I read through it again and edited it a bit, but not much.
WARNING: Raven is slightly OOC. Flame me if you want, but know it means nothing because I already know this. I wanted to experiment with the possibility. If you cannot fathom Raven acting a slight bit outside of her usual attitude inside her own thoughts, then please save us both the trouble and the angst and do not read this, 'kay? Constructive criticism is, as always, welcome and appreciated.
Disclaimer: No money being made, no ownership claims, no nuthin'.
Thanks: Love to all y'all that read every piece of writing I put out, regardless of how well crafted.
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Thirst
by Em
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"Go not for every grief to the physician, nor for every quarrel to the lawyer, nor for every thirst to the pot."
- George Herbert
A common mistake a lot of people made, Raven mused, was assuming that just because she didn't show emotions that it meant she was not possessed of any. Of course, she didn't help the situation by her stoic face and claims of not doing some emotion like fear or whatnot. And although some part of her always wished for someone to realize her bluff – to realize that the façade of outer calm was just a mask, reluctantly borne and tenaciously maintained, there were times when she was supremely thankful that no one asked or wondered what she might be feeling or thinking.
The present situation, as she stared at one of her teammates drinking thirstily from an ice-cold glass of water, was a prime example.
For, although her infatuation with Aqualad was well documented (mental note: search Beast Boy's room again) and with Aqualad as an example it wasn't hard to figure out that not only that there was a type of male she was attracted, but just what that type might be (and no, as she had told Beast Boy often enough, her type was not tall, smelly, and scaly) what very few people had ever come to notice was that her true attraction, the kind of attraction that made her heart do the proverbial jump into her throat, was in nothing so base as hair or eye color. It was in the little things.
Which brought her to her current predicament.
Some part of her wondered for how long she might remain where she was without being caught, while another one reminded her that she hadn't actually been there all that long.
'How long could he guzzle water?' she wondered, her mouth going just a little dry as she watched his Adam's apple move up and down as he gulped.
Eventually, her eyes were drawn to following the drops of water his thirsty drinking had allowed to escape and which were running the gamut of chin, sweaty neck before disappearing under his muscle t-shirt.
She swallowed…hard, but still found herself incredibly thirsty. He was moving again, bringing the water jug he still held in his left hand to refill the cup in his right before raising the glass to his lips and tipping his head back to drink once more.
'Isn't that just like him?' she wondered inanely. 'Instead of just drinking from the water jug, he goes through the trouble of filling a glass…'
It had, of course, occurred to her that she was staring quite blatantly at him as he drank water. That she was, in point of fact, standing with nothing for cover, in open space, where all he had to do to see her was shift his sight from whatever it was he was internally thinking about as he drank slightly to the left, and he'd find her staring at him as if she were some form of drooling pet, begging to be fed from what he had.
It had occurred to her, she was just lately finding it harder and harder to act on the prudent course of action and finding the reasoning that no one would suspect her true reason for standing there even if they did catch her much more persuasive than she normally might.
After all, it wasn't like anyone would assume she was watching Robin drinking water out of any sort of attraction or even because of any normal sort of female appreciation for the male body.
Not Raven, the Ice Princess.
She sometimes wondered if everyone thought she was asexual. Just because she couldn't indulge in feeling didn't mean she couldn't enjoy a nice visual. She did have tastes, after all and she did have preferences and likes and dislikes. They knew she had those, so why would it be so strange to think she might like or dislike a particular body type? What was so different from knowing that she preferred the taste of tea over coffee to thinking that she might prefer one body type over another?
She had to admit that she didn't think of attraction in the same way as Starfire or any of the other girls did. She didn't have immediate bodily reactions to the sight of a naked male torso and she did have other things to think about than boys or sexual attraction. But the truth of the matter was that she was a heterosexual female of a certain age when her body seemed to remind her periodically of certain physical needs and desires.
And of course, she did have emotions and they did react to certain stimuli the same as any other person's emotions might react...she just kept them locked up.
Sometimes, she fancied that he did see her (after all, how could he not notice?) and that he only pretended not to notice to give her a show: to tease her or tempt her.
But this was Robin she was thinking about and he wasn't the type to do that. He didn't tease and he certainly wouldn't try to tempt…and even if he did, surely not her.
But despite all these perfectly logical, completely natural reasons for her to be attracted and / or captivated by his...well let's be honest: his body, she still reacted as if she were some giddy, guilty school girl catching a forbidden peek through the locker room windows when he finally lowered the glass and turned in her direction.
And when he rose a brow in question at finding her there, it was all she could do to keep the blush out of her face. She was instant movement, walking past the threshold into the kitchen and toward the cupboard with the drinking glasses.
Once her back was safely to him and she could busy herself with finding her water glass long enough to gain some semblance of control over her wayward emotions (namely, lust and embarrassment), she found she felt it was safe enough to speak.
"Are you done with the water yet, Lawrence of Arabia?" she snapped before he could speak a word. "Because I would like to have some before we need to..." she was interrupted from her fruitless search for her glass and her embarrassment-prompted rant by a hand reaching above her hands into the cabinet. She would've turned around and told him none to gently that she didn't need his help, but she felt his chest bump into her back as he reached and the contact robbed her, momentarily, of sound. 'What was wrong with her?' she wondered frantically, metaphysically jumping on her emotions to keep them from wreaking havoc with the kitchen.
Meanwhile, in the time she could not speak, Robin had found her water glass and was handing it out to her.
She took it and cleared her throat. "I would've found it eventually," she said, rather proud that her voice came out normal. "But thank you, none-the..." She started to turn around, but he hadn't moved and although he was no longer touching her, he was still close enough that if she moved, they would be. She turned her head to look sideways at him to offer up some sarcastic remark asking for space, but his face so close to hers made her pause. "...less," she finished.
He grinned crookedly at her, as he stepped back to lean against the counter. Raven immediately felt the rush of cold where his warmth had just been and she just managed to repress the shiver. Instead, she walked to the counter where he had placed the water jug and poured from it into her glass, all under the watchful eye of her leader. A leader who, Raven was finding it harder and harder to believe, must've been aware of what he was doing to her, no matter how illogical it might otherwise seem. (Was it her time of the month? Was she, as Beast Boy would so crudely put it, needing to get some?) Despite her inner turmoil, she calmly raised her own glass to her lips and drank. (She was still thirsty after all.)
And when, upon lowering the glass, she could still feel his eyes on her standing the hairs on the back of her neck, she refilled her glass rather than look at him. "Was there something else?" she asked. Unwilling to back down or flee however much she wished she could, she looked up at him. "Did you want more water after I'm done?" she asked, holding out the jug to him in mild exasperation.
He grinned and shook his head. "No," he answered, arms crossed over his chest. "If I had wanted more water, I'd have just grabbed the jug in the fridge." He raised a brow, the grin still planted firmly on his shapely lips. "You know, Rae, the extra one you insisted we buy yesterday?"
Internally, Raven was smacking herself with something sharp and calling herself stupid. Of course she remembered being in the supermarket and insisting they buy extra water because the boys always drank it all when they'd been working out or playing on the roof. There was no doubt now that he knew her excuse was shit. She was caught and she had absolutely no clue how to get around it. So instead, she calmly put the jug in her hands back on the counter and drank her water.
And although she hoped he might, Robin didn't leave.
'There must be something in the stars,' she decided, all too conscious of Robin's stare on her as she drank and feeling only the more thirsty because of it.
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A/N: I blame this less serious train of thought of Raven's entirely on my lack of sleep...that combined with the possibility that maybe, occasionally, Raven really does think this way. After all, just because she has to act cool, calm, collected, doesn't mean she always is.
Anyway, I had been missing having a bit of the wicked Robin in here, so viola. Robin gets the upper hand. Take it how you will. This originally was heading in a totally different path but although I liked it, it seemed to be a really out there tangent that didn't have anything to do with what I wanted this one-shot to be about and what I had started it off as being about, so I just copied/pasted all that other stuff into a new document and I just might make it work into an independent one-shot.
And in any case, I think it's about time they start realizing their attraction for each other...don't you?
Course, ((wicked gleam)) that doesn't mean Raven's going to like it.