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NOTE: Normal is Raven, Bold is Beast Boy, Italic is thoughts/dreams.
Game/Show: Teen Titans
Characters/Pairing: Raven and Beast Boy
Disclaimer: Mature Themes (language and slightly naughty insinuations). I do not own Teen Titans or anything from the DC Universe

Raven tried to take a breath, but the very air around her burned her lungs. She strained to see through the smoke, but couldn’t make out anything more than a foot in front of her face. A flash of green caught her attention and she moved towards it. She wrapped a part of her cloak over her mouth as she slowly shuffled forward, keeping a hand against the hot and jagged wall of the dark tunnel to steady her should she trip.

The tunnel fell away and she was suddenly in a large cave, and while the air was still stifling it no longer hurt to breath. Her eyes were drawn suddenly to a raised altar in the middle of the room where two figures sat.

Terra and Beast Boy were in an embrace, hands groping, mouths glued to one another. Raven blushed and felt a small twinge as she turned away only to turn back when a feeling of foreboding suddenly engulfed her. She watched as BB started to nuzzle Terra’s neck and the earth mover smiled. She turned and locked eyes with Raven, her eyes starting to glow gold. Raven was rooted to the spot as Terra moved her hand, snapping one of the stone stalactites above them and used her powers to plunge it into his back. Raven fell to her knees and cried out as she watched her friends’ last gasping breath, the blonde laughing at her sorrow.

Raven awoke with a scream. Her heart hammered in her chest and her breath came in gasps. Her silver silk sheets were soaked in sweat and the room around her was a testament to her highly emotional state if the books and papers lay scattered around the floor were anything to go by. Raven tried to slow her breathing, her heart rate and to generally get her emotions under control. The image of Terra standing over a dead Beast Boy flashed through her mind and she huffed as the chair to her desk flew across the room and crashed into the wall.

Raven sighed and got up to go take a shower to quieten her nerves. By the time she had towelled herself off the dream was pushed to the back of her mind. After she changed into a pair of black cut-offs and a purple singlet top, she walked to the kitchen to get her morning tea to soothe her frazzled nerves. Raven moved through the Com-room and into the kitchen, put the kettle on to boil and leaned against the kitchen counter to soak in the quiet of the early morning. The nightmare had woken her an hour before her usual time and no-one was up at 5am, not even early bird Dick. Even with the noise that came with her powers throwing things, the sound-proofing they had installed in all of the bedrooms ensured it wouldn’t have woken anyone else up.

After the team had returned from Tokyo to a still wrecked tower, they had decided not to put it back the way it was but to make some improvement. So they had upgraded the training facilities, the computers and the entertainment equipment. And had added sound-proofing to all of the bedrooms. Cy, BB and Raven had insisted on it. While Star and Dicks relationship was new, it wouldn’t stay that way for long and nobody wanted to listen in on their affection. It was a peace of mind thing all round, and turned out to be a wise decision if the teams occasional stays in hotels when they were travelling was any indication.

Raven thought on the changes that her fellow team mates had gone through since then. So much had changed in the 2 years that had passed since their return. Dick had shot up and filled out, and he and Star had been dating for 2 years now and often shared Dicks’ room. The Tamaranean woman had only grown more beautiful, but now had curves that made men drool. Cy had been seeing Bumble Bee for a year, but they later broke up when they realised their long-distance relationship wasn’t really working. He had recently been sneaking off every few nights to meet up with someone and Raven was happy her friend was finding happiness again as he had taken the break-up hard. Raven herself had gone through a growth spurt but was still the shortest member of the team. Her dark purple hair now reached near her lower back and she had expanded her wardrobe to include outfits other than her Teen Titan uniform.

And then there was Beast Boy.

Raven sighed and grabbed the kettle as it started to whistle. She turned slightly as she heard giggling and a man’s deep voice coming down the hallway that led to their rooms. She turned away as a pretty blonde girl with blue eyes and next to no clothing stumbled into the room. A tall green man grabbing for her and they kissed and groped as they made their way towards the elevator. Raven tried to ignore the sounds they were making as BB said goodbye to his conquest of the week.

He had shot up just like Dick had and the 2 men were almost the same height with Dick beating BB by an inch. After they had come back, BB had been trying to keep his mind off Terra and her apparent amnesia. He had taken to working out more and had gotten into extreme sports, trying to burn off his anger and grief. It had turned his lanky form toned and muscular. It was then then that he had taken up a slightly more destructive form of coping. His new physique now drew women like flies to honey. Women were practically throwing themselves at him and he seemed happy to oblige. Raven wasn’t sure if he was even aware that the only companions that he chose were blue eyed blondes, like the woman who had just left. This being California they were hardly in short supply. Raven wondered if he was conscious of the fact he was using the women as substitutes for his first love. The woman he could never have.

Terra.

Raven once again shoved her nightmare to the back of her mind as the green changeling came back into the room with a large grin on his face. Raven raised an eyebrow at him as he spotted her and stopped in his tracks; he had obviously hoped to get the woman out of here before his friends woke up.

“Good night?” Raven asked with a smirk, ignoring the small twinge she felt whenever confronted with his nightly activities. BB gave a small smile and took the bar stool across from her as she made her tea.

After his ‘Terra Issues’ Raven had become a kind of confidante to BB. He had come to her whenever the grief consumed him, and it had brought them closer together. Now, they were still close but BB had wisely refrained from talking to Raven about his many women and that part of his life was something they never talked about. Which was how Raven generally preferred it. But she couldn’t let the prime opportunity to tease him go to waste.

“Can I help it that the ladies can’t keep their hands off me? Who could blame them when confronted with such a fine specimen of male perfection?” BB laughed and flexed in an imitation of a body builder. Raven’s mouth went dry and she took a sip of her tea, hoping he wouldn’t notice her blush. “Anyone with half a brain. Though I highly doubt it’s their brains you’re interested in.”

*****

BB chuckled at her jab. Brains had never really been a requirement for his bed-mates. He sat back to look at his friend. She was so different from the withdrawn introverted 15 year old he had met all those years ago. They had fought like cats and dogs in the beginning and BB hadn’t really thought he could ever be friends with the goth with a sour outlook on life. 7 years later and she was one of his best friends: someone he considered family. She had helped him in his darkest moments after Terra’s ‘death’ and after she came back as someone else. Raven knew what it was like to have your heart shattered and never told him platitudes like “It will get better”. She had listened to him without complaint and for that he would be eternally grateful.

It wasn’t just her spikey nature that had changed though. She laughed at the occasional joke (never his) and she stopped repressing her emotions as much as she used to. She had also grown curves in all the right places, and her hair was long and framed her beautiful face and made her violet eyes really stand out. Her shorts accentuated her long legs and BB had to stop himself from staring as she turned away to get some honey out of the cupboard above the stove. No matter how beautiful she was or how much he sometimes dreamed of her, he would never do anything about it. Not only would it wreck the friendship that had been so hard to develop, when it all went wrong (and it would) there would be no place to hide from her and no-one to help him lick his wounds. Raven was his rock, the one thing that had kept him together in the darkest hours of his depression. Losing Terra had shattered his heart. Losing Rae would destroy him. Better to have mindless and emotionless sex with women who meant nothing to him but a good time and a release. It might be somewhat cold but he never wanted to be in a position to be hurt that way again. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to live through it a second time.

BB dragged his eyes away from Raven’s long legs and asked a question he didn’t really want the answer to to fill the silence. “How’s Mason doing?”

*****

Raven internally cringed at the mention of her ex-boyfriend’s name. She had met Mason at her favourite bookstore. She had been browsing the folklore section for some reference materials for an assignment in one of her classes, when a tall slender red-headed man with warm brown eyes had come up and started talking to her. They had chatted for a few minutes before he had asked her out for coffee. Raven wasn’t really used to men asking her out. She had gotten so used to men comparing her in an unfavourable way to the bubbly, vivacious Star (villains really didn’t count as their flirting just made her uncomfortable). She had accepted and they had been seeing each other for over 5 months. Mason was a good guy; a professor of the occult at Jump University with similar tastes in reading to her. But there had always been something missing. Whenever they kissed or he touched her, she didn’t feel anything. There was no spark. In fact his touch made her want to run for the hills.

It’s not like she hadn’t had relationships before. She and Garth (Aqualad) had had a ‘friends with benefits’ thing that had ended amicably after about 5-6 months and Roy Harper (Speedy) had asked her out more than once, probably taking her refusal as a challenge. There was just something about Mason that made her hold back. Maybe it was that he was always resentful when she had to cancel their plans if a mission came up. Or the way he sometimes belittled those who weren’t academics like himself; as if anyone who lived a life different from his own weren’t really worth his time. But it was the way he had put her friends down and had started to accuse Raven of cheating on him with male superheros that had been the final death knell on their relationship, and made her wonder why she even dated him in the first place and to redefine her definition of what constituted a good boyfriend.

‘You know why’ a small voice whispered in her head. She squashed it, even when she knew it was right. Damn Timid.

Mason had shown interest in her when so many others went by her, not really seeing her. She was Raven: the scary Teen Titan who controlled black energy and turned into a monster when she lost control of her powers. Many people were afraid of her because of what she was. A half demon. An abomination.

Mason hadn’t been afraid of her, he’d been fascinated. He had asked her countless questions but somehow never made her feel like she was a bug under a microscope. He had shown an interest in Raven the person not Raven the superhero. And that had probably been one of the only reasons their relationship had lasted as long as it had.

She was afraid that no-one would bother to look beneath the creepy surface to the person she was beneath again. After their argument yesterday though, she didn’t care if she never saw him again. He had put down her friends for the last time. His need to be the centre of attention and be the smartest person in the room had been tweaked on the few occasions he had actually met her friends. It was one of his last comments that had stayed with her though. “I won’t be used as a substitute for the green freak, Raven!” He hadn’t believed her when she said there was nothing going on between her and her changeling friend, he had even accused her of being one of the masses BB had taken to bed.

For some reason though his statement had made her think. Had she really been using Mason as a substitute for BB because she knew she couldn’t be with him? She had noticed her strange reactions when she had seen BB and the women sneaking in and out of his room. She had felt hurt, which is not the typical reaction to a friend getting laid. She had gone to Nevermore and tried to sort out the many voices of her emotions. What she had discovered had made her heart pound and her blood run cold. She had feelings for Garfield Mark Logan, their resident changeling and man-whore. Since this revelation, she had done everything in her power to avoid the evidence of his new womanizing ways. She had gone to her room early to avoid him necking with women on the couch, had gotten up after 6 to avoid their affectionate goodbyes. She would have been happier if the nightmare had woken up 20 minutes later so she could have avoided the earlier giggles and kissing entirely.

He will never find out I want him she promised herself.

*****

“We broke up yesterday. He wasn’t too happy about it.”

BB held in a sigh of relief as he examined Raven’s face for any signs of sadness. Even if he thought the guy was a total tool, he didn’t like it when his friend was hurting. Though, if the argument he had overheard yesterday was any indication, Mason was going to be the one nursing some injuries. He couldn’t believe it when Mason had accused Raven of using him for a substitute for the ‘green freak’. If only Mason had realised that using Raven’s own personal F-word was enough to end things then and there he may of thought better of it. Anyway, he was dead wrong. Raven didn’t feel that way about him. She had always treated him as if he was her annoying little brother and she would never do something as cold-hearted as use someone as a substitute, even if BB had no idea why she had liked the dick in the first place. Roy would be better for her than Professor Douchebag, which was saying something. Roy was a man-slut who’d bang anyone who offered. Some of the propositions he had made to Raven through the years had made BB want to unleash the Beast on his ass, but instead he contented himself with Raven’s firm ‘No thanks’. If that wasn’t bad enough, Mason had really pushed it when he accused her of sleeping with him. BB had nearly lost it in that second, had nearly given in to the Beast waiting just below the surface when Raven was in danger or being threatened. He had just been coming around the corner when he saw a wave of black energy pushing Professor Douchebag off his feet and onto the couch, pushing it over with the force of her throw. Raven had stalked towards him then, her eyes glowing red. “If you really think I’d be one of the faceless many, you really don’t know me at all” she had said before she had escorted him out of the tower and hopefully out of her life.

He hated to admit it, but her opinion of his sex-life stung a little. Sure, he slept with a different woman every week, but it wasn’t like there were any illusions about it. They were getting the thrill of sleeping with a superhero and he was getting a willing bed-partner for a few nights. It was a win-win situation and you’re only young once. He was enjoying it while it lasted.

*****

Raven watched covertly as BB stretched and yawned, trying not to stare as his t-shirt lifted to show some of his sculpted stomach.

Mmmm, me likey the voice of Lust whispered in her head. Raven internally rolled her eyes, but secretly agreed with one of her most annoying emotions. Lust had been almost entirely silent during her relationship with Mason, except near the end when it made comparisons between him and her green friend. “Well, I’m going to go get some sleep so I don’t nap during training. Night Rae” BB slipped off the chair and walked towards his room scratching between his shoulder blades. It wasn’t until he disappeared into his room that Raven heard a voice near her.

“His new girlfriend has gone home I’m guessing?” Raven jumped as Dick moved from the shadows and into the kitchen to the fridge. It was a testament to how badly BB distracted her that she hadn’t sensed their leader’s presence. “It’s a bit early for you, isn’t it Dick?” queried Raven, ignoring his earlier question and put the kettle back on so he could have his morning tea. He’d never admit it to anyone, but Raven had brought him over to the dark-side and he would now forgo coffee for tea with his breakfast each morning. “I thought I heard a thump and then I heard voices. I decided to investigate.” Raven didn’t suppress her eye roll this time, he was always one edge. You’d think having a hot alien girlfriend in his bed would reduce his stress levels. Apparently not.

“Sorry, the thump was me. I was hoping no-one would hear it. BB and I were just having a chat after he said his goodbyes.” Dick cut his eyes to her, hearing the change in her tone as she spoke about BBs ‘guest’. She was grateful when he turned away again and started pulling out food for his and Star’s breakfast. Raven was struck by how much their fearless leader had changed. He was still as high-strung as a General, but his relationship with Star had brought out his caring side. Raven had always been his favourite when it came to the team itself (he had always listened to her opinions on strategy, team allocation when planning missions and brainstorming ideas on the villains next moves) but it was clear that his girlfriend was his favourite in everything else.

He muttered something to himself as he tried to juggle everything he needed in one trip to the counter.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that.” Raven smiled as Dick tried to balance eggs on top of a loaf of bread and bacon. Dick sighed, placed the ingredients onto the counter and turned to face her.

“That path leads only to heartbreak” Dick repeated in his best big brother tone and Raven felt her face grow hot.

He knows.