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There’s a protocol, to successful missions. To make them, sure, but also for the aftermath. It’s simpler that way, to have a set of tasks to lean on during the exhausted days that follow.
This protocol, of course, includes breakfast. The most important meal of the day, and for nocturnal heroes, one that's easy to skip; You stumble back to base late, of course. You’re hungry but more likely you're hurt, and this- weakness, you have to address first. You handle it yourself, or admit it with only with a turn your head to or sheepishly away from your Master-
Have any of the other titans ever done that?
..Worked nocturnally, Robin means. Granted, their schedule is- a bit chaotic, but, compared to Batman’s, it definitely counts as diurnal. Compared to a lot of schedules.
Which is why it’s a little strange, sitting on a well-worn blue sofa, staring out the huge windows of your base. Out at the seven-AM form of your city’s skyline, just after you've woken up.
There’s quiet banter in the kitchen, and the smell of.. of cooking. He thinks it’s- eggs? Those are common protocol. The smell isn’t acrid or sulphuric, though, just.. peppery. A little damp, like half the smell's just steam.
Robin could probably just turn and look. To see Beast Boy cooking, their team leaned against the counters. He'd actually hear their words, unlike now, where their banter goes in one ear and out the other. All four of them are there, right behind him, and if he just turned back-
..but. he. give him a minute.
A minute always turns to several. Humanity's grand contingency plan for this was the invention of the watch, but that does nothing if you don't look at it, and right now Robin's eyes are stuck firmly on the bay, on the city- on the daylight spreading over them and creeping, minute by procrastinated minute, across the ceiling of the living room. It has hit the far wall. It will soon track along the floor, and flood back to him. And by then he really should mo-
"ohhh ROBINNN," a voice calls from his left, too close, and he jolts, hands up like- like he's trying to block, like he expects to have plates of metal armor on his forearms to save him.
Instead, between the cotton-clothed limbs, he just sees.. "Beast Boy,"
Beast Boy blinks a few times. That's his whole reaction. He's not hurt, Robin didn't- "Uhm, yep, that's me. Nice reflexes, dude."
The two stare at each other for a few more seconds before Robin remembers he should probably lower his arms. The movement is stiff, the room is quiet, and Robin's voice echoes both: "I- it won't happen again,"
"Awh, dude, no, that's not what I-" Beast Boy readjusts the balance of something in his hands, so he has one free to run through his hair. "ok, let me start over, please?"
Let Beast Boy start over with what..? "As you wish."
Beast Boy nods, takes two steps back, clears his throat, and then a long stride forward. "Robinn, I have made you food!"
Sure enough, there's a plate in Beast Boy's outstretched hands. Scrambled eggs sit atop it, yellow and fluffy, with the black speckling that suggests Robin was right on the pepper. It's handed over gently, Robin's thumbs - rare, he realizes, to have ungloved in this tower - leaving marks in the condensation atop the plate rim. He sets the plate on his lap, and Beast boy sits beside him, arms crossed behind his head but eyes..
Attentive, is the word Robin will pick. It's not quite caution, or judgement, just.. sure. he's been watched plenty.
Still, he doesn't pick up the fork to eat til after Beast Boy looks away, out to the sea ahead. The eggs are fine, if strangely alien in his mouth, which.. He's had eggs in the last month, hasn't he? Overcooked compared to this, though, and he supposes before that, they would have mostly been tofu eggs, since Beast Boy's the Titan's main.. cook...
He pauses.
"Beast Boy,"
"Mm?"
"Why are these.. are these real? Like, from," Robin makes a gesture of cracking an egg.
Beast Boy shrugs, the motion a little stiff. "They're a bit more nutritious. Thought you could use it."
What does that- it wasn't like Slade had starved him, not after the first few days- a hungry soldier is weak, a hungry student too fogged to learn, it's inefficient. So there'd been plenty of chances to earn food, so this- it shouldn't have been enough to be visible, should it? He shouldn't- "You didn't have to do that,"
"Yeah, well, I wanted to."
"But it- you've been a-" Robin's head is- swimming, with the strange place and the alien taste and, and Beast Boy is a hero and has morals and one of them is that he doesn't eat meat because he's been those animals, and this isn't right, he doesn't deserve-
"Hey, Robin- Robin, look at me." Beast Boy says, and suddenly there's a hand on Robin's shoulder, testing his new promise of not flinching. Beast Boy has brought his legs up onto the couch, curled beneath him, to face Robin entirely. His left hand meets Robin's, gentle over tight fingers.
He takes a deep breath. Robin tries to follow.
"I," Beast Boy begins, as serious as Robin has ever heard him. "Am willing to break my morals for you. To help you." He lifts Robin's left hand, held halfway between their two hearts. "You decided we're worth that, so I'm telling you the same. You are, and will always, be worth it."
He smiles, then, sheepish, and tilts his head a bit into the golden light of dawn; "I, uh, still don't wanna eat these, though. I know that means this is, like, nothing compared to what you've done for us but-"
"Thank you." Robin says, clasping his hand around Beast Boy's with a suddenness that surprises them both. "It- no, it's perfect. that- thank you,"
Beast Boy grins, wider this time, and soon after Robin remembers to let him go. To breathe, to pick back up the fork..
"So, I was thinking," Beast Boy says, tone light, and Robin breathes a laugh at the shift. "After this, you know that racing game, with the space ships? Cy and I've gotten soo much better, I've gotta show you-"
Beast Boy continues to rattle on about games, and movies, how oh you have to see this, can't wait to show you this, guys come on let's, as the others make their own way to the couch, and as Robin, admittedly, tunes them out again. But now he turns his head and watches, watches his team, lounging in their pyjamas in the golden light of dawn. The eggs on his plate are real, and warm, and so is the thin skin over each scar he's gotten the last month. Each bite and bruise of loyalty, valued above all else.
It doesn't feel quite right. It'll probably be a long while til it does. But Robin knows, as he curls up onto the sofa, comfortable in the light of laughter and the dawn: he's finally home.