A/N: I don't own the dialogue from 6.15, but that entire episode thrust me back into some old Theroy feels. As sad as I will be if Thea does decide to leave, I know she will be happy with Roy, and that's all I can ask for on a show that usually kills my faves. I know this ship is dead and most people only read Olicity, but I hope a few of you guys like this story regardless!
Angel in Red Leather
Roy had been in some pretty shitty situations in his life, he wasn't going to lie, but this had to be a low.
Strapped to a chair in a hotel in Star City, getting beaten by dirty cops who were too much of cowards to leave a mark. He was used to the pain, this routine second nature, but he was not as young as he used to be, too out of practice, far used to running instead of standing his ground. This was not his finest showing, too busy trying to catch his breath to fight back. Death by telephone book - that was a new one. He didn't even know they made those things anymore.
A moment of peace couldn't come soon enough. His attackers were leaving and then she was dropping out the ceiling like some goddamn angel, there to save him. Roy wasn't even sure if she was actually there, or if the blood loss had caused him to start hallucinating.
But then her hands were on his wrists, slicing through the binds, and he knew this wasn't just in his head. She was real.
Holy fuck, she was real.
Two years and the only thing he could think to say was, "Is that my hood? It looks good on you."
Brown eyes stared at him incredulously through red leather. She didn't blink, didn't speak, didn't even breathe. What she did do was lean down and kiss him. It was rushed and messy and desperate but damn if it didn't feel like home. His heart was straining against his ribcage for a whole new reason now, long-suppressed emotions flooding through his system, pushing every other terrible thing away for those few blissful seconds.
Thea pulled away, and Roy tried to chase her lips. She looked conflicted when all he wanted was to see her smile.
"I-I'm sorry if you're seeing anyone…I'm not - "
He was quick to reassure, shaking his head. "I didn't take your advice. No wife, no kids, and I really, really hate minivans."
Thea looked relieved, but Roy was just confused. How could she think there could be anyone else when she was everything he could ever want and more? He wouldn't want the picket fence kind of life with anyone except her.
"How did they find you?"
"I was in St. Roche, and the Star City cops, they tased me, and they threw me in the back of a van," he recounted, shaking his head, trying to make sense of this nightmare. "They knew everything. They knew about Oliver, they knew about me faking my death, they-they knew it all."
There was a muffled voice coming from the comm in her ear - Oliver no doubt. Or Felicity. Roy had to stifle a smile at the memories that stirred up. His team, there to rescue him even after all these years.
Suddenly, Thea was reaching around, pulling Roy up and helping him stand while he swung one arm around her deceptively strong shoulders and hobbled across the room. It was nice, Roy thought, to be so close to her, even if every step caused him agonizing pain. The glass wall behind them was large, plenty of room for them both to escape into the night. Thea was already ahead of him, opening it and scouting out a safe path.
"We're leaving."
"No, you're leaving," he refuted, feeling his bones ache in protest, crunching and shifting in ways they normally shouldn't. "I'm in no condition to be swinging from rooftops."
"I'm not leaving without you!"
Her words were so fierce and so determined that it scared him.
At the sound of footsteps, Thea threw him into the closest chair, not noticing how Roy clutched at his injured ribs, her one-track mind focused on holding down the fort. In an instant, she got down on one knee, her bow drawn tight, arrow notched and ready to fire. Roy had no doubt that she would unleash hell on anyone who tried to come through the door. She would take them all down without hesitation. Because that's what they do - they protect each other.
But Roy knew something she didn't He knew what she was about to go up against, knew she was out of her league even if she wouldn't admit it. He didn't want her to die. He didn't want to lose her again, not when they've come this close. But if they had to separate - and the universe had deemed that they must - then he'd rather be the one to bear the brunt of things.
"You have to go," Roy implored, knowing that every second they wasted in a shootout was a second they could never get back.
"I'm not leaving you!"
An arrow came flying through the window, releasing a cord that wrapped around Thea like a lasso. Her eyes went wide a fraction of a second before Roy's did, realization settling in. Her mouth opened to protest, but anything she had to say was snatched away along with her body.
Roy didn't have to see to know she was screaming, kicking, and fighting the whole way. She didn't want to leave, and he knew that. She didn't have to feel guilty about leaving him behind; he wouldn't want her to.
What happened to him was inconsequential. Knowing that she was safe was the only thought that mattered when the lights went out.
Diaz circled Roy like a shark before sitting down in a chair, looking far too cordial for someone who was ordering his goons to beat the shit out of Roy only a moment before.
"You have a strength one doesn't see much," he praised, and Roy felt sick. If he wasn't so damn exhausted, he'd spit at the man. "You want to join my team?"
"Sure," Roy scoffed with a roll of his eyes. "Do you offer medical and dental?"
He waited for the backhand, the punishment for his loose tongue. It had always been his downfall. He used to think it would be the death of him, before he started dressing up in red leather and courting death on a nightly basis. But the backhand never came, and for some reason, that concerned Roy more.
"You know, my police friends are telling me you're not cooperating. You're not playing ball! You won't testify against Queen."
Another scoff, another roll of Roy's eyes. "If you actually think that I would do that, you're an idiot."
"Yeah. One of us is," Diaz agreed unkindly, impatience now lining his eyes and frown. "See, but I'm not the type of guy that believes giving a beating is the only way to cause some pain."
Roy'd heard that one before. He'd been subject to more forms of torture than he was comfortable with, and yet, no one had broken him yet. He doubted a squirmy, overeager drug lord was going to be the one who finally did him in.
"How's Speedy?" he asked, and Roy's stomach dropped like a stone. He hoped that his face wasn't giving him away, that he still looked as cool and disinterested as he was a few moments ago. But Diaz goaded him, trying to find just the right buttons to push. "She came out of retirement. Why would she do that? Why the hell would Queen let his baby sister dress up like Will Scarlet? I mean, I got to ask- eh, it's a moot point."
He waved his hands around, the big man now that he had his ass to show for his new crew. Diaz enjoyed this: having leverage. Roy didn't think he had ever hated anyone more than he hated Diaz at this moment.
Diaz leaned in real close, staring Roy down, manic fire flickering in those dangerous eyes. "You see, the real question is: who do I got to bring the pain to? Do I got to bring it to you, or her?"
Say that again, he snarled at the douchebag with the dragon tattoo, lip curling as he tried to keep his thoughts contained to his head and not spilling out his mouth. You lay a finger on Thea and I swear I will bust out of this chair and rip you limb from limb.
Roy didn't care what they did to him. But Thea? He would do anything to protect her.
Roy was only half-conscious when he heard gunfire. Gunfire and screams and the familiar snick of arrows followed by bodies hitting the ground. It was terrifying, to be in the center of the chaos and be helpless to stop it. To be reduced to dead weight thrown over someone's shoulders and carted off to God knows where.
He didn't have to panic for too long. He was knocked unconscious soon enough.
When he returned to full consciousness, he was in the back of a different van. The crook of his arm stung, and the shadowy figures surrounding him were unfamiliar. He was still in danger. Panic washed over him, and he fought the hands on his chest, holding him down while the vehicle rocked and bumped as it sped down the highway.
"Roy! Roy calm down!" a familiar voice shouted, ringing through his ears. It stopped his frenzy, body stilling as he searched out the source. Peering up, he found concerned brown eyes, misted over with tears.
Thea was crying. Why was she crying?
If Diaz had hurt her…there would be hell to pay.
Her hand reached down to grasp his, squeezing tightly while the other shadowy figure - Oliver, his brain finally kicked in - fixed the IV Roy had knocked out of place. Whether the vice grip was to comfort him or tether her, neither knew. All Roy knew was that he never wanted her to let go.
"It's over. You're safe," Thea promised, stroking her fingers through his hair. It was soothing and soft and everything he had been starved of for nearly two years. Broken and weary and high on pain meds, it was almost enough to make him cry.
She leaned down and placed a kiss on his forehead.
"I'm never leaving you again."
In that moment, Roy allowed himself to believe it.
Stitched up and given a clean bill of health, Roy let Thea take him back to her place. Not that he had anywhere else to go, nor any other better option. It was just strange to be back in a place so different to what he was used to. A place so high in the sky, far away from all the problems left in the bunker.
"Home sweet home."
She spun half way around, gesturing to the wide open space, her heels clicking on the stone floors, echoing off the glass walls that displayed a perfect view of the city he used to save, the city that she was going to save.
"Nice," he said, appreciating his surroundings. Everything was fresh and new, lacking the layers of grime and misuse he was used to. "For the past two years I have been sleeping with the cockroaches."
It was meant to be a joke, albeit a poor one. Thea turned and faced Roy with the strangest mix of guilt and longing.
"I feel like I should have been there with you," she admitted, the words washing over Roy, filling his mind with half-formed memories of the last two years, but instead of them being as cold as empty as he remembered, they were filled with images of her. It was a nice fantasy, one that he didn't dare indulge. He might have had a masochistic streak, but torturing himself with ideas of a woman he could never have was cruel even for him.
That didn't stop him from wanting now, and oh, how he wanted her.
She was there now, close enough to touch, close enough to kiss and hold, and it was intoxicating. Everything in this damn apartment smelled and felt like her, and it was getting increasingly harder to keep his hands to himself. Roy had to work his jaw, had to close his hands in and out of fists, had to keep his eyes from wandering from her lips to the crisply made bed, thinking of all the ways he wanted to mess it up.
It was then when he realized he'd been silent too long. Thea was looking up at him, insecurity in her eyes.
"Is-is that too presumptuous or confusing? I…I know the last time we saw each other I said that we should probably see other -"
He couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't take her insecurity, couldn't take the longing in her eyes and wonder how she couldn't see it in his too.
He surged forward, grasping her face in his hands and winding his fingers through her hair, pulling her closer closer closer until they were pressed together from head to toe, careening towards the bed where they fell one on top of the other. She was beautiful underneath him, brown eyes blown wide and wanting just as desperately as he was, pushing at the shoulders of his red jacket. He removed it without hesitation, that and his shirt, then hers.
There was a scar down her sternum that gave him pause, like someone had cracked her open, straight down the middle. It was concerning, frightening even, but he dared not ask - didn't want to ruin the moment with something that was clearly painful. His fingers traced the scar, and Thea shivered. His fingers traced lower, down the dip of her bellybutton, splaying flat across the soft skin of her stomach, and she reached down to grab his wrists before they could go any further.
"Roy," she gasped, holding him at bay.
They were going too far too fast, a flurry of movement and need, trying to shove two years worth of repressed emotion and wasted time into this one moment. And it was too much.
"I just…I want…."
He couldn't find the words to express just how much he wanted, how much he needed. It was like he was drowning and she was the only source of air. The only light in a deep dark abyss. The only one who could hold the demons at bay.
She was a necessity. She was everything.
"I know," she agreed, running soothing fingers through his hair. "Me too."
She pulled him to her, and he collapsed, tucking his head against the scar down her sternum, ear placed over the spot where her heart thump thump thumped in her chest. Sure and steady and so very alive.
They survived.
"You should sleep," she suggested.
Until then, Roy hadn't noticed how tired he was, how the events of the past twenty four hours had finally caught up to him. Exhaustion had seeped into his bones, causing him to tremble where he held himself up above her. Fine tremors wracked his spine and shoulders where her hands ran over them, light as a feather.
He didn't want to sleep, didn't want to miss a second of her, but he was so, so tired. Thea seemed to understand, lips curling up into a smile that made his bruised heart lurch.
"I'll be here when you wake up. I'm not going anywhere."
He tucked his face into the crook of her neck, pulling her to him, molding their bodies together. His hands brushed against many more scars, hers no doubt finding the same on his body. They would have stories to tell each other in the morning, when they were rested and recovered and wholly unharmed in each other's arms. Until then, Roy just wanted to hold Thea close and pretend the rest of the world didn't exist.
"Oliver said that, wherever you're headed next, that I should go with you," she said quiet as a whisper. "I thought he was trying to get rid of me, push me away like he usual does when things get scary, but…I think I get it now."
She laughed, and it was the sweetest sound Roy had heard in a long time.
"Would you want me to?" she asked, hesitant once more. "Go with you?"
Too exhausted to say anything, he could only hope that the kiss he placed to her lips was enough for her to understand. Roy wanted her, now and forever, and he'd be damned if he ever let her go again.