skin?" Starfire made a point then of twirling around in the air so Raven could appreciate a full view of Starfire's polka dotted bikini, the stark white knit-design more than flattering on her bronze skin.

Raven bit her cheek and returned her eyes to her book. "I'm fine, thanks."

Starfire crossed her arms. "Friend, I must insist you partake in at least one summer ritual. Even Robin is joining, by assisting me in the building of traditional beach sand armaments."

Raven quelled the urge to throw a barrier between herself and Starfire. "For the last time: no."

Starfire's whole body drooped, and she seemed to melt from the air onto the beach next to Raven's sand chair. "Why have you even worn the bathing attire I purchased for your birthday if you are going to cover it with your cloak and never do the enjoying of it in the water?" There was no reasonable answer Raven could rattle off quickly enough, and Starfire provided her own before Raven could think of something. Her eyes grew wide and twinkly. "Is it that you are embarrassed? You are victim to the consciousness of self?"

At that, Raven's book snapped shut. "I'm not self conscious."

There was no indication Starfire had heard her. "In the Cosmopolitan magazine I have read this is a common difficulty for women of Earth, especially on beachly occasions. Please, there is no need for you to feel this way." The statement was punctuated by a tender hand on Raven's shoulder. "You are radiant, Raven!"

Raven pinched the bridge of her nose. "That's not why Iㅡ"

Starfire jumped to her feet, flinging sand in every direction, and Raven squeezed her eyes as sand flecks rained. "My father always said the surest cure to a phobia is by complete and immediate submersion!"

Wondering what good could possibly come of that proclamation, Raven squinted her stinging eyes toward the sun, struggling to stand. She felt Starfire's hands on her shoulders again, but before she'd gained her full footing there was a gust of wind all around her and she was naked.

Star threw the cloak away grandly and cried, "Tada!"

Okay, Raven was certainly not naked, per se, but she might as well have been. Her pale stomach probably hadn't seen sunlight in years. The black bikini Starfire had picked out for her was about as modest as a bikini could get, but it was still that. A bikini. Raven fidgeted in the sand, her mind completely white with panic. There was no emotion, not yet. Just blind physical panic.

It was not the bikini she'd been hiding with her cloak.

Starfire was still twirling, having not actually looked at Raven yet despite repeated sentiments of "Look friends, see how stunning Raven is in her water costume?" in a dozen variations. Finally, when she could pry no answer from the boys, she ceased her prancing to flash dangerous green eyes at them. "Does she not drop you dead with the gorgeous?"

But Cyborg and Robin did not seem to even realize Starfire was still talking. They were staring, gaping, open-mouthed at Raven. And no, not in the drooling, teen-movie, she's-so-hot kind of way, but in the what in god's name are my eyes even seeing kind of way. Star tilted her head comically, and followed their gaze back to look at the object of confusionㅡRaven herselfㅡwho was fidgeting in the sand and calculating how much energy it would require to open a portal from here to the surface of the moon. Raven didn't even bother trying to cover it up because Robin and Cyborg had zeroed in on it with light speed, so when Starfire turned she saw it too and made a dainty gasping sound, slapping her hand to her mouth.

It was at this mind-numbingly awkward moment that Beast Boy came trotting up the sand as a little scottish terrier, barking all the way before changing back to his human form to brush the sand off his half-sleeve wetsuit. "How long on the hot dogs, Cy?" he wondered, and chanced a peek under the grill cover.

All Cyborg could manage was a incredulous sidelong glance at Beast Boy, who then snorted; Cy was looking at him like he'd sprouted wings out of his eyes.

"What's up with you guys?" Beast Boy laughed. "Why's everyone standing around like someone died?"

"Um…" That was all Starfire could muster, and in lieu of finishing the statement she stepped aside to reveal Raven.

Beast Boy's eyes almost bugged out of his head at the sight of so much of Raven's pale marble skin. "Oi, Rae, you finally let Star play dress up! Fuck yeah, haha! Lookin' good!" He beamed and gave her two enthusiastic thumbs up, then pointed both thumbs toward the sea. "So does this mean you wanna go swimming now orㅡ" He trailed off as it finally hit him why everyone was acting weird. It wasn't the bikini. At all.

Raven met his eyes, begging wordlessly for him to say something, anything at this point, anything to relieve her of the responsibility of breaking this silence. Really it was a testament to Beast Boy's character that it had taken him longer to see it than everyone else, but now that he did, boy did he stare, and more blatantly and unapologetically and slack jawed than the others combined. And for good reason. Because there on Raven's chest, in full view in the open v-neck of her swimsuit, just off the left side of her sternum, cresting onto the inside edge of her breast, lay a fresh tattoo of a little green paw print.

The silence mounted, growing more tense and more palpable until Beast Boy shattered it by clambering with inelegance over Starfire's sand castle, burying Robin in its remains as he advanced on Raven.

"What the hell is that?" he finally managed.

Raven bristled. Behind her the book flipped open; whether a breeze or her powers blew its pages was anyone's guess. She crossed her arms defiantly. Beast Boy knew what it wasㅡeveryone knew what it was. She would not deign to answer the question.

A gleeful grin broke over his face and he poked at her chest. "You're secretly in love with me. That's what this is, right?"

That was all she could take. Positively snarling, Raven covered the insufferable tattoo with her hand and dug the sand out from under him with her powers, sending him crashing backward onto the remains of the sand castle, further burying Robin. She wheeled around to retreat from the beach with haste but Beast Boy grabbed her arm; she realized he was laughing.

"Wait," he pleaded, "I'm kidding, Rae, I'm kidding! Don't run off, come'ere for a second." With that he began pulling her down the beach toward the waves.

Their friends at last found their voices. "Return please," Starfire wailed after them. "I am full of confusion!" At the same time Cyborg cupped his hands to bellow, "Where are you going?".

"To have a word!" Beast Boy called over his shoulder. A wave splashed past their ankles and Raven's feet began to sink with each step into mud but still he pulled her deeper into the water.

"In the ocean?" Robin shouted in disbelief.

"We'll be right back," Beast Boy answered happily.

When the next cresting wave rolled past their chests, Raven's feet left the ocean floor. "Don't you think this is far enough?" she groaned.

"Almost." He glanced back her way with a gleam in his eye and surveyed the beach hesitantly before adding, "I wanna be alone for a sec."

The closest people were a fair ways north up the beach front, and they were invested in some kind of lawless beach volleyball game. There was no one around to hear or see them and Raven was about to say so when Beast Boy winked at her boldly and dove headfirst into an oncoming wave, dragging her right along with him.

Underwater, Raven tumbled and skittered along the sand and her legs became tangled in a billowing net of free floating seaweed, until she felt Beast Boy's hands on her legs, carefully unraveling the slimy plant. Reaching into her well of power she surrounded herself with a bubble of black energy and forced the water away from her face until a pocket of oxygen enveloped her upper body. Outside, a silhouette wavered in the light. With a sigh and a fair bit of trepidation she widened the air pocket to include Beast Boy.

Raven pushed her dripping hair away from her face, refusing to meet his eyes, one hand moving subconsciously to cover her chest. "What are we doing out here?"

Under their bubble, the current waxed and waned and Beast Boy's leg brushed against hers. He was grinning like there was no tomorrow. "Duh, I wanted a closer look at your tattoo!" Gently, he took hold of her wrist and pulled her hand away from her chest.

Sunlight filtered down through blue water and dark energy and left everything inside the bubble looking washed out and gray, tendrils of white light flickering lightly across their skin. "We're underwater," Raven pouted. "The lighting is terrible."

"Don't care," Beast Boy hummed, and linked his free arm around her waist to pull her flush against him. Raven blushed furiously but he didn't notice. His eyes were raking down her neck to linger on the little paw print, stark and black against her pale skin in the sealight. The urge to pull away and hide from his impenitent scrutiny was high but Raven dug her feet into the sand and held still. "I thought you said you would never get it," Beast Boy finally burst, with an air of frustration, releasing her wrist to lock his other arm firmly around her waist. "What gives?"

"I think what I said was 'I wouldn't be caught dead…'"

Beast Boy rolled his eyes. "Yeah, how could I forget? Thanks for reminding me. I guess what I'm asking is: what changed your mind?"

Moving her arms from her sides to his arms with tentative caution, Raven said, "Well…" She trailed off, the blush returning full force. She still wasn't quite used to this and wasn't sure she ever would be. She was trying, though, she really was.

Beast Boy blinked at her, nonplussed. "What?"

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she moved her hands to the neck of his wetsuit and started to unzip it. Beast Boy's grip on her waist slackened as he realized what she was getting at, and she stopped when the zipper reached his navel to push aside the material covering his sternum. Another layer of her heart softened as she rememorized the indigo raven tattoo there, slightly off-center, wings spread in perpetual flight.

"After I said no," she mumbled, "you went and got yours anyway." His tattoo also appeared black here in their bubble, and with some hesitance she placed her hand over it. Despite the freezing water his skin was warm. "I liked it," she admitted. "I liked how it looked. I liked that it was for me. That it was… mine."

Looking back up into his face she saw his gaze had become distant and dreamy, and as she raised her eyebrows curiously something deep in his eyes shifted. His hand went to her neck and he eyed her with severe detachment, like he was a million miles away. She shivered as his fingers brushed lightly at the lingering drops of water under her hair. The pad of his thumb brushed her carotid. Never in all her life had she felt so vulnerable as in this moment, and after a long minute Beast Boy shook his head, ridding a fraction of the intensity from his face. His hand moved down her neck past her clavicle and he trailed his index finger all the way down to the tattoo, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

When he spoke his voice had an almost dangerous edge to it. "Are you saying this one is mine then?"

She wanted to say no; there was a headiness in the air that told her he wasn't talking about the tattoo at all. She wanted to say no. But... stronger than that was the want to say yes, and so Raven gave a short nod. She had finally begun to learn how to pick her battles.

A thrill ran through her when he pounced at her and the bubble pulsed around them, splashing them with water as he pushed her down onto the seabed. Seaweed tangled in her hair but she could do nothing as she struggled in vain to stabilize their air pocket. Beast Boy fell on her heavily, threading his legs with hers and leaning in to whisper in her ear, "I like the way that sounds."

The lattice of light beyond the energy wall above him framed his head in a halo, and she tried to tell him to stopㅡhe was moving too fast, wasn't he?ㅡbut nothing came out. He'd begun to kiss her neck. Suddenly he wasn't moving fast enough. She tried to angle her head to kiss him back but all she could reach was his temple; he was migrating lower.

"Beast Boy," she warned half heartedly.

He was really toeing the line this time. He realized it too, and his kisses grew lighter as they grazed her neckline, testing the invisible boundary. But even as he eased up she made no effort to stop him and eventually he made it back to the tattoo again and placed a solid kiss there. The kiss was remarkably chaste, save for its placement, and stretched on for one endless moment until Beast Boy finally gave into the insatiable urge and opened his mouth, grazing her skin ever-so-slightly with his incisors. Raven's breath hitched (quite noticeably, seeing as he was on top of her).

Beast Boy froze.

Okay, there was no way that Raven had actually just made that delicate, enticing, unabashedly feminine sound. He imagined that, right?

Upon parting from her skin an inch or so he was amused to see she was just as blindsided by her reaction as he was. Beast Boy met her eyes slyly, a look of crazed mischief darkening his expression until her heart raced beyond any rate that could be considered healthy. Very slowly, staring her right in the eye, he stuck out his tongue. Dazed, she held perfectly still, not believing he was truly going to do it even though she saw him going for it and made no move at all to stop him. Animalistic traits hung about Beast Boy the way personality quirks did on other people, some animals more than others, and it was a dog that he reminded Raven of now as he held her gaze with his tongue poking playfully out like that.

But there was nothing more human on Earth than the way he pressed it to her skin, fingers curling behind her ribcage as he traced the entire length of the tattoo. She arched her back, gasping at the sensation, and their bubble collapsed.

They closed their eyes to the saltwater, blind as the current tossed them. After a few tumultuous waves they skidded along the sand and came up spitting water, Raven burning with the heat of a thousand suns and trying to disentangle herself from him, Beast Boy grinning ear to ear like he'd just won the Boston Marathon in a bananasuit.

The smell of charred tofu and byproduct caught their attention as Raven finally managed to pry herself from him, sending him reeling backwards into an oncoming wave. Their three friends were still there in the exact same place as if cursed by a witch. A plume of black smoke was currently billowing from the portable grill. No one took heed.

Starfire was the first to resume screeching. "Friends, what is going on? Why do you have the mark of Beast Boy on your chest?"

Raven opened her mouth to damn everyone to hell but Beast Boy took the reigns, literally stepping in front of her as he headbutted into the conversation. "It's okay, I got this one. The suspect has been cleared of suspicion, guys, no need to worry."

Cyborg finally snapped, his glassy eyed vacancy replaced with straight up bafflement. "Okay, what now?"

Beast Boy met his confusion with a dumbass, self-assured smirk. "All we've got here is a classic case of a copycat crime." He gestured sloppily. "Boom. Open and shut."

At this Robin burst upright, spraying sea shells in every which direction, showering Starfire in fallen sand turrets. "Have you both gone batshit insane? B, what are you talking about?"

"Yes, what are you saying?" Cyborg and Starfire clamored in unison.

Draping one heavy arm lazily across Raven's shoulders in a manner that made it hard to shrug him off without putting a stupid amount of effort into it, Beast Boy geared up for his biggest punchline to date in this lifetime.

"I'm saying," he emphasized, then pulled his still partially-unzipped wetsuit aside with triumphant flair to reveal the raven tattoo therein, "that I had mine done weeks ago."

It must have been ten solid minutes of unintelligible babbling after that mindfuck (during which Beast Boy proudly showed off his ink and complained about how much it had hurt while Raven sat down in the waves and demanded that they drown her) before Beast Boy took pity on Raven. "Okay, okay, you guys have fun at the beach," he said. "Rae and I are gonna peace out."

"What!" Cyborg shrieked. "You can't leave after dropping something like this!"

"Yes!" Star chimed, "We must know the details of this secret tryst!"

Robin was off to the side, near to pulling his hair out. "How did I not see this? I'm the best detective in the entire city and somehow I missed this?"

Beast Boy could tangibly feel Raven calming down as he wobbled up the beach after her, envying the ease with which she hovered over the hot sand. "I'm sorry," he laughed as the dark cloud pressing on her shoulders evaporated. "I had to. You only get a chance at a joke that that once in a lifetime, Raven. Once in a lifetime!" He sighed wistfully, thinking back over his own joke. He didn't care if Raven stayed mad at him for a whole week. The look on his friends' faces when he revealed his own tattoo had been worth unquantifiable amounts of gold.

She stopped at the bottom of the narrow driftwood staircase that meandered up the cliffside toward the parking lot, one hand on the lopsided sign that read La Playa Oculto. "I have to admit, their reactions were priceless."

Beast Boy crawled under her as a sandcrab before morphing back to smile down at her from the steps. "Definitely," he agreed.

Something flashed briefly in her eyes, and before Beast Boy could decipher what emotion it was she'd replaced it with her regular stoicism. "Here's a thought… I bet they would have a collective heart attack if they knew the tattoo parlor was having a two for one special."

Beast Boy cocked his head in momentary confusion while she raised her eyebrow and waited for her words to sink in. His mouth fell open, his brain still an inch shy of understanding. "Wait…" He was almost there.

Raven rolled her eyes and pushed past him, leaving him alone at the base of the long staircase.

Wait. Two for one. Two for...?

The tattoo parlor was having a two for one…!

"Wait, WHAT?" he squeaked, the last gear finally clicking into place with a hundred exclamation points. "You got two tattoos?" Raven didn't look back, but on the first landing she had to suppress a smile. "Aren't you gonna show me?"

Raven stepped over the green crab that scuttled under her feet to quickly became a snake that stretched between the two rails to halt her progress. She ducked under him. "You'll find it eventually."

Human again, Beast Boy sat on the railing with a dumbfounded look slapped across his face. He cupped his hands, calling after her, "I'm taking that as a challenge!"

Raven's heart skipped a beat as she registered the loaded implication behind his words. Two-thirds up the staircase she snuck a glance at the palm of her hand, where a little copper penny was inked in the center. The artist had been miffed at the request, citing a hundred reasons why not to get a tattoo on the palm of your hand, but Raven had insisted. She understood that it would fade with time if she didn't get it touched up every year. She knew it would take constant work to maintain. She knew it would be hard. That it would be anything but easy. But…

She looked over her shoulder at Beast Boy, who was still perched on the railing halfway down to the beach, looking her way like she was standing in the only patch of sunlight on the entire west coast. "You heard me," he taunted. "I'm taking that as a challenge, smartass."

A challenge. That's exactly what it would be. Raven curled her hand into a loose fist and pressed it to her heart, wondering how far he would go to find it.