Organizing her workspace was never Felicity's priority. She always rocked chaos. Which is exactly the single word to properly describe the current state of her personal work station. There are papers, pens, photos, empty coffee mugs and toffee wrappers littering every single space of her desk, but she doesn't care, chewing on her liquorice twist as she squints into her computer.
It's been hours and her eyes are starting to show the first signs of fatigue, having grown dry and irritated over the course of the past couple of days. She is not used to this anymore, the sleepless nights and never-ending gazing onto multiple screens, her eyes snapping back and forth between the running computers as she furiously types her code until the carefully crafted electronics finally yields to her will and produces some results.
Ever since founding Helix, her code writing has been more on the mellow side. She's still writing software, yet she's also dividing her focus and attention between computers and mechanics, building the components and linking them to the programming in a perfect symbiosis of a functional manmade biomechanical limb.
Hacking though? That one she hasn't done in years. Not since Cooper.
Yet apparently, she's still got it. And, apparently, she's missed it, too. She hasn't even realized how very much. How much she's missed having her heart race as she cracks and breaches another wall, mind deciphering systems most thought impenetrable as her fingers fly over the keyboard.
True, her work is purely on the legal side these days, but oh my God, the thrill she can feel from hacking 'for fun' is simply priceless, her fingers tingling with adrenaline, and for once, it's from the good kind too.
Also, technically, she is not hacking – still such an ugly word – for fun, but quite the opposite. There is a logic to her madness. Doesn't mean she can't enjoy the process in the meanwhile, though.
And enjoy it, she does.
"YES!" Felicity cries out loud, pumping her fist in the air when the very last safety catch lying between her and the security system she tried to breach for the last couple of hours falls. She's still got it; GhostFoxGoddess's still the best!
Now all she needs to do is link the individual parts together, upload her search algorithm and wait for it to do its job. Piece of cake.
"What are you so happy about?" asks Curtis from their mechanics station, screwdriver in one hand and a joint component in the other.
"Nothing," she sing-songs nonchalantly, unable to hold the big smile from stretching across her face. Damn! It's really been too long. Why has she neglected her favorite hobby again? Oh right, there's the illegal part. But then there is the real reason. Cooper. Son of a bitch. Her face pulls into a grimace at that.
"You sure you're alright over there?" asks Curtis a little concerned now and no wonder, since these days, she can apparently go from victorious to sour to chirpy or teary in a flash.
"Yeah, yeah," she waves his worries away with a hand, "just finally cracked something in the system that's been bugging me for a while."
"Oh, good for you. Way to go, girl!" Curtis calls back to her with a smile, pumping his own fist in the air in a gesture of support.
He's sweet and genuine in his joy, and has been nothing short of amazing these past couple of difficult days, always there for her, trying to make things appear as normal as possible. Which makes her feel that much worse for lying to him.
Her and Curtis, they go a long way. And one of the cornerstones of their friendship and partnership is that they don't keep secrets from each other. But this part of her life…the Cooper part, the hacktivism part, that is something nobody else has ever been aware of, a part she's not particularly proud of in hindsight. Don't get her wrong, she is proud of her skills, fully and absolutely, but she knows the world doesn't look kindly at hackers in general and the things Cooper made her do back in the day were more than a little shady.
So no. She is not telling Curtis, not if she strikes out with nothing. Nobody ever needs to know this is the way she's been spending the past couple of days. And if – by some miracle – her searches do come up with something… Well, she'll cross that particular bridge when she comes to it.
Glancing at the screen to her right, Felicity looks at the pictures of the four dead girls smiling at her from the screen, all so full of life and yet already dead, and Felicity is once again reminded why she's doing this. Why it's all worth it – legal or illegal – as far as these girls get the justice they deserve and their killer is set behind bars where he'll be unable to harm anybody else ever again.
She once again goes over all the data, cross-checking all the relevant facts she uploaded to her very own computer murder-board with the information she put into her algorithm. It has taken her quite a while to sift through all the files Agent Diggle delivered to her doorstep the other day, then took even longer entering all the big as well as tiny details into her evaluation program, categorizing them by date, relevance and other characteristics, but she thinks she's got them all – all the important facts – into one compact, relevant and logical bundle. That part was hard, but then there was the ultimate hurdle, creating the virus that'd unleash her search algorithm into the relevant security systems and databases. She was nervous at first, hasn't worked in the field for several hours, and things do tend to change so fast in computer science, but she needn't have worried. In the end, it was as easy as riding a bike.
And it's a thing of a beauty, really, her virus. It's a creation she's particularly proud of. She's been working on in non-stop the past couple of days and it's rather clever, is she herself says so. Shame it won't really see the light of the day as part of an honest and legitimate piece of software, but if it does its job, it will still be more than worth it.
Her eyes scan the code one obsessively more time before she finally hits enter and lets her search virus go viral, hoping beyond hope it will do its job not only well, but quickly too.
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"Son of a bitch," Felicity quietly curses under her breath as she furiously types into her keyboard of her computer work station. She's been doing that quite a lot lately, Oliver realizes as he observes her from his perch on her couch, coffee cup in one hand, a file in the other. Whatever she's working on is obviously not yielding to her will and offering the results she was hoping for, if the aggressive way she hits the keys with is anything to go by.
It brings a smile to Oliver's face, the thought of all the zeal and dedication Felicity puts into any task she sets her mind to. She can get completely lost in her work, so deeply in fact that Oliver is quite confident she wouldn't notice if firecrackers went off directly under her nose.
He really likes and cherishes these moments. When her computer pings with something and she immediately rushes to it like her life depends on it, then works for a couple of moments to tweak and change the code to her liking before letting it resume its work again. It grants him a quiet and often long moment to just observe her, take her in without having to worry she'd find him creepily or unprofessionally staring. Because unfortunately, that's exactly what he does every single time. It's, in fact, what he's doing this very moment; just observing her and – with a hint of embarrassment – enjoying the view.
She's wearing a nice, simple yet sexy orange summer dress today. Her legs are bare – and impossibly long – in those orange red pumps she wears in spite of the brutally chilly November wind howling behind her loft's windows, which tells him she has no plans to leave her apartment. And despite feeling slightly ashamed for the thought and regretful for her own discomfort, his heart settles greatly with the realization.
'Soon', he promises himself. Soon they're going to catch this son of a bitch and she'll be free to safely roam the city once again, go out and leave the loft's confinements. Do things as mundane as get a cup of coffee, visit a cinema or buy a new pair of shoes. Whatever her heart desires. Until then, he's unofficially designated himself as a liaison between her and her coffee shop.
"Sorry," Felicity apologizes as she walks back to him a couple of minutes later, an apologetic smile on her face.
"Tough code?" he offers sympathetically, although if he's truthful, half the time he has no idea what she's talking about whenever she tries to explain her work to him, her mind and mouth running a mile a minute. He just can't keep up. Still, he likes to just listen to her voice.
"You could say that," she hedges, and there is something about how she evades his eyes that makes him feel quite uneasy, but he lets it go for the moment, not interested in grilling her when she doesn't feel like telling him what's bothering her. God knows, there are plenty of reasons these days.
"Where were we?" she asks distractedly, plopping back to her side of the couch, leaving a respectable distance between them despite turning her body towards him.
"Uhm…around the middle of drinking our coffee, I believe," he answers impishly and she smiles at that.
"Yeah," she drawls with an apologetic wince, "Sorry about running away at you like that. It's just…whenever I get an idea-"
He stops her mid-sentence with a halting gesture of his hand. "No need to apologize, Felicity. It's your work, of course it takes precedence. I can wait."
For a moment, she looks struck speechless, her eyes casting downwards before she utters a tiny appreciative "Thank you." Which makes him wonder that his words aren't something she's used to hearing too often. That her work and her priorities matter. Which is a shame, really. She shouldn't feel self-conscious about being good at what she does and occasionally loosing herself in her work.
The short silence is broken by Felicity clearing her throat, "Thea still angry with you?"
He smiles at that. It's his sister, so yeah, the thought of her always brings a smile to his face.
Ever since that first time he brought Felicity coffee, Oliver has made it his mission to stop by and bring her a cup of coffee from her favorite place as a piece offering as well as a compensation for the fact that Felicity herself currently can't – or shouldn't – go out to grab it for herself.
At first, it was just every other day, less even. But then he showed up more and more often, until a point when the habit turned into an everyday occurrence, Oliver using his lunch hour to go visit his favorite computer engineer.
The nature of his visits changed over time as well. First, the pretext – and yes, Oliver can now see that's all it was, just an excuse to see her – was to update her about any news on the case or discuss ideas or leads they might have missed. But later, his visit started to take longer, and five minutes between her door turned to fifteen minutes spend in her foyer to thirty minutes spent chatting on the couch and talking about her or his day up to a point when Oliver had to literally force himself to unglue his frame from her couch to catch the end of his lunch hour. Sometimes it was him who brought the food and sometimes Felicity would have ordered something for the two of them and Curtis. And slowly, from what was first just a touching base sort of event became daily lunch meetings he was looking forward to with more enthusiasm he would ever admit to anybody.
Diggle is pointedly not commenting on where Oliver is disappearing each day for an hour, a fact for which Oliver is immensely grateful. He just…he really needs these meetings. Needs his daily chance to see her and make sure she's okay, to offer her at least a little bit of connection to the outside world when she now has to be cooped up between the walls of her own apartment because Oliver himself has yet been unable to catch the sick murderer fixated on her.
And if he is being completely truthful with himself, his daily visits are also becoming more and more about enjoyment as much as his need to check up on her. He likes spending time with Felicity, likes getting to know her. It's not about the case anymore. It's about getting to know her and offering more of himself in return.
Spending the short amount of time with her at her loft each day brings him comfort and calmness, quietens his buzzing mind and organizes his scattered thoughts. Felicity's presence and company helps him refocus and regroup, so when he returns to his office just an hour later, he feels invigorated and ready to crack this damn case wide open. In a way, Felicity's company has become his very own respite. He feels calm and centered when he's around her, and he doesn't want to look too closely as to why.
To assuage his bad conscience over his daily breaks and to compensate for his absence during lunch, he works even more late hours. Which, however, brings them to the current topic of his sister, who is pissed at him for not being able to find the time to personally meet with her in several weeks.
"Don't worry, she'll come around," Felicity says quietly when he doesn't respond for a while. "I am sorry this case is eating away so much of your time you could be spending with Thea," she says kindly, her hand soothingly squeezing his forearm.
His eyes fall to her fingers wrapped around his sleeve, and even through his shirt's fabric, Oliver can feel the warmth of her skin. Which is bad. Or good, depending on the way you look at it, his inner voice chimes unhelpfully.
Oliver is no fool. Of course, he's attracted to her. Madly, even, and seriously, how could he not? She is beyond beautiful, crazy smart, clever, funny, and on top of that, she has the biggest and kindest heart he's ever seen in anybody. And under any other circumstances, he wouldn't think twice and already ask her out on a date. But under these circumstances… There is just no way. Even if there was not the blatant conflict of interest, it would be utmost unseemly and selfish of him to ask her out and lay this on her under these circumstances, when her life is in so much turmoil and uncertainty. She's got enough on her plate to deal with other than his baser desires and immature lack of personal restraint. It just wouldn't be fair and at the moment, it's definitely not the right time.
Moreover, asking her out would be one thing, but Oliver knows for a fact that's not where he'd stop, already secretly yearning for so much more with her than simple and slow casual dating between two willing adults. Something tells him, though, that a potential relationship wouldn't come as easily to Felicity. Apparently, she's been hurt by relationships in the past, starting with her father's abandonment for sure, but Oliver suspects there is more to her timidness regarding forming new relationships than that. The way she is so closed off, skittish almost, living a successful yet rather friendless and lonesome life, Felicity and a potential relationship with her could prove to be something that could break the fragile friendship they've build over the past few weeks for good. It's a friendship Oliver isn't ready to risk, not now and not by being selfish for wanting more when her world is already so fucking unstable.
And then there is the other thing. If Oliver doesn't need one thing in his life right now, it's to make things awkward and uncomfortable between them if she ultimately wasn't interested in him like that. He can't afford to have her withdraw from him and lose the trust they so painstakingly built between them over the course of the past weeks. It's not even about their own feelings getting hurt that's at stake here, it's her very own life that's in danger if things were to go south and he didn't have his head steadily on his shoulders. If there's one thing Oliver won't jeopardize, it's her safety, even if it means hell's never get his chance with an extraordinary woman like Felicity Smoak. A woman who's weaseling her way into his heart more and more with each passing day.
No, first things first. Catching the Star City Slasher, get the murdered girls justice and make sure there are no more victims, getting Felicity the piece of mind to continue on with her life – that has to take absolute and uncompromised precedence now. Everything else, his own growing feelings towards her, will have to wait.
So Oliver forces himself to ignore the warmth the touch of her fingers causes, her simple act of kindness seeping through the material of his shirt and underneath his skin and grits his teeth instead, forcing a smile onto his face. Anything just to see her smile at him in return.
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He is so damn angry, he's nearly shaking with rage. Today, something happened that's never happened to him before. He was turned away. He had a note for her, an important one on top of that. One he really needed to deliver personally to her door.
So he put on his suit and his wig along with the fake beard, took his briefcase and made his way to her building. And the fucking doorman stopped him, asking for the purpose of his visit along with a damn ID!
He had barely the presence of mind to remember the name of the middle-aged business man who lived one level under Lisy and whom he regularly saw pacing in front of his windows snapping into his phone while he was watching Lisy. So he just stammered his way through the story that he was just delivering some court papers for the guy but forgot his wallet with his ID back at his office. The doorman seemed to believe him, offered to take the documents for him and have them delivered, but flat our refused to let him walk inside on his own, blabbering about protocols and new security measures and his boss breathing down his neck.
It was utterly humiliating as he was forced to offer a smile to the man and assure him that of course he understood, that it was okay, that it was surely the right thing to do, when he very well knew the man was a fucking retard sitting on his ass the whole day watching stupid Spanish telenovelas while stinking of fish tacos he ordered and ate at his station with almost religious regularity.
What had him so riled up was not just the fact that he wasn't let in. No. What had him absolutely livid was that that jackass of an FBI Agent got to come and go as he damn well pleased. Each and every damn day, the asshole was there with that stupid bribe of his! Stupid fucking jerk knowing perfectly well that if his Lisy couldn't say no to one thing in the whole damn world, it was a coffee from her favorite place. The same place she was not visiting anymore because she didn't have to anymore. Not when she now had her own lovesick FBI puppy bringing it to her every damn day.
How come that fucker Oliver Queen – and yes, of course he made sure he knew who he was dealing with, he was no amateur. Keep your friends close but enemies closer, right? – how come he could just hang out at her place all the damn time and nobody gave a fuck? Didn't he have actual work to do at his office? Of course he did!
So it was obvious to him that this was nothing more than a silly plot. Agent Queen was just using Lisy, trying to coax information from her about him. Well, too bad, because if his regular visits told him anything, it was that Lisy hasn't budged an inch so far, his clever girl. Otherwise he wouldn't drag his ass there every day, right? If he got what he wanted from her? Still, he has to make sure she knows what kind of danger she's in. He has to warn her.