Flowers

An: I do not own Arrow or The Green Arrow

Felicity was busy working on a new code to secure the Queen servers from cyber attack. If her thoughts were correct, not only would this code stop the attack but also help track who was attempting to break into their servers. Under the new cyber crime laws, if she could determine the IP addresses of the attackers, Queen Consolidated would be able to file a complaint with the police and the hackers would be arrested and charged. She was so engrossed in her code she didn't hear her name being called until the person was shouting it at the top of their lungs making her jump.

"What?" Felicity asked confused as she realised that it was the secretary for the IT department that was holding a large bouquet of flowers in her hand.

"You've been holding out on us Ms. Smoak," the secretary said with crafty smile, "These arrived for you today," she thrust the flowers towards Felicity who blinked in surprise.

"This is a joke right? Some guy with a camera is going to pop out from somewhere and say they got me? This is for one of those reality shows?" she said looking around the room waiting for someone to spring up from behind one of the cubicles.

The secretary rolled her eyes at her, "As entertaining as those innuendos of yours are, that mouth should not be on TV," she said dryly. "Now take your flowers,"

"Those aren't for me. I'm single. No boyfriend, no lover, not even a married suitor. Nope not for me." Felicity reiterated.

"The card says 'To: Felicity, have coffee with me? From: Jonas' There's an e-mail to respond to him."

"It doesn't have my last name and I do not know any Jonas?"

"It's just Felicity but that doesn't mean it isn't for you. He could be a secret admirer," she said excitedly.

"It isn't for me. There is actually a Felicity in the marketing department. I heard she's quite popular with the guys. Send them up there."

"The guy said he was told to deliver it to the 3rd floor,"

"Marketing's on the 10th floor the sender probably got confused. Send them up there." Felicity said firmly.

She turned back to working on her code. All thoughts of flowers were lost among the lines of code.

The next day Felicity was extremely busy. The server to the accounting department crashed and of course it had to crash right as they were running the pay roll which meant it had to be fixed right away or there would be a riot by the 1000+ QC employees demanding their pay. It wasn't just a simple crash either that she could fix in a matter of minutes and carry on with her day. No it took her all morning just to get the server to function again. She then had to reinstall most of the accounting software, add the latest information from the back up files the day before and listen to the accounting staff bitch and complain about why they had to start the payroll over from scratch.

She was in a very sour mood by the time she got back to her desk at 6:00pm that day. There was a bright arrangement of flowers on her desk. She glared at them. How hard was it to find the tenth floor? An inter-department courier was passing and she handed it to her.

"Take these up to Felicity on the tenth floor for me please,"

The courier gave her a suspicious look.

"Oh no, they're not from me to her. They're probably from some dude called Jonas. He sent them to her. They just put it on the wrong desk. I don't even know Felicity. Nope, never seen her before in my life. I just know she exists because we share the same first name," she babbled.

"Ok whatever you say lady." The flowers were removed from her sight.

The next day Felicity was finally able to get back to her code. She felt she had written enough to run a test. She was just about to start when the Secretary was disturbing her again.

"These are for you," She said with a wide smile.

"Not again," Felicity groaned. "Tenth floor! How hard is that!"

"Uh uh," the secretary shook her head. "The messenger specifically said Felicity in the IT department. The card even says Felicity Smoak, IT Department, 3rd Floor."

"Oh," Felicity said stunned.

"They're from Jonas again. He's persistent. He's asking for coffee again," the secretary said looking at the card.

Felicity frowned, "He could be an axe murderer for all I know. You keep them."

"You don't want your flowers? You could just hack his e-mail address and do a search on him. I hear the guys talking about that all the time."

"One, I don't accept flowers from strangers and two, that is illegal. I would very much like to keep my job at Queen Consolidated." Felicity said dismissing the secretary. She had a code to run.

That evening she received a strange visit from Oliver Queen, the C.E.O's son, and current Vice-President of QC.

"Ms. Smoak," he said with a charming smile.

"Mr. Queen," she said sitting up straight. Suddenly her pink blouse and black pencil skirt seemed under dressed next to his polished three piece grey suit.

"I thought I told you several times already to call me Oliver," he said looking around with a frown.

"Mr. Q," she started but he gave her a stern look. She corrected herself, "Oliver," she said slowly, "is there something I could help you with?"

"Yes, Walter said that you had the received the results of the feasibility study for the OMAC suit."

"Yes, I can transfer it to your laptop right now."

"I didn't walk with it," Oliver replied.

"Oh no need, once you have it plugged in upstairs, I can access it and put the files on it for you," Felicity said pulling up a file which had the names of the computers that all the employees used.

"You can do that?" He asked pulling up a chair to sit beside her.

She got a whiff of his cologne. Why did he always have to smell so good?

"It's a new aftershave that's on the market," Oliver said

"I said that out loud?" Felicity asked horrified.

He chuckled. It was the sexiest chuckle she had ever heard. She stared at the computer trying to remember what she was looking for. Her mind always seemed to come to an abrupt halt whenever Oliver was in the room, only able to focus on him. She looked at the name of the file she had opened and it dawned on her. She quickly looked for the information she needed. The sooner he left, the sooner she could go back to a properly functioning adult and not the puddle of goo he made her.

"Arrow?" she said confused.

"Arrow?" he repeated just as confused as her.

"Arrow's the name of your computer. Who named your computer?"

Oliver shrugged at her. Even shrugging he looked handsome. What was she doing again? Oh right, looking for Arrow on the network. She pulled up the servers that controlled the executive floor and searched for Arrow. When she found the computer she accessed it using her administrator password and copied the data across.

"There all done," she said with a smile turning to face him. He was sitting closer now. She could see the slight variations in the blue colour of his eyes. She swallowed. "Is there anything else you needed?"

"No," he said reluctantly looking away from her. He stood, putting the chair back where he found it. "I'll just go do some Vice-President stuff."

The next day, the flowers arrived again. She was seriously getting pissed off now so she put up a sign on her cubicle, "I do not accept flowers from strangers. Besides its better to buy a plant, it lasts longer!"

She spent the rest of the day handling minor IT issues and preparing for the meeting the next day on the OMAC project. Dr. Ray Palmer from Palmer Technologies would be partnering with them on the development of the project and Walter wanted to wow him with QC's talent.

The meeting went well though Felicity got the impression that Dr. Palmer might have been hitting on her a bit. Oliver didn't seem too pleased but it wasn't her fault. She couldn't control the guy. After the meeting was done, Oliver asked to see her in his office privately. She thought he was going to fire her.

"You can't fire me, I'm your best employee!" she said as soon as the door to his office closed behind her.

"Why would I fire you?" Oliver asked.

"I thought you were angry with what went on in there." She said her hand pointing back to the conference room.

"The meeting went well," he said.

"Not the meeting, Dr. Palmer," she clarified but then mentally kicked herself for saying that.

"I was angry," he admitted.

"You were,"

"Yes I was, but not at you. I've wanted to ask you out, well I've been trying to ask you out over the last few days but I obviously had the wrong approach and I didn't want him to beat me to it."

"You've been trying to ask me out?" she repeated dumbly.

He smiled at her. He reached down to the fern on his coffee table. She could see the pot was decorated and there was a little card sticking out the pot with her name written on it.

"Felicity Smoak, will you have coffee with me?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered automatically until she realised that it was Oliver who had been sending her the flowers.

"What's wrong?" he asked "Did I get the wrong plant? I didn't know what you would like. The guys at the shops said ferns are easy so I got a fern," he said panicking now.

"The flowers were from you?" she said softly.

"Yeah," he said sheepishly scratching the back of his neck.

She immediately realised that she might have insulted her boss when she didn't accept the flowers.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't realise they were from you. I thought it was an axe murderer or serial killer or something like that. Nobody ever sends me flowers. No one has ever sent me flowers actually. I'm not even dating anyone so I couldn't see any reason for me getting flowers. I'm so sorry I didn't accept them. If I had known they were from you, I would have accepted them. Honestly I would have,"

Oliver held his hand up for her to stop. He was fairly sure she needed to breathe and he didn't want her fainting in his office because he let her babble on.

"It's ok. It's my fault. I didn't sign them with my first name. I didn't want anyone but you finding out they were from me."

"Why didn't you just ask me out yourself?"

Oliver ran his hand through his hair, "I didn't want it to sound like a pick up line or something because I got lots of pick up lines. I wanted to do something more genuine for you."

She blushed. "So coffee then?" she asked.

"Yes,"

"Let me just put the fern on my desk and I'll meet you downstairs," She said.

As she walked out of the elevator and passed the secretary, the woman commented, "So you won't accept flowers but you buy yourself a fern?"

Felicity shrugged, "I guess I realised that I needed a bit more colour on my desk. Isn't green wonderful."

Over time the fern would be joined by other plants but it would always hold a special place in her heart as the first gift Oliver ever gave her.