In the beginning, there were rumours circling around the company, the club, the city… rumours about her, and/or Oliver, and of every possible context and combination of the aforementioned subjects. Once she became his PA the gossiping only intensified, making the topic a hit at coffee breaks in Queen Consolidated. One would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to know that, and Felicity is most certainly neither of those. The funny thing though, is that for all the gossip and speculation about her new work position and all the unwelcome commentary soundtrack that seems to accompany their every movement these days, she is often closer to getting fed up and leaving than to falling in love with Oliver Queen.
"This is absolutely intolerable!" The voice is irritating and rude, and the face that goes with it is red and full of anger.
It's in moments like this when Felicity misses her old IT job the most.
"I'm very, very sorry but as I've already told you Mr. Queen has had a personal emergency and he is no longer in the premises, but I'll gladly reschedule your meeting, of course."
She stands and works around the screen of her tablet, opening the calendar app while ironing the final details of the latest Arrow incursion.
"Listen to me, sweetie—" An accusatory pointed finger appears dangerously close to her nose and if there is something that Felicity likes even less than to be shouted at and bullied, that is to be called "sweetie". "You better make sure that the next time I come to see Mr. Queen he is here to keep his appointment or so help me God."
She braces her tablet and takes a deep, deep breath before solemnly nodding. She might not be a real secretary but she has played one long enough to know that punching the guy in the face is probably not the way to go. Although nobody said anything against anonymously messing with his online profile and information.
She takes another breath, not as deep as the previous one, and walks towards her desk to retrieve the eye makeup remover that she keeps in the second drawer before heading to Oliver's office.
She doesn't knock, and the room is as quiet and dark as if it were empty.
"How did it go?" Oliver is characteristically standing in the darkest corner, carefully buttoning up his dress shirt while his face is still covered in smudged black makeup that doesn't conceal in the slightest his dumbass, GQ-model, sardonic smile as he keeps talking. "He is not the most charming of our investors but we need his money and I'm certain you are in his good graces."
Felicity's intake of breath is probably audible from miles away and the frustration of the day is going to translate into so much stress-eating that she is afraid there won't be enough triple chocolate ice-cream in the city. "'Not the most charming of our investors' might be the greatest understatement I've ever heard and I'm not really sure anybody that doesn't reside within the inner circle of Hell could ever be in his good graces." She puts the bottle of makeup remover on the surface of his impressive mahogany desk with a loud thud and cracks her neck carefully, trying to relieve some of the tension. "Do you need anything else?"
He takes a giant, swift step and takes the bottle from the desk while smirking at her. There are barely ten inches of air between them and Felicity has absolutely no problem understanding why there are a bunch of websites and boards exclusively dedicated to that insufferable grin.
"Well, you could bring me a coffee."
Felicity would like to either or both, smack the daring smile out of his face or aggressively lick it off. The knowledge that he could probably kill her with his pinkie is not quite enough to even turn the scales.
"I hate you," she says, equal frustration and determination colouring her voice as she clenches her hands into fists and turns around because there are days to not tease her about coffee and then there are days to definitely not tease her about coffee. "I'm gonna go now because although you are not really my boss you are still kind-of-my-boss and I hate you so very much right now that I don't have the time to elaborate because I have to go and teach certain next of kin to Lucifer an anonymous, shaming lesson in social networks security configuration."
Her resolute pace makes her ponytail bounce angrily, her pumps stomping on the ridiculously costly floor at the same rhythm as Oliver laughs not quite quietly at her back.
Sometimes she is so close to being done and fleeing that she has to remind herself of the fact that, in a butterfly effect kind of fashion, her putting up skills have saved the life of a handful of people in this city.
There are also other times. The kind of other times that make her feel like falling in love with Oliver Queen is more a matter of an irremediable when and not so much of a voluntary if.
"I know we said it was going to be just some minor recon and we wouldn't need you but something came up," Diggle says in that neutral tone of voice that makes it hard for her to guess is he means that the server is working rather slow or that they have accidentally ignited up the cybernetic apocalypsis.
Felicity looks down at her fluffy, comfortable, bunny slippers and sighs with a chocolate ice-cream stained spoon still in her hand. "Fine. I'll be there in five."
She doesn't really change as much as throws a coat over her hoodie and yoga pants, grabs her laptop and the ice-cream in a silent act of rebellious protest and hails a cab. If the driver suspects she is dramatically underdressed for a night at the Verdant he doesn't comment, and just for that Felicity tips her accordingly.
She drags herself downstairs and takes a look at the damage done on the listening devices management program; nothing that a little time and the right knowledge can't fix.
When the boys come back they are mostly covered in mud, stomping their enormous boots onto the floor and leaving a trail of dirt and a number of guns behind them, Felicity has already finished her job and is watching an episode of The Good Wife on her laptop.
"Are those bunny slippers?" Oliver's voice is has mix of incredulity and amusement in it that Felicity doesn't really apreciate given the circumstances.
"You are wearing black makeup smeared all over your upper face, are you really going to judge my style choices?" she says crossing one foot over the other on the desk for effect.
He does that thing he does sometimes where he tries not to laugh but instead looks at the floor, kind of sighs and then fails miserably and ends up smiling anyway.
"I'm going to hit the shower now," announces Diggs on his way to the bathroom, "and it's going to take a long time before I clean off all this mud so don't expect any hot water left. Neither of you."
The bathroom door closes and Felicity huffs. As if she was planning on taking a shower here when she could take a nice, warm bath as soon as she gets home. She closes her eyes for a moment and rolls her neck. The next thing she knows is that Oliver has peeled out his hood, has quietly come behind her and has started to massage her shoulders because, apparently, it might be a thing vigilantes do, who knows? Vigilantes are weird and she is not planning on protesting anytime soon anyway.
"God, you are good at this," she says under her breath, her stiff muscles melting under the firm pressure of his hands.
"Thank you."
"No, really. If fighting crime doesn't pay off you can always rub people for a living. I mean professionally," she tries to clarify. "Rub people's backs professionally. In exchange for money."
Behind her Oliver snorts and she simply gives up. "Okay that wasn't entirely my fault. It is an easy topic for innuendo. Platonic innuendo."
"I'll remember to tell that to my mother's massage therapist," he says sounding perfectly un-sex-implied-ly and correct.
Felicity throws her head back and opens her eyes, her line of vision perfectly aligned with Oliver's amused one.
"I hate you." But she doesn't. Not at all. He must be tired and still he is taking the time and effort to somehow make up for her coming to the foundry.
Oliver breathes deeply and leans, kissing her on the forehead. "Come on, partner," he says, "I'll drive you home."
And Felicity, in her bunny slippers and yoga pants thinks that yes, it's definitely a matter of when.
Diggle is another story altogether. The brother in arms, the stand-by hero, the capable sidekick. Diggle has impressive abs and arms that could support her for the rest of her life and the good boy vibe that the women in her family never fell for.
"Your coffee, girl."
He brings her coffee and waits with her in the background when Oliver Queen makes a big entrance and the photographers become nasty savages to get the best shot.
"My hero," she says from behind her PA desk and he smiles at the hidden pun like nobody else in the entire world could.
He sits noncommittally at the edge of her desk and asks her about her day, about the latest call from her mother or about that book she was reading that had her so excited that she couldn' .up. about it.
Diggle finds the time for the small things, he smiles lightly when he concentrates instead of brooding, and enjoys Belly Burger a little too much, but none of these things make him less of a soldier. He is like the sensible version of a night vigilante, always questioning why they should jump of a building when there is a perfectly nice elevator just there waiting for them to use it. Felicity loves him for that, in a totally platonic way, of course.
"What about that book everybody is reading nowadays?"
"Please don't say—"
"Fifty Shades of… something."
"Arggg!" She tries to consider if this topic of conversation is worth her while for half a second before her inner rage gets the better of her.
"That is a book that should never be brought up in my presence, like EVER!"
Diggs eyes her suspiciously and maybe she is typing way too fast and way too hard. He crosses his impressive arms over his impressive chest in that way that makes him look like a colossus and that sometimes reminds her of that dream she had once— and wow. So not the point.
"Felicity, are you okay?"
"Okay? With that book? No, I'm most definitely not okay." Felicity can talk about these things with Diggle because he didn't spend five years on an island and doesn't look at everybody like every breathing moment that he is not fighting for justice is a waste of time and oxygen. "And I'm gonna tell you why and you are going to regret having brought this book up."
"I'm already regretting it."
Diggle looks at his watch getting up from her desk and she picks up on the gesture without skipping a beat; it's time to go, she gets her tablet and walks around the desk while Oliver gets out from his office.
"It romanticizes abuse! It's an offense to every independent woman of this planet."
"Do I want to know?" asks Oliver as he leads the way to the elevator.
"Not really."
"All I'm just saying is that we are in the business of providing justice, we should burn every copy ever printed of that book. That would be justice." The click of her heels on the impeccable floor just gives her rhythm. "It paints a poor portrayal of victims of trauma as children and is an absolute insult to the BDSM community."
"Did you just say—"
"It just ignores the Sane-Safe-Consensual principle and goes straight to the spanking sex and the ropes."
The elevator door closes and when a couple of second later nobody has pressed any buttons she turns around. What she finds is the very epitome of intrigue, surprise and prudishness painted on the guys' faces. Oh God, has she just spoken to Diggle and Oliver about BDSM?
"What? Don't look at me like that; I used to read a lot." Yes, a whole lot of very instructive fanfiction although she is not going to tell them that.
Diggle snorts, remembers that the three of them are inside of an unmoving elevator and presses the button for the garage. "I'm definitely not going to bring up that book ever again."
If Oliver looks far less amused than Diggs and maybe even a little bit flustered, Felicity tells herself that it is just because Diggle is always a different kind of story altogether.
She used to do this too when she worked in the IT department of Queen Consolidated and had had a particularly vexing day: stay late, prepare herself a hot chocolate, take her shoes off and work. It never fails to make her feel a little better, to solve the problems she knows how to solve, efficiently, without unwelcome distractions. And if she thought she had vexing days back then, karma has taken to prove to her how relative things can be — outside of Einstein's theories — since she met Oliver Queen.
She takes her mug and walks barefoot to her station at Arrow when the familiar sound of a metal bar hitting metal dents makes her reconsider her feel-better routine. She had a really bad day, she is already barefoot and with a hot chocolate in her hand, if she were to sit and just stare for a while as Oliver exercises — probably shirtless — instead of refactoring code, could anybody really blame her?
She sits quietly and observes. She watches the muscles of his back and his arms contract and expand in mesmerizing movement, all glistening with sweat — which should be gross but believe her, it's really not — and the taste of chocolate on her lips. She is a little ashamed of herself, truth be told, not by her obvious crush or by the implied objectivization of her partner, her friend, but embarrassed that she fell for such a cliché: tortured, rich, handsome guy with an hero complex. It's like she is fifteen again and reading bad fanfiction on her computer, a little flustered and a little out of breath.
There is a sudden movement and Oliver lets go of the metal bar landing soundly on the mat and looking fixedly in her direction without really seeing her. She strangles the mug between her hands and contains her breathing until he visibly relaxes but keeps staring at her in quite a different way.
"Felicity."
And that's her cue to panic a little and babble a lot.
"You used to have one of those?" She points with a movement of her head to the salmon ladder. "You know, when you were… not here." She doesn't say the island because by now she knows that he was also somewhere else, that there is more to the story there than he will ever tell her.
He smiles in that confused way that is not really a smile and raises his eyebrow a quarter of a half of an inch. The second of silence suffocates her.
"I ask because you use that thing more than Diggle uses ketchup and that is saying quite a lot." He is still looking at her and Felicity fills every inch of the hole she feels forming at the bottom of her stomach with as many words as she can summon. "I mean you use it for training, obviously, but is like you climb up that thing whenever you are trying to deal with something. You're angry? Salmon ladder. Frustrated? Salmon ladder. Anxious? Salmon ladder. Your cat dies? Not that you have a cat but if you had one and it died—"
Oliver sighs interrupting her and Felicity breathes for the first time in what feels like a decade or two.
"Your point?" he goes and picks up a towel and dries his face before leaving the thing hanging from his neck. His torso and arms are still glistening under the fluorescent lights and the first thing that comes into her mind is what a bastard.
"You can talk to me too. I'm a good listener and an extensive use of the Internet has taught me not to judge." The pregnant pause makes her feel like maybe she has trespassed some kind of limit, like maybe she doesn't have the right to say such a thing to him. "Or not talk at all. God, I mean, not-talking as in having coffee or something, not not-talking as in using the mouth for other purposes."
He tilts his head and she swears, sometimes he enjoys her rantings a little too much not to be a complete jerk.
"The point is, I'm here," she finally says and takes a sip of her not-so-hot-anymore chocolate if only to just shut up.
Oliver nods and still shirtless he takes a few steps and sits on the edge of her station. His arms extended and supporting part of his weight, every single damn muscle showing off in that posture and he is close enough now that Felicity is actually wondering how he can smell so neutral after working out and how in hell is she supposed to be able to relax and concentrate enough to get anything done.
"So how was your day?" asks Oliver which is, admittedly, such a little thing to do and yet Felicity smiles brightly and maybe, maybe, she thinks he is less of a jerk.
"Crappy. My boss is kind of a jerk sometimes."
He doesn't really smile but his knee bumps lightly against her knee and asks in all faked solemnity, "do you want me to kick his ass?"
"No, I think I can handle him."
He looks at the floor and laughs mostly to himself but when he speaks again he looks at her in the eye with an earnest, complacent facial expression.
"Oh, I'm sure you can."
The extremely narrow gap between buildings is far too dark, small and dusty to even begin to mistake it for a comfortable hiding place. There would be barely room for a big dog to lay there but somehow Oliver manages to accommodate the both of them there and she really hopes that the lack of illumination is enough to fool the bad guys since his back is actually blocking the only way in. Although coming to think of it, it is entirely possible for someone to mistake Oliver's back for a brick wall.
Totally possible.
"Do you think we lost—" she begins to whisper.
"Shhh."
The sound of military boots coming and going is distressing and Felicity can't really tell if the effect is due to the guys frantically checking the zone or a just the echo between close walls. Her heartbeat is loud in her ears and the stress combined with the fact that there is literally no place for her to move is making her more and more claustrophobic by the second, her breathing starting to go faster and harder.
Oliver leans infinitesimally towards her, he barely moves because there is no room for it — oh God, no room. She can't breath — but he manages to loosely embrace her somehow as the sound of angry steps still reverberates on the walls.
"Just breath," he murmurs very softly and she closes her eyes in the darkness and tries to breathe as deeply and as silently as her lungs will allow it, letting the air in and out in controlled gulps of air until everything disappears, everything but Oliver's arms around her and his solid presence, and she can pretend there is a whole ton of free space around them.
It strikes her at the most inconvenient moments — this one, for instance — this little stupid crush she sometimes has on him. It strikes her fast and blindingly hard every once in a while, when she can smell him without colognes or artifices; he smells like coming home and she thinks maybe this is what made her trust him before she had any motives to do so, this intangible sensation of being comforted by his presence.
He has always smelt this way to her, always made her feel like this, like that moment right before falling asleep when you feel so warm, safe and relaxed that the world starts to fade.
She breathes in and breathes out as her heartbeat decreases to a normal pace and she realizes that the sound of bad guys looking for them has dissolved into the night.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
Felicity opens her eyes and tries to shake this feeling out of her system. "Yeah, sure. Just remind me not to wear high heels next time we might be chased."
He gets out of the hole in the wall and offers her a hand to walk out of the tiny alley.
"Not a fan of tight spaces?"
"I'm still trying to figure out how you were able to breath in there. As in how was your rib cage physically able to expand."
Oliver laughs with a charming low intensity as they both walk and turn into a main street, Felicity letting the cold air of the night wash this unnamed feeling away.
Sara Lance comes and goes like the Ghost of Christmas Past as Isabel stays to wander around Oliver like a vicious curse.
It was bad enough that Oliver, her friend whose emotional well-being she cares about, made the incredible dumb choice of falling into bed with the incarnation of all pure evil and mistress of hidden agendas, but to be on the receiving end of the consequences was a little too much even for Felicity's particular brand of karma.
Her constant presence and demands were an inconvenience to her real job for Oliver and her entitlement and general rude manners managed to kill-off her good spirits in about five minutes after having set foot in the building. So, in short: it was all Oliver's fault.
"This is all your fault," Felicity hisses as she struggles with the rope that maintains her wrists tied behind her back.
She has been so eager to get out of Isabel's action radius that she has agreed to accompany him to the bank to renegotiate Queen Consolidated's conditions of recapitalization. She should have known better, nothing good ever came from visiting a bank office.
"If you keep doing that your are going to make it worse," says the human muscle wall she is tied to.
"Define worse."
"You'll find out soon enough when the rope starts to cut into your skin."
She groans frustrated and leans back against Oliver's back. "Couldn't they commit crime at night like everybody else?"
Felicity can feel the vibration of his muscles as he snorts and for some obscure reason his amusement only serves to light up her irritation.
"Don't worry, I'm sure the police will take care of the situation smoothly."
She is not worried as much as pissed off. There are a dozen crucial tasks she should be undertaking instead of spending the morning seated on the floor of the bank's manager office, and if she is crossing some mystical, invisible line for worrying about productivity while being taken hostage, she is certainly not in the mood to contemplate it.
Outside the office, one of the robbers-turned-kidnappers shouts at the receiver that he has Oliver Queen and demands a ransom according to his hostage status. Felicity rolls her eyes and sighs.
Again.
There is absolutely no way that Oliver could get them out of this bank with his secret identity intact and if action movies and tv shows have taught her anything is that hostages situations often require a pizza delivery, a negotiator, a convoluted side plot about corruption within law enforcement and time.
She should try to leave her outrage aside and make the most of a pretty crappy situation.
"So, "she says out loud trying to get the attention of the office manager seated and tied up across the room. "Do you think you could cut the interest rate of Queen Consolidated if we compromise to redeem the capital in less time?"
"Are you… are you negotiating? RIGHT NOW?" The guy looks pale like a paper sheet. "Are you INSANE? We could DIE here!"
At her back Oliver takes her hands in his, they are warm and calloused as they usually are which she finds endearing and comforting most of the time, but now it's just another drop in her proverbial full glass of frustration.
"Just relax," he says, as if he were trying to tame a wild animal, "it will be over soon."
The rope around her wrists loosens, giving her some space to move, to rotate her shoulders and change the angle of her punished elbows even if she has to keep her hands at her back to maintain a certain level of hostage appearances.
The delivery boy arrives and she can see through the glass of the office window how the guys with black sky mask throw themselves at the food without even thinking about checking the boxes for bugs.
"God, we're being held hostage by the junior league of Starling's criminals," she comments. "It's kind of humiliating."
"I'm sorry I put you in this position," he says very, very low, almost like the voice of him in her head.
"You didn't." She rest her whole weight against his back purposely. She is suddenly so very exhausted. "But you put me in a position in which Isabel makes my life as miserable as she can and gave her reasons to feel vindicated doing so."
He sighs and shakes his head and she can feel the movement of his muscles and tendons at work. "I'm sorry," he says sounding like he really means it. "I'll fix it."
She doesn't want him to fix it, she just wants for him to understand that she faces consequences too, that she deserves to be heard.
"I don't—"
There is a sudden explosion. Artificial smoke filling the place making the air opaque and hard to breath but she doesn't have time to even cough her discomfort before she finds herself thrown against the floor. She finds every inch of herself buried beneath Oliver, pressed, trapped under the incredible heaviness of his body and she wonders if this asphyxiating suffocation is what he feels with the weight of the world over his shoulders.
Felicity meets Barry Allen precisely at the right time: soon enough to ask him for a favor and not too late to save Oliver's life.
She puts on a sundress and bright pink lipstick and goes to meet Barry before he has to catch his train back to Central City. They get milkshakes and walk around the park near the train station with the sun warming their skin and the faint smell of cut grass in the air.
She has almost forgotten that this used to be her life once; soft drinks, easy, mindless conversation and daylight.
"Star Wars or Star Trek?"
"I resent the implications there is any need to choose, Sir."
Barry smiles openly and brightly as only the people who don't guard terrible secrets can do. "A girl that likes to keep her options open. I like that."
Felicity sips from her triple chocolate milkshake and maybe blushes a little.
"Listen, rumor has it that there is going to be a Syfy Movie Marathon at Open Air Cinema this summer, maybe you would like to visit Starling city and go with me?"
"I'd like that very much."
When they sit on a bench their arms and legs bump lightly into each other and they smile awkwardly like a couple of teenagers on their first date.
This is what Felicity has found out about Barry so far: he is nice, easygoing, a cute geek with a sane sense of justice, he is into science and into her. It is a pleasant feeling to be liked for the mere pleasure of one's company and conversation and not for providing much needed computing skills.
"So…," Barry says finally. "I have a train to catch and I should probably get going now. I'll text you. If that's all right."
Felicity nods too quickly to be cool, but that's alright. "I'd love that."
Barry leans in so slowly that Felicity swears she has seen continents moving faster than him. His lips land over hers an eternity or so later and she feels like she has been holding her breath for maybe too long.
It's a chaste, nice kind of kiss. Her lips feel warm as she watches him go and sighs. There is a part of her that knows in that precise moment that Barry and her are never going to be a thing. And not only for the lack of chemistry in that otherwise perfectly nice kiss but because deep inside, in an obscure, infrequently visited corner of her mind she is perfectly aware that Barry and her have one last thing in common: they both care far too much about Oliver's approval and she needs to be a priority not another understanding sidekick.
She enjoys the blue sky over her head, the green grass around her feet and what is left of her milkshake before heading back home. Maybe Barry is not the one for her, but he offers her triple chocolate kisses, afternoons in the park and a companion whom she doesn't have to lie about her nocturne activities, so she refuses to give up the unlikely maybe of them. At least not yet.
After the third appletini and an unfortunate encounter with a tequila shot everything starts to make sense. Well, it all starts to blur and turn around her but also it starts to make perfect sense.
"I am a terrible person," she declares, her words slurred and not as charged with the epic stoicism that she pretended. "I am the worst."
She rest her forehead over her crossed forearms on the table and is vaguely conscious of the stickiness of spilled drinks on her arms' skin.
"Come on, everything will be okay." Digg's voice sounds comforting and patient as he strokes her back. "None of this is your fault."
She thinks she hears country music behind the white noise of other people's conversations and she wonders briefly how the hell did she end up in a country bar and then remembers, that yes, guilt-ridden need for drunkenness demands the closest bar, not the one with the best music.
"Is not my fault," she acknowledges because, well, lightening striking control is not counted among her several, colorful skills. "But here I am crying myself out like it has happened to me instead to my almost, maybe… something. He has family, and friends and here I am, Diggs, like I was the affected part. Like a phony marthyr." A sudden, horrible thought enters her mind. "Like my mom. Oh god, I'm becoming my mom! I'm definitely the worst."
Diggle sighs, or at least she thinks he sighs, it's difficult to tell once her drunken mind decides not to be able to ignore the country music. "Come on, I think you've had enough appletinis for one night." He gently coerces her to sit up and open her eyes. "I'll walk you home, I think the fresh air will make you good."
She thinks the fresh air will make her throw up but whatever, she gets up and lets Diggle ease her into her raincoat and scarf. She loves this scarf, she hopes she doesn't throw up all over it.
Felicity stumbles on her way out of the bar and he offers her a supportive, steady arm to keep walking.
"This is nice", she says as she leans into her friend. "You are nice."
"That's me, nice, old Diggle."
She burrows her face into his open jacket as they walk, he is basically carrying her as she takes one shaky step after another, and she inhales the soothing, clean scent that she has come to associate with him.
She would like to feel not so very stupidly sentimental. She wishes she had someone in her life that would ugly cry with her and offer to share snacks and get wasted over a bottle of expensive scotch instead of the handful of emotionally closeted personality types she has as close friends.
When was the last time she had a girlfriend? Did she ever had a girlfriend? She tries to remember the last time she talked, really talked, to a person that doesn't have genitals on the outside and she isn't able to come up with anything.
"Oh God, my life doesn't pass the Bechdel test!" she says mortified. "I am a feminist disgrace."
Although it's completely possible what actually comes out of her mouth sounds more along the lines of 'Ima femnishshgashe'.
"I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about."
She wants to reply with a witty retort about structural patriarchy, but neither her neurons nor her tongue seem particularly participative, so she sighs in a non-conformist, rebellious way and lets Diggle carry her home.
She is used to be around boys. Felicity worked IT, she went to MIT and her mother had a record number of boyfriends coming and going when she was growing up. Being around boys is kind of her default position, yet when Sarah Lance turns out not to be dead after all and joins their secret club of all things vigilante, Felicity feels like a heavy and testosterone-filled weight has been lifted off her shoulders.
But Sarah is elusive and guarded and seems to only be able to relax around Oliver. The two of them fit in a way that is obvious and mysterious and when she observes them training with Diggle, Felicity can't help but feeling like instead of being more integrated in the team now that she is not the only girl, it just evidences that no matter the sexual chromosome, she is the designated outsider. The addition of Roy to the group doesn't prove her wrong.
She decides to make lemonade out of the bitter metaphorical lemon she can taste in the roof of her mouth.
They are no longer the awkward trio that they once were but Oliver and Sarah become a thing, a circumspect and cautious thing as they are, Diggle shifts uncomfortably between training trios and hanging around her land of the geek, Roy broods alone in dark corners and Felicity wonders if they are ever going to become a real team.
It's like they all are suddenly made of eggshells, too afraid of bumping into each other and breaking into a million pieces. They should be more. They should be collectively better.
These are her people now, her chosen family even if they don't quite realize it yet. Which is why the fourth day in a row that Sara uses the salmon ladder of unspoken feelings until she is so out of breath that she falls ungraciously on the mat, Felicity buys an enormous amount of ice cream and two bottles of some fine wine and self-appoints herself as the official welcome-to-this-whatever committee.
"You don't have to do this."
They are in the sitting-room/chill out area of the Verdant basement that apparently nobody but her really uses except to crash down and emergency sleep like the dead.
Sara looks small and fragile with her legs crossed on the sofa and a pint of Caramel Chew Chew ice-cream on her lap as Felicity connects the multimedia hard drive to the screen. Nobody would have suspected that she could kill a bug taking on her appearance at the moment, much less that she could slaughter a small army of well-trained men.
Deceiving looks can be deceiving and all that jazz.
"Are you kidding me? You haven't watched any of the Avengers franchise movies, it's my moral duty as a faithful Comic Con goer to introduce you to the Marvel Eye Candy Movieverse"
Felicity sets up the queue of movies in chronological order, takes a pint of Mint and Chocolate Chips ice-cream of her own and sits alongside Sara, close enough to almost bump legs.
At some point, between the second glass of wine and Obadiah Stane revealing his betrayal, Sara puts the ice-cream on the floor and interlaces her fingers with such a force that makes her knuckles go white and then Felicity's mind start to rush, her body suddenly rigid and frozen thinking, "Oh my God, OH MY GOD!", cause did she really thought that a movie about
a tortured superhero was the way to go with a tortured vigilante? It's like forcing a real physicists to watch The Big Bang Theory.
"Are you alright? We can totally change movies, or discard movies altogether—"
But she doesn't get to finish her blabbing.
"You are the one in charge of the security cameras, right?"
Felicity looks at her but Sarah keeps her eyes fixed on the screen, tense, her fingers twisting in a way that is almost painful to see.
"Yes."
"And I take you're also the one that usually looks over the footage."
"Yes."
Sara nods and takes a deep breath, like Felicity knowing that Oliver and her are engaging in the proverbial horizontal tango adds its pound to the heavy weight that Sarah already carries on her shoulders.
She has read more than her fair share of fanfiction to recognize the cliché setup of an angsty romance triangle when she sees one — not that there is any romance involved on her part in this particular scenario.
Felicity would like to explain that impressive abs and biceps aside, she values Oliver's and Diggle's platonic friendship more than she can express with words and that although she is used to it by now, she deeply resents people's assumption that her love for them is only some kind of teenage crush on both or either of them. But the truth is that, as good as Felicity is at babbling and rambling, she is not so good at actual talk.
On the TV Tony Stark is about to start the final battle and the blue-ish light that irradiates from the screen lights their skin matching Sara's look of sorrow.
"I can't even begin to imagine what was like being in that overpopulated desert island of doom, mostly because nobody seems to want to talk about it which is really not the point and it was a mean thing for me to say. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that I know what it is to grow up in a family in which you don't feel like you fit, so if you ever want to talk or not to talk or hang out or anything, I know I'm not your sister but I'd like very much to be your friend."
Sara looks at her for the longest part of a minute as if she were trying to figure out if Felicity is going to grow another head in the near future until she smiles the smallest of smiles at her.
"I think I'd like that very much."
Felicity smiles and takes one of Sara's hands in hers in what she hopes translates as a reassuring gesture.
"In case nobody has said as much yet, I'm really glad you're back and still not dead and out of the heartless assassin's business."
Sara's smile broadens and she uses her free hand to re-arrange a lock of Felicity's blonde hair behind her ear. "You are really cute, Felicity Smoak."
And before she has time to process any of this at all, Sara's hand moves from her ear to her nape and their lips are touching.
The kiss is soft, sweet and chaste, and when Sara's pulls away what Felicity sees in her eyes is not desire but a tender gratitude that stays with her. All that she seems to be able to think is "Well… okay," and then she smiles because, yes, this is going to work."
Felicity has a list of every website that might one day be convenient to have access to so on quiet nights like this one, she sits in front of her screens and conscientiously tests their security, sends cleverly disguised trojans and carefully reviews their source code in search of bugs and holes that she could use as her own private backdoor.
She types with conviction at a steady pace and mouths along the lyrics that come out of her headphones as Oliver throws Roy to the mat over and over again at the far end of the lair.
It's a little past midnight when she decides she deserves a break, starts a process that doesn't need her supervision to run smoothly and goes to the fridge for something fresh and sweet to drink, probably one of those bottled starbucks vanilla coffees that she restocks every week even though supposedly nobody else drinks them.
When she goes back the training seems to have stopped too; Oliver is nowhere to be seen and Roy looks beaten and dejected, all flushed up as he drags his steps towards the sofa.
"I'm not sure I fit in all this," he says making an ambiguous gesture with his hand and letting himself drop onto the sofa carelessly.
She should be sympathetic not only because the situation probably calls for it but also because it's kind of her default setting mode, but instead the declaration rubs her in all the wrong ways. Felicity leaves the bottled coffee on the nearest surface and crosses her arms over her chest as restrainedly as she thinks she is able to manage.
"You think you don't fit in all this? You?" She is more than a little passive-aggressive but doesn't let her voice rise above a conversational tone. "There are four of you and one of me. You train together and assault buildings ninja-style together while I get to stay here and talk to myself mainly because God forbids that any of you have any idea what I'm talking about. It is like I can't escape the old high school trope, the one with the cool kids and then me being the outsider nerd."
Roy's looks a little astonished for a moment, like her ranting is an unprecedented event, and then very slowly, he starts to smile sideways, the tantalizing mask falling over his features like a curtain.
"I've always considered you one of the cool kids, Felicity."
She briefly wonders if they all practice flirting and charming too between kicks and punches. It only makes her feel even more inadequate and awkward.
"Flattery will get you nowhere with me, mister," she says with the no-nonsense tone she has mastered to get Oliver to disinfect non-life-threatening wounds. Roy's façade falters long enough for her to recognize the soul sucking sadness that peaks in his eyes. She softens, uncrosses her arms and sits beside him on the abused sofa using her normal conciliatory tone. "What's wrong?"
Roy's intake of air is slow and steady but his eyes flare, his jaw sets square and all the muscles of his neck get visibly tense. There is this battle inside of him that is almost painful to watch as the Mirakuru traces in his blood try to get the better of him anytime he gets upset, all that bottled evidently violent energy struggling to come out. Maybe Felicity is too thoughtless for her own good or maybe she has too much faith in his humanity but instead of getting scared she just lets her hand rest over Roy's clenched one in what she hopes is a comforting and encouraging gesture.
"I just—" he grunts instead of ending the sentence. "I don't know."
She doesn't take her hand away instead tries to be patient and doesn't press the issue because Roy's internal turmoil is as obvious as his discomfort trying to put feelings into words, so she just stays there, reachable and approachable to listen to whatever he would like to share whenever he would like to share it. She doesn't expect him to tell her anything of consequence, after all, repressing feelings and salmon ladder exercises are kind of the lair trademark, but she dutifully plays her part.
"I miss Thea," he says surprising them both. "I miss her so much it hurts, but I will not risk injuring her."
Felicity nods solemnly, squeezes his hand and looks him in the eye, hoping that he will be able to see that she is not trying to frivolously appease him.
"It will be okay." She is not sure how or when, but she believes it with the strength of a thousand suns.
"I don't want to hurt any of you either." His voice is about to break and her heart seems to shrink a little bit out of sympathy.
"You won't. We will help you."
They will help him. She has to believe it because they help people everyday so they have to be able to help their own people, they just have to.
Felicity swallows the tears that threaten to fill her eyes and throws her arms around his neck to envelope him in a tight embrace. If Diggle impersonates the role of big brother then Roy has the one of little brother covered just fine.
"Is everything okay?" the sound of Oliver's voice is sudden and startling, — as he usually is — so she jumps a palm in the air in shock — as she usually does — breaking the hug.
"No, no, everything is okay. Peachy. Mostly alright," she says in a blurt walking away to her station instead of staying to see Oliver's eyebrow go up in confused amusement.
She sits back in her chair and busies herself checking all the things that don't need her supervision to calm her nerves. She breathes deeply a couple of times, contemplating her own silliness, she is around Oliver all the time; the concept of him making her nervous should be preposterous but here she is, exposing feelings near such a source of restraint as Oliver doesn't fail to make her feel too weak for this place.
"Hey, Felicity," says Roy and she turns to face the source of the voice in time to see the bottled vanilla coffee rapidly approaching her. She should be ashamed of the pride she feels at catching it before it hits her on the nose. "You are the coolest kid around here."
She is genuinely speechless as Roy goes back to the training mat, the damned bottle of coffee falling undignifiedly from her hands when Oliver stops in front of her giving her a funny look.
"Sure you are all right?"
"Yes, totally." And because she feels this stupid need to fill the silence she continues, "he was just joking." She makes an exaggerated disregarding gesture. "Roy. Joking. He does that sometimes. He doesn't look like he does. But he does. Joke."
Oliver smiles and Felicity rolls her eyes. She is completely ridiculous sometimes. Then Oliver takes another step, leans in and grabbing delicately the side of her neck kiss her on the top of her head.
"No, he is right. You are the coolest kid around here."
Her wound closes nicely. The new, bright, pink skin at the back of her shoulder is soft, thin and itchy, which is only to be expected. Still Sara seems to take special pride on the quick healing and the fact that it may even not leave a scar.
"They key is hydrogen peroxide. Lots and lots of hydrogen peroxide," she says as she corrects the posture of Felicity's feet and urges her to throw a punch. "Povidone-iodine is for sissies," she determines with a little smile.
"Duly noted," Felicity says as she tries to kick the air in front of her in just the exact way Sara has been teaching her to.
"Well done," Sara encourages her. "Remember, the most important thing is for you to create an opportunity to run away."
"Hit and run. Got it."
It's not like Felicity thinks she has any kind of actual chance against any of the opponents this team is used to, but these little exercises and techniques make her feel a little less weak, a little more powerful. "No woman should ever feel at mercy of a man's hand" said Sara once when she first started teaching her self-defense and the quiet ferocity in her voice was enough to convince her she was right.
They have the mat for themselves most of the time since Oliver and Roy have taken to train in derelict buildings after one too many broken pieces of furniture. She ends up completely exhausted, sweaty and feeling soft and weak but it's also a weirdly compelling and rewarding experience.
"I think I like all this girl on girl action," she says taking the bottle of water without thinking too much about how it sounds. She is too tired and too flushed to even blush. "I mean — whatever."
Sara smiles sheepishly as she looks down and Felicity groans and lets herself fall flat to the mat to rest her sore muscles, her breathing still loud and labored. Sara sits near her, her legs crossed Indian style as if waiting patiently for Felicity to catch her breath and the distant, almost inaudible music from the Verdant providing them with soft beats to register the passing of time.
It's nice, it's relaxing, it feels very much like home. Still, Felicity has been around enough time to recognize this for what it is.
"This is the calm before the big storm, right?" she asks Sara looking at the industrial roof. Mirakuru, strange disappearances in the glades… she can read the signs.
Sara sighs loudly and resignedly. "There is always a big storm in the waiting." She says it with the unavoidable gravitas of recited axioms and Felicity rolls around the mat to be able to look at her in the eye. Felicity can see it every time that she looks into Sara's eyes, this dark sadness, this patient wait for the inevitable, ugly, painful drop of the other shoe, and every time, it breaks her heart a little bit.
She stretches her arm and reaches to grab Sara's hand, tries to bring her back from that dark place she never really abandoned. "At least we don't have to wait alone. That's something, right?"
Sara squeezes her hand a little. "That's everything," she says with a low, sweet tone of voice.
Felicity always marvels at her soft delicacy, at the way she can be hard and cruel but her manners, the way she conducts herself most of the time is sweet and vulnerable. A "fake it till you make it" meets "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" kind of deal, like a moth reaching blindly to the light that it can't manage to possess.
It scares her a little bit, it scares her what Sara could do that would end up hurting herself but she has no other clue as how to help her so she holds her hand for as long as Sara allows it and hopes against hope that it will be enough.
Diggle's birthday manages to arrive before the metaphorical all-hell-breaking-loose that they are quietly expecting does, so Felicity puts on a big, bright smile and prepares a small party at the foundry, hoping that along the celebration maybe they will all accomplish some team bonding through having fun and alcoholic drinks instead of the usual shared soul-wrecking drama.
It takes all of her blackmail material and she suspects, a little of charm on Sara's side, to get Oliver involved but in the end there's booze, cake, music, booze, little hats that Felicity makes everybody wear, some minor sulking and some more booze.
"This is childish," Oliver says, but everybody is busy filling their glasses one more time and nobody seem to want to pay any attention to his spoilsport assertion; it is only testimony to their diverse states of inebriation that when the fabulous idea of starting to play drinking games comes along, the majority of them don't even think twice before agreeing.
"And I think maybe we have celebrated enough." Oliver's words sound heavy and dense, like they were filled with boredom of doom and completely empty of any kind of meaning for the rest of them. Felicity snorts as she finishes refilling her glass and proceeds to accordingly ignore what he is saying
"Those are big words coming from someone with a little green hat crowning his head." Diggle's words might be a little slurred but still Roy and herself nod as solemnly as they can manage in agreement.
"Not to mention you rather epic drunkenness record." Sara's look of inebriated incredulity is self-explanatory enough.
"Booooooooo," is Felicity's eloquent argument which she emphasizes by grabbing a handful of popcorn and throwing it at his face for good measure. "Besides, you all have nasty bruises from that thing the other day, I'd bet alcohol will help with that. And with everything. We definitely need more alcohol in our collective blood systems."
Roy carefully takes her hand to help her sit on the floor as they all take places and in her drunken stupor that is confirmation enough that this terrible, bad idea is actually going to work on their favor. They all sit in a circle with their backs resting partially or totally in various strategically located pieces of furniture and training devices, the glass with their current drink in one hand and half-empty bottles of alcoholic beverages at an arm's length.
Roy ignores her and consistently looks at some point in the distant, metaphorical horizon while they figure out the logistic needed to start the game. They sit on the floor and rest. They look like a weird star shape in which she is the point located between Diggle and Roy and Oliver and Sara are kind of her opposite.
"Okay, you all have been warned," Oliver says, as if it were his moral obligation to state his superior knowledge of general drunkenness and partying and finally gives up raising his glass above their heads. "Diggle, man. I wouldn't do it for anybody but you," he declares and empties his glass in a single gulp. "Your party, you start."
Diggle laughs and nods and Felicity is probably a little more excited about this than any adult should be. A party full of friends, that has been missing too much of a normal life to be embarrassed by it though. They all have.
Diggle raises his glass and starts the game with a gleeful smile as he proclaims, "Never have I ever had to babysit Oliver Queen," and takes a gulp of his drink accordingly, quickly followed by Sara.
"This is going to be fun!" Felicity says and drinks because really, who hasn't, and laughs out loud.
"I'm way too old to be playing this," murmurs Oliver with a regretful tone of voice but Sara gives him a good humored punch in the shoulder and he keeps playing anyway.
There's a second round and of course there is a third one. There is another round and yet another before Felicity loses count and maybe stops caring about sensible or stupid choices. Their glasses are emptied and refilled, their laughter grows louder and louder until it's Sara's turn again and Diggle really has to go to the bathroom. "Or I might embarrass all of us," he says.
"Some special forces you are," Oliver teases Diggle as he goes and Felicity grabs Roy's steady arm to keep her from losing her balance from so much laughter.
Sara just smiles and raises her glass.
"Shouldn't we wait for him?" Felicity asks a little concerned of starting to count casualties instead of keeping on with the induced booze bonding but Sara doesn't even hesitate. "Never have I ever, kissed or been kissed by a member of Team Arrow," she declares and promptly makes her due shot.
"We don't really call ourselves like that," insists Oliver without much success before drinking.
Roy sighs loudly and relaxes his shoulders, the contentment for staying dry this round written all over his face. Meanwhile, Felicity looks in the general direction of the bathroom waiting for Diggle to appear, mainly because leaving people behind seems like a contradiction of the spirit of the game, but also because she thinks there is a small chance that he might have passed out in a corner somewhere.
She can feel Sara's eyes piercing at her profile, which proves to be a lot more unnerving that she would have anticipated, and takes a breath before drinking and leaving her glass almost empty again. Didn't Diggle left ages ago? She discards her glass to the floor and uses Roy as a prop to get herself to her feet. She is proud to say that she manages to give at least three steady, consecutives steps before the room starts to spin and keeping her balance starts to feel like an impossible task of epic proportions.
Felicity feels like she is going to fall; she is going to drunkenly fall on her face and probably pass out on her way to the floor when out of nowhere Digg's solid hands appear at her waist to steady her up. She grabs at his rock solid figure and waits for a little wave of nausea to pass by.
She thinks she has never been so glad to see him, except maybe all those other times he has prevented her from getting in harm's way. Whatever, she can't really remember.
She can feel how Diggle moves them both, dragging her feet at his imposing pace and only opens back her eyes when she sees they are back in the company of their friends.
"Okay, so what did I miss?" Diggle asks and Felicity lets herself slide down his body till she reaches the floor.
It's not until Oliver answers, "I was asking myself the same question," with his you-have-failed-this-city voice, his confused face and a sudden tension that Felicity can't quite understand, that she starts to suspect that she must have missed something important too.
The metaphorical big storm Felicity was so worried about not only comes but devastates in its passing. In a matter of two weeks, everything that happens is too fast and too violent to let any of them catch their breath and when they win, when they save the city and entrap Slade the taste in the back of their mouths is bitter and angry instead of sweet as triumph should be.
They manage to cure Roy and get rid of the small army of Mirakuru's pet rats but not before they leave a body count, literal and figurative, that could have been far, far more extensive.
Thea leaves the City, Sara too, and Moira Queen is a different kind of gone. Queen Consolidated is in the impossible compromised kind of situation that brokers in Wall Street have ugly, scary nightmares about, and The Glades resemble more a battlefield than any kind of place where families might live and yet… Given the circumstances Felicity chooses to concentrate on counting her blessings, rejoice in their small victories and move on.
"When people come back from an island there's usually some sort of vacation involved and not super secret jail for former super soldier," she complains leaving her backpack on the metallic table of the foundry that had been used, on more than one occasion as a stretcher. "I'm just saying."
She rolls her head trying to liberate some tension from her shoulder. Who would have thought that the day she would actually miss a commercial flight would arrive this soon.
"Not in my kind of island," Oliver answers and Digg snorts as he puts his own bag besides hers.
"Look!" she says pointing at the bare skin of her arm, "I'm not even tan."
Oliver crosses his arm over his chest, his eyebrow so high with incredulity it should be offensive. "You tan?"
"I get slightly sunburned which from a distance can be mistaken as a tan," she explains too quickly. "I still rest my case." She smiles, sits at her chair and rests her head.
Diggle smiles at her and puts a hand on Oliver's shoulder in that way that Felicity imagines feels brotherly and supportive. "I'm gonna go home now and unless the Apocalypse begins again or you want to grab a beer, I don't want to see either of you in the next forty-eight hours." He walks towards the stairs, raising an arm in light warning with his back to them. "I mean it, I have a nice watch with a chronometer and everything."
Felicity closes her eyes and sighs deeply. She is positively drained. She has come to observe that being kidnapped has that kind of effect, at least on her; weird knowledge #28 that she has acquired since partnering up with The Arrow.
"You look tired," Oliver says.
"Believe me, I feel worse."
She feels so exhausted that she doesn't think possible to cross the city to her apartment without taking a ten hour nap first. Suddenly, Oliver strong fingers are on her shoulders and the absolute lack of jumping on her part should be proof enough of her level of weariness.
She should protest, she is after all a little pissed off at him but his hands start to work on the muscles of her shoulders and instead of a smart, resentful comment what escapes her lips is a muffled groan.
He just presses a little harder in response.
The heel of his hand sinks at the exact place while his fingers work on relaxing the base of her neck and she feels like it is too much for it to be fair.
"I am a little mad at you," she says, her voice breaking under her labored breathing.
"Is it because the lack of vacation and the 8 hour flight in that tin can?" His words are low and steady like a lullaby.
"No, although that doesn't speak on your favor either." She aids him reach the tense muscles that run along her nape by stretching her neck forward and keeps her eyes closed. It's easier to concentrate solely on herself that way. "You should have filled me in with the plan before."
Before you told me you loved me, before you put a syringe in my hand.
Maybe she is being selfish. They were shot at, punched, kicked, stabbed and all she had to endure was those five seconds of uncertainty between his words and the feeling of the object he was putting in her hand and yet the pain she felt at being used in such a manner was worse than the one she felt when she took that bullet for Sara.
"You have the worst poker face," he says, both their voices are barely more than whispers now, as his hands keep massaging her.
"You used to be so very bad at lying," she says a little bit longingly, a little bit breathy, closer to sleep now than she has been for a while.
"The best lies are the ones that are the closest to the truth."
She doesn't answer that. She is too tired to keep arguing. She feels him lift her in his arms and carry her to the sofa but she can't bring herself to open her eyes, won't bring herself to open them. The last thing she remembers before falling completely asleep is to wonder what can be close to the truth in a lie like "I love you".
She left a flyer for the "First Syfy Movie Marathon" at the Open Air Cinema of Starling City's Park stuck to the crystal wall of the basement because sometimes, she is a little too close to an emotional deprivation disorder diagnosis for her liking.
Felicity knows what she is talking about; she took a semester of Psychology for Dummies 101 back in college, although is pretty possible the course wasn't actually called like that but something slightly more official and classic MIT pretentious. Not that that is near the point. At all.
The point in fact is, that she is used to going to these kind of things alone, she is more than used to, actually, but this year she had expectations of not being alone. She had someone who was willing to go with her, someone who is currently still under a coma and she feels a little bit lonely at the outcome. So, she left the flyer because sometimes she has this feeling that if she doesn't hold her end where the people she cares about are concerned, they will just fade away while she is looking elsewhere and therefore she occasionally does these things; the kind of things that casually say, "hey, it's cool if you want to tag along, it's also cool if you don't feel like it. Please, don't use it as an excuse to leave me". Or at least, that's what she expects that this says.
What she didn't expect when she left the flyer was for any of her vigilante-let's-do-two-hundred-push-ups-for-fun friends to actually attend the event. They are too paranoid, not nerdy enough and there is always so much energy around them that Felicity seriously doubts that any of them could sit still for the whole duration of the marathon. And yet, if she would have had to bet her life on which one of them would be more likely to show up she would never in a thousand years have said that it would be Oliver Queen.
Night is quietly falling on the city. It's not dark enough to see any stars on the sky, not yet anyway, but the light is dim and shadows are long and treacherous. It makes it impossible to distinguish his features from a distance but she'll be damned if she doesn't recognize the way he moves, approaching silently and proficiently avoiding stepping on anybody else's blanket.
"What are you doing here?!" she asks as soon as he is in hearing range and her strained whisper sounds more accusatory than surprised even to her own ears.
He stops suddenly freezing like she imagines he would do if he would happen to stomp into a land mine and Felicity swears to herself that she is going to learn to use the nuances of language any day now. She sure as hell has the brain for it.
"You left that flyer so I though…"
She sighs loudly, probably louder than she just spoke and tries for an apologetic smile. "No, yeah, sure, of course—" she interrupts. "What I meant is, what are you doing here?" She tries to add miming by intonating every word but the tragic outcome is that the sentence ends up sounding exactly the same but slower, as in slightly retarded not in cinematic slow motion. She shrugs and makes a dismissive movement with her hand. "Urg. You know what I mean."
Oliver is just at the border of her picnic blanket as if waiting for a formal invitation to come in, which is not only probably unheard of, but pretty absurd too. He is wearing a long sleeve t shirt that probably costs more than her monthly rent, the fabric clinging to his shoulders and chest as he stuffs his hands in the front pockets of his ridiculously expensive designer jeans, and an honest to god baseball cap.
"Are you wearing a baseball cap?"
He even seem a little embarrassed at himself for a moment before smiling tightly and gesturing towards the blanket. "May I join you?"
Felicity blinks once, twice even."You know this is a Syfy Marathon, right?" she says moving aside to make space for him. "You actually read all the words in the flyer."
Oliver smiles more broadly, or at least she has a feeling he does because darkness has finally settled in around them and the light from the distant lamp posts is not enough for her to distinguish his features until he takes that step and sits on the blanket by her side.
"I've been known to be able to read, yes." Felicity shakes her head slightly, her ponytail bouncing at the movement as she recognizes the familiar feeling of social embarrassment.
"It's a slow night. Diggle has gone home and Roy is on patrol. I thought we could hang out."
Felicity is about to point out that they never hang out. Not really. Not like this, just the two of them alone in casual clothes, doing something mundane and normal that doesn't involve work, playing bait, or some sort of surveillance, but that's the moment the screen comes to life in front of them and a blue glow immediately covers all the audience and she decides to enjoy the movie now and asks the questions later.
She has watched this movie at least a zillion times but she is caught up in the story nevertheless, as soon as the first scene ends she forgets about her job and her other job, the rent — she even forgets about the park and the other people, as if she were suspended in time and space. There is just her and these characters she knows and loves.
"Are we good?"
And apparently, Oliver too. His voice comes to her almost like a noise, an unwelcome disruption she can't ignore but can't quite pay attention to either.
"Uhm?"
"You and me. Are we good? Because you are one of the few people I trust to keep me grounded and to keep me on the right path and I really need for us to be good."
That's the moment when Felicity suddenly loses the track of the movie even though she knows
the argument by heart and she spins her head towards Oliver so fast that it wouldn't be that surprising had she legitimately sprained her neck.
There is something really serious going on the day Oliver Queen chooses to have a conversation about something that could be defined as feelings without a gun pointed at either of their heads.
"Yes, yes. We've had some disagreements, Oliver." She carefully puts her hand over his where it rests on his right knee. "That doesn't mean that I no longer stand by you."
She expects to observe some kind of reassuring expression in his features but instead there is a flicker of something that for a second looks too much like disappointment for Felicity's comfort.
"Oliver? What's going on? You are freaking me out."
The movie is completely forgotten; she keeps her voice low due to the possible secrecy of the matter they are about to discuss instead of for the benefit of their fellow audience members.
Felicity's hold on Oliver's hand tightens as she mentally braces herself for whatever is about to come.
"You didn't mention to me anything about you and Diggle," Oliver says, low and strained like every word were costing him a whole deal of pain.
There is this moment in which her brain stops all conscious thought, just stops, and all she can hear and see is a big, fat, comic-like "WHAAAAT?!" written in the air. She lets go of Oliver's hand but he reacts quickly and interlaces their fingers like the physical grip will make her freak out a little less.
"What exactly should have I mentioned?" Because maybe she is just misinterpreting the whole
thing. It certainly wouldn't be the first time her brain decides to go far beyond the line of duty to get her into an embarrassing mess. For all that she knows, Oliver could be talking about their Big Belly routine or the fact that even though she has solemnly sworn never to bring coffee to Oliver to his office she has been known not to apply such a rigor where Diggle is concerned.
"That you two are… dating?" he finishes the sentence with the interrogative tone that gives the sudden uncertainty over the sense behind what one is saying. Felicity's face must be the very picture of incredulity and Oliver lets his head drop for a moment before taking a deep breath to look at her in the eyes again. "You two aren't dating, are you?"
No, Diggle and I are not dating, how the hell did you get to that conclusion? That's what she means to say, but instead the words that come out of her mouth are others. "Is this about the coffee?" Her voice sounds a little strangled but in all honestly, she thinks she is managing the situation remarkably well, given that currently she is not completely freaking out. Operative word being 'completely'.
"It is absolutely not about the coffee."
There is a moment of silence and the dialogue of the movie fills the gap between them. It feels surreal, the artificial glow, the warm, nocturne temperature and their stupid fingers are still entangled and what felt innocent and meant for comfort before is like a pink elephant in the room now.
"I don't understand," she whispers because she says it mostly to herself but Oliver hears it nevertheless.
"I shouldn't have said anything." He is looking at the screen now and she breathes deeply as she retrieves her right hand and Oliver quickly shifts his attention and fixes it to the point where her hand was just a moment ago.
"We are as good as we've ever been." She smiles at him but her smile is crooked and doesn't reach her eyes.
"Yeah, right." Oliver looks ahead; he has the kind of resigned determination in his eyes that she has seen thousands of times by now, in very specific scenarios. "I guess we just aren't as close as I thought we were."
He speaks with a quiet sadness that almost breaks her heart, almost but not quite because she is no longer as naïve as to believe that Oliver's words have the same meaning they would have if she had spoken them.
"I need a drink," she says. The marathon is obviously ruined for her anyway and somehow it seems like the adult thing to do.
"Okay," he says. He stands up and smiles his usual I'm-amused-at-you-smile and offers her his hand. "I'll buy you one."
Felicity breathes deeply and takes his hand because this kind of nonchalant Oliver is a territory she has learned to navigate a while ago.
"Round of appletinis!"
They pick up and fold the picnic blanket and Oliver takes her handbag as they walk out of the park.
"I'm not going to drink that."
Oliver offers her his arm and she takes it without thinking too much about it.
"Fine, you can drink caustic soda or whatever it is tough guys like you usually drink."
"Tough guys?"
"Shut up." Felicity shoves him playfully and it feels like the force is balanced in the universe once again, the whole lot of summer ahead of them to figure everything else out.
