Cigarette Butts
An: I do not own Arrow. Written for sissylover24 at fanfiction who requested a romance story. Hope this achieves that.
Summary: Felicity owns one plant, a fern. She's very proud that her plant hasn't died yet and that she remembers to water it. On one such watering, she discovers a cigarette butt carelessly discarded in her precious plant. She gets very angry that someone defiled her plant. Olicity, Fluff, Au. Written for sissy love24.
Chapter 1 – Cigarette Butts
It was a nice pleasant Sunday morning perfect for getting some shopping done except Felicity Smoak was still in bed. She lived in a high end apartment complex in Star City. Every cluster of apartments surrounded a pool and party area. The night before, the new owner of the apartment opposite her, on the other side of the pool, threw a loud raucous party till 2:00am when some of her other neighbours finally had enough and called the cops. It took a further two hours for everyone to get out.
Despite the quality of her sleep the night before her body still woke her up at her usual time but she refused to get out of bed and forced herself drift back to sleep. A few more hours wouldn't hurt the chores that needed to be done around her apartment.
It was close to midday by the time she finally dragged herself out of bed. She felt all out of sorts because of the disruption to her sleep routine. It was so late she decided to skip breakfast and go straight into lunch, a microwave pizza, since she didn't feel like going anywhere. She was fairly sure no one would appreciate her grumpy mood today. After eating two slices, she grudgingly started her Sunday chores, starting with cleaning her laptop and tech equipment.
It was mid-afternoon by the time she reached to watering Max. Max was her fern that she had bought a year ago. He was situated on her open air porch that boarded the pool area. She was about to tip the watering can forward for water to pour down the snout when she noticed objects in her fern. She parted the leaves and carefully inspected her plant. The objects ranged from cigarette butts, chicken bones and a phone. Anger coursed through her system. How dare they violate her fern!
Felicity put her watering can down and marched over to her neighbour's apartment. Rumour was he was one of the billionaire brats that lived in the city. His parents had banned him from bringing home his flavour of the day so the trustafarian bought the apartment to entertain his flings. No one had yet to see him since he always arrived late at night. She reached his door and started banging loudly. As expected there was no answer but she knew he was there. The sleek Porsche parked in front of the apartment was a dead giveaway. The idiot was probably still asleep but Felicity was determined to keep banging until he answered.
After a few minutes of knocking she began to wonder if she should deface his car. Maybe he would appreciate the cigarette butts and chicken bones glued to his car? She was so busy staring at his car while she knocked that she didn't realize the door had opened until her hand landed on hard muscle.
"What do you want?" a deep irritated voice asked.
Felicity turned her attention back to the door. A tall man with beautiful blue eyes, closed crop brown hair, five o'clock shadow across his jaw line and perfect abs greeted her. He was dressed only in his boxer briefs which gave her a fantastic view of his chiselled body. Her mind momentarily drew a blank. She had never been faced with such perfectness before. He was closing the door when Felicity's neurons started firing again and she kicked her foot forward to stop him.
"There are cigarette butts in my fern," she said angrily.
"So?" he asked as if it wasn't important.
"So! That's all you have to say. Your friends violated my fern. They put it in there and I'm not cleaning up after them Mr. Queen," Felicity stated. Her brain had finally put a name to the face. The man standing in front of her was most definitely the infamous Oliver Queen. In a way it made sense that he didn't care about the fern. He was noted for a peeing on a cop car. If he could do that without remorse, then the violation of a fern wouldn't mean a thing to him. Well she was going to change that.
"I paid the apartment complex to clean up after the party," he stated irritated.
"And they did. The pool area is clean but my fern is on my porch and they are not expecting private property to be violated," Felicity retorted fiercely.
"It's your fern. Clean it up yourself," he replied disinterested.
"But it's not my mess!" Felicity said offended. "I don't see why I should have to pick up the trash after you entitled rich kids."
"At least they didn't throw up in it," he pointed out and lifted his large hand to his face to cover a yawn. It just served to raise her anger further because he got to sleep in while she had chores to do.
"Is that all you can say. No wonder your parents threw your ungrateful ass out. Be an adult for a change. Put on some pants and clean up my fern!" Felicity demanded.
"You don't know anything about me," he replied angrily clearly offended by her comment.
"You're right, I don't, but because of you mister," Felicity said poking him on the chest with her index finger, "Max was violated."
Felicity ordered her brain not to focus on how hard his chest was or how perfect his muscles looked.
"Who's Max?" he asked confused.
"My fern! Can't you keep up!" she screamed in frustration.
He stared at her as if she were a mad woman. This was exactly why she wasn't supposed to leave her apartment when she was in a grumpy mood. People always thought she was crazy.
She crossed her hands over her chest to force them to behave or they would go wild swinging all over the place. "Well are you gonna put on some clothes or are you going to clean Max half naked?" she asked because he was definitely cleaning up Max. That wasn't up for debate.
"Give me a few minutes," he mumbled closing the door.
"I'll start back banging in five minutes if you're not out by then," she yelled at the closed door. She pulled out her phone and started the timer.
Oliver looked at the time on the clock stand. It was 3:32pm much too early to be dealing with crazy chicks. Usually he would ignore them but he got the distinct feeling that this one would not give up until he cleaned her stupid fern. The thought of calling security to deal with her crossed his mind but she was his neighbour and he really didn't want everyone knowing he had moved into that complex.
He should have known that when he told Tommy it was ok to throw him a small house warming party that it would be the exact opposite. It took him forever to get the people Tommy invited out of his apartment. This one chick stripped down naked and tied herself to his bed. He had to call Laurel's dad to come and deal with her. Carrie Cutter had been her name and Quentin had advised him to file a restraining order. Being one of the most wanted bachelors in Star City was harder than it sounded.
Oliver walked to his bedroom and pulled on his nearest jeans and a grey Henley. His phone started ringing and he went to the bedside to answer it.
"Yes Thea?" he asked irritated. If it was not some Crazy Fern Lady bothering him, it was his little sister.
"Oh you're actually awake. Guess I lost that bet," she mused sarcastically.
"What do you want?" Oliver asked. He really didn't have time for his sister's snarky attitude at the moment.
"Oh I'm just doing you a favour by reminding you that we have to attend dinner at mom's house tonight. Remember her big announcement," she said.
"Crap," Oliver said. He had forgotten about that. It was just another reason why he shouldn't have had a party the night before.
"What time are you picking me up?" she asked.
"Why am I picking you up? Can't you get a driver to take you?" he asked her.
Oliver had chosen to move out of Queen Mansion to be on his own. It was the exact opposite of what his mother wanted. His father and his mother had divorced two years ago and his mother lived in her own house since the Queen Mansion was to stay in the Queen family.
Oliver and Thea were Robert's heirs and she wanted them to live in their house. Just after the divorce his father's mistress Isabel moved in and wasted no time in providing another heir. Isabel was more than happy when Oliver moved out but he didn't care. He was fed up of playing her games and wanted to live his life on his terms. She couldn't touch his trust fund, his shares or position in the company or the fact that the house would indeed be left to him as first born.
His father was not messing with that tradition for anyone.
"Nope. I cursed Isabelle yesterday when she tried to interfere in father-daughter time. Dad wasn't too pleased. Said something about cutting ungrateful children off. Looks like you're stuck with me," she chirped happily. He had no idea what she was so happy about. Their mother would have an epic meltdown if she heard that.
"Fine, I'll be there at 6:30pm," he stated gruffly. He hated driving out to the Mansion. Isabel would probably stand their smugly with her son in her arms. Everyone knew she only picked up her son when she wanted to gloat to Oliver or Thea.
"You could be a bit nicer on the phone you know," his sister pointed out to him.
"I'm a bit busy Thea. I have something to do," Oliver ground out.
"Something or someone?" Thea quipped.
"Goodbye Thea," Oliver said hanging up on her.
He opened the door and found Crazy Fern Lady with her phone in her hand. The timer was actually running and he could see he had five seconds left. Crazy Fern Lady was really uptight. She probably needed to get laid. Oliver followed her around the pool to the apartment directly opposite him. If he opened the curtains to his porch he would be staring into her porch. She swung open the stupid little gate thing to access the porch from the pool and pointed to the other corner. Oliver followed her line of sight.
"That's the fern!" he exclaimed.
The angry crease in her forehead came back. "Yes that is Max, my fern," she confirmed.
"Looks more like a green monstrous bush," he said to purposely irritate her.
He watched with pleasure as her mouth fell open at the insult.
"Mr. Queen, you are one of the most insufferable men I have ever met!" she exclaimed.
He smirked. She was kind of cute when she was upset.
"Are you going to clean it or not?" she asked.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he said walking over to the bush.
There was a brightly coloured watering can on the ground next to it and Oliver moved it to the side before he kicked it over and Crazy Fern Lady went off on him about flooding her porch. He parted the leaves of the fern and sure enough there were quite a few cigarette butts in it.
"Is that a chicken bone?" he asked disgusted.
"Yes," she replied primly. Her hands were crossed over her chest and if it were possible he thought smoke would be coming out of her ears and nostrils.
"How am I supposed to clean this?" he asked."You can't expect me to put my hand in there!"
She arched an eyebrow at him in disbelief. "You run a multi-billion dollar corporation and you don't know how to do something as simple as clean a fern?"
"Correction, my father runs the multi-billion dollar corporation. I am still learning. What I meant was I need some form of protection for my hands if I'm to put them in your plant! You don't own a pair of gloves or something?" he asked.
"Don't you?" she fired back at him.
"No," he answered honestly. Gloves weren't really high on his priority list. What would he need gloves for anyway? Raisa was supposed to come out once a week to clean his apartment for him.
"Fine, I'll have to drive you to Walmart to get you a pair of gloves," she said angrily.
"Can't you just lend me some?" he asked irritated.
She held up her right hand, "Newsflash," she said using her left hand to point to her right hand, "My hands are much smaller than yours. My gloves won't fit you. I hope you have your wallet with you."
Oliver groaned. The day just kept getting worse and worse. He patted his jeans pocket and fortunately he felt his wallet in it. His car was back in front of his apartment. He would have to go back there, get the keys and then follow her to the store since he didn't know where the stores were yet. That would take time. He couldn't be late for dinner with his mother. That left him with no choice but to go with her.
He stared at her trying to decide if she was a threat to him. Yes she was crazy but physically, she was tiny. He was a trained black belt in four different disciplines; he doubted she could get the drop on him.
"Ok, let's go but if you try anything funny, you'll regret it," he said deadly serious.
She rolled her eyes, "You are probably the sexiest man I have ever met but I don't do idiots, no matter how attractive!" she blushed at the admission about his looks. "I'll meet you in front. I need to lock my apartment."
She entered her apartment through the back door, locking it when she closed the door, paranoid much? Oliver found his way to the front of her apartment. By the time he reached there she was standing in front of a red thing that might pass for a car.
"What is that?" he asked horrified. She couldn't expect him to get into that tiny car!
"My car!" she replied offended.
"I'm not getting in that," he stated. Why was he burdened with all the crazy ones? Tommy never had any of this trouble.
"I know it's not a Porsche but it is a very reliable and environmentally friendly car. Now get in," she ordered.
He sighed and opened the front passenger door. He had to squeeze himself into the front. He tried to push the seat back but it still didn't give him enough leg room. He shifted around a bit to try to get comfortable.
"It's not that bad!" she said as she started the engine.
"You haven't driven in a Porsche," he replied with side eye.
"No obviously not! Now stop being a dick about it," Crazy Fern Lady ordered.
Oliver paid attention to the route she took. The chances were high that he would have to come to the store as well to restock his apartment. His mother had been the one to stock it with groceries for him. He noticed that her car was surprisingly clean. His sister was famous for having a good portion of her shoes flung in the back seat area.
Crazy Fern Lady was also a decent driver. She came to a complete stop, not a rolling stop like him, at every stop sign even when it was clear, she didn't blow through any stop lights and she kept up with the flow of traffic. Within ten minutes they were at the store. She didn't bother trying to look for a spot near the store and parked at the end of the row.
"Wow you can actually park," he said when she reversed into the spot in one go.
"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked in confusion while she turned off the car and grabbed her purse she had tossed in the back seat.
"Just that everytime I'm waiting for someone to park, it's a woman," Oliver said as he got out of the car.
"That's just sexist!" she declared.
"Is it?" Oliver said pointing to a woman in a large SUV trying to park her car further up. The woman went forward and back, forward and back trying to get into the spot. Oliver knew he could have done it in two seconds.
"She just bought a car she can't drive properly," Felicity declared. "Honestly, people should stick to cars that they are capable of driving."
"Mmmhhh," Oliver said with a cocky grin.
She turned away from him and started marching up to the store. His longer stride ensured he kept up with her easily. She went straight to the section that contained gloves and selected something appropriate for him. He accepted her choice and they went to the front of the store to pay for them. Oliver decided to irritate her again. As the cashier rang up the gloves he said loudly. "Oh I forgot the box of condoms."
He saw her blush furiously but when he smirked she picked up on what he was doing.
"I think all the size smalls were finished," she said to him. She was very quick with the comebacks.
"Actually, I need extra-large," he boasted waving his large hand in front of her face.
She snorted at him, "The only thing extra-large about you, is your ego," she responded.
The cashier cleared his throat, "Sir are you going to pay or are you going to get another item?"
Oliver reluctantly let her have the last word for now and pulled out his black amex card to pay for it.
She picked up the gloves while he was paying and started heading for the car. She was already seated in it with the engine on when he caught up to her.
"If that is how you behave all the time I can only imagine the example you set for your younger sister," she commented when they were pulling out of the car park.
"Look lady, you don't know anything about me. I set a great example for her. Let's just get back to your apartment and clean the damn fern," Oliver said angrily.
"No objections there," she replied.
Fifteen minutes later Oliver was combing through the fern pulling out all sorts of things and putting it in the garbage bag that Felicity supplied.
"Whose phone do you think that is?" she asked him when he pulled it out.
"I have no idea," he answered. "Does this place have a lost and found?"
"In the administrative office but no one will be there till tomorrow," she told him.
"I think that's the last of it," he said combing through one more time. It was after five and he needed to get back to his apartment to bathe and change before heading out to get Thea.
"Great as long as my fern stays clean, we shouldn't have any more problems," she told him with a large smile.
Oliver gave her a forced smile. "Great." He was finally done with Crazy Fern Lady.
An: Thanks for reading. I am hoping to update this story once a month. Its supposed to have five chapters but I started off Smoak Detective Agency with the same thought and ended up with 13 chapters.