To Heal All Wounds

And Billy Does What He Can

It was a twenty-minute drive to the Harrington-Buckley estate, and Billy used the time to go back over what he was going to say to Robin again. For what must have been the millionth time. In its millionth incarnation. A simple apology, a variation of one he'd used before and had worked like a charm, always had girls climbing back into his lap regardless of what he'd done or not done, said or not said, or some other perceived or real slight that he'd committed against her. It had even worked on the guys when he soured them, having gotten too aggressive on the court or too careless when he flirted with their girls. Got them back on his side, or at the very least, out of his face.

Another sure thing.

I'm sorry that you were upset about what happened. You gotta know that I didn't mean to hurt you, it was just a joke. Guess it didn't land, huh?

Short.

Simple.

Easy to remember.

He repeated the apology over and over as he drove, as though trying to carve it back into the fat of his brain. Trying to remember and adapt the delivery into something he could use on a woman who would never be interested in him. Where he would normally lean into her space and whisper his apology into her ear, he would need to stance himself some other way. Treat her more like a teammate who needed an apology to move on. He pulled into the parking lot to their apartment repeating the apology under his breath, training his voice to sound sincere because he was. He couldn't just flash her a smile or clap her on the shoulder when he said this, he needed to convince her that he meant it. He did. He kept restating it as he climbed the stairs, forcing it out of his lungs along with the huffs of air he expelled with each step. 

And he was ready. He swore he was ready. He'd apologized to people before. He knew how to do it.

But then Robin opened the door and his mouth went dry. She regarded him with careful suspicion and he lost this voice. His mind went blank. Everything that he had been planning was suddenly out the window and all he could hear was the wind between his ears. She made some kind of gesture like she was waiting for something, but Billy could not, for the life of him, figure out what that was. It was a standoff, with Billy lingering in the hallway outside the apartment and Robin standing guard. One searching, and one waiting while tense silence dragged on.

Finally, Robin broke the tension with a sharp, "Well?" as she gestured into the apartment with both of her hands. The sudden sound made Billy jump fractionally before he finally pried his feet from the floor and went inside. Behind him, Robin made an annoyed-sounding scoff in the back of her throat before swinging around him and shouting, "hey dingus, the boy is here!"

The boy.

It plucked something in Billy that made him run cold with irritation, and he had to stamp it back down and remember that she had every reason to regard him with cold dismissal. This was part of it. Part of his penance. Like when he called out to a girl he had scorned and she looked at him before she turned away, giving him the cold shoulder as punishment. Or when that teammate that he pissed off got a little nastier on the court than normal in practice. Billy needed to let Robin be mean to him, let her do whatever she needed in order to get to a place where she could listen to him.

So he followed her into the apartment, down the small entry hallway, and into the apartment proper.

It smelled like flowers, which he didn't totally expect and yet was completely unsurprised by. In the same way, he was completely unsurprised by the way every surface seemed to have been recently scrubbed down, and in some cases was still glossy with moisture. The couch had been fluffed and the accent pillows, all of which were mismatched, had all been arranged and organized against either arm. There was even a scented candle, the source of the floral scent, flickering on a bookcase by the window.