*A/N: So, lovely CyRae people, this is me, Maven Alazais, on my second CyRae fanfic! I will be trying a different approach to them, through group hardships and past relationships and stuff… If any of you have read my 'A Raven With Gears' one, thank you, firstly, for joining me again on here and please do not compare the two stories, they're different and well…this is just a fanfic I came up with due to my need to write something and an abundance of CyRae feels. I hope you enjoy this and, please, by all means, leave me a small review by the end of it, it will mean so much! Thanks for reading!*

CHAPTER ONE

It was a usual Friday afternoon at the Tower of the Titans. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, no alarms had sounded for a couple of days and everything went smoothly. The doors to the living room slid open and in glided Raven, her purple cloak slightly mopping the floor. Upon entering, she noticed Starfire casually chirping over Robin and Beast Boy with Cyborg lounging on the couch. Cyborg laughed his typical, loud laugh.

"Come on, Beastie, are you chickening out?"

"Hell no!" The shape-shifter said, clutching the video game controller. "If there's going to be a champion of this game, it's going to be me!"

"Don't get your hopes up, buddy! I'm un-beat-able."

"We'll see about that. Put up the stage's stats."

A videogame duel between this two usually took about…a couple of hours and Raven grew particularly agitated when she heard Beast Boy accept Cyborg's challenge. Silently as ever, she levitated behind the couch, just above Beast Boy's head and cleared her throat. The 'duelists' shot their eyes towards her and Beast Boy grinned awkwardly.

"May I have a word with you?" She asked, her coarse voice portraying her dismay.

"Um, sure!" Beast Boy replied, jumping up. "Wait a sec, Cy."

"Yeah…" Cyborg mumbled as Raven dragged his friend a couple of meters further.

"So." Raven said, getting straight to the point. "What's going on with the video game?"

"That? It's just a stage I need to win, no big deal, Raven."

"We both know that 'no big deal' takes long."

"Well, I can't possibly turn down the challenge, Rae!"

Raven arched an eyebrow and spoke sternly. "We had plans for tonight."

"Oh, we can do them later on! Or…I know! You can join us and cheer me on so I can win!" A goofy smile spread on his face.

"Oh, how wonderful." Raven said, blank-faced. "You sure do know how to keep me happy with something so interesting for me…"

Beast Boy's smile faded. "Come on, Raven. It's just a dinner date, we can have our dinner here together later! I need to beat Cy!"

"Gar, let me get things straight." She said, folding her arms. "You know I'm no social butterfly unlike our little Tamaranian Princess over there, but I still know that 'couples' like we're supposed to be need to have some…activities and be alone, outside maybe, and spend some time together."

"And we will do it, just-"

"When was the last time we ever got to do that?"

"Yesterday, we-"

"Talking for five minutes in the kitchen doesn't count."

"Okay, then, how about the other day, when-"

"Helping me restore my library after you accidentally brought it down in your rhino form doesn't count either."

"Oh don't be so difficult, Raven! Please!" Raven's eyebrow twitched at that sentence. "We will get to do everything, I promise, but I can't go back on Cyborg!"

"Like you can go back on our plans?"

"Why are you so stuck on a dinner anyway?"

"You don't get it, do you?!" Raven asked, obviously angry.

"Get what? That y-"

"You know what," Raven interrupted, "never mind. You go play."

With that, she turned around and moved away from him. Just before she was about to exit the room, she turned her head around and said "Good luck, Cyborg!"

"Ay, thanks, Rae!" He said, waving with his controller in hand, while Beast Boy reclaimed his seat.

"I hope you win." With that, she was soon outside.

Beast Boy laughed. "She's such a meanie!"

"You're sure you don't want to play this another time or somethin'?" Cyborg asked, frowning.

"Nah, man! Let's finish this now! I mean, it got unpredictable weather effects, it's going to be so cool!"

"Alright…" Cyborg said, pressing the button.

Although his friends had spoken in a low tone before, Cyborg's enhanced bionic hearing caught the most of the discussion. He was unaware that Beast Boy was to go out with Raven, otherwise he wouldn't have challenged him to the final level of the game. He didn't quite grasp why Beast Boy insisted on continuing the game; it wasn't like he wouldn't understand. He knew that couples are supposed to go out or spend time together and, really, he hardly ever saw the two of them together or doing anything at least. He really couldn't blame Raven for calling Beast Boy out on that, even though it did strike him is as peculiar to see her act out to something like that. He shrugged it off, though, thinking that couples have their own troubles and, well, anyone can act differently in a friendship and in a relationship; they're two different games, with different tables and different rules. Same players at times, but different attitudes.

And so, he focused on his racing; Raven hoped he won, he couldn't possibly let her down. He grinned and pushed the accelerator button.

OOO-OOO-OOO-OOO-OOO

Raven was in a state of pure confusion when she reached her sanctuary, her room. She fell on her bed face down and closed her eyes. It wasn't like herself to whine like that but she had been preparing for the outing for two days. It was just a dinner date, yes, but she was preparing just to be able to be cheerful for Beast Boy, since she was always characterized as gloomy most of the times and, well, seeing Robin being so happy with the ever-blissful Starfire made her think that maybe she should try being a bit more…breezy. But how could she possibly be more cheerful when the very person she was going to try for practically cancelled their plans for some game? And it wasn't the first time this had happened. She couldn't really recall the last time they did something as a couple. She was aware, of course, that they weren't exactly ordinary, but even Robin, somewhere between being the leader of the Titans and Batman's sidekick managed to find time to spend with Starfire and her weird date ideas.

She huffed and growled at her pillow. Maybe she was caring and trying too much? Or maybe not enough? She didn't know, but she grew furious at that precise moment, and all of her pillows were shot to the opposite wall in black magic orbs. Just when she was about to start meditating, the alarm sounded around the Tower. She half-smiled to herself, knowing she would get to channel her frustration somewhere else.

OOO-OOO-OOO-OOO-OOO

With their heads hanging low, the five of them entered the living room and sat around the table. The silence was eerie and felt heavy; someone could have thought they could practically touch the tension around them. They all had their eyes averted, never crossing looks; Raven magically mended some of her scratches, Robin twirled his thumbs huffing, Cyborg observed the damage on his canon. Only Starfire's eyes jumped on to everyone's faces, trying to catch a glimpse of theirs, but failing.

Finally, some awkward moments later, Beast Boy lifted his head and sighed. "So…" He mumbled and, automatically, they all raised their eyes and shot unreadable looks to each other. "Are we going to keep ignoring the elephant in the room or what?"

"Not the time for animal puns, Beastie." Cyborg said.

"It's not a pun!" Beast Boy defended. "It's merely an expression…"

"So, are we?" Raven said.

"Are we what?" Cyborg asked.

"Going to ignore it."

"No." Robin said. "We're going to deal with it, right now."

"Well, then, to put it gently, today's mission…sucked!" Cyborg said, obviously bothered.

"Subtle." Raven commented, raising her eyebrow.

"Friends, please!" Starfire called. "Let us keep our calm and discuss peacefully."

"Let's take things one by one, then." Robin said, passing his fingers through his wet from sweating hair. "The only good thing is that it was, in the end, a success."

"By accident." Cyborg said. "If that guy hadn't messed up, it would have been a total failure."

"You…don't know that for sure." Beast Boy said, lifting his eyebrows. "We were just a bit…loose today."

"No, we were totally uncoordinated." Robin said. "As if we've never even worked together before! What happened anyway?!"

"I'll tell you what happened!" Cyborg asked, his frustration decorating his vocal tone. "We faced an enemy we had no knowledge of, and suddenly our so-called leader lost his mind!"

"What?!" Robin said. "I am to blame for this? You've got to be kidding me!"

"The orders you gave us were the least bit useful!"

"They were orders though, which all of you messed up!"

"Yes, because we didn't know how to work on them, hello?" Beast Boy said, taking Cyborg's side.

"This is outrageous! They were simple!"

"Yeah," Raven said, "because when three guys hold lethal weapons we've never seen before and fire at innocent people inside a mall, the first thing that comes to mind is 'stall them' and not 'take them out immediately'…"

"I had my reasons!"

"Mind sharing them?" Beast Boy asked.

Robin sighed deeply. "I needed to disarm them."

"Uh? What?" Starfire said, followed by the wondering looks of the rest of the Titans.

"Their weapons had traces of Apokolips technology. Some other specimens have been found in other raids around the globe but it's too complicated for us to decipher how it works and we needed every specimen we could get."

"'We' as in…you, Bats and the League?" Cyborg said.

Robin looked down. "Um, superheroes in general."

"We're superheroes too, but you didn't bother sharing that information with us, did ya?"

"I planned to write a report."

"When?" Beast Boy asked.

"Have you even bothered with the team updates lately?" Raven said. "I can bring up at least three new facts about the team and our villains included in our status report that I bet you don't know."

"What is this, a pop quiz? Really?!" Robin said.

"You're being defensive, thus proving my point." Raven said austerely.

"This is ridiculous! The only issue here is that you couldn't follow the orders and messed the plan up!"

"We messed it up?!" Cyborg said. "Oh, that's rich! We only tried to save the innocent people that were there, remember?"

"They would have targeted us, not the people, if we got in their way!"

"But they appeared to target the people, Robin!" Starfire said. "What if someone got injured?"

"No one would have gotten hurt, you should have listened to me!"

"How can you guarantee that?" Beast Boy said. "And you can't blame us! We didn't know what those weapons could do!"

"So you had to go all T-Rex and bring the whole mall down, uh?"

"It was the only way I could withstand the hit!" Beast Boy defended. "I needed to shield the bystanders and survive somehow!"

"Fine." Robin said. "What about you, Raven? What was with all that brunt?!"

"Are you going to accuse for being strong? That's a new." She replied.

"Strong? You were vicious! You could have taken the guy down with much less, but went all out instead!"

"He survived, didn't he?" She said coldly. "Get over it."

"I told you I wanted him to look fine!"

"What was that for, really?"

"A new...technique I wanted to try, to test the attackers."

"A technique we've never rehearsed before at the training rounds…"Cyborg said.

"I just recently got familiar with it myself."

"And you didn't bother to share with us either." Beast Boy said.

"Hey, why are all you attacking me now? It's not like it was a one-man mission! I can pinpoint at least five strategic battle mistakes you all made!"

"Oh, preach, mister flawless!" Cyborg said and there, Robin lost it.

*That was the first chapter, folks! Not much CyRae action yet, but there will be some soon! I hope you enjoyed it, or at least you want to read some more! I hope I'll update soon and sorry for any unnoticed typos!*