Questions & Answers
Oliver didn't think it was possible to become so completely intoxicated by someone, and yet, here he is.
Oliver is watching over the city, stomach pressed into the cold railing on a rooftop, when he hears the muffled thud of someone landing behind him. He isn't easily surprised by anyone; he can count on one hand the number of people that could get close enough to land without him knowing, all of them highly dangerous. He turns around, already tensing for a fight, when he recognizes the masked figure.
Taylor.
Of course she blindsided him. He doesn't quite posses her ability to identify people by their tread. She's tried teaching him, but it seems his affinity for languages doesn't encompass the non-verbal, although he isn't hopeless at all of them: he understands just fine how she feels by the delighted grin she flashes him as she straightens up from her landing position.
At almost six feet, she cuts an intimidating figure in tight black leather pants and a gold-trimmed jacket. Her thigh-high boots and gloves match the jacket, both with hardware a similar gold, one that makes her caramel skin glow. The utility belt that encircles her waist holds two guns and several rounds of ammunition, and two sheaths on her upper thighs hold a dozen knives each, along with the several dozen in her jacket. Her dark, almost black, hair is pulled back into a slightly rumpled but tight French braid, exposing a gold arrow cartilage bar and simple gold studs in her earlobes. He once thought the mask she chose to conceal her identity was strange – the black fabric surrounds both her eyes but pulls away from the left side of her face to reveal a mouth painted a racy blood red – but now that he knows the story behind it, he recognizes that it is to her what the hood is to him. It is a reminder of what she fights for.
Standing right there, across the rooftop from him, in a suit so reminiscent of Laurel and a taste in jewelry so reminiscent of Felicity, but most of all, a personality so reminiscent of his that their mind are all but mirrors, he can't help but think that she is the best and worst possible person: best, because neither Felicity nor Laurel are or were anything but the best, and worst, because, what else is he? A hollow reflection in a broken mirror. Nothing more.
For the longest time, he went back and forth between pushing her away to protect her from the darkness and pulling her close because of his own selfish need to have her near. Then he watched her kill and realized that the only way he could protect her was to keep her close, and while he's still not entirely sure what instinct made him draw that conclusion, the bottom line is that he trusts his gut. As it is, he hasn't spent a lot of time thinking about it, and for one simple reason – he's afraid what answers he may find.
It isn't the answer itself – he has a pretty good idea of what it will be already – but the fact that something definitive will result in him not being able to pretend that this woman means that he will never be the same again.
And while he thinks, sometimes, that their similarity goes as far as their feelings for each other, he doesn't know. He's found time and time again that the eye only sees what it wants to, and it doesn't seem like such a stretch to extend that metaphor to matters of the heart.
"What do you think?" she asks in a tone that's a little breathy and a lot excited, more so because her synthesizer is turned off. The phrase "Girl in a brand new dress" comes to mind, as she practically skips over to where he leans against the railing, the action pulling the corners of his mouth up without his permission. He thinks the fact that she's giddy about a new suit with enough weapons for a small platoon and not a sundress or an evening gown makes better fuel for irony. Still, he can't help himself as he runs an eye up her body at the way the fabric clings to her decidedly feminine figure.
Several words cross his mind in reply to her question – breathtaking, beautiful, bold. "Badass," he says instead.
Her mouth lifts at that, the crimson taunting him, and she laughs. "Real smooth, Green," she quips, coming to a stop inches away from him. He allows a breathy chuckle to escape at that. It's strange, how, when he's around her, he's both at his most open and his most guarded.
There was a time when he didn't think such a contrast was possible, but he didn't think it was possible to become so completely intoxicated by someone, either, and here he is.
"Ready?" he asks, expression turning serious. Any more time spent on this rooftop means more time spent thinking about her. And any more time spent thinking about her might just mean he'll admit what he knows to be the truth to himself - and that truth will be his undoing. But then, she has always been his salvation, so what becomes of him then? He's not sure he wants to know the answer to that.
She just nods in reply, the seriousness that slips onto her face not entirely able to obliterate the gleam in her eyes. He pauses to pull his hood over his face before shooting a rappelling arrow into the concrete in front of him. She moves toward him immediately – one of a hundred actions that have somehow become routine. In a movement that feels almost as familiar as breathing itself, but he knows shouldn't, he wraps an arm around her waist as her arms go around his neck. He hooks his bow over the steel cable and jumps off the roof with a running leap in one swift motion. When he lands, a small smile inches its way across his face.
When he's around her, everything feels almost as familiar as breathing.
A/N- This is me trying my hand at Arrow fanfiction. Hopefully I'll be as obsessed as I am with the show, but exam year means there won't be vary frequent updates (not that I'm very frequent even otherwise, but...)
I would love to hear anything you have to say, but if not, thanks for taking the time to indulge the castles I build on air. Having said that, it would totally make my day if you were to follow this work. Just saying. ;)
Affly,
M
