Fun fact: when writing this, I called it the Shameless Fluff Chapter.
Masks, Daylight
"What?"" Felicity nearly whacked Roy in the head with her tablet, she'd spun around so suddenly.
"Watch it," Roy growled.
"Sorry," Felicity said, hastily, before turning back to Thea. "He said that?"
"Yup." Thea was perched on one of the steel worktables, swinging her legs. Felix was a dusty orange ball in her lap, purring as he slept, oblivious to Roy's acidic glare. "Told me to factor in my surroundings and something about the extra weight — I swear, Ollie is the only person who can do that kind of math in the split second before a truck goes wham-splat on him."
Felicity laughed. "He got a D in tenth grade algebra," she said. "There is no way he could do that kind of friction-mass calculations under fire. Even Barry needs at least five."
"I probably wouldn't mention that," said Diggle, hanging up from his call with Lyla. "Oliver doesn't exactly play well with others."
"Not true," said Felicity. "He plays well with all of us — God that sounded so wrong —"
"Where's Lyla?" Thea asked. "It's nearly midnight — why's she calling so late?"
"Kasnia." Diggle crossed his arms, stoic as usual. "ARGUS thinks they can try and prevent a civil war between the north and south factions."
Felicity looked up from her computer. "I know she's Head of ARGUS and all, but should she really be going out into the field while she's pregnant?"
Diggle gave her a look. "Believe me, I tried to tell her that, but I'm pretty sure she'll keep flying all over the world until her third trimester — and even then she might try to push it."
Thea was still relatively new to the whole Foundry-ARGUS-Team-Flash setup, so she looked understandably unnerved by the thought of a pregnant woman (three months, but still) mediating a potential civil war. "So…you guys taking any baby name contributions?"
"If you're offering," said Diggle, looking amused.
"What about Meghan?" said Felicity, nudging the growing pile of glass chips Roy was picking out of his suit. "It's cute. What parents don't want a cute baby girl?"
Diggle suppressed a laugh. "Felicity, Lyla's only three months along, and you're already thinking about baby names?"
"Carpe diem," she said. "Plus, I have no life, so I have to live vicariously through you and Lyla."
"We don't even know if it's a boy or girl."
"Okay, so if it's a boy…uh —" Felicity groped for a male equivalent of Meghan "—Megatron," she finished, lamely.
Thea snorted, and Roy sighed in audible annoyance. "Morgan."
Felicity snapped her fingers. "Curly fries to the man."
"We'll bear that in mind," said Diggle, placatingly. "How was Central City?"
"Sunny." Felicity pulled at her earlobe, still hearing a phantom ring from the Pied Piper's (Cisco's codename, not hers) fancy metahuman-ness. "And loud," she said, a little ruefully.
"Hey." An arm encircled her waist and Felicity jumped. Even with the amount of time she spent with Oliver, his way of popping up without a sound still caught her off-guard.
"Hi," she said, and felt her hip press against the table as Oliver gave her a soft kiss on the lips. His skin was damp from a quick shower, and he smelled like laundry soap from the fresh change of clothes.
"God — must you?" Thea groaned, hopping down from the table, Felix swinging in her arms. "Big brothers aren't supposed to kiss their girlfriends in front of little sisters."
Oliver just looked amused.
"Thea —" Felicity reached for her, but caught the sly wink she tossed over her shoulder instead.
"Gotta go," she said, kissing Roy on the cheek en route to the stairs, which she took two at a time. "Verdant's co-manager is a total moron. Don't stay up too late, guys. It's a school night."
The door banged shut behind her.
Felicity's head ached in sympathy. Booming club music, tequila and exhaustion really didn't play well with each other. "I can't believe she still has energy to manage a nightclub after all the vigilante-ing you guys do."
"We all have our masks," Oliver said, looking down at her. "You get better at balancing both, eventually."
Felicity snorted. "Even at Queen Incorporated, you're still the chronically late CEO."
Oliver raised his eyebrows.
"Walter talks," she explained, with a glance at Diggle. "So does Dig."
Diggle shrugged, modestly. "Head of Security. What can you do?"
Even Oliver had to laugh. "Ready to go?" he asked.
Felicity reached for her bag. "Absolutely. Got an early meeting tomorrow."
"Isn't it weird that you both work for competing companies?" Roy said, dubiously. "I mean, I know that Oliver doesn't like that Palmer guy —"
Oliver cleared his throat, pointedly. Felicity exchanged an amused look with Diggle, who was zipping up his jacket. "I gotta go too, the babysitter's still at home. Roy — you gonna be okay here?"
Roy rolled his eyes and pulled the suture through his skin with (feigned) nonchalance. "No worries, I won't drown the cat. I'll just wait here for Thea."
Oliver stopped beside Roy's table. "Keep her out of the prototype arrows," he said, firmly.
"Will do."
Felicity waited until they were halfway up the staircase before she turned back to Oliver. "You do know they've been using the gear Cisco sends over, right? The Foundry has surveillance cameras — and I found one of those frisbee things stuck in a monitor last week."
"If that's the only thing they're doing down here, I think I can live with it," Oliver answered dryly, while Diggle chuckled behind him.
Felicity decided that he didn't need to know about the deserted supply room in Verdant.
"This might be a stupid question," said Felicity, looking up from her tablet and at the half-open bathroom door, "but are you sleeping over?"
"What?" Oliver came out of the bathroom, his hair darkened and spiky from a second shower. The mattress creaked when he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled a shirt over his head (damn, she should have hidden it).
Felicity caught one last glimpse of his back — scars and muscles — before the T-shirt covered it all. Fair enough — if he walked around like that, she had a tendency to set things on fire from pure, unadulterated distraction, and flaming furniture would definitely ruin the mood.
She realized Oliver was waiting for her to repeat herself.
"Uh —" she said, clearing her throat. "Are you — uh — sleeping over?"
Oliver looked momentarily confused, in his eyebrows-contracting, adorably-confounded way. "Is this because I still smell like C4?"
"No — God no — I always wanted my bed to smell like Korean barbecue." Felicity let the tablet lie flat on her stomach, drumming her fingers on the glass screen as she tried to figure out how to phrase her question in the least awkward way possible. "I mean — now that you don't live in the Foundry anymore — it seems polite to ask if you want to stay here. Since, you know," she waved her hand around, "this isn't exactly a Queen penthouse."
Oliver made a sound partway between a cough and a laugh. "I don't stay in a penthouse."
"The apartment at the top of a building is called a penthouse, Oliver." Felicity went back to reading Ray's email blast about the Palmer Technologies-Queen Incorporated meeting, while Oliver ventured beyond the bedroom to do everything a responsible apartment-dweller would do (i.e. check the front door, turn off the lights, make sure the freezer wasn't hanging open, etc).
The covers lifted when Oliver climbed in beside her, generously contributing his body heat to warming the bed. Reading company documents was a far-gone ruse at this point, so Felicity reached out to brush a small cut at the side of his neck, probably from flying glass. He nearly always climbed into bed with some kind of new cut or injury, but she'd never stopped worrying about them on his behalf.
"Do you want me to go?" he asked, running his thumb across the back of her hand.
Felicity gave him a look of the sarcastic please variety and flicked a page on her tablet, more out of reflex than anything else. "I mean, you did ask me to marry you, and we've been sleeping together for the last six months. That's practically your side of the bed."
There were an infinite number of ways she could have phrased that sentence better.
"I mean…" she said, hastily, "sleeping in the same bed. Same apartment. Not doing…that. Well, sometimes that. Actually —"
Felicity made an involuntary noise of surprise when Oliver pulled her close. Her tablet slid away and off the bed, and she was suddenly beneath Oliver, breathless in the half-darkness as he bent to kiss her.
"Should I go?" he asked, against her lips.
Felicity wrapped her arms around his neck. "Stay," she whispered.
Oliver woke too soon and too early. Bad dreams occurred less frequently than they used to, and most mornings he woke without the imprint of them at the back of his mind. Felicity played a big part in that, bigger than she knew.
She was still asleep, her face turned into his shoulder and an arm thrown across his chest. Completely trusting of him. It soothed him to know she was there, and he relaxed against the pillows, holding her close.
Today he'd woken quietly. No thrashing, no nightmares about faceless assassins from his time in Nanda Parbat and the terrible war with the League — and Ra's al Ghul, long-banished into the void.
Oliver shut his eyes briefly at the remembered pain of a sword thrust through the heart, permanently commemorated in yet another scar on his marked body. Except this was a scar shared by them both — a scar Felicity knew as well as he did. Another story he'd survived, another proof that he'd always come back.
Oliver lifted her hand from the covers, silently thoughtful. A few months ago, at the wedding of two very dear friends, he'd asked her a question — and she'd said yes. He still remembered how warm she was in his arms as they danced, the song that'd been playing when he'd asked the question, her voice in his ear when she whispered the answer. The memory was still vivid in his mind as he ran his thumb along the width of her ring finger, which was still bare because he'd never given her a ring, and she'd never asked for one. They'd both kept promises bigger than the promise of marriage, and they had the scars to show for it. A ring — at the time — seemed like a very inane concept.
The thought was still in his mind as he lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss into her palm.
A new day. Endless possibilities.
"I am so late," said Felicity, brushing the tangles out of her crazy bedhead while Oliver — because he'd woken up at like five in the morning — calmly knotted his tie in front of the bathroom mirror. Dress was on (good), shoes were waiting in front of the door (unusual), makeup finished (excellent), which left…
"Have you seen my other earring?" she asked, rummaging through the general clutter on her dresser. "The blue ones — I swear I still had them when we went to dinner the other night —"
"It might have rolled under the bed," Oliver answered immediately. His uncannily detailed memory was a godsend for misplaced possessions, not so much for when she was trying to get away with something.
"Rolled under the bed — why would it — oh. Never mind." Blushing in spite of herself, Felicity went on her knees and peered under the bed.
Aha. A telltale glimmer, beside…
She straightened up, dragging the lightweight titanium case out from under the frame. "You keep a bow under the bed?"
Oliver stuck his head out of the bathroom, looking all neat and ready for a serious business meeting. "Of course," he said, as if it was the most logical thing in the world. "For emergencies."
Felicity realized she didn't have time to discuss his definition of emergency. "We'll talk about you keeping dangerous weapons in my apartment later," she said, hurrying back to the dresser mirror.
"About the meeting." Oliver leaned against the doorframe and watched her fumble with her earrings. "Palmer doesn't know about us, does he?"
Felicity poked her own earlobe, taken aback by the question. It occurred to her that maybe Ray wasn't quite aware that she was dating-slash-engaged-to QI's CEO, but then again, he'd never asked. She also wasn't interested in fording questions about her objectivity just because of someone she happened to be dating-slash-marrying-at-some-point.
Either way, with all the eligible billionaires running around Starling City, the paparazzi were profoundly disinterested in Felicity Smoak, so Oliver Queen — even though he practically lived on the tabloid pages — showing up at her apartment had always stayed blissfully out of the trashy magazines.
"Short answer," said Felicity. "No. But then again, it's not really a conflict of interest. This is technically a friendly deal — nothing hostile-takeover-y about it. I keep my secrets and you keep yours. Completely separate spheres of influence — right?"
Oliver walked up behind her and zipped the back of her dress, which she'd forgotten — again. "That's not necessarily true," he said, resting his chin on her shoulder as his arms encircled her waist. "You could hack into my company servers anytime you wanted, even with the level of encryption QI's IT department puts up."
"True." Felicity nudged his head with hers, playfully. "But I promised not to."
"Mm." Oliver sounded thoughtful. She closed her eyes when he pressed a kiss into her neck, soft kisses tracking the curve of her throat, kisses that sent a tingle racing up her spine. "Come work with me," he murmured, against her skin.
Felicity opened her eyes and their gazes met in the mirror.
"You couldn't afford me, Oliver Queen," she said, and they both smiled.
Fluff. So much fluff. I am unaccustomed to them being so happy.
