#bbrae week

“Honey,” Kori called out when he happened to steer close enough to them. “Come sit down. You have to slow down when she lets us, remember?”

“Right.” Dick slowed down with effort and joined them, laying at the foot of the bed. Kori laced her fingers through his, and it was like a switch that let him breathe full breaths again.

“To think I’ve always wanted to be a mother,” she mused. “It’s odd to think it finally happened.”

“You’ve always known that?” Raven asked, and Kori nodded. “I never saw myself having children. Still don’t.” She said it because she’d realized it at that moment, and then wondered if that was insulting, seeing as she was looking down on her friend’s baby as she said that.

But Kori was Kori. She didn’t take offense. "You've never had baby fever?" she wanted to know.

“No," chuckled Raven, and left it at that.

Part of her still doubted the so-called baby fever was even real. Seeing a baby awoke a primal urge to take care of it. Humans were designed that way. It was so parents wouldn’t abandon their babies for being so needy--so the human species wouldn’t die out. Maybe it was because she held such tight control on her emotions, things like that didn’t make it through her primary filters. Or maybe the fever was a myth.

Raven smiled down at Mar'i. “I’m just fine being an auntie.”

Dick cleared his throat. “Raven, is Gar coming now?”

“Yeah, just after the table read,” Raven confirmed.

“Um, when he comes, can you keep him from trying to pick Mar'i up?”

Raven did rip her eyes from Mar'i for that, turning to look at her friend in surprise. Dick at least had the decency look ashamed, though tiredness had made him callous, and Kori shook her head smiling, in a way Raven could tell they had talked about this beforehand and hadn’t agreed. “Excuse me? Why?”

“It’s not personal, alright? I’m just trying to keep my new baby from being dropped.”

“What?” Raven couldn’t help feel immediately defensive of her boyfriend of two years, and made no effort to hide it. “Why do you think he’s gonna drop her? I was just more likely to drop her.”

“Nope, you took care of kids before,” Victor’s voice joined the discussion from the kitchen. “They’re fine to this day. No evidence of a long-buried head trauma you conveniently forgot to tell us about.”

“I’m trying to protect my child here, Raven,” Dick pleaded, more frenzied seeing Raven’s frown didn’t ease.

“Gar seemed so eager to visit, too,” Vic’s voice commented. “He looked particularly excited today. Flippant. Butter-fingered.”

Raven called out, “Thanks, Vic. Don’t help.”

Kori calmly said, “If Mar'i was dropped she would simply fly.”

“That’s right, can’t Tamaraneans fly from birth?” asked Raven.

“She’s half Tamaranean,” Dick pointed out, at the same time Kori laughed, “He hasn’t allowed me to see if she can fly or not.”

“Of course not!” Dick cried at his wife, who smiled so warmly at him in return his face slackened, and he gave her a kiss as if to apologize for being a raw nerve.

He looked so pitiful, Raven couldn’t help but want to be diplomatic. “Well… with any luck Mar'i will stay asleep through Gar’s visit.”

However, there was no such luck. In the next hour, Mar'i began to fuss, then move her little feet, and open her eyes at turns, and she was well awake by the time G let himself through the door, bellowing, “Uncle Gar is here!”

“Sh!” Dick admonished, having materialized at the door next to him.

Gar’s ears dropped. “Is she asleep?” he asked, now in a whisper.

“No, but she just was,” Dick said, his tone plainly regretting that she wasn’t still asleep.

Gar lifted the admonishment on himself and scanned the apartment for his niece. His eyes brightened when he located Raven –it was a thing she always noticed happened when he saw her again after a while, and it was one of her favorite things in the whole cruel world-, and he made a beeline for the bed, laying a kiss on his girlfriend’s temple before he turned his attention to the baby, wherein his eyes widened and he gasped.

“Whoa, Kori… she’s so beautiful. And so tiny.”

And then the thing Dick feared so dearly happened in a split second. Dick was leaning against the opposite wall, half asleep on his feet, when Gar asked, “Can I pick her up?” and Kori nodded.

One green hand went under her head, another scooped the rest of her body, and Gar delicately lifted Mar'i on a safe journey to his chest, where she laid her head, perfectly comforted.

Dick had been halfway across the room. Gar turned just in time to see him stop cold, and cocked his head at the spatial disorientation of his friend being four feet closer than where he thought he was.

Dick had stopped cold because Gar had turned, and the sight of him holding Mar’i was so undeniably peaceful that his sleep-deprived mind could scarcely remember what he was scared about. He let out a mystified, “Oh.” And straightened.

Victor came out of the kitchen with the last batch of pancakes, most of which would be for Gar. “See, told you he wasn’t gonna drop her.”

“You thought I was gonna drop her?” Gar demanded.

Kori laughed at the scene and looked at Raven, but her smile fell when she saw her friend’s face.

Raven was staring at wide-eyed at nothing, face flushed red. Kori called, “Raven?”, and when the room’s attention inevitably turned on her, she went redder, covered her mouth, and coughed into it to cover it up. Koro patted her back, and Raven could feel her boyfriend’s concerned gaze on her.

Raven had never wanted children. It had never entered her mind before in any shape or form. But all it had taken was Gar holding Mar'i like that for her to be hit upside the head with a deep, irrational longing.

Maybe she wanted kids. Maybe she wanted one right now. The certainty split her brain in two: on the one hand, she knew her new feeling was as unreasonable as it was sudden; on the other, she was sure she needed to have a baby right this moment, with that exact guy. Goddamn it. The stupid fever was real.

“I’m fine,” she said as Dick brought her a glass of water. She was still avoiding Gar’s eyes.

If you concentrated hard enough, you might hear a clock ticking.

───

Notes:

It's fucking 0:14 where I am I was so close to making it 😥 whatever it's still Day 1 because I haven't gone to bed

I'm risking my life finishing editing this on mobile. If there's any mistakes I'll edit them tomorrow 😅

I stretched this prompt thin, mainly because I was sure the prompt 'future' was gonna win in the poll and I didn't realize it hadn't until after I was attached to this 😶 but hey, at least it keeps with the family theme

This is legitimately all based off a tiktok

I’m not gonna say how many drafts I have for how many of the week prompts in case I don't finish but I'm posting it all on ao3 and fanfiction.net at the end of the week.

           “But how may we solve this conundrum?” Kori asked with a frown, her face set in characteristically adorable consternation. “We have already been seated and I would not like the Jeff to think we are the rude by leaving.” Over Starfire’s shoulder, Gar could see their gangly teenage server – the “Jeff” in question – struggling with an ice bucket.

           “God, no. We can’t risk hurting Jeff’s feelings.” Gar prodded idly at the lemon wedge in his water.

           Kori nodded solemnly. “I am so glad you agree, Friend Beast Boy.”

           Raven gave him a soft jab in the side with her elbow. In his peripheral vision, he saw the warning in her expression. He tried to school his growing smile, but honestly, her touch still sent a thrill through him. He hated that.

           “And I’ve been craving these fritters since we planned this trip, so if you wanna leave, you’ll have to drag me out kicking and screaming,” Cyborg announced. He looked comically out of place on the small wooden bench where he sat, but his tone told Beast Boy he wasn’t messing around.

           “No need,” Gar said in a conciliatory tone, throwing his hands up in surrender. “I’ll suffer in silence.” Then he waited for Raven to comment on what a blessing his silence would be, but she didn’t. Instead, she surprised him again.

           “Why don’t Beast Boy and I just find somewhere else to eat?” she suggested, removing her napkin from her lap.

           Gar gaped at her. “What?”

           “Raven, are you sure?” Dick asked, frowning.

           The empath shrugged. “We’re the only ones who don’t like it here. It wouldn’t be fair to uproot the rest of you on our behalf.”

“But Friend Raven, is not the vacation a particularly special time for bonding activities amongst friends?” Starfire protested.

“Yes,” Raven answered, “but we’re staying in the same rental and we’ve got a week left on this trip. We’ll have plenty of time to bond.” Gar couldn’t help noticing how beautiful she looked in civilian clothes. She was pretty all the time, of course, but something about Raven – dark, broody Raven – in a sleeveless black dress on a waterfront patio, her hair fluttering in the ocean breeze, her nose a tiny bit red from a day in the sun–

           He had been so immersed in these musings that he failed to notice the question Raven had directed at him until she jostled his shoulder.

           “Hello?” she demanded. “Yes or no?”

           “What?” he repeated dumbly. Raven rolled her eyes.

           “Do you want to find someplace else to eat with me or not?” she asked, her cheeks coloring slightly. Gar glanced over at Nightwing, who gave a permissive nod. It was perhaps silly, now that he was in his early twenties, to still seek approval from his leader, but getting Dick to consider a vacation at all – ever – had been hard enough, and he didn’t want to step on his toes and rule out the possibility of future trips.

           “Um. Sure,” Gar said to Raven, who was already rising from her seat.

           “Come on then,” she said, making her way to the exit.

           Gar stumbled a little getting up, then offered an apologetic glance to his remaining teammates. “Sorry. Guess we’ll see you all later.”

           When he caught up with Raven, he shoved his hands into his pockets casually and matched her stride. “In a hurry?” he asked playfully.

           “I thought I was doing you a favor,” she replied, her tone bitter. She paused on the sidewalk to orient herself, then added, “If you don’t want to join me, no one’s making you. You’re the one who looked like he was about to hurl chunks in there.”

           Gar grimaced. “I was,” he admitted. “You’re a hero, Rae. Like, my hero, not just a superhero.” He grinned at her. She didn’t smile back, but at least she wasn’t glaring.

           “Where to?” she inquired.

           “Uhhhh…” Gar dug his cellphone out of his back pocket. “Hold, please.” He opened up Google and typed vegetarian restaurants near me (albeit with several typos). The results were dismal, but he tried not to feel discouraged. “Says there’s a Mediterranean place with vegetarian options a few streets over,” he said, turning the phone to show Raven.

“That’s fine,” she agreed. She had just started to levitate when Gar interrupted. 

“Whoa whoa, what’re you doing?” he asked.

Raven quirked an eyebrow. “Flying?” she replied.

“I thought we could walk,” Gar said casually.

“It’s like fifteen minutes by foot,” Raven said skeptically.

“But we’re on vacation!” Gar insisted, tipping his head toward the beach sprawling in front of them. “We should at least try to enjoy the view, right?”

Raven narrowed her eyes. “We were at the beach all day. We live by a beach. You’ve seen the ocean so many times. You’ve been a whale.”

Gar waved dismissively. “Yeah, but that’s, like, our ocean, y’know? The west coast. This is Florida.” He gestured grandly at the stragglers on the beach, packing their belongings up against the backdrop of the setting sun. A few feet away, a group of fraternity brothers stopped to allow one of their rank to vomit profusely in a flowerbed.

“Not really helping your case,” Raven replied, but she floated back down to the ground nonetheless. “Okay. Let’s go, then.” 

Gar breathed a sigh of relief. If Raven noticed, she didn’t comment on it. As far as he was concerned, one-on-one time with Raven was rare but precious. One should count themselves lucky if she deigned to spend her free time with them. At least that was his philosophy, because something about having Raven’s undivided attention made him feel like he’d struck gold (file under “things to investigate further at a later time”).

They walked most of the way in companionable silence, occasionally pointing out stores they thought Starfire might like to visit, but at a certain point their route took them inland, away from the shore, and without the dull noise of the ocean to fill their silences, their conversation grew more substantive.

“Okay, I got one,” Gar said, holding up a completely full can of White Claw they’d found abandoned on the sidewalk. He cleared his throat. “Florida Man Arrested for Taking Two Sips of Every White Claw at the Store Before Replacing Them on Shelf.” He waggled his eyebrows, awaiting her judgment. “Eh? What do you think?”

Raven wrinkled her nose. Fucking cute, Gar thought before he could stop himself. Even though he hadn’t said it aloud, he cleared his throat on instinct, shuffling from foot to foot awkwardly. Raven must have assumed he was just getting antsy for her reply.

“A bit wordy for a headline,” Raven offered finally. “Most of those sordid details go in the body of the article.” She paused. “Plus, should you be touching that?”

Gar tossed the can into the nearest trash bin. “Good point,” he conceded. “Aw, it’s no fair, Raven. You’re better at this game because you read so much.”

“Yeah, usually not ‘Florida Man’ articles, though,” Raven said drily. They were moving again, the facade of the restaurant awaiting them at the next street corner.

“Well, I was never gonna win after you saw that used condom on the ground,” Gar said. “That one was just low-hanging fruit and you know it.”

“I was appealing to my target audience,” Raven returned with a shrug, eliciting a squeak of indignation from Gar.

“I do not find crudity funny, thank you very much!” he cried theatrically, and this patently false proclamation earned a smile from both of them.

“This is the place, I think,” Raven said, gesturing to the sign. “Shall we?”

“About damn time,” Gar muttered against his growling stomach. He reached out to hold the door open for his teammate, who was scowling up at him.

“You’re the one who wanted to walk h–”

“Enough,” he interrupted, corralling her inside.

The place was apparently a “seat-yourself-and-we’ll-maybe-get-to-you-at-the-next-commercial-break” sort of establishment, which was all well and good for Gar since generally he found those spots served the best food. He and Raven settled into a corner booth. Throughout his years working and living with Raven, Gar had come to learn that Raven preferred these tucked-away settings in all venues – a larger-scale projection, he supposed, of the way she routinely shielded herself with her cloak’s hood. He was no psychologist. He did, however, consider himself sort of a small-time expert on the intricacies of Raven.

Which was a completely platonic and definitely not weird thing to feel about a friend.

In any case, he figured the real, practical reason Raven liked these corner booths was that they enabled her to evade the prying eyes of the general public, and he couldn’t say he blamed her on that count. The Titans had grown used to being a spectacle; it sort of came with the territory in their line of work. Still, a lanky green guy and purple-haired demon were bound to attract attention, especially in a place where the clientele was disproportionately nosy tourists, and they had a right to relax on vacation.

It finally occurred to Gar that he could just ask Raven about her restaurant seating preferences instead of pondering them internally, but by that point she was already opening her mouth to say something.

“Sorry, go ahead,” he said.

“I was just going to say that the falafel pita sounds good,” Raven said, pointing across the way. Unlike the last restaurant, this place had its menu written on the wall in colorful chalk, but at least Gar didn’t have to interact with another booklet coated in mystery residue.

“It does,” Gar said, “and it’s probably my best bet unless I just want tabbouleh salad or a side of hummus. You’ve got way more options than me. Whatcha gonna get? A chicken kebab, perhaps?”

Raven looked over at him as though he’d said something incredibly stupid, then turned back to the menu. “I’m not going to order meat in front of you.”

Gar furrowed his brow. “Why not? You guys eat meat in front of me all the time.”

“We’re on vacation,” Raven replied, imitating his earlier cadence, and he laughed. “You looked so pitiful back at that tourist trap with the fishy smell. I just figured maybe you’d want a break from all that stimuli.”

Gar’s hand flew to his heart, his eyes widening dramatically. “Raven, are you…being considerate towards me?”

“Consider this a trial run,” she answered, resting her chin on her folded fist. “If you behave well enough, I might upgrade you to the next tier package.”

Before he could ask what she meant by that, a disgruntled looking man in a stained white t-shirt with a dish rag slung over his shoulder approached to take their orders. Raven graciously ordered vegetarian menu items for herself, and Gar decided to return the favor by sticking to water and not ordering a beer. He had the rest of the night to throw back cold ones poolside with Vic, so Raven could enjoy the company of one-hundred-percent-sober Gar for now.

As they ate, they recounted with relish the way Dick’s face had darkened when Kori had presented him with the Gulf of Mexico as a potential vacation spot – the way, a week later, his mouth was a thin line as he informed the team that they would be taking a team-building retreat to this touristy beach town. (What sort of team-building activities would they be doing, Gar had wanted to know? Classified, Dick had answered. Could you please declassify whether or not we will be allowed to slam mojitos at a beachfront dive bar, Gar had pressed.)

As they paid their bill (“My treat,” Gar insisted), the changeling steepled his fingers and eyed his friend seriously. “So,” he began, “how am I doing?”

“What?” Raven asked, sucking down the last of her water.

“The trial run,” Gar clarified, feeling stupid for even bringing it up again. “You said–well, you know, how’s it going? Am I gonna get that upgrade?”

Raven considered him for a moment, her head tilted to the side. “Remains to be seen,” she said finally. Gar deflated. She rose from her seat and glanced at him conspiratorially. “But your progress is satisfactory.”

He beamed, his elation momentarily gluing him to the booth. “Oh all right!” he whooped, stumbling to catch up with Raven for the second time that night. “Hey, Rae,” he said as he sidled up to her on the sidewalk, “listen..” He tugged at his clothing self-consciously.

“Yes?” Raven murmured, moving a strand of hair out of her eyes.

Gar swallowed. “Well, we’ve got like a week left here, and between Cy and Star, dinner’s probably always going to be somewhere yuck, and I mean…I just thought…” He stopped on the sidewalk, looking at Raven pleadingly. “Maybe we should grab dinner together every night?”

Raven drew back as if offended, and Gar winced. “In Florida!” he clarified. “Just while we’re here, this week, in Florida. Not like, always. Not forever.” He smacked his own forehead in chagrin. “Oh my god, shut up, you stupid–”

He was caught off guard by the sound of Raven’s light chuckle. He peeked at her through his fingers, much too embarrassed to reveal himself fully.

“That sounds nice, Beast Boy,” she said kindly. Her arms were wrapped around her torso protectively, so he knew it probably took a lot for her to make this concession.

Gar dropped his hands to his sides. “Oh. Cool.” He smiled, and they began their walk back to their rental guided only by the glow emanating from the streetlights. Then something occurred to him. “Wait, what sounds nice? The just Florida part, or…?”

Raven threw him a withering glance over her shoulder.