A/N: Posted last year but I thought maybe I should put it up somewhere else. This is just part 1. I'll upload the rest soon but I noticed that very few people write for this pairing and I happen to like them a lot.

Chapter 1

Raven had been thinking about it for a while now.

Working at the restaurant is really what had started it. Though she wouldn't necessarily call herself 'friends' with her fellow waitresses, Raven did spend a lot of time with them. They all smoked cigarettes in the back alleys during breaks, they worked in pairs to refill ketchup bottles and restock the sugar, and they always took care of each other when a male customer took the unwanted attention too far. An easy camaraderie had developed between all the girls and Raven, unaccustomed to the regular company of anyone but Charles, drank it in.

It was during one of these smoke breaks that the subject of sex came up. Raven knew a little about the act itself, of course. She had to sit through the same high school film strips as the rest of her classmates and she'd heard the occasional jerk bragging about a conquest as she passed by the locker room. However, there were still gaps in her knowledge. Charles' parents (she refused to see them as her own and really could hardly stand to acknowledge that Sharon was the reason Charles was on Earth) certainly hadn't wanted to discuss sex with her. And Charles (her sweet wonderful savior) had blushed scarlet when she'd asked him what was happening when they'd found two cats in heat behind the mansion the summer after she'd moved in.

The specifics were still fuzzy to her though. Maybe if she had known more it wouldn't have frightened or surprised her as much when the girls started talking about bloody sheets and intense pain. Maybe her stomach wouldn't have twisted as much when tall, beautiful Mary had paled as she recounted being sent away for the end of her senior year and missing her high school graduation to give birth at the house of a severe faced relative who shouted at her about Jezebels and harlots and the perils of Hell. That evening she hadn't been able to meet Charles' eyes and had suffered strange nightmares all night long.

A few days later, the girls were once again standing in a circle passing around the cigarette pack. Raven pressed a cigarette between her lips, sneaking glances back and forth and adjusting her finger hold accordingly. She quickly covered her cough on the first inhale and nodded in agreement when the girls began to chatter about how long they'd needed their nicotine fix.

The conversation soon steered over to sex again but this time the tone was different. Raven blushed as she listened to Mary talk about smoking cigarettes as she lounged naked with a tall Frenchman in the afterglow of their love making. Raven giggled nervously as Lisa described the policeman who'd walked right past her car when she'd been in the backseat with her skirt hiked around her waist and a head between her thighs.

And Raven's stomach coiled uncomfortably when Stacy told them all about a customer with beautiful blue eyes who'd flirted with her and taken her out for ice cream. When she'd told him she lived with roommates who wouldn't allow men to visit, he'd led Stacy into a quiet alleyway and fingered her, his tongue tangling with hers to muffle the noise of her orgasm. Raven tried not to remember the times she'd seen Charles, with those damnable blue eyes, talking to Stacy when he'd visited the restaurant.

Mary had turned expectantly to Raven then and Raven panicked, muttering an excuse about a bathroom so she could escape back inside.

She'd spent a while trying to concoct a believable virginity story, rehearsing it in her head as she walked to work. She was determined to be prepared to fit in the next time they discussed sex. However, suddenly the dishwashers had begun taking breaks with the women, chatting them up in the back alley and effectively putting an end to their girl talk and Raven's new education.

That was where it started, but it wasn't where it ended.

Raven suddenly found herself dwelling on those conversations at the strangest of times: making coffee at work, when she was alone at home in front of the television while Charles studied at the library, across from Charles at the breakfast table as he licked his sticky jam covered fingers, and late at night in her bed when she'd wake up from fleeting dreams that left her pressing her thighs tightly together to try and relieve the deep aching pressure.

She started seeing couples everywhere. They were in front of her in the grocery store, sharing kisses over their peaches. They were in the restaurant playing footsy. One night she and Charles were walking home from a late night foreign film he'd insisted on seeing. He was talking the way he always did when he got passionate, his hands animated and his voice rising in pitch, when they rounded the corner and stumbled upon a couple. They were pressed against a storefront window, kissing passionately. His thigh was between her legs and when she squinted, Raven could definitely see tongues sliding back and forth.

"Avert your eyes." Charles said sharply, grabbing her by the wrist and tugging her to the other side of the street. He immediately picked up the thread of his lecture and began again, too distracted to notice the fact that Raven kept peering over her shoulder until they had become mere shadows in the night.

Raven decided it was time to stop dwelling on this. When a handsome blonde teenager sat in her section, asked for coffee and then stayed all afternoon, she smiled coquettishly at him, testing the waters. He smiled back, a big goofy grin and left her a five dollar tip. When he was back the next day, introduced himself as Andy, and asked her to a movie at the end of her shift, she accepted.

He bought her popcorn and candy and directed her towards the back row. She let him put an arm around her shoulder and half an hour into the very boring film, did not object when he leaned over to kiss her. She experimented as they kissed, trying out different hypotheses, different methods, and collecting each moan and each gasped breath as part of her results. Charles would be proud, she thought.

Just then, Andy fitted a hand over the curve of her breast. Well, maybe not.

She didn't feel the same thrill deep in her stomach that her friend's stories had sparked but still she allowed him to leave his hand there as they kissed through the end of the film. She straightened her skirt and, as the house lights came on, she stood up and shook his hand. "It was nice to meet you."

When she came home, Charles looked up eagerly from his notes but frowned upon catching sight of her kiss swollen mouth and rumpled hair. He opened and closed his mouth before he turned back towards his notes and began to write again, the pen ink blotting as he pressed down with more force than necessary. "Call next time you're going to be late."

She liked Rob. Unlike many of Charles's other friends, he didn't ignore her. In fact, he typically went out of his way to make her comfortable and relaxed. And his eyes were a beautiful blue.

Tonight, she sat in a booth at the back of the bar with Rob, watching and laughing with him as Charles got more and more drunk and struck out with woman after woman.

"Man needs new material." Rob laughed after Raven parroted Charles's pick up lines from across the room.

She nodded in agreement. "I need another coke."

"I'll get it for you." Rob said, pushing her back down into her seat and heading up to the bar.

Raven watched him go, surveying him thoughtfully. He was strong and handsome and older. He might do fine.

When he returned she smiled and batted her eyes, unconsciously imitating the many women she'd seen Charles hit on time after time.

To her surprise, Rob smiled back and pressed his thigh against hers when he sat beside her. "So tell me more about you, Miss Raven."

Another friend of Charles, Tim, made his way over to them a few minutes later. He seemed oblivious to their wish for privacy and the game of footsie they were playing under the table. In fact, he completely ignored Raven in favor of pushing at Rob's arm. "Dude, what's the deal with Missy? Didn't you date her?" He pointed vaguely behind him, and Raven supposed poor unfortunate Missy was back there somewhere, unaware she was about to be hit on by him.

Rob made a disbelieving noise in the back of his throat. "Umm, I don't know if I'd call it that. We fucked for a while. She's a total slut."

Uninformed as she may have been, that word Raven knew and the warm desire turned to ice in her stomach. That stupid expression Sharon used to use when she and Charles were children suddenly floated through her mind. No one buys a cow when they can get the milk for free. She remembered how she'd hated that expression even as a ten year old. Even when she didn't completely understand it, she'd understood how ridiculous and hypocritical and utterly unfair it was.

For a moment, Raven entertained the thought of shifting into a man, becoming her pseudo brother, and staying that way. She wasn't looking to get married right now. But she also wasn't looking to be judged, not for an emotion that she knew men felt just as strongly, a feeling that they were allowed to freely express. Hell, Charles seemed to have felt it with half of the female campus. She'd also never heard him use the word "slut" afterwards, and for a moment she loved him so fiercely she could barely stand it.

She scooted away from Rob and looked around for Charles. He materialized beside her immediately, her coat already in his hand. They walked home quietly together. She linked their fingers together and Charles squeezed her palm gently but she didn't speak, too lost in her thoughts, and he didn't ask.

Raven stopped flirting for a while after that. She didn't stop wanting though. Her dreams at night were still confusing, still troubling, and she began pressing her fingers down firmly over her panties, feeling the moisture seeping through. She wasn't sure if it made the ache better or worse.

In the mornings she quizzed Charles, who was becoming increasingly paranoid about exams every day. Afterwards, she'd drag him to breakfast at various cafes and make him buy her breakfast as a reward for her patience when helping him study.

"Chocolate croissant and a cappuccino please." Raven said, smiling up at the pleasant young woman taking their order.

"And for your boyfriend?" she asked, gesturing at Charles with her pencil.

Raven stopped, her eyes widening. "Um-"

Charles laughed, looking up from his textbook. "Scrambled eggs, toast, black coffee." He winked at Raven and placed a hand over hers. "And bring my girl scrambled eggs too. She needs a little fattening up."

He made an exaggerated point of calling her "darling" "sweetheart" and "my love" all through their meal and soon she was giggling just as hard, scooting their chairs together as she lay her head on his shoulder and batted her eyes up at him.

"That look is lethal." Charles declared, kissing her on the top of her head before he pulled her to her feet to help her on with her coat. She blushed and crossed her arms over her chest self-consciously. He carefully steered her out of the restaurant with a hand on the small of her back and Raven heard an elderly couple whispering about the days when they had looked at each other like that.

This only made Raven blush harder but the second they were out of the restaurant Charles looped an arm around her waist. "Let's go Sweetheart. I have more studying to do."

She giggled obligingly as he continued the game the whole way home, but the people in the restaurant had given her something to consider. Raven carefully watched the reactions of everyone they passed. No one looked at them strangely. Most didn't even give them a second look. They looked normal, natural, like any two people in love might look. She hadn't considered that before, hadn't considered him before.

Suddenly she did. Suddenly Charles seemed the most natural choice in the world.

That night her dreams stopped being vague and confusing and when she awoke and pressed her hand between her thighs, it was Charles she saw.