Disclaimer: I do not in anyway own Arrow or any of its characters. DC Comics, the WB, and others have that honor. No profit is being made, and no copywrite infringement is intended.

AN: One of the strangest things about writing this trope is you can't really advance relationships or storylines, and can only deal with character growth for a single person. That said, the reason I chose this fandom, pairing, and storyline for the challenge was that I thought it would be absolutely fascinating and awesome for a character like Oliver, and perfect for where their relationship was at here. Oh, and in case anyone missed it in the summary, this is an Olicity fic and that starts delevoping now. Hope everyone is enjoying!

This chapter is dedicated to mjf2468, who has been wonderful enough to review every chapter. It's always a little scary writing for a new fandom, no matter how long you've been writing, and comments and favs are what keep it being fun.

Tuesday

by Lady Callista

Chapter 4: Saturday

It should have been Saturday, but instead it was the fifth Tuesday Oliver Queen had been forced to experience.

To say that he was frustrated would have been an understatement.

As far as everyone else was concerned it was Tuesday, and he had just taken Thea's call and was waiting upstairs for the building inspector to show up. He had about four minutes before the man in the dark blue suit and contrasting pale orange tie would walk in the door.

He was sitting at the bar, googling time loop on his phone, and trying to find a way to filter out anything fiction. He wished he'd payed more attention to Felicity's instructions on how to search things.

He spent the whole hour Mr. Crawford was there inspecting the club on his phone, sitting at the bar, trying to figure out what to search for to even begin to try to fix this. He found nothing he hadn't already read in the past few days.

He had dealt with the building inspection for five days running now, because it was one of those things on the short list of things he had to do just in case the time line was normal again tomorrow. Then again, most of what he did/should do today was on that short list.

When Thea arrived with his favorite Thai for lunch, he took it to go, saying he had other plans. And he headed down to the basement to find a better way to research whatever the hell was going on.

He noticed at once that the lights were back on, and rather than trying to fake a smile to Felicity he gave her a nod of acknowledgement as he stuck the lunch he didn't want in the mini-fridge and moved towards the training area.

He had thought that by skipping lunch with Thea, where they normally chatted for almost an hour, he'd have a bit of alone time before Felicity showed up, but obviously she had been down here for longer than he thought.

"Everything okay?" Oliver asked as he stripped off his shirt, noticing Felicity's pause in typing as he moved towards the salmon ladder.

"Peachy." Felicity chirped, her eyes locked firmly on her monitor. "Ray's stuck in budget meetings all day, so I took a few extra hours for lunch so I could work on something here. I think I'm close to finding the ninja star guy. Are they? Are they ninja stars, I mean? Cause well, now that I've met real ninja, and you know, I never thought I'd be able to say that? But I've met ninja and they mostly use bows and swords, so does throwing stars work better than ninja stars as a descriptor? Or do the League even count as ninja, I mean they're sort of both not what you think of and what you do when... 3, 2, 1."

"They're shuriken, Felicity." Oliver said with a grin as he stretched out his shoulders. Moments like this, moments that were new because he had changed something, were brief rays of sanity. "And the League does use them, you just haven't seen it."

"I'm good with that." Fellicity glanced up as she responded, her fingers freezing on the keys as he jumped up to grab the bar. She took a deep breath, taking to long moment to just admire, because it was hardly a secret that she enjoyed watching him on the salmon ladder, and if he was going to tease her with that view she was certainly going to enjoy it. If only she could do more than look.

Felicity could have kissed her computer when it chose that moment to ping an alert, and she turned her attention back to her monitor, determined to ignore the sexy and infuriating half-naked man less than twenty feet away. She was only somewhat successful.

It got much easier after about a half hour, when the elite lab she used anonomously by faking various authorizations emailed her with an urgent notice. She had sent one of the ninja... no, shuriken there, on a faked CIA order that had actually been a fun challenge to ply her digital magic on.

The very specific metallurgy report on the weapon had raised a red flag on a series of homicides in both Paris and Berlin. She had committed two felonies to get this info. She committed a third as she erased everything relating to the request and the results. She'd learned to not think about things like that.

"Shuriken guy's name, well, wanted poster name, is, well, actually Shuriken." Felicity called out, briefly flashing back to learning Cisco loved giving frankly hysterical names to the villlians in Central City. Although really, it wasn't any worse than the Ninja Star Killer moniker the Starling media had chosen. "He's wanted dead or alive by A.R.G.U.S. and has federal arrest warrants in over a dozen countries. Including this one."

"But no one has a real name?" Oliver asked as he crossed over to her, toweling off and grabbing his shirt off the table but not pulling it on just yet.

"Not, um..." Fellicity stuttered as she turned to talk to him and found herself six inches from his absolutley amazing abs. She spun back just as quickly and screamed internally as she placed her hands over the keyboard and prayed that muscle memory would take over. "Not yet. But we now have all the information of over a dozen intelligence agencies who don't like to play show and tell with each other. I've got another program that can filter everything, so I should have an answer in, well, it could be in five minutes or five hours, but today."

"Sounds good." It would be almost exactly thirty minutes, Oliver knew, as it had been 1:32 pm the past four days he had come down here after lunch with Thea, and he had heard her whoop of success as he came down the stairs.

He was tempted to tell her the legal name and location of Shuriken, as well as all the tricks he would play on them as they tried to capture him, but in the end was still concerned about exactly what the hell was going on. He pulled his shirt on and went to work on some arrows while his mind grappled with possibilities.

Yesterday, well, what he considered yesterday, he had made sure to check world news, and so far it had been consistent with today. Which was the same as the check he had done between the previous two days.

There were minor inconsistencies, but no huge accomplishment that would point to someone who was repeating a day until they got something right. Although even if that was the case, that wouldn't explain why Oliver was remembering it. And it could still be the case, and just be something that didn't make the news.

There were no major disasters or assassinations that might mean someone was trying to prevent something, although again someone doing that wouldn't explain why Oliver remembered.

And neither of those theories, nor any of the others he had come up with over the past excruciating days, even guessed at how it could actually be happening.

Oliver bit out a curse as his inattention left him with a bleeding cut across the back of his hand.

"Oliver." Felicity's chair clattered as it spun, and she was out of it and at his side before she even really registered that she was moving. She reached out with both hands to take his bleeding left one in hers and raised it at an angle to get better light.

Oliver just stood there with his hand in both her small, warm ones as he watched her face transform into her calm in the face of blood expression. And he cursed again, softly, at the thought that she wore that expression enough that he recognized it. He had also forgotten just how fast she could move.

His thoughts were broken when she mumbled something under her breath. It sounded a little like Mandarin, but when Felicity swore under her breath it was usually in words that were only considered curses on some sci-fi show or other. He had learned long ago that frak was exactly what it sounded like, and also learned to stop asking about the other ones unless he wanted a long explanation of the show it came from. But this was different. "What was that?"

Felicity's slight blush darkened as she glanced up to find his stormy blue eyes barely six inches away. She quickly dropped his hand and clipped over towards the medicine cabinet. "I just figured you were swearing in Chinese, I would too. It's not bad though, probably shouldn't even need stitches." She pulled out supplies with the quickness of too much practice.

Felicity took a deep breath, trying to remember while sorting through over a dozen prescription only level drugs that this was part of her normal life. She remembered fondly the little white box you could buy at the pharmacy for twenty bucks that used to live under her sink, and maybe get pulled out once every few months. Then she thought of the medical-grade metal monstrosity Dig had given her to keep at her place just in case. He'd brought it one night with a bag of bananas to teach her how to do stitches. "Some days I can't even believe this is my life."

"What?"

Felicity spun rapidly, supplies in hand, as she questioned, "Was that out loud?"

"Sort of." Oliver grinned as she crossed back over to him. He had grabbed a clean towel and was applying pressure to the back of his hand, inwardly cursing himself for the lapse. He knew not to work on weapons when he was distracted. And while they both knew it wasn't serious, he knew she would be annoyed if, since they had time, he didn't let her treat it. "You were mumbling, just like you were when you said, well, what apparently is Chinese, so I clearly didn't hear it very well."

Felicity breathed a sigh of relief, glad he was willing to let it go. Because she loved her life, she really did, but sometimes she just had thoughts like how she knew real ninja and how to draw blood and give stitches. She thought of how she could honestly say she had taken a bullet for someone, and jumped out of a fraking plane, and stabbed a villain in the neck with a drug. And it always threw her for a bit of a loop.

Then she remembered that he was asking about the Firefly phrase she had murmured earlier, and repeated what she had said as she started to set the alcohol, gauze, and butterfly bandages on the table next to him, along with a local she knew he would refuse but always tried to offer. "It basically means stupid inbred sack of meat. It wasn't meant to be a, uh, I just..."

Oliver blinked at the unexpected translation, shaking his head at the local and enduring her deep sigh, then wincing but remaining motionless as she started to clean out the cut. Some of the words were there, and he could understand how maybe it could mean something like that if pronounced properly, but it certainly wasn't a common phrase she would have heard somewhere.

"Where did you learn it?" Oliver asked, mostly to distract himself ftom the burn of the cut than anything else. He could deal with most pain with barely any expression or reaction, that didn't mean that he didn't feel it. Especially when there was nothing but her soft hands and sweet smell to distract him. And the fact that he had just had that thought clearly meant he needed the distraction, Oliver chided himself. "It might just be your pronounciation, it is a tonal language, but..."

"It's from Firefly." Felicity blushed even deeper than she had earlier. "It's a show set in the future, and the language of the whole world is this mix of English and Chinese, and..."

Oliver let her words drift over him as she explained the show, actually fairly briefly for her, and then admitted that the show wasn't exactly known for its correct use of the language. The whole time she was neatly and gently cleaning and bandaging the nearly inch long cut.

"Thank you." Oliver said softly when she was done, and smiled as this time she didn't drop his hand after looking up into his eyes. "And I would recommend not trying to learn to swear in Chinese from that show. I'll admit I never thought that would be something you would want to learn, but..."

"I don't, not really, but I used them before I knew you, they were just more sci-fi words where the boss wouldn't know I was swearing. And then I found out you actually knew Chinese, and it seemed dumb to use them around you, because I knew they weren't exactly right. I just forgot today." Felicity said softly, looking down at where she still held his hand in both of hers before leaning down and pressing her lips lightly over the treated cut, barely brushing his skin. "Best medicine, right?"

"Felicity..." Oliver's breath whooshed out as his other hand found her hip. Their eyes locked, and she had just started to drift closer to him when her computer let out an alert tone.

She dropped his hand with a sight squeal, backing a few steps away before quickly spinning to her computer. "I have a name and address on Shuriken, I'll start filtering camera feeds in the area from the past few days. It was rented through a shell corperation, it was searching for recent..."

"Felicity." Oliver dropped his hands ever so lightly on both her shoulders, forcing himself not to react as she relaxed slightly back into his hands. "About that..."

"About what?"

"Try this next time." He felt her tense and knew he had to keep it light, but couldn't resist bending down to whisper the Mandarin phrase in her ear, smiling when he felt her shiver slightly.

"And what does that mean?" Felicity managed after a moment, although her hands were frozen over the keys.

"More or less, it means I will kick your ass." Oliver said with a slight grin, which burst into a full smile when she asked him to repeat it.

They had repeated it back and forth a few times, and she almost had it, when the computer pinged again. "We will practice that." She grinned before turning back to her monitors.

Oliver took a deep breath and turned back to his arrows. And promised himself that they would.

"Can we talk for a minute, Oliver?" Felicity asked as he came out from changing at the end of the night, his leathers hanging over his arm.

He dropped them on the floor by the case, still remembering his amusement when Felicity had informed him over a year ago that fabric sprays were originally designed for things like kevlar, things that couldn't really be cleaned but that you didn't want to ruin your sense of smell. Or, you know, just have to breath next to. Everytime he opened the case the pine scent reminded him of her.

"Sure, what's up?" Oliver wondered as he crossed the platform, his fingers automatically finding her elbow as she rose. Both his eyebrows rose when she said, in perfect Mandarin, that she would kick his ass. "Perfect."

Felicity grinned at the praise, swallowing sharply as she tried to find either the courage to go through with what she had been thinking about for hours now, or the willpower to pull back. She took a deep breath as she caught his eyes, and the desire flowing through them made her whisper once again that she would kick his ass. And then she rested her hands on his chest for an instant, sliding them up around his neck, completely expecting him to use the warning she was giving him to gently move back, to remind her again why they couldn't do this.

Instead Felicity's heart almost exploded as he met her halfway and deepened the kiss until she damn near forgot her name.

Oliver lost himself in her, not just in her babbling conversation and amazing friendship as he always had, but in the warmth of her skin and the scent of her hair. In the softness of her lips under his. The nails of one of her hands trailed distractingly over the back of his neck, and he could feel the light whisper of her other hand trailing over his cheek. His hands were locked on her hips, thumbs trailing over the bare skin left by the side cutouts in her royal blue dress.

Oliver gasped as one of her hands slid down his back, squeezing his ass before pulling back from both the kiss and his arms. He instinctively reached for her elbows, and she swayed back into him, resting her palms on his chest even as her head cocked adorably as he whispered something in Mandarin.

"I said consider my ass kicked." Oliver whispered in her ear as he trailed kisses along her jawline.

Felicity used the last of her willpower to pull back. "Should I remember that phrase or forget it?" He had been a little flirty yet awkward earlier, and it had been so similiar to their one and only date that she had decided to take a chance. But she knew that it was his decision as much as hers, however much she disagreed with the one he had made a few weeks ago. Although he seemed to be wavering on that.

"If you mention it tomorrow I won't pretend it didn't happen." Oliver whispered as he stroked his hands over her waist and cheek before stepping back.

"Good night, Oliver."

He returned the sentiment with a soft brush of his lips on hers. "Sweet dreams, Felicity."

TBC...