Title: Waiting
Rating: PG 
Characters/Pairing: Billy, One-sided Billy/Penny
Word Count: 497
Warnings: None
Summary: Every Wednesday and Saturday, except twice last month you skipped the weekend.
A/N: This was written for Round 1/Challenge 1 of jossverse_las. I'm also using it for my fanfic100 prompt 085. She.


Billy pushed the goggles up onto his forehead and ran one white gloved hand through his messy blond hair. It was no use. The Transmatter Ray was no nearer completion than it had been this morning, and he couldn’t work any further on the Freeze Ray until he got hold of some Wonderflonium. He just couldn’t concentrate - the science that usually lit a fire in his imagination becoming boring and dull; a distraction to endure while he waited for three o’clock.

Billy sighed and pulled of his gloves, setting his goggles on top of them on the desk. He quickly unbuttoned the lab coat and hung it neatly on a hook by the door. There was no point in trying to continue, and anyway, he’d known he would never be able to concentrate, not today. After all, today was Saturday, which meant today he got to see Penny. Wednesdays and Saturdays weren't Evil Days, they were Penny Days.

He glanced again at the clock and grinned as the hand finally swept past the twelve with an almost joyful tick. He grabbed the laundry basket of (mainly clean) clothes and hurried out the door. It would only take him ten minutes to get to the Laundromat. Penny never arrived before half past three, but he always left plenty of time just in case something - or someone, he thought darkly, checking the rooftops for a Captain Hammer-shaped silhouette against the skyline - delayed him. Luckily, the roofs remained nemesis-free and he made it to the Laundromat safely.

He pushed open the door, breathing in the familiar smell of detergent and fabric softener, and made headed straight for the washer three along from Penny’s usual machine. He figured if he was always right next to her, she might get suspicious. She might think he was a stalker or something. But three washers away could just be a coincidence, while still being close to her.

He balanced his laundry basket on top of his washer and turned to face the door, his eyes only leaving it to glance impatiently at the clock, watching the minutes and seconds until half past three tick away. She always did her laundry at half past three, because that was just after she finished at the Care for the Elderly care home and just before her shift at the soup kitchen. He smiled softly to himself. She was so wonderful, so good, so willing to help others. She wanted to change the world just as much as he did, just on a smaller scale.

He looked at the clock again. Twenty-eight minutes past. Not long now; but the 120 seconds until he saw her felt like years stretched out in front of him. But he could wait years; decades; aeons, if he had to; for Penny.

She always did her laundry at half past three, but Billy watched the hands on the clock drag past four, then five, and then six; and she never arrived.