A sound woke Felicity up and a bit confused she looked at the clock to see it was almost 3 a.m. Then she heard the sound again and realized it was her phone ringing. She scrambled sideways on the bed to get to it wondering who could be calling her in the middle of the night. She was afraid it was a certain green-clad vigilante and that it was about some kind of emergency.
"Hello...?" she answered hesitantly.
"Felicity, I hope I didn't wake you up?" came Oliver's voice on the line.
"Well it's 3 in the morning so yes you did, but that's fine, I don't mind. What's wrong?"
"I'm patrolling and kind of in your neighborhood and was wondering if I could come in for a while?"
Felicity thought it was a bit strange that he would be patrolling on a night when he specifically asked her and Diggle to go home and relax, but then again maybe that was exactly the reason. He still had stitches in his side from the last mission gone wrong and she and Diggle had been nagging at him to take it easy and rest so that he could recover properly. Of course he didn't listen to them and was pushing himself way too hard, so maybe he'd just wanted to get rid of them and go off on some stupid thing by himself.
"Yeah, of course. Did anything happen?" Felicity asked already a bit worried. If he wanted to be on his own in the first place then why was he calling her now?
"No... not really... I just thought I could swing by before I'm done for the night...", came Oliver's vague reply.
"Ok, well you know how to get in my window so just let yourself in whenever you get here. Although I would appreciate a knock so I don't get a heartattack or something", she said.
He just hang up without any reply and that made Felicity even more sure about something being wrong. He probably just didn't want to scare her, but she could always tell when he wasn't being completely honest with her. The fact that he called her in the middle of the night instead of just going straight to the foundry spoke volumes.
After a couple of minutes she heard a knock on her window and went to her living room to greet Oliver. However, she was surprised to find him actually struggling with the window and looking like he didn't quite have the strength or the balance to enter as smoothly as he normally did.
She rushed over to help him and managed to drag him inside only to have him loose his balance and fall down in the middle of her living room floor.
"Oliver! Are you okay?", she shrieked as she knelt by the spot where he had fallen.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry about that, probably looked like a fool who can't even climb in a window properly...", he said a bit embarrased.
"What's wrong? And don't give me some crap about being fine when you come here in the middle of the night and clearly aren't able to sneak up on me like you usually do", she demanded.
"I'm telling you, nothing happened. I just haven't been feeling so well tonight and thought I'd check if you were home so that I maybe could come in and get some rest and warm up a bit and see if I felt better after a while. Maybe I'm just out of practise with this whole patrolling thing", he explained.
"Are you sure? For you to actually admit that something's wrong I'm pretty sure you'd have to be dying or something. But whatever, of course you're always welcome here eventhough you keep really strange hours. It's not like I'm getting my beautysleep or anything, but maybe that doesn't matter so much since I'm always holed up in some basement where nobody can see me anyway. Okay, I'm rambling again. Just come on over to the couch and let's see if there's anything good on TV".
She offered him a hand to help him off the floor and was really surprised at how warm his skin felt against hers.
"Oh my god, you're really warm! Did you just come from the sauna or something?", she exclaimed. "Well, stupid question, of course you didn't. Maybe you caught a cold out there and have a fever or something?"
"I'm not sure about the cold, but a fever certainly would explain why I've been a bit off my game tonight. And why I'm freezing eventhough you're only wearing shorts and a top", he mumbled as he slowly and (to Felicity's horror) a bit unsteadily followed her over to the couch.
"Okay, well first of all I'll get you something more comfortable and warm to change in to and then maybe I could make you tea or something? Just in case you have a cold I think that's probably what you're supposed to do? I'm not really good with these things but at least that sounds somewhat reasonable", she rambled on while getting him some big sweatpants and an old hoodie that would probably fit him.
He started to change out of his arrow-jacket, that actually was kind of damp and cold after spending the night outside, when he suddenly heard her gasp.
She was just coming into the room with the clothes when she caught a glimpse of his side that looked really awful. It was an angry red all the way and the big wounds that had been sewn together only a week ago looked like they were oozing some sort of yellowish goo.
"Oh my GOD Oliver! What's that?!" she sreamed as she dropped the clothes and ran over to him.
"Well, I think my wounds have gotten infected, but it's probably nothing...", he said sheepishly.
"Why the hell didn't you tell anyone? This is so not nothing, you've been running around with this all night and probably even stretching the wounds and getting sweat and dirt into them with your stupid vigilante crap! Oh my god, we have to get you to a doctor to get this looked at!", she panicked.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you but I seriously don't think it's so bad. At least they didn't look so bad this evening when I got dressed".
"And now you show up here with this, falling down on my floor and telling me your not feeling good. In your case it's probably code for you being lethally ill and still you just expect me to deal with it. What the hell am I supposed to do with you? Okay, first I'll clean the wounds, I'll get some supplies from the bathroom so you can finish changing your clothes while I'm in there. Then I'll call Diggle. Yeah, that's probably a good idea", she continued her rambles.
"Okay, but don't call Diggle just yet. He doesn't need to be woken up over something like this, it's probably just a little fever that will pass with new dressings and some rest. I'll be good as new in a little while", he tried to reassure her.
She finished cleaning his wounds and had to admit they did look better after the goo was removed and she got some clean bandages on him. But she didn't miss how hot he still felt and how he winced and clenched his jaw to avoid screaming everytime she so much as touched his side. No matter what he tried to say she was sure this wasn't just some minor thing and was really worried.
Oliver was now slumped on his good side on the couch and looked like he was struggling to keep his eyes open. When Felicity returned from the bathroom, where she had disposed of the old bandages and the cleaning supplies, she saw that he had fallen asleep.
She was still worried about him, but he looked so completely exhausted that she just thought she'd let him sleep for a couple of hours and deal with this in the morning. She was pretty tired herself and decided to just go to bed and not worry about this anymore right now. If he'd still been able to do all his vigilante business tonight then Oliver probably wasn't dying in the next couple of hours. Right?