Author's Notes: From an anonymous user on Tumblr: "coffee."
Still not canon compliant.
Title from the Queen song /Emily West cover, "Who Wants to Live Forever."
She comes into the foundry at 3:45 in the morning the day after her mother leaves, folding her fingers over each other like she did the time they met at a coffee shop, voice as small as he's ever heard it. "Can I -" She takes a moment to clear her throat, compose herself, and he almost winces because he's supposed to be the one who wears the masks, not her. Never her. Nonetheless, when she straightens her shoulders and looks him dead in the face and asks, "Can I still talk to you about my day?", he's nodding before the third syllable is even uttered.
(He wants so much to talk about not just today but tomorrow, whisper pleas for atonement and absolution into her skin, for she seems to be the truth, the light and the way, and he is back in a very dark purgatory without her; a hell of his own making.
He's been wrong about so many things before, but he's never felt like he was the one who should've detonated in the ashes of the aftermath.
Until now.
Until her.
She's changed so many things; been the outlier, the asterisk. He worries about what else he's missed when she's been right in front of him.
Is determined not to let history repeat itself.)
"Of course," he says softly, and she slides in to her chair, swiveling it enough so she can roll over to the little bed she'd bought. They sit knee-to-knee in silence for a moment and he watches as she rubs at where her glasses are perched on her nose. Hesitantly, tentatively, he puts a hand on her leg, willing her to know, in spite of his shortcomings, that he is always a safe place for her, a haven in a hurricane world. She laces her fingers with his mostly on instinct and sighs heavily. "You know the one thing I kept thinking while she was here?"
It's not a question he's supposed to answer, so he sits quietly and lets her finish in her own time. "I wanted to know why she didn't come to my college graduation." She shakes her head, and a few stray droplets that must've gotten caught on her hair from the light shower dampening the walk from her car to him slide down her neck and darken the blue of the sweater she's wearing. "I was the first person in my family to even go to college, and she couldn't make the effort."
(He's a hypocrite for thinking less of Donna Smoak for not going the extra mile for her daughter, he knows that. It's why the biggest fight he's ever taken on is the one to make himself worthy of this moment, any moment.
All the moments.)
"I walked around campus after the ceremony," she continues, a shiver going down her spine, and he squeezes her knee in encouragement before heading to the coffee maker and brewing something hot to help warm her up. "Saw all these kids with their families, taking pictures and planning to meet up for dinner at the Pizzeria Uno on Comm Ave, and I was just...alone." She chuckles sardonically. "Some things never change."
"Felicity." He doesn't intend his voice to be as soft as it is, the tone identical to the one he'd used when he'd said her name in a hospital hallway eight months ago, and he certainly doesn't intend to crouch down in front of her, tilting her chin up with his index finger, but he does not fight his instinct - that's how they got in this mess in the first place, he remembers with a sting worse than the circumstances under which he'd received any of his scars - and does both. "You're not alone."
She searches his eyes for something. and he lets her look, because his armor is chinked, his walls are down, his defenses are breached, and he's willing to go once more into the fray if it means coming back out of it with her trust of him intact.
(He's willing to wait however long it takes for her love to return as well. A lifetime, because it won't be really be one until she's in it.)
"You're not alone," he repeats, "and I'm proud enough of you for the both of us."
His heart stops in his throat when he sees her eyes fill with tears, and he runs his thumb gently over one that escapes down her cheek. "MIT was lucky to have you." He takes a deep breath, then cups her cheek, and his skin sings when she leans into his touch just a little bit. (It's enough.) "And so am I."
She offers a shaky smile - the gratiude, however, is cemented - and then says quietly, gently dismissing him and the discussion for now. "Coffee's ready."
It takes another year for them to be ready, but when they are, they go to Boston in October for alumni weekend and she laces her left hand with his right as she sips at her Dunkin' Donuts coffee and uses their linked hands to point out various buildings, regaling him with the story behind the pot brownie incident when someone calls out to her.
She stops and turns, and he's made himself read her well enough that though she doesn't outwardly start, the momentary tightening of her hand around his raises his own hackles.
"Justin!" she says as a man with sandy hair jogs toward them, a lilt in her voice Oliver knows is insincere but that seems cheerful to the rest of the world. "How are you?"
There's a half-hug and a plastered smile on Felicity's face, and then she gestures to Oliver with her half full cup. "Oliver Queen, this is Justin Whiting. We lived on the same floor freshman year."
"Well, some of us lived more on the lacrosse field than in the actual dorm," Justin says and everything clicks into place. Oliver sizes up the man in front of him, and he doesn't see a trace of a college athlete anywhere, not anymore. And while he understands the guy being irrationally, irrevocably in love with Felicity, he has to work to tamp down the instinct to go "angry face" on him for bothering her then as he did.
(He wonders sometimes what kind of person he'd be had they met before.
Mostly, though, he concentrates on being here now; on being better with her as much as he wants to be better for her.)
A curvy redheaded woman and little boy about six meander to where they're standing, and Justin puts a hand at the small of the woman's back. "My wife, Melissa." He ruffles the child's hair. "And this monstrosity is Max. This is Felicity Smoak. She helped your old dad not flunk Chemistry."
Max holds out his hand, which Felicity takes and shakes heartily. "Hi, Ms. Smoak," he says politely, and then repeats the gesture to Oliver. "Hi, Mr. Smoak."
Felicity chokes on the sip of coffee she'd just taken, and instinctively Oliver rubs the space between her shoulder blades, then leaves his hand at the nape of her neck, thumb rubbing against the freckles there, because he knows it soothes her. He shakes his head when Justin goes to correct his son, because it's not a big deal - even if the idea does send his heart racing a little bit.
(He's wanted a lot of things in his life, been given most of them outright, but forever with her is something he's only just realized he'd started hoping for somewhere between Queen Consolidated and Queen Mansion - somewhere between hi, i'm Oliver Queen and so he took the wrong woman - and is determined to earn.)
They chat for a little bit longer, and he and Felicity share an entire conversation in a singular, silent look when they see how Max's entire being goes wistful when he hears Oliver and Felicity have tickets to that evening's Red Sox game at Fenway and end up offering their tickets so he and his dad can enjoy the game. Max nearly knocks both of them over in thanks, wrapping an arm around each of their torsos.
(He sees something in Felicity's eyes when he glances over at her after smiling down at the exuberant little boy, a flash of a future, a dream drawn in haze and hope but that feels like it could be as corporeal as the child in their midst, and again he lets her see the truth he sees in her, and the promise that whatever he is, whatever's left of him and whatever he could be is hers.)
They watch the game from the Pizzeria Uno on Comm Ave that night, walk back to their hotel to the sound of the distant cheering crowd, and when a thank-you card of crayon and construction paper shows up on her desk at Queen Consolidated a few weeks later - addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Smoak - both letter and drawing hang on their refrigerator when she gets home.
(Eventually, their save the date card gets hung next to it. And still further down the line, a sonogram.
He makes sure Donna Smoak shows up for both.)