(A/N)- I've actually got most of the prompts already written this year!

Lol, I procrastinated a bunch as per usual but 5 out of 7 fics are done and ready so I'm hoping for a smooth posting schedule. Hope you all enjoy this year's offerings!

This first one wound up being a little angsty, sorry.

Disclaimer: Stiiiiiiiill don't own. Drat.

RobStar Week 2024, Day 1 - Friends To Lovers

English was a frustrating and stupid language and human boys were frustrating and stupid.

That was what Starfire had decided, spinning the issue around inside her own head as she wandered the craggy, desolate outpost planet, in search of materials to build herself a weapon. She'd already found a suitable rock for an arrowhead and a couple decently straight sticks that could be shaved down or bent into the proper shape. She now sought some kind of twine or fiber, as she ran over the events on the communications relay and wondered for the thousandth time what she was misunderstanding.

Girlfriend. Friend who is a girl. They both translated the same inside her head. Yet there must be more to it, otherwise Robin would not have reacted how he had, would not have frozen up and angrily denied it.

Starfire wasn't uninformed. She had heard the word "girlfriend" before on many Earth television programs, had asked Raven about it. Raven had mumbled something about relationships and feelings and flowers and then had shut the door in her face. But Starfire knew what "girlfriend" meant.

Or so she had thought.

Yanking up tufts of short, brittle grass, Starfire wove the fibers together, frowning, fingers working furiously as her mind worked overtime, struggling to comprehend the whole bizarre conundrum.

She was friends with Robin, yes. She was also a girl. But she was friends with Cyborg and Beast Boy too, and yet she was certainly not "girlfriend" to either of them. The feelings she knew she had for Robin—and that she knew he had for her—were clearly what set her relationship with him apart from any of the others.

So if they felt that way about each other and he often took her out to places alone, to spend time specifically with her, apart and away from the others, and clearly had affections for her that were different from how he acted around the rest of the team...

She shook her head.

It all kept coming back to the same question:

Why wasn't she his girlfriend?

Where was the line? Where was the boundary between what they had and what she'd seen depicted in storybooks and movies, what Raven had described to her?

Where did just friends end and girlfriend begin?

Starfire bit her lip, her braiding slowing down for a moment.

There had always been a spark of attraction between them. From the day they met, she had always had feelings for Robin, for the first person outside of Galfore who had been genuinely nice to her, treated her with kindness and concern and true companionship, expecting nothing in return.

She... liked him. In a way she knew went beyond how she liked Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Raven.

And she'd thought... she'd hoped... that she was special to him in that same regard.

Had she been mistaken all these years? Did he truly think, even with the dates he'd taken her on, the way he clearly treated her differently than the others, that they were just friends and nothing else?

He felt the same about her... didn't he?

Starfire clamped down on a sinking feeling in her stomach as she knotted off the braid, scrunching her eyes against a sudden heat rising there.

The worst part was that he wouldn't explain it to her. She could usually always count on him to have a dozen answers to her questions, but this time he had clammed up, stammered like an idiot, brushed her off when she tried to ply for clarification. It was so unlike him. He had assured her in the past, over and over, that her questions were never a burden, that he was happy to tell her about anything she wanted to know. She didn't understand what was so hard about her questions now.

"If I am not your girlfriend, then what am I?"

Where did she stand with him? Was she expecting too much perhaps? Had she misread everything about their relationship? Why had it felt like he was pushing her away, keeping her at a distance? Why had he reacted so vehemently against the idea that she was his girlfriend, shouted at her to 'give him space'? She had always been afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing and making her friends annoyed with her, making them dismiss her and stop being her friends. Had she pushed Robin's patience too far? Was he done with tolerating her?

Starfire shook herself, banishing the dismal thoughts.

No. Robin was not like that. He was not a 'fair-weather friend', as the Earthlings called it.

But then what was he? And what was she?

What were they?

Starfire gave a heavy sigh, coming out of her musings and realizing she'd finished stringing the grass braids into a long strand of thin rope.

Pushing her feelings and confusion to the side for a moment, compartmentalizing it in a little box inside her head, she focused on finishing up.

The flint was attached to the first long straight stick, she manipulated the curve of the other and strung the twine around the ends. In moments, her makeshift bow and arrow was complete. A bit crude, but it would suffice.

She wished she could raise up into the air and zoom back to the crash site, snipe the slime creature from above, but the roiling cauldron of confusion inside her made it impossible to dredge up a single joyful thought with which to fuel her flight.

She stood, rising to her feet and brushing off the dust and worries.

Bow in hand, she began the long trek back to her crashed pod. Her thoughts strayed again to Robin as she walked, worries and anxieties colliding inside her head.

She did her best to tramp them down and numb them as she made her way.

She found her pod, but startled as she realized the glass cockpit was pried open and the creature was no longer inside. Adrenaline beating alarm bells inside her, she looked around.

It could not have escaped the pod on its own. Cyborg's seals were too secure. So that meant...

Heart pounding, she ran up into the slopes, searching.

Small patches of goo marked the creature's path, almost invisible in the pale moonlight. She followed them until she was on a little hill overlooking a flat plain, watching the creature charge forward and bowl over a human figure, small and frail-looking, across the distance. She watched it pin the figure down, drooling in anticipation of its meal.

Her heart clenched—even with all his stupid posturing and pushing her away the thought of losing Robin scalded her—but she was as stoic and as cool as Raven as she fitted her arrow to her string.

She only needed one shot. So she took very careful aim.

The slime monster burst apart into liquid goop as her arrow found its mark.

Starfire took a few steps forward to confirm her kill, then tossed her bow to the side.

She wouldn't need it, now that Robin was here. He would protect her.

She schooled her expression into very careful neutrality, even as her heart beat with excitement and relief at the sight of him, even as her stomach performed flips and her mind spun in circles, even as the bottom dropped out of her as she wondered once again what exactly their relationship was, why he would run for her arms outstretched like she was the most wonderful thing he'd ever seen if he didn't care for her in the way she thought he did.

She took a step back, away from him, bringing his happy run to an uncertain halt. His expression was so bright and so hopeful and relieved and it was scalding because she felt like she didn't know him anymore.

Something in their comfortable, easy friendship had shifted.

It was all misaligned.

Just friends, she told herself, replying robotically to him. That is all he thinks we are. He does not care for me.

She turned away from him with a huff and blocked him out, resolving not to be bitter and angry and disappointed and failing utterly.