This is set in early season 2. Thea is still running Verdant, Roy is not a moody Hulk, Moira is alive and Oliver is still under the impression that Slade is dead. Basically, simpler times.
It didn't take much of an excuse for Thea to plan a party and the 31st of October was more than enough incentive to close Verdant down for the night for a private party; or not so private as it would seem. It seemed she had invited half of Starling City including the entire staff of Queen Consolidated and every person she had ever met under 30. Oliver certainly wasn't that excited to attend which was why it was only one hour before the party was due to start and he and Dig were responding to a gunfire report at the docks. Felicity as always was monitoring from her post in front of her many monitors, hacking into the video feeds at the docks. She had been getting ready for the party at Verdant when she had gotten the call from Oliver. Rushing over to the Foundry she found it empty, Oliver and Digg already on their way. She quickly got to work, securing all the feeds and setting up the comms.
"Are you guys on site?" Felicity asked through the comms.
"Yes." Oliver quickly answered. "Do you have eyes on us yet?"
"Almost, give me one second." Felicity murmured as her emerald coloured nails flew across the keyboard. "Can you hear gunfire? Which section of the docks is it coming from so I can pull up the right footage?"
Instead of Oliver's reply, Felicity could only hear faint static and overwhelming silence.
"Oliver?" Felicity shouted frantically down the comms. "Digg are you there?"
Felicity was met only with faint static and overwhelming silence.
"Dammit, they're blocking our comms." Felicity growled with growing apprehension. Why would someone be blocking radio frequencies at a thug gun fight.
As Felicity continued to hack the survelliance cameras she saw the tell tell signs in the system of another hacker actively trying to block her out.
"Lucky, I'm better." Felicity mumbled with one last violent hit of the return key.
"Oh, no." Felicity gasped as she took in the many camera feeds the appeared on her screen.
She watched as a group of men fired at each other but none of them went down. They were using blanks. It was a trap. Felicity barely had time to process a plan before she switched the bluetooth headset she wore to her cell phone and started running to parking lot.
"Quentin Lance." Lance answered through her bluetooth.
"This is Felicity. Our mutual friend is responding to gunfire at the docks. It's a trap. Get your men there now." Felicity ordered before she burst out of the metal door into the cool Starling night. She began walking towards her car before she second guessed herself. The docks was about to be crawling with cops and she didn't have time to hide her car when she got there. It was registered in her name and the fact that a QC Executive Assistant was seen at the scene of a shoot out involving the Arrow might bring up more questions that she was prepared to answer.
"I can't believe I'm doing this." Felicity mumbled to herself as she ran over to what appeared to be an innocuous storage unit built into the side of Verdant. Felicity of course knew better. She quickly unlocked it with her code and threw up the rolling door. She was met with the three unregistered, unmarked motorcycles Oliver kept as spares. He totalled them often enough to need a few reserves.
"I swore I wouldn't ride one of these after my 20th birthday." Felicity groaned to herself throwing her leg over the nearest black Ducati and pulling the helmet over her head. Thank god her costume was motorcycle friendly and good at concealing her identity. She fired up the engine, which was much more powerful than any she had ridden before but desperate times called for desperate measures.
She sped out of the garage in the direction of the docks, hoping and praying that she got there in time to warn Oliver and Digg. Thankfully it was only 10 minutes away; 5 if she pushed the motorcycle anywhere near as hard as Oliver did.
When she got to the entrance to the dock, Felicity quickly took out her phone and brought up the surveillance feed she had routed from the Foundry. She brought up the footage just in time to see dozens of men with guns streaming out of the shipping containers that surrounded Oliver and Diggle.
"No…" she breathed, watching horrified as they were both knocked out. Soon a man appeared dressed in a suit and a cruel smirk. He began issuing hurried orders as the sound of sirens began in the distance. Felicity brought up Oliver's tracking info on her phone as they were dragged out of frame. She waited as the little green dot travelled around two blocks and into a nearby warehouse. Close enough to provide a quick spot for an endless list of terrible things but far enough away that it would take the police a long time to secure the docks and surrounding buildings. This wasn't good.
Felicity quickly rode off in the direction of the warehouse where Oliver was, pulling up and parking it behind a garbage skip and throwing off the helmet that was about 5 sizes too big for her. She drew down the mask of her costume which was meant to be one big, hilarious inside joke. Some joke now. She squeezed through a hole in the wall of the abandoned warehouse that squatters had long since created for themselves, and set off in the direction of the little green dot on her phone. As she neared the metal room she was searching for, she heard voices.
"Create a distraction on the other side of the docks so the Police don't find us for awhile. I'm nowhere near done with him." A calm but chilling voice echoed through the warehouse. "You stay here, the rest of you, go."
Felicity sighed a breath of sigh of relief as she heard the rest of the men rush in the other direction but she was still acutely aware that there were two highly dangerous, probably armed men still standing over Oliver and Digg. She quietly slipped through a side door and took advantage of the dark and the advantageous colour of her halloween costume to sneak into the room where Oliver's tracker was. She clamped her hand over her mouth to silence her horrified gasp as she took in the scene in front of her. The dangerous man in the suit she had seen on video feed was standing over Oliver with a metal pipe. Oliver was facing away from her and judging from the soft bobbing of his head, he was slowly regaining consciousness only to find he was very securely tied to a sturdy metal chair. Digg was on the same side of the room, mere feet from where she hid behind industrial shelving and wooden crates. He was very clearly unconscious, while the only other man in the room stood over him holding a gun with his back to Felicity.
"You and your partner here have cost me a lot of business." The man in the suit said in heavily accented English. Somewhere from Eastern Europe, Felicity noted to herself, not that the information would really help in the situation. "All my business associates have left Starling City because of you and I am suddenly without anyone to buy my products."
"And what products would they be." Oliver spat, his hood still up and his voice modulator on.
Felicity jumped but thankfully remained quiet when the man whipped the pipe across Oliver's face.
"I don't believe I asked you to speak." The man sneered, still eerily calm. "But since you asked… A little of everything really. Guns, drugs, even the occasional bomb."
He began circling around Oliver, taunting him with the pole and threatening to hit him with it at any moment. Felicity's mind started reeling, looking around for any solution to their particularly terrible predicament. She remembered that the man standing over Diggle was the only one who seemed to be armed, with a gun at least, and he was thankfully facing away from her. She saw Oliver's bow and quiver laying beside the man, still nocked with the arrow Oliver never had a chance to fire. Felicity also noticed a particularly large crowbar on the wooden crate in front of her.
"My problem can be quite easily solved though, I think. You see if there is no Vigilante to interrupt my business dealings, my customers will very quickly return. But first…" The man circled around behind Oliver reaching towards his hood. "I would like to know who it is I am killing before I beat you to death."
This was it, the man was going to reveal Oliver's identity. While they obviously hadn't recognised Diggle there was no chance that they wouldn't recognise the famous CEO of the biggest corporation in Starling. Felicity reacted on instinct, silently charging forward before she had a chance to even think. If she had that chance, she probably would have thought she was crazy and suicidal.
Felicity brought the crowbar down on the thugs head with as much force as she could muster and didn't pause to watch him crumple beside Diggle, the distinct clatter of a gun hitting the concrete floor. She launched herself in the direction of Oliver's bow, grabbing it a quickly spinning on one knee to draw it at the man standing over Oliver. If it weren't for the possible impending death, she might have paused for a moment to congratulate herself for being such a good fake badass. Felicity couldn't help but thank her lucky stars that the arrow was already knocked because there was no way she would have gotten the little plastic thing slotted into the string and still look like a convincing archer. She had no idea how Oliver did it so fast.
But luckily she had spent enough time watching Oliver train to know approximately how she was meant to hold the bow, even if she felt entirely sure she couldn't hit the broad side of a barn firing one. That wasn't important though, giving Oliver a few seconds to gain the element or surprise didn't mean she actually had to shoot; she just had to look the part.
The man in the suit whipped around to see Felicity take aim, shifting to move Oliver between them both. Felicity knew that Oliver couldn't see her behind him, especially with his hood still up. She needed to get where Oliver could see her and realise she could give him a moment of distraction.
"Well, well. You sure do like to dress up your beautiful sidekicks in leather." He chuckled heartlessly at Oliver. "Even sharing your colours this time I see."
What was meant to be a hilarious joke and somewhat sexy halloween costume was currently the only thing giving Felicity any sense of credibility as she held the bow aimed at him. She slowly rose to her feet, keeping the arrow trained on him, and began circling around Oliver so that he could see her and realise what was going on. The man of course slowly circled with her until he was standing behind Oliver, the metal pipe pulled firmly across his neck. As Felicity came into Oliver's view, the way his blue eyes widened behind his mask would have been comical if it wasn't for the current situation.
"Now what?" The man sneered, crouched behind Oliver.
Felicity took another moment to say thanks for her thoroughness in the joke. She had even build a little tech into her costume. Tech she had the forethought to turn on just before she rushed the goon with a gun.
"Step away from him." Felicity said in her most menacing voice, almost startling at the way her voice sounded through the modulator. She knew she must have been quite the sight. Dressed in head to toe green leather with the exception of her bare waist, a light green arrow head across the chest of her leather top. She had been brainstorming with Thea for costumes as they planned the party together because it was as much for QC as it was for Verdant. Felicity had scoffed when Thea suggested she go as the Arrow's sexy sidekick, not knowing how she and her brother spent their nights. It was only later that Felicity had thought about how completely hilarious it would be to turn up in a costume so completely on the nose while only Oliver, Digg and maybe Lance realised the inside joke. That was how she came to be in a costume that ended up serving an entirely different, lest humorous purpose. Her hair was pulled up in her customary ponytail, a green leather mask obscuring her face all the way up to her hair line. Her waist and arms were bare because there was a certain degree of skin required of female superhero halloween costumes and she honestly thought it would have made the whole spectacle even funnier. There was even a prop bow and quiver at the Foundry where she had left it, never thinking that she would end up holding a real, and very deadly, bow and arrow that night.
"You aren't going to risk hitting your hero here." The man taunted from behind Oliver, pulling the metal bar tight across his throat.
Felicity tried desperately not to look at Oliver's distracting face. It was an odd mixture of reactions she couldn't quite read and she couldn't afford to get distracted. She might not be able to win with a bow of brawn but she could do it the way she always did; with brains.
"If you know anything about his aim, that should tell you about mine." Felicity bluffed, the voice modulator turning her usually feminine voice into something deep and menacing. "This is a high powered compound bow. It fires an arrow at 300 feet per second. We are about 30 feet from each other. That means that this arrow will reach you in one tenth of a second. The average human reaction time is three times that. So tell me, how fast are you?"
Felicity had custom ordered the bow in her hands so she knew enough about the specs to hopefully intimidate the man, if not distract him while Oliver planned his escape. She left the empty threat hanging in the air, hoping it sounded menacing.
"Works the same way, sweetheart." The man sneered. "If I snap his neck it was still take you that long to kill me and he will still be dead. I suppose we have reached a stalemate."
Felicity nearly loosed the arrow in shock when a loud gunshot rang out and burst of blood erupted from the gunrunner's temple. She quickly looked to Digg who had silently regained conciousness and shot him from the side, careful not to hit Oliver and Felicity with a stray bullet.
"I hate chess." Diggle groaned as he pulled himself to his feet and checking that his would-be-guard was still unconscious.
Felicity quickly lowered the bow and rushed to untie Oliver, quickly realising just how tight the knots were. Thank god Diggle had woken up because there was no way Oliver had been getting out of them. Grabbing the arrow she had just been threatening with, she used it to cut through the ropes. As soon as he was free she grasped his cheeks firmly, pulling his head up to inspect the damage of the pipe. Oliver had a gash across his cheekbone and a rapidly blooming black eye, but otherwise seemed fine.
"Can you move?" Felicity asked, startling herself with the voice modulator and quickly turning it off.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Oliver answered in a daze, slowly standing up and grabbing his bow and quiver.
"The SCPD are searching the area and they probably heard the shot." Felicity said, jumping into action again and leading Digg and Oliver through the back of the warehouse to where she had stashed the bike.
When Oliver and Digg saw the black Ducati Felicity was throwing her leg over after grabbing the helmet, they couldn't resist commenting once the shock had worn off.
"Okay, what are you wearing and why are you riding my bike?" Oliver questioned in a strained voice.
Felicity sighed as she threw them both a look that clearly said "Really, now?"
"Well I couldn't very well turn up in my Mini, which is registered in my name by the way. And I was getting ready for the costume party at Verdant when you called. It was meant to be an inside joke but then when after all hell broke loose tonight I guess it isn't so funny now."
"No but it is sexy as hell." Diggle teased with a grin and all the complimentary affection of an older brother while Oliver made a quiet choking noise.
"Very funny Digg, and for that you're walking." Felicity teased back. "Seriously though, we all can't fit on this death machine."
"You and Oliver go." Digg said. "I'll circle back and get Oliver's bike. The car I drove over here will attract less attention so I will come back in the morning to get it."
"Are you sure you are okay?" Felicity asked worriedly. "You got knocked out too."
"Yeah I'm good. No concussion, promise. The headache's even gone." Diggle assured her.
"Scoot back." Oliver grumbled, walking towards the bike.
"Yeah… no." Felicity retorted. "You just took a metal pipe across the face. I am sure as hell not letting you in the control on a motorcycle, especially while I'm on it."
"And I should let you drive? You don't even have a licence."
"I got here didn't I?" Felicity snapped with a pointed look. "I haven't always been the innocent IT girl. I had a bad boy phase my freshman year of college that included more than one motorcycle now get on."
"Listen to the woman, Oliver. Meet you back at the Foundry." Digg smirked before running down the alleyway.
"Here, you wear the helmet. It's too big for me anyways and I doubt your hood is going to stay on and my mask will." Felicity teased as Oliver got onto the bike behind her. "I guess I'm just better at designing a vigilante costumes than you."
Before Oliver got a chance to come up with a witty retort, Felicity fired up the bike and sped off towards the Foundry. Oliver had no choice but to grip Felicity's bare waist tightly, feeling incredibly thankful for his green leather gloves. If he could actually feel the smooth skin, and the tight green leather encasing it, beneath his finger tips he didn't know what he would do.
The ride back to Foundry was short and before too long, the black Ducati was tucked in beside the others and they used the back entrance to sneak into the basement of Verdant to wait for Diggle, away from the prying eyes of the party that was now in full swing.
Felicity walked over and collapsed in her chair, the adrenaline in her system giving way to exhaustion. She reached up and pulled the mask of her head while Oliver leant up against the metal table across from her.
"Why did you come to the docks? You couldn't have gotten yourself killed." Oliver said quietly after a long pause.
Felicity sighed. She should have known the ride back would give Oliver enough time to switch from snarky to guilty and self loathing.
"Oliver the comms were down and you were both walking into a trap. Was I supposed to just wait around here until Lance called and told me he found your bodies?" Felicity answered, anger and a little more volume than usual tinting her tone. "You wouldn't stand by and watch me walk into a trap and get myself killed so don't expect me to do anything different just because I'm not some solider. End of discussion."
After a long awkward pause where Oliver inevitable beat himself up some more in his head Felicity took the opportunity to break the tension.
"Besides, at least I looked the part tonight." Felicity joked and Oliver couldn't help but release a strained laugh along with her, which fairly quickly gave way to a much closer inspection of her costume and what might have been described as a hungry look.
"Um… let me check you for a concussion." Felicity said, crossing to the medical cabinet and getting a small medical flashlight and the supplies she needed to clean up the cut across his cheek. After checking his pupil response, she was relatively certain he didn't need to go to the hospital. She was putting antiseptic on his cheek when Digg walked in.
"Well don't you two make the leathery green sight." Diggle whistled as he walked down the metal stairs.
Felicity just rolled her eyes with a smile while Oliver shot him a glare that clearly said shut up.
"I might have mentioned this before but damn, Smoak!" Diggle continued to tease Felicity. "That thug didn't know what hit him and I'm pretty sure I could have walked right up to that arms dealer and pistol whipped him and he would't have seen me coming. He was too distracted being held up by the sexy Arrow."
Diggle chuckled when Oliver let out a feral and very Arrow-y growl.
"Don't worry, Oliver. You're still sexy Arrow too." Felicity teased, patting his arm as she gathered the medical supplies and returned them, not noticing how Oliver froze under her touch and words. Of course, that only made Diggle double over and laugh harder.
"I better go call Thea and make up an excuse for why we aren't going to be there tonight." Felicity said, grabbing her phone and walking back to sit at her desk. The way Oliver's eyes followed the exact path of Felicity's leather clad ass didn't escape Diggle's attention.
"Just imagine if she had turned up to the party in that. She would have needed your arrows to keep all the men at bay." Diggle said under his breath, thoroughly enjoying torturing his clueless boss who only growled in return.
"Hi, Thea?" Felicity said from the other side of the Foundry into her phone. "Sorry but I don't think we can make it tonight. There has been a security breach at QC. Nothing serious but we have to take care of it tonight, it can't wait. Oliver and Diggle are tied up at the moment trying to fix it."
Oliver watched as Felicity smoothly covered for them and trying desperately and very unsuccessfully to not stare at her from where he stood. Once she hung up the phone, she quickly used her computer that was already hacked into the dock surveillance network to delete the last 2 hours of footage. Once her work was done, Felicity grabbed her coat and wrapped it around herself, obscuring her costume from Oliver, much to his dismay.
"Well since we have to wait until the morning for SCPD to process the scene and identify creepy gun trafficker guy, I'm calling it an early night. This has been way to much excitement for one night." Felicity said, picking up her handbag.
"Good plan." Diggle agreed, grabbing his own coat.
"You go home too, Oliver. There is nothing more we can do tonight until all of this settles down." Felicity said, putting a hand on his arm again as she passed him on her way out.
"And if either of you ever mention this costume again, I will arrow you myself."
Felicity walked into the executive office of QC at 9am the next morning, back to her customary dress and heels. She put her things down on the desk and booted up her computer, keen to check out the news from last night and find out who had attacked Digg and Oliver.
She first hacked the police report which identified the man as Erik Hruska, a independent Czech low-life, known to police and under investigation for multiple counts of racketeering. With no solid mob connections it seemed that their problems were mostly over now that he was dead and no one would be looking for retribution.Felicity then quickly ran a RSS feed search for any hint that the Arrow was being attributed to the dock incident. What she saw pop up on her monitor made the colour drain from her face.
"You have got to be kidding me!" was the first thing Oliver and Diggle heard as the elevator doors opened to Oliver's office. They quickly spotted Felicity staring slack jawed at her computer.
"What's the matter?" Diggle asked, walking around to stand behind her and see what had shocked her so much.
Oliver did the same and mumbled a soft curse in Russian at what he saw.
"So apparently there was a hidden surveillance camera inside that warehouse. It mustn't have been as abandoned as we thought." Felicity groaned as she pressed play on the video.
It showed Felicity at the far left of the screen while Erik crouched behind Oliver to the right. Mercifully, Digg had remained out of frame for the whole thing otherwise the SCPD might have been banging down the door. The video showed the silent conversation as Felicity held the bow trained on him and cut short just before Diggle had shot him. Thankfully there was nothing that incriminated them or revealed their identities but the video made her realise how close Oliver had been to being revealed to the entire city as the Arrow. If she hand't stepped in when she did his secret would be out and they would probably all be under arrest right now.
Just when she started to think that camera hadn't been that bad, she saw another article.
The Arrow's New Huntress?
Footage had been released by police overnight of what they are claiming is the Vigilante's new accomplice. The goddess with a bow we have dubbed "Artemis" was captured on camera saving the Arrow while an unknown accomplice used the distraction her tight leather costume doubtlessly provided to take down racketeering king-pin Erik Hruska. The Arrow has been linked to the Huntress, Black Canary but this fierce blonde beauty in green leather is definitely new to the scene and we can't help but hope that she sticks around…
Felicity groaned as Diggle laughed so hard he were actually in tears. Oliver on the other hand just stood beside her chair, reading and re-reading the article with his typically impenetrable expression.
"Are you done?" Felicity snapped at Diggle.
"Never, my Greek Goddess. Never!" Diggle's comment only served to send him into a fresh fit of laughter.
Felicity just sighed exasperatedly, letting him have his fun. It would surely become old and he would be all laughed out before too long.
Of course all of this only became worse another article popped up on her feed tracker with the headline "Artemis and the Arrow: Starling's Sexy New It Couple?" The trashy social media article was accompanied by another section of the video footage that showed her holding his face. She had been checking for a concussion but of course the pathetic excuse for journalists at the Starling gossip rags had interpreted it as an intimate gesture.
"Oh, for God's sake." Felicity grumbled, quickly closing the tabs that were proving so hilarious to Dig.
"Oliver you have a meeting with Ms Rochev at 10, we need to go." Felicity stood up abruptly.
Oliver was still staring and the blank screen and Felicity had to say his name twice more before he snapped out of it.
"Right… meeting. Yeah." Oliver said, following Felicity to the elevator.
Felicity had insisted they stopped at the cafeteria before the meeting because there was no way she could handle Isabel without caffeine and the coffee maker in their office was still very much out of action. As they waited for their much needed coffee Oliver couldn't help but overhear two men sitting at a nearby table.
"He did you see the Arrow's sexy new sidekick?" One asked the other and Oliver had to physically restrain himself from punching him and defending his partner.
"Oh man I know! All that leather. God damn." The other man laughed through his mouthful of breakfast burrito.
New plan, Oliver decided. No more hiring sexist pigs to work in his company. Especially ones that leered over his valued partner while she was in earshot.
"There is no way he isn't banging her. Could you imagine the sex?"
Right that was it. Oliver was going to publicly pummel them in his own damn cafeteria even if they had no idea why. Just as he was about to walk over and drive their foreheads into the surface of the table the sat at, he felt a soothing hand on his arm just as the barista called out their order. "Saved by the espresso, assholes." Oliver thought to himself.
They took their coffees and walked back to the private CEO elevator and as soon as the doors closed Felicity couldn't help but burst into a fit of giggles. Oliver couldn't have been more confused.
"Why are you laughing? Those guys were saying horrible things about you." Oliver asked as Felicity caught her breath.
"Oh please they were harmless idiots and you, billionaire Oliver Queen and their CEO, were about to beat them to a bloody pulp just for gossiping about the local vigilante." Felicity explained, her tone still ringing with laughter. "Plus, if only they knew that the sexy vixen in leather was actually the word-vomitting IT girl. People sure took a 10 second security camera clip and ran with it. I'm starting to see where Dig is coming from. It's at least a little bit funny."
Once Oliver had simmered down enough he started to see the humour and before they reached their floor he was laughing along side her.
"Hey, one thing though." Oliver said, suddenly quite serious. "You shouldn't talk yourself down like that. Yes the way those pigs were leering over you was disgusting but you weren't wrong in their assessment of your… look last night."
"Does that mean I should adopt that costume as my superhero IT girl get-up and wear it every night?" Felicity joked though she certainly wasn't prepared for Oliver's reaction.
Oliver groaned loudly as he shot her a lustful look that made the air around them shift suddenly. All at once, Oliver lost every last ounce of resolve that told him they were a bad idea. After all, there was only so much a man could take. As it turned out, skin-tight green leather over soft ivory skin was his line in the sand.
"I can barely handle that grey dress, please don't." Oliver growled, stepping closer to her.
Felicity knew the dress he was talking about and she was so acutely aware of how well it flattered her curves that she had bought another one with yellow side panels, instead of orange. What she hadn't been aware of though, was that Oliver had noticed.
"I have no idea what dress you're referring to Mister Queen." Felicity replied coyly, surprising even herself with her brazen flirting.
Felicity watched with baited breath as Oliver punched the big red emergency stop button and turned back to Felicity with a predatory gaze that didn't scare her one bit. Instead of a fight or flight reaction, she just felt an electric thrill race down her spine.
So this was gonna be a T-rated piece about Felicity being a badass but it, like all of my one-shots, morphed into a possible multi-chapter smut fest. This is why I have so many unfinished projects. What do you think? Do we need elevator hooky?