The Chateau du Monde.

Favored restaurant of Gotham's rich and famous. Five star Zagat rating. Owned by Bruce Wayne and frequented by the billionaire and his rotating entourage of models and socialites. A six month waiting list for a reservation. Three massive chandeliers. Long neck candles on every table. A violin quartet and a sommelier in a three piece suit. The crème de la crème of Gotham eateries, pun very much intended.

Felicity wasn't really feeling it.

She hadn't felt this apathetic about a date since that swimmer in college had invited her for "a fun night out" that ended with her sitting on the pool deck while he practiced his flip turns. Felicity kept telling herself that her lack of enthusiasm was just because she's had a long day-nine hours of merger talk with the people from LexCorp will wear on a person-and not the fact that she shouldn't have agreed to the date at all. That this was all happening too soon. That she wasn't ready.

It's been almost two years, Felicity. Move on.

As a waitress bent over the table to refill their water glasses Felicity stole a glance at Ted over the top of her menu. What was wrong with her? Her date was tall and handsome, with a thick head of hair and dark eyes that crinkled around the edges when he smiled. Not to mention wildly intelligent- the founder of his own tech conglomerate, Kord Industries. Oh, and then there was the fact that he was great in bed. Which she knew because they'd been sleeping together for months, ever since they first butted heads in a business meeting back in July. They were good old fashion friends with benefits. Just sex. No cuddling. No cooking each breakfast in the morning.

Or at least, they had been old fashion friends with benefits. Until a week ago when, in the middle of an afternoon quickie in the private bathroom in Felicity's office, Ted had pulled back from kissing her neck and said in a serious tone that he didn't use very often, "Come to dinner with me."

She'd said no. Of course she'd said no. She wasn't look to date, wasn't looking for a relationship. Then later that day she'd been standing in the grocery store checkout aisle and her eyes had fell on a tabloid cover featuring a glossy photo of Oliver and one of his political aids. The small dark haired one. Monica, if Felicity remembered correctly. Oliver was leaning toward her, his hand on her elbow, whispering something in her ear while she laughed. The headline read: Mayor Queen Moves On?

It was stupid, Felicity knew. To agree to a date just because some trash magazine claimed Oliver was sleeping with one of his assistants. Felicity knew better than anyone that 99% of tabloid stories were complete bullshit. And even if it was true, Oliver moving on didn't mean that Felicity had to. She knew this. And yet somehow that hadn't stopped her from leaving her groceries on the belt to call Ted from the parking lot.

"I changed my mind," she said. "About dinner. Let's do it."

So now here they were, sipping from a $200 bottle of wine at the fanciest restaurant in the city, avoiding each other's gazes and shifting uncomfortably in their seats like two people who hadn't spent the last three month rolling around in each other's beds.

"So," Ted said, as the waitress finally backed away. "Um. How was your day?"

Felicity made a face.

"That bad, huh?"

"Worse."

Two leggy supermodel swept by their table, their long evening dresses rustling with tiny embroidered pearls. Felicity pulled self-consciously at the cuffs of her polka dot blazer. She hadn't had a chance to change after work and her cute jacket, pencil skirt outfit suddenly felt like a potato sack. Felicity caught a glimpse of her reflection in the back of her spoon and grimaced. Her eyeliner was completely smudged and her lipstick was nothing but a mauve memory.

"Hey, are you alright, Smoak?" Ted asked.

"What?" Felicity tore her eyes away from the spoon. "Oh yeah, I'm fine. Just...feeling a little underdressed. It's nothing." The maître d passed by, leading the Mayor of Gotham and his third wife to their usual table in the back corner.

"It's too much, isn't it?" Ted ran a hand down his face. "All my friends said this place was too fancy for a first date but I didn't listen.
"No," Felicity protested. "No, it's not too much. It's, um..."

Ted glanced around at the quartet waxing mournfully behind them. "Felicity, I'm pretty sure those violinists think it's 1912 and the Titanic's about to go down. You know what-" he threw his napkin on table "-let's forget this. We're scientific people. We can recalibrate. There's a Big Belly Burger two blocks over. How do burgers and shakes sound?"
Felicity's shoulders slumped with relief. "Honestly? That sounds perfect."

Fifteen minutes later Felicity was sinking her teeth into the best Double Belly Buster (extra pickles, hold the mayo) she'd eaten in her life. She let out a moan of pleasure. Across the table Ted raised an eyebrow.

"Like that, do you?"

"Es it's awful, I hate it," Felicity said through a mouthful. She swallowed and took a long drag on her chocolate milkshake. As she drained the frothy dregs from the bottom of her glass, her eyes flicked to the television flickering above the bar. It was set to channel 5 news.

Huh.

That was a Star City news channel. The reporter looked like he was at some kind of ribbon cutting ceremony. Probably for the new police headquarters, Felicity realized. She'd read about it online. After their old one had been shot up more times than she could count, SCPD was finally getting a new building. About damn time, she thought.

Felicity was about to look away when he walked into the frame.

The straw slipped from her lips.

After almost two years, the tightening in her chest when she saw Oliver was more of a dull throb than the raw, ever-present ache she had lived with for the first few months after the break up. She noted this with a detached sense of awareness, like a doctor recording the progression of a disease. Was this because she was finally moving on or if she'd just gotten better at compartmentalizing?

Probably the second one. Almost definitely the second one.

On the TV, someone handed Oliver a pair of comically large scissors. He smiled and laughed but that didn't stop Felicity from noting the shadows under his eyes and the slight slump in his posture. They were just tiny things but to her they were giant neon signs telling her he'd been up all night at his second job. The slightly less legal one.

"Excuse me- " Felicity hailed their waitress as she passed "-would you mind putting on the game?"

"Sure, hon. Which game did you want?"

"Um...whichever one is on right now?"

The waitress raised an eyebrow.

Ted was watching her with an inscrutable expression. She thought she saw a flash of something- pity? worry?- but then he turned to the waitress and said, "the Rangers-Jays game just started. We're big fans. Thanks."

"Not from around here, are you," the waitress said wryly. But she slipped away and a minute later Oliver was replaced by the baseball game.

Felicity hoped Ted didn't notice her letting out her breath. She carefully avoided his gaze, swirling a french fry around a puddle of ketchup, her appetite all but gone. Dropping the French fry, Felicity flashed Ted a smile. "Hey, I'm stuffed. Want to go for a walk before my zipper pops?"

Ted took her redirection in stride. "Sure," he said, pulling out his wallet and dropping a five on the table for tip. "Although I wouldn't object to any zipper popping either."

"I thought that's what this night was all about," Felicity teased, shrugging on her jacket. "To see if we could be about more than zipper popping."

Felicity couldn't help noticing how easily Ted smiled. He smiled often, and without thinking. She had been like that once. Not so much anymore.

"That's exactly what it's about." Still smiling, he stood and offered her his hand.

It was brisk night, but not too cold to be outside. Leaves crunched beneath their feet as they walked along the river, listening to the water shush through the reeds at the edge of the bank. The moon hung like a chipped tooth in the star speckled sky. Two swans drifted by, luminous in the darkness.

Felicity could tell Ted wanted to hold her hand but she wasn't quite there yet so she pushed her hands into the pockets in her jacket and pretended not to notice his eyes following them as they disappeared.

They talked about work mostly, which was unsurprising since that was where they'd met, a year and a half after Felicity had moved to Gotham to be Wayne Enterprise's new head of Developmental Technology. Ted had tried to get her to buy a bundle shipment of Kord Industries new fiber optic lenses. Felicity replied there was no way she was buying anything from him until he dropped the suit claiming Wayne Enterprises had stolen the codes for its new cyber security software. The suit was just a delaying tactic, meant to keep the software off the market until Kord Industries could release their own bastardized version.

"And how can you be so sure of that?" Ted had asked, eyes sparkling.

"Because I wrote the damn code myself," she replied.

Now here they were, walking down the river side by side, the lights glimmering on the dark water. And it felt good. Nice. Felicity felt light and relatively carefree for the first time in a long time. Maybe, just maybe, this hadn't been a huge mistake. Maybe she was ready to try again. Maybe everything that had happened with Oliver hadn't left her as irreparably damaged as she'd thought.

An hour later when Ted walked her to the front stoop of her apartment building, Felicity hesitated on the top stair, wondering if he was going to kiss her. The fact that she was worried about a kiss seemed ridiculous considering they'd done pretty much everything else already but somehow she was. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her hand nervously jangling her keys in her pocket. "I had a really good time tonight."

"Does that mean you'd be open to date number 2? I'm thinking somewhere less fancy than The Chateau but slightly more upscale than Big Belly Burger."

Felicity tapped her chin, pretending to think about it. "I'll consider it. Tell your people to call my people." A sudden gust of wind swept down the street and sent the hem of her coat flapping her legs. Felicity sucked air through her teeth, surprised by the biting cold.

Ted backed away from the stoop as leaves swirled around his ankles. "You're a tough cookie to crack, Smoak."

No kiss then. Felicity couldn't tell whether she was relived or disappointed. She smiled down at him. "I am. But I'm worth it."

"Hey, you don't have to convince me."

Felicity watched him slide into the front seat of his car before letting herself into the apartment. Upstairs, she shucked her heels, changed into pajamas, and crawled into bed with a glass of her new favorite red (a 2009 Castaño Monastrell, plummy, with notes black pepper and a palatable $10 price tag) and her laptop. "Alright, Nancy," she said to the computer, "let's take a look-see at what our criminal friends are up to tonight. How does that sound?"

Sipping her wine, Felicity pulled up the Star City Police and Fire bulletin and scrolled through the new entries. She might have left Star City behind but she couldn't help checking in every few days to see how things were going. She was like an anxious parent whose child had gone away to college, whose affairs she tried to micromanage from afar. Only in Felicity's case she was the one who'd left so maybe that wasn't such a great metaphor after all.

The bulletin was short. A couple of muggings. An three alarm fire at a chemical warehouse in the Triangle. A stabbing outside a bar in the South End. Almost all of the incidents had been quick open, shut cases but Felicity felt a detectivey mood coming on so she set her wine glass on the nightstand, quickly hacked into the SCPD system, and helped herself to the files of the detectives who had worked the warehouse fire case.

Felicity's eyes flickered across the screen.

Fire crews had arrived at the scene at approximately 9 pm to find heavy smoke and flames coming from the building. The fire had engulfed a laboratory measuring about 7 meters by 5 meters, in close proximity to a production and storage area. There had only been one person inside at the time of the blast- the longtime foreman. The man died of smoke inhalation and injuries sustained in the blast en route to the hospital. The fire marshal hadn't found any clear indication of what caused the explosions to take place however there were no sign of foul play and the fire had been ruled accidental.

Felicity read through the report a second time to make sure she hadn't missed anything. Usually if she thought she could add something to the investigation she put together a file and sent it anonymously to Captain Lance, knowing he'd pass it on to the team. Not that she actually thought they wouldn't figure out where information came from. Somehow, it was just easier that way.

Tonight, at least, Felicity had nothing to contribute. Nothing stuck out as suspicious. There was just the niggling feeling in her gut that something wasn't quite right. Felicity quickly drained the rest of her glass and shut her laptop a tad harder than necessary. Grimacing, she patted the top of the machine. "Sorry, Nancy. I didn't mean it."

Felicity fell back against her pillow with a slight huff. She should get up and brush her teeth but that would require getting out of bed and bed was so lovely and comfy and warm. Her mind turned over the events of the day. All in all things had gone pretty well- her first date in two years and it had only been sixty percent disastrous. She liked Ted. She liked Ted a lot. So why was it Oliver's face she couldn't get out of her mind? If his appearance at the ribbon cutting ceremony was anything to go by he was not getting enough sleep. Who was running the comms tonight? Dig? Thea? If Oliver was sleep deprived he'd need an especially level headed person in his ear.

It's not your responsibility any more. Go to sleep.

Sighing, Felicity rolled onto her side and switched off the light.

It was a long time before she managed to push his face from her mind and even longer before sleep finally took her.

Sighing, Felicity rolled onto her side and switched off the light.

It was a long time before she managed to push his face from her mind and even longer before sleep finally took her.