Chapter Text
It’s three am and Beast Boy can’t sleep.
He spent what feels like hours just tossing and turning in his new bed without feeling any closer to unconsciousness. The giddiness he’s been feeling since he fought off these aliens with his new team (are they even that? Or is this wistful thinking?) has slowly faded into a weird mix of anxiety and sadness as the nostalgia (don’t think about them don’t think about them don’t think about–dammit he’s thinking about them) hits, reminds him of orders screamed and screwed priorities and always the mission first and he’s...
He’s scared. Terrified, even. He doesn’t want to go back to before.
He shakes his head at the thought and officially decides to get on his feet and do something before he actually thinks too hard and his head explodes.
Besides, like any member of the Doom Patrol would say, it’s not like thinking things through has ever been his strong suit.
He swings his legs off the bed and shifts into a cat to see in the dark hallway and slips out of the room as quietly as possible. He doesn’t want to wake anyone up with his little nighttime adventure.
Once he’s out of the hallway of bedrooms he takes a moment to think about what to do next, which takes longer than it should with his half-asleep brain at the wheel.
He blows air through his nose and shifts back into his human form before thinking about what to do, because…
Now that he’s outside of his room, he has no idea what to do to take… these things out of his mind.
He could go train in the gym… but it’s quite frankly, the last thing he wants to do at this hour. Playing video games is less fun without Cyborg, and he thinks watching a movie will probably wake someone up and bring up a lot of questions he doesn’t have the heart to answer.
So, occupying the couch until someone wakes up it is then!
Soon after entering the silent room, however, he stops dead in his tracks.
Because sitting alone in the dark in front of the silent TV is Robin, their new unanimously declared leader.
-
Robin is… different, from the rest of his teammates, and not only for the obvious reasons.
Firstly, there’s the fact that he’s much more experienced than all of them, both as a solo hero than as part of a team.
Well, it’s not like any of them actually ever worked with a team, as it stands…
…except for him that is. But he’s not thinking about them.
He’s also, in Beast Boy’s humble opinion, one of the greatest heroes of all times. Not that he would ever say that to anyone, he’s not an idiot, he knows how this looks.
But he’s just so cool.
He started fighting crimes so young and even without powers he’s strong and the second greatest detective of all times.
And he’s cool.
Did he say that already?
Ok, maybe he has a bit of hero worship going on. Not that he would ever let that interfere with the team, obviously. It’s just something he keeps to himself.
And, finally, there’s the elephant in the room.
Batman.
His mentor/maybe-father-figure.
Not that he knows, since Robin remains secretive (as with everything else) about it.
Cyborg and him never talk about any of the other heroes they’ve heard Robin has worked with, in a silent agreement to not make this uncomfortable. He has not asked them about their past, so they don’t pry on his.
As for the two others, Raven probably knows (she seems to know everything), and he has not mentioned Batman in front of Starfire since they met her, as far as he’s aware.
-
Robin has his gaze firmly out the window and doesn’t even look up as Beast Boy enters the room and awkwardly goes to sit on the opposite side of the couch.
He has three apples in his hands and he juggles them almost silently, still staring at the lights of Jump City.
For a while they sit in silence, except for the slight thud the apples make every time they hit his hands in their repeated circular motion. The smooth motions of the apples going up and down repeatedly gets him the closest to sleep he’s been all night… but something’s still bothering him.
“How do you do that?”
Robin pauses for a second. “Juggling?”
“Yeah! I’ve always wanted to learn how to do it!" He waves his arms around as he talks.
"When I was young I used to just throw anything in the air and think that was juggling, but then… when I lived with the Doom Patrol, well, at first they didn’t care, because Elastic Girl thought it was good for me to act like a kid sometimes and it was good enough for everyone, but then once I dropped one of the gadgets I was playing with and it turned out it was Mento’s and… yeah, I stopped doing it after that… heh…”
He cuts abruptly when he realizes with horror that he’s rambling.
In front of the boy wonder himself. Who doesn’t answer and just frowns.
For a moment, the room stays silent and Beast Boy is terrified that he finally did it, he weirded out the other boy so badly that he decided to start ignoring him, before the boy in question hums pensively and puts the apples down.
Robin turns back towards him with a little smile playing on his lips.
“Want me to teach you?”
—
Half an hour later, he holds three (pretty bruised) apples and he can almost consistently juggle at least two of them at the same time, without dropping them.
Beast Boy does one last entire cycle before dropping one of them, which is a personal best, before doing a quiet victory sound. Only then does he realize that his eyes have begun to close by themselves… and that the morning training they all agreed on is most likely in an hour or less.
He tells Robin of his epiphany, kind of in a panic, before defeatingly telling him, “Looks like I won’t be getting any sleep tonight. Hehe…”
Robin stays silent for a moment, before shaking his head. “No, I think our morning training can wait. Go sleep, I’ll let the others know.”
Beast Boy perks up before smiling, trying to convey silently what his tired brain can’t put into words. He shifts into a cat again and stretches before jumping off the couch, walking tiredly towards his room.
But before he gets out of the room, Robin speaks up. “Next time, if you can’t sleep, you can wake me up directly. I wouldn’t mind doing this again with you. Good night.”
In lieu of an answer, he just purrs loudly, confident the message was well received.
As he goes to sleep, Beast Boy doesn’t even fear the future.
He just lies with a smile and thinks of apples and new beginnings.