So, this is just Twelfth Night-inspired. It's not strict canon. It's barely loose canon (*snort* - that was actually unintended). Anyway, I still miss Tommy so have made him Felicity's twin, so the whole 'being mistaken for each other looks-wise' is out (not that I've ever really bought that in the casting of any production I've ever seen). I also couldn't put a fake moustache and suit on Felicity. Just no. Or have Laurel fall for her. Just couldn't.
Otherwise, for any school kids skipping out of reading the Shakespearean comedy and looking to scan over something quickly for the essay they need to write, this story is exactly the same as the play. You can quote scenes from it and everything. Promise.
Just a friendly warning: if you are going to read this story, then please suspend your disbelief very, very high. Granted, we are playing in the DC universe, so clark-kent-donning-glasses-so-noone-recognises-him-as-superman is probably a good bench to mark. In other words, try to be kind and forgiving, and let's have some fun with it.
Chapter top quotes and storyline (vaguely) is all Mr Shakespeare's. Bless.
So, Twelfth Night. Twelve chapters. Let's do this thing.
'If this were played on a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.' - S'spr, 12 nite, y'all.
Chapter 1 - 'These parts: which to a stranger, unguided, and unfriended, often prove rough, and inhospitable / one face, one voice, one habit and two persons'
Felicity tugged her grey hoodie further down to shield her face, and pushed her shoulder into the heavy glass door to swing it open. She swagger-shuffled into the coffee shop and took up at the end of the line of patrons awaiting their hit.
Breathe, just breathe.
She adjusted her saggy denim jeans that were starting to slip a little and adopted a wide leg stance, shoulders slightly hunched and fingerless-gloved hands hooking off her lowdown pockets. Her black and orange backpack covered the Starling City Hawks emblem blazed across the back of the hoodie, and her wide, blackframed hipster-geek glasses seemed tassled across the top rim by her fake brown fringe.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
She was going to kill Tommy for talking her into this.
She glanced around, surreptitiously, blue eyes scanning the room to see if anyone was looking at her weirdly. Engrossed in animated conversations, headphones, texting, newspapers and thoughts, no one was paying her attention.
She breathed out a little and mentally fist-pumped. She was actually pulling this off! Wait, was she really celebrating the fact that everyone thought she was a boy?
Her consternation thought-train was punctured by the sounds of heavy fingers hitting keys, and frustrated, muttered swearing against the background of cafe chatter.
Felicity's left eyelid began to twitch in duet with each thunking key-smack. She looked around and spied the culprit in a booth next to the window, his back to her, but his forearm and hand staccato-ing off the 'enter' key firmly in view.
She couldn't help herself. Bad things happened when good people did nothing.
She broke away from the line and walked towards the man in the booth.
'Stop! Just stop. Hands up and awaaaayyy from the keyboard.'
He looked up from the screen, and swivelled his head around towards the voice - his expression a little confused, a little amused. 'Are you holding me up?'
Sonafabitch. Pretty much the most handsome face she had ever seen was doing the asking. Blonde cropped hair, deep blue eyes, beautiful expressive mouth, hard jaw glinting with golden stubble. Couldn't have been a pasty-faced middle management type. Oh no, she was pretty sure this was that billionaire playboy guy, Oliver Queen. The one back from the dead a few months ago.
Still, crimes against technology and all.
'Ha!' she stalled, pointing her finger at the laptop, nodding her head in unison with her rhythmic pointing. What the hell was she doing?
'The only crime being committed here is your assault on that poor, baby computer.' Was that an incredibly girly thing to say? Felicity coughed and dropped her voice a little.
'I mean, dude, you're crushing the keys. You need to treat her gently, like a lady.' God, just make it stop.
She was going to kill Tommy for talking her into this.
The Oliver Queen guy was looking at her like she was slightly insane. Fair call. She shrugged off her backpack and gestured with her eyes for him to move down the red booth seat so she could sit.
He didn't move.
She raised her eyebrows. 'Do you want my help or not?' Voice a bit gravelly. Nice.
The man staring up at her was now looking a little concerned. She was pretty sure he was checking for green exit signs. Maybe he's not been out among the people much since he's been back?
'Scoot over dude and I will fix whatever's ailing you. And by you, I mean your computer. Because I wouldn't know how to play doctor with you...or want to for that matter...but I am like a doctor for computers. An IT neurosurgeon, if you will-'
'Okay, okay!' he looked at her, shaking his head, obviously deciding the odd young guy standing in front of him was harmless. He smoothly moved his body down the booth to sit next to the window, creating a vacancy in front of the laptop perched on the table.
Felicity, bypassing second thoughts and rapidly nearing third, was suddenly hesitant to sit down. She didn't know this man - who was famous in a notorious kinda way - and she was supposed to be keeping a low profile.
Fuck it. It was just fixing a small computer problem for a stranger. A few minutes and she could fade back into the city.
She plopped down onto the still-warm bench seat, trying to ignore the fact he had turned slightly towards her, and was really quite big now she was sitting down next to him. She could feel him looking at her so she shot him a glance from behind her glasses, and a close-mouthed non-engaging smile, and turned back to the screen in front of her.
'So what exactly is the problem?' she asked him, voice low, eyes on screen, head tilted slightly towards his answer, ear cocked.
'Uh, the computer belongs to a friend of mine who's out of town and he needs me to access some files for him.'
Felicity's black, short-nailed fingers flew across the keys, finding the crack in the fortress.
'I'm in.'
'You're in? Just like that? That was about 10 seconds,' his tone disbelieving.
'Yep, and no force needed. Just a little sweet talk and digit encouragement.' Felicity turned to him and smiled in satisfaction. Her words signed onto the register in her head. Fuck.
'That sounded a little dirty, which was not...' He began his amused smile at her again. She mesmerised a little. Then his gaze shifted, arrowing behind her, as his iron arm grabbed her head and pushed it down towards the leather booth seat.
'Get down! Stay dow-'
Deafening gunfire drowned out his voice. She was swept by his body, off the bench and to the floor, shielding her. The gunfire rained throughout the room, joining a symphony of screams and shattering glass.
She felt the wind of bullets above her. The laptop bounced off the table and landed a foot from her hooded head, riddled with holes, screen sharded.
The silence sounded out of place after the commotion and chaos of the last minute. There was a quiet sobbing, rustling, a cough. Calm before a different storm of shock and realisation.
Felicity raised her head from the debris scattered, brushed concrete floor, adjusted her glasses, and looked around. The weight of the man's body - Oliver's - had lifted from hers amidst the gunfight, and she couldn't see him as she looked around the coffee shop in its broken aftermath. She could see others though, and everyone seemed to be alive - glass and dust covered, some bloody - but moving bodies at least.
Felicity gingerly rose to standing and crunched across the glass to the person nearest her. A dark haired woman, sitting up now in a booth, but bleeding from the brow. Felicity ripped at the napkin dispenser in the middle of the table, pressed some white napkins against the red, and helped the woman position her hand to keep it in place.
She looked around and saw others getting up and helping those who were injured, some with phones to their ears - calling loved ones, or emergency - trying to bring sense back to the crazy.
A young, aproned-covered barista was moving next to a black clad body on the ground, blood spreading from under the body, gun still strapped to his torso. The shooter. The barista was cautiously removing the gun from the body. To get it away, Felicity assumed.
As she picked her way across the gauntlet of the coffee shop - chairs overturned, hysteria taking hold for some as voices started to raise - she saw two more black clad bodies on the floor, centred in red, pooling blood. Three shooters? What the hell?
Her eyes scanned the room as she swivelled. Where was the Oliver guy? He had saved her; she needed to make sure he was alright.
They stopped their search at a body-caused blood trail creeping away under the swing-closed kitchen door. Someone was bleeding and crawling.
Felicity nimble-hopped over a side-turned table and headed towards the kitchen. She swung the double-hinged door open and paused - hearing attuned for gun-clicky noises of more shooters.
She heard hard, laboured breathing and a groan. Forgetting safety, she scampered towards the figure slumped on the floor against a metal, condiment-laden shelf.
'Oliver! Oliver!'
His grey T-shirt had morphed into black with blood, a tear in the shoulder signalling where the bullet had hit.
Unthinking, she grabbed his face in her hands as she crouched down next to him, willing him to fully conscious and okay.
He met her halfway.
'Take me...take me...father's...' Efforted words between harsh, shallow breaths.
'Oliver, you're going to be okay. I don't know what you're trying to say though.'
'Take me to...father's old steel factory...Glades.'
'Oliver, no. The ambulances will be here soon. They'll take you to the hospital.'
'No!' he bit, sharp. 'Please.' His eyes hooked hers. 'Take me.'
Felicity could feel her blood pumping, heightened breathing, adrenaline navigating her through her decision. Was this man even in his right mind to be asking this of her? What if he died and she was left with him at some abandoned factory? Surely she should just try to stop the bleeding until the paramedics arrived. Plus, he was huge. She was doubtful she could even fit him in Tommy's car, let alone drag him there.
As she debated, she stood and looked around the kitchen. Spying a pile of clean tea towels, she reached and grabbed a striped few, and bent down to press them as padding against his wound. Her hands, gloved in blood, looked so small against his labouring chest. They were dwarfed as his own hand came up to cover hers and vice the towels in place.
'Please. Help me.'
Fuck. Three little words made her decision for her.
She met his imploring eyes and nodded.
'You're going to have to help me Oliver. It is Oliver, right?'
'Right.'
'You're too big, I can't lift you.'
He turned his head to look for a purchase, grabbed the vertical steel spine of the shelves, and began to lever himself up, Felicity slipping under his arm to help, and staggering a little as he transferred his weight to her.
'Out the back,' he clenched. He had one arm slung over her shoulders, bearing his brunt, and the other holding the red drenched tea towels in place.
Together they non-rhythmically faltered to the door, like a drunken three-legged man race. Felicity felt like she was trapped under a mountain of iron. Damn, he was heavy. How does someone get this heavy?
She heard him cough a laugh. Guess that observation had visited her mouth.
'Sorry. Blooding pouring, imminent death. I know, I know.'
They somehow made it to the back door, and with some clumsily creative manoeuvring, through the door, down the back steps to the alley, and to Tommy's car parked on the street.
The front of the cafe was in bedlam, people on the street, others heading in to help, the first of the red and blue flashing turning the corner and pulling up to double park in front.
Shielded by the spectacle of the crime scene, Felicity hurriedly opened the back car door and eased Oliver down as gently as she could. Her 'gently' could probably use some work, as his head smacked against the doorframe on her first attempt. 'Sorry.' She then shoved him into the backseat - reverse jack-in-the-box style - jarring his foot as she slammed the door. 'Sorry...again.'
'This is saving me?' she was pretty sure she heard him mutter against the pain, as she dropped into the driver's seat and started the engine.
She pressed her lips together to contain the smile that threatened, and checking the side mirror reflection, pulled out into the street, towards the Glades, undetected.
As she drove, eyes flickering to the rearview mirror to check on her passenger, paling but still breathing, dawn began to break on the reality of her predicament.
Tommy was going to kill her for this.
And not just because of the blood soaking into the upholstery of his backseat. In the last half hour, she had pretty much risked everything. Not only had she spurned laying low, she had inadvertently began dating its antithesis - beckoning-for-a-spotlight-by-saving-Starling's-most-famous-and-media-magneted-son.
At least Oliver seemed to want to avoid any attention, if the derelict, dimly lit factory she had just pulled up outside of was any indication. Felicity double-checked her phone to make sure she was in the right place. Perfect location for a horror movie. He may not be the only one who dies here tonight.
Oliver roused as the car stopped. 'Downstairs. Dig will help.'
Not really understanding, Felicity nodded and scooted out of the car, towards help.