Flip Turn

Chapter Twelve: Dessert

Five seconds didn't seem like a very long time when Vic counted it out inside his head—it took him longer than that to take a drink from the water fountain. But in the pool, it was forever. He'd taken two seconds off his IM time, but he had to take off five more, and Vic didn't think there was any way to swim it faster. And there was only one more meet after this one. And then Divisionals. And if he hadn't taken off five seconds by then…he was going to take off five seconds by then.

Vic repeated the counting silently, over and over as he walked towards the locker room. One, two, three, four, five. It wasn't that hard. He tried to picture himself in the water, swimming just that much faster. It wasn't even under two minutes, and he'd been able to break two minutes when he was seven, so why couldn't he—

He shook his head. It didn't work that way. Five seconds.

"Vic!" Somebody poked him between the shoulder blades. "Hey, Vic, I know you can hear me!"

He turned around to see Wally tossing an apple from one hand to the other, grinning up at him. Vic felt himself smile slightly, reaching out to grab the apple in mid-throw. "Yeah, I heard ya. How was your relay?"

Wally immediately stopped trying to snatch the apple back, sighing. "No good. We got DQ'd. But that's not—"

"Wait a sec, how do you get disqualified on the free relay?" You could swim anything you wanted for freestyle, practically, even one of the other strokes, as long as you didn't touch the bottom or the lane rope, so you'd have to be trying to get disqualified.

"Robin false started, but—"

Vic's mouth dropped open. "Robin false started?" he echoed.

"Yeah, but that's not the problem!" he said impatiently. "I don't care about getting stupid ribbons—I already have too many, and anyways, it doesn't even matter who wins 'cos it doesn't count till Divisionals. Well, okay, Gar's really mad, but only because he had to swim and do all that work for nothing."

The dual meets weren't scored; nothing counted until Divisionals, which was probably a good thing because Coach Slade's team could have eaten them alive. "So what is the problem, then?" Vic asked slowly, following Wally towards the locker room. He wasn't sure if he wanted to find out what Wally would consider a problem.

Wally's eyes narrowed. "Robin's acting all weird. He always acts weird, but this is even worse."

He pushed open the heavy door, holding it for Wally. "Weird in what way?"

"Well, I think that—"

But he never finished saying what he thought, because as soon as they were through the door, they both stopped talking and Vic had to try really hard to keep his breathing even. A big guy from the other team—he was wearing their orange and black uniform, so Vic knew he wasn't from the Titans—had one palm on either side of a shower stall, making a little cage out of his arms. And in between them, Robin was just standing there, blue eyes puffy and wide and terrified, not trying to run away but looking like he really, really wanted to.

"C'mon, shortie, you can tell me. Just tell nice ol' Grant what's the matter. I just wanna make it all better." Grant's hair was plastered to his forehead, trails of water running down into his ears, and he had a smile on his face that told Vic that he probably wouldn't make anything better.

Robin shook his head, biting his lip and not saying anything.

Grant shifted his weight so he could drop a heavy hand on Robin's shoulder. "Not gonna talk to me, short stuff? We can't have that. I don't like it when people don't talk to me." His fingers tensed dangerously, and there was something in his eyes that Vic didn't like, and then he knew that he had to say something quick.

"Hi, are you using that shower?" he asked calmly, trying to pretend that he really just wanted to know the answer to the question.

The blond head swung around, turning the glare on Vic and Wally. "Actually, I am, and I don't really appreciate being interrupted by runts. Got a problem?"

Vic shook his head. "No, I just wanted to talk to Robin. Privately. But since you're here and you don't want us to interrupt, I guess we'll just go somewhere else to talk." He motioned for Robin to come with him, and Robin looked helplessly from Vic to the hand on his shoulder.

"I don't take orders from—"

Wally interrupted him with a careless laugh. "You can't do anything to us, or we'll go get our coach, and he'll kick your butt, and then he'll kick your coach's butt, 'cos he's Bruce Wayne and stuff."

As soon as he'd started speaking, Vic had worried, because he could tell that Grant had a really short temper and you couldn't reason with those kinds of people—you just had to get away from them or try and make sure they couldn't hurt you. But by some miracle, the words had some effect—or at least the name did, because right when Wally said 'Bruce Wayne', Grant seemed to shrink at least a few inches and he let go of Robin's shoulder as if it were suddenly on fire. He stepped away from him, brushing right through Vic and Wally by shoving them to either side, pretending he'd just wanted to go look in the mirror. Vic edged away while Grant checked his hair, wishing that Wally would do the same but he didn't look scared at all.

After he'd taken long enough to be able to pretend that he really did just want to leave, Grant gave them one last dirty look. "Pathetic babies," he scathed. "You're not even worth me beating you up. Look me up when you're more than six inches tall."

Vic was pretty tall, actually, almost as tall as Grant—who had to be at least twelve, maybe thirteen or fourteen— but he didn't think that pointing that out would be the best idea.

"Gonna go check out that hot girl on your team with the long, black hair—see if she's less of a loser than all of you." His voice echoed after him as he left, and Vic thought that if Komand'r would like anybody, she'd like this guy. They could steal Starfire's toys together.

None of them moved for a few seconds after he left, with Vic not entirely sure that he wouldn't come back, and Robin looking like he wanted to crawl back into the shower stall, close the curtain and stay there forever. Wally was the one who finally did something. Closing the distance between them, he shrugged off his towel and threw it around Robin's shoulders.

"You're cold," he stated, as if answering Robin's incredulous look.

"No I'm not," he said.

Wally rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that's why you're shaking and you're turning all purple. If I were you, I'd have been smart enough to at least turn on the hot water if I was gonna hide in the shower."

"I wasn't hiding, and anyway, if I was, turning on the water would make noise, which would totally defeat the purpose of—"

Something about hearing Robin say "defeat the purpose" made Vic smile. Then he stopped smiling, because he noticed that Robin's eyes looked worse than he'd thought, his whole face, really—like he'd been crying. Hard.

But it wouldn't be good to say that, because if whatever happened had been enough to make Robin cry, he probably didn't want anybody to point that out. So Vic just said, "What'd that jerk say to you?"

Robin shrugged. "He didn't do anything."

"I didn't ask what he did; I asked what he said," Vic pointed out gently.

Another shrug, Robin's gaze falling to the gray tiles. "Nothing. He was just bothering me, but now he's gone—so thanks for making him stop."

"No problem," said Vic. He hesitated, and then added, "Do you—d'you want us to go get coach?"

Robin's eyes snapped up, caught somewhere between sad and scared. "No. No, it's fine, I'm okay, let's just get out of here."

"Okay," said Vic.

"Yeah, let's go! I'm starving, and they might give us candy for free if they have extra." Wally grabbed Vic by one arm and Robin by the other, leading them towards the door and grinning.

"I don't really think you need any more candy, somehow," Vic said, shaking his head.

"You can never have enough candy!" Sobering, Wally seemed to realize something and stopped walking, bringing Vic to a halt as he yanked his arm back. "Robin, just so ya know, none of us mind, okay? It doesn't matter."

Robin pulled himself out of Wally's grip. "Yes it does. It matters more than you could possibly get." His voice wavered a little.

"Then maybe I'm stupid for not getting why it matters, but if I am, I kinda like being stupid, and it still doesn't matter," Wally said brightly. "Now are you gonna come with us or not?"

Robin took a breath, slightly deeper than his breathing had been before, and nodded hesitantly. "I guess, but I'm not eating candy. I don't even like it."

Wally paled. "Okay, that's just wrong!"

Vic kind of agreed with him, but there was no way to tell if Robin was lying about it, because he didn't eat it, wouldn't even touch it. There was something disturbing about that. Even Komand'r didn't turn down candy.

"Hey, are you guys allowed to go get ice cream with us?" Gar appeared behind them, swinging on the lifeguard stand, excited and breathless and balancing an armful of gum in the crook of his elbow.

Vic looked doubtfully at the stuff in his arms. "You have all that, and now you want ice cream?"

Gar nodded resolutely. "I've been wanting Dairy Queen ever since I found out about DQ—and yeah, I know it's not really that, but it still makes me think of ice cream, and so I bugged my mom for awhile, and she says we can…so are you allowed?"

"I dunno; I'll have to ask," said Vic. It was kind of late, and he didn't really feel like ice cream when Robin still looked like he was going to cry.

"I'm allowed. I'm always allowed." Wally, of course. "Vic, can I ride with you?"

"If it's okay, sure," he said cautiously. "You want to go, Robin?" He asked it casually, but it was really important that he say yes, because then they could try to get that frightened, hopeless look out of his eyes—and if he didn't want ice cream, Starfire would probably make him eat it anyway, and maybe that would help. Somehow. If anything could help.

Robin glanced over his shoulder and shuddered, the movement barely discernible, and he quickly shook himself back to normal...but Vic saw it. He also saw who Robin was looking at. Coach Bruce didn't look mad, exactly, but whatever it was, Vic had definitely never seen it on his face before.

"I'm tired," Robin said softly, passing Wally's towel back to him with a muttered thanks. "See you guys at practice tomorrow." The words were hollow—Robin couldn't care less if he saw them at practice or not, and Vic was pretty sure that the way he shrank away from Coach Bruce when the man tried to lay a hand on his shoulder had something to do with it.

He was also starting to wonder if Grant hadn't been the whole reason that Robin was crying in the locker room. If maybe he hadn't been the reason at all.

Coach Bruce said something to Robin, too soft for Vic to hear, but Robin didn't answer, just reached up to take his gym bag from him, zipping it open and throwing on a blue t-shirt. Then, he swung the bag over his shoulder and started silently towards the parking lot.

Vic didn't want ice cream at all anymore.

My sister pulled the "C" key off my keyboard (don't ask how I'm writing this right now) so I'm not sure when I'll really be able to sit down and write again, but I do hope to get it fixed very soon as I can't live without my laptop. Thanks a ton to everybody who's given feedback on this--I'm really thrilled! Next chapter will be underway as soon as this keyboard nonsense gets straightened out. --Azelma