Title: Be Careful with That Heart of Yours (That's Where Mine Is, Too)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~3,700
Characters: Roy/Thea
Summary: He got shot in the leg with an arrow. The fact that he loses some of the coloring in his cheeks over a little bit of blood running down her arm seems kind of ridiculous.
Be Careful with That Heart of Yours (That's Where Mine Is, Too)
When her back hits the mat for the fifth time in the last half hour, she hears two voices snap, "Sara!" in unison, echoing through the basement.
Thea tilts her head back to see Roy and Oliver standing at the edge of the sparring platform, arms crossed over their chests as they stare Sara down with identical expressions of warning. Thea smirks. As much as Roy and Oliver pretend to be annoyed with each other because they're different, they're more alike than they think and everyone sees it but them.
"What now?" Sara asks with a laugh.
"Just… be careful."
"There's no such thing as being careful when you're sparring, Ollie," Digg chimes in from where he's sitting on one of the tables.
"Besides," Sara adds, pulling Thea onto her feet, "she'd hate me if I went easy on her."
"Oh, I'd despise you."
She's been in training for six weeks now and, honestly, it's hard to tell if she's really improved. The only person she's trained with for fighting so far is Sara and it seems like the girl takes her down just as easily every time. But she's not far enough along to start training with Digg yet and probably won't be for a while, and because Oliver and Roy absolutely refuse to fight with her, the only other person she can spar with is Felicity. Which they do occasionally, but the girl is always reluctant. Felicity's not that bad of a fighter, but the only reason she's also going through training in the first place is because Oliver wanted her to be able to fend for herself, at least enough to escape and get the hell out of wherever she is if she gets into another bind. Apparently, even though she's the tech part of the team, Felicity finds herself being used as bait a lot—thus, self-defense training. She hates it, but whatever.
You can't exactly argue against being too prepared.
Anyway.
Digg tosses Thea and Sara bottled waters and Thea practically downs half of it in one gulp. Her muscles ache, but at least she isn't as sore as she was after her first day of training—especially since they didn't even do any fighting then, just cardio. She'd always been under the impression she kept herself in fair shape, but obviously that'd been wrong.
"The pizza I ordered to the club should be coming any minute," Felicity announces, stepping onto the platform to hand them each a towel, "so, like it or not, it's time for a break."
"Fine," Thea says, tilting her head as she points a finger at Felicity, "but after our food's settled, you and I are going to throw down."
Felicity wrinkles her nose. "That wasn't anywhere in my plan."
"Well, it is now, like it or not."
Felicity looks like she's about to protest, but then Oliver says, "Hey, the pizza guy's driving up," and Felicity lets out a laugh, shoving Thea's arm playfully. Oliver holds onto her hand as she hops off of the platform and doesn't let go, just laces their fingers together and lets Felicity swing their hands between them as they head up the staircase.
Thea smiles and shakes her head. Those two are too cute, sometimes.
Then she turns to look at Roy, feeling her smile spread. She doesn't know what's up with her, but whenever she looks at Roy recently, she gets those silly, schoolgirl butterflies in her stomach, like she's seeing him for the first time or something. Even then, the first time they met hadn't been like that—she'd been pissed, actually, since he'd stolen her purse. But she supposes in a lot of ways, this is still true—she is seeing him in a new way. She'd always known he was different, special – rough around the edges but a secret romantic at heart.
Now he wasn't so troubled or brooding or half-pretending to be an ass to keep up some sort of image with himself. Oh, he still can be an ass – or at least a jerk – and he could scowl and pout into the next century. But he seems different now. Maybe even a little more relaxed. She can't place it but, whatever it is, she loves how much happier he seems to be.
"You looked good up there," Roy says, stepping up onto the platform and walking towards her.
"Really?" she asks, arching an eyebrow and casting a playful smile. "I looked good getting my ass handed to me multiple times?
"I meant that you're getting even better at fighting." He slides his hands over her hip and pulls her close. Had this been a few months ago, she would've been more self-conscious about being sweaty and gross in front of her boyfriend and she had been the first time, but he just called her silly and planted a kiss on her. "But you definitely look hot all the time."
"Will I still be hot when I'm the one kicking your ass?"
"Babe, I'm not fighting you."
Thea scoffs out a laugh, pushing him away. "This misogynistic thing of yours is not hot."
"I'm not being misogynistic," Roy says, sounding amused. "I had to work my way up to fighting Sara when I first started. I know women can kick my ass."
"So why won't you fight me? You and Ollie won't even consider it."
He sighs. "I can't speak for your brother, but I refuse to fight you because there's no way I'm hitting my girlfriend."
"Roy," she says.
"I grew up in a place where guys hit their girlfriends and wives and daughters and that was normal. And I don't want feel anything like those people, alright?" He runs his fingers down her arm, tracing the bruise Sara left last week. "I barely like the fact that someone else is hurting you, even if it's just Sara and you're training and everything. Maybe it's stupid, but—"
She cuts him off with a kiss—one that's probably a little deeper and dirtier than it should be considering her brother's right upstairs, but whatever.
"That's sweet, not stupid."
"Maybe," he says. "When did I become such a wimp?"
She knows he's teasing, though, so she shrugs a shoulder and says, "Around the same time you started dating me and turned into an actual human being." He chuckles, shaking his head. "Now let's go upstairs. I'm starving."
"That's nothing new," he mutters, and then laughs when she swats at his arm.
... ...
She never took Roy as the type to find a little blood unsettling.
He got shot in the leg with an arrow. The fact that he loses some of the coloring in his cheeks over a little bit of blood running down her arm seems kind of ridiculous.
"It's just a scratch," she reassures, watching as he takes her arm and gently turns it so he can get a better look. "And it was just an accident."
"Who did it?"
She rolls her eyes and smiles, slightly amused but mostly touched by his reaction, even though he's basically overreacting right now. "It was an accident, Roy," she repeats, placing the palm of her hand against his cheek, and she feels him relax into her touch. "Some drunken guy bumped into me outside and my arm scraped against the side of the building."
He nods a little, seeming to accept this answer, and then kisses her cheek. "Let's get you patched up."
He disinfects the scrape and covers it with one of the larger Band-Aids from the little first aid kid they have in the backroom, and other than Oliver and Felicity and a few of the other employees asking what happened when they notice what's on her arm, she completely forgets about it for the rest of the night.
Then they're back at the house, sitting in one of the parlors upstairs that are usually closed off whenever they have people over, because these rooms are the rooms that she and Oliver grew up in and they like having these parts of their lives almost literally locked away from people who don't really deserve it. It's the six of them, as usual – she and Roy, Oliver and Felicity, Digg and Sara – and they're sort of spread out across the couches while The Sound of Music plays on the flat screen. It's literally the only thing they could settle on to watch together and they sing along with the songs and talk through some of the duller parts, and instead of popcorn, they have ice-cream sundaes and boxes of Girl Scout cookies.
They've had a lot of nights like this one recently and Thea loves it. Honestly, the people in this room are the only reason she's stayed relatively sane through everything—learning everyone's secrets. When it'd been her mother's, Thea was pissed and confused and devastated. She hasn't seen her mother in weeks, actually. She knows the woman is staying elsewhere around the city and comes by when she knows Oliver and Thea aren't home to swap out clothes or something, but otherwise, she's only seen her behind a TV screen.
Her mother's secret had been selfish. Oliver and Roy's secret had been for protection, so it was a hell of a lot easier to forgive them.
She's not an idiot, though. She knows they can't go on like this forever—that, somewhere deep inside her, she loves her mother and always will. She'll forgive her eventually and so will Oliver, whether it takes weeks or even years to.
"Stop," she whispers, because she can feel Roy tracing over the Band-Aid on her arm. "I'm fine."
He laughs, but when he says, "Just making sure, because I'd go insane if you weren't," she has the strongest feeling that he's completely serious.
... ...
She remembers how the gravel of the roof digging into her skin when she'd fallen, and the rain soaking through her clothes, and Felicity's voice, high and frantic as she was crying into the earpiece or maybe even a cell phone, saying something about a gunshot and Thea not responding and someone come find them.
When she wakes up, she's staring at a white ceiling.
It's not a hospital ceiling, though. She recognizes it, the hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars taped to it, and remembers when she and Oliver were younger and bored and alone in the house with the nanny in another room, and they'd decided they wanted decorate her ceiling with constellations. They took astrology books from their father's study and found ladders from the basement and spent the entire evening putting up those stars. She remembers her mother being frantic when she came home and walked into the room and saw Thea slip off of the ladder on her way down, scraping up her leg and bruising her hip. Thea hadn't even cried, but she remembers her mother did, just a little bit, as she told Thea to be careful.
"Oh, thank god, you're awake," someone says, and Thea turns to see Sara and Felicity walking into the room.
"I was getting worried—well, more worried, if you can believe that," Felicity tells her as she's setting a tray of breakfast foods down on the nightstand. "If even one strand of my hair turned gray, you're totally paying to get my blonde touched up."
Thea laughs. "Sounds like a deal."
Her voice is a little raspy, and there's a dull pain in her side that she knows will hurt as soon as she tries to move, but otherwise she feels alright. She turns her head, glancing around the room. Roy sleeping beside her on the bed over the duvet, and Oliver and Digg are passed out on opposite sides of the floor in a mess of pillows and blankets.
"We all sort of camped out here last night," Sara explains, sounding amused. "The boys absolutely refused to leave the room."
Thea looks at Roy again, smiling. "I can believe that." Then she looks at the food Felicity brought in and bites her lower lip. "Can I… I mean, how am I supposed to eat?"
Felicity and Sara laugh.
Thea was right—her everything seems to hurt as soon as she moves—but it can't really be helped.
And she knows the fuss they make wakes the boys, because as Sara's helping her sit upright and Felicity's adjusting the pillows between her and the headboard, she feels Roy shift beside her and hears Oliver and Digg mumbling. Roy glances at her, blinking sleepily, and his eyes widen a little as he realizes she's awake. She laughs as he scrambles to sit himself up, his eyes never leaving hers. She pushes her fingers into his hair and ruffles it just because she has the urge to and he lets out a shaky breath, his lips tugging into a wide smile.
"Did you have a nightmare?" she asks, because his breathing is a little heavy and his eyes are a little red and his skin looks a little clammy.
He gives her a look. "Did you really expect me to sleep alright?"
Thea shakes her head and he leans over and kisses her, like he can't help himself, and her eyelids flutter closed. The kiss is slow and soft and gentle and unlike almost all of their other kisses, but she loves it. Maybe it's silly, but it's almost as if she can taste his desperation to touch her and his absolute relief that she's alive and awake and alright.
The bed shifts as someone plops onto it and they pull away abruptly, slightly startled. Digg's smiling at them and shaking his head and Thea laughs, leaning back against the pillows.
Oliver leans over and kisses her forehead, smoothing a hand over her hair. "You know you put me through hell, right, Speedy?"
"Well, it's not like I could let them hurt my future sister-in-law." Oliver breathes out a laugh, glancing at Felicity as he reaches for her hand. Thea grins and tilts her head. "Not bad for my first night out in the field."
"Not bad at all, kid," Digg says, patting her leg. "How're you feeling?"
"Hungry," Thea admits, and everyone just laughs. Roy shifts himself closer to her until their legs are pressed against each other's, slipping his fingers through hers and squeezes ever so slightly, and she knows that even if he has to argue with Ollie come nighttime, he won't be leaving her side anytime soon.
... ...
They don't typically go on patrols, but if Felicity picks up something suspicious then Oliver will take her and Roy with him to check it out. Usually it'll be a false alarm or a petty crime like a robbery or something (well, petty compared to other people they've encountered, the ones out for blood), so they'll handle it, stay out for a little longer to make sure things stay quiet and then go home when it gets late enough. Recently, though, Roy's been staying at the base with Felicity while she and Ollie take care of things. She'd find that strange (Roy skipping out on heroism is almost unthinkable) but she knows Digg and Sara have been arguing that Thea's ready and doesn't have to be babied or watched as often anymore.
They call it quits a quarter passed 1:00 in the morning, and Felicity's in the middle of reheating their takeout when they get back to base.
"I'm starving."
Thea peels off her mask and tosses it onto the table, setting her bow and quiver down with it. "That's new," Roy says with a smirk, swiveling his chair to face her. She rolls her eyes and laughs, crossing the distance to stand between his knees and comb her fingers through his hair.
"How does someone eat as much as you do and still fit comfortably into a skin-tight suit?" Felicity asks. "Although, if your answer involves more cardio, forget I asked."
"Fast metabolism, actually," Thea corrects, then grins as she adds teasingly, "Though, being born with a perfect figure probably helps."
"It's genetic," Oliver adds.
"Don't I know it," Felicity mumbles, and then blinks as her own words sink in. Oliver raises his eyebrows, amused. Thea grins and Roy stifles a laugh. Felicity blushes but rolls her eyes, shoving a takeout box into Oliver's chest as she says, "Just eat your noodles."
Thea sits on the table with her feet propped up on the arm of Roy's chair, eating her noodles with chopsticks as Roy picks at his own leftovers, and while Oliver and Felicity are literally only a few feet away from them, they might as well have been in another building entirely, that's how far off into their own world they are. Thea doesn't mind at all, though, because she's counting the days until her brother finally proposes. They're not even officially dating yet, but whatever. Thea's already got ideas on color scheme and centerpieces and favors.
"It's almost gone," Roy says suddenly.
She gives him a strange look, but then he runs his fingertips over her forearm and she knows he's talking about the scar she got from the knife some drug dealer nicked her with a few nights ago. It was nothing – just a flesh wound – but, as always whenever she gets hurt, Roy had to take a few deep breaths to keep from getting pissed.
"Yeah," she agrees. The first few times he'd reacted to her minor wounds like that, she'd been kind of amused and told him not to be so dramatic.
But he'd just looked at her and said, "I don't like seeing you hurt, ever," in this soft, steady voice, and she'd realized that he'd meant it. She could probably get a paper-cut and he'd probably react that same way, because it's her and anything that happens to her becomes a big deal to him.
(She'd stopped teasing him after that.)
... ...
Thea's stepping onto the backyard patio when she hears Roy's voice call out, "Tabitha, be careful!"
"I know, Daddy," their daughter huffs back, climbing higher up the rope ladder leading into her (rather elaborately-built) treehouse—which was her doing, with Oliver and Digg's assembly, of course, because the last thing Roy wanted was their daughter that high up in a tree, where she could fall out and break something or scrape up her skin.
She loves that Roy's concerned, but he's a little ridiculous sometimes.
"She's gone up and down that tree dozens of times before," Thea reminds Roy, setting the pitcher of lemonade onto the patio table. "She's always careful."
"I know," he says, but his eyes are still locked on their daughter like a hawk, and Thea just chuckles as she settles herself onto his lap, kissing his cheek. "I just worry."
"Bumps and bruises are a part of life. And she's our daughter. Her pride has a better chance of getting wounded than her body."
He chuckles at that, relaxing into his seat for the first time since Tabitha announced that she wanted to play outside. No parent likes to see their kid get hurt, obviously, even it's a small thing like bumping into a door or getting a splinter, but Roy's always been a little bit worse than other fathers in that department. Considering how protective he's been of her over the years, she knew he'd be extra paranoid if and when they had a child of their own. But, while Tabitha is a lot like Thea – confident and feisty and hates it when people tell her she can't do something, or constantly fuss over her – she's rather patient when it comes to her own overprotective father—mostly because she's such a daddy's girl, but whatever.
And it's not like Roy spoils the girl (well, not totally, and Thea will step in when she feels like it's getting to that point) or keeps her under his thumb. He disciplines her when necessary and makes sure she can do things on her own. She's actually rather independent for a four-year-old and wants to help with the household chores more and more.
He just gets anxious when he thinks she's going to get hurt, and usually only Thea can pull him from his paranoid thoughts and keep him from hyperventilating or something whenever Tabitha's cart-wheeling on cement and jumping off of play structures.
Anyway.
They're outside for about another hour or so before Thea catches the time on the kitchen clock through the bay window and says they should start getting cleaned up and ready to meet everyone else for dinner. Roy's setting their dishes onto the silver tray to carry back inside as Thea calls for Tabitha to come in now.
She trips while running across the grass and Roy drops everything onto the table to rush to his daughter.
"Daddy, I'm fine," Tabitha insists, already on her feet again.
"Just let me see, Tabs," Roy says. Tabitha rolls her eyes (it's honestly hard to tell who she looks like more when she does that) but stands still as Roy looks over her.
"Any battle scars?" Thea asks.
"Nope," Tabitha replies, giving Roy a pointed look. (Seriously, she's so their kid.) "Can I go upstairs and start my bath now?"
Roy kisses her hair. "Of course, angel," he says, and Thea runs her hand over his back and knows he holds his breath a little bit as Tabitha takes off again, running into the house like trying to race everywhere didn't just make her trip a minute ago.
"You're going to get worry lines and gray hair twice as fast if you keep this up," she says, and she's mostly teasing but also a little bit serious.
"I know." He slips his hand over her hip and she grabs the tray as they step into the house. "And I know she can take it—that you both can take it. I just can't kick the habit."
She kisses his cheek. "Don't. No matter how crazy you get, we will always love you for worrying."
"Yeah?" he asks, meeting her eyes.
"Of course," she replies easily, not skipping a beat. "Now, come on. The sooner we get dressed, the sooner I can eat."
He laughs.