Two days passed without much change in the tower. Beast Boy had been doing a particularly good job of keeping away from Raven, whether it was because he had promised to or because of the consequences that his kiss could bring scared him. Either way, she hadn't seen much of the shape-shifter, though his absence was also partly Raven's fault too, for she had spent most of her time alone in her room during the past two days meditating and reading books. None of her emotions had appeared to talk with her ever since discovering who had won the competition, which seemed odd to Raven as they had been so persistent before. Still, she appreciated the silence and alone time without any unnecessary distractions.

Raven wasn't sure why she was spending so much time by herself except for that she just felt better when she didn't have to see the others and be reminded about the contest, although each of the Titans seemed to be doing their own things now whenever Raven did leave her room. Robin was usually training. Starfire had discovered her new favorite hobby to be cooking -much to everyone else's horror- and Beast Boy was catching up on his video game time. Cyborg, whenever he wasn't playing against Beast Boy, had now become obsessed with a new T.V. show, which -to Raven's dismay- was none other than the show she and Beast Boy had been on. She couldn't wait to see Robin try to break Cyborg of his new fascination, The Cutest Couple Competition. How the robotic teenager had gone from football to The Cutest Couple Competition, Raven didn't know, and she didn't want to. In his spare time though, Cyborg was almost certainly teasing Beast Boy about the show, and Raven didn't want to have to deal with him or his immature taunts unless necessary.

Her peace and tranquility was disrupted on the third day after the end of the contest by a knock on her door. Raven recognized it easily, as the person on the other side was one who came to her room the most out of all the Titans. Raven slid the door open, and, as she had expected, Beast Boy stood there alone with his hands behind his back. He smiled a greeting in the anxious way that he always did.

"Hello," Raven addressed, unsure how else she should respond to his unpredicted appearance.

"Hey Raven," Beast Boy said, shifting his position. "I was just wondering if you were okay."

At least he got right to the point. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well," Beast Boy laughed nervously, "you didn't want pizza… you know, after the winner was announced, and I figured that's reason enough alone to be worried! And the last time you spend days in your room, there was a magic book that had come alive in there and turned your robe all white!"

Raven stepped aside, revealing the empty room save for her usual things along the walls and the bed set in the middle. "See for yourself," she offered. Beast Boy peered in and, after a quick scan around, nodded.

"Yep, it's as normal and dark as ever," he observed, leaning back. He looked at her. "Actually, I also wanted to make sure you weren't mad at me. For… well, you know." He scratched the back of his head, focusing on his feet. "If you were hiding away because of me…"

"I'm not hiding," Raven interrupted, pulling down her hood. "I'm just… taking some time to myself."

"Oh." Beast Boy turned. "Sorry, if I was interrupting, I just-."

"No, it's okay." Raven grabbed his shoulder, stopping him. "You're not intruding." She glanced at his hands hidden behind him from her sight. "What are you hiding this time? Another picnic basket?" she asked, crossing her arms and recalling their "first" date in the park.

"What? Oh, no, not that." Beast Boy held out a book, which Raven accepted curiously. "Remember when I said at the start of the competition when it took forever to convince you to do it with me that I would buy a whole bunch of books and stuff for your room if we won?" He shrugged. "Well, here."

"But we didn't win," Raven reminded.

"And I didn't buy you a bunch of books," Beast Boy said, grinning. "Just this one. Besides, I felt like I owed you something for competing with me. It's kind of a thank you, I guess."

"You already thanked me," Raven murmured. She turned around and entered her room before Beast Boy could ask what she'd said, leaving the door open. Beast Boy hesitated. "You can come in," Raven sighed. Now with her permission to enter the threshold, Beast Boy walked into the room, looking around secretly for any hidden dragons or wizards that might be hiding in the corners as Raven slid her new book into an open space in a bookshelf. The title was in Latin: Carminibusque Reprehenderit. Spells and Charms. Raven assumed that -because she doubt Beast Boy knew a single word in another language- someone must have helped him pick it out, but knowing the shape-shifter, he'd probably had the final choice in the end despite his lack of knowledge. Little did he know that this book was one that Raven didn't have. She'd actually been looking for it for a long time, and the dark girl couldn't help but wonder where he had found it. She stood and faced Beast Boy. Catching her watching him, Beast Boy quickly straightened and Raven walked over to her bed, sitting down. "Do you have time to talk?" she asked.

Beast Boy glanced at the door nervously."But, um, I thought I had promised not to bother you for a week after the competition was over?"

"You're not bothering me," Raven replied truthfully.

Beast Boy sat down beside her on the bed, rubbing his arm. "Okay. What do you want to talk about?" he questioned.

Raven didn't say anything at first. While alone in her room against her subconscious will, she had thought about this kind of conversation should it ever occur, though she never expected to have gotten the chance. Raven had been prepared, just like everyone else, for the whole thing to blow over and all of their lives to go back to normal without any change, yet here she was with Beast Boy sitting beside her and ready to hear what she had to say. Raven made up her mind and looked at him.

"When you kissed me on the cheek," she started, and Beast Boy widened his eyes. He wasn't sure he was ready for this conversation. There could be potential pain in his immediate future. "The morning after, I wasn't sure what you had meant by it, so I had Robin, Starfire, and Cyborg find out for me. I don't know why I didn't just ask you myself," she admitted. "Maybe I was scared, or didn't want to know." Beast Boy raised his eyebrows. Raven, scared? It was hard to believe that he could scare her the most out of anyone on the team. He always thought of himself as more of the funny dude than a scary guy. Even Starfire's food could be more terrifying than him, although that wasn't saying much as most of the time her dishes were still partially alive, and bore teeth. "Whatever the reason, I had the others do it, and they explained to me what you told them; that you did it to win the contest."

"Raven…," Beast Boy tried to interrupt, but Raven didn't let him.

"I thought about it for a while, but now I want to hear the words from your mouth." Raven looked him straight in the eye. "Did you kiss me on the cheek because of the competition and no other reason?"

Beast Boy swallowed. He always got nervous when it came to talking with Raven, and although it had gotten a lot easier during the past three weeks, with her here staring him down like she was, he found that no matter how hard he tried, it was impossible for him to form a complete sentence. "Well, you see, it was like, uh… That is you were there and I, um… I hadn't, err… The contest was, uh… I heard cameras and the… Ah… you…," he rambled.

Raven frowned.

Beast Boy coughed, pulling himself together. "Yeah, okay. Yes, I heard the cameras rolling when I kissed you on the cheek," he admitted, pulling at his collar uneasily. Raven broke her eye contact, and though she was as emotionless as ever, the entire room seemed to fall into a heavy gloom. His stomach fluttered with guilty butterflies, and Beast Boy felt like he had to tell her the whole truth. "But that's not why I did it."

Raven looked at him. "Why?" she asked dangerously.

"Well, I, um, uh, you see it was like-," he started, precariously close to rambling again. He caught Raven's eye and took a breath. "I kissed you because I've kinda started liking you during the time that we were dating." Raven didn't move for a moment, just watching Beast Boy with her dark violet eyes, which served to make him even more nervous, and -being the anxious boy that he was- once more started talking without really knowing what he was saying. "I know that you said after we had been interviewed to let you know if I was going to try anything ahead of time and stuff like that, but I figured that you would completely destroy me if I told you about it before, which you are probably thinking about doing right now... But I didn't tell the others the truth to why I kissed you because, well, you know, they're them, especially Cyborg and who would know what it would be like if he knew how I feel about you and he would never stop teasing us about that. I didn't really have it planned though, because it was just a spur of the moment kind of thing and I figured since it was the last time I'd have the chance I should take it and hope you wouldn't be really mad at me because of it, because I really like you and didn't want to just forget the whole thing without letting you know how I feel and-." He cut off, swallowing as he caught Raven's expression. "W-what are you looking at me like that for, Raven?" he asked with a nervous laugh.

Raven suddenly grabbed his shirt in a tight fist. Beast Boy swallowed again. "W-what are you doing?"

Raven looked at him, deadpan. "You kissed me without my consent," she said. "It's time to accept the consequences of your actions." Beast Boy cringed, bracing for the pain of whatever punishment she had prepared to dish out on him. Raven's usual reaction to anything he did was anger, and such anger was almost always followed by an injury of some sort. That was probably why she had stayed in her room for so long; she was formulating the best way to kill him without leaving any evidence. All those books on the shelves were probably torture spells or something, methods on how to get rid of the people who annoy you most in the world. And he had walked right into her room without even suspecting that he had set his own demise, the end of the era of the shape-shifter Beast Boy. The other Titans wouldn't even know he was gone! Raven would find a spell to wipe their minds and then poof! It would be like he had never even existed. Beast Boy thought he was safe from her rage after giving Raven a few days to calm down, but now he realized he'd only been delaying the inevitable.

These thoughts flashed through Beast Boy's head at a thousand miles an hour. Raven's dark eyes locked with his. Only a few seconds had passed, but Beast Boy felt like he was standing on a tightrope above a pit of flame, sweating as the rope slowly burned down to nothing and snapped. He was ready to see his life pass before his eyes any minute now.

Raven glanced at the window for a moment, her expression unreadable. At last, with Beast Boy's shirt still held in her fist, Raven placed on her free hand behind his head, suddenly pulling him close to her, and kissed him, softly pressing her lips against his. Beast Boy, who had been about ready to pass out from fear, was overcome with first relief, and then surprise. Raven was kissing him? She'd looked like she had about to kill him! How was he not dead right now? The questions racing through Beast Boy's mind disappeared for a wonderful moment and his eyes fell shut before Raven moved back. Beast Boy stared at her, and then he pinched his arm.

"What are you doing?" Raven asked with a sigh.

"Making sure I'm not dreaming," Beast Boy confessed guiltily. Raven dipped her head, and before she could stop it, a soft laugh escaped from her mouth. Beast Boy widened his eyes. "Did… Did you just laugh?!" Raven looked at him, smiling. "At one of my jokes?!" He threw his arms in the air. "Okay, now I know I'm dreaming!"

"If you tell anyone, I'll have to kill you," Raven said seriously.

"Now that sounds more like the real Raven," Beast Boy admitted, grinning and loving the fact that he could still feel her kiss tingling on his lips. Not only that, but she had laughed at one of his jokes! It all seemed too good to be true. He sat back, and something behind her caught his eye. "Um, Raven?" he said cautiously, pointing. "I don't want to alarm you or anything, but it looks like your curtains went through a bad cycle in the washer or something." Raven turned around and saw that he was right. Her previously full velvet drapes lay tattered on the floor, appearing as if a playful puppy had snuck into her room and tore them to shreds. In fact, if she hadn't known better, she probably couldn't have recognized that the remains had been part of a curtain at all.

Raven regarded the cloth with no signs of surprise. "I'm impressed that nothing else got destroyed," she admitted. Beast Boy looked at her, confused, and she held up a glowing hand. "Powers driven by emotion, remember?"

"Oh," Beast Boy said, and, dissolving the magic, Raven lowered her hand. Unknowing to the two Titans, a little ways outside of Raven's window floating off into the ocean there was a large chunk of the tower's shore that had been cut from the island by a slash of black magic. No one would notice the change for a while, until one day sometime in the future Robin would ask if anyone else felt like the tower had tilted to the side a little. The Titans would then discover the mysterious piece of island missing, and while Cyborg would be able to fix the problem without any trouble, no one would ever figure out the reason for the missing chunk of land. Back in the present, Beast Boy grinned at Raven. "You know, I really thought you were going to kill me before!"

"It crossed my mind," Raven declared with another smile. "I was deciding if I should throw you out the window at first and then kiss you."

Beast Boy raised an eyebrow. "But were you going to kiss me anyway?"

"It was in the plan," Raven said, "although plans change. It could have gone fifty-fifty."

"I like this fifty," he smirked, running a hand through his hair. "So, does this mean you like me too?"

"No," Raven stated, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes, "because I always kiss people I hate. Right before I tie them up, light them on fire, and then send them into another dimension."

"Those lucky people," Beast Boy grinned, earning a light whack on the back of his head from Raven. Beast Boy grew serious. "But what about the others knowing? What about the team? You said a while ago that their teasing would be hard to bear."

"They already know you kissed me on the cheek, idiot," Raven reminded. "They just won't have to know about this kiss for a little while. The media thinks we've been dating for some time now because of the show, so they'll be the ones we'll have to worry about. We won't have to lie about being in a relationship at the very least."

"Okay, I guess that works. And there's always Starfire and Robin to lighten the load once we do tell them," Beast Boy thought out loud. Raven rolled her eyes again. That was Beast Boy, always thinking of ways to get out of things, although in this case he might actually have a point. But Raven wasn't going to tell him that.

Raven suddenly groaned. "I bet Starfire's going to want to go on a double date with us," she realized, placing a hand to her forehead. Starfire forever wanted to do things that she heard about on Earth, and, of course, Robin would always comply with her wishes. Raven continually was getting pulled along with them when it came to these little activities as she was the lone other girl in the tower.

"At least I'll get to see you dressed up in a cute outfit again," Beast Boy smirked.

"Unlikely," Raven proclaimed. "I'm not getting in another guise like that one for a long time."

"Aw, darn." Beast Boy said, pouting. "Wait," he paused, what Raven had said earlier sinking in at last, "so we are officially dating? Not fake anymore?"

"I suppose so," Raven sighed tiredly, though a smile played at her lips. "But you have to promise that you're not going to buy me a truckload of gifts anymore, especially not all that food like you purchased for me before the competition."

"No problem there. I doubt I have any money left after those three weeks anyway!" He pulled his pockets inside out. "See? Nothing! You'll have to buy me stuff now!" Raven rolled her eyes and Beast Boy stood up. "So when are we going to tell the others?" Raven only shrugged. She hadn't taken any time to think about it. Beast Boy grinned at her. "We could totally mess with them on this you know. You could walk out and act like you are extremely happy because I'm dead. The rest of the team would be completely in shock and freak out, then you would just say you were kidding and… um… uh… help me out here."

Raven snorted. She had no interest in playing pranks on the others, however much they irritated her at times. "There's one flaw to your plan, Beast Boy. I don't think that they'd care too much that you'd be dead."

"What?!" Beast Boy looked hurt. "You can't mean that! They totally love me!"

"Of course they do." Raven got to her feet and started walking toward the door. Beast Boy followed, thinking.

"So Rae, you have got to think I'm funny now that we're really dating," he said. "You laughed at one of my jokes! That's proof, right?"

"In your dreams."

"This feels like one; does that count?" Beast Boy asked with a smile that revealed his glinting canine tooth.

"No," Raven exhaled. Beast Boy stopped in the hallway beside her as she spoke. "We'll figure out a way to tell the rest of the team later." She glanced at her bedroom where her curtains used to be. One of the problems that still existed for Raven was going to be controlling her powers due to her emotions, but she suspected in due time -with a lot of meditation and willpower- she would be able to conquer this dilemma. Luckily, she enjoyed meditation and held a lot of self-control within herself. It would take a little while to get used to it, but, like holding hands with Beast Boy, soon being in a relationship with him would come easily. If Beast Boy got a little roughed up along the way, she could always heal him, but thinking about it, Raven doubted he would even care.

Beast Boy looked at her. "I really can't tell anyone you think I'm funny?"

Raven lifted an eyebrow. "Because I don't."

"Aw, dude," Beast Boy whined. He frowned a moment, then, suddenly kissing Raven on the forehead, spun and raced down the hall. "Hey guys! Guess what?! Raven thinks I'm funny!" he called, arms flailing around. "She laughed at one of my jokes!"

"I swear I'm going to kill him," Raven muttered, fighting a smile. She paused a few seconds to silently quiet the cheering voices of her emotions in her head, and then sprinted after Beast Boy, prepared to throw him in a volcano if she had to in order to keep him quiet.

The End

I swear I'm going to start crying. I cannot thank you enough for the many many many wonderous and thoughtful reviews you have all given this story. I especially appreciate everyone's encouragements and I might not have updated as quickly as I have if it weren't for all of you. I'm also so excited, along with shocked, that I got up to the eighties for followers. This is the most successful story I've written, and it's all because of you amazing people. If I could thank everyone individually, I would, but there wouldn't be enough room on the page to do it.

But I must give one quick thank you to BlueTitan for inspiring me to write a Teen Titan story on Fan Fiction. His writing abilities are beyond amazing, and reminded me just how much I love Teen Titans. I recommend that if you want to read something very good, you might want to look into his stories. Or if you already have, I just posted the first chapter to another story, Mood Swing, that I'm starting which was chosen by the votes from the poll on my page. I'm going to keep the poll up for a little longer, so keep voting on it and I might begin one of those stories too!

Thank you all so very much from the bottom of my heart, and, as always, review please! Ha, sorry, I couldn't resist.

-CleoArrow