Disclaimer: I do not own the Teen Titans.

Beds: Rachel needs a bed and Gar just happens to have an extra.

After the fourth night in the last two weeks of being banished to the student lounge at two o'clock in the morning, Rachel Roth was beginning to think that she was not meant to share a room.

Rachel liked her roommate, Kori Anders, well enough. She was a sweetheart—kind, lovely, and oblivious to her own beauty. She had a talent for reading Rachel's moods that no one ever really got. She knew when to push Rachel into grabbing a smoothie with her or when to leave Rachel to a book and cup of herbal tea. She was probably the best friend Rachel ever had. Kori was such a wonderful person it was hard to hate her.

Even when Rachel was stuck in the student lounge because Kori had invited her boyfriend back to their room in the middle of the night.

Tonight, just like the last three nights he'd come over, hadn't been planned. If it were, Rachel would have been able to find someone to bunk with before the couple returned. As it was, Rachel got a warning text about five minutes before Kori and boyfriend, Dick Grayson, stumbled through the door giggling. Awkward exchanges on both sides before Dick apologized and offered to leave and Rachel said that it was okay, she had homework to do and was planning on an all-nighter anyway and made her getaway.

She didn't have homework. She'd just finished a book and hadn't had enough time to pick out the next one to read. She'd left her laptop and headphones behind in her haste to escape. And her cell phone was running out of battery.

In short, there was nothing for Rachel to do but watch MTV on the television in the lounge alone because she didn't know where the remote was.

She sighed with her chin propped in her hand as she leaned her elbow on the armrest of the couch. Kori so owed her.

She heard the front door of the building open and voices as whoever entered checked in. Shuffling and then the couch bounced as someone collapsed onto it on the opposite end.

He looked at her, as if just realizing that he wasn't alone, then forced a grin. "Hey, Rae."

"Hey, Gar," she replied. She'd almost rolled her eyes at the nickname but he said it so despondently that all she could do was furrow her eyebrows.

Rachel didn't know Gar Logan very well. They knew each other obliquely because Gar was Dick's roommate but their conversations never lasted long. And when they did, one or both of them usually walked away very disgruntled. But she couldn't bring herself to hate him; he was a nice guy as far as she could tell. Besides, the four of them all lived on the same coed floor and shared a bathroom. He was unavoidable. But he looked as if he wanted to be unavoidable.

He wasn't exactly unusual but he seemed a little mismatched. He wasn't really tall, clocking in at around five foot eight, but he was so lanky that his limbs appeared longer than they actually were. The sides of his head were buzz cut and his blond hair was longer and messier on top with the ends dyed green. He had a ready smile and bright green eyes that didn't go very well with the black design tattooed on his left arm, starting at his forearm and stopping at his shoulder. Depending on the shirt he wore, something red poked out of his collar, hinting at another tattoo. Covering his right arm in an almost exact mirror image of his tattoo, was puffy scarred skin that reached the edge of his neck, opposite the red tattoo. Rumor had it that there'd been an accident, a fire that left him burned but alive, but she'd never heard anything about it from him.

He was usually cheery to the point of being obnoxious, but tonight he just looked sad.

Sure she was going to regret it, Rachel asked, "Are you okay?"

He didn't answer right away. She was about to ask again when he waved his hands at her. "Yeah, course I'm okay. I'm great. What about you? What're you doing down here in the middle of the night?"

Not so subtly changing the subject, she noted. Something was definitely wrong but she decided to go along with it. If he didn't want to talk about it she wasn't going to push it.

"Kori and Dick needed some privacy," she explained. Then something dawned on her. "Wait, if you're here then that means your room is empty. Why didn't they just go there instead of kicking me out? Unbelievable."

Gar smiled. Well, tried to. "I wasn't supposed to come back alone."

It took her a moment to get the meaning behind his words. Her face warmed up. Right. She'd seen him with his arm wrapped around a cute blonde sometimes on campus. A geology major, if she remembered right. She'd always idly thought they looked nice together. "Oh. Um. Where…"

"Well," Gar started, matter-of-factly, "she dumped me. About, oh, four hours ago? We were supposed to go to the midnight carnival, which ends at eleven thirty so it's not really midnight, just late-ish, but before we could leave she ended things, right there. So I went by myself. I won a giant chicken, gave it to a little boy who kept losing. You're wearing shorts."

Rachel looked down at her bare legs, so blindingly pale they could've burned a vampire to death, and self-consciously pulled her legs under her. She tugged the sleeves of her sweatshirt down to cover her hands then casually (she hoped) draped her arms over her legs.

"Yeah," she said. "I was gonna go to sleep."

"I don't think I've ever seen your legs before." He frowned. "If you wear shorts to sleep, how come I've never seen your legs before? We share a bathroom."

"Yeah, us and fourteen other people. I put on sweats before I go to the bathroom."

"Why?"

"I don't like my legs."

"Why not? They're nice. You should wear shorts more often."

She narrowed her eyes at him, not threateningly but like she was trying to see him better. She hadn't noticed at first but his face was flushed and he carried the faint smell of alcohol on him. "Are you drunk right now?"

He screwed up his mouth, thinking. "Maybe just a little. You have a birthmark."

Without looking, Rachel pulled the hem of her shorts down to cover as much of the mark on her leg as she could. Which wasn't much. The birthmark was large, covering half the side of her thigh and hip. It was purple against her pale skin, like she'd gotten ugly bruises that wouldn't go away.

"Oh," he said knowingly, nodding. "I get it. You're embarrassed by it."

"No I'm not," she said, not looking at him.

"Ashamed, then," he amended. "I used to feel that way about my scars. But I couldn't hide them so I decided not to be ashamed anymore." He grinned and held up his left arm, pointing at the black ink. "Then I got my first tattoo. Figured if people are gonna stare might as well give them a good reason."

Something akin to guilt swirled in her stomach. She could hide her birthmark. Gar couldn't hide his scars. Instead, he embraced them. It was the kind of courage she wished she possessed and she was overcome by the need to get very far away from it.

"You're drunk," she said again.

"I went to a party," he confirmed with a sigh. He dropped his head onto the back of the couch. "Or two. Or four."

Then, without meaning to, she said, "You really liked her."

He stared at the ceiling. "Yeah, I do."

Great. He was emotional. Drunk and emotional. That was never a good combination. If she had a problem dealing with him sober and happy, drunk and emotional was going to blow. On the bright side (the very dim, sun-stuck-behind-the-clouds bright), at least he wasn't a loud drunk. Just sad.

"Um, there, there," she said flatly. "It'll be alright."

He snorted and dropped his head to the side to look at her. "Has anyone ever told you that you suck at comforting people?"

"No," she scoffed. "Because I don't comfort people. Just, I don't know, sleep it off and don't think about it."

"Is that how you handle all your problems? By pretending they don't exist?"

"I'm trying to be nice to you. Don't make me regret it."

"Aw, don't say that, Rae. I'm sure you regretted it the second you asked."

She tried not to look like he was right.

He chuckled then sighed and slapped his hands down on his thighs to push himself to stand. "Okay. Let's go."

He offered her a hand and she frowned at it. "Go where?"

"I can't just let you sit here all night," he said like it was obvious. "There's an empty bed in my room that no one's gonna use tonight. You can."

"Share a room with you," she summed up. "All night. Just the two of us. Alone. While you're drunk and emotional and vulnerable and just might take advantage of the situation."

He sighed and squinted at her. "A lot of words came out of your mouth just now and none of them was no, so. Are you coming?"

Rachel didn't really think for one second that Gar would try anything. Her history with the male gender had left a bad taste in her mouth and forced wariness to be her first reaction to anything involving men. But whatever else she might think about him, Gar wasn't that kind of guy. He was genuine and sincere and currently seriously heartbroken.

Besides, if she watched one more second of MTV she just might attack the television.

"Let's go."

The elevator ride up to the fifth floor was tough for both of them. Gar's face took on a slight green tint, making Rachel hope they reached their floor before he threw up. He was so off balance she had to help hold him up. They stumbled down the hall together like that until they reached his door where she had to fumble awkwardly through his pockets to find his room key. Then finally, she dropped him on the floor.

The room didn't look that different from hers. It had two desk/bed combos, like someone replaced the bottom bunk with a desk, pressed against either wall with a dresser at the end of each. A window over a small table was in the wall opposite the door and she cracked it open. Gar's side of the room—easily distinguished by the wall of clothes that cluttered the ground around it, the zoology textbooks on the desk, and the odd mix of animal and Playboy posters on the wall—had a funny stench coming from it.

Still on the ground, Gar pulled off his sneakers and threw them haphazardly on the floor. He grunted and dragged himself to his feet as he told Rachel, "You can go ahead and take Dick's bed."

"Thanks." Predictably, she felt a little odd as she climbed the ladder to her best friend's boyfriend's bed. Neither of them would be mad, and it was a thousand times better to the ripe smelling alternative, but it was still weird.

When she reached the top and looked down, Gar stripped off his shirt, his back to her. She bit back a surprised yelp, her eyes widening slightly and face flaming. Then he unbuttoned his jeans and kicked them off to reveal light blue boxers with bright yellow ducks on them. She stared as he climbed the ladder to his bed, the lean muscles on his back doing interesting things. He was so skinny that Rachel had never considered the idea that he might have any muscle on him at all, but evidently she was wrong.

He settled onto his bed and she peeled her eyes away, staring straight ahead, surprised at herself. That had been unexpected.

"You okay over there?" he said as he wrestled with the tangled mess of his blankets.

"This is just…weird, sort of." In more ways than one, she added silently.

"You want to trade?" he offered, spreading his arms wide and gesturing to his bed. "This one doesn't belong to anyone's boyfriend anymore."

"That's okay," she said, settling down. "I'll manage."

"M'kay. Night."

"Good night."

She didn't fall asleep right away and when she did, it was precarious and unsatisfying. She could hear Gar tossing and turning. It didn't feel like a very long time until she opened her eyes but checked the clock on the table under the window, she found that it had been about an hour and a half since they laid down.

She shifted from her back to her side and squinted in the darkness at the other bed. She could just see the outline of Gar's body, one arm slung over his face. He wasn't moving anymore but that didn't mean he was sleeping.

After a minute or two, she closed her eyes again. Then she opened them. Then closed them. It wasn't any of her business. It didn't matter to her if he got any sleep tonight. She didn't care.

Another minute or two passed. Then she huffed and opened her eyes to glare at his bed.

"Gar?" she said softly. Her voice was drowsy; even to her own ears she sounded like she just woke up. "Are you awake?"

Enough seconds ticked by that Rachel was satisfied that he was sleeping, when an exhausted, husky voice mumbled, "Yeah."

Inwardly, she swore. Outwardly, she sighed. "Have you slept at all?"

"Maybe."

She took that as a no.

"I just…" He trailed off then tried again. "I just keep thinking about her. I just, I don't get it. I don't know what I did wrong. I don't know what's wrong with me."

"There's nothing wrong with you." Comforting Gar Take 2, she thought. Off to a good start. "You probably didn't do wrong anything either. Or maybe you did, I don't know. But it isn't really about you. It was about her. It was her choice, she made it, and now you're the one that has to deal with it."

"I don't know if this is supposed to make me feel better or not."

She didn't either but it was the truth and she told him so. "There's nothing you can do about it now. It happened. Accept it and find a way to move on."

She saw him remove his arm from his face and turn his head to look at her. There wasn't enough light in the room for her to see his face clearly. It made her feel oddly exposed, not knowing what kind of expression he had as he looked at her.

"What if I wanted to try to get her back?"

"Do you think you're going to marry her someday?" she asked.

A pause. "I don't know."

"If you don't think you're going to spend the rest of your life with her, then what would be the point of trying to get her back? She broke up with you once, there's nothing to stop her from doing it again."

"That's so depressing," he said. "You're a real pessimist, you know. What kind of attitude is that to have about love?"

"If you know so much about it, then don't listen to me. I'm bad at this anyway."

"You're the one that started this conversation."

"You're the one that sat down next to me."

"You didn't have to ask."

"Fine. Next time don't look like the world is about to collapse at any second and I won't ask."

"Fine."

"Good."

She huffed and closed her eyes, adjusting the blanket tighter around her in annoyance. That's what she gets for being "concerned." Last time she does that.

Then, "Hey Rachel?"

"What?" she said sharply.

"Thanks."

She sighed, relaxing, eyes still closed. "Just get some sleep."

"Okay."

A/N: I have no idea what this is but there will probably be more. I was thinking about how to fit green into normal-looking Gar and then a story(ish-type-thing) showed up. Hope you liked it!