Disclaimer - I do not own Arrow.
As he stepped into the cubicle, with a trailing Felicity Smoak behind him, he realized he needn't have bothered trying to find an excuse to gain access to Trent's computer. For while the accounting department seemed to be buzzing around him, busy with its usually daily activities, the cubicle was thankfully empty.
He nudged Felicity into the vacant office chair, fully confident in her abilities to find any information that was needed from the device. His help would only hinder her progress.
To avoid attracting too much attention to him being in the middle of the accounting department, he sat in a neighboring empty cubicle while she worked, not wanting to leave her alone altogether just incase Trent did come back.
The girl did tend to ramble a bit too much, and while usually it was amusing, more often than not it also resulted in her over sharing information.
It wasn't that he didn't trust her, for some particular reason her felt like he could put his faith in her, but he didn't want her to accidentally let information slip. He hadn't know her for that long, and from what he had gathered at her first interview she could probably hold her own, but he didn't want to risk it. This was too important to him.
So he sat in the chair observing her as she worked away. Her hands flying across the keyboard at lightening speeds and her eyes scanning the information before her on the screen even quicker.
He could understand why his son was so taken with her.
From the blonde locks to her skinny physique, she looked just like Oliver's usual type. His heir was unfortunately predictable.
But she was also different. Without a doubt she was beautiful, but she didn't know it like all the other girls Oliver dated, didn't flaunt it as if it was her one and only redeeming quality.
This girl had brains but more importantly, to him at least, was her personality. Her quirkiness definitely added to her appeal, but what he found to be most fascinating was her ability to brighten up any room she walked into. He never missed the way Oliver's face would light up when she walked into a room, no matter how much his clueless son tried to hide it.
She was innocent but wasn't naïve enough to ignore the evils of the world.
But possibly the most important thing for him was that their money was one of her least concerns. She certainly knew about it, their wealth was hard to hide, but he didn't see the usual hunger for it that he saw in other people's eyes. She almost shied away from it all.
He was sick of watching the long line of gold diggers that preyed in their circles throwing themselves at his son.
His eyes travelled away from her form to the desk before her.
He was shocked at how impersonal it was.
In all his years in working in offices he had never seen a cubicle so bare, it was beyond the borders of strange, particularly with having the knowledge of Trent being in the company for over six years.
You could tell a lot about a person by looking at their workspace, and there weren't many different types of office set-ups.
You have the employees that covered their walls and desks with photos and memorabilia of friends and family, their hobbies or interests. They showcased their lives for the world to see, but also so that they could surround themselves with what they loved, even while at work. They were the people that worked to live.
Or you have those efficient workaholic types that have reminder notes everywhere, their workplaces being just that as they decorated it with nothing personal. A lot of them didn't have much personal items to decorate their space with. Files and paperwork would be either strewn all over the place or with a methodical precision; it didn't make much of a difference. These were the people that lived to work.
Of course you had the people in between, but all people generally leaned towards one category or the other.
But this cubicle was just bare. Nothing tacked onto the reminder board, the desk bare with the exception of the keyboard, mouse and three filing trays, mostly barren themselves.
He was just about to stand up to open the filing drawers under the workstation when a chilling voice halted his movements.
"What the hell do you think your doing?"
He looked up to the man that had spoken but his focus wasn't on him but a very shell-shocked Felicity who was currently gaping like a fish out of water as she looked up.
If the situation wasn't as serious as it was he would have laughed at the way she physically stopped herself from talking by covering her mouth with her hand. He decided this was a good a time as any to step in, hoping that she had already found what she needed, or at least gotten a hint at what needed to be done at a later stage.
"Mr. Trent I presume?"
The man's angry face turned towards him but quickly schooled his features when he realized just who was talking to him.
"Mr. Queen? Can I help you with something?" his voice wasn't angry, by Robert still caught an undertone that he didn't like.
Something just didn't sit right with him about this whole situation in general.
"I'm sorry to invade on your personal space Mr. Trent, we had Miss. Smoak in for an interview in IT and I was just checking her skills. I seemed to recall someone telling me there were issues with your computer. I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and see how good she is while she fixes your computer".
"I don't recall anything with my computer Mr. Queen", his voice was edgy as he looked back down at Felicity and directed his next question at her "Did you find anything wrong Miss. Smoak?"
Robert Queen, like so many before him, had clearly underestimated one Felicity Megan Smoak. He watched as she turned to look at him, then with the biggest doe eyes looked up at Trent and giggled like a Catholic schoolgirl.
"Oh God, to be honest the first firewall I got to I was lost, QC's network is so much more sophisticated than anything I've worked with before! Seriously your security is amazing, back where I'm from the only thing people protected their computers with is passwords! All I can do is fix the hardware, give me wires and circuits any day, but this is all too technical for me. Not that I wouldn't love to learn! That's why I applied for this internship Mr. Queen, to learn. And of course my mother was so proud when I got the chance to interview. Not that you need to know this. Sorry Mr…um…yep, sorry, I don't know what is wrong with your computer. You will have to get someone from IT. Which by the looks of things I'll never be. I should probably stop talking now."
Robert Queen himself nearly fell for the innocent rambling blonde act. It seemed that she could lie well enough; she just had to ramble nervously while she did it.
He heaved a sigh of annoyance, his chest swelling in pride on the inside for the girl that had enough brains to not give up his secrets.
"Miss Smoak, I have to say that's a bit of a shame. I had such high hopes from your resume".
"Mr. Queen! Please! I need this job I really do, just give me one chance and I promise you wont regret it!" she pulled off the pleading voice spectacularly. He'd have to look into getting her a raise, and maybe employment at the Starling City Theatre.
"Fine Miss. Smoak, you may have this internship, I'm sure you know how much of a privilege this is and I won't have to tell you how hard you have to work to stay in Queen Consolidated" his voice stern as he channeled his inner CEO authority.
"Yes Mr. Queen, of course Mr. Queen".
"Good day Mr. Trent, thank you for the use of your computer".
And with that they left one baffled Donald Trent behind them, standing a meter away from his desk, clueless as to what had just happened.
They did not get a chance to talk privately until they were back on their level, away from the prying eyes and ears of the employees in the elevator.
"Oh my God! I can't believe I just did that! That was crazy! I'm running on so much adrenaline right now. I feel like I just robbed a bank. Or committed some kind of felony, except I didn't, I just hacked into his computer which belongs to you and you knew about it so I could probably get off on a technicality."
He watched her as she paced in front of his desk, too worked up to actually sit down, until she ran out of steam.
"Miss. Smoak, did you find anything interesting?" surely this trip hadn't been for nothing. He certainly learned a bit about Trent the man but his computer could lead to the evidence of what he was looking for, or at the very least have trails to something or someone else involved.
"Yes, yes I did. I mean I didn't, which begs the question as to why I didn't doesn't it?"
"That's a bit broad Miss. Smoak, you're going to have to be more specific. And a bit more concise maybe?"
"Felicity. Call me Felicity please."
"Felicity then, anything?"
She took a breath and slumped, rather in an unladylike fashion into his guest chair.
"Nothing. And not nothing like I couldn't get into it. There was just nothing on his computer. And not in the way that he scrubbed the computer clean or anything, because I'd be able to tell, but in a way that no actual data is ever stored on that computer. It's like the whole system is set up for all the data to go onto some external hard drive. Probably a portable one that he carries around with him. There are no work files, no personal files, nothing stored on that computer. If he keeps all his files on an external data drive it would explain his need for all the firewalls once the drive is connected to the computer, because it's only then that people, well me, that can hack into the drive. When it's plugged into one of the QC's mainframe computers."
She took a breath before continuing.
"So to put it plainly, anything that we probably want is on an external portable hard drive that he only plugs into the QC computer when he is at his desk. Hence all the firewalls on his computer, to prevent anyone trying to look inside said hard drive, again that someone would be me".
"Is there any way to break the firewalls?"
"I can try, it will take a while but." She sounded far away, as if she was already trying to process all the information that she had consumed that day and thinking of possibilities for the hack job ahead.
It amazed him how she could zone out completely when concentrating.
"Try Felicity. And continue looking into other employees also, if we found one strange instance, more likely there are more".
She nodded and stood up to leave, taking his words as a dismissal but was stopped by his voice before she reached the door.
"And thank you Felicity, I think you passed your second interview for the Queen Consolidated IT department with flying colors, I'd definitely consider you for our next internship round".
She beamed at him in gratitude for the underlining praise, but played along all the same "Why thank you Mr. Queen. I'm sure I could learn a lot from the IT specialist's of Queen Consolidated".
She left after that, hearing his laughter ring out behind her.
Finally she didn't make a fool out of herself in front of him. She walked with her head held high, a grin that she couldn't hide away plastered on her face.
One minute she was walking down the hall towards her office, the next she was yanked into the dimly lit copy room, her back pressed into the cold, hard and now very closed door with one smirking and very pleased with himself Oliver Queen in front of her.
Not that she could ever complain about that.
Not for the first, and definitely not for the last, time she thought that that face should be illegal. That jaw structure. It just wasn't fair to all the other men of the world.
"Oliver".
Her face changed from beaming when she was walking down the office hallway, to shock at being yanked into the copy room, to beaming again when she realized it was him. His heart fluttered just a little bit at that.
"Felicity".
He watched in fascination as her eyes darkened just a bit when he said her name.
He decided to test the theory, repeating it again and allowing one of his hands to leave its place on her hip to travel up and back down slowly on her side.
He wasn't wrong, only this time her head moved back to rest on the door and her eyes became just a little bit more hooded.
"Oliver" she breathed.
His answering growl accompanied her hand as it moved to the back of his neck to scrape the soft hair she found there with her nails.
"I've missed you," he whispered as he let his nose skim the skin of her collarbone, taking her scent in.
"You saw me last night at the club. And this morning at work Oliver," her words said one thing but her smile told him a different story. She had missed him too.
"Have dinner with me. Tonight. I can take you anywhere you want to go, just name the place. Or we can do it at my house if you want?"
He didn't hide his eagerness and she appreciated that the most.
"How about you come to my place? I'll cook."
He scrunched his face "That's not a date Felicity. I don't want to bother you with anything".
"Mr. Queen, I want you" she paused as she moved her finger from the hollow of his neck down his chest slowly, her eyes never leaving his, "to come to my house" her other hand using her fingers to softly pull at his hair on the back of his skull "so that I can cook for you" she shifted her legs minutely, but it made their whole bodies align perfectly "that would be the perfect date, and that's the date I want".
This woman was killing him. Slowly but very surely and thoroughly killing him.
He placed his forehead on her shoulder, forcing himself to breathe properly, before looking back up to her again.
"What time do you want me there?" his voice was strained and he knew it, but he held onto his control for dear life.
"Say seven?"
"Seven's perfect".
EXTRA long chapter - I expect reviews :)
Love to all - stay safe - Stace XXX