Oliver Queen was a happy man.
And that wasn't even the strange part.
It had been easy.
He'd only had to reach out and grab it, grab her. Instead of pushing it all away. As soon as he'd admitted what he wanted, rather spectacularly, like he and Felicity were the only two people in that room, it stopped being a battle.
The fact that they were together became as simple as the fact that he loved her. Now they wanted things together.
Felicity wanted to run Palmer Technologies, together, while they tried to figure out what happened to Ray. That was met with strong resistance from the board and even a few accusations about gold digging and sabotage were thrown Oliver's way.
Oliver wanted to stay out of the public eye. He wanted his days and his nights to still be spent with Felicity, helping their friends. So he let her make him a consultant and a silent partner. Officially, he was facilitating the purchase of Star Labs. Unofficially, he'd been helping Barry a lot. He was surprised how well he took to the role of mentor, with Barry, Thea, and even Laurel finally. Felicity, of course, wasn't surprised at all.
Now Oliver wanted nothing more than to get home to her.
Sometimes, she went to Central City with him. He liked that better. But CEO duties had trumped his wants this time. And he'd spent the past five nights on Barry Allen's couch. Five nights. Five days. From Monday to Saturday. The longest he and Felicity had been apart since Nanda Parbat. By double. And while he had a now unabashed brotherly affection for Barry, it didn't begin to fill the void that was not waking up with his arms full of babbling blonde.
He half toyed with the idea of letting Barry run him home. But left the way he came, on the train. Oliver Queen took the train. Thea laughed at that every time. He liked the determined, constant motion of it. The repetitive rhythm of progress. The passengers's quiet self-involvement. Oddly enough he could find himself at ease in a train car. Enough so that his mind wandered and his eyes slipped closed to daydream about the last time he and Felicity had been in CC together.
It was about three months ago, a little before Christmas and his first Chanukah. Felicity had gotten off the phone with Barry and pretty unceremoniously announced that her nemesis was back in play. A nemesis Oliver knew nothing about. He had been more than a little concerned as he conjured up the image of another Cooper Seldon. And Felicity caught him in a now rare twitch.
"Oliver, don't worry about-"
"About you? Not an option. I'm going with you. "
As fun as it was watching her work, honestly, he ended up more than a little disappointed when the Bug-Eyed Bandit turned out to be no match for his girl. Felicity barely had to crack her knuckles. The lackluster encounter left the Flash team with steam that needed blowing off. And while Caitlin's spirited suggestion of karaoke was accompanied by a series of groans and eye rolls, Cisco's happy-hour idea was another story. For one, Felicity's eyes lit up and she did some absurdly adorable clapping thing.
They ended up in a pseudo-Mexican chain restaurant with five dollar drinks specials. And that was how he found out Felicity not only had a thing for red wine, but also a thing for jumbo margaritas as well. He watched, with pride, as she bested Cisco in a nacho eating contest, was happy to keep watching as she and Caitlin pushed each other around a tiny dance floor, but was happiest when he got to pull her away from their friends and make her just his again.
She had been a little tipsy, leaning heavily against his side as he walked them the short distance back to their hotel. Tipsy enough to break her own rule about public places. She'd pushed him unexpectedly against the wall as they waited in the lobby for the elevator. Only it wasn't the wall. And they'd nearly ended up on the floor of said elevator. But Oliver couldn't bring himself to care because she was soft and warm in his arms and she tasted like salt and tequila.
And she was waiting at home for him. He got to come home to that every night. She did most of the coming home now, actually. And it made him ridiculously, dopily happy.
He made it from the station to their building in a blink, bypassing the elevator to run up the stairs. It was only ten floors. He had thought they'd get a place of their own, but Felicity asked if they could stay together, the two of them and Thea, and he loved her even more for it. He'd wanted to ask but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He'd asked enough of her. So he didn't ask. And then she asked him, told him – they all needed to be together.
Between her and Thea there wasn't an inch of closet space left, everything in his bathroom smelled like vanilla something, and there was a Robin Hood poster above his bed. Stupidly happy.
He was punching his security code into the key pad outside the door. Felicity had wanted a bio-metric system. It was hers and Thea's first fight. Up until then, he'd been worried. They got along too well. The fight lasted seven minutes. He sat useless on the couch, his head whipping back and forth between them as they shouted. Of course, it was Felicity that ended it with a compromise that sucked the air out of the room. Regular security system, fine. No more glass coffee tables.
So, Oliver turned the door handle hoping to find her with her feet up on the absolutely not glass coffee table. Hair in a ponytail. Lost in something utterly ridiculous on the tv. Then he could just curl up beside her for the rest of the afternoon, lay his head on her lap while her nails dragged lazily across his scalp and down his neck.
He smiled just walking through the door. And he had a fantastic cliché on his lips before chaos erupted.
"Thea Dearden Queen! Bring that back!" Felicity's voice carried remarkably well from upstairs.
"You said I could have this one!" Thea's shout came from the kitchen.
"You did have one!" Felicity was still out of sight. The pitch of her voice was too high. Something was off. He'd caught a hint of it on the phone with her last night but hadn't pushed. Oliver was about to head up the stairs when his sister came into view.
"Yes. And then you said, trust but verify so-"she stopped as Oliver turned. Her mouth clamped suddenly, suspiciously shut.
"Speedy? What the-" Oliver lost his words as he stepped toward her and caught sight of something in her hand. Something narrow and white that she spun absently between her fingertips like the sai she was recently so fond of. His jaw ticked as her eyes met his and he forced her name from between his teeth. "Thea?"
Felicity's bare feet were suddenly falling heavily on the stairs behind them. Oliver spun to see her mad, then surprised face but didn't really hear what she was saying aside from his sister's name. Her knuckles were tight around a twin white stick. Oliver blinked. When he opened his eyes, Felicity was missing the second to last step.
His overnight bag hit the floor as he rushed forward and his stomach seemed to make the impossible leap to his throat. Thea was just as quick. They each caught her by an elbow. She looked up at him first, her eyes impossibly wide behind her dark frames. She was scared. More scared than he'd seen her in a long time. "Felicity?"
Her gaze darted pleadingly to Thea as she slipped unimpeded out of their grasp. That confused him more. A slight effort kept his voice level. At least one of the women in his life was – well yelling wouldn't help. "Someone tell me something. Now."
"Ollie, it's not what it looks like." That was not the someone he had in mind. Thea was bending to retrieve the pair of pregnancy tests that he hadn't realized had both made it to the polished concrete floor.
He felt a little insulted. And a little worried that Felicity hadn't said anything. She hadn't moved but it felt like she wasn't even in the room. "Really? Because it looks like my wife and my sister are-"
"Oh no, no," Thea was thrusting the test sticks into his hands. "I'm just the control subject. Wife said it was scientifically necessary. Control subject. Hand holder. That's it. And now I'm gonna go." Her incredibly loaded look was directed behind him. At Felicity. And then she was speeding toward the door.
Oliver unsuccessfully resisted the urge to call after his sister. Not that it did any good. She simply waved and sang, "Love you guys!" without turning back.
A/N: As always, I have to thank Mike, and Woody, for all their encouragement. Where would I be without you guys? There is definitely a Part II. There could be more parts than that . . . how badly do you want them?