Felicity doesn't think twice as she flips the ringer on her phone to silent and treks through the almost eerily quiet club towards the locked door at the back. She doesn't expect to have any visitors while she works on the project that's been consuming her for the past few days. Her heels click against the steel steps as she descends and it isn't until she flips the light switch and bathes the basement in light that she sees him sitting there. She falters for a moment before continuing past him, towards her computers.
"I wasn't expecting anyone else to be here right now," she tells him, hitting the power button on the computer system and watching the monitors glow to life. When she drops into her chair and spins to face him, he's watching her silently. She raises an eyebrow at him and he mimics the expression back at her, earning a small smile for his effort.
"You were sitting alone in the dark again. Never a good way to find you." He smirks and ducks his head, chin touching his pale blue sweater lightly.
"I just wanted some time alone to think."
"Oh!" She starts in her chair, ready to leave if he asks her to. "Did you want me to-?" She motions vaguely towards the way she'd come but he shakes his head.
"Of course not." She nods once and spins back to the computers, pulling up some of the programs she keeps running constantly.
"What are you doing here anyway?" Oliver asks after a few minutes. Felicity doesn't turn but she can hear him shifting on top of the table he's sitting on. She shrugs, halfheartedly.
"Didn't have anywhere else I needed to be."
"You don't have to live your whole life down here." She spins around again and gives him a look.
"Neither do you." He returns her look but leans back casually, bracing himself with his palms on the metal table. The side entrance gives a beep to acknowledge a passcode being entered and Felicity can hear it being tugged open. She turns in her chair as John appears around the glass display case holding Oliver's hood. He spots her and stops, clasping his hands behind his back.
"What are you doing?" He asks and Felicity glances back at the now empty table.
"Just talking to myself," she offers flippantly with an attempt at a smile.
"Don't you have to go to work?"
"Not today. Thought I'd make sure my babies don't get rusty," she explains, twisting back to the monitors and closing down one of the programs she'd been running. She can tell John doesn't miss the action but he doesn't comment on it either.
"How'd you know I was here?" She asks, folding her hands in her lap and avoiding his eye.
"Saw you come in." She looks up at this, raising an eyebrow. "I've been staking the place out for the past couple days, hoping I'd see someone else come in." Felicity ducks her head back down at this, glad she isn't the only one who refuses to give up hope. If blunt, analytical John Diggle is on her side she must have some credence.
"You should go home," he says.
"So should you," she counters. He sighs, his hands dropping to his sides and then coming up to cross his chest, his posture as pristine as always. "You gonna make me?" She asks quietly, after a short staring contest.
"Are you sleeping at all?" She shrugs.
"Here and there." John sighs again and runs a hand over the back of his neck, the gesture is so familiar and common to one particular person that it brings tears to her eyes and she considers that maybe she should be trying harder to sleep. The less rational part of her brain insists that she has more pressing concerns than her own sleep deprivation. She tries to remember how many days a person can go without sleep before they die. She thinks she read an article about a man who went for eleven days without sleep. She hopes it won't take her that long to find what she's looking for.
"Felicity," John starts again, pulling her out of her own head. She jolts and looks up at him before putting her hands up in surrender.
"Fine. I'm going." She knows she won't get any work done with John looking over her shoulder anyway. Her empty apartment is less appealing than this empty club basement but it'll have to do.
She stops and picks up a coffee and a fresh bag of dark roast – the bitter taste a good compromise for the caffeine boost – before heading home. She doesn't know if John is tailing her but she buys a box of sleepy time tea to carry out and stuffs the bag of coffee grounds in her purse just in case.
When she reaches her apartment door, he's waiting for her. He steps aside as she unlocks the door and trails after her as she enters. She has to double back and shut the door behind him, glaring and offering a remark about being raised in the most well-manicured barn in the world. He leans against the half wall separating her kitchen from her living room and she moves around him, shoving the tea into a cabinet and tearing open the bag of coffee.
"You know, coffee isn't going to help you sleep."
"Is that how caffeine works? They should really teach this stuff in schools." She responds, the sentence punctuated with a yawn. Oliver smirks at her remark, crossing his arms over his chest as he watches her move around the kitchen.
"You get mean when you're sleep deprived."
"You keep me caffeinated, you keep me happy." She grabs the to-go cup of coffee from where she'd set it on the counter and chugs the rest of it while the coffee maker sputters to life behind her. She rounds him again, heading back into the living room where her laptop sits, waiting for her to type a command and start a program. She drops onto the couch and leans across to the keyboard, bringing up the aborted program from the foundry. It starts immediately, words sprawling across the screen faster than she can read them. But she doesn't need to. She just needs them to do their job.
"Felicity," he says from where he stands behind her, still in the limbo of the kitchen and the living room. Even in her muddled brain, she finds it fitting. She raises an eyebrow, urging him to say whatever he's holding back.
"This isn't healthy. You have to sleep, you have to eat. You can't stop living."
"I haven't stopped living," she debates, turning back to the laptop with a frown. "I'm doing what I've always done, trying to help you." He sighs and she groans, dropping her head into her hands. She closes her eyes and gives herself a few seconds. Then she jumps from the couch suddenly and turns to him, keeping them separated by the safety of the furniture.
"I'm not really a superstitious person, Oliver." He nods at this like it doesn't surprise him and she supposes it shouldn't. "I believe in logic and facts. Few things in this world exist that can't be explained one way or another by science or reason."
"Okay," he says quietly when she pauses, as if he doesn't know what he's supposed to say.
"So, I don't really believe in ghosts." He sighs and dips his head, his hand coming up to scrub across the back of his neck. "The way I see it, you're either a ghost or a hallucination. A hallucination means I'm probably losing my mind but a ghost means…" She can't bring herself to finish the thought let alone the sentence.
"What do you want me to be?" He asks, lifting his head back up to meet her eye, hands tucking away into the pocket of his jeans.
"My options are insanity or your death?" She asks quietly and he shrugs. "I'd rather be crazy than never see you again."
"Don't say that."
"Why?" She demands. "You said you were coming back! You said you loved me, that you'd win! How am I supposed to feel here, Oliver?"
"You have to keep going, regardless, Felicity." She frowns and looks down, twisting her hands together in front of her. Her apartment goes silent except for the buzz of her laptop working through her program. She considers it may be too much for her personal computer to handle but she's lived through more than she could handle. So could her computer. She swallows and looks back up, expecting him to be gone. He's still standing there, hands in his pockets, watching her.
"You have to come home so I can say it back," she murmurs as she fights back the tears threatening to fall. He doesn't say anything as he studies her, standing up straighter and tugging his hands from his pocket. She closes her eyes under his scrutiny and every breath filling her lungs burns like they can't expand enough for the air being forced in. The next time he speaks, he's so close, right on the other side of the couch from her.
"Not all hallucinations are the product of insanity."
When she opens her eyes, he's gone. The tears fall and she swipes at them angrily, pushing them off her cheeks with forceful lashes of her fingertips. Her computer lets out a long, low beep behind her and she spins around to face it, staring through the water droplets obscuring her glasses. The face on the screen is grim and familiar and fills her with warmth. It's from the day he left and there's no guarantee in the photo but it's something. She checks the location and grins as she fumbles to pull her phone from her pocket and dial John.
"Gotcha."