Title: like tinsel and ribbon
Pairing: Oliver/Felicity
Words: 1,848
A/N: This fandom needs some fluff right now. So here's some mindless Christmas silliness. Title from All Time Low's "Fool's Holiday". Established Olicity, set sometime in the future.
There aren't many things that Oliver Queen can't handle. He's survived this long, not by luck, but by skill; lessons learned the hard way drilled into every fiber of his body and mind. He's faced assassins, warriors, and downright psychos without flinching. He's gone head-to-head against some of the biggest names in pain and death, and lived to tell the tale. He's been shot at, blown up, tortured, roped into nearly every corner imaginable and somehow he always managed to find a way out.
But this? This is just impossible.
The words disaster and this was a bad idea come to mind.
It's not like he planned on being here, stuck in this situation. He had been perfectly happy spending the day with Felicity, maybe camped out on the couch to watch a few of the Christmas films she was sure to have queued up for them. After the past few disastrous holiday seasons, he was looking forward to quiet simplicity. But chaos, as always, intercepted the idea of anything simple or quiet happening in Oliver's life. He should've known, really.
He calls out for Felicity, fully aware of what the show of weakness is likely to earn him but ignoring the consequences because dammit, this is at least a two-person job.
Every time he tries to figure a new way around this, everything he does, it only creates a bigger mess and he's never taken well to failure. If one more thing goes wrong, he might just implode.
He's not panicking. Absolutely not panicking, but it's just hopeless.
Blonde peeks out of the doorway and Oliver gives her his best pleading look. The time for pride and refusing help passed hours ago.
Felicity laughs, and Oliver scowls.
"It's not funny," he says, in a voice that's caught somewhere between a whine and the Arrow's growl, like he can't quite decide which persona is appropriate for this particular situation. He's asking for help, needs help, but he also wants to shoot the box in front of him so full of arrows that it bleeds. Felicity laughs again and Oliver thinks he might just glare a hole straight through the wall before she stops giggling long enough to help him.
Of course, that wouldn't help anything. She'd just lecture him again about how he's not rich anymore and can't afford to go around blowing things to pieces because she is not replacing another computer chair that just happened to be in range of his bow.
He's pretty sure laser vision is better in theory, anyways.
Felicity walks over to where he is, standing over him from where he's sprawled out on the floor. There's a stack of boxes to his side that's no smaller than it was two hours ago when she left him with such a simple request, and a mountain of crumpled wrapping paper the size of a small child. Oliver is in the middle of it all, glaring up at her with as much fury as he can muster.
Which has never been much, really, but he makes a damn valiant effort.
The hand over her mouth does almost nothing to muffle her laughter.
"I see you've made some progress," Felicity says, eyes shining at him from behind her glasses and if Oliver weren't so frustrated he'd probably smile back. She's got flour on her forehead and all over the front of her shirt, why couldn't she have put him in charge of the cookies? He gives a huff and shoves the nearest gift towards her with the heel of his hand.
"How in the hell am I supposed to wrap a foot massager?" The expression on his face when he looks at her is absolutely exasperated and Felicity has to hold her breath to suppress another bout of laughter.
The most hilarious part of it all isn't the fact that Starling City's hero and savior is pouting at her from her living room floor, but more that there's wrapping paper shreds in his hair and at least two bright pink bows stuck to his shirt.
And the glitter? It's everywhere.
"That's what the bags are for, Oliver." She says, snatches one up and nudges him with her foot to move over so she can sit down. He acquiesces, and if he's still pouting a little, she doesn't acknowledge it. Her voice is still too cheery to Oliver's ears. Doesn't she understand how impossible this it?
In twenty seconds flat, Felicity has shoved the massager into a bag, filled it with tissue paper and preened it to wrapped perfection. She drops it in front of Oliver and grins at him. He might be gaping just a little bit.
"How did you- I spent the past half hour trying to wrap that damn thing, you know."
Felicity laughs again and tilts her head up to plant a kiss on his cheek. Oliver can't help that his frustration ebbs away a little when she does, that his lips quirk up in just the tiniest fraction of a smile.
It's the effect she has on him, and he's not sure if he should hate her or kiss her for it right now.
He doesn't get a chance to do either, though. Before he can respond at all she's plucking another box from the stack and okay, maybe he's a little incredibly amazed right now.
Not that it's a new experience when it comes to her. Felicity is always coming up with new ways to blow his mind, effortlessly revealing more tiny pieces of information about herself and quirks he never knew about. He wonders if she'll ever run out of things to surprise him with.
Today, he learned that she's apparently some sort of gift wrapping goddess.
"Practice," she says. "You probably had tons of that, though. I hear Christmas was a big deal in the Queen household."
Oliver shakes his head, "Nope. Christmas was big, but I never had to do this." He gestures to the mess surrounding them. It's like their own little nest of wrinkled green and red paper.
He had wanted to laugh when she handed him the rolls of paper earlier in the day, quip something about how they really don't need more green and read to look at and did she want him to cut out the middle man and go ahead and wrap everything in leather.
"You really expect me to believe you've never wrapped a present?" she says incredulously, eyebrows raised and that permanent smile plastered on her lips.
Oliver snakes an arm around her waist and pulls her closer so he can nuzzle the sensitive spot on the side of her neck. "I've always been more skilled in the art of unwrapping," he says, fingers playing just under the hem of her shirt.
He's grinning like a fool and that in itself takes him aback. Maybe he should be used to it by now, the easy way she brings out the careless, happy kid in him that he didn't know still existed until she came around.
Felicity swats him away and gives him a playful shove when he turns the pouty look on her. Her resolve doesn't last long though, she leans into his side after putting up a worthy fight and Oliver smiles just that little bit wider at the reaffirmed knowledge that if she's backed him into a corner, the puppy dog eyes will always be his ticket out.
As if his ego needed more stroking.
"Your mom was probably afraid you'd tape yourself to the wall," she giggles, and pulls several strips of the tape from his shirt sleeve. "How did you even manage to get it stuck to your shoulder?"
She looks up at him, and Oliver doesn't think twice about seizing the opportunity to steal a kiss.
"No, nuh-uh. Don't think you're getting off that easy." Felicity says, pulling back with a reprimanding look in her eyes but her lips are still wearing that delicious smile. "You can't charm your way out of this one, rich boy." She teases, plucks a box from the stack and deposits it in front of him. Grabbing a roll of wrapping paper, she spreads it out in front of them. "I'm going to teach you to wrap the prettiest damn present you've ever seen."
Oliver thinks about attempting escape. She's not wearing heels, but he could probably still outrun her.
But then she's pulling down two more boxes and all he can think about is how in the hell she's managing to talk so fast and cut such a straight line at the same time.
It quickly becomes abundantly clear that Oliver was not exaggerating the never part of his never wrapped a gift story.
"It's these big hands," Felicity says, grabs his hand and holds it up to the light to inspect. She looks at it like it's kicked her neighbor's dog or locked her out of her tablet when she was in the middle of a winning streak on Angry Birds. "They're why this isn't working. How do you do anything with these oaf fingers?"
He smirks, "You've never had a problem with their performance before," and it's a true testament to how far she's come that she only blushes a little bit at the comment.
"That is so not the issue right now," she says, and rolls her eyes as she drops his hand. She's gone through five more gifts trying to show him what to do, and the only fruit of her efforts is the questionably wrapped, very crumpled box that lies before them.
Honestly, it's the furthest he's gotten with one all day and Oliver's probably more proud of it than he should be. There's an enormous silver bow on the top to cover where the paper didn't quite go all the way around and he forgot who it had been labeled for so the tag is blank but he thinks he might give it to Diggle just to prove a point.
Felicity laughs when he voices this thought. "I'm pretty sure that was for my mom, Oliver. I don't think that Digg would appreciate a pair of purple peeptoes."
He sticks his tongue out at her because they're adults and he makes a point of always settling their arguments like a mature grown man.
She pokes his side because she likes to take advantage of knowing where he's ticklish.
It doesn't take long for the now significantly smaller stack of boxes to be forgotten in favor of smile shaped kisses and quiet giggles.
They end up half-dressed, tangled together on her living room floor. There's still flour on her forehead and he doesn't know whether to laugh or kiss her harder because her bra is green and he's got glitter in places that glitter should never be but she's grinning and so he is too.
Felicity's cookies burn, and a week later her mom is going to receive a poorly wrapped package addressed for John Diggle.
All in all, it's shaping up to be the best Christmas they've had in a long time.