Felicity's back was rigid as she forced her hand to remain steady when it so desperately wanted to shake. With her professor standing behind her and watching her every move, Felicity was terrified that she would mess this up and get a bad grade on the lab. She had worked hard to get into MIT and if she messed up in ONE class and ruined her straight A history, she was going to be pissed. Professor Moira Queen was known for having the most difficult class on campus and Felicity had been so unlucky as to be placed in her class seeing how the other professor's- Ray Palmer- was full. She hated the Chemistry class with a passion and it was only aggravated when she had a teacher like Dr. Queen. She was strict and the course was fast-paced and difficult. She couldn't wait until she got out. Today was the final exam and being the evil Queen (pun intended) she was, Dr. Queen had made it count for forty percent of their final grade. Felicity was a few steps above nervous and a few steps below anxiety attack. It was all she could do to not vomit all over her lab.
With sweaty palms, Felicity added the last drop of the acid to her mixture and held her breath as it changed color multiple times and eventually settled on a nice purple. Dr. Queen leaned forward and her icy blue eyes examined every inch of the project before she turned her gaze onto the nervous brunette and smiled; actually smiled, which made the IT nerd just a little worried. "Well done, Ms. Smoak. It's perfect. I think this is the first time in my thirty odd years of teaching that a student has mastered this lab. Congratulations."
Felicity grinned and thanked her before running out of the classroom and accidentally slamming straight into a hard wall. Her first thought was that someone was trying to prank Dr. Queen and had inadvertently cemented her into the class from hell, but then she realized that the wall was warm and there was no way that a cement wall could be warm. Looking up, the cyber security major found a pair of warm, but strangely familiar blue eyes watching her. They shouldn't have been familiar because Felicity was pretty damn sure she'd never met the handsome man in front of her, but she still recognized those eyes. Full lips smiled and Felicity couldn't help but smile back. "Sorry. I wasn't paying attention to where I was going."
The man in front of her, though was most definitely more god than man with a handsome face like that, grinned, showing perfectly straight, white teeth. "No, it was my fault. I should have been paying attention. I'm Oliver Queen."
"Felicity. Smoak. And is that Queen like in Dr. Moira Queen?" Those eyes were far too similar for him not to be Dr. Queen's son."
Oliver grinned. "It is, but if I want to keep safe here, I'd better not tell anyone else. My mother isn't exactly well-liked around here."
Felicity gave a shy smile. "She is a little strict."
"More than a little from what I've heard. No need to sugar-coat it for me. She's my mother, but she doesn't exactly change her personality from work to home. If today is finals day like I was told, then I'm pretty sure you should be freaking out."
Felicity shrugged with a happy sigh. "She told me I did perfectly. Knowing her, that means that I should be getting a decent grade on the assignment. It's good news for me."
Oliver nodded in agreement. "Definitely." He paused a moment pursing his lips. "Maybe I could take you out tonight to celebrate?"
Felicity grinned. "I'd love that."
Three years later, Dr. Queen stood and tapped a knife against her champagne glass to get everyone's attention. "Almost four years ago, I met Felicity Smoak in one of my classes. Like all the other students there, she was terrified of failing my difficult course, but unlike the others, she didn't give up. She worked hard and managed to get an A in my class. To this day, it hasn't happened again and I have only the most respect for her for managing to get that grade, but there was something else about her that I noticed from the first time I met her.
"Not, most of you know her as the blonde, brilliant Queen Consolidated IT girl, but when I met her, she was a goth brunette that was just trying to get through college. What surprised me the most about her was that she forced me to look past the admittedly rough exterior and into her personality. Just like my Oliver.
"Most people see Oliver as he used to be; some playboy that had no care for anything but the next party, but if they had looked past that, as I had to do with Felicity, they would find that he was a brilliant boy that worked as hard as he could to meet everyone's expectations. They didn't know him from his achievements at Harvard, just his more public problems after going to bars.
"The second I saw the similarities between Felicity and my son, I knew that they would be perfect together. They were the same in that they were tough to deal with on the outside, but amazing on the inside. Yes, they differed in interests and personalities, but they were comfortably different. Different in a way that let them experience new things together and learn from each other.
"And that is why I made sure to schedule Felicity as my last tester on finals day. I told Oliver to meet me at my classroom at the same time Felicity would be leaving because I knew that the second they met, they would click. And they did. Which is why we are here today, celebrating their wedding. Congratulations, both of you. I already know your marriage will be a long and happy one." And it was.
A/N: So, this is just a little AU fic I wrote in my Human Adjustment class today. We had to write a story about a picture in ten minutes (I'm not going to lie, I went over by five minutes) and this is what I came up with. Now, keep in mind that I have no idea about anything going on at MIT because I am a high school student in Florida. I have no idea if Felicity would have to take Chemistry or what, but let's just pretend she does, shall we? Leave me a review to let me know what you think!
PS: I hope no one minds that I pretended Cooper never existed. I didn't see him fitting into this anywhere, I just left him out. We'll say he and Felicity were never together in this, okay
