Fic: Never Know
1 | It had been months since Billy had first laid eyes on Penny at the Laundromat - and having spent so long watching ( no, not watching - watching sounded almost creepy; stalker-like) doing laundry at the same time as her, he tended to make some (very scientific, non-personal) observations. One, that Penny had very modest taste in fashion - she didn’t show herself off, and didn’t want to be ogled at, if her choice in clothing said anything. He respected that immensely - and if anything, it gave him cause to glance over in her direction more and more often each time he went to do his laundry. Two, he started to notice, as the weeks ticked on, trends in the states of Penny’s clothing. Sometimes, there would be new clothes - he could tell, because they were always so different from each other - and when she didn’t have new clothes for a while, he noticed holes starting to grow in the fabric, the colour fading from them.
This, Billy decided, just wasn’t right.
So, he took the money from his last heist and (after ever-so-discreetly while she was out of the building checking her laundry from the machine for the sizes, his face a very un-evil shade of red) bought Penny some new skirts and shirts and whatever else she tended to wear (except for… well, undergarments; he had avoided those out of a sense of respect), and placed them in Penny’s basket, mixed in with the rest of the clothes, the next time they had been there at the same time.
Needless to say, he was very pleased to see her wearing some of the clothes the very next week, after having watched her ask every woman in the Laundromat if they had misplaced their perfectly-fit-to-Penny clothing.
2 | It seemed absolutely genius to him. If he didn’t have the courage to be couldn’t be there in Penny’s life to help her with things, then he’d send something to her that could help her out with anything she needed. He had, admittedly, followed her home once - remote controlled camera, not himself, as he realized, while being evil, he was still incredibly clumsy and would draw attention to himself in seconds (and for that matter, only because she was being escorted home by Captain Hammer; if anything went wrong - or at least wrong in his mind - he’d be there in a second to… attempt to put a stop to it). After finding out where Penny lived, he was in absolute shock - how could such a sweet, caring girl be living in a run-down dump where the electricity failed half the time? But upon seeing the contents of her refrigerator, he realized she simply didn’t have the money to live anywhere else.
So one day, when he KNEW Penny would be off elsewhere, he broke into her house (which was pathetically easy - he made a mental note to see if he could enforce the lock without changing the appearance of it too much) and pulled out her refrigerator from it’s place against the wall, installing in the back of it a small device - one on the top and bottom of both the freezer and the refrigerator , and hurried out after replacing the large, heavy box when his alarms went off to say Penny was coming back. To her surprise that night, when she opened the refrigerator, there was a home-cooked meal (which, admittedly, Billy had bought from the supermarket; he’s a chemist and scientist, not a cook) residing where there had once been empty space. She never found out who was putting food in her refrigerator - or who had installed the miniature trans-matter ray in her refrigerator - but she was thankful for the food she found every few days after that, filling the fridge.
3 | If there was one thing that Billy had learned from following the gut-wrenching couple that the girl of his dreams was a part of, it was that she was an incredible fan of frozen yogurt. He didn’t quite know why - just plain, vanilla frozen yogurt. As part of an experiment (so he called it, making him feel less like a lovesick boy and more like a scientist), he had brought her (ever-so-subtly and with different excuses the first few times until it was a normal thing, and he simply bought it every day) different types of yogurt every laundry day, experimenting to see which flavors she liked best. But every single time, it came back to vanilla.
Then one day, when Penny had gone to buy her own frozen yogurt, taking a break from working on the homeless shelter, getting it ready for next month’s opening, she was surprised to find that she had a pre-paid tab at the store. She had inquired as to who had set it up, but all she got in reply was that it was anonymous - the man hadn’t a clue.
“H-here. T-this should cover for a while,” Billy said, his hoodie covering his head as he handing the shop owner a 100-dollar-bill. “Just… g-gimmie a call when she’s almost gone through it,” he said, picking up re-usable bag (Penny’s influence) that contained two frozen yogurts, and heading to the door.
“Whatever, kid. I don’ see why you just don’t bring ‘er in here yourself and pay for it then. Ain’t that what you’re supposed to do when you get sumthin’ fer yer girlfriend?”
Billy’s face, hidden by the hoodie, went bright red.
4 | Of all the ironic things, it was a bright day. Not a single cloud in the sky - the kind of day that Penny loved. Business went on as usual in the Laundromat; the park was full, and peaceful; the homeless were still being helped, even when she had time off; and it seemed that, at a glance, the city of Los Angeles had not a care in the world.
Billy stood, dressed in a black t-shirt (with a white long-sleeved shirt under it - he’d reflect the sun, how pale he was), hands at his side, clutching and wrinkling the paper that enveloped the stems of a large bouquet of flowers, held at his side. He wasn’t stuttering, he wasn’t tripping over his words (or his feet, for that matter). He stood his ground, eyes locked on Penny, visibly completely cool with the exception of his shaking hand and lip nearly to the point of bleeding, being bit at for so long.
“I never had a chance to give you anything like this,” he said, walking forward, starting to shake more and more as he proceeded forward, extending the flowers out.
Kneeling down, he placed the flowers on the freshly-turned earth, leaned up against a small, marble tombstone, resisting the urge to trace the name with his fingers. He shook, his eyes watered, his teeth ground, and his legs felt weak. It was ten minutes before he found the effort to stand back up again, feeling more guilty leaving than he had coming to see her.
His face was completely dry, jaw sore from clenching it more prominent than anything at the moment, and mind surprisingly still and stable.
It was the most he could do, if he couldn’t bring himself to cry for her.