Office Visits

Oliver had the Starling City cemetery. Notwithstanding the visits to Sara's grave, Felicity had her own version of it. A red-brick townhouse with a green door. She adjusted the hem of her dress like she was about to see the school principal, raised her hand, and knocked.

Tap-tap.

The promising sounds of scurrying ensued from behind the green door. As an only child, she never recognized the noise for what it was until she started visiting. It was the sound of a house alive with children.

The door opened, and Felicity looked down, because she'd expecting someone taller to be opening the door. But her face broke into a smile when she saw who it was.

"Hi, Martin," she said.

Martin's untidy hair had a piece of lint in it. Felicity brushed it off on their way up the staircase. There was a acid-green toy car against the wall, which she stealthily picked up until she could find a less dangerous place to put it down.

The house didn't seem like anything Amanda Waller would have lived in. The side tables were antiques and brimming with family photos, mostly of the children — twins and an older daughter — a rare few of Amanda with her husband, deceased. Even in the photos, the husband smiled, while Amanda only looked like she was happy if you looked hard enough.

"Where's your aunt?" she asked, looking for a free space on the side tables. She shifted a frame to make space for the car.

Martin was waiting by his bedroom door, his head tilted to the side in a perpetual state of curiosity. "Went to get groceries. Coretta's supposed to be watching us, but her boyfriend just called, so she's in her room." Martin scrunched up his nose as if he didn't think much of couple Skype sessions.

Felicity heard footsteps pattering up the staircase and turned just in time to have her waist crushed in a hug by a little girl around Martin's size.

"Oof," Felicity said, patting the top of her head. "Hello to you too." Jessie was in her cartoon-supernatural phase, so her plastic headband was decorated with ghoulish orange pumpkins, and her dress was a black and white masterpiece of cartoon ghosts going boo.

"I'm getting better at sneaking up on you," Jessie said, peering up at her with Martin's eyes. With similar builds and without the loss of baby fat, the two of them were more twin-like than ever.

"Oh, definitely." Felicity reached around Jessie to pull a crepe-wrapped package out of her bag. It was a little more wrinkled than it should have been due to her questionable packing skills. "Present from Moscow, all of you get one. Could you pass this on to Coretta too?"

Jessie nodded and dashed off, hugging the package to her chest. Felicity heard the brief sounds of Skype-garbled conversation from Coretta's open door before Jessie disappeared inside.

Martin had gone inside first, and was sitting on his bed when Felicity walked in. She cleared the bits and parts of a dismantled laptop from the desk chair and sat down too. Martin's room looked a lot like her childhood bedroom, manifestations of curiosity taking up more space than she possessed, the part-intuitive, part-guessing-game process of learning everything she could about computers.

"I see you're on your way to masterminding evil," she said, poking around the jumble of frayed wires and discarded computer hardware.

"I'm trying to make a computer that survives a three-story drop." All this, he said as if it was no biggie.

Felicity immediately checked the latch on his window. Loose and frequently used. Dammit. "Have you been—? You know what, don't answer that. That's a felony, by the way. Take it from someone who may or may not break them on a semi-regular basis. Less fun than it looks."

Martin shot her a rare gleeful smile as he unwrapped his present. "Matryoshka doll," he said, and the folds of crepe paper rustled around the unveiled doll. The gleam in his eyes was better than any thank you he could give her, as he lined the dolls up in a straight row across his bed, studying each of them in turn. "Why were you in Moscow?" he asked, studying the wood varnish. "Masterminding evil too?"

"You know I only do that on Wednesdays," Felicity said, fiddling with the window latch. She'd partly been expecting her clumsiness to break the latch for her, but her powers seemed to have shorted out for the day. She'd tip off Martin's aunt on her way out.

"Mm-hm," was Martin's skeptical answer.

Felicity sighed, resigned to being sassed by a nine-year-old. Martin's house faced a park, resplendent with the burnished orange leaves of fall and coloring the wind every time a breeze swept across the trees. She'd seen those trees in all four seasons, since she visited a few times a month, to see the children Amanda had left behind. The house they lived in was proof of Amanda Waller's substantial life insurance, and even though they didn't have a father, they had family to look after them.

It wasn't exactly a cemetery visit, but it was something in that category. Oliver said that Felicity didn't owe Amanda Waller anything. It was, in its own way, true. Felicity had never worked for her, but spending last hours together and watching someone die had a tendency to forge an unbreakable connection, especially with the ones left in death's wake. Felicity had first met Martin in Nanda Parbat, and he was nothing like Amanda's cruelty, but everything like her brilliance.

Watching Martin, she sometimes wondered if Oliver would ever come with her on one of these visits. She knew why he didn't. His memory of Amanda was different from hers — tinged with secrets and whatever she'd done to him during those five years, the manipulations and twists she'd put him through to make him an ARGUS asset. When he looked at Martin, it was an active effort not to see Amanda Waller in his features, a strain to school his instincts against the wariness that came with any mention of the previous Head of ARGUS.

One day, one day.

Amanda Waller was a ghost that Oliver would have to face, even if he had a talent for outrunning his problems.

Felicity looked around at the sudden silence from Martin's side of the room. He'd paused, in the middle of arranging the dolls on his nightstand, staring hard at the wall like it had the words he wanted to say.

"Mom's lawyers came last week," he said, very quietly. "They found a new will."

Felicity's hands clenched on her knees. "Martin…"

"She left me some stuff. Nothing much, a few photos, a computer." Martin swallowed. "But it won't open for me. I've tried everything, but it keeps saying the same thing."

Martin looked up when Felicity crouched beside his bed, looking up into his face. "Show me," she said, softly.

Martin tugged an industrial-grade plastic container from under his bed. Out came the computer, nothing out of the ordinary, except when it was opened. Felicity felt the growing whispers of a mystery drawing her in as she bent closer to inspect it.

The screen glowed bright blue. No ARGUS logo. No sign of any organization, except a sequence of block letters across the center of the display.

Felicity's mouth silently formed the word.

ORACLE.

Felicity frowned when her desktop made a laconic beep, signaling another failure as far as her decryption program was concerned.

"Frack," she muttered, brushing her hair behind her ear as she bent over her desk.

Not to dishonor the dead or anything, but what kind of mother left a Cobalt-Level-and-Higher-Encrypted computer to her son? It was like a big fat test of approval from beyond the grave. Good thing she hated mysteries and had excessively mixed feelings about Amanda Waller, because she was going to crack that computer for Martin, one way or another.

"I am going to crack you like a hazelnut," she said, in the firm-but-fair voice she associated with misbehaving children and malfunctioning tech.

There was a soft cough in the room.

Felicity's head snapped up, and she was momentarily confused by the sight of Oliver and Diggle standing in the doorway. Cue flashback confusion. They didn't all still work in the same office, did they?

"We interrupting?" Diggle asked, with a smile.

Felicity glanced involuntarily at the annoyingly still-locked computer sitting on her desk as she walked out from behind the table. "Just having a déjà vu moment. Wasn't expecting to see my two very handsome boys on the twenty-seventh floor." She looked from one to the other. "What are you guys doing here?"

Oliver checked himself, as if he'd been about to kiss her on the cheek but thought the better of it. Glass-wall office environment (and Diggle's presence) meant that they (she and Oliver they) were in strictly non-touchy mode.

All three of them totally noticed.

Clearing his throat, Oliver smoothed down the front of his jacket, a tic she'd noticed recently, associated most often with a certain somebody. "Just had a meeting with Palmer," he said. "We were discussing the gallium deposits his VP successfully secured from Marinov Holdings." Oliver's unmistakably proud smile made her blush.

"No bullets breaking the windows this time," Diggle added. "I had a nice talk with your assistant Gerry…about his Irritable Bowel Syndrome. That boy really needs to learn how to filter."

Felicity covered her mouth in mock-horror, mostly just finding it very, very funny. "Could happen to anybody," she said, muffled by her hand. "Seriously though, it's nice of you to drop in for a visit, but every time the three of us are together there's usually some kind of security threat or scary conversation."

Oliver glanced at the — shut — glass doors before turning back to her. "Anatoly called," he said, quietly. "I have a meeting with the new Head of the Starling City Bratva."

Felicity puffed out her cheeks. "We really need an acronym for that mouthful," she commented. "Okay — did he say who it was? I can run background checks, dig up dirt from twelve generations back if you need me to."

Oliver shook his head. "He didn't give me a name. Probably because he anticipated this happening. I only have an alias — Selena."

Felicity raised her eyebrows. "Color me very, very surprised. Didn't think the Bratva's leadership policies were so progressive."

"Their mob tactics are straight from the fifties," Diggle said, with an amused glance at Oliver.

"Very true," Felicity said, pointing at Diggle like they were playing trivia. "So are you going?"

Oliver made a noncommittal sound, like he and Diggle had already gone through a minor disagreement about his answer. "Diggle doesn't like the idea of me going in blind," he said, with an air of resignation, as if his friends worrying about him was a minor hassle in his pursuit of neck-risking.

Diggle folded his arms. "Damn straight."

Oliver sucked in his breath like he was about to answer back, so naturally, Felicity interrupted him.

"I could help with that," she said, cutting him off. "This — Selena — hasn't made contact, yet, right? I'll whip up a little tracer, bug your phone, follow the merry trail back to its source, see what we find. Sound good?"

Oliver shared an amused glance with Diggle before he handed his phone over to Felicity. "If you're offering," he said, his fingers brushing her palm when the phone changed hands.

Felicity tapped the phone to her chin. "Well, I'm sure QI's IT department could manage it by the end of the century, but I'm guessing you're in a bit of a hurry?" Her smile was more impish than she intended — but that was kinda the point.

Oliver squeezed her forearm, as close to playful as she was likely to get. "To say they're having some tech trouble…would be an understatement."

"Hm." Felicity circled over to one of the worktables and reached for one of the monitors. "That seems to be going around."

Diggle was by her desk, and he leaned over the laptop, the mass of wires curling from her desktop to its much smaller hard drive."I thought you'd graduated from fixing computers." he asked, curiously. "Did Roy spill coffee on it?"

Felicity shot Oliver a look. "Well, it's not exactly riddled with bullet holes," she said, hooking up his phone to her computer. "I went to see Martin today. Amanda left him this computer, and the encryption — in a very fascinating display of maternal love — is pretty hack-resistant."

"Sounds like ARGUS," Diggle said, tapping a key to wake up the screen. "ORACLE," he read. "Acronym for something?"

Felicity blew out her breath as she typed. "You tell me. Lyla's ARGUS. Could you maybe do a little snooping?" She put on her best please smile, the one associated with national-security-violating requests and big friend favors.

Diggle chuckled. "I'll see what I can do. But if you can't crack it, I don't see anyone else in ARGUS pulling it off." He pulled out his phone anyway. "For all you know, maybe Amanda planned for it to end up with you. She knew you'd visit Martin if anything happened to her."

Felicity made a face. "Not exactly your usual sagely reassurance, Dig."

"I'll see what I can find out. Meanwhile —" said Diggle, pushing off the table with a knowing smile. "It's past time I gave you guys a minute. Just remember that I have to get Oliver back to the office in an hour."

The glass door swung shut behind Diggle, and Oliver turned away from the door with a faint sigh, as if he was used to the extreme lack of subtlety in Team Arrow.

"Hi," he said, softly.

Felicity glanced over her shoulder. "Hi," she said back.

Oliver's hands were in his pockets. "I've never seen your office before," he said, looking around. "It's nice."

"Well," Felicity answered, "it used to be yours."

Oliver made a noise of amusement. "I didn't use it all that much."

Felicity looked up from the monitor and skeptically eyed her office. Oliver was as neat as a pin when it came to lairs/offices/homes, and she was…well…decent. There was an impressive constellation of papers across the various worktables, a laboratory-grade microscope (long story), and lots of monitors, one of which she was currently using.

To say she was getting use out of the office would be a colossal understatement.

Felicity was supposed to be keeping her eyes on the monitor and the tracer program she was encrypting Oliver's phone with, but she couldn't help but look over at him just the same. True to Oliver-Queen-repressive form, he was examining a deconstructed computer hard drive with mild interest. His fingertips tapped lightly on the table as he did, and Felicity realized that she was creepy-staring again.

Which wasn't completely her fault, given the way Oliver looked in a suit. Perfect Human Specimens generally looked good in anything, but Felicity remembered how her heart used to do embarrassing skippy-motions back when she was still an IT girl seventeen floors down from his office.

Still did.

The computer was still running when Felicity turned, leaning back against the table. "You know," she said, in what she imagined was a flirty voice, "we never really talked about the ground rules for office visits."

Oliver didn't even look up. "Felicity, relax, I'm not going to out you to Palmer."

Felicity paused, because she found the terminology — inappropriately — funny. "I'm not averse to the…outing," she said. "I just have extensive experience with awkward situations, and I try to avoid creating them on purpose."

"Like telling him I was in your hotel room the whole time you were in Moscow," Oliver said, demonstrating his uncanny ability to read her mind.

"Moscow would be one of them, yes. But —" Felicity leaned her head on her shoulder, a shy smile warming her face. "Moscow was very nice."

Oliver took the cue and moved a little closer, until they were at an exquisite level of almost, until she was looking up at his face. "You're not worried about Palmer finding out?" he asked softly, but she swore his eyes flickered down to her lips.

Felicity toyed with the end of his tie, pulling him closer still. "Bound to happen sometime," she said, and tilted her head back as if she was expecting his kiss.

It was easy to look at Oliver's mouth and imagine all sorts of — frankly — unspeakable things. Bringing up Moscow was both a very good, and very bad idea. It all depended on what happened next.

Who would have moved first, Felicity really couldn't say. But the next thing she knew, the computer beeped and startled them both.

With a faint flicker of disappointment, Felicity reached behind the monitor and unplugged Oliver's phone. "There — we — go —" she said, and held it out to him. "All set."

Instead of taking the phone, Oliver's hand was suddenly under her chin, tipping her face up to his, and before she knew it — his mouth was on hers and all pretenses of workplace decency went right out the twenty-seventh-floor window.

Even though Oliver had her by the waist, Felicity still felt herself arch backward with the enthusiasm of his kiss. She wrapped her arms around his neck and (vaguely) thought how it was a good thing that she had a table behind her, because Oliver's kiss threatened to destabilize her knees altogether.

Sometime during the whole bending-back thing, Felicity's elbow nudged one of the monitors, and she only belatedly realized that it was falling when Oliver's (frankly, inhuman) reflexes kicked in and he caught it by the wires before it made a crash-landing.

Oliver's beard rubbed against her cheek when they both turned to look at the almost-damage behind them, and she heard him release a breath of relief. Felicity's hands shook against Oliver's face as she tried to smother her laughter. "Oops," she said, as the monitor dangled precariously between floor and table like an oversized pendulum.

With the way they were aggressively leaning against the table, it took some creative maneuvering to get the monitor back onto solid ground, and by then, Felicity was laughing.

"Sorry," she said, trying to keep a straight face. "I just keep wondering whether we can make out like a regular couple — i.e. without breaking things."

Oliver's hand lingered on her hip. "Unlikely," he murmured. "But speaking of the conventional, I was wondering if you wanted to stay over at my place tonight."

"Mm." Felicity leaned back to see his face, pretending to consider. "I'd say…that for a request like that, you might have to take me to dinner first."

In response, Oliver shifted his body in a highly effective way, one forced her to bite her lip to keep herself from making a supremely embarrassing noise. "You know what you're doing," she said, a little breathlessly.

"Is that a yes?" he asked, tantalizingly close to her lips.

Felicity was about to answer when she caught sight of the half-open door over Oliver's shoulder…and the person standing with his hand poised to knock.

Fate really needed to work on the sense of humor side of things, because it had the irony part down pat.

"Ray!" she said, a little louder than was probably necessary. "Hi."

Right, yeah, the above scene is my retaliation for that (admittedly cute) scene in the office with Raylicity. (Eurgh) Also, Ray had to find out sometime. Oh, and what am I doing with Ray and Felicity and Oliver? *Cue shifty look*

Oh good lord, stop giving me good fanfiction ideas during class. Teachers can tell I am not paying attention by the gleeful look on my face while I frantically type all the brain farts down before they drift away.

I CANNOT wait for 3x17, partly because of the wedding, and partly because I legit want to see Ray make the stupendously moronic decision to go after Oliver Queen. Bring. It. On.

Also, this may make me a stalker, but I've been on the Previously TV fanfic forum for Arrow (you really should check it out, there's some hilarious stuff going on there, fanfic, fanvids, fanart, etc.), and someone called Wonderwall very nicely keeps reccing Legacies. So this is an excessively roundabout way of saying thanks.

I swear this is the last point, but I did make a trailer-ish thing for You're His Hope (which is on Youtube and my Tumblr). If anyone's interest is piqued, search "You're His Hope Olicity fanfic" and it should come right up. Cheers, and happy Easter Break for anyone lucky enough to be in the UK for this glorious month-long vacation.