Disclaimer: Don't own it

A/N: I'm back with a lovely piece of Arrow h/c - nothing major, just a bit of speculative fiction with some blood and Felicity involved. So it's...fluffy hurt comfort, I suppose. Mostly, this is to wake my Arrow muse back up so I can bring you some serious Arrow fiction as the season progresses!

Welcome Home! …with bullets and stuff

It was all so messed up.

All of it.

But let it be known that Oliver Queen did not leave his family in danger. He did what needed to be done and he even managed not to kill anyone this time. Thea was safe. The Hood-wanna-be wasn't a meat smear on the floor. He saved them both.

Because… Oliver Queen sometimes left his family in danger.

Because, let's be honest, Tommy was family. And he'd been in danger. And he ended up dead. And Oliver should have saved him and didn't. And now his mother might be on death row very soon and prison isn't exactly the safest place around when you go murdering the same demographic that makes up the bulk of your roommates.

"Damn it!" Oliver hissed.

He slammed his hand down on the table and it made a loud metallic thud. A searing tension headache was balling up in the back of his skull, making it hard to concentrate on anything. The time difference between here and his island didn't help much either. Not that he'd be able to sleep anytime soon anyway.

Oliver turned in a tight circle, taking a deep breath.

All he needed right now was a band-aid. That's it. That was the only thing on 'Oliver's list of achievable goals' for the night. But he couldn't find the first aid kit. He couldn't really find anything, actually. All the fancy computers glowed up at him and his uniform (or was it a costume?) was frowning down at him. Really, he was just caught in a very condescending plane between objects and, in that moment, all Oliver really wanted to do was go back to his island.

Where it was safe and simple.

"Oliver?"

He spun around, the smile flashing up on his face lightning quick.

"Felicity. Hi."

"Hi." She smiled at him in that awkward way of hers. "I'm just, well…getting something."

"Ok," he said. His voice was tight and shallow.

She brushed past him. "Need me to do anything?"

"Nope. I'm good," he said. Oliver pretended to be interested in some papers on the desk. He flipped through them a couple of times.

"Ok." Felicity pretended to look at something too. They both avoided each others faces.

Oliver felt bad – for many reasons, actually. But the one hovering in front of his face was Felicity. She was so proud of this place and she so wanted him to feel like a returning champion. Like he was needed. Like he was wanted. He figured it was mostly because she was riding his wave of heroism. On his team, she was more than just a silly little IT girl. She was somebody important.

"You know," he started. She looked up at him. Oliver hesitated. "Never mind."

She watched him for a long moment in silence. And then she took a breath. "I'm glad you came back with us, Oliver. I really am. We've needed you and not just so I can ogle you while you do the salmon run and—OH MY GOD! Are you bleeding?!"

Oliver pursed his lips. "…I'm…fine."

She was at his side in an instant. "That's like a lot of blood coming through your shirt! Oliver! Oh my god, you're over here acting so calm and cool and what on earth happened?"

"It's not a lot of blood…"

"Oh, wow. You're back, alright. Did you get in a gang fight or something?"

"I was looking for the first aid kit," Oliver insisted with a frown. "I'm fine. I just…can't find anything down here."

"I'm sorry. I am so sorry!" Felicity yelped. She scurried off to a distant corner of the basement, yelling as she went. "It's over here. No, wait. Stay there. I'll get it and show you where I put it later. Just sit down or something. On a scale from one to minor surgery, how bad are you?"

"It was just a ricochet. Barely grazed me. Just get me a band-aid and I'll be fine," Oliver yelled to her.

"Ricochet?! As in bullet?"

"…ok, get me one of the big band-aids, then."

"Do you need the numbing stuff?"

"No, I'm fine!"

Oliver had forgotten how Felicity got around blood. It was so much different than Diggle. Diggle stayed calm and cool. Felicity…didn't.

"Should I call Diggle?" she asked as she came walking up with a rather large plastic tote labeled 'minor bullets and pointy things'.

"No, do not—"

"—because I will not have you getting an infection from me treating you. I mean, you probably have like a super immunity if you managed out on the island all on your own but still, you never know what could be in these totes. I thought I should probably sterilize them after I bought them but I didn't—"

She started to ramble and Oliver kept his mouth shut. Sometimes, Felicity just needed to spew words out. It must've been exhausting in her head, with all those thoughts and words shooting through her brain. It was easily ten times the mental traffic that he processed on a daily basis.

As she unleashed her verbal tirade, Felicity dug around in the tote, pulling on a pair of gloves and extraditing gauze pads and antibiotic creams.

"Bullets and pointy things?" Oliver asked as he pulled his shirt over his head.

Felicity flushed a little. "Yeah, well, I wasn't kidding about the severity scale. I have like five of these back there. We're prepared for anything up to, like, surgery. And I bought an actual gurney and stuff. Diggle had a nice collection of medical equipment going when you two were running things but I made a few improvements. And I also took a first aid class. Thought it might help. Heh, if I wasn't so clever, the government might get a little concerned with all my internet purchases. But I am clever. So, there's that."

Oliver snorted a laugh. And then he hissed as she prodded his wound. A stray bullet had pinged off of the floor and across his side in the fight to rescue Thea. It left a neat little trench in his flesh. At the time, he'd just slapped a wad of fast food napkins over it on his way back to the club. It was a bad idea. The napkins fused with the old blood, cementing them in place.

"Oooh, this is gonna start bleeding real bad again," Felicity said as she examined the napkins. "I know. I got a tiny cut on my face once so I used a piece of toilet paper to stop it. The cut sort of absorbed the toilet paper into a scab and then when I pulled it off, I was gushing blood everywhere—"

Oliver ripped the napkins away with the slightest of grunts.

"Geeze!" Felicity yelped. "Will you just sit still and let me clean this up?"

"Felicity, I can put a band-aid on," Oliver insisted.

"Yes, I know you can. But so can I. And I'm right here. Just…let me do it."

The blood was a little sluggish. It took a few moments for it to start bleeding again. She swabbed out the cut with hydrogen peroxide. It foamed as it ate up the bacteria.

"Ow…" Oliver grumbled.

"Oh, yes, I know," Felicity said in an oozy sarcastic voice. "Big bad Hood gets wussy in the presence of peroxide."

"I do not," he groused.

"Stop moving." She smeared some cream into the wound. "We don't have big enough band-aids for this, by the way."

"We should."

"Duly noted." Felicity slapped a piece of gauze over his side and taped it in place. "All set. Need anything else?"

"No." He smiled at her. And then narrowed his eyes in thought. "Yes. Where did the fridge go?"

"Just around the corner from your office nook," Felicity said. "And I stocked it with Gatorade and yogurt, just for you. Don't touch the peanut butter cups. There's a bag of granola on top."

"Thank you," Oliver said. And he meant it. It was only a small little bundle of happy feelings but he was more than thankful anyway. Felicity. The girl who didn't need saving. The girl who had her life together. The friend who was there to pick up his pieces. "Thank you so much, Felicity."

"You're welcome, Mr. Queen," she said, smiling back. "One thing though?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't leave again the next time it gets hard, ok?" She looked at him and was so serious that it caught him off guard.

"I won't," he said, flippantly.

There was a brick of lead in his gut.

"No, seriously, don't," Felicity pressed. "We all needed you here. And you just took off. Don't do that again. Ok?"

Oliver swallowed the lump in his throat. He couldn't make that promise. Not when he longed to step out of this nightmare of a life. The piles of responsibility. The lingering pain. The pressure to be a hero. The fear of death.

The island was safer for everyone.

"Yeah, ok," Oliver said, putting as much honesty into the words as he could.

She stared at him for a moment longer. And then nodded.

"Good night, Oliver. Welcome home."

"Good night, Felicity."

He watched her leave and then ran a head through his hair. One night at a time. Tonight, he was here. He would stay. And maybe, just maybe, he'd stay the next.

That was as good as she was gonna get.