Felicity was awoken by a scrabbling sound at her bedroom door and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to where she was. She hadn't fallen asleep in her extremely comfortable double bed but at her desk whilst she was buried sky high with endless paperwork. Her mother always thought Felicity was too work orientated and Felicity agreed with her to some extent. Working on a Saturday night whilst she could have been having a Batman marathon, was to put it simply unacceptable.
Felicity groaned as she took her head off the desk; she had so much work to do. It was then that she noticed that something was not quite right. An annihilated pillow had burst with the feathers still cascading across her bedroom. Her cerulean duvet was strewn across the floor and ripped in some places. Worst of all her boss, the Walter Steele, laptop cable had been chewed through. Felicity's six-month-old puppy lay at the bedroom door whining. The IT girl would have been annoyed at the culprit if it hadn't been noon; long past his breakfast time. Instead, she was furious at her so called 'supervisor' for making her take on his workload as well as her own. Mr Steele was going to need his laptop and charger back intact by nine o'clock tomorrow morning, which was going to result in Felicity spending the rest of her Sunday off on a shopping trip to Tech Village. However, she was going to need to treat her neglected puppy with some TLC, food and a walk before she left.
...
Felicity checked the time on her phone- it was now four o'clock in the afternoon. She still had to fix the wiring of a laptop, reprogram the software which had gone haywire and back up several highly confidential files with military level encryption by Monday. Felicity groaned: Monday was tomorrow. It didn't help that Felicity was stuck queuing to buy the equipment she needed. At this rate, she wasn't going to get served for a whole hour; Tech Village really needed more staff on hand. Her eyes scanned the shop hoping to spot the manager who she could complain to. However, she couldn't even spot the assistant manager. Instead, Felicity spotted someone else walking right towards her. Someone who she hadn't seen in six years. Someone with who her relationship had not been entirely platonic. Felicity wished that the ground would swallow her up.
"Felicity," a small smile broke across his face, lighting up his haunted, pain ridden eyes. Felicity nervously touched her glasses. How could one word mean so little but so much? How could he have been through so much and still say her name in the same intimate way? How could he forgive her when she hadn't forgiven herself? She had left him six years ago and condemned him to five years on a deserted island. Yet he was here. Oliver Queen acting like nothing had gone wrong between them.
"Oliver?" questioned Felicity. She still didn't quite believe her eyes. Five years on an island must have significantly changed him. There was something familiar yet foreign within him.
"Hey," he gently reassured. "I'm still Oliver." Felicity's heart rate elevated. He was speaking in that tone reserved only for. The soft tone which she used to silently swoon over. The news hadn't been lying: Oliver Queen had really come back from the island.
"I mean of course you're Oliver Queen," Felicity apologised. "You're not going to Gandalf or Dumbledore. Saying that I can totally picture you with a long white beard... And I should stop talking." Felicity silently cursed after she said this. Her habitual babbling was turning this reunion into her worst nightmare.
"I missed your talking," Oliver confessed. "And your babbling. And your technical speeches." He was still smiling and clearly trying his best to make amends with her. Felicity tried to shake off the growing warm feeling inside her, that fluttering in her stomach but she failed epically. Oliver had spent the past five years on an island because of her. He deserved better than her. She had ran away from their relationship.
Felicity was quick to turn the conversation back onto him. "I never realised that you were so interested in technology. Did you miss your MySpace account on the island?"
Oliver laughed. "You could say. I'm actually here looking for technical advice as to what I should do about my laptop."
Felicity sighed in exasperation. "Because it isn't like you have an entire IT department at your disposal that could fix it for you." Maybe Oliver hadn't wanted to see her again, so had been trying to avoid the IT department entirely. If he knew she worked in the IT department, Felicity wasn't entirely sure, maybe she was surmising too much. She had worked for Queen Consolidated for a summer job prior to their relationship.
"Hey I wasn't sure if you wanted to see me again," Oliver answered. Felicity suspicions were right but they usually were where Oliver was concerned. She glanced around the shop to find people staring at them. Felicity suddenly felt self conscious. She had been so focused on Oliver that she did not notice all the people looking at them. That was the downside of being knowing a billionaire- the paparazzi and interest of the general public. Felicity supposed that it wasn't helped by the fact that he had been presumed dead for five years. Then making a miraculous resurrection as he had in fact been trapped on a deserted island for five years.
"Look Oliver," Felicity firmly said. "I don't have a problem with working for you but I do have a problem with you thinking I don't want to see you again. I'm fine with it." Oliver seemed to cheer up a bit at this but Felicity still wasn't too sure what he was thinking. "Look I'll make a deal. If you queue for this charger and bring it too me just before nine tomorrow morning, I'll fix your laptop."
"I agree as long as I get to bring you coffee tomorrow morning," Oliver insisted.
"Your negotiating skills are really top notch Mr Queen," Felicity joked. For a moment there seemed to almost be a flicker of their previous relationship but it vanished as soon as it appeared. Neither of them would be able to go back on what had happened in the past six years
...
Felicity was in at work an hour before her scheduled meeting with Oliver the next day but to her surprise Oliver was already there an hour early. If Oliver had been an hour late, Felicity would have understood what was going on perfectly. Felicity had never known Oliver to be on time for anything let alone five minutes early. An hour early was just incredibly unbelievable. Yet, Oliver was here clutching the charger for Walter's laptop.
"Sorry if I was a bit cranky yesterday," Felicity apologised. "I'm sure I could have given Darth Vader a run for his money which definitely says something. I was just stressed out and seeing you was the least of my worries." Oliver didn't reply but placed the charger upon her desk. Felicity was already beginning to realise that the post island Oliver seemed to be quieter and more reserved than the pre island Oliver. "What's wrong with your computer?"
"Actually, I'm here about my laptop," Oliver corrected Felicity. "I accidentally spilt a latte on it and was hoping you could retrieve some information from it." He handed over a laptop ridden with bullet holes. Felicity frowned at the sight of it.
"It must have been a really dangerous latte you spilt," Felicity sarcastically replied. She ran her hand over the bullet holes.
"What?" Oliver exclaimed, looking extremely confused. This irritated Felicity. He must know that his own laptop had had a run in with a gun at some point.
"It's just these look like bullet holes," Felicity explained. "Last time I checked split lattes did not leave bullet shaped holes." Felicity paused and surveyed Oliver seriously. "You've not taken up gun lessons, have you? I really can't imagine you going my name is Queen- Oliver Queen. You don't really have the accent for it." For a moment, Felicity was lost in her thoughts of Oliver acting all James Bond. She couldn't imagine him brandishing a gun or jumping from building to building whilst being shot at. No, even after his five years on the island, Oliver was still just Oliver. He hadn't turned into a ninja overnight. Felicity snapped out her thoughts to see Oliver smiling at her again.
"My coffee shop is in a bad neighbourhood," Oliver replied. Felicity raised her eyebrows in disbelief and Oliver just enigmatically smiled at her in return.
The IT girl began to look at the laptop's hard drive to see the extent of internal damage which the bullet had caused. To say it was bad was an understatement. Half of the drive appeared to have been fried by the force and friction of the bullet. Felicity glanced at the time on her laptop. She was meant to be returning the laptop back to Walter in twenty minutes. The mission of retrieving the information was turning out to be colossal and it would take longer than twenty minutes to fix, even for herself. For a while, Oliver sat admiring Felicity work. Her hands were like that of a surgeon fixing cutting wires open and replacing bits of technical equipment that Oliver didn't understand. He knew hardly anyone would comprehend why he found her work so interesting. Quite frankly Oliver didn't understand it either but there was a certain beauty in the way Felicity was able to make sense of what was going on.
After a while Felicity stopped working and nervously straightened her glasses. "You laptop is completely fried and unfixable to say the least."
"Were you able to recover the data?" Oliver nervously asked. He didn't know why he was tense. Oliver had always been able to fully trust her computer gobbledegook before.
"I feel upset that you need to ask," Felicity replied. She brought up some pictures of blueprints on the screen of her laptop and sighed, in exasperation, because Oliver looked confused. "I thought this was your laptop."
"Whose is it?" Oliver asked. Felicity raised her eyebrows in a questioning manner, she imagined he should really know who the laptop's actual owner was.
"I would say that there is a Shakespearean family drama going on. You know like with Mr Steele and your mum being Claudius and Gertrude." Felicity hesitated before adding. "You're not mad enough to be like Hamlet though."
"I didn't study Shakespeare at any of the five schools I dropped out of," Oliver replied blankly. She rolled her eyes at the thought of Oliver the playboy. The façade that he put on, not many people knew the real Oliver.
Felicity interrupted her thoughts. "These are blueprints of the exchange building," she explained. "Mr Steele is planning on buying Unidac Industries and the auction is being held in this building tomorrow."
Oliver looked sincere and thoughtful for a moment but then laughed. "Seriously, how do you know this stuff?" Felicity was not amused. Someone was trying to pick off the competition for the auction. She just hoped that Mr Steele wouldn't be the next victim in someone's crusade to buy Unidac Industries.
"This is a serious matter," Felicity chided getting annoyed at how immaturely Oliver was handling the situation. This was quite uncharacteristic of him which made Felicity wonder if he was playing a part.
"Right," Oliver said putting his serious face on. "So I will just tell them that I found a creepy laptop which just happens to have blueprints of the exchange building which belongs to Floyd Lawton."
Felicity frowned looking extremely confused. "The laptop is owned by Warren Patel," she stated pointing out his name upon the screen. "Who is Floyd Lawton?"
"An employee of Warren Patel evidently," answered Oliver taking out his phone. He stepped out of the office making Felicity assume that he was calling the police.
Felicity thought it was extremely peculiar that Oliver had managed to come across a laptop of his stepfather's rival. Especially when it had bullet holes ridden all over it. People don't normally tend to use laptops as shooting targets but if they did Felicity would refuse to be friends with them. It was also strange how he would lie to her about the laptop being his. Felicity's only conclusion to this mystery was that Oliver was hiding something; something big. She was going to have to keep a close eye on him.
Oliver strolled back in muttering something about police being hopeless these days. Felicity silently agreed with him. The Starling City police department really needed to improve the time it took them to get to a scene of a crime as it was well above the average. Then Oliver suddenly asked-
"I was actually wondering if you... Umm... If you wanted to meet up for the coffee?" This took Felicity by total surprise. That was why Oliver hadn't been true on his promise to bring her coffee just now. Olive seemed to notice her discomfort. "Tommy will be there as well. Maybe Laurel." His cheeks flushed ever so slightly at his request.
"If it's the coffee shop where this poor baby-" Felicity stroked 'his' laptop. "-was shot then I must most graciously decline your offer." Felicity didn't like the sound of her phone or laptop being endangered. She didn't like the sound of Oliver, Tommy and herself being endangered either but her babies were defenceless against the bullets and couldn't even run.
"Don't worry it won't be," Oliver reassured. Felicity finally cracked a smile, she looked into Oliver's eyes finally realising how much he had changed over the last six years.
"I guess I'd better to get going. I need to deliver this to Mr Steele's executive assistant. If I'm late then I would have a shot at worst employee of the month since I have to do all my 'supervisor's' work as well whilst he sleeps with the fourth floor secretary." Felicity was more complaining to herself than Oliver but he was closely listening.
"Farewell dear friend," Felicity smiled trying to break the slightly awkward silence. Oliver nodded a farewell. Felicity, thinking that it was the best farewell she was going to get, began to head towards the door.
"Oh and Felicity," Oliver eventually said. Felicity paused at the door and turned her head towards Oliver. "I'm glad we can still be friends."
...
Felicity was exhausted; completely exhausted. She was exhausted to the point that she hadn't bothered to make supper and had just ordered pizza. Felicity had seen Oliver Queen twice within twenty four hours and been too busy working to have any sleep the previous night. Now she just wanted to sleep for twelve hours to make up. For the past six years, Felicity thought that she would never see him again. How very wrong she had been. It was still taking time for the truth to sink in. She has spent so long just wanting to have one last conversation with him. Now Felicity could have as many conversations with Oliver as she wanted.
There was a short knock at the door. Felicity groaned. She felt too tired to move. But she managed to heave her body off of the sofa. She could feel her enervated body groaning out of exhaustion. Eventually, she managed to reach the door. This surprised Felicity as she doubted her body would be able to go much further in the languid state it was in. However, when she opened the door it was a bigger surprise for it to be-
"Oliver!" Felicity exclaimed. She let him in and closed the door her face flushing red. It may have been only 7 o'clock but she was already wearing her favourite cupcake pyjamas. "How did you know where I live?"
"Thea told me," Oliver explained. "Though I don't understand how she knew."
"It's probably a long story," Felicity replied venturing into her kitchen. "Tea or hot cocoa, sorry but I ran out of decaf last week, you probably don't want to drink caffeinated coffee at seven in the evening but if you do I can pour you some or I could go to the shop and buy decaf which I could do in well under two minutes or ask my neighbour but he's probably lost his cat again." Felicity said the whole sentence without pausing to breathe. Oliver put a hand on her shoulder and steered the flustered IT girl back into her sitting room.
"Relax Felicity I'm fine," Oliver reassured her after she had collapsed on the sofa. "It's a nice place you've got here. I would have invited you over to mine but I know you'd feel uncomfortable at my place." Oliver smiled- her house was not anything like his mansion but it was a lot more welcoming and snug. He preferred it. He knew she preferred it too. Felicity had always had something against his house.
Felicity noticed him looking around but didn't care. "Why are you here Oliver?" She frantically asked. "Is everything okay? I'm not used to getting billionaires knocking at my door- not that that's important. But I saw nothing of you in six years and now I've seen you three times in twenty-seven hours. Normal friends don't see each other three times in twenty-seven hours. But then normal people don't usually think their friend is dead when they actually are still alive or do they?" Felicity was still trying to get other the fact that he was alive even though she had known for a couple of weeks.
"I'm just so sorry for happened," Oliver apologised thinking of all the grief and pain he had caused her. "Six years ago I was a jerk and now I'm just a- I'm a damaged jerk."
"You weren't really a jerk," Felicity corrected. Oliver cocked his head slightly to the side in disbelief. "Okay maybe slightly when you wouldn't turn up for my amazing IT lessons I planned for you."
"They were amazing," Oliver sarcastically said. Felicity narrowed her eyes. Since when had Oliver used sarcasm? Something bigger was concerning her though. The contents of the brown paper bag that Oliver clenched was a mystery to her. Mysteries bugged Felicity. Oliver was shrouded in mysteries but she had a feeling that the paper bag mystery would be solved.
"What's in the bag?" Felicity asked inquisitively, skipping right to the point.
"I thought about many things on the island, but there was one thing that I thought about every day," Oliver said. This piqued Felicity curiosity: she was keen to know all about the island. "I actually dreamed about it, and I promised myself that if I ever got a chance to do it again, I'd do it with you. Eat ice cream." Felicity's heart fluttered. This is what she had missed for six years.
A/N: Please review if you'd like to read on