FF#4: Strategic Withdraw – Day Three
Flash Fic Prompt #4: Alone With You
Walt Disney was one sick, twisted son of a... not so very nice lady.
It was all his fault.
Everything.
Despite the fact that thirty-six hours had passed since Oliver had seen her... trying to go to the bathroom, he had yet to stop mocking her. Laughing silently at her. (Maybe she couldn't hear him doing it, and maybe he was doing so while somehow managing to keep a straight face, but she saw through his idiotic playboy facade... though he had that act down to a science.) Mentally degrading her. What he didn't realize, however, was that it wasn't her fault.
It was Bambi's. And it was her mother's (for shoving Felicity in front of a television until she was old enough to shove herself in front of a computer). And it was Walt Disney's.
For whatever reason – call it practicality, perhaps it was because she was an analytical thinker, maybe it had something to do with her much-repressed (thank god) childhood, Felicity liked things to make sense. If something was said to be a certain way, then it should be that way. A spade was a spade. Ones were ones, and zeroes were zeroes. And, if an animal was named Flower, then it damn well better smell like a field full of frigging roses... you know, if roses grew in fields.
So, that's why she hated skunks. Why she feared them. Oh, Felicity knew that it was a ridiculous – childish even – phobia, but everybody had a weakness. She could live in an elevator – heck, she practically had as a freshman in college; small spaces were cozy. She thought black cats were cute, ladders made for great shelving solutions and inventive display cases, and thirteen was practically her lucky number. If Felicity was foolish enough to tear her money up and throw it away by playing the lottery, she'd totally select the number thirteen. And she could climb every mountain or scurry up any tree. Heights? Forget about 'em. Or so she assumed. Not that Felicity had every spent time climbing trees as a child, but that was only because computers didn't grow in them.
But that'd be awesome.
Especially if they were Macs, because Apples. Duh.
"Keep up. I'd like to get back to camp before sunset. I need to find us something to eat." Oliver meant kill. For the past too many meals, Felicity had been served wild game. When she got back to the office... if she ever made it back to the office, she was going to do some research on appetite harassment. Surely, that was a thing. If it wasn't, it should be. She'd make it one. "And you should... clean up before it gets dark." If he was implying that she was the one between the two of them that needed a little private creek time, Oliver Queen had another thing coming. If either of them smelled like butthole, it'd be the mountain man.
Grizzly Adams could suck it for all she cared.
… And totally not in a sexual way, because, though the guy was built like a brick shit ton house (and, yeah, she knew that wasn't really a thing, but he deserved the extra modifier.), his personality left everything to be desired. She just meant that Oliver Queen could kiss her...
"Felicity, stop lagging behind. I don't have the time or the patience to come looking for you if you get yourself lost."
She gave him the bird. The California Howdy.
"I saw that."
"Yeah, well, apparently, spending time with you brings out my inner sailer. Too bad I couldn't say the same for the Gambit's crew five years ago."
So, that was a cheap shot, but she had just spent the entire day participating in team building exercises with the entire IT and Security Departments. She could handle the lack of plumbing and running water. Felicity could deal with the fact that she was pretty sure Alvin was now all on his own, because she and Oliver had chowed down on his backup singers for breakfast the morning before. She could even survive without a blow dryer and a flat iron for a week. But to insult her with a list of activities straight from a 'team building for dummies' website was like pouring salt in her retreat-sized wound.
Rock salt.
Because table salt was for pansies, and Oliver Queen ate pansies for breakfast.
No seriously.
He had fed her flowers for breakfast.
Flowers.
In fact, putting aside her gripes about being blindfolded and felt up all in the excuse of playing 'Minefield' for the entire afternoon and the lack of her modern girl in the city creature comforts, Felicity could admit that the straight-from-Wrong-Turn woods were beautiful. Peaceful. In a fatalistic, masochistic way. In fact, she was even thinking about getting one of those noise maker machines that played birds, and running creeks, but didn't include the sounds of a jackass – human, not donkey – snoring if she ever saw her babies again.
Camping with a mule (remember, she was paranoid yet prepared-for-everything-but-a-wilderness-suicide-mission packer) would be preferable to camping with an Oliver.
"Ow," Felicity complained, reaching up to smack against and then rub the sting she suddenly felt right below her frizzy hairline.
"What, break a nail," Oliver taunted from out in front of her.
But his remark was an automatic one – something meant to irk her into annoyed submission. Though Oliver Queen was a dirty, rotten scoundrel, there was more to him than just a slutty, spoiled cad. Oh, she hated him. She hated him with the passion of a wronged telenovela heroine. But she also recognized the fact that he wasn't everything he portrayed himself as... or, more accurately, he was more than what he made himself out to be.
As Felicity ruminated on this, she started taking deeper breaths. Apparently, much to her irritation (at Oliver, because, well, he was Oliver) and bafflement (at herself, because she didn't remember making a conscience decision to do so), she had picked up her pace, despite having every intention not to... because Oliver wanted her to. Also, it wasn't just her neck itching; now, as she walked, she dug her not broken nails into her shoulders and upper arms, the small of her back and her sides.
While his nature-inspired team building activities left everything to be desired, Oliver's trapping and fishing skills would make even a Bonner man take notice, and he had the reflexes of a liger. Plus, she had seen him naked...ish? Yeah. Nakedish. Not only did he walk, talk, and sleep around (physically-speaking, not sexually) her shirtless, but he wasn't shy when it came to bathing either. The man was covered in scars – not the typical knee scrapes and busted elbow scars every man who was once a rambunctious boy sported but like hardcore Braveheart battle wounds.
She was just thinking about Oliver Queen with two-thirds of his face painted blue when Felicity realized her slightly elevated breathing was now panting, that her tongue was swollen, and she felt like she was going to throw up. As she started to collapse – first falling to her knees and then going down onto her back with her legs bent awkwardly, she thought about two things: first, that there was more to Oliver leading the retreat when he had nothing to do with the company and his ban on all technology – especially given the break in at QC a couple weeks prior, and, secondly, that she really didn't want to die with hairy legs, because there was no way in Northern-California-Forest that she was shaving in a river.
Oliver's face appeared hazy above her, and, before Felicity finally succumbed to her allergic reaction, she uttered just one word. "Nuts."
It seemed fitting... on so many levels.
Some time later, she came to, and everything was much the same as it had been before. Oliver was kneeling beside her – a cross between perturbation and worry dragging his features downward into premature lines and wrinkles, she was pretty sure that she was laying on top of what was either a giant turtle or a mossy rock that was oh-so-slowly sliding around underneath her, and she felt like microwaved death.
Oh, and there was a horrendous, bitter taste in her mouth, too.
"So, I've gone to hell, huh? I knew I shouldn't have illegally downloaded all those songs... and movies... and television episodes... in college. Drats."
"You should have told me you were allergic."
"Yeah, well, you shouldn't season your squirrels with nuts. That's just sick and twisted, Oliver."
His brow furrowed further... if at all possible. Seriously, someday the man was going to look like a Whedon demon if he didn't cool it with the vamp-face. "What are you talking about? You were stung by a bee."
"Huh."
"Huh," he repeated. And he totally couldn't pull off a 'huh' like Felicity could. Sarcasm amateur. "That's all you have to say?"
She sat up – wobbly so, but at least Felicity managed to do it on her own. "Yes – huh, because I didn't know I was allergic to bees. This is a new experience for me. Getting stung. I didn't much care for it, truth be told." Oliver rolled his pretty, pretty eyes. (Maybe she wanted to drive pointy sticks into those pretty, pretty eyes sometimes... er, most of the time, but she could still admit that they were pretty, pretty.) "Also, thank you. For finding my EpiPen and stabbing me. Was it as good for you as it was for me?" Those eyebrows then went sky high. "I mean, not dying. Of course."
Finally responding, he bit out between clenched teeth, "the next time you go camping with someone, tell them you carry an EpiPen."
"Oh. So then you didn't stab me." Tilting her head to the side, Felicity regarded Oliver curiously. "Why am I not dead?"
"I gave you some... herbs."
"Some herbs?"
"From the island."
"The island of what? Rainbow Dolphins? Those must have been some herbs."
Oliver stood, brushing his hands against his thighs. He didn't offer to help her stand, though she managed to climb up on her own. Eventually.
As they once more started making their way back to camp – again silent but this time, at least, at a much slower pace, Felicity found her mind returning to its previous focus. With every moment she spent with Oliver, she felt like she kept losing more and more of the pieces to his puzzle. Three days prior, she hadn't wanted to admit it, but she couldn't deny the truth any longer: he was a mystery, and, if there was one thing she hated more than Oliver Queen himself, it was a mystery.
Oh, and miss-named wildlife.
Stupid, creepy Walt Disney.
