Oliver really loves Felicity's name.
Really he loves everything about her, even her tooth paste stained pajamas that she should have thrown away ages ago but won't because they are just so comfy and her awful, terrible, "how did you get an A+ in Chemistry Felicity?" omelettes and her loud voice and flared nostrils that means he is in trouble…he loves all of it because he is completely and utterly gone on Felicity Smoak…but he really, really loves her name.
He loves breathing it into her hair after particularly risky missions. He loves gasping it in between moans when they fall into bed soon after, a tangle of limbs, needing to remind themselves that they are still here, still alive.
He loves it when it's the first thing he says in the morning because it's a reminder that she is the first thing he sees in the morning and really how did he get so lucky?
He loves dragging it out, savoring each syllable- "Fe-le-ci-ty" when she is being particularly adorable and getting caught up in one of her rambles and the only way to get her to stop is to say her name slowly.
(Well there is another way to get her to shut up, but last time he tried that in front of the team…Thea tried to gouge her eyes out and Diggle pointedly asked them if they needed to leave the room.)
He loves whispering her name, almost like a prayer, when she is fast asleep and Oliver is awake marveling at the beauty the universe has granted him.
—
He loves her name. Loves what it represents. That after those wretched five years where nothing good happened, after he returned to a falsely familiar home, with a sister who was spiraling and a mother with her own agenda and an ex girlfriend who hated him for who he was before the island and a best friend who only wanted the man before the island, her name felt like hope.
That in those dark post-island times, when Oliver felt the weight of expectations and his father's notebook threatening to swallow him whole, that somehow two words managed to break past it all, show him something more, something new, something good.
"Felicity Smoak?"
"Hi, I'm Oliver Queen"
It's hard to explain. It certainly didn't happen all at once. Her name isn't magic. Speaking it did not cure Oliver, did not rid him of the darkness, did not cleanse him of 5 years of hell and death and war.
No, that would take longer. A work in progress. A battle he is still fighting. One he is not sure he will ever be finished fighting if Oliver is being honest with himself.
Her name is not a cure. But it was the start of something new. She was the first person that made him smile-genuinely smile, not a heavy "I'm so happy to see you after 5 years" smile weighed down by the expectations of Ollie Queen or the fake, perfect smile reserved for the paparazzi, crucial to maintaining his play boy persona.
But a genuine, spontaneous smile at her chewed up red pen and crooked glasses. A normal smile.
A smile he didn't know he was capable of anymore. Felicity gave him that. A hope at a brighter future where his smiles weren't calculated and his nights were filled with something other than nightmares of all the lives he couldn't save.
—–
He tries explaining this to her, one night that summer in Ivy Town when she makes some offhand comment about her childhood nickname of Lissy and how she hated it at first but grew to tolerate it. He tries explaining to her how much her name means to him, how much it symbolizes to him the moment he started to see his life as something more than a vessel to carry out his father's dying wish and enact a deadly form of justice. The glimpse of light she offered…
He doesn't get very far though. Felicity's eyes grow wide and she murmurs, in the softest possible tone, "Oh Oliver". And fuck, if that doesn't send his mind in a completely opposite direction and their conversation is sidelined for a different purpose entirely but he certainly isn't complaining.
Later that night, though, when they lie in bed, Felicity propped on her elbow across from Oliver, Felicity declares their relationship a "nickname free zone".
"Really?" Because he is incapable of denying Felicity anything these days and if she wants a nickname, he will do it. Except.
Except Felicity is fast becoming his favorite word in his dictionary and decreasing the times he gets to say it saddens him just a tiny bit. But he won't let Felicity know that. If that's what she wants.
"Really", she answers, cutting off his train of thought.
"I've never really liked Lissy", she continues and crinkles her nose, "and I definitely don't like Ollie"
"Okay", Is all he can say, trying to stop the stupid grin from invading his face.
Felicity cocks an eyebrow, eyes sparkling.
"Is that all?"
Realization dawns on him and he really can't stop the grin this time.
"Okay, Felicity", he says, rougher and lower than he intended. Felicity's eyes widen and Oliver can tell that this time, it's her name that is having an effect on her.
He can't help himself anymore, he draws her in for a kiss. He has never been very good at words and tries to pour everything he can't say into it, how much she means to him, how much she has always meant to him even before they started all this and he was just a vigilante and she was his partner that he convinced himself was too good for him.
She breaks the kiss, breathless and Oliver presses his forehead to hers, not quiet ready to for the loss of contact just yet.
"I wonder…" Felicity muses, pulling away from Oliver so she is facing his side, eyeing his body speculatively,
"How many times do you think you can say my name in…" she pauses, her fingers joining her eyes in the shameless wandering,
"Oh I don't know…", She draws out her words, slowly while her hands follow suit.
Her hand stops, just barely grazing his hip. Oliver nearly stops breathing. It's ridiculous the effect she has on him.
"Maybe the span of five minutes?" She finishes, almost innocently (there was nothing innocent about what her hands were doing)
"Felicityyy", Oliver grits out, half warning, half pleading.
"I am going to need a lot more than one!", Felicity huffs with mock disappointment, serious tone belied by the smile on her face.
Felicity gets her wish. Oliver says her name many, many times before she relents and Oliver gets his revenge by making her gasp his name over and over again until they collapse into an exhausted heap of limbs and discarded clothes, all talk of nicknames completely driven out of their minds.
—-
Oliver loves saying Felicity's name. So it's only fitting when he gets down on one knee in front of their friends and family and Christmas trees and Hanukkah menorahs, the first words out of his mouth have nothing to do with marriage or vows.
He gets down on a knee, shows her the ring she has already seen (she has always been one step ahead of him) and says the only words that feel right to him.
The only ones that come close to expressing the emotions battling in him. The jubilation after coming so close to having his worst fears realized. The startling realization that something this light and pure and good can co-exist in a world with Damien Dhark and gas chambers and Ghosts holding him back while he watches his loved ones die.
"Felicity Smoak?"
"Will you make me the happiest man on the face of the Earth?"
And she's smiling, already nodding her head yes before he can even properly ask because of course she is. She's never had any of his hangs up about deserving happiness. She has always been breathtakingly confident about what she wanted from life. The fact that she wants him has always stunned him a little bit, but he is not one to argue, especially not today.
—-
Minutes later, although it will feel like a lifetime to Oliver, Oliver will be holding Felicity, bloodied and limp, in his arms as he desperately tries to check if she is still breathing.
He will whisper her name, still in shock over what just happened. And then louder it because she won't wake up no matter how much he begs.
Oliver is holding onto Felicity like a life line and repeating her name over and over like a mantra. Panic overwhelms him as he feels her being pulled away from him…familiar arms are restraining him-Dig?
"You gotta let go man"
But Oliver can't let go, not when people are taking Felicity away from him…
"FELICITY-FELCITY-FELICITYYY-FELI-"
—-
Oliver startles awake with a jerk, slamming his head against the plastic standard issue hospital room chair. He is alert in seconds, eyes scanning the unfamiliar circumstances until they fall on the hospital bed and oh-
His gut tightens and he remembers.
Felicity getting gunned down because Oliver wasn't fast enough. The paramedics taking her. Diggle restraining him while he shouted himself hoarse. The doctors. Absolutely useless fucking doctors saying that there was nothing more that they could do. That Felicity's body had gone through a significant trauma and that she was taking a time out. That they didn't know when, didn't know if she would wake up.
Her body looked small and fragile in the bed hooked up to IV tubes and large machines. Oliver hates it.
Felicity belonged on the computer, humming cheerfully, bright pink nails hacking her way into Iron Heights. She belonged in the kitchen making truly awful omelets that Oliver would give his right arm to have again.
She didn't belong in this bed, in this God awful sterile hospital room with tiny plastic chairs and god damn IV tubes. Across from him, in the room's second chair, Donna snores lightly in fitful sleep. Oliver thinks dully that if this was any other night, always perfectly glammed up Donna Smoak would be mortified to know that anybody could walk in on her like this-no make up or glitzy heels, lightly snoring with drool on her chin.
Oliver doesn't know what to do anymore. Never has felt quiet so helpless in his life. So he does what he has done the past five days, he leans forward, clasps Felicity's hands in his and says the only two words that give him peace.
He closes his eyes and the words spill out of him.
"Felicity Smoak Felicity Smoak Felicity Smoak" please wake up. I don't know why I can't say this out loud except that I'm scared I'll start crying again and I promised myself I would be strong for your mother and-
"FelicitySmoakFelicitySmoak" It's almost unintelligible now, a garbled prayer for a God he is even more certain does not exist because no entity is cruel enough to try to take Felicity Smoak away from this world.
But it calms him somehow, his desperate, fevered repetition of her name.
It steadies his breathing and placates his very strong desire to put an arrow into the next doctor who suggests Felicity might not wake up-at least for the time being, so that's something at least.
"Felicity Smoak-Fel"
"Hi, I'm Oliver Queen." The words are so so soft, so mumbled, Oliver is certain he imagined it at first, his brain desperately trying to cope with the trauma by offering up a memory of their first meeting.
Except, he didn't hear it in his voice. Oliver opened his eyes, the hopefulness almost paralyzing him. Felicity is awake and looking at him, eyes watery but bright.
"It's how we firs' met? Right? You had the most ridiculous excuses…", Felicity trails off weakly.
Felicity is awake and Oliver can barely form words beyond her name…
"Felicity yo-", Oliver croaks, not sure finish his sentence.
"I'm here", she says softly, rubbing her thumb in soothing circles over his palm
"It's okay, I'm okay," Because of course even when Felicity is laying in a hospital bed hooked up to tubes, she is the one comforting him.
"Felicity", he says and he almost chokes on his words.
"Felicity, you're okay"
—-
Later, after Donna wakes up and sobs into Felicity's shoulders, after the doctors and nurses check up on her and give him good news for once, after Felicity is finally able to talk Donna into leaving the hospital room for a shower and change of clothes, after Oliver tells Thea, his voice cracking with relief and she promises to tell everyone else, after all of that…
When Oliver is laying on the tiny hospital bed holding Felicity which he is fairly certain against the doctor's explicit instructions but Felicity had asked- "I can't get to sleep without you" and when had he ever been able to say no to her?
Later, when Oliver is holding Felicity while she dozes fitfully, Oliver keeps checking her pulse to make sure she is okay, she is alive and here with him.
He can't stop the mantra from escaping his lips, calmer now, less frantic.
"Felicity Smoak-Felicity Smoak-Felicity Smoak"
He could have sworn that his words have an effect on her, that they even her breathing and make her sleep more peaceful. Her lips curve a tiny bit as if her dreams have shifted to something more pleasant.
Oliver brushes a kiss to her forehead and smiles ruefully.
He has never loved saying her name more.