A/N: This is something I wrote a while ago (like, back in May? Maybe.) and realized I never posted it here wow. I did post it on AO3, though, so if it looks familiar that's probably why.

Original A/N: I haven't written or read any Oliver/Felicity fics in a while and I don't know if there's already a thousand other versions of this type of story already but it wouldn't leave me alone! It was actually all inspired by the need to see one of the scenes in here written out and it escalated from there. I'm pretty upset knowing that with the way Arrow always does hiatus we'll never be privy to the intimate details of what will happen on their road trip or whatever it is. But at least we'll get some domesticity ayyy! Anyway, I hope this fic reads well - it's got that whole time jumpy layout that i've become quite fond of - and that it helps fill the hiatus hole for some of you!

Oliver shows up at her apartment door with a bright smile and a set of keys jingling in his hand. She's got two bags at her feet, her purse balanced precariously on top, and an empty apartment. She's never felt more like she had nothing holding her back in her entire life. He opens his mouth, maybe to ask if she's ready to go or offer to take her bags, but doesn't get any words out as she pushes up on the balls of her feet and kisses him. He breathes out a laugh against her mouth and opens up to her, undoubtedly expensive car keys tangling in her hair along with his fingers.

For the first time in a year, Felicity feels like she can breath again.

I'm happy.

She tries not to let the words scare her. Happy is good. She doesn't want to spend her whole life waiting for the other shoe to drop. They still don't know where they're going and he hasn't told her the details of his deal with Malcolm but they're together and Oliver isn't the only one who can't stop smiling so she can deal with the rest.

She suggests they head in a vaguely eastern direction, knowing if they continue along the coast alone they'll end up in Mexico and she doesn't know if Oliver learned how to speak Spanish in his time away. Better if they stick to the English speaking regions. It takes her all of five minutes to map out a mostly straight line across the country on her tablet. She drags a suggested pin upwards on her screen in a not-so-subtle attempt to avoid the state of Nevada all together. Oliver tracks the movement of her fingers, doesn't comment.

"East it is," he says instead, merging onto the eastern ramp when they hit the highway. He reaches over and tugs her hand from her tablet to lock her fingers in his.

They've got more money to burn than Felicity has seen in her life thanks to Malcolm Merlyn's money and Thea's complete distaste for using anything more than what is necessary of it. Felicity stumbles over the moral ramifications of using what Oliver himself dubbed as blood money but she fears bringing it up and returning that haunted look to Oliver's eyes. She doesn't want to be a cause for his pain anymore – even indirectly.

They eat at greasy diners where the milkshakes are more expensive than the food and stay at five star hotels. They're only a few days out when she gets the call about Ray. Oliver watches with worried eyes as she hums vague answers to questions she's not prepared to be asked. Missing is the word that sticks out in her head most. Not dead just exploded and then poof .

She makes a gesture of making a fist and then exploding her fingers outwards when she says those exact words to Oliver. He raises his eyebrows and doesn't say anything for a while. She takes a deep breath and tells him the rest of the news.

"CEO?" He chokes though he looks much less terrified by the concept than she feels. She wishes she had taken the call in private, not sure where this will leave the whole finding himself thing. She won't make him go back to Starling with her but she's grown accustomed to being with him and she isn't prepared to let that go.

"Apparently, before we left for Nanda Parbat, Ray had started the filings to transfer ownership of the company over to me," she explains, pacing back and forth in front of the bed painfully aware that the shirt she'd nabbed of his does not fully cover her behind and the air conditioning in the room is almost literally freezing her ass off. "I don't know what he was thinking!" The weight of the situation settling heavily on her shoulders, she drops clumsily down on the bed. Oliver sits next to her in a much gentler manor and she spares him a dirty look for being so put together but his hand lands warm on her bare thigh, the heat from his palm spreading outwards and warming her skin.

"He was probably thinking what I know," he tells her quietly, "that you've practically been running that company for years and that you'll be amazing at it." She doesn't really have a response for that so she leans forward and kisses him, guides him back into the mattress and puts the company she now owns out of her mind. It doesn't take much effort if she's being honest.

"Do you need to go back?" He asks later, his hand twisting a frizzy curl around his finger, unwrapping it, and repeating the motion. His knuckles ghost across her shoulder blade as he does it, leaving goosebumps in their wake. She trails her index finger over the raised skin of one of his various scars and stares at the curtain covered window on the opposite wall.

"I don't know," she admits, remembering what the lawyer she'd spoken with had told her. "It's gonna take a few months to reconstruct the entire top floor and any floors that suffered other damage. I doubt it would bankrupt the company to close down while they do that but we wouldn't be able to afford to keep paying the employees and I can't put them out on their asses – they have families." She bites down on her lower lip, the anxiety creeping back up, and finally meets his eyes. He's smirking down at her like he knows something she doesn't and it makes her frown.

"What?"

"I told you you'd be great at this," he grins and she realizes it's pride not smugness shining in his eyes and feels her cheeks heat up.

"Yeah, well," she shrugs, "I had a great cautionary tale." It's her turn to smirk at him as he feigns offense and rolls on top of her. He kisses a line down her neck, supporting himself with his upper arms. He mumbles something against her neck that feels distinctly like I love you. When he pulls back he looks much more serious but there's still a hint of the smile Felicity is still getting used to.

"So, we have a few months at least?" He asks and she realizes neither of them has actually asked the other to stay with them, wherever they end up going. She doesn't know if it's because they're both too full of their own guilts to ask it of the other or because they know they'll stay together regardless.

"Yeah," she breathes and he drops down to land a quick kiss on her lips before she continues, "whatever business needs to be dealt with during the rebuilding I can do from right here." She wraps her arms snugly around his back to illustrate exactly where here is. When he ducks down this time the kiss is slow and languid, like they have all the time in the world, and she figures he knows exactly what she meant.

Most mornings she wakes up to an empty bed. She knows Oliver hasn't had a normal sleep schedule in years and Thea has a habit of calling to check in early in the morning anyway. Felicity thinks it might be the younger Queen who's developing a sleep schedule based on late night patrols around the city now. Usually when she wakes up he's out on a private balcony or huddled in another part of the room, talking in a hushed tone to keep from waking her. The gesture always makes her smile.

She tries to call John later at night when she thinks Sara is most likely to be sleeping. Sometimes she tries to imagine him sat in the living room with Lyla, glasses of red wine in their hands as they talk about crime fighting and baby raising in quiet voices. She calls when the thought makes her more sad than happy and John always understands. He and Oliver aren't back to where they were but he always tells her how happy he is they're trying to be happy and she has to bite her tongue to keep herself from begging him to be safe. She knows he's as careful as he can be in his line of work but the thought of returning to a Starling City without a John Diggle in it is too much to bear.

"I'll see you when you get back," he says with conviction every time, like he knows exactly what she's thinking, what she's holding back from him.

Felicity sometimes forgets that she's never been able to get anything past John anyway.

The midwest is hot and dry no matter where they stop. The dangers of starting a soul searching road trip at the end of May, she supposes. Her ponytail is too heavy and leaving her hair down isn't an option in the heat. Between the highway exit and their next hotel, she spots a hair salon. Oliver goes to shower, the heat keeps him from asking her to join him and her from offering. The air conditioning in the car was a respite but the room is still hot while they wait for the air conditioning to kick in and Felicity knows the temperature of the water in his shower will be cold.

She sneaks out and gets her hair cut to her shoulders. It's not a whole lot but it's enough that the drive back to the hotel doesn't feel as bad. Oliver is out of the shower and dressed, hair still damp and confusion clear on his face when she walks back in. It takes him no time to notice, for someone who can be so mind numbingly obtuse at times he still has the best perceptive skills of anyone she's met.

"It was so hot," she explains, running her fingers through the shorter strands experimentally, "I just thought this might help, you know?" It's only hair, anyway. She knows it'll grow back in a few months but she's nervous regardless. He doesn't hesitate.

"It looks nice," he assures her, crossing the room to reach her. He's looking at her so earnestly she doesn't even feel the need to dismiss the compliment. He wraps his arms around her back, clasping his hands at the base of her spine and presses his forehead to hers. She slips her hands under the thin material of his t-shirt and his skin is still chilled from his cold shower. The air conditioning is kicking in and she feels comfortable pressed tightly against his chest. Then again, she always does.

"I should shower," she sighs but doesn't make a move to pull away from him. He nods, wrapping a strand of hair around his finger and tugging gently. When he releases it he cradles her face in his hand and guides her mouth to his. He murmurs an I love you into her mouth and Felicity doubts she'll ever tire of the words, pressing her mouth harder to his in response.

"Go shower," he says when they separate, though he sounds reluctant, "then we'll find somewhere to eat." She pulls herself away from him, her hands slipping from underneath his shirt. She doesn't miss his shiver at her nails dragging across his skin and smirks.

"Maybe after dinner the room will be cool enough," she offers, stepping around him towards the bathroom. He twists to follow her movement.

"Cool enough for what?" He asks but his voice suggests he very much knows exactly what. She doesn't answer, stopping just outside the bathroom door to pull her t-shirt over her head and toss it at him before disappearing behind the door. She can hear his laugh through the wood.

By now, she's spent more nights than she can count mapping out the various lines that make his body – both natural and unnatural. If she were so inclined she's positive she could draw an exact replica of the jagged line left by an unsteady knife wielder that trails from his side around to his back. She can find the scar from the Demon's sword on his abdomen in the pitch black room with little conscious thought. Her fingers tend to gravitate towards that one and neither of them ever comment on that particular tic of hers.

There are scars where she's sewn the skin back together with an unsteady hand, scars she'd watched him patch up himself. The ones that plague her aren't the ones that left her short of breath and terrified of losing him. It's the ones she still doesn't know the story of.

"Will you tell me about your scars?" She asks quietly one night. The lights are all off and the curtains are drawn, the only light coming from the moon fighting past the dark fabric and lighting the room eerily. She can't really make out his features in the light but she feels his breath stutter under the hand resting on his chest, faintly tracing the tattoo she knows is there but can't see.

She gives him a minute. She hadn't really meant for the words to come out, had thought them so many times in the past few weeks – hell, maybe years – that they slipped past her lips without intention. "You don't have to," she assure him, her own heartbeat picking up at the worry that she's just killed this. Tomorrow the sun will come up and the haunted look will be back and she'll have put it there.

"No," he tells her, "I want to." She can still feel his pulse fluttering under her fingers as his hand lands on top of hers squeezes once and then locks his fingers through hers. He uses his hand on top of hers to guide her fingers to a particular scar just under his ribs. He tells her the story quietly as her eyes adjust to the dark, as if they can't stand not being able to see him right then. As he tells her the stories, quick and vague but enough, she traces her fingers over each scar in question and eventually escalates to hooking her leg over his, hauling herself up onto his lap. She follows the movement of her fingers with a gentle sweep of her tongue.

The first time she does it, trails her index finger over a knife wound from mere days before he'd met her and then bends forward to follow the path with her tongue, he sucks in a breath in surprise. When he breathes her name, it isn't with the warning she'd gotten so used to whenever they'd get too close, too near to admitting whatever it is between them. She makes him continue, continuing her movements as he tells her the stories, taking shaky breaths in between. This is hardly the most sexual thing they've ever done but she considers it might be the most intimate. She wishes she had something she could share with him the way he's opening himself up to her.

He only makes it through three more scars before he's dragging her up his body, crashing into her, covering her mouth hungrily. He flips them over, pushes his pilfered t-shirt up her body until her stomach is uncovered and then he's trailing hot kisses down her body, sending heat all the way down to her toes, and promising the rest of the stories on another night.

"I want to make a happy story tonight," he admits, lips pressed against the inside of her thigh.

"I love you." Oliver looks up in surprise, a bit of egg sliding off his fork and dropping on top of his bacon. Felicity understands, she hadn't quite meant to just blurt it out in this crowded diner. And it's hardly the first time either of them have said it. It's just-

"I love you, too," Oliver offers, though it sounds more like a question. He's inquiring about her outburst, she knows. She clears her throat and puts her own fork down.

"I know," she nods, more vigorously than entirely necessary, "that's the thing. I just feel like you say it all the time – which is great don't get me wrong! It's not exactly something I'm tiring of. It's just that it's been a while for me, like, a while, you know? Since college and Cooper and, well, that's not the point. I just know I don't say it as often as you do and I don't want you to think it's because I don't love you, because I do. It's just-"

"Hey," his hand lands on top of hers on the table and his face is understanding. God bless this man for always knowing just when to stop her. "I know. I just spent so long denying myself the immense pleasure of being in love with you and, honestly, I like saying it." He's grinning that stupid boyish grin that always makes her heart beat a little fast and she can't help but grin back at him.

"Okay," she nods, "good." She picks her fork back up and digs back into her pancakes. Oliver laughs on his side of the table but she hears his own fork hitting the dish as he scoops the dropped eggs back up and her chest feels a little lighter.

She's feeling so good about the conversation by the time they get back to the room that she practically jumps him as soon as he closes the door behind him, pushing him back into it and wrapping her legs around his waist as he lifts her. She whispers I love you into his ear and they don't even bother trying to make it to the bed.

They're six weeks in when she wakes up grumpy and uncomfortable in her own skin. It takes three hours of Oliver skirting carefully around her moods for her to realize that she's late. She tries to keep the panic out of her voice when he tells her he's going to take a shower and she decides to run to the drug store down the street. The box of emergency contraception weighs heavy in her hands before she stuffs it to the bottom of her bag before he comes out of the shower. She doesn't actually know if it'll even help, they've been having sex on such a regular basis, but the thought of not at least trying feels even more irresponsible that having maybe let it happen in the first place.

She goes over it in her head, they've always been careful and she's been on the pill since she was with Ray. But it's easy to lose track of the days when you spend most of them driving and a good portion of them naked with Oliver Queen. She can't convince herself to take it, deciding on a shower first. She gets her period before she can return to the agonizing decision of whether to take the stupid pill or not and the crisis is averted. She doesn't throw the box out though.

Of course, that's her mistake.

He finds it a few days later when she asks him to get something out of her bag for her. She comes out of the bathroom, wondering if he'd found an alternate dimension hidden at the bottom of her bag, and finds him cradling the box in his hands on the edge of the bed. She freezes in the doorway but he sense her there. Perceptive bastard.

"Were you-"

"No," she answers immediately, rushing to point out that the box is still sealed. He's still searching her face and she knows she can't keep this secret. She moves towards him carefully, like he's an animal she might spook if she moves too suddenly, and sits gingerly on the bed next to him. There's a good foot of space between them and she didn't do it on purpose but she isn't going to bridge that gap right then.

"I thought I might be. I was late this month and, well, a few days ago when I was in that terrible mood? Yeah, I kind of thought...," she trails off with a shrug. He knows what she thought.

"You didn't tell me," he points out quietly, setting the box down in between them on the bed.

"I know," she breathes, her eyes sliding closed at the hurt tone in his voice, "I was just scared."

"Of being pregnant?" He asks and, well, he's perceptive but he can't read minds. She shakes her head and he frowns in confusion.

"I was scared because I couldn't convince myself to do it," she admits and just like that it's out there for them both. The thought of a child that was half Oliver Queen and half Felicity Smoak was not the worst thing she could dream up. Terrible timing and all, if she had been, well, she might have even enjoyed it. His eyes widen at the implication and she twists her hands together in her lap. His hand lands on top of hers, pulling them apart and sliding his fingers in between hers.

"Someday," he whispers, more like a promise than a dismissal, and her breath catches in her throat for a second. "But I want you to be able to tell me. I want to be better at this stuff."

"This stuff?" She asks, letting him move past the part where he'd suggested they'd be together long enough to have kids. Even hood-less and villain free, it feels like a dangerous promise to make. But suddenly he's launching into a story about a woman he hadn't loved but had caused what he could only imagine was an immense amount of pain. Felicity's heart ached for the woman she'd never met when he explained the miscarriage.

"Knowing your mistakes already makes you better," she tells him when he finishes and they're laid back on the bed, tangled up in each other.

"I still feel like I haven't really made up for all my past sins," he sighs, his fingers trailing through her hair and Felicity presses her lips to the corner of his mouth.

"That's the thing about guilt," she says, "sometimes it's there to let you know you've grown."

When they reach the east coast, he toys with the idea of Massachusetts but Felicity shoots it down. Instead, she suggests Maine. He doesn't question her but she explains anyway.

"No more ghosts."

He nods like he understands and she knows that he does. It's why they'd left, avoided Nevada and Central City. It's why she takes her calls with John outside of the room and he speaks to his sister in hushed tones while she's asleep. The ghosts are everywhere, anyway, but it seems unnecessary to actively seek them out.

Maine is just as hot as anywhere they'd stopped in the middle of the country except it's a damp heat, the ocean leaving the air humid and her hair a tangled, frizzy mess. They spend most of their time in the Oceanside state in the water or naked in their room. Usually, it's still too hot for the fun activities that involve nudity. The hotel is on the cheaper side this time and the air conditioning is a joke but if they leave the window open at night a breeze blows off the sea and makes curling up together in bed rather than at opposite ends of it a much more intriguing prospect.

Oliver makes a comment about how it's much cooler in Australia at this time of year and Felicity isn't entirely sure it's a joking suggestion. He says he's never been to Italy or Holland and Felicity admits she's never been further out of the country than the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. He looks at her so fondly at the admission that she finds herself genuinely discussing the options of leaving the country.

"Oliver," she starts eventually, "what are you trying to find?" He shrugs in response and she's tucked so closely against him that she feels it more than she can see it.

"I don't know," he admits, hesitates. "Do you not want to do this anymore?" She knows he's talking about their new vagabond lifestyle but it feels like he's asking more and she can't help but roll her eyes at him.

"I'm here," she tells him, gripping his chin to make him pay attention, "I'm with you." He kisses her in lieu of a reply and when she bites his shoulder later he tastes like sea salt, sweat, and something vaguely hopeful.

They stay in Maine longer than she had expected but the place is growing on her and Oliver's smile comes so easy lately, she's in no rush to move on. He went out and bought them a world map that they keep spread over the desk in their hotel room as they debate over destinations and the monetary costs of each. Oliver always insists that it doesn't matter because it's Malcolm's money but Felicity reminds him that doesn't mean it's unlimited . The man is off playing master assassin somewhere and she doubts he's making any money to be replenishing Thea's trust fund.

She doesn't want to spend the rest of her life living off of Malcolm Merlyn anyway, the cut of the loss of Sara still somehow as fresh as the day they'd walked into the foundry to find Laurel there.

Oliver is smiling that easy smile, though, so she doesn't use this argument as he talks about all the beautiful things to see in Italy and the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower and she's mostly a goner anyway but she likes that he's putting in the effort. They've got green post it notes stuck on the places they have agreed upon and yellow ones on the places they're still discussing. Felicity can think of no one else she'd want to share this with.

Somehow that thought always leads to discarded post its and discarded clothes and the discussion finds itself tabled for the time being.

In hindsight, if she'd forgone all the sex and they'd just hopped on a plane and gone then maybe it would have worked and maybe she wouldn't have to drag herself away from him back to Starling City.

In the end, it's not the company she now owns or a super villain come to level the city that drags her back to Starling City. It's three simple words from her mother.

"It's your father."

Despite everything, Oliver goes back with her.