Teen Titans Fan Fiction ❯ Falling ❯ Adrenaline Rush ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: Teen Titans and all related characters and situations don’t belong to me. I’m just playing in their universe.

Spoilers for “Stranded”

Falling

By Lelila Chapter 1: Adrenaline Rush

Robin had never been afraid of falling, and through his training first as an acrobat and later to fight crime, he had become very good at controlling how he fell, and more importantly, how he landed. But since he’d joined the Titans, he’d actually come to enjoy falling, even anticipated it. Occasionally he even jumped. He always knew that as long as one of his teammates saw him, he wouldn’t land, he’d be caught. It was as close to flying as he ever really got.

How he was caught really depended on who did the catching. When Beast Boy caught him, he could be grasped by the shoulders by a pterosaur or land unceremoniously on the back of an elephant or be caught by the arms of a gorilla. It was always a surprise, and not always a pleasant one. When Raven caught him, he was usually encased in a sphere of her magic, and he would float to the ground like a soap-bubble. The first few times it happened, it had taken him nearly a full minute to get his bearings back, having been stopped mid-fall. He still found it rather disconcerting.

He liked it best when Starfire caught him. She would either scoop him up in her arms, or, more often, simply grasp his hand and pull him along. He loved the feeling of flying through the air with her, being able to survey the scene from above. His adrenaline would rise and he always landed more energized and re-focused on the fight.

They had practiced such catches in training of course, with all of his teammates. He realized at one point that he had unconsciously scheduled more of these practices with Starfire than with his other teammates that could fly. He hadn’t dwelled on it too much at the time; he simply scheduled more time with Raven and Beast Boy. But in the time since then, he had pondered it. He realized that it was because he’d liked the excuse to hold her hand, or to wrap his arms around her.

Not that he needed an excuse; Starfire was very affectionate. She hugged and kissed all of them whenever she got the chance. But then, she hugged and kissed Silkie, her pet caterpillar, too. They all endured it with a sense of humor, knowing she was just expressing her exuberant friendship for them.

But Robin had realized early on that when she hugged him, he, at least, was feeling something more than friendship for her. He would feel his heart start to race and his head get muzzy. He’d tried to deny it; tried to push his feelings aside and concentrate on his work, his training. He thought he’d been succeeding too, until they’d been stranded together on that strange planet not so long ago.

Shortly before that ill-fated mission, Cyborg had made an off-hand comment about Starfire being Robin’s girlfriend. Robin had denied it in front of Starfire, and had snapped at her during the flight to the planet. He and Starfire had spent most of the time while they wandered the planet looking for their teammates not exactly arguing, but trying to figure out exactly what his intentions toward her were. While he wasn’t sure they came to any conclusions other than the fact that she was his best friend and he cared a lot about her, their relationship had definitely changed after that.

He had allowed her to be more affectionate with him, even privately looked forward to her holding his hand and snuggling close to him on the couch. His reciprocations had been measured and rare, never even allowing himself to kiss her cheeks, much less her lips, and he had made no concession to her being his “friend who is a girl,” as she put it. For one, he really didn’t want the other Titans in on whatever it was he felt for her, because he wasn’t really sure himself what that was. And perhaps more importantly, he didn’t want to lose control. He had no real “powers;” what made him a “superhero” was his control, over his body, and his emotions.

But alone in his room, away from being the leader of the Teen Titans, away from Starfire’s affections, in the rare place and time when allowed himself to be just a teenage boy, he pondered and even stressed over his feelings for his alien teammate. If it was love, hell, even if it was just lust, he didn’t know how to deal with it. He had no experience with either emotion, and certainly no training on what to do when he felt that way.

But he wasn’t pondering any of that now. In fact, it was the furthest thing from his mind. Right now, he and the other Titans were battling some huge bear-like creature that seemed intent on destroying downtown. Whether it was a mutant, an alien, or some combination thereof was not Robin’s problem at this moment. He would research that later. For the present, the only thing on Robin’s mind was disabling or capturing the creature.

At this precise moment, he stood at the ready in the middle of the road, watching as Beast Boy, morphed into a T-Rex, tried to grapple with the thing. He was thrown to the side, morphing into a humming bird in mid-flight before landing on the hood of a car to morph back into his human form to regroup. Starfire blasted it with several starbolts just as Raven dropped a large piece of concrete from a damaged building onto its head. This just seemed to make it angrier.

Finally deciding to act, Robin flung an expanding net at it. Right on cue, Cyborg blasted it with his sonic cannon. The net found its target, over the creature’s snout. The sonic blast seemed to really affect it, as it grabbed its ears and stumbled toward the building Robin was standing in front of. The structure had a decorative arch and a roofed canopy in front of its main doorway. The Titans stood back to see what would happen as the creature tripped into the arch. It roared, tore the net from its face, then extended wings from its back from beneath a flap of fur, and flew off toward the nearby forested hills.

Robin immediately decided to follow the thing, yelling, “Titans, go!” as he took off at a dead run toward his R-Cycle, which was parked nearby. Paying too much attention to his mission and not enough to his surroundings was a mistake that Robin rarely made. But he made it today. The next moments were a blur as he heard Starfire shout “Robin!” and felt her fly into his solar plexus. They tumbled end over end, stopping under a pile of debris, Robin lying atop of Starfire, his face pressed to hers.

His heart already pounding and the adrenaline already in his veins, his breath gone from Starfire’s impact, and with the smell of her hair suddenly in his nostrils and the touch of her skin igniting his nerves, Robin acted on instinct to do what his senses were telling him: he moved his head up slightly and crushed his lips to hers.

In that moment, everything went away: the creature’s threat to the town, the fate of their other teammates, even the pile of rubble they were beneath. The only thing that existed in that moment was Starfire and his need for her. He let his weight fall against her and gripped her shoulders, leaving marks on her bare skin. He wanted to swallow her, to be inside of her, to somehow meld himself to her. She was eagerly returning the kiss, and had already opened her lips to him. He followed suit, sucking her tongue into his mouth and quickly moving on to nibble her lower lip and jaw.

Starfire, whose arms had been around him in her rescue of him, crept her hands up his back and into his hair. Robin was very aware of this, and it only served to further his frenzied affections for her. What he was not aware of was the fact that they had floated several inches above the ground. He shifted his weight to get a better grip on her, and that caused them to roll over. Robin did not come out of his reverie until he fell to the concrete, his lips losing contact with her skin.

“Robin,” Starfire inquired, out of breath. “You are unhurt?”

Robin took several deep breaths, trying to clear his head. “I think so.” He studied her face in the dim light streaming in through the cracks in the debris. She was so beautiful…wait a minute…cracks in the debris? He snapped back to reality. “Starfire, what happened?” He attempted to sit up.

“I believe you kissed me.” She beamed.

Robin managed an embarrassed smile in return. “Yes…we’ll have to talk about that. But I meant the building.” He gestured to the concrete surrounding them.

Starfire lowered herself to crouch beside him in the small dome. “It appears that we have been trapped beneath the arch. I saw it beginning to fall, and I attempted to remove you from its path, but I regret I could not.”

He put his hand on her arm, making a horrified note of the marks he had left on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Star. We’re both unhurt, so you succeeded in that. Do you think you can get us out of here?”

She beamed at him again. “I shall attempt it.”

Starfire gathered her legs under her, and was about to try to push one of the stones above them out of the way, but before she could make any real effort, the stone beside it suddenly turned black and floated aside. Raven appeared in the opening. “You two okay?” she asked as the two of them picked their way out of the crushed arch.

“No worse for wear,” Robin reported. “What happened to the creature?”

“It escaped into the forest. Cyborg and Beast Boy have gone after it; I told them we would follow once I got you two out.”

“Then let’s go!” Robin started toward his T-Cycle as Raven gave a nod and flew off in the direction of the hills.

“If I may, Robin,” Starfire started. Robin pivoted back on his heel to look at her, a “Not now, Star” poised on his lips, but dying there as she continued. “The hills are very steep, and I believe your R-Cycle will be of little use in the forest. Perhaps you could fly with me?” She held out her hand to him.

As much as Robin wanted to sort out his feelings at the moment, or put them aside and deal with them later, she did have a point. With just a moment’s hesitation, he put his hand in hers. “Let’s fly.”

A few author's notes:   This whole thing started out as a couple plot bunnies inspired by the episode Stranded.  In it, the team crash lands on an alien planet and gets split up.  Robin and Starfire wind up together, and at one point, Starfire falls down a ravine (she's having trouble flying).  Robin dives after her, catches her, and shoots a line into a cave in the cliff face.  They tumble inside and wind up landing much like they do in this chapter.  Only in the episode, this big monster shows up right afterward, so any fluffiness is derailed.  Me, being a hopeless romantic, wanted to know what would have happened if he did kiss her... and Falling was born.

Next: Chapter 2: Star and Fire Light