Page 5

Entry the fifth, twenty-four days since moving into Titan's Tower.

There is something of a question of the ethics in human society. In the instance of a prolonged absence from updates, is it better when one re-emerges to bring attention to the absence to attempt with making explanations or to simply continue on as though the absence had not occurred? If one draws attention to the delay, while it may satisfy some, it also reminds them of the fact that the absence happened. It also burdens the re-emergence with the label of something which follows an absence. Should somebody come along after the absence, any references to it will merely leave them confused. On the other hand, if you don't draw attention to it, and either subtly or unsubtly gesture toward the reasons why it may have taken so long, there remains the small chance of angering those that did spend that time waiting. Like with all of the questions of the ethics, it has no correct answers.

Of course, when my audience is you, simply my diary, it is a bit more simple. Between writing this page and the last or the next, no difference in pages happens due to the time that has passed. The only way that the diary would show evidence of the wait is if the user made a habit of recording the day on which the entry happens. As has often been the case since my arrival, no mistake made in earnest goes unpunished. If I hadn't chosen to record how long I had lived among the humans, it would be as if nothing happened. Now, I am simply unable to sweet-talk my way out of this one.

As such, friend Diary, I come bearing excuses as well as entries.

At the end of my last entry, I spoke to having my choice of friends to pursue. As with all things, the gift of hindsight has made this seem foolish. I had not woken up first, nor had I actually investigated what my friends were up to, so by the time I had dressed and left my room, Robin and Beast Boy were gone. A note left behind told me that they were off training with Robin's mentor, who I have heard much about but never met. Cyborg and Raven had also left, but they were merely going out for activities together. I must admit, it occurred to me that this was the first time I have ever been left completely alone in Titan's Tower. Perhaps this could be seen as a good thing, as I am now trusted enough in the not doing of the crime and the proper working of the microwave to be left on my own. But, at that time, it was hard for me to look at it that way. In the span of a mere ten minutes, I had gone from having my choice of who to make the outward hanging with to having **** and no hanging.

With the newfound trust gained from my friends and the prospect of being alone, I decided to do what any sane person would do. I went to each of my friends' rooms and buried my face in their pillows, one after the other.

Now, this exercise had a variety of desired observations. All of which I am sure are quite obvious. In the interest of brevity, here are a pair of lists of the two main things I set out to measure.

• Who in Titans Tower has the comfiest pillow? Ranked most to least comfy.

1. Starfire
2. Cyborg
3. Raven
4. Beast Boy
5. Robin

I was not surprised to find that my own pillow was the comfiest, as well as being the fluffiest, it is also the one I am the most used to. I was quite surprised to find how comfy friend Cyborg's was! Despite not being very fluffy, the pillow used by friend Cyborg has an almost perfectly-round indent in it, perfect for holding one's head at any angle. I suspect he has used this pillow for a very long time and takes good care of it. Friend Raven's pillow is also quite fluffy, but suffers from an odd shape, and the cartoon pillowcase makes loose hair very obvious. While the comfort and the length of the pillow itself was quite admirable, seeing all of those loose hairs gave me an odd sense of the squickies. Friend Beast Boy's pillow was much like straw, both in the sense that it was likely made with straw and not animal feathers, as per his wishes, and by the fact that he does not seem to wash the case much, making the case quite starchy. Finally, in last place, friend Robin's pillow could be best compared to a brick. I actually suspected this ever since seeing it for the first time. His bed is very bare and minimal, and I think he believes that a bad pillow will build his toughness.

• Who in Titans Tower has the best smelling pillow? Ranked most to least good-smelling.

1. Robin
2. Cyborg
3. Raven
4. Starfire
5. Beast Boy

Friend Robin's pillow smelled like friend Robin. I am likely biased in this regard, but I find that to be a most favorable smell. I was once again surprised by friend Cyborg's pillow, as it smelled like he washed it very regularly, and what little of him I could smell on it smelled like coconut! In third place is friend Raven, whose pillow smelled neither bad nor good. There was a very minor hint of makeup on it, which gave it a slightly chemical-y smell. Now, I will admit with some shame that I rank my pillow near the bottom. When actually pressing my nose in to smell my pillow, I came to realize that by making as much of the drool as I am, I am needing to wash my pillow more often than I have been. Finally, at the bottom is Beast Boy's. Beast Boy is often told that he smells like an animal, but he has not yet taken this as the provocation to wash his pillow very often.

• So, based on these two lists and a number of other ones, I would rank the pillows in Titans Tower thusly.

1. Cyborg
2. Starfire
3. Raven
4. Robin
5. Beast Boy

I will admit, I did not suspect that any pillow would surpass my own, but friend Cyborg's pillow impressed me in every measurable quality! The placement of Beast Boy at the bottom did not come as a surprise, but I did not expect how truly poor the experience of his pillow would be. For both he and Robin, who I placed near the bottom for the great agony of his rocky pillow despite how lovely the smell was, if I were to sleep in their beds, I would bring my own pillow. Raven ranks flatly in the middle, as her pillow was neither so compelling as to win me over nor so bad as to be repellent. It is a very specific pillow for a very specific person, and anybody that is not her is not likely to get the mileage out of it that she does. My own pillow, though in need of more frequent washing, remains the most comfortable choice and maintains the cutest case.

Now, the Titans also all have private showers. While I did also try all of them, I will admit that the differences between them were minimal enough to not be worth making even a single list about. Beast Boy's was clean by virtue of minimal use, Cyborg's was spotlessly clean and stocked with more lotions and oils than any other, and friend Raven's was painted black, which only made things more lonely and intimidating. The only thing of note was in the shower of friend Robin.

I admittedly saved his for last, as I was still somewhat intimidated of his truly horrible pillow. Of course, when it came time to actually use it, I found it to be a very normal and functional shower, not one that rained down plasma or tried to attack the user to build toughness. It was the only one to feature a glass door instead of a curtain, I am not sure why. Perhaps it is bulletproof glass? As well as that, it featured some unique aspects that the others did not, or at least that I did not notice. If I were to make a shower tier list, it would simply be friend Robin's at the top and the rest below it in the tier of "normal showers" with his being above normal. When I reached up to turn the nozzle to massage setting to test his water pressure, the nozzle fell off! I was certain that I had broken something, and if I were to break something, I would have hoped it to be something simple like a pillow. However, the shower nozzle continued to spray the water, attached to the wall by a hose and not a metal pipe. With it turned to massage, the water jumped up almost a full foot into the air. It was some intense water pressure indeed!

I picked up the nozzle and pointed the water into my face, then moved it to spray the back of my neck and my shoulders. It was quite intense, a good deal more so than any other massage mode. Though, this may be because of how much closer it was. No matter where I aimed the water, it made the skin tingle, almost like it was being shocked.

Perhaps the diary, more well-versed in the ways of things on Earth than I am, knows where this story is headed already. Understand that I had seen videos of women doing what I ended up doing on the net of inter in my research. That is, after all, why I did end up even trying what I tried, but I didn't understand the reality of what I was actually doing. I assumed it was one of the things that the girls in the videos pretended to be liking for the interest of the viewer or her partner. And we did not have detachable shower heads on Tamaran.

I was very lucky that I remained alone in the tower when I tried aiming the showerhead at my "pussy" because I let out a very loud scream that was likely hard to distinguish from the cries of great agony and sorrow. The **** of the water was so overwhelming, and my own anatomy so... sensitive. Where before the touch of the harsh stream might have been kind of like an electrical shock, this one was very much like such a shock.

And it was a shock that didn't end because I didn't think to pull the nozzle away. It was not painful, though there may have been some discomfort. The discomfort was not enough to motivate me to pull it away, because it was accompanied by some of the most wonderful pleasure I have felt! As the shower continued to spray me, the water made my pleasure more intense, as well as making the nervous shock linger in my stomach, growing more like a sort of the great dread. I would manage to pull the nozzle away for a moment, but the pleasure would go away, so I would put it back, but then the dread would start going. I was stuck! Trying to achieve the pleasure of the spray, but not to bring on the great dread. The more I pulled the nozzle away, the more losing the pleasure began to make me upset. But the closer I got to the dread, the more my limbs shook and I felt like my head was going very stupid!

Perhaps it would be beneficial for the purpose of this story to explain a certain aspect of Tamaranian culture. Or at least, my own upbringing in it. Tamaraneans do not... "spank the monkey." When faced with the prospect of sexual longing, we usually do not lack a partner of our own species to relieve us. And in the odd cases that we do, we are not so out of control of our longing like humans. It is not impossible for a Tamaranian to "**** the chicken" but it is simply not done. I had not, to this point, done it. I had also not mated with any of my kind, as almost exactly at the same time as my coming of (legal) age, I made my escape to Earth. As well, in my time since being here, as my own longing grew more like that of the humans, all of my experience was in giving my friends pleasure. In all of this, I had failed to consider my own interests. Trying very hard to appease humans, as a visitor in their home.

Perhaps it would simply be shorter to say that I had not before experienced what I did at that point.

At a certain stage in my little game of trying to achieve the pleasure without the tension, I passed a point where pulling the nozzle away did not abate the tension enough, and pulling away the nozzle resulted in something like pain. My childish game had reached the checkmate, with me as the loser. I decided that if I was going to be stuck here, too afraid now to pull the nozzle away until Robin returned and found me, I may as well keep the nozzle in place. Perhaps it was my anxiety at having trapped myself, but the great pressure and dread grew so great, that could no longer control myself. I sunk to my knees, setting the nozzle down on the floor and trying to grab the shampoo to go on with my shower sullenly, clearly not considering that I would be unable to rinse out my hair without removing the nozzle between my legs.

And then... it is hard to describe, I felt something like a shudder, and then something like I was frozen! I tried to gasp for breath, but it was like the wind was knocked out of me! I hung in limbo for a moment before an uncontrollable, almost terrifying shiver rolled through me, focused within my strogarff, my "pussy." It was a scary, throbbing, twitching thing that made me gasp for air like I was dying. My body felt like it was on fire! Like a bulb of glass had been shattered by the steady stream of water and the light inside had come bursting out. Again, I was lucky to still be alone, as when I could manage to make noises, it was loud fishy gasps and deep noises that, if I played them back for myself, might have been groans. Of course, I understand what was happening now far better than I did at the time. In that shower at that moment, I was too gloriously relieved to be fearful, and too fearful to be truly relieved.

Gradually, over time, the pleasure grew weaker and weaker, the dread and pressure now gone and replaced with a sort of sleepy lightness. When I finally felt safe, and had let out my last little shudder, I pulled the nozzle out from between my legs and found that it no longer produced discomfort. I managed to stand up, grabbing onto the railings in Robin's shower for support, as my legs had gotten quite weak. I will admit, I practiced less than the optimal amount of shower etiquette in finishing up, wanting to get out of there and filled with some apprehension that I would be tempted to move the nozzle again.

I returned to my room after that and redressed myself in something of a daze. I enjoyed the light, less anxious, and more sleepy way that the incident in the shower had made me feel, but was still filled with an odd sort of... unrest. While I didn't feel that I had done anything wrong, and it dawned on me slowly more and more what it was that I had actually done, it did still mean something almost profound to me. Tamaranians did not masturbate, but I just had.

When I left my room to go grab some food, I found friends Raven and Cyborg in the main area. Friend Cyborg was playing one of his games and Raven was mostly sitting and watching him without speaking.

"Hello, friends! Did you have a good time outside of the tower?" I asked them.

Neither of them turned to look at me, but a moment later, friend Raven rose wordlessly and hovered out of the room past me without even looking me in the eye! I heard her door close behind me, so I went to go sit by friend Cyborg as he continued to play.

"Do you mind if I sit here?" I asked him.

"Sure," He told me, focusing on his game.

I sat in silence as friend Raven had been before, though I suspect that they may have been using telepathy to speak to one another, as Raven is capable of when she trusts a friend enough. A thing she has only done once before with me but that my friends say is a regular thing for them.

I wanted very badly to ask him about friend Raven, but I had other questions, and I have been told that you sometimes need to make the smaller talk before speaking about the heavier issues. When I looked at him, I could see the reflection of the game on the hairless human side of his head more clearly than on the hairless robot side, which reminded me of his pillow. When he was between fights, I started up a conversation on what I felt to be smaller talk.

"Do you... put lotion on your head?"

He paused his game and looked at me with what I have heard him call the "Starfire just said something that requires and upward holding" face.

"Sorry, what did you just say?"

"You have a most spectacularly shiny hairless head! Does it smell of coconut?"

"I'm going to pretend you didn't just ask that." He told me as he unpaused his game.

"One can make pretend that somebody did not just ask a question?"

"Well, I can decide that you didn't mean for me to answer it, and you were just saying weird alien stuff."

"But I did mean for you to answer it!"

"Yeah, but I decided that you didn't."

"That is... I do not know how to respond to that." I told him, unsure how I would deal with it when a human decided that I had not just said what I had said.

"Look, what I'm trying to say is, you shouldn't ask a guy if they lotion their head."

"But it shines as if it were lotioned!" I protested.

"And you especially don't tell a guy without hair that their head is shiny, lots of guys are insecure about that kinda thing."

"Oh," I responded, realizing that I had stepped over a boundary, "Are you insecure about it?"

"No, I shave it. The robot side doesn't grow hair, so it just looks weird if I let the human side grow out."

"And then you lotion it?"

He sighed very heavily, "Yes, I lotion it. I got dry skin, sue me. Drop it."

"What does it mean to sue somebody?"

He unpaused his game, "I don't know why I let myself get bothered by you."

"Are you angry with me?" I asked him.

"Not really, sometimes you do stuff that annoys us, but we gotta remind ourselves that you don't mean anything by it."

"It seems as though you are speaking with both the plural and the singular we there!" I pointed out, ecstatic that I had caught on to a human behavior. "Like how when Beast Boy makes a mistake in combat, it is a "we" problem and not a "he" problem."

"I mean, in this case, it is me I'm talking about, but we've all had moments like that."

I sat in silence for a moment as he played, I felt as though he had been hinting at or touching upon the same thing that I wished to talk about, but was not going to be the one to bring it up. This is a human thing, they wait for their opponent, or in this case, their friend, to bring up the subject that they both know about without explicit prompting from them. The Sherlock Holmes character does this sometimes with evidence of a crime, but perhaps this was not a comparable situation. I couldn't be sure unless I activated friend Cyborg's verbal snare trap, something I would be **** to do if I wanted to get answers.

"I am afraid I may have done something to anger friend Raven, she has not talked to me since yesterday." I finally managed the courage to suggest.

"And why do you think that is?" He asked me, clearly knowing what it was that was the reason, but wanting to hear me say.

"She and I... I practiced intimacy with her in the locker rooms, even though I suspect she may not have wanted me to. I suspect it is because you and her were in the middle of one of your patented "weird sex things" when I inserted myself uninvited."

"You could look at it that way," Cyborg agreed, then continued, "Or you could look at it in the way that you **** yourself onto her."

"****? But if she wanted me to stop she could have-"

"Dude, she's your friend, she's not going to unleash the netherworld on you. She figured you were an alien and you didn't know what you were doing, but she's still allowed to be mad at you."

"I understand it was in error!" I protested, "But if she continues to leave rooms when I enter them, I will be unable to apologize!"

"Alright, look," Friend Cyborg looked around to see that we were alone, then turned the volume of the video game up, "Don't tell her I told you this."

"Don't tell her you told me what?" I asked him.

He shushed me, "No, seriously, she will kick my ass if she finds out I told you this, don't even write it in your journal."

"Okay," I told him, deciding that he had actually meant to write it in my diary.

"Raven is the type that isn't going to tell you what's wrong, but she doesn't want you to figure it out on your own either, she just kinda wants to sulk. Flowers, chocolates, proper apologies, not really her thing."

"Do you mean it is already too late to make the apology?" I asked him, quite scared that my friendship was over.

He shushed me again, "No, no, slow down. She's not mad at you, not really. It's just kinda... you fucked things up pretty bad."

"In regards to the weird sex thing?" I whispered to him

"First of all, when your partner can and does summon demon tendrils, a buttplug is not that weird. Second of all, yes, it is about the weird sex thing."

"I realized as soon as I had finished that I likely overstepped some of friend Raven's boundaries. But I was overcome with a rather fearsome case of the dumb idiot brain!"

"Look, I get it, but you need to be better about that. You need to respect people's boundaries. It's not that Raven doesn't... feel that way about you, it's that-"

I could not help myself from interrupting, "Friend Raven feels the same way?"

Friend Cyborg shushed me very harshly! Leaning forward to check the hallway for signs of Raven.

"Yes, she does." He whispered angrily, "But you could not have approached shit worse, girl."

"I do not want to lose Raven, neither as a friend nor as a partner in the rituals of the romance. What do I need to do?"

"First things first, you do need to give her time. If you barge into her room and apologize, it'll just make things worse. If you give her some time, eventually she'll get to a point where she's willing to stay in the same room as you but she won't talk to you. She's easing back into the water at that point. Make some light talk, joke around a bit, but she's going to pretend nothing happened."

"So the key to apologizing to friend Raven is... not to apologize?"

"What? Fuck no."

"But you just said-"

"Once she's willing to joke around or send you pictures of her plants, that means she's comfortable again, but especially considering that what you did was fucked up, you really should apologize. If you weren't an alien that doesn't understand boundaries, what you did absolutely would have been friendship ending. Even with you being an alien, it was still fucked up. Don't explain it away with dumb idiot brain, don't try to make it make sense to her, just apologize. Best case scenario, she'll nod and not say anything and keep pretending it didn't happen. Worst case scenario, you give a bad apology and she gets mad. Most likely scenario, she goes back to not being around you for a few days again. Depends on how embarrassed she is about it."

"You seem to be the apology expert." I praised him.

"Not really, I've just spent enough time trying to pry my foot out of my mouth. That's part of why she doesn't say much, if you're bad enough with your own feelings, you hurt a lot of other peoples' feelings. For the record, I've also never fucked up things were her as badly as you did."

"Does it hurt?" I asked him curiously.

"Does what?"

"Prying your foot out of your mouth, I was unaware that was a risk that you faced."

"Uh... no. Turn of phrase, Star."

"Why does the phrase turn? What angle do I intend to see it at by rotation?"

Cyborg sighed and told me, "Sometimes, I almost come close to forgetting that you're an alien, but you remind me pretty constantly."

"Human culture is... hard for me." I told him honestly, "Some of your concepts are foreign, and some are recognizable but buried in layers of differences."

"Just keep in mind, a lot of people will forgive a lot of things with the excuse of culture shock, but everybody has a line where they expect you to be... understandable. Hell, not even that, just not... impossible to deal with."

"Is my interest in friend Raven the understandable? Can it be dealt with?"

He made an odd noise, something like a "sheesh" before laughing slightly, "It would be harder to understand if you weren't."

"If you two are an... item, does my interest in her not represent an issue to you?"

"Look, way I see it, even leaving aside any bits where you're an alien and don't get how things are, even then I wouldn't see you doing stuff with Raven as a threat. She and I are both public figures, we deal with this shit in some amount, day in and day out. It's kinda... special... what we have. Enough so that I don't feel like I have to prove myself by picking fights with everybody that looks at her."

"Even if I were to be another male?"

"Especially if you were another man. That girl has a bullshit filter that can cut through stone, if she's letting you get through it, you gotta be doing something right. If she's interested in you, that's her business. If your interests lie with her, that's up for her to decide on. If she chooses to forgive you for the alien **** shit, I don't have to understand, it's just... nice to have some honesty about it. And it's better for everybody if you respect her boundaries instead of forcing your way through them from now on."

"And what about if my interests lied with you?" I asked him, somewhat bluntly. "Would she feel the same way?"

Friend Cyborg is very good at hiding when he is the embarrassed by something in regards to his face, his darker skin and somewhat mechanical features mean he does not blush in a way that is as easy to see. He is not good at hiding it in his voice, which may be why he holds back from speaking most of the time when confronted with emotions that may embarrass him. However, when he responded, I could very much hear the embarrassment in his voice.

"I didn't think that was uh... on the table." He told me, his voice peaking slightly in squeaks.

"I once told you, like with all of the other Titans, that I have the feelings for you," I told him.

"Well, yeah, but I kinda thought that was a weird alien thing. Should have been pretty obvious by now that there's a lot of those when it comes to you. I hadn't really... taken it seriously, you know?"

"If you were familiar with my having made the actions on the other titans, why would you assume it was a lie to you alone?" I asked him, I almost felt offended!

"I mean, Robin's got the whole leader thing so I figured you and him was an obvious thing. Raven is... well... Raven. You'd kinda have to be blind not to feel something about her. But... wait... did you and Beast Boy do something?"

His voice was surprisingly amused. As if the notion of Beast Boy engaging in romance was something he had considered but found to be unlikely.

"It was not so serious as with friends Raven and Robin, but we were... together in a sense? I allowed him to touch my grebnacks when he was feeling the big sad."

"Beast Boy? Big Sad?" He asked me incredulously. "Did it help?"

"Of the one human I have tried it on so far, it proved helpful in the aiding of the battle against sadness."

"And uh... what exactly are grubsnacks?"

"It may depend on context, but depending on your dialect, they may be known as breasts, or boobies, or bazongas, or-"

He interrupted me when I was only one one-hundredth of my way down the list, "Okay, yeah, lots of words for those. Not surprised that cheered him up."

"It seems that human males have a great fixation for honkers."

"I mean, women too. Everybody loves titties. Some people just prefer the ass though."

"The ass? Yes, I have observed a fixation for the rear in my studies, in roughly seventy-five percent-"

"Shit girl," He paused the game and set down his controller, turning to me in shock, "How much porn do you watch, exactly?"

"It has become my foremost way to occupy time since my arrival," I explained.

"Yeah, okay." He nodded disbelievingly, in a way that seemed to imply that this was not a "yeah, okay" situation.

"I have been pondering what you meant about it being pretend, when you talked about it on the day of yester. I admit, your way of phrasing it was a source of confusion, but I believe I have come to understand it."

"That wasn't really... something to think about an understand, Star." He grumbled, as if frustrated that I didn't understand some basic concept. "It was just kinda a fact."

"Well, yes, but it seemed like when I agreed with the basic and obvious nature of it, you took some issue. As if there were a more complex aspect to it."

He made a small noise of confusion, "Well, I'm not sure what you mean. Or what I meant at the time. Might just have been flustered by the situation of it."

"I think I have come to understand it. In all of the videos, even the ones which do not feature the pizza delivery boys and the cleaners of the pool, there is a performative aspect. In my actual experience, the people do not make loud, pleased noises that cause for the lowering of the volume. They do not both reach the moment of pleasure at the same time. And even the performances which focus most on the intimacy and the acts of the characters outside of the sex, there is a performance. The videos and the stories are to sex as the movies about monsters are to real monster attacks. They are clean, everybody looks pleasing, and they do things that the audience wants to see. In reality, when fighting a monster one does not call out the name of their attack, and the fighting itself is a small part in the face of much saving of lives and helping of the wounded."

"You're not wrong, even if half this team does actually call out their attacks." He responded, but I had not finished my thought, so I ignored him.

"The real thing has a flusteredness to it, a great fumbling of the limbs. It must be experienced with the brain in one's head and the senses of one's body. One cannot escape to a vantage point. It is a scary thing, almost. Even if it is cleaner for one of my species, when I am with a human, I cannot separate myself from their emotions, their flusteredness, and fear. And I suspect that for them it is the same way. You are trapped with your partner, and bear all the sweat and grossnesses of the body as they do yours," I finished.

"Well, you sure have a way of making it sound... kinda nasty," He responded.

"No! That was not my intent! I want the flusteredness and the fumbling. I want the grossnesses and the fear! One moment of that is more real than any amount of my research. I suspect why you humans attach it so deeply to intimacy and love is because of the trust of it. You want to be afraid with somebody who would be good to you during your fear."

"That's puppy love, if you're with the same person for long enough, the fear goes away and the trust is the main part." He told me.

"Then I want to get to that point of trust with all of my team," I responded.

"And how does the rest of the team feel about that?" He asked me, somewhat as a joke by the tone of his voice.

I remembered a gesture I had seen done before, and I set my hand on one of his own and clutched it softly. It was his skin-hand, not the metal one, but I do not know if it would have made a difference. My hand was substantially smaller than his, almost like that of a child to a parent, or at least that is how it felt. For the first time, I could really, very truly, see him blushing.

"Well, how does this member of the team feel about it?" I asked him.

He cleared his throat nervously, "Like if he does anything with you before you've apologized to Raven, he's going to cause a substantial fight."

"I did not think Raven to be the jealous type." I pondered.

"It's not that, it's just... communication is kinda the most important thing here. I know how I feel about you and her, I don't know how she feels about you and I. I'm pretty sure I know how she feels about it, but I'm not about to make assumptions."

"But wouldn't that make the two of you the even? Considering that her and I-"

"Star, stop. That's like... the single worst way you could look at things. Raven didn't do anything to get even on. The only reason she didn't ask me first is because you kinda **** the issue."

"Did I... cause problems between the two of you?"

"Between us? No. I teased her a bit about it, but that was all. This isn't about me."

"But you are the one I'm asking about."

"And Raven and I are a package deal. You roll with her, I'm going to be there. You roll with me, she's going to be there. If you're willing to work with that, I'll work with it too. If not, then that's fine too. I can work with Starfire the teammate just as well either way."

Cyborg is more inflexible about things in that way than any of the other teammates. Although, I suppose that Raven would also be had I asked her before I attempted to copulate with her. When it comes to friend Cyborg, the world is set up seemingly as a series of rules. Each situation and each person are like a box full of things. If something works with what is within the box, then all is well. If there is a mismatch between what is in the box and what he needs or wants, it seems as though he is more willing to look for another box.

I realize as I describe him in that way that I may be making him sound the cruel, or that my description of him may come across in a way that sounds like I am unhappy with him. It is actually very much the opposite! He has shown himself capable of adaptation a lot, and I largely suspect that when it comes to me, he presents the appearance of the man with the boxes more strongly than with anybody else. In action and with others, he seems more casual, more willing to change his own box to meet the needs of others. I actually very much appreciate the hardness of his box when working with me. Perhaps it is the machine part of him, or maybe it is something in the human that he is compared to the others, but most humans are unwilling to so strongly and so clearly state the rules for me. It is far easier for me to understand computers, who speak their rules openly and then never break them. If any of my other friends spoke the rules they wished me to follow so plainly, I would not have my standard struggles with their rules. I am merely trying to say that when it comes to friend Cyborg, more than with any other friend, there is no situation where friend Starfire is the one doing the explaining and setting the conditions. He is often like a computer to me, where the rules are stated and then not to be broken.

In the end, when he had made it clear that he did have an interest in me but that now was not the right time to explore it, I accepted and gave him my word to make the apologizing to Raven, as he had instructed me to. I offered him a kiss, but he did not give me the kiss of the lips, instead, we exchanged kisses on the cheeks, as he said it was a sign of affection, but that did not transgress any boundaries.

A moment later, I was struck with the tiredness in a great degree, despite it being in the middle of the day still. I excused myself to my room, leaving friend Cyborg to continue playing his games. On my way back, I encountered a curious sight. When I passed friend Raven's door, I noticed that it was open just a small sliver. Not enough to see inside or out, but enough that it was not fully closed. I was somewhat stunned by this, as it is a very rare sight indeed to see friend Raven's door even that much the open. As I floated by the door, considering why that might have been the case, very loud music began to play from within. Perhaps she knew that I was out there, but perhaps as well she merely chose that moment to start up her music. Either way, it was loud enough that I could no longer make out the sounds of friend Cyborg's video game from down the hall.

I returned to my room and slept for a few hours, dreaming about my friends. Each of them now I had shared what an earthling might have considered a moment of courtship, although each of them was very different from the ones shared with the others. Perhaps, in that way, the documentation of human courtship present on the net of inter is less of a rulebook and more of a collection of tactics that have worked on at least one human being in the past. With each of my friends, the decisions I made in the moment of courtship mattered far more than any practiced mantra or technique.

I am afraid that those dreams of my friends marked the last restful moments I would experience for the next few days. I was awoken by an alarm mid-dream, calling us to go stop a crime in progress. Raven emerged from her room and Cyborg turned of his game in time for Beast Boy and Robin to return from their training. While that alarm did turn out to be for false pretenses, it did take us into the area of a real crime in progress. I admit, my own near-perfect memory fails me from this point onward. As soon as we were finished dealing with that crime, we were called to another crime in progress. And then another after that, and another after that.

When we returned home to Titans Tower, it was late, late enough that all of us could think of nothing but the allure of the venerable beds. I slept like a baby Galumpastort for the first time since my arrival, a fact that would have been most wonderful, were I not woken after a mere six hours by another alarm.

For the next few days, this pattern continued. I asked friend Robin about this at one point, and he confirmed that this did happen from time to time. Usually, it was nothing, but sometimes it was a "prelude" to a "big bust" and we needed to be on high alert. Well, we were on "high alert" for the whole of three days straight! In the end, there was no "big bust" of any sort. As it turned out, we learned from Robin's mentor that there had been a large-scale escape of supervillain prisoners from a local asylum and this was merely a natural result. Whatever the case, I slept a mere twelve hours in that three-day span instead of my usual thirty for the same time.

This is the first time I have experienced a great deprivation of the sleep in my life, though it was not the first for any of my friends. The deprivation of the sleep is a most fascinating thing that I do not wish to research further. It causes a sort of muting of the emotions, or a great strengthening of them, with no in the between. We would all go from sitting around the couch or on our beds, trying to get some sleep while there was no crime, then the alarm of crime would go off and we would stumble off wordlessly, or with great arguing. It made my brain feel small sometimes, other times, it made it feel as though my brain was trying to burst from out of my skull, pushing my eyes out as it came spewing from my ears and nose.

Yet, at the same time, there was a lack of distraction. We were more focused in combat, perhaps from the desire to no longer be in combat. I had no drive to do anything but sleep or to fight, perhaps why I both neglected my studies and my friend diary in that time. If you were wondering why it has been so long between entries, it is because we have stopped more crimes in the past three-day span than in all the other days I have been here put together.

That is not to say that those were lost days. Sometime on the second day, Raven and I were left alone on the couch, perhaps she was too tired to remember to avoid me. I apologized in accordance to Cyborg's directions and she grunted and nodded. A few hours later, she had returned to encouraging me during combat. I am perhaps a bit disturbed that we are simply not going to deal with what happened, but I will take hearing friend Raven's voice again over making the issue pressed.

Our long crime-fighting marathon came to an end around thirteen hours ago now. We were called out to another case when Robin received a call from his mentor. Robin eagerly relayed the news that the Justice League had sent out a hero to take care of the crime we'd been dealing with and that we'd be allowed to retire early and then take the next day off. Their reason was something about paying junior heroes like we technically are only so much per month for time that is over what we are expected. And we apparently are already on the max of that time since my arrival. Robin relayed this news to us with great relief before heading immediately to his room. In a different circumstance, we might have made fun of him for going to bed so early, but we all did the exact same thing.

After my first proper rest in several days, I do not feel better, but I do feel normal again. And normal is so much better than how I was feeling that I do feel better, very technically.

It is rare for us to have a day off, at least, I think it is rare. It is the first time we have had a day off since I have arrived. The alarm will be shut off in all cases aside from a Tier-1 threat, meaning that barring the actual end of the actual world, we will not be bothered. After the past few days, I suspect that my friends may react to even such an alarm with anger as opposed to the sense of the duty.

As it is, given that it is the first day off, I am given the option to spend the day doing whatever I want. What I want to do is hang out with my friends. I suppose, since I am the first one awake after reaching my maximum possible sleep time of ten hours, I could technically choose the friend I desire to hang out with. It is an exciting prospect, though I am somewhat intimidated by having to choose between my friends.