John Diggle walked into the base of operations that he, Oliver and Felicity worked out of, together trying to keep Starling City safe. Felicity had taken to calling the sub-basement of Verdant 'The Arrowcave', much to his annoyance. it wasn't so much that Felicity wanted to have some fun while she was running coms that annoyed him, but that she mentioned 'The Arrowcave' when they were outside of their vigilante personas, which could potentially draw heat onto them.
Thinking about it some more, Diggle resolved to talk to Felicity about proper descriptions of things when talking about what the three of them did in their 'time off'. There was a poster Diggle had seen at some point, from WWII, which had an artistic rendering of a terrified man drowning in the foreground, with a burning ship slowly sinking in the background. Running on the bottom of the poster, was the legend - 'loose lips, sink ships'. While the situation was slightly different, the message was the same now as it was back in any of the wars that had been fought for any reason, letting either your enemy, or unknowns who might be/know your enemy hear any information they could potentially use against you was a sure way to get a bullet in the back. Or maybe it should be an arrow in the back in this case.
Diggle was brought from his planning of his discussion with Felicity by the young women herself. From what he could hear from the tone of her voice, Felicity was not happy about something. Sighing, and mentally preparing himself for what he might find once he crossed the threshold, Diggle pushed open the door and entered the heart of the vigilante effort to clean up Starling City.
As he got closer, Diggle could hear, along with the normal humming of the foundry turned defunct bar, crying. Sighing, before squaring his shoulders, Diggle walked the rest of the way into the control room of the Arrowcave.
There before him was Felicity sitting in her chair, sobbing her heart out. Immediately, Diggle thought that something had happened to Oliver to cause the young lady in front of him to act this way. Although he was worried that he was going to again cause Felicity distress, Diggle reminded himself that he needed whatever information that Felicity could give him so he could make the best decisions going forward.
Diggle quickly walked forward, grabbed Felicity by the shoulders, turned her around and gave her a gentle, but still firm shake. As he was doing this, Diggle asked the most important question in his mind.
"Felicity, has something happened to Oliver?" As soon as the question was out of his mouth, the blond started wailing again. Realizing that he wasn't getting through to her with her in this state, Diggle went to the mini fridge that he and Oliver kept stocked with bottled water and after unscrewing the cap on the bottle as he walked back to Felicity, up ending the contents on her head as soon as he got close enough.
As John had hoped, the shock broke Felicity out of whatever trauma she was in, as the girl jumped up from her chair with an ear splitting shriek. As Diggle waited for Felicity to come back from her shock, he noticed that both the girl's blouse and bra were fairly sheer when water was applied. With a faint blush on his cheeks, Diggle walked over to the part of the sub-basement that he and Oliver keep multiple changes of clothing on hand and after pulling out a black t-shirt and a pair of basketball snap pants that Oliver would wear when the two of them would work on fighting techniques and tossed them toward Felicity.
Felicity felt the clothing hit her head and upper torso and before she could do anything, Diggle started speaking.
"Go take a quick shower, get changed, then come out and tell me what's going on." He instructed Felicity.
Watching as the blond meekly walked away to do what he had instructed, Diggle sighed again and sat down in the closest chair to wait for Felicity to appear, cueing up some files on people they were looking into to read while he waited. While the wait took longer than Diggle was used to, Felicity came out sooner than some clients he'd had to stand around for in similar situations, so he wasn't too bent out by it. He did have to exert a good amount of willpower so he would not laugh or even break out into a smile as to how much Felicity was swimming in the spare clothes he had provided her. Looking at the girl in the change of clothing he'd provided her, Felicity looked like a child playing dress-up with their father's clothing.
As Felicity sit down, Diggle was worried by the fact that she wouldn't look at him, instead, looking at her feet. Reaching out, Diggle lightly took hold of Felicity's hand, causing the girl to jump slightly before looking at him, and gave her what he hoped was an encouraging smile. Felicity, when Diggle took her hand, gave a short jump before looking up and looking at Diggle's face, if not exactly in his eyes. Taking a deep breath Felicity started talking.
"I don't know if it's that obvious but in working with Oliver and seeing what a force of good he is for this city, I may have developed a slight crush on him." Hearing what Felicity said confirmed a number of things Diggle had begun to suspect, ever since Oliver had decided to send Felicity undercover in Dominic Alonzo's underground casino. Realizing that it might not come off well if he said anything, no matter how he phrased it, Diggle just smiled slightly and gestured for her to continue. Diggle got worried when Felicity just scowled a bit more before she picked up her explanation.
"That guy who was behind everything that we just finished dealing with, Roache and everything, was a former friend of Oliver on the island." Felicity exclaimed in an overly dramatic fashion to Diggle. Knowing this already, Diggle nodded to Felicity, in the hope to get her to pick up her story a bit faster.
"He kidnapped Oliver's ex Laurel and was holding her to flush out Oliver when Oliver told me he loved me and that Slade had kidnaped the wrong women. What I didn't know was that Slade had placed camera with sound throughout the Queen mansion, which Oliver did know and was duping Slade in the hope that he would release Laurel and she could tell Oliver where Slade was hiding.
"This caused Slade to send some of his men to kidnap me leading to Slade and Oliver fighting over both me and Laurel" Felicity said, gritting her teeth when she nearly spat out the other girl's name.
"I even managed to inject this Slade with a cure to whatever he was on, allowing Oliver to beat him and he still chose Laurel!" Felicity screamed in anguish at the end.
Falling back in on herself, Felicity finished her story.
"While we were waiting for the police and paramedics to come, all Oliver cared about was Laurel. Sure he gave me a cursory check, and asked if I was ok" Felicity explained, before Diggle could say anything, "but his entire focus was on Laurel, even when he was making sure I was OK." Felicity somehow snarled and whimpered out, before she sunk back into her chair and started sobbing again.
A myriad of feelings rushed through Diggle. Happiness that Oliver, Felicity and Laurel were OK and Slade was in custody. Sympathy for Felicity seeing her dreams shatter in such a painful fashion, anger that Oliver left Felicity sobbing her heart out, without caring about how the blond was feeling.
Just as Diggle was about to go for his phone to call and berate Oliver over his treatment of Felicity, the memory of his failed relationship with Carly, which was not in part due to not being able to separate his love for Carly with his hatred of Deadshot, no matter what he had told everyone, but his feelings for his ex-wife, Lyla.
Diggle, had to admit that he might understand where Oliver was coming from, as much as he thought Oliver restarting his relationship with Laurel might blow up in both their faces, and affect the team as well. However, still wanting to make sure Oliver was Ok, Diggle took out his phone and called his friend. After no more than three rings, Oliver picked up.
"Hey John, everything's Ok. I managed to beat Slade and he is currently being transported to an ARGUS black site facility, Waller promised to let me know where they finally dump Slade, but right now I'm happy that I'm where I'm supposed to be, with Laurel. I don't know what the next few days are going to be like, but I'll call you tomorrow so that we can discusses it more in depth if you'd like." For a moment, Oliver stopped talking, and Diggle was worried that they had lost the connection, before he heard what sounded like fabric dragging on each other. Sparing a quick glance at Felicity, Diggle took the phone off speaker, and brought it up to his ear, so that his friend didn't have to hear, first hand, her dreams go down in flames.
"You know, after everything that's happened in the last year it really has put things in perspective. I think all of us should sit down and really discuss where we should go from here with the plan to clean up Starling City. We might have to look into a different method than what we've been using for the last two years, given everything that's been going on. Anyways, that something to talk about later. You should go home and chalk up another win for the good guys, before things go crazy again. See you in a couple of days." With that said, Oliver hung up and Diggle was listening to dead air.
Bringing his phone down, Diggle wasn't sure how to react. He had been worried something like what had happened was going to happen, but Oliver seemed to have handled it without much difficulty. He didn't know exactly what was going to happen next but that was something to talk to Oliver about later, apparently. Anymore musing was ruined by the sniffling coming from behind him. As he spun around, Diggle realized that he had the phone on speaker most of the time which had allowed Felicity to hear her dreams come crashing down around her feet. Before he could even think of what to say to comfort the girl, Felicity had her hand up to preemptively stop him.
"The next time you talk to Oliver, let him know that I've decide to take some vacation time to clear my head of distractions, OK?" Felicity said with what Diggle guessed was supposed to be a brave look on her face, honestly though; Felicity looked like she was one moment away from losing it completely.
While Diggle wanted to insist that Felicity spend some time with him, so he could look after her, he guessed that it wouldn't go over well. All Diggle could do was nod his head. As he stepped forward to give the girl a hug, Felicity scampered around John, while also, started gathering up her bag. After checking to make sure she had everything, Felicity looked back at Diggle.
"My mother has been badgering me to come out for a visit, but in all honesty I always thought I was better than her, and had refused every invite. Guess I'm not that much more than that Vegas showgirl's daughter after all, huh?" Felicity said, ducking out before Diggle could start to come to grips with what he'd just learnt.
Looking back up, Diggle realized that he was the only one left in the sub-basement. While he might be able to understand why Oliver did what he did, Diggle wished it hadn't crushed one of his friends to the extent that it had. Deciding that maybe matchmaking wasn't in his wheelhouse if he was this far off the mark, Diggle looked around to make sure that everything was shut down for the night before he left too, making a mental note to talk to Oliver about being more gentle in letting people down.
A/N: Please review. (Although, if you're just going to bitch at me for not getting Oliver and Fefe together, don't bother)