This is a continuation of the shopping trip to Costco between Oliver, Felicity and her assistant/best friend Jerry from my fan fiction story Expectations.

I plan to post additional chapters in the coming weeks.

Enjoy!

When Oliver was six he developed what his mother had deemed "an unhealthy relationship" with the Queen family housekeeper. Raisa was a godsend to a little boy who desperately wanted his parent's attention but were too busy with work and social demands.

It was Raisa who drummed in "please" and "thank you" to Oliver's skull. It was Raisa who gave Oliver an appreciation for food. It was Raisa who always saw the best in him, never doubting his heart despite the numerous times he was arrested or vilified in the press for his youthful antics.

He'd always gravitated towards the housekeeper, who cleaned him up after scraping his knees or kissed his head after falling (yet again) from the old oak tree on the grounds. But after he was expelled from the posh private school his parents insisted he attend for hitting a bully, his relationship with Raisa became something more. His mom hired a private tutor so Oliver could be home schooled but he took an instant dislike to Mrs. Fitzsimmons and terrorized the poor woman until she quit.

After the following three tutors were hired and subsequently quit in the space of a week, the housekeeper persuaded Mr. & Mrs. Queen that she was more than capable of seeing to Oliver's schooling.

"I love Mister Oliver like he's my own. I want what's best for him and those people you bring here are not good for him."

Despite his mother's reluctance (this was her precious baby boy) it was decided that Oliver would spend his days with Raisa learning the required curriculum for a first grader. And Oliver learned what was required, but he was also taught how other people lived.

Raisa was determined to show the boy who had everything done for him that there were people who had to help themselves.

Included in his education was Oliver accompanying Raisa on her shopping trips for the Queen kitchen. Charity events and business dinners were often catered at the mansion but the day to day cooking fell to Raisa and she loved it.

"You listen to me, Mister Oliver. Food is life. If you appreciate it and what it can give you, you will go far in this life."

It wasn't until years later when he was freezing and starving on Lian Yu that the housekeeper's words resonated with Oliver.

So this was far and away not Oliver's first encounter with a shopping cart. But unlike the miniscule cart Raisa used when they'd visited her favourite Russian specialty market, or the plastic cart at Felicity's beloved 24 hour grocery store, the Costco cart was in a league of its own.

It was longer, deeper and wider than anything Oliver was used to. It was a shopping cart on steroids.

"Size is everything here," Jerry explained. His words were innocuous but the look on his face said he was thinking on a different level.

They'd just entered the store where another man in a red vest eyeballed his membership card and thrust a piece of paper at him when Oliver felt a hand on him arm. He looked into Felicity's face and realized she was doing the thing with her eyebrows, the thing that told him she was worried or stressed or thinking too hard.

"Do I have to pee again?" The crinkle in her brows deepened for a second before she relaxed and nodded to herself. "Yup, I've got to pee again." Without another word Felicity turned on her heel and walked away, leaving them with the overgrown cart and in danger of being trampled by other shoppers jostling to enter the store.

"We'll wait…here…" Jerry's voice trailed off as Oliver's quick reflexes kicked in and he barely cleared Jerry and himself from an oncoming barrage, taking shelter beside a display of TV's.

"Should've warned you about that. If you stop for a second too long you'll be trampled quicker than a heard of antelope grazing the Serengeti." Jerry side-eyed a woman who brushed past them, narrowly missing his leg with her cart and who kept on walking.

Oliver unfolded the paper the clerk at the entrance had handed him and saw what appeared to be coupons for household items – toothpaste, mouth wash, shampoo and…condoms? He looked closer, certain his eyes were seeing things.

Jerry, who had leaned over to read the handout, plucked it out of his hands. "Oh, they have condoms on sale!" He exclaimed excitedly, catching the attention of a few shoppers. Oliver smiled back at the odd looks women were sending their way.

"Jerry…" Oliver admonished out of the corner of his mouth, the smile never slipping.

"What?" Jerry blinked, his look innocent. "Can't a man be excited about condoms on sale?"

"Yes, but…"

Jerry's eyes opened wide. "Do we need to have a talk about what condoms are for, young man? You know those things that protect you from venereal diseases and oh, pregnancy."

Oliver lifted a single brow and regarded the other man ruefully. "Cute."

Ignoring him, Jerry turned his attention back to the coupons muttering to himself "no" and "yes" and something that sounded like frack before he gleefully cheered, "Wipes!" while holding the paper out for Oliver to read, his finger tapping at a picture.

"Wi – what?" Oliver squinted but couldn't make out what Jerry was pointing to. Then as quickly as the paper was thrust at him it was gone and Jerry whipped his head around searching. When his eyes found whatever it was he sought he left the safety of their hideaway and with ease wove his way through a sea of carts to a display of boxes on the other side of the entryway.

Oliver watched as Jerry struggled slightly to reach a box at the top of the display, a display that was actually boxes on a wooden pallet stacked so high it was impossible to read the sign behind. A steady stream of carts kept flowing inside. Oliver eyed them and like a salmon entering the stream edged the shopping cart into the fray. With a few perfectly timed maneuvers and a few "excuse me's" he worked his way over to Jerry. He pulled the cart out of the way from the oncoming traffic and effortlessly reached up and one-handed grabbed the box Jerry had been trying to reach.

At 6'2" it was an easy reach for Oliver. Not that Jerry was short because if his educated guess was correct he would say the man was just shy of six feet. A couple of inches made all the difference apparently. Oliver smiled imagining the comeback Jerry would have if he'd said that out loud.

Jerry gratefully accepted the box from Oliver with a smile. "Show off."

"Are you going to tell me what got you so excited you had to venture all the way over here?"

Grasping the handles on the side of the box, Jerry lifted the box and cheerfully said, "Baby wipes! And on sale too!"

Sure enough the lettering on the side of the box proudly exclaimed the contents were ultra-soft baby wipes and were accompanied with a picture of a smiling toothless baby. The number nine hundred caught his eye in the bottom left hand corner. That was a whole lotta' wipes.

"I'm guessing we need these?" Oliver asked.

"Are you – you've clearly never changed a diaper before, have you?"

"Ahhh…not really."

"But you have a younger sister!"

"That's what the nannies were for."

Jerry rolled his eyes and unceremoniously dropped the box into the cart. "Of course, how could I forget who I was talking to."

Since Oliver had taken a box from the top of the pile it was much easier for Jerry to pull down another box.

And another. And another.

"Whoa there…"

Jerry bent down and place the fourth box under the cart. "Trust me. You're going to need these."

He quickly did the math – thirty-six hundred wipes. Were they stocking up for the end of days?

"Since you're obviously clueless when it comes to changing diapers, believe me when I tell you that one of these suckers will last you two months, if you're lucky."

"Eight months is a long – "

"Per kid."

"Oh…" Oliver exhaled. "Right."

"Exactly," Jerry answered. "When Marie & I first started changing Christopher's diapers we went through a box in two weeks! Eventually a friend of hers showed us the right way to do it and we realized we were wasting so many wipes."

At the mention of his nephew Oliver saw the sadness creep into Jerry's eyes, saw the moisture collect and whites turn red, but as quickly as it had started, it ended with a wipe of his hand.

"Jerry…" Oliver said softly, struggling to find the right words of comfort.

"I'm fine. I'm okay," Jerry's mouth twitched attempting a smile but it didn't reach his eyes, eyes that he continued to swipe at and Oliver could read the desperation in the man, determined not to let the tears fall.

"If you ever want to you know, talk about it…" Oliver reached out intending to lay a comforting hand on Jerry's shoulder.

His arm fell away when Jerry suddenly stepped back. "I said, I'm fine."

Jerry looked and sounded anything but fine and Oliver considered pushing the point. He asked himself what he would want in the same situation and the answer was simple – he would not want to talk at all. If he'd been forced to watch someone he loved, a child he helped raise since infancy slowly die of cancer, Oliver knew without a doubt he would bury those feelings as deep as humanly possible.

But Oliver was well versed in the art of loss. And so it gave him an intimate knowledge, something he felt he could offer Jerry, but try as he might the man refused to accept any kind of compassion or help. So as much as Oliver was able to understand the depth and reasoning behind Jerry's refusal, he also understood how it was the wrong choice to make.

But it had only been three months, Oliver reminded himself. Three months since Jerry had lost his nephew. And three months after the death of a child was but a teardrop in a sea of grief.

"Jerry's upset. Why is Jerry upset?"

Surprisingly Oliver startled, not realizing Felicity had returned and was standing next to him. So much for those ninja skills she was always teasing him about. He opened his mouth to respond but the opportunity was lost when she flung her arm and whacked him in the chest. Without her trademark high heels her blow landed mid stomach instead of the usual mid breast.

"Ow," he protested weakly, rubbing the spot where her arm had connected.

"Big baby."

"That hurt," he lied.

Her eyes grew small but what he could see of them they were steely. "Oh, I will bring a whole new meaning to the word pain if someone doesn't explain to me why my best friend is upset. That's a promise. And what in the search engine is all this?" Felicity's eyes were transfixed on the cart, the one now half filled with boxes.

"'Lissy everything's fine. I'm fine. We're," Jerry gestured between him and Oliver, "fine.

Felicity's expression screamed "I don't believe you" and it seemed to Oliver she struggling with backing off and not calling Jerry on his white lie.

Her attention broke from her friend and fixated on the cart. "And this?"

"Baby wipes," Oliver explained.

Her eyes grew wide, like cartoon character wide and Oliver held a laugh back at her expression. "I'm having twins, not a football team!"

Oliver held his hands out in surrender, palms up. "Jerry said we needed them. He's the expert."

The pain that had clearly been written on his face mere moments ago dissolved at Oliver's words, replaced with a smirk and a brightening of the eyes.

"Expert exactly," Jerry crowed and he puffed his chest out for emphasis. "I've changed more diapers than you, I'm sure."

"One would be more than the number of diapers I've ever changed in my lifetime," Felicity confessed.

"Huh?"

"Hello," Felicity waved her hand. "Only child here."

Jerry frowned, confused. "Not one?" Felicity shook her head. "Not even when you were babysitting?"

Felicity snorted. "While the girls in my class were watching other people's kids for money I was winning the state science fair – three years in a row," she added with pride.

"Oh God…" Jerry groaned and dropped his head in his hands. "This is worse than I thought."

Felicity sputtered and Oliver could sense her loud voice on the horizon.

"We'll figure it out, just like we always do. Right?" In her flip flops rather than her usual four inch heels Oliver had to look a little further down into Felicity's face but when he saw apprehension there instead of her normal steely determination he paused. It was the hormones, he told himself. This was the woman who'd faced down mirakuru men, he reminded himself. This woman was a genius, he repeated to himself.

This was Felicity.

"Yeah…right, sure. Uh huh."