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The first week Beast Boy and Raven start dating, not a lot changes other than Beast Boy dedicating a lot of his time to pondering in amazement the fact that… well, he and Raven had started dating.
Starfire receives the news happily but not a bit surprised. The alien girl is naive to the ways of earthlings, but by no means oblivious to affairs of the heart. Robin and Cyborg, on the other hand, think it's an elaborate prank and have to receive confirmation from Raven several times before they can wrap their minds around this new development (much to Raven and Beast Boy's mutual irritation).
When pressed for details over "how on earth she fell for the grass stain," the empath answers calmly that she spent the better part of the year trying to figure that out for herself and finally decided that sometimes, things like that creep up on you over an indecipherable period of time. Everyone expects Raven to be cagey and flustered over her newly public affections, but the subject is already an old one for her, and she's surprisingly comfortable with talking about it. A heartfelt girl talk with Starfire reveals that Raven spent quite a lot of time arguing with herself prior to ever presenting the topic to Beast Boy, in the hopes that she could somehow talk herself out of or otherwise vindicate her initially unwanted feelings.
She should have known, of course, that Beast Boy is not one to allow anything involving him remain private, and his eventual discovery of her—requited, as they would both find out—feelings was inevitable.
The Titans all possess well-intentioned curiosity over how this shift in relations will change the dynamic between their two most volatile teammates, but the change is surprisingly anti-climatic. Raven is microscopically more receptive to Beast Boy's usual pestering and flirting, and Beast Boy is slightly more daring when it comes to touching her—albeit the touches are limited to benign contact like pokes, pats, and brief hugs. If they didn't know better, it almost wouldn't seem like the two were dating at all.
But the key to their relationship lies within their private encounters.
Like with most anything that requires her to step outside of her comfort zone, Raven tactically mapped out exactly how things would work out, and Beast Boy dutifully takes her guidelines to heart. He knows and understands better than anyone that it's a big deal for Raven to openly express anything other than disinterest and disdain (and maybe it's because of this understanding that she's giving this whole thing a chance). She covertly loathes the idea of treating their relationship like a bomb that needs to be handled just so, but the reality is, anything involving her emotions does not really bear many differences from a bomb. Having been the scapegoat—and often cause—of most of her past emotional outbursts, Beast Boy understands this as well.
The first and foremost step to her 'Manage to Date Someone Without Supernaturally Causing Jump City to Combust' plan (aptly named so by Beast Boy) is, "No public displays of affection. At least, not yet." This rule meets the changeling's ears with a disappointed 'aww,' but he begrudgingly accepts it. The idea of Raven being completely okay with PDA right off the bat is admittedly unrealistic—and a little humorous—anyway.
But even still, Raven realizes that she's forcing a lot of compromises onto him and tries to make just as many herself. For as much as she complained in the past about Beast Boy being a nuisance, she's well aware that putting up with her own icy tendencies takes a patient and remarkably persistent person, and dating those icy tendencies is no easy feat. She genuinely wants to make their relationship worth all of her shortcomings, though she'd go shopping for lingerie with Starfire before she'd admit such a thing to her boyfriend's face.
"Hey," she calls out quietly one evening, clutching a book that she has no intention of actually reading.
"Hey yourself," Beast Boy replies from the living room couch, pausing his game long enough to wave her over. She approaches, uncharacteristically hesitant, and he pauses again to appraise her body language. "Is somethin' wrong?"
"No," she says quickly, and as always, her tone is too neutral for him to discern whether or not she means it. "Everyone went to bed."
"Yeah?" His face scrunches slightly as he puts his brain into overdrive to decipher what this cryptic message is supposed to convey. When he takes too long to think about it, Raven sighs—not an impatient or irritated sigh, but it's more like a labored exhale.
"I mean… no one's around," she elaborates, and she can't look him in the eyes anymore. His eyes spark to life with realization, and he lets out an audible 'ah!' before reaching over for the Gamestation's power switch and sending his fictional quest to a premature end. He gives it little thought; there are far more pressing matters in the three-dimensional world right now.
"What do you want to do tonight?" he asks her with a polite smile, ever conscious of Raven's comfort zone. They take advantage of times like this when their friends are not around to practice wading into the world of 'acting like a couple.'
She huffs—again, not in vexation, but in something more akin to embarrassment, if that's even possible for the apathetic girl—and folds her arms as she seats herself a foot away from him. "I don't know. You decide."
He quickly moves to close the gap between them, the freedom to 'decide' quickly ridding him of his inhibitions. One arm snakes around her shoulders and crushes the one foot distance into a negative three inches. "I just wanna spend time with you."
"Beast Boy, we live together. We spend all day, everyday together," she quips sardonically to ease this intimacy into something resembling their old banter. This whole 'dating' thing is considerably less nerve-wracking if she can just think of it as an evolved form of their friendship.
Beast Boy makes that resemblance a lot harder to maintain when he presses his lips against her cheek. She can feel in the curve of his mouth that he's smiling, the cheeky monkey. "Aw, c'mon, Rae. You know that's not what I mean. I don't wanna just spend time with a teammate, I wanna spend time with my girlfriend—man, I still can't believe I get to call you that. Girlfriend. Yeah, that's Raven, my girlfriend. Why yes, this is my girlfriend here, no big deal. Except yes, big deal, because my girlfriend is Raven—"
"Garfield, if you do not stop saying that word, I will personally see to it that the title no longer applies to me." Her voice is stony, but the color of her cheeks negates her attempt at feigning exasperation, and Beast Boy only laughs while lacing his fingers between hers.
"Sorry," he says, but he isn't one bit sorry, and she knows it. "If it's okay with you, I just kinda want to PDA minus the P tonight."
Raven only manages a mangled and utterly nondescript noise in response. Beast Boy decides to interpret this sound as, "Sounds great to me" and settles his lips on the crook of her neck.
It takes a great, concentrated effort on her part to not shudder at the sensation—not because it's unwanted, but because she simply doesn't know how to steel herself against the wave of emotion that accompanies it. She copes by allowing her fingers tighten slightly around his, gentle and hopefully affectionate, and this minuscule pressure on his knuckles makes Beast Boy falter. It feels a lot like she's bracing herself, and the last thing he wants to do is something that makes her upset.
"Raven, is this okay?" he asks earnestly, his voice small and squeaky, and it reminds her of the way his voice sounded on the first day met: unassuming and eager to please and strained with a small note of fear—fear of making a mistake, fear of incurring someone's disappointment yet again, fear of rejection.
Raven opens her mouth to say, 'Yes, of course it is,' but the words get snared in her throat, and she exchanges a wide-eyed stare with him for a moment while she tries to figure out what it is about this boy, and only this boy, that always makes her surprise herself. Even before their clumsy confessions, before she had any inkling of romantic affections towards him, he was always the one to drag her from her dark, lonely recesses and force her to try something new.
All of her friends have had a part in helping her grow, of course, but they maintain respectful distances. Cyborg is her confidant on the rare occasions that she needs one, and he always knows the secret to tackling an issue and making it more manageable. He's an affectionate brother figure Raven never realized she craved to have in her life, and like a good big brother, he knows when to back off and let Raven have her space. Starfire is the warm, overbearing affection that helps Raven to loosen up and remember that sheis still a girl, and it's fun to forget her apathetic shield now and then and enjoy a girl's day out with the kind-hearted Tamaranean. The alien girl is like sunshine and rain on dry, abandoned terrain, and Raven harbors a lot of fondness towards her for it. Raven's bond with Robin is a difficult one to give a label to, because he's like a brother without the childish banter, like a father while still remaining on the level of an equal peer, and like a lover without the romantic inclinations. If she had to put their relationship into words, it's a mutual respect and understanding that could only ever be shared by two people who have been in each other's minds. Robin understands Raven's limits intimately, and he's always the first one to rest a reassuring hand on her shoulder when he knows she needs to take it easy for a while.
Beast Boy is another thing entirely, and her dynamic with him is every bit harder to define. He's a bundle of contradictions, pesky and sweet, nosy and thoughtful, juvenile and mature beyond his years. Like Robin, but to a slightly lesser degree, he understands that Raven has limits; he just chooses to drag her across their borders with her kicking and screaming. Every aspect of interacting with him is like stretching a little further past one's range of flexibility, because it's uncomfortable and leaves her sore and at the same time increases her ability to crawl out of her carefully constructed barriers, and she's never sure whether to react to this by slapping him over the back of the head or by thanking him. If she had to put their relationship into words, he's the only person who could watch her summon her demon father, nearly end the world, and still have the capacity to worry that her change in uniform colors meant that she had changed as a person. (He's also the only person who would forcibly hug her after the whole ordeal. She complained about it at the time, but she also made no effort to struggle against his grip. She has a feeling that he noticed this.)
"Look," Beast Boy's apologetic voice interrupts her train of thought and snaps her back into the present. "I don't wanna do anything you don't wanna do. Okay, Rae? If you just want to sit together and talk about something else, I'm up for that."
Raven bites her bottom lip, shakes her head, and thinks to herself that Beast Boy's the only person in the world she could ever be this close to without falling apart, the only person she could lean towards and kiss without fear, and the only reason she's come this far in emotional expression is because he's the one who trained her how to step outside of her claustrophobic restrictions, whether he realizes it or not. The contact between them is light and electric, and to her repeated surprise, it feels right. Not dangerous or uncomfortable or forced. Just, right.
When he finally pulls back, there's a lopsided, disheveled sort of grin on his face. "Whoa," is all he manages, along with a string of breathless laughter. The kiss was benign, really, but the fact that it was Raven who initiated it is what's left him winded. And he supposes that this is what makes her exciting; Raven never yields to anything easily, and that's what makes every look, every touch, and every single shy smile so much more rewarding.
It's through such patient compromises that their budding relationship functions, and whether or not the others understand that is irrelevant. They know what they're doing, and they'll take as much time as they need to take each step forward together. Even if it's by millimeters, Raven is being lured out of her shell, and Beast Boy will wait until the second ending of the world for the day where she can be completely comfortable with herself and, by extension, him.