TT- Sweet

The loud, almost unbearable noise of the laugh-track on the TV blared through Beast Boy’s ears. He gave a sigh and flipped to the next channel, decision dancing an intricate waltz between three or four channels of interest before he finally let his attention fall on a Loony Toons episode and then sat still and watched the antics of Daffy and Bugs trying to outwit each other as Elmer Fudd looked on in confusion. He shoved a mouthful of Lucky Charms into his mouth and let the sweetness of the multicolored marshmallows drift slowly over his tongue before he swallowed.

Robin, Star, and Cyborg were gone this morning. They had gone off to ‘blah blah blah,blah-blah. Blah’ as far as Beast Boy had heard. He had been entranced with an Animal Planet rerun at the time and hadn’t really cared enough to focus on what his friends had said about their daily agenda. Raven, of course, had opted to stay home also, but as he had expected it was pretty much like she wasn’t even home. She had a strange ability to make herself completely and totally unnoticed with her silence, sitting in her room in the dark, and it was easy to pretend she wasn’t around.

More or less alone in the Tower, Beast Boy had decided to make the most out of this Saturday morning and have one of those nostalgia-filled times of doing what you still loved to do from childhood. Beast Boy’s long-time favorite cereal sat in its box beside him along with a carton of soymilk and an extra bowl and spoon in case of emergency. There had not been one single Saturday morning he could recall that went by when he was younger that did not involve sitting in front of the TV watching cartoons endlessly and eating Lucky Charms. Even in the less-than-modern village in Africa where they had lived for most of his childhood, he had always found some way to get into the communications van his parents had and watch all the cartoons that would come in on the small TV in the back. He hadn’t done this in a very long time. Superheroes just don’t do Saturday morning cartoon-a-thons, because they simply didn’t have time. He had found this out from experience, and it was nice to get back to the old Saturday routine of things. Though it was nice to do what he had always loved when he was younger, he had come to find that watching Saturday morning cartoons in the huge empty living room of Titans Tower on the big, cold screen that worked better for video games than anything else was just not as enjoyable as  doing the very same thing sitting in the van while his parents worked on organizing the zoology research they had gathered the previous Friday night. It was actually quite a bit lonely, and since he had been doing this for almost an hour, he was starting to really wish for someone, anyone, to keep him company.

“Gar, could you toss me that pen you’re sitting on? Thanks! Nice throw, you’re going to be stronger than superman one of these days! Just wait until you’re six!”

“Ya really think so, mom?”

“I know so. But only if you eat your veggies.”

“So those really do work?”

Beast Boy shook himself out of his memory. He could feel the corners of his eyes almost starting to burn and glisten with wetness, and he certainly didn’t need this. Why was it that everything he did had to bring up some kind of memory? He sighed and closed his eyes, willing the memory away. Willing the pain away. And when it dissipated he was left with an emptiness inside that gnawed at him. He took a bite of his cereal, poured himself some more even though there was still plenty left in the bowl, took another bite, swallowed, and resolved himself to be happy. It took about another half-bowl of the sugary wonderland before he was able to zone out on Loony Toons once more and become blissfully unaware of anything around him. He sat still and stared at the screen, falling into the pattern of chewing and swallowing, chewing and swallowing, and consuming more cereal than any normal person would have.

“Cartoons rot your brain,” said a very blunt, very bored voice from someone out of his line of peripheral vision. Beast Boy jumped slightly and followed the voice to somewhere behind the sofa where Raven stood, only her head and feet not concealed by the dark blue folds of her cloak.

“Yeah, but solitude makes you insane,” Beast Boy argued. Raven was fun to toy with sometimes, and on one of her good days it was fun to see how far he could push her before she got angry. It was dangerous game to play, but he had nothing better to do.

“I know. And insanity is a weapon,” Raven argued back, though he could tell from her tone that she was not going to play his game today. He sighed and lifted his feet up onto the coffee table, giving a stretch and a yawn.

“What’re you doing out here, anyway?” he asked her.

Raven gave a small shrug, looking almost like she really didn’t know the reason herself. “Just thought I’d take a walk around,” she said. “And make sure you weren’t trashing the place,” she added, an afterthought just to be sardonic. Beast Boy rolled the emerald marbles of his eyes and sighed out of one side of his mouth, sending some of his olive hair on a short ride before it landed limply back on his forehead.

“Whatever,” he muttered with a shrug. Raven rolled her eyes at him and turned her back on him with a rustle of blue material and a small swoop of short violet hair, and made a beeline for the kitchen. Bored, Beast Boy stood up, stretched and headed for the kitchen as well. Raven was fussing with her teapot, and Beast Boy leaned against the refrigerator and listened to the clink of china as she struggled to pour tea with her hands wet. She got her cup full before the teapot slipped, hitting the floor just before she could send her psychic energy to the rescue and smashing into pieces, large chunks and tiny pieces like soap flakes littering the tile, pale brown translucent tea washing in a steaming wave around its broken container. Raven cursed lightly. “Ooh, watch your mouth, Raven,” Beast Boy said, wagging a finger at her. She turned around and glared openly at him.

“Why are you following me?” she snapped.

“Temper, temper,” he wagged his finger again. “That temper of yours is going to get you into trouble one of these days.”

A vein pulsed in Raven’s forehead and she lifted her hands, enshrouding the mess on the floor with black energy and lifting it through the air to the trash bin, dropping it all in, even the tea, and leaving not a speck on the floor. Then she turned her attention back to Beast Boy.

“Don’t you have someone else to annoy?” she asked him, shaking her head and setting the ends of her hair in motion. “Because I have things to do.”

“Everyone else is gone,” Beast Boy said, bounding after her as she left the kitchen. “So it’s your lucky day.”

“Oh joy, I must be the luckiest girl in the world,” Raven said, walking on, clutching her teacup in her hands.

“Where are you goin?” Beast Boy asked, walking quickly to keep up with her stride.

“My room,” Raven replied, giving the response he knew she would, and he wondered why he had even bothered to ask. Sometimes he wondered if Raven was just programmed to do three things: reading, meditation, and sarcasm.

“Oh come on Raven, you always do that,” he protested. Raven stopped walking and turned around.

“Do what?” she demanded of him, lips pursed tightly, eyes dangerous.

“Go off in your room with your creepy old books! Why don’t you ever want to hang out?” Beast Boy asked. Raven raised one eyebrow in a slight, graceful arc, a tiny gesture but nonetheless effective.

“Because you are an immature fool with the attention span of a loaf of bread,” she said, words sharp enough to cut. “And furthermore it’s none of your business.”

Beast Boy stood there staring at her for a moment, mouth agape. “Why are you always such a jerk!?” he asked finally, throwing his arms in the air and flailing them around like some kind of malfunctioning animatronics animal. “You are so mean to me it’s unbelievable! I just try to be nice to you, and you say things like that to me! NO matter what I do you’re still just nasty!” he stopped ranting and walked over to her, standing on his tiptoes a bit to look her in the eyes. “I bet you couldn’t spend one day being nice to me!”

“Oh really?” Raven asked, a small smirk on her face, her expression offering him a challenge.

“Really. In fact, let’s go ahead and bet on it!” he said.

“No. It’s stupid and senseless and I’m not going to waste my time,” Raven said, trying to turn away from him and head for the solace of her own room, but he grabbed her wrist and held her in place.

“That’s just because you know you can’t do it!” he said, egging her on. “You know you couldn’t be nice to me for more than three seconds without your head exploding!” he stared straight into the violet battlefields of her eyes and didn’t back down. She stared straight back, engaging in his battle, staring into his own emerald eyes with an intense ferocity that scared him.

“Alright, fine. I’ll play your little game,” she said without looking away.

“Okay,” Beast Boy said with a nod. “But you’re not just going to be nice to me. You’re going to be sweet.” he gave a self-satisfied smirk as a look of dread came into the purple eyes. “We need some guidelines. You have to actually be around me, no going off into your room. You can’t just sit there and read and ignore me. You have to be sweet until…say…midnight tonight.”

Raven nodded. “Alright,” she said. “And if I win, you’re going to leave me alone for a week, alright?”

Beast Boy nodded. “Deal. And if I win…” he searched his mind, hunting mentally for the one thing that would make her more unhappy than anything in the world. Going through internal file cabinets, searching through everything he knew about the Azarathian. His eyes lit up as the perfect plan of torture popped into his head. “If I win, you have to kiss me.”

Raven blinked for a moment, and then shot him a look that meant certain death to anyone in its path, a look that she reserved especially for Beast Boy and occasionally Slade. “You can’t be serious.” her voice dripped with silent pleas that he wasn’t serious, that the thought of her having to kiss him would never cross the conversation again.

“Serious as a heart attack,” Beast Boy said, grinning. “So now you have some incentive to try, don’t you?”

“Definitely. You are the last person on Earth I would want to kiss.”

“Oh that hurts Raven. You cut me real deep there,” Beast Boy said with a roll of his eyes. “I feel so hurt. Because you’re the girl of my dreams and all,” his tone was cruel, little daggers of words trying to jab at Raven, threatening to stab at tender flesh and bring forth torrents of pain-blood.

“And you know you’re no Prince Charming yourself, you overgrown lima bean,” she retaliated, hands on her hips, cup of tea now drifting silently in the air before her on waves of ebony energy.

“Better watch your mouth, princess,” Beast Boy said. “Because the bet takes effect as of right now!”

Raven closed her mouth, swallowing back down whatever other harsh words had been forming on the back of her tongue and silencing herself to risk condemnation to her worst nightmares. “Okay, then,” she said with a nod. “I’m not going to stand here all day. Let’s go in the living room.”

Beast Boy shrugged. “Fine by me,” he said, following her down the hall. “Oh, and good luck. You’re going to need it.”

“You wish,” Raven said sweetly, rounding a corner, still guiding the tea along with her powers. “I’m going to win hands down.”

“We’ll see,” Beast Boy said in a syrupy voice right back, fighting back laughter as they entered the living room. “We’ll see.”  he flopped down on the couch and Raven followed suit, sitting down and crossing her arms. She sat in stubborn silence for a moment. Beast Boy had such a smirk on his face that it made her want to take a flying dive straight through the glass of the bay window.

‘He is not going to beat me.’ she decided, staring stonily out the window at the morning sun setting the waters of the bay into a state of silent life, rippling in waves of white and liquid gold, sparkling with every slight motion set off by the breeze. ‘There is no way I’m going to kiss him.’

“So…” Raven muttered, trying to start a reasonable conversation.

“So what?” Beast Boy asked, and Raven could have hit him. But she didn’t. She pulled the teacup out of the air and into her hands and took a long sip.

“How are you?” she asked the first normal question that popped into her head.

Beast Boy shrugged. “Okay, I guess. But how are you?”

If it had been a normal day, Raven would have told him that truthfully she was doing horribly and wanted to murder him, but instead she forced a cheesy smile onto her face. “I’m doing okay too.”

“Reeeally? Wow, that’s a first,” Beast Boy said. Raven realized that she couldn’t strike back and felt like pulling every strand of hair from her head and throwing herself off of the Tower. She squeezed her eyes shut, vein pulsing in her temple, and took a long, slow sip of hot tea. “What’s the matter?” Beast Boy asked in a voice sweet enough to be taunting. Raven answered with an unintelligible grunt and tried her best to ignore him. “Oh come on, don’t ignore your old buddy Beast Boy! Ignoring people isn’t nice.” his tone was pointed.

Raven gave a long sigh and opened her eyes. “So, what do you want to do?”

Beast Boy shrugged. “We could watch cartoons and eat cereal,” he said. Raven almost gave her customary ‘you’ve got to be joking’, but she restrained herself.

“Alright then,” she said. “What could it hurt?”

Beast Boy beamed and poured some cereal into the spare bowl on the coffee table, added some soymilk and a spoon, and handed it to her. Raven set her tea down, sighed, and shoved a bite of sugary cereal into her mouth, looking up at the screen, where Wile E. Coyote was chasing desperately after Roadrunner, holding a knife and fork. ‘This is mindless, she thought, watching the coyote run over the edge of a cliff and then fall. ‘How do people stand it?

She glanced at Beast Boy, who was eating his cereal like there was no tomorrow and watching the cartoon with interest. He looked over at her. “Oh come on, don’t tell me you don’t like Loony Toons,” he said.

“I really, really don’t,” Raven told him.

“And why is that?” Beast Boy challenged.

“Because it’s almost as mindless and y-” she caught herself before she finished and condemned herself to lose.

“Better watch it, Raven. You wouldn’t want to lose,” Beast Boy said menacingly, giving her an evil smile.

“You know, that would have been a lot more threatening without the little pink marshmallow stuck to your chin,” she commented, looking out the window. Beast Boy brushed the marshmallow from his face and shrugged.

“It’s true, though. If you keep going at this rate, you’re going to lose, and we both know what happens if you lose!”

Raven gave a very visible shudder. “Okay, okay, I’ll be nicer,” she humbled herself, nodding. “I’m sorry.”

Beast Boy’s eyes widened. “You-you apologized!”

“So?”

“So you never apologize to me! That was…that was so nice!” he gave her a genuine smile. “Maybe there’s hope for you after all.”

“And maybe pigs can fly,” Raven muttered under her breath, praying that he wouldn‘t hear her. She didn’t even want to think about what was going to happen if she lost this stupid bet.  

“You know, you don’t like watching cartoons, so maybe we should do something else you’d like better,” Beast Boy offered. This was the first really nice thing he had said all day, and Raven was grateful. It would be a lot easier to keep being civil to him if he didn’t open his fat mouth and say something that made her lose it like he normally did.

“No, it’s okay. Let’s just watch cartoons. It’s what you want,” she said. Beast Boy’s eyes sparkled. He was most certainly not used to her consenting to the things that he wanted to do, and he wasn’t used to her being nice to him, either. Even though she was only doing it for the sake of the bet, it was still strange and unreal.

“Okay!” he said, giving her a huge grin, which made her feel strangely good, as though she had done some unbelievably gallant deed. She gave a small smile back, and was surprised to find that this time her smile was genuine.

The two of them sat and watched cartoons for nearly an hour. Raven decided that they weren’t quite as bad as she had assumed, though they still had no value and she knew quite well that both of them were having their brains rotted by focusing on this kind of mindless drivel. She didn’t pay much attention to the cartoons, just mostly let her mind wander, finished her bowl of cereal and her cup of tea, got a little bit of sneaky meditation squeezed in, and thought that she’d generally made good use of her time. She was extremely bored by this time and missed her books, but she kept her mouth shut and convinced herself that she could handle it. ‘You can do this, Raven. It’s just one day. You can beat this bet. He’ll leave you alone for a whole week if you win! Plus, there is no way in the world that you’re going to kiss him, so you’d better do this!’

‘Come on, kissing him wouldn’t be that bad. It’s not like it would kill you or anything, Happy said. ‘He’s kind of funny.’/em>

‘He is not funny!’ Raven argued. ‘He is an idiot. I’m just going to get through this day in one piece without him driving me completely insane and then everything will be fine.’

“You okay?” Beast Boy asked out of nowhere, scaring Raven to the point where she jumped from the couch cushion and flew several feet into the air. “You looked like you were spacing off and it hurt you or something.”

Raven nodded. “Yes…I’m fine.”

“Good. Hey, you wanna play video games?” Beast Boy asked. Raven flinched. She couldn’t think of one single thing in the world that she wanted to do less than play video games with Beast Boy at the moment. But she had to keep up with doing this whole ‘nice’ thing, and so she didn’t tell him this.

“I guess so,” she agreed reluctantly, watching Beast Boy get up and pull out the game controllers. She gave a soft sigh and stared again out the window. 'This is going to be a long day.'