And you're saying to hell with the salt, lemon and lime.
Author's Note: Hello again, apologies for how long this has taken, I ground to a halt writingwise and couldn't find my mojo until recently. So, this is the much requested sequel to If you like Pina Coladas, which I resisted the urge to call Pina Coladas 2: Electric Blue Lagoon - you can thank me later. To everyone who reviewed Pina Coladas, and the person who recced it on TV Tropes, many thanks. I also apologise for not responding to any reviews but I never know what to say besides thanks, if that bothers you feel free not to leave anything, if it doesn't then review away. There may be more in the future, but I can make no guarantees. Anyway, that's enough of that. Enjoy the fic, I hope it was worth waiting for.
"I hate everyone." Tommy declares as he leans over and picks the shot glass up with his mouth before tilting his head back and letting it run down his throat.
"That's not true. You're Tommy, you don't hate people." Oliver downs his own shot, as Tommy lifts the bottle and fills a line of shot glasses downing the first before he even finishes pouring.
"I do." Tommy states defiantly, slamming down the Tequila bottle in his right hand and the shot glass in his left before picking up a fresh shot in each hand and swallowing them in quick succession.
"Do you hate me?" Oliver asks, a smile at the edge of his lips.
"Yes." Tommy says with a decisive nod, and a decisive shot.
"And Laurel?" Oliver presses on.
"Yes." Another nod, another shot.
"What about Thea?" Oliver's smirk is becoming more pronounced.
"Very definitely." Tommy replies, a slight rasp to his voice from his just finished shot.
"Even Felicity." Oliver asks, grabbing a shot from the bar and swallowing it down.
There's a pause while Tommy considers. "Well, obviously not. She's like a unicorn or a Disney Princess you can't hate her." He shrugs and does another couple of shots.
"I don't know." Oliver says thoughtfully. "I reckon snow white can go fuck herself."
Tommy rolls his eyes and downs another shot. "Just as well she's Rapunzel then." He slams the glass down and sticks his tongue out at Oliver, before lifting the bottle and refilling the glasses.
"Rapunzel's a Disney Princess?" Oliver frowns grabbing a couple of shots and downing them.
"Have you not seen Tangled?" He pauses with the shot glass halfway between the bar and his mouth, staring in disbelief at his friend.
"I'm a man." He responds defensively. "And I was on an island for five years, Tom."
"Even so, Tangled's awesome." He does a shot for emphasis. "Which reminds me, I need to be Flynn Rider for Halloween." He fusses with the shots for a moment trying to exchange his empty glasses for full ones
"Huh?"
"Rapunzel's consort. He's the only Disney prince other than Aladdin who marries into a royal family but isn't royal himself. Obviously, there's the Mulan/ Shang thing, but neither of them are actually royalty so it doesn't count." Tommy explains as he gathers and swallows his fresh shots.
"Tommy?"
"Yes, Ollie?"
"How much time did you spend with Thea in the last five years?" He asks gently, carefully approaching his friend as though he were an animal about to startle.
"Some, why?" Tommy answers distractedly.
"Because I think she may have filled your brain with too many rhinestones." He reaches past him and pushes the full shot glasses away.
"Shut up, I like Disney." He reaches for the glasses but is cut off by Oliver's arm. " You know I like Disney." He tells him turning to grab the bottle instead, but Oliver snags it before he can make contact. "Disney is my happy place." He says with a footstomp and a pout.
"If you start singing Let's get down to business I will cut you off." Oliver tells him, before handing him the bottle.
"You can't cut me off, I've barely started." Tommy pours another shot and downs it, then follows it with a second and third in quick succession.
"I'm older than you, that means I'm in charge." Oliver settles against the bar and starts swallowing down the already poured shots.
"I'd have said I was in charge cos it's my club, if I were you." Tommy tells him with a shrug.
"That too." Oliver says wincing slightly at the taste of the tequila, at least Tommy hasn't decided to neck a bottle of the good stuff.
"Well, don't cut me off till I start babbling about marine animals." Tommy tells him hopping up to sit on the bar.
"You're never going to tell me what happened that night are you?" Oliver complains with a sigh.
"It would genuinely be a more boring answer than you can come up with on your own." Tommy says with a tone that's far more sober than he should be able to manage following the amount he's had to drink.
"I don't believe you." Oliver tells him wagging a finger at him, it might even look threatening if he weren't also holding a shot.
"That's your lookout." Tommy shrugs.
They stay there in silence for a moment just the quiet sounds of two guys doing shots. Oliver drops his glass to the bar and reaches for another when a thought occurs to him.
"Have you been eating sushi in the office?" He asks with a frown.
"Nope, I haven't made it up there in a while now. Why?" Tommy looks at the bottle in his hand and then at the empty glasses on the bar. He shrugs to himself and takes a long slug from the bottle.
"I keep thinking I can smell rotting fish. I wondered if maybe you'd had some and it fallen behind something." Oliver shakes his head and does another shot.
"Not me." Tommy says, with as innocent an expression as he can manage. "Maybe you should consider getting a scan, perhaps you've got a brain... thing, with the stuff..." He makes motions with his hands to emphasise the point he's failing to make.
"Huh?" Oliver stares at him clearly befuddled.
"You know, with the stuff in your brain that makes you think you smell rubber or that everything tastes like the word sunflower." He awkwardly drags his legs up and twists himself around so that he is sitting cross-legged on the bartop.
"Yeah. Okay." Oliver responds, trying to work out the simplest way to get the tequila bottle away from his crazy talking friend.
"He means an aneurysm, or possibly a tumour." Felicity says as she appears suddenly from the direction of the basement.
"For what it counts I'd say you're more likely to have pissed someone off enough to hide something stinky." Tommy interjects from his perch on the bar as he surveys the bottle in front of him . "Have you done anything to anyone recently that might provoke vengeance?" He asks in a tone that sounds suspiciously like that employed by Mr. Archibald their high school guidance counsellor.
"No, that is the people who would currently exact vengeance would be more..." Oliver searches his mind for the right word to describe the sort of retaliation he typically encounters.
"Arrowy?" Felicity offers as she wanders up to him and snags one of the few remaining shots in front of him.
"I was going to say deadly, but sure." He grins at her as he watches her down the tequila with the slightest of flinches.
"Okay, I'm off." Diggle says clapping Oliver on the shoulder as he passes. "Felicity, do you need a lift?"
"No thanks, Digg. I came in my car, and I need to run through a couple of things with Oliver before I go." She waves her tablet at him, building plans already visible.
"Well then, I'll see you tomorrow." He raises a hand in goodbye. "Don't drink the whole bottle Tommy."
"I won't, Ollie's already had some." He says gesturing wildly with the bottle.
"Yeah" Comes the sceptical response. "Good luck, guys." He calls out, and Oliver's fairly sure the older man picks up his pace.
"So, what did you want to talk to me about?" Oliver asks turning to the blonde on his right.
Felicity snaps to attention and shows him what she's been working on. "The schematics for Thursday, do you think you can get up this way or will we need to work out some alternative route?" She grabs another shot while he reviews them.
"No, that way looks doable, but I think we want to get a secondary entry point ready anyway, just in case you need to send Digg in as backup." He says, tracing potential entrances with his eyes.
"Oh, he'll come in this way..." A bright purple nail appears on the right hand side of the screen.
"Right, so you're thinking we need a potential third breach point?" Oliver frowns.
"No, I think we might need a secondary exit." She says slamming her tequila.
"Hmm, we'll check it out tomorrow. Or do you think that'll be too late?" He gives her what she thinks of as his SuperSerious!Oliver face.
"It'll be fine so long as you don't spend the whole night hanging from the rafters." She shrugs.
"I've never spent the whole night hanging from the rafters." He says.
"Last Thursday you were up there for four hours." She says with her best Unnamused!Felicity face.
"I was training." He responds affronted.
"You were hanging." She insists. "It was like some David Blaine thing." This is partly directed at Tommy.
"I don't know what that means." Oliver says, and does another shot.
"A mostly pointless show of endurance that even if you pull off makes you look like a douche." Tommy interjects, then takes a slug from his bottle.
Felicity gestures towards Tommy with a determined look on her face that Oliver correctly interprets as. "It means that, dumbass."
"Like I said, I was training." Oliver says again, only with an odd primness to his tone.
"Then why weren't you doing crunches, or sit ups, or whatever?" She asks, taking her tablet back from him and carefully closing down the various files she's been using and hiding them away where her supervisor won't find them if he decides he needs to use her tablet again.
"It was endurance training." He asserts. "What if I have to hang off a building by my fingertips? I now know that I can do that for at least four hours." He points out with an oddly superior air.
"You were hanging by your knees." Felicity points out. "And you were only doing it so you didn't have to help Digg categorise the weaponry." She flicks him in the shoulder with her finger.
"Douche move Queen." Tommy announces, toasting Oliver with his bottle.
"Shut up, Tommy or I'll tell Felicity about your Disney fetish." He responds, and downs the last shot of the pile he confiscated from Tommy earlier.
"Oh, do you love Disney?" Felicity asks Tommy, her face lighting up. "Which is your favourite? It's The Lion King isn't it? You just want to be Simba, don't you?" She says her face starting to split with a huge grin.
"Don't act like you know me." Tommy pouts. "Everyone wants to be Simba." He mutters.
"I wanted to be Nala, she was way better than Simba." Felicity says thoughtfully.
"Of course, Ollie wanted to be Sid." Tommy says, rolling his eyes exaggeratedly (and almost immediately regretting it.
"Ugh, he would." She says, pulling an unimpressed face.
"Hey, the hyenas were awesome." Complains Oliver.
"The hyenas were idiots." Says Felicity.
"They were funny." Oliver insists.
"You're an idiot." Tommy takes another long swallow.
"Tommy, no name calling." Scolds Felicity.
"Sorry." His face doesn't do a very good job of matching his words though.
"He thinks you're Rapunzel." Oliver interjects apropos of nothing.
"Really?" Felicity says, slightly astonished. "I always felt I was more of a Belle, y'know bookish and practical." She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
"No, you're Rapunzel, sweet and kind, but also ten kinds of totally kickass." Tommy drains the bottle. "Plus, I feel like you're a girl who could kick it shoeless." He nods emphatically (which also lead him to wonder when they put the bar on a turntable).
"Thanks." She gives him an appraising look. "You're Aladdin, none of the others have enough personality, except Flynn, but he's too selfish."
"Oh." Tommy's face falls slightly.
"You look most like him though." She adds with a slight smile.
"Thanks." He replies with his most boyish grin. "Do we even need to say who Oliver is?" He asks raising an eyebrow.
"Clearly I'm the one from Little Mermaid." He says with an arm wave to indicate "Duh!"
"Ha!" Laughs Tommy as Felicity says "You're not Eric."
"I am, lost at sea and all." He insists.
"No, you're Adam." Felicity says gently.
"Oh, yes." Tommy agrees.
"Which one's Adam? Is that Snow White? I hate Snow White."
"No, Snow's prince is officially called Charming." Felicity says pulling a slightly disgusted face.
"So who's Adam?" He asks confused.
"Belle's prince." Answers Felicity.
"Belle as in Beauty and the Beast, Belle?" He asks, somewhat affronted. "You think I'm a beast?"
"No, I think you're a selfish jerk who went through a traumatic experience and currently requires the love of a good woman to sort himself out." Explains Tommy.
"Why am I hanging out with you two?" Asks Oliver with a shake of his head.
"You like us." Says Felicity as Tommy answers "You pay us."
"Tommy!" Felicity scolds in that tone she has that reminds her of her mother.
"Well he does." Tommy mutters to himself.
"We discussed this before, he has very little impact on our bank accounts." Felicity points out.
"That's true." Tommy relents. "Felicity's right, you must like us."
"Wait a minute. Did you say you hate Snow White?" Felicity asks.
"Uh, yeah. Bluebirds and hanging with dwarfs and how dumb do you have to be to take the apple from the old lady?" He complains. "Besides, I prefer blondes."
"You've never seen Once Upon a Time have you?" Felicity asks shaking her head.
"For g-... I was on a freaking island for five years. And right now I have more important things to do than catch up on pop culture." He growls.
Tommy and Felicity dissolve into laughter.
"I hate you both." He mumbles grumpily and slumps with his head on his folded arms on the bar.
"You love us Ollie. We're fantastically fantasticated." Tommy says with a flourish of his arms.
Oliver gives Tommy a look. "I think you might have had enough buddy."
"I disagree. Vehemently." Tommy tries to emphatically slap the bar with his hand but misses and wobbles precariously despite what should be a very sturdy position on the bar.
"Tommy, you're going to have to go back to Laurel and she will not be happy if you vomit tequila everywhere." Oliver says, a certain amount of worry in his voice.
"Laurel's with her dad tonight. I'm staying at yours." Tommy says, waving Oliver's concerns away with one hand.
"And when was that decided?" Oliver asks.
"Since when do I have to ask? You've got eleventy billion rooms in that place. I know for a fact you're not sure you've seen every room in the whole thing. It's not like I'm asking to crash on the couch in your studio apartment, I just want to sleep on Egyptian cotton sheets." Tommy responds half affronted, half pouting and all in all kind of wheedling.
"Nah-nah-na-nah-nah-nah sheets of Egyptian cotton." Felicity mumbles as she fiddles around on her tablet.
"Oh, Thea loved that film." Oliver says. "She made us watch it like all the time. More than Monsters Inc."
"Boo?" Tommy asks in the deepest voice he can manage.
"Kitty?" Replies Oliver, getting a surprisingly high pitch.
"You're a little girl and you're Sully?" Felicity asks disbelievingly.
"Actually Thea decided she was Boo, he was Sully and I was Mike." Tommy explains, getting a slightly worrying look on his face, like he might be fighting the urge to regurgitate.
"Aww." Felicity says, mostly cos her eyes are on her screen not the gradually greening boy on the bar.
"Don't aww that was a very traumatic Halloween, there were stilts in my costume." Oliver complains.
"At least you didn't have to dress as a giant eyeball." Tommy says downing a shot he's found somewhere. "And unless I'm very much mistaken you convinced Laurel to have some borderline fetish sex with you while I took your sister round the neighbourhood collecting candy."
"Which means you got candy, I didn't." Oliver whines.
"You got sex Ollie, sex beats candy." Explains Tommy with a tone that implies this argument has happened before (Felicity would not be surprised if it has).
"Not always." Oliver says, though he doesn't sound very convincing, even to himself.
"Then you're doing it wrong." Tommy sighs, flopping backwards, so he's now lying on the bar. His legs still crossed like a kid in kindergarten.
"Have you considered that maybe it's your candy choices that are wrong?" Oliver continues, desperately trying to fight what is quite clearly a losing battle.
"Sex beats candy!" Tommy yells, as loud as he can.
"Not when you need to stay up all night writing code. At times like that only Red Vines and Diet Dr. Pepper will do." Felicity chips in, tapping her screen and adding notes to her ongoing plan to upgrade to a better system, she bookmarks the server she wants to pitch to Oliver and then bookmarks the one she actually wants him to buy, and closes the windows.
"Except in those specific circumstances, sex beats candy." Tommy concedes.
"Thanks." She says with a smile.
"You know he wouldn't share his candy with me?" Oliver grumbles.
"Don't complain Laurel shared hers." It comes out of her mouth before she can stop it and the look on her face is as shocked as theirs.
"Felicity!" Oliver yells.
"What?"
"You're supposed to be on my side." He whines, moving closer to her in a less aggressive but not dissimilar manner to the one he utilises with those who've failed this city.
"What? Since when? I never agreed to that. In fact, I think my behaviour has on multiple occasions indicated that while I do intend to support you in all your endeavours I have not now nor will I ever support you wholeheartedly and without question. Furthermore, it is my belief that calling you out on your bullshit is one of the more important aspects of my job with you and one that I can do better than Digg on account of the fact I am able to disagree with you without running the risk of being punched in the face. You can't intimidate me Oliver, it won't work." She babbles, backing away into the bar as he crowds in closer. Oliver leans in closer, careful not to stop her from getting free if she wants, but as always Felicity holds her ground.
"Yeah buddy, you need to step off." Tommy slurs from his perch.
"Step off?" There's a smirk on Oliver's face and he's rapidly losing interest in teasing Felicity.
"Yeah, it's a... thing, that we say... on the streets." Tommy tries, realising what it is he's saying.
"The mean streets?" Oliver asks with a raised eyebrow.
"Hey, I'm much more ghetto now than I was six months ago." Tommy insists full to the brim with righteous indignation (and tequila).
"Sadly, that is very, very true." Oliver says with a carefully choreographed headshake of sadness.
"Because you're so ghetto yourself. I'm more ghetto than either of you and I would never use the word ghetto to describe myself." Felicity's voice is full of disbelief (and her mother).
"Hey, I think surviving an island for five years, makes me much more ghetto than Tommy. Or you." Oliver continues, in a tone that leaves Felicity waiting for him to stamp his foot.
"You were a billionaire the whole time, that makes me ghettoer than you." Tommy says, carefully laying back on the bar.
"Felicity, tell Tommy I'm more ghetto." Oliver says, in his best Hood voice.
"Felicity, tell Oliver he's as ghetto as Donald Trump." Tommy adds, in his best annoying child voice.
"You guys keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means." Felicity tells them, extracting herself from where Oliver is getting increasingly close to wedging her into the bar.
"What are you trying to say?" Asks Oliver as Tommy confusedly says "Why are you quoting The Princess Bride?"
"Okay, on the privileged white male ghetto scale Oliver is marginally more ghetto for not recognising the quote from the Princess Bride. Now can we please stop talking about this as though either of you are even remotely able to describe yourselves with that word considering you were both raised in a world of safety and privilege unfathomable to normal people. The pair of you are being offensive, and you're just lucky that I wasn't actually raised in that bad a part of town or I would give the pair of you a technological smackdown right now." Felicity's realises, she's not only using her loud voice she's channelling her mother.
"Why are you yelling at us?" Oliver asks seriously.
"You're mean." Tommy pouts.
"You two need to quit drinking tequila. You're going to the bad place." She actually wags her finger at them, and has to fight the urge to break it off.
"What bad place?"
"The place where I'm standing on the riverside at 4.00 in the morning playing taxi." She throws her arms up in frustration and wonders why she didn't just leave, she could've talked schematics tomorrow.
"You could've not come." Oliver insists causing Felicity to clench her fists, and bite down on her lips.
"Ollie, she really had no choice." Tommy tells him gently, but firmly, he even makes the effort to sit back up.
"It's not like anyone forced her." He responds, waving an arm to indicate their ridiculousness.
"I tried to call a cab and you broke my phone Ollie." Tommy's, not just sitting up, he's actually twisting around to try and get down, though he's drunk enough he's not making the greatest headway.
"Stop making shit up, Tommy." He makes another dismissive gesture and stalks to the nearest barstool.
"He's not." Felicity says, making her way towards him like a zookeeper with a restless big cat.
"You guys aren't going to get me this easily." He points at them. "You need to get over the thing with the goldfish Tommy." He adds, as Tommy finally drops to the floor, and takes a moment to find his, increasingly unsteady, feet.
"Hey, it was very disturbing for 14 year old." Tommy says, heading towards (in the broadest definition of the word) his best friend.
"It was not." Oliver makes another dismissive gesture, and Felicity wonders what she'd have to offer Digg to make him break his boss' arms.
"And it wasn't a goldfish it was lionfish, which is venomous and while usually non-fatal to the healthy, children are a higher risk group." Tommy continues, in what would probably be a reasonable and perhaps even intimidating tone, were he not reeling like a vertiginous Tilt O' Whirl patron after their fourth consecutive ride.
"But you were fine."
"You told me I'd swallowed it, even if it hadn't been potentially lethal do you know how much it cost? My dad would've killed me." Tommy complains, pausing to steady himself on his way towards Oliver.
"I got stuck on an island for five years, how about we call it even on the trauma scale?" Oliver tells him dismissively.
"Dude, do not use the island to win arguments, it's not cool and it diminishes whatever you went through." Tommy's face is so sad, it makes Felicity want to cry.
"Stop blaming me for shit I did as a kid." Oliver shouts.
"It wasn't me that brought it up, and before you start acting all high and mighty drunk Oliver is still the same douchebag he always was." Tommy says, finally reaching him, and does his best to stab a finger menacingly into his chest. What actually happens is more like poking someone with a wet noodle, but Felicity mentally awards him an A for effort.
"It was you! You've done something to the office to punish me." Oliver says rounding on her before she even realises he's moved.
"What? I only do technological revenge, everyone knows that." She proclaims, unsure quite how to cope with the sudden change in target.
"How do you know it wasn't technological?" Oliver declares, having apparently decided that enough tequila makes him Perry Mason.
"You said something happened to the office and you haven't complained about the lights or anything, I just assumed." She stammers.
"You're not a Disney Princess, you're actually Maleficent." He slaps a hand down on the nearest flat service, and Felicity has brief flash of Raymond Burr in tight green leather, luckily she suppresses the shudder.
"Cool, I'm a dragon." She says with slightly forced brightness.
"No, she's a Disney Princess. You're a Disney Princess." Tommy reassures her, with his best placatory tone.
"She's an evil genius, she's being crafty, Disney Princesses are all good and kind and nice." Oliver points emphatically as he lists each princess trait.
"She can prank you and still be a Disney Princess numbnuts, and maybe you should be a better person if you don't like it." Tommy tries to hit him in the shoulder, but misses and reels in the general direction of Felicity.
"And maybe you should quit drinking." Felicity catches him and manages to keep him on his feet though she almost goes down in the process.
"He went after Disney. Disney's sacred." Tommy mumbles into her shoulder, sounding so very like a little boy it makes Felicity's heart hurt.
"No he didn't, he said I wasn't fit to be Disney." She pets him on the shoulder reassuringly.
"Because you're too smart. He attacked my happy place." He says in his most affronted tone, and a little part of her heart swells, that his happy place has girls who are smart as well as girls who are pretty. "I'm glad you hid that fish in his sofa and it's now driving him crazy." Her heart falls to her feet and she carefully resists the urge to pinch him. Hard.
"Ixnay onway ethay ishfay inway ontfray ofway Oliverway." She growls at him.
"Oh god, I've lost the ability to understand English." Tommy's face falls and he gets that lost little boy look on his face that's so utterly painful because it's so real. "I hate it when that happens, but it usually takes at least two bottles of tequila and something from a pharmaceutically minded botanist." Of course being Tommy, he can't let a moment of emotional honesty go unsubverted.
"I knew it! I knew you'd done something! And now, now you've admitted it!" Oliver is practically dancing with glee at his big discovery.
"What am I supposed to have admitted to?" Of course he's never met Felicity in full on fronting mode.
"Felicity, speaking in pig latin only works in front of people under five." He says in a slightly patronising tone of voice.
"What pig latin?" She uses her really blank face, the one with the really huge eyes.
"Just now, you told Tommy not to talk about the fish in front of me." He says, but there's a slight tone in his voice that makes her think she might have planted a tiny seed of doubt.
"Tommy, do you remember what he's talking about?" She asks in her best vaguely puzzled tone.
"I'm sorry, my ability to understand language is apparently on the fritz, I'm not the best person to ask about anything." Tommy lays his head on her shoulder and looks about as pathetic as a guy in top to toe designer labels can.
"I know you did it, and I'll find the proof and then I'll make you pay." Oliver promises.
"You should probably go home Oliver, I think you've had too much to drink. You're starting to talk crazy." Felicity tells him, putting an arm around Tommy, to make the really awkward position they're in feel less awkward, it doesn't really work.
"You're good, I'll give you that..." Oliver is still doing his best impression of a TV detective.
"You'll give me that? You don't need to give me anything Oliver." She takes a look at Tommy and leans him against the bar.
"Oh, I do. Game recognises game, Felicity. And it is on." He watches as Felicity heads behind the bar and starts rifling through the bar towels.
"I'm very confused, and I'm feeling really very quite sick." Tommy says, looking greener than ever, and worryingly sweaty. Felicity takes a bar towel and wets it in the remains of a champagne bucket, she wrings it out and hands it to him.
"Don't throw up in the bar area Tommy." She says and goes to the ice bucket behind the bar and pulls out the remaining solid pieces, carefully setting them on the dish that had held various garnishes earlier in the night and puts the dish on the bar next to him.
"Please, I haven't done that since the great Jaegerbombing of '09." He says, adjusting the towel so it sits on the back of his neck, then picking up a piece of the ice and licking it cautiously. When he doesn't immediately lose the bottle of Cuervo he's drunk he pops it in his mouth and sucks on it thoughtfully.
"Sometimes, I'm almost glad I was on the island." Oliver says with a tone of resignation.
"Don't say that Ollie. It was like the creepy bit in Fantasia with you gone." Tommy says, his words a little garbled by the ice and booze.
"Well, I'm back now, the hippos won't get you." He reaches out and adjusts the towel around his best friend's neck with a gentle smile.
"You were scared of the hippos?" Felicity asks leaning against the bar in anticipation.
"He is scared of the hippos." Oliver responds with a raised eyebrow.
"Their skirts were round their armpits, they were otherwise naked and at one point you went into its mouth. The hippos are super creepy." Tommy says defensively, before effectively ending the conversation with his next statement. "I'm going to puke." He gets up and starts making his way across the floor.
"Use the men's room you'll throw up as soon as you enter the office." Oliver calls after him. "Because of the smell." He pointedly directs at Felicity.
"You should have someone look at that. Sounds like you might have a real problem." She says without the slightest note of sympathy in her voice as she digs around behind the bar again.
"I will find out what happened." Oliver assures her making full eye contact when her head pops up from where she's found a packet of Cheetos.
"You certainly seem to think so." She stuffs an orange stick in her mouth and Oliver has to bite his lip not to smile at the fact she's not trying to be cute about it, the way pretty much every other woman he's not related to would.
"Tomorrow, I'm stripping the office. If I find anything hidden in there that makes a smell I'll be blaming you. And I will have my vengeance." He tells her with a grin.
"I'm positively shaking in my boots." She says returning the grin. "Cheeto?" The packet gets tilted at him.
"Technically those are mine. Or are you putting cash in the register?" He grabs a couple and eats one, holding the rest for later.
"I regularly risk jail for you by doing illegal things to help you catch bad guys. I think that a packet of Cheetos is the least that you owe me." She sticks another one in her mouth and moans extravagantly. "mmmmmmm E-numbers."
He laughs at her despite himself, the way he always does when she's concerned, with that lightness he only otherwise feels when he's with Tommy. He eats another Cheeto with a smile on his face.
"So," she says. "Why is he drinking Tequila by the metric fluid-fuckton?" She chomps on another Cheeto as a strange form of emphasis.
"I don't know, I think he spoke to his Dad." Oliver says with a shrug.
"You know, if you're not comfortable telling me his business, that is an acceptable answer." She explains levelly.
"No, Tommy wouldn't mind. I genuinely don't know." Oliver thoughtfully eats his last Cheeto. "Tommy says he hates everyone and needs to drink, I sit there and make sure he doesn't choke on his own vomit, that's how it works."
Felicity gives him an appraising look. "Okay, go make sure he's not dying. I'll see you tomorrow." She sucks Cheeto dust off her fingers and a half formed dirty thought flits across his mind in some Pavlovian response.
"You sure?" He asks ignoring the fleeting thought and concentrating on the task at hand.
"Yeah, Tommy needs you." She glances at her watch. "And I need to be at work in five hours." She walks around the bar and grabs her bag and tablet. "Go check on him, I can make it to my car fine."
"Are you sure?" He's not entirely convinced, but she's in the employee lot tonight so he's not too worried.
"I'll. Be. Fine." She annunciates, turning on a heel and heading out the door before it really occurs to him to just ignore her and go anyway.
Oliver hears the door to the club slam and the beep of the security alarm re-engaging. He sighs to himself and climbs off his stool heading in the direction Tommy just went. The club echoes with his footsteps, and he feels odd to be almost completely alone, when just six months ago that was all he ever was. He pushes open the bathroom door and the sound of Tommy praying to the porcelain gods is amplified to truly disgusting levels. He wanders through pushing stall doors until he finds his friend curled up and heaving.
"How're you doing there buddy?" Oliver crouches in the doorway, carefully maintaining minimum safe distance. Tommy just groans in response, Oliver switches from crouched to sitting, stretching his legs ahead of him. "I probably should have brought you some water, or ice or something."
Tommy hauls himself up and heaves a few times but nothing more happens. He drops back to sitting on the floor and rests his head against the tile floor, he reaches in his pocket and pulls out the bar towel, wiping his face carefully. "Thanks man, I needed that." He grins at Oliver, and Oliver grins back.
"You think you're done now?" Oliver asks.
"Yeah, I think I'm done." He reaches up to close the lid and flushes.
"Want to tell me why you felt the need to do that?" Oliver asks, eyes firmly on his knees.
"Well, you see, I drank a lot of tequila..." Tommy says with a surprising amount of good humour.
"I meant why did you feel the need to drink a lot of Tequila, dude." Oliver says just about managing to avoid laughing at Tommy's lame joke. "You know you can tell me."
"Yeah, but..." Tommy sighs.
"But what?"
"It gets boring." Tommy says with a frown. Oliver's seen him be serious more often than most, but it always looks out of place. He always expects Tommy to be laughing at himself and his pain, and for the first time it hits Oliver how messed up that is.
"What does?"
"Telling you about how my dad's the worst, again." Tommy shrugs.
"That's not boring." Oliver reassures him.
"It is for me." Tommy grins.
"C'mon, let's get you back to mine and you can tell me all about it." He pushes himself up and offers his hand to Tommy, pulling him to his feet.
"Well, since you ask so nicely." Tommy says, leaning heavily on Oliver as they make their way out. "I don't suppose you've got any gum?" His face right next to Oliver's.
"I wish." Says Oliver trying to get his face away from Tommy's. "But, since you're my best friend, you can borrow my toothbrush when we get home."
"Thanks buddy, you don't have to do that." Tommy breathes into Oliver's face, making his eyes water.
"No, really, I insist." Oliver says while trying not to breathe in.
"That bad huh?" Tommy asks doing his best not to breathe on him again.
"Worse." Oliver says with a grimace. "But don't worry, I still like you."
"Thanks man. I still like you too y'know. No matter what." Oliver has a feeling he's not talking about vomit breath.
"Yeah, Tommy. No matter what." Tommy smiles serenely, and Oliver figures that so long as he's smiling now, whatever Malcolm's done to him can wait till the morning.
Author's Note 2: I would like to use this opportunity to apologise for that one superawkward segue from Felicity and Oliver, it's stuff like that why I'm doing this for free. If you'd like to complain I now have a Tumblr you can try me at, though I haven't really worked out how to do it yet. Here's the address .