Taking a leaf out of Abbie's book and beginning a started-but-not-finished-fics collection. And maybe if you guys see something you like/have ideas/I get inspired again, I can finish or continue some of these. Who even knows. Enjoy?

Summary: Beast Boy and Robin friendship in an alternate universe. Bonding over girl problems? Yes, always. :D

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Lightning screamed outside the window, followed by a loud rumble of thunder. It was accompanied by the pounding of rain of the rooftop. The skies flashed brilliantly again, and thunder traveled in its wake once more. The howling wind was almost buried underneath all the other noise, but it could be seen tugging at the branches and leaves of trees. The foliage surrounding the apartment building drooped down with the weight of falling water. On the sidewalk below, people scurried about their business, heads down and umbrellas up, not meeting anyone's eyes as they walked. Cars, buses and taxis zoomed by in the street, occasionally sending a wall of water shooting up at some unfortunate soul in the wrong place at the wrong time as they drove through a puddle. At the restaurant across the street, people huddled under the awning, waiting to be admitted to their dining area. It seemed to exude warmth, as the coziness of the indoor décor could be partially seen through the windows.

On top of the raging storm outside, there were sounds in the apartment building, which helped build the whole thing up into quite a racket. In the suite above, children were screaming and running through the rooms, which through the ceiling sounded like a herd of elephants stampeding across the floors with monkeys shrieking in the background. The couple below had a bad habit of turning up the television to ridiculously loud volumes so that no one could hear what they were actually doing in their room through the thin walls. It didn't fool any of them one bit, but annoyingly, this was one of those times. Across the hall was the lady who refused to get a job that paid more than the telemarketer one she had now. She was the one who owned enough animals to start her own zoo; three cats, four dogs, a ferret or two, a cult of rabbits and a psychotic gerbil. He was the one she called on to take care of them when she was away from home. For some reason, he always said yes. The cats were hell bent on eating a ferret or rabbit, and the dogs were scared witless of the gerbil. One particular Chihuahua yelped late into the night, and despite numerous complaints she wouldn't give him away. On either side of him were the man and the woman who continuously broke up and got together. The man had been kicked out of their shared apartment one day after a screaming row, and had immediately rented the one two doors down from his on-again-off-again girlfriend. The two were always either yelling at each other or snuggling together, but everyone in the building was now used to seeing the man dragging his things down the hall twice a month. There was an ongoing bet in the lobby which the doorman kept tabs on for how long they would be staying together this time. During the times they were exes, they would exchange heckling phone calls that always followed the same pattern:

"Oh, I'm sorry; I must have called the wrong number."

"I'm sick and tired of this, Lindsay (or Jackson, depending on who was calling)! I don't need to you bothering me while I'm trying to start a new life for myself!"

"Like you could get anywhere without me. You depend on me for everything, even when we're not together!"

"You see! This is the reason that I broke up with you! You think that the universe revolves around you, and I need someone who can pay attention to the needs of other people!"

"You broke up with me?! I was the one who ended it; I couldn't take any more of your straitjacket views on everything!"

"Straitjacket views, huh? That's it, we're over for good!"

This was the week that the two were broken up, and their yelling at no one in particular was grating on his ears on top of everything else. Even without the thunderstorm there would have been enough noise for him to wish that he was deaf, but with it you couldn't concentrate on anything else. All that Gar wanted to do was make himself a nice cup of hot chocolate and settle down with his laptop to watch a movie with headphones on. However, he was having some problems measuring out the appropriate amount of mix what with one of the older children above him stomping on the floor with all his might and shouting, "I can't hear anything! Everyone shut up!" with mantra-like consistency.

Gar put the mix down and rubbed at his temples, glancing around his own apartment. It was quite messy, not that it was ever very different. Clothes were strewn across the floor whether they were dirty or clean. He would sniff them as he picked them up to determine whether they were wearable or not. His moth-eaten couch sat across from a television, which whenever he watched it, he could swear that the picture was tilting down to the right. Blankets and pillows were set up on the couch cushions, as Gar refused to sleep in his bed after that one fateful day where he came back from work and all of a sudden there was a large stain on the green sheets. He asked around the complex, but no one seemed to know anything. The couple downstairs did look awfully suspicious when he asked them, but he had never been able to prove anything. He always made sure to double check that his door was locked from then on.

Objects that made the place homier were scattered here and there. All the letters that Rachel had ever written him were pinned up to his corkboard next to the kitchen table. He was expecting another one in reply to the one that he had sent any day now. Tickets from a movie that he and Victor had seen together the other weekend still lay on the white table itself, and he was waiting on his friend to return a video game he had loaned him. Pictures of himself and Kori were everywhere; the girl loved to take them, and he refused to throw any of them out, although his favorite was one of Kori alone. A close-up of her tan face that was lit up with a gorgeous smile and showed all of her pearly whites. She complained that it made her cheeks look pudgy; Gar told her that he wasn't getting rid of it no matter what she said. He also thought that he had one of Kori's pink sweaters in his closet somewhere, and if he was honest with himself, he would admit that he had worn it the other day when the heat had broken. A professional photograph of Tara sat on his bedside table. It had been taken before she had let herself go- the way that he liked to remember her. Next to that was a picture of his parents, one of the only ones that he had been able to keep.

It was a three room apartment, with his bed shoved into the corner of the living room. It was as though someone had built the two rooms but forgotten to build up a wall between them. His dresser and closet were all in plain view from the couch where people would sit to watch TV. He also had a few other pieces of furniture, a coffee table, a bookshelf, a chair. His bathroom was cramped but actually sanitary, and the kitchen was almost bare, as he always put off going grocery shopping until he absolutely needed to. His music sat in piles on the floor that he had organized, but hadn't actually put onto any shelves yet. His laptop computer was currently sitting on the coffee table, open and ready to begin playing his movie of choice; tonight it was Young Frankenstein. Hey, just because he didn't like black and white movies as a rule didn't mean he couldn't enjoy the classics.

A headache was starting behind his eyes. Gar growled, took a deep breath, and managed to scoop some of the hot chocolate mixture from the container into his mug. Sighing with relief, the young man stirred it in, thinking that he would finally get some relief from his crazy life for a few hours where he could laugh at Gene Wilder and Igor. He picked up the chipped mug, smiling reminiscently when he saw the Wayne Enterprises logo on it. It had been a gift from Dick, who had handed it to him with a shrug. "You'll need something to remember me by."

He had been joking, of course, but Gar took it very seriously. And he had used it whenever he needed something to drink.

Gar was found a minute later settling onto the couch with a white fuzzy blanket wrapped around his shoulders and the warm mug in his hands. He put the DVD in and waited for it to load, sipping the steaming drink and not bothering to wipe away the mustache that came with it.

The loud buzzing normally would have interrupted someone in a relaxed state like that, but if Gar hadn't developed the habit of listening for the buzzer, he wouldn't have heard it at all. The noise around him was loud enough to drown anything else out. As it was, the young man rolled his eyes and heaved himself off the cushions, slouching over to the intercom. He listened to the insistent buzzing for a few more seconds before answering. "Yeah, hello?"

"Let me in!" the voice demanded through the crackly speaker as soon as he took his finger off the button. Gar chuckled softly to himself, recognizing the voice and contemplating leaving his friend out there to weather the storm. Quickly, his compassion got a hold of him and he buzzed the young man up, drinking from his mug as he leaned against the wall next to the door in preparation for the person who was coming in. He dejectedly let the thought that he wasn't going to be able to watch his movie in peace tonight float across his mind.

In no more than two minutes there was a knock on his door. Gar immediately opened it to be faced with a soaking wet Dick, standing there in his dripping coat and with his black hair plastered onto his forehead. His blue eyes grinned at him, matching the one on his face. But Gar could see that it didn't really reach the depths of his orbs. Not completely, at least.

The taller man forced his way into the apartment and shed his coat, throwing it on the floor carelessly. He turned around to face Gar, who was scowling slightly, and said with somewhat of a laugh in his voice, "Man, I've missed this place."

"Yeah, you would be the only one." Gar replied scathingly, shutting the door and cutting off some of the noise that had been floating through from elsewhere in the apartment building. He eyeballed Dick for a minute, taking in the less-than-cared-for hair and the mud-stained jeans. With a sigh even heavier than the one that had escaped his mouth earlier, he headed for the kitchen, knowing that his friend was going to need a drink tonight.

"What are you doing here, man?" he asked, shuffling through the cabinets to see if there was anything that Dick would be willing to drink. He even surprised himself by being so direct, but he was more shocked at just how disappointed he was that he wouldn't get the 'quiet evening' that he had been planning. But when it came to Dick, he couldn't really expect anything else. The young man showed up at the most inconvenient times, and always with a whole lot of problems on his back.

But if there was one thing that Gar could count on, it was Dick being even more direct. He may not admit to his problems, but he would tell you the situation in an instant. He doesn't want any help, but he'll let you know what's going on. It was a double-edged blade that Gar had been living with for quite some time now. Victor had been too; the two of them talked about it, but couldn't figure out a way to fix these problems permanently. They would just have to live with it for now. And live with Dick.

"Kori kicked me out." He said, shrugging, although it was clear that this was part of a bigger problem, because it didn't cut into his eyes as deeply as the real root would have. Dick leaned against the counter backwards, watching Gar shuffle around the place, opening and closing cabinets and repeatedly returning to the refrigerator only to glare angrily into its depths. The young man shook his head, splattering water all over the tiled floor.

Overlooking that, as there were places far more unsanitary in his apartment, Gar eventually pulled out another mug and the mix for hot chocolate. He turned to his friend, holding them up, "All I've got is this."

Dick nodded. "That's fine."

As the water was being heated in the microwave the two chatted about light things, easy things. Dick informed Gar that his job at Wayne Enterprises wasn't nearly as entertaining as it had been a month ago when Bruce had been overwhelmed by business meetings with other companies from foreign countries. He had enjoyed watching him attempt to juggle all of them at once. Bruce had done so admirably, much to Dick's disappointment ("The dude's your father!" "Doesn't mean he's not a prick."). Now they trudged on through daily life at the company, and Dick found himself playing computer games more and more often when people weren't looking ("You've infected me." "Score!"). Gar related the amusing incident when the other day, instead of calling, the girl from the odd couple, Lindsay, had marched over to Jackson's door with an empty bottle to 'borrow' something or other, and pretended that she had forgotten that it was he who lived there ("Those two are still going at it?" "Are you really surprised?"). It had been such a nice change from the norm of screaming across telephone lines so loudly that they could hear each other without the phones, that everyone had peeked out of their doors to watch the escapade ("Highlight of your life, Gar." "You bet."). The weather came up ("What a nightmare!" "For you? You're not the one who lives here, Dick."), and Dick tried to start a conversation about politics, but Gar refused to even look at him until he dropped it.

Minutes later found them both sitting at the round kitchen table, sipping their drinks and trying hard not to broach the subject that brought Dick to Gar's apartment in weather like this. They could simply not talk about it at all, and leave things be, as they were instinctively inclined to do, but they had tried that once, and when Dick had gone back, he had merely exploded again. That time had ultimately led to a break up, and it was an unspoken agreement that they would never ignore it again, no matter how much they wanted to.

Looking down into his mug and finding that he was out of hot chocolate, Gar raised his head and met Dick's sky blue eyes. With nothing to distract him with and put off the conversation, the young man shook his head and resigned himself to this.

"So… Kori, huh?" he leaned back casually in his chair and scrutinized his friend's reaction.

Dick didn't so much as flinch. Gar frowned, but waited for an answer. "Yeah, Kori." Was all he received.

"She kicked you out. So, what exactly was the reason that you walked all the way to my apartment in the middle of a thunderstorm?"

The black-haired man looked sharply at his friend sitting across from him, but evidently he must have seen something in Gar's expression, for he relaxed. "Kori found out that Rae and I used to have a thing…" he trailed off hopefully. Obviously, even though he was seeking refuge in his friend's place, it was too soon for him to want to talk about it yet. This did not deter Gar, who simply crossed his arms and continued questioning, although now with a slightly puzzled expression on his face.

"Why would Kori get so pissed about that? She's so laid back, and you guys are both friends with Rae…"

Dick shrugged, averting his gaze. "Well… I sort of let it slip that it was during the very beginning of my thing with Kori." Gar's look changed from inquisitive to an odd mixture of bored and knowing, and waited for his friend to continue. "Rae didn't know, of course, and I had to tell her that so Kori wouldn't get on a plane and fly halfway across the country to beat her up. But when I told her that, she went ballistic on me. Told me that I didn't care about our relationship, or about our friend—she totally flipped when it came to Rae, kept saying that I was degrading our friend by leading her on and wondering what Rae could have ever seen in me—and then she accused me of not caring about her at all!"

Gar's eyebrows drew down and together thunderously, but Dick didn't seem to notice. It was hard to tell whether Gar was angry with Kori or with Dick; most likely, it was both. But he said nothing.

Dick gulped down the last of his hot chocolate quickly. "So, at this point I'm starting to go 'shit, shit, shit, shit' in my head, and Kori's freaking out on me. So I try telling her that of course I care about her and of course I want to make this work, blah, blah, blah. And normally this leads to girls calming down, right? I mean, it's supposed to, right? You talk to 'em a bit more and it turns off the water works. Not this time, man. That, me saying that I cared about her, made her go flipping insane. She went off about how I never say that 'I love her' and crap like that. What was I supposed to say to that? If I start saying I love you then, she accuses me of just saying it right then so that she would believe me. If I start yelling at her, she does the whole 'I'm not the villain here' turn, and I become the bully."

It looked as though Gar wanted to say something, but stopped himself, for Dick gave him a glance before continuing with his story. "But apparently I can't just stand there and not say anything either, because while I'm trying to figure out what to say so that she won't go over the edge, she thinks I've been quiet for too long, grabs my coat from the rack next to her and chucks it at me, screaming that if I don't care about her or our relationship then I can find another place to live." He shrugged, swirling the dregs of his drink and listening to the sloshing noises. "So, I came here. You're closest."

Gar's green eyes were closed at this point, probably in exasperation. That headache that had been starting before returned full throttle, making him grit his teeth. The young man cared for his friend, he really did, but sometimes Dick was an idiot. However, he mostly likely didn't need to hear that right then. Better to be more casual and supportive of him; Kori had never kicked him out before and it looked like he was taking it very hard.

"Okay…" a pause. "Do you think she'll take you back?"

The first note of real panic intruded into Dick's calm and cool features, and he fidgeted anxiously. "What do you mean?"

Gar groaned, this time out loud, and stared at his friend. "Look at your track record, man! What do you really think your chances are of her letting you back into her life?"