Title: Fixer Upper

Rating: M (for language, some mild violence and probable sexual situations later on)

Disclaimer: I don't own Arrow or any of the characters used within this fic.

Author's Notes: Noooooo – once again I have been pulled unwillingly into another fandom! I blame Tumblr – you can only see so many Olicity gifsets without undergoing some sort of weird conversion process. However, oddly enough, it wasn't Olicity that finally pushed me to write, it was Flommy (Felicity/Tommy)! The blame for this is a little bit more specific: absentlyabbie and rosietwiggs are the two main culprits (please check out their blogs and their fics).

I will be forever crushed that these two never appeared to meet in canon. Felicity did apparently text Tommy (there's a screenshot of his Inbox out there somewhere) but sadly we will never know how many times, or what it was about.

Background for this fic: So, the story is canon-compliant right up until Tommy gets into a tight spot while saving Laurel at CNRI in 1x23 – however, in this fic, Oliver manages to save him before he gets skewered by a piece of rebar. They're on the verge of completely reconciling, but Tommy discovers that Oliver did kill his father and cuts Oliver out of his life once and for all. Thus Oliver still decides to retreat to Lian Yu. Laurel, unwilling to be a point of disagreement for the two of them, seeks distance and reflection in Central City. Felicity and Diggle are left to rebuild – but when Felicity realises that Tommy is alone and unsupported in a city full of people who hate his guts, she decides to keep an eye on him until Oliver returns (whether Tommy likes it or not).

Pairings: This is intended to be Felicity/Tommy. However, I do love Olicity so that will be addressed in this fic as well.

She's pretty sure that – whatever he might claim, if asked – he's actually only barely tolerating her intrusion into his personal life (and space). Oh, he's certainly doing a good job of pretending he doesn't mind – better than she would have expected, in the circumstances – but nonetheless, his patience must be wearing thin. Sooner or later, she'll need to back off, she realises.

God, she really wishes Oliver would stop moping and just get his ass back to Starling City.

"Okay," she says, hunched over the coffee table, studying the DVDs laid out neatly in front of her. "So I brought a few different things – I mean, obviously it's nothing compared to Netflix, and I totally would have signed into my account, but…" She casts a mournful look at the dented, deceased laptop lying on the floor, "I kind of assumed your laptop would be in working order."

Tommy shifts uncomfortably on the couch. "It was a… uh, casualty, I guess."

He doesn't supply any further details, and he doesn't need to. It's hardly the first broken item she's encountered in his apartment over the last few weeks. He's working through things as best he can. Her only hope is that he doesn't self-destruct before he can pull himself out the other side of this.

Which, obviously, is why she's loading the first disc of her Community boxset into his surprisingly not cutting-edge DVD player. (Another failed assumption: before she first visited, she'd thought his home cinema system would be on a par with Barney Stinson's full-wall illegally imported TV screen. Not that she's judging, of course. Tommy has his own reasons for living in a poky apartment with small windows, peeling paint and a mysterious smell in the kitchen. If he wants to discuss it, she's more than ready, but she's visited six times now and he hasn't exactly shown signs of becoming more talkative.)

While the DVD menu loads, she rifles through the other bag she brought with her. "So, I've got some snacks," she says, laying them out on the coffee table. "Uh, Doritos, M&Ms, Oreos… some weird gummy thingies…" she smiles and shrugs helplessly, "I didn't really know what you'd like, and you didn't text me back, so…"

She glances up. He isn't looking at her; he's staring out of the small window next to the kitchen door. The heavy orange cast of the street light outside glows through the dirt on the outside of the glass. She wonders where his mind is tonight – in Central City with Laurel? Or Lian Yu with Oliver?

Either way, she'll likely never find out.

"Okay," she says, as brightly as she can manage, "so this is a pretty good comedy series, I think you'll like it." She settles herself back on the couch, curling her legs underneath her as she thumbs the remote to select the first episode.

Tommy's quiet, and she fights to keep from glancing at him too much. She assumes he's still lost in thought, not even looking at the screen, but ten minutes into the episode, he says, "I think I've seen this before." He meets her eyes briefly. "The Spanish teacher is insane, right?"

"Oh. Yeah, that's the one." She looks at him with surprise, a smile tugging at her lips. "Well, never mind, I brought plenty of backup options – I've got the Hangover films, or Mad Men, or – ooh, Cool Runnings, that's a really great –"

"No, leave this on," Tommy says, turning back to the TV. "I remember thinking it was good."

"Okay." But it isn't okay, she realises. She has no idea what she's doing.

Watching TV with Tommy Merlyn? Sure, no problem.

Watching TV with a guy who lost his father and his best friend on the same day – a guy who now bears the brunt of the hatred of Starling citizens for the actions of his father, not to mention faces constant pressure from the insensitive, self-serving board members of Merlyn Global to do something, anything to save a flagging corporation?

It isn't TV, she acknowledges. In a way, it's a suicide watch.

Diggle had said as much to her tonight, before she came here. "Oliver would appreciate what you're doing for that kid, Felicity," he'd remarked, wiping sweat from his brow as he leaned against her desk.

She'd snorted softly. "I'm not sure what I'm doing," she'd confessed. "Annoying him, probably. But I just… I can't leave him there alone, Dig. He hardly comes out."

Dig's hand was warm on her shoulder. "You're doing more than you realise. More than he realises, even." A grim look passed across his face. "Nobody goes through something like that without facing some pretty dark thoughts – especially not a guy with Merlyn's history." He looked down at her. "I'm not saying you can fix him, but I'll bet you've pulled him back from the edge more than once."

Truthfully, she doubts she's done that much, given that Tommy hardly says a word to her. But at least if he knows she's coming – if he knows he has one friend – then things might look marginally less bleak.

She reaches over to the coffee table and grasps for a packet.

Failing that, there's always chocolate.

Her next visit comes two days later. She normally gives him a little more space, but it's her day off and she's on her way home from the foundry with his repaired laptop in her car – it seems like a good excuse, she figures.

The other excuse is that she has cleaning supplies as well.

"You didn't text," says Tommy curtly when he opens the door. He doesn't seem particularly surprised, though.

"Why?" she teases. "Would you have tidied up for me?"

He throws her a sour look as he steps back to let her through. "No. I might have barricaded the door, though."

She holds up his laptop, bouncing it gently in her hands. "Don't think I wouldn't use this as a battering ram, if it came to it."

He raises his hands in mock self-defence. "Scary. Clearly my defences aren't up to scratch if a three pound aluminium laptop can breach my front door."

Felicity eyes the deadbolt that doesn't align properly and has rusted over from lack of use. "I'd say that's a given already." She hands him the laptop, and hesitates before holding up the other bag. "Uh, I might have an ulterior motive for being here, sort of." She takes his raised eyebrow as an invitation to continue. "Look, I know I've made jokes about how this place fails about twenty different building codes – and it totally does, that's a serious problem – but… you can't be happy living like this. And I'm not saying this is the solution to…" she waves vaguely in his general direction, "all of your many, many problems, but… I just think it might help if we… cleaned up a bit…"

His expression is carefully shuttered. He folds his arms across his chest and scowls down at the floor. Really, she thinks, he couldn't throw up any more barriers if he tried. "You can, if you want," he offers gruffly. "I think I'll pass."

She considers this, weighing up the pros and cons of trying to push him a little bit more. In the end, she concedes defeat, and leaves him in the living room to tackle the kitchen by herself. Guilt and frustration wage heavy war in her heart, and she finds cleaning to be a good distraction.

They don't really know each other, she acknowledges, as she removes the meagre contents of the cupboards – a few chipped mugs and plates that have seen better days – in order to wipe the shelves clean. If she'd met Tommy properly before everything went down, maybe this wouldn't be like wading uphill through treacle. But as it was, they'd nodded at each other maybe a couple of times in Verdant.

Once, she'd sent him a text asking if she could move some stuff around behind the bar in order to access a panel that covered some of the data lines supplying the foundry. He hadn't replied, and she'd gone ahead and done it anyway. Later she found out he'd just broken up with Laurel, and probably hadn't been in the mood to even think about a weird text from a virtual stranger.

And that, she reflects, washing the dishes carefully before they go back into the clean cupboards, is no doubt part of their core problem now – she's still a stranger to him. Granted, thanks to her loose tongue, he probably knows more about her now than he ever wanted to. But that doesn't change the fact that in those early days after the rug had been pulled from underneath his feet, he'd been raw and vulnerable and on the verge of breaking – and some stranger had shown up on his doorstep carrying a metric ton of food and some sympathy cards from a surprisingly broad group of people (all carefully vetted by Diggle, of course) and had chattered endlessly to fill the awkward silence until she finally realised she might not be a welcome guest.

She pauses in the middle of squirting Mr Muscle onto the stove, listening carefully for any sound from the living room.

Nothing.

She shrugs and continues, scrubbing furiously until her muscles ache. It isn't that she enjoys cleaning, especially, but it's kind of cathartic, and she honestly thinks that Tommy might start to feel a little more comfortable in this apartment if he can walk into his own kitchen without gagging.

She doesn't quite know when he started renting this place.

She suspects it must have been before the earthquakes, because most landlords would probably have outright refused to harbour a Merlyn in the current climate. Did he start living here even before then? She'd heard he'd reconciled with his father and had moved out of Laurel's apartment, so naturally she'd expected that he would have moved back to Merlyn Mansion.

Certainly, given that access to his trust fund had been restored – and in fact, all Merlyn assets now exist solely in his name – she wonders why he picked a place like this to live? Is he simply seeking anonymity now there's a price on his head? Or is he punishing himself for the crimes his father committed against the city?

She suppresses a snort. Oliver and Tommy appear to have chosen remarkably similar coping strategies; if things between them weren't so bad, they could have booked a package tour to Lian Yu together.

She loses track of time for a while. The fridge/freezer isn't too bad, but that's mainly because Tommy apparently isn't buying any food. She's disappointed to see that a lot of the frozen meals she'd brought are still sitting there, untouched.

By the time she's done, it actually looks pretty decent. The laminate countertops are an uninspiring shade of grey, but they're clean, and the metalwork gleams brightly. She's managed to work the small window next to the sink open – the wooden frame is poor quality, and probably it won't take much for it to fall apart, but at least there's some fresh air.

The smell is still there, faintly. She frowns and unleashes three short, sharp bursts of Febreze.

She's still standing there, inhaling deeply and trying to decide if she needs to start looking for a dead rat when the door opens unexpectedly and Tommy's face appears around the corner. "You know you've been here for nearly three hours, right?" he begins – and then the wary frown disappears from his face as he takes in the sight. "Whoa."

He steps into the kitchen fully, his hand reaching out to skim the bright white metal of the stove. He opens the refrigerator briefly, raising an eyebrow when he sees a frozen meal sitting on the bottom shelf to defrost. "Now I really do feel like a bachelor."

She squats, gathering her cleaning supplies together and shoving them in the cupboard underneath the sink. "Yeah, well, consider grocery shopping to be your homework." She pulls herself to her feet, wiping her hands on her jeans. Her hair started out in a nice neat bun on top of her head, but she can feel it sagging now, annoying loose bits drifting forward into her face. "You're welcome, by the way."

Tommy grimaces briefly. "Right. Sorry. Thank you." He taps the fridge door closed and shoves his hands into his pockets, eyes glued to the floor.

"No problem." And… it really isn't. This might actually be the most significant reaction she's managed to pull from him in a whole month. She gestures to the living room with her thumb. "I'll leave the rest til next time, okay? Unless…" her lips quirk into an awkward grin "you want to try it out? It's super satisfying, I promise!"

The grin slips from her face as Tommy shifts awkwardly on his feet. "Anyway," she says, "I'd better go. Uh, I won't be around for the next few days – sorry. I've got some stuff I need to sort out, and it's a big mess, so…" She trails off, hoping that doesn't sound like a made-up excuse. The truth is, she and Dig are moving some stuff in and out of the foundry, and they need the cover of darkness – which, on summer nights like these, comes pretty late.

"Don't forget about the other meals," she tells Tommy as she slips past him through the door. "Next time I'll bring a kettle. I've got one I hardly use, so you can just have –"

"Do you want to stay a while longer?" Tommy interrupts her. "I mean – we've got those DVDs – your DVDs, really… I just thought maybe –"

"Yes," she blurts out, without thinking. God, she hopes that was the right answer. Maybe he was just offering to be polite – ugh, no, is it too late to take it back?

"Great," Tommy replies, no trace of annoyance on his face. "I'll call for takeout. Pizza sound good?"

She blinks.

What just happened?

They make it through nine episodes before Tommy passes out in a cheese coma. He hasn't exactly been chatty, but he's been paying enough attention to snort with soft laughter from time to time. She glances over at him, taking the opportunity to study his features carefully.

In sleep, he still looks youthful, she thinks – the lines of stress and worry have all been smoothed away. His little frown persists; she longs to press her thumb to the top of his nose and rub it away. The stubble on his jawline looks nearly a week old, but it doesn't hurt his handsome features. No wonder he and Oliver were so beloved by the press, she thinks – the two of them are ridiculously photogenic. It's so easy to picture the two of them laughing, arms slung over each other's shoulders as they stagger out of a party or a nightclub.

They can still have that, she thinks stubbornly. They can fix this. And no, maybe it won't all be midnight pool parties and early morning scandals again – because that isn't who they are anymore. But they can forgive each other, and lean on each other again, and be the best friends they so obviously want to be. She believes that wholeheartedly.

She levers herself up carefully off the couch, avoiding that one creaky spring in the middle. She won't breach the privacy of Tommy's bedroom – that's just a step too far – but there's a little closet next to the bathroom where the water heater lives. The shelf near the top has a couple of blankets and some bed linen. She stands on tip-toes to reach, and nearly brings the whole stack down onto her head.

The blankets feel soft and luxurious, and what's more, they smell clean. She'll bet they were among the only things Tommy took from Merlyn Mansion when he moved out.

He shifts a little as she drapes it over him, but doesn't wake. She breathes a quiet sigh of relief, and stealthily tidies everything away, switching off the TV to leave only a small dim light illuminating her way out of the apartment.

Maybe she's reading too much into it, but tonight he let her in – really let her in for the first time. That's progress, she tells herself firmly. It matters. So keep trying, Smoak.

She closes the door softly behind her and hopes he sleeps through the night.

Author's Notes: Hope this first chapter tickled your pickle! I love writing these two and can't wait to continue with this fic. (Also can't wait for Arrow Season 3 premiere next Wednesday – ugh, why can't this week go faster?)