AN: Here's something I wrote a while back. Six hours on a plane in Russia produced this rambling, roundabout take on something that's been done literally thousands of times on this site.

Disclaimer: I don't own 'em.

Day Five: First Kiss

Droplets of water hit the floor in Raven's room. Drying one's hair with an already-wet towel was an exercise in futility, but still she tried. There was no sense in inviting a cold; her day was already going badly enough that she wanted to tempt fate as little as possible.

Adonis always made her skin crawl, but this time… this time he had crossed a terrible line.

"A little backup would be appreciated!" Raven yelled into her communicator as she dodged another crate. Snapping it shut, she barely had time to place it back on her belt before a steel girder flew her way. This, she deflected with a shield of black energy. A wolf whistle drew her gaze to where Adonis was causing his mechanical suit to perform an absurd pelvic thrust.

"That would be more impressive if you had anything down there," she called to him, knowing his hubris would leave him careless and open to an attack. Deciding to go for the gold, she added, "And I'm not talking about the suit."

As predicted, the would-be bodybuilder roared and charged her head-on. With a slight smirk, the sorceress erected another shield…

And was dealt both a physical and psychic blow when he passed through her soul-self, dissipating its manifestation as he slammed her to the ground.

As she lay groaning in pain, attempting to regain her senses, the mech loomed over her and knelt, pinning one of her hands in each of its massive ones. "Who's afraid of the big bad witch?" the boy crowed as he leaned in, breath reeking of teeth not brushed for days. "Put a couple magic rocks in the latest model of my suit. Who's packin' heat now, sexy?"

Between the pain she was in and Adonis's remarks, it was all too easy to let her second set of eyes appear; the hard part was reining in her anger. "I think it's time for you to back off," she hissed in an unnatural voice.

The villain merely smiled even wider. "Ooh. Got yourself a little inner demon, eh? Guess you aren't as pretty inside as you are on the outside." His eyes raked over her, lingering in the most unwelcome of places. A mechanical hand dipped down toward her chest…

Thankfully, Adonis's idiocy hadn't been cured by the purchase of a few rune stones. While his suit might not have been vulnerable to magic, per se, it was still subject to the laws of physics— specifically, heavy projectiles launched at high speeds. By the time the rest of the Titans found them, Adonis had been wrapped entirely in the same girders he had thrown at her, only a head with a horrifically cracked faceplate showing through the metal.

Still, though his hand hadn't reached its destination, Raven couldn't shake the experience from her mind. Resigning herself to damp hair for the time being, she let the towel drop to the floor. Even though Cyborg had added on a bathroom to each of the Titans' rooms, she had no motivation to walk back in there and hang it properly. Taking a seat at the foot of her bed, she settled into the lotus position and prepared for a long session of meditation.

A knock at her door pulled her back from the edge of tranquility. "Raven?" came a muffled voice. "It's me."

"Not now, Beast Boy," she called loudly enough to be heard through the metal paneling.

"Please? It's important."

Reaching a tendril of empathy out, Raven felt the simmer of her teammate's emotions: anger, shame, helplessness, desperation, all ready to break out into a full boil. Problems with the Beast, then. It made sense; they'd been fighting Adonis, after all. Taking a calming breath and pushing aside her own needs for the time being, she used her powers to open the door.

Shoulders slumped, Beast Boy slunk into her room. His eyes were fixed on the ground, and he stopped short of her, as though afraid that sitting on her bed as per usual would be too close.

From experience, Raven knew that any prompting on her part would only prolong her friend's silence; he would speak when he had gathered his jumble of thoughts. Finally, three words came out, almost inaudible but laden with feeling. "I hate him."

"Who, exactly?" Raven replied.

"Adonis."

Suppressing the revulsion that spread through her at the mention of his name, Raven weighed her words. "I know he reminds you of the struggle you have to go through, but you're still in control—"

"Not that," he murmured, shaking his head. "I don't care about me. I hate him for how he made you feel."

The sorceress barely hid her shock. "Me?" she asked, trying to maintain her usual monotone. With almost anyone else, the result would have been passable, but Beast Boy knew her too well.

"You." His eyes flickered up to hers, then back down to the ground. "I saw."

Oh, merciful Azar, no. "S-saw what?"

A growl rumbled in his chest. "Don't make me describe it, Rae. You know what I'm talking about." His jaw clenched and his nostrils flared. "I was sneaking up on him as a mouse. I saw it, and I wanted to rip him out of that suit and tear out his heart and give it to you so that you would feel better, so that you would know he'd never make you feel that way again."

"I'm fine, Beast Boy," she said, cursing the quiver in her voice. "You don't have to worry."

"Liar," he shot back. "I heard the water running in here. Two separate thirty-minute showers. And you didn't use your regular soap; you used the stuff Cyborg gave us for cleaning up after we fight Plasmus." His fists clenched. "He made you feel dirty, Raven, and I hate him so much for that, because you of all people should never have to feel that way." Green eyes met hers once more, but this time they didn't break contact. "But that doesn't change the fact that you can't just ignore this. You've gotta process what happened or it's just going to get worse."

Raven rose to her feet and shouldered past Beast Boy, though the action served no purpose. She stopped short of the comedy-tragedy sculpture, unwilling to be driven from her own room by her inability to handle her emotions normally. The changeling, to his credit, simply stood and waited.

She knew he was right about this, however much she despised facing the reality of the situation. The sorceress closed her eyes and reinforced her empathic shielding as much as she could, concentrating on isolating her own emotions. Revulsion and anger and fear were obviously there, but a highly unusual mixture was also present, floating like a layer of oil atop a lake— shock, excitement, happiness… laced with terror.

As Raven pondered what could possibly have evoked such feelings in her, a single sentence swam through her mind, and she froze.

"He said… he said I was pretty," Raven murmured, eyes wide. Though her back was turned to the changeling, she felt him creep a few steps closer. "There have only been two people who have ever called me beautiful or pretty, and they are both despicable beings." She swallowed. "I know I'm not beautiful, but somehow evil people are still attracted to me. What if it's because they sense the evil in me and are drawn to that?"

There was a pause, then a short bark behind her caused her to turn around. Beast Boy was shaking his head, one palm resting over his eyes. Scant seconds later, he began to chuckle.

Incensed, Raven strode over to him and grabbed the front of his uniform. "Beast Boy, for once in your life, be serious, you insensitive—"

"Sorry," he interrupted, and when he pulled his hand away from his face, Raven saw a genuine apology. "It's just one of those laugh-or-cry things, so I gotta laugh. I mean, how can you possibly think you're not beautiful, Raven?"

She shrugged and released him. "Last time I checked, Starfire was the alien bombshell, not me."

"Starfire's got that traditional brick-house look going on, sure," the changeling replied, waving a dismissive hand, "But do you like never look in the mirror or something?"

A purple eyebrow shot up. "Meaning…?"

Shifting from foot to foot, Beast Boy looked at her eyes, then away, then back. "Look, I'm gonna start with the shallow stuff just cause it's super super obvious, but it'll get better from there, so please don't kill me till after I'm done talking, kay?"

At Raven's nod of assent, he took a deep breath and began. "Okay, so first off, the legs! He waved his arms frantically at her lower half, which was largely exposed at the moment. "I mean, most of the time they're covered up with your cloak and all, but when they're showing it's just… *BAM*, amazing legs! If you decided one day to ditch the cloak and let 'em out all the time, we'd have to stop calling you Raven and start calling you, like, Lady Legasus or something."

The utter absurdity of the statement caught Raven by surprise, and she let out a guffaw.

Beast Boy's eyes turned to saucers. "Holy tofu cow, I finally made you laugh," he whispered. Blinking a few times, he shook his head. "Okay okay okay, anyway, you've got a rockin' body, awesome curves in all the right places. That's the super shallow stuff. Now the kind of shallow: your face. I'd need a thessalonicusaurus or whatever you call it to come up with enough words to describe all the things I like, so just take my word for it. You've got that mix of cute and beautiful that's like the most awesome thing ever, and you don't even have to be smiling; no matter what, you're still the most beautiful girl I've ever seen."

Now it was Raven's turn to go wide-eyed. The changeling was speaking from the heart; she didn't even need her empathy to sense his honesty. No one had ever spoken to her this way, and her vision began to swim at the bottom.

"Not done yet," he said, putting a finger to her lips as she opened her mouth. "This part's the most important: you are an awesome person. I've known you for years; I've seen you at your happiest and your crabbiest, I've bought you chocolate and tampons and you've made me your mom's vegetable soup recipe when I've been sick. That evil in you that you're talking about? I've seen it up close. But y'know what? You keep fighting it, and that alone would make you a good person, beautiful inside. All of the little things together? You are the most amazing, beautiful, wonderful person I have ever known, Raven." A sad smile tugged at his mouth. "And when I see you doubting yourself like this, it makes me just want to hold you tight and kiss you till you realize how incredible you…" Beast Boy trailed off, finger dropping from her mouth to hang limp at his side.

His words hovered in the air, crackling with potential energy awaiting the chance to turn kinetic. "Raven?" he murmured, "Is it all right if I… kiss you?"

Biting her lip, the empath nodded and allowed her eyes to drift shut. She waited, heart hammering, as she felt warm breath on her lips…

"Okay, good," came a voice just inches from her face. Cracking one eye, she found the changeling giving her a nervous grin. "That's good, cause I really really want to but I figured I should ask because I don't wanna do anything you aren't comfortab—"

With a growl, Raven snaked a hand around to the back of Beast Boy's head and pulled him in until her lips brought his to a halt.

As smashing two mouths together went in Raven's limited experience, it wasn't bad. Still, she felt some strange sensation apart from the obvious. Once more a single eye opened, only to find the changeling staring at her like the proverbial deer in headlights. With a sigh, she broke contact and waited as his mental faculties returned. When he was finally able to speak, his response was pure Beast Boy. "Aww man! I totally ruined our first kiss, didn't I?"

Raven shrugged. "Contrary to what you might hear, the first kiss is rarely all that magical. Nerves run high, and there's a lot of fumbling, miscommunication, and so on."

The changeling looked at her quizzically. "Sounds like you're speaking from experience."

"I did date someone for two months, in case you'd forgotten," she replied, a bit of her customary sardonic humor returning.

He grinned. "Oh yeah, Goth Boy. Somewhere around last Valentine's Day, right?"

Raven gave a nod. "So in any case, yes, I had a first kiss before this. Just one."

"One more than me," he replied. "And that means you've gotta teach poor innocent me all about the art of kissing." His eyebrows wiggled.

With a smirk, the empath nodded once more. "All right, then. First lesson, Grasshopper: the first kiss isn't the important one. It's the second kiss that has all the fireworks in it."

Lips curled upward and a fang grew even more prominent. "Gotcha," he replied, inching closer to her and tilting his head. One gloved hand came to rest gently on her left hip, and the other skimmed across her cheek before cradling the back of her head, thumb brushing the tip of her ear. Frisson shot through the sorceress, and her eyelids fluttered as she drew in a sharp breath.

Garfield's lips made a smooth landing, gradually increasing in pressure. It was patient, tender— much like him, in his better moments. His lips moved against hers a few times, then parted ever so slightly… and after another few seconds, his tongue brushed against her teeth, and she let it in.

Slowly, with some degree of trepidation, the muscle moved against her own, growing bolder with each pass. All too soon, Raven's lungs crept into her awareness, and as if reading her thoughts, Beast Boy pressed his lips firmly against hers once more, then pulled away.

They hung in suspended animation for the briefest of moments, then the changeling let out a deep, shuddering breath. "Fireworks," he whispered with a sense of awe that echoed Raven's own.

Just as Raven opened her mouth to reply, Beast Boy released her and stumbled backwards onto her bed. There he sat, staring dumbfounded at his trembling legs. "Whoa, that's something new."

As if on cue, Raven's hands began to shake as well. She made her way to the bed and sat just to his left, some nameless compulsion bringing her leg to press up against his. His arm, propping him up as he leaned back, stretched another few inches until it rested against her lower back.

Raven couldn't remember a time when everything felt more right.

There was no telling how long they sat there, simply savoring the feeling of contact, but predictably, it was Beast Boy who broke the silence.

"C'mere," he said, swinging his right hand under her thighs and lifting her into his lap. With a little squeak that she would vehemently deny having emitted, Raven's arms shot around his neck out of instinct… and oh, this was even more pleasant.

Beast Boy's eyes twinkled with mischief. "Betcha we can make the third kiss even better, Professor Rae-Rae," he said as he brushed his nose up against hers.

Five minutes later, despite her objections to the new nickname and although she knew telling him would inflate his ego to intolerable proportions, Raven was forced to admit he had been right.