A/N: Posting and running tonight, guys. Long, hard day at the lab (you should all come and see what I've got on the slab – yes, I Dr Frank N Furtered you because if loving Tim Curry in drag as a transvestite, alien, slutty doctor who sins against the laws of nature is wrong, then I just don't want to be right).

So, I'll be brief.

Updates in my life – D'Artagnan seems to have gone to a better place as I haven't seen him for a couple of weeks. I bought one of those sonic things which is meant to repel rats/mice and it seems to have worked. That's science 1, rats 0. And I didn't have to stitch up a single butt hole, so all in all, I'm chuffed.

Second update is that I've just finished inventing a salad dressing which I think I'm going to call Aunty Lou's Super Duper Salad Dressing… or Veronica… I'm not sure which yet. I've been working on getting the formula right for months ever since Kraft discontinued my one and only favourite dressing - Fat Free French… the bastards. I've tried every other brand and flavor and hated them all. And that was how Veronica came into this world… born of necessity and a 'never say die' attitude.

And that's it. Now there is only the chapter to read and you're good to go. So, please, put your trays in the upright position and dive in and we'll find out if it was all a dream…

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Oliver remained frozen in place, too frightened to move or even blink in case the apparition he was currently staring at might evaporate.

Felicity looked around the room, wide-eyed. "Were we broken into?" she asked unsteadily.

Oliver could barely hear her over the roaring of blood in his ears. "Ah, no," he said hoarsely.

Felicity made a stressed face. "What happened to my file room?"

Oliver looked around the room and tried to think quickly which was basically impossible right then. "This is pretty much how you left it, isn't it?" he asked weakly. Oliver placed the folder he was holding lightly on top of a leaning stack of files on the desk and apparently it was the straw which broke the camel's back. The teetering tower toppled to one side, sliding off the desk and crashing into other stacks, making them fall over as well. It was a domino effect which basically left the room ankle deep in loose pieces of paper and folders. Oliver saw all of it unfold out of the corner of his eye but he refused to turn and look at it properly, allowing him to the hope that it wasn't as bad as he knew it was. "More or less," he finished off valiantly.

Felicity's mouth was hanging open at the rampant scene of destruction she was now viewing. "It's less," she squawked, "way, way less!"

Oliver grimaced, reluctantly turning his head to take in the carnage. "I'll help you put everything back in order," he offered up quickly.

Felicity tried to take a few steps further into the room but files just collected around her ankles, like she was wading in a paper stream. "That would be like getting Jack the Ripper to be your gynecologist," she said dazedly. "Not a great idea, Oliver."

Did Felicity just compare him to a serial killer? Oliver swallowed hard, this wasn't going well. He needed to distract her from the files. "How-when did you get back?"

"Last night," said Felicity distractedly as she bent down and picked up a handful of folders but more just slid into the space she'd created. "I texted you I was in." She looked back at him. "You didn't text back."

Oliver pulled a face. Damn it, he knew that phone call had been from Felicity. "A dog ate my phone."

Felicity cocked her head. "Is that a euphemism for something?"

"No, a dog actually ate my phone, last night, when I was out patrolling."

She frowned. "Is the dog okay? They shouldn't eat phones, it'll get stuck."

"He didn't really eat it, just crunched it up."

"Why?"

"Because he was being a dick."

"No, why did the dog have your phone in the first place?"

"I dropped it." Oliver shook his head. "It's not important."

"Oh."

There was a long pause then and Oliver scrambled for something to say. He'd rehearsed this moment a thousand times in his head and now he was completely blank. There was so much he wanted to say to her but Oliver didn't know where to start.

"You'd better get going, you're going to be late," said Felicity finally. "It's an important meeting and most of the others have come halfway around the world to be there. You should at least make it fifteen blocks on time."

Oliver blinked. "How did you know about the meeting?"

"I uploaded your schedule last night. Wanted to know what I was walking into today and be prepared." Felicity pursed her lips and eyed the disaster zone which used to be her meticulously organized filing system. "Although there are always some things you can't really prepare for apparently," she finished off unevenly.

Oliver made a pained expression. "I'm sorry. It just kind of got away from me a little bit." He followed Felicity's gaze. "A lot," he amended ruefully.

"It's okay," said Felicity, forcing a bright smile to her lips. "At least I won't be bored today."

"So… you're back?" asked Oliver cautiously. "How's your mom doing?"

"I moved her into the rehabilitation facility yesterday," said Felicity, nodding her head. "She's doing great. Settled right in and already running the place." A lop-sided smile touched her lips. "That's my mom for you. She never stays down for long."

"A family trait it seems," said Oliver. He couldn't stop staring at her. It was like he was a man dying of thirst in the desert who had just come across the first well spring he'd seen in three weeks. Oliver wanted to drink in every little thing about her until he was fit to burst. "You look tired," he said unevenly. "Are you feeling alright? You must be exhausted after spending all that time looking after your mom." Oliver's gaze trailed down to her arms where he could still see the faint outline of scratches on Felicity's arms. Scratches he'd caused when she'd run off into the woods to try and escape him. Oliver swallowed hard, feeling sick. This was a lot more confronting than he'd expected, even though he'd been bracing for this for weeks. "And you're still recovering yourself," he said hoarsely, finding those marks hard to look away from.

Felicity self-consciously pulled down her sleeve and put her hands behind her back. "I'm fine," she said quickly. "It's just my stupid pale skin. Everything looks bad on it. Even when it's not…" Felicity trailed off and then took a deep breath. "What were you looking for?"

Some kind of sign that you don't hate me even though you have every reason to. Oliver paused, not sure for a moment if he'd said that out loud but Felicity just continued to look at him expectantly and he knew he mustn't have. "I was looking for the Nagasaki contract," he said distractedly.

Felicity wrinkled her nose. "I don't think that is going to happen in here without a handful of experienced Sherpa's and a team of rescue dogs. I'll print you up a new one." She turned around and headed out of the room.

Oliver instantly followed, too frightened to let her out his sight in case she disappeared again, like in his dreams. Felicity walked down the corridor and into their main office. She sat behind her desk and opened up her computer as Oliver watched her. It felt so good to see Felicity back where she belonged but even so, Oliver was still tied up in knots inside. All he wanted to do was put his arms around her and tell her how glad he was that she was back, how much he'd missed her. But Oliver didn't know if Felicity would want him touching her ever again after what had happened. Normally she was the one who initiated the hugs between them but she hadn't this time. Oliver didn't know if it was just because of the distraction of seeing the state of her files or if Felicity really did have an aversion to touching him in anyway now. Oliver pressed his lips together in a pained response to that thought. Did Felicity think it wasn't safe to get to close to him still? Was she worried he was going to attack her again? They were the questions which had been keeping him awake at night and he needed to know the answer to.

Felicity stood up and walked over to the printer, grabbing the sheets of paper which had just printed out. "There you go." She walked up and handed them to him.

Their fingers collided for the briefest of seconds and Oliver felt a bolt of lightning rock his entire body from just that smallest of touches.

Felicity hastily snatched her hand away and looked a little flustered. "You'd better go."

Oliver's heart sank at her reaction to such a tiny amount of contact. This was his worst nightmare. "Will you be here when I get back?" he asked shakily.

"No."

Oliver felt the blood drain from his face.

"It's pretty likely I'll be in the file room, you know, just me and the UN disaster rescue team."

His shoulders sagged in relief. "But you'll be in the building," he pushed. "Working… here… in the building?"

"That's where my job is, yes," said Felicity, looking a little confused. She frowned. "I do still have a job, right? I mean, I know I was gone for way longer than I thought I would and everything and I would totally understand if—"

"Felicity, of course you still work here." Oliver interrupted her babbling to try and reassure her. "If you want to, that is."

"I want to."

Oliver felt a small ray of hope that things might not be quite as bad as he'd first feared.

"I've got bills to pay after all," finished off Felicity blithely.

Oliver hoped his face wasn't registering how crestfallen he was over that last statement of Felicity's.

She glanced at her watch. "Oliver, you really need not to be here anymore. At least try and be on time for this thing."

Oliver didn't give a damn about the meeting now that Felicity was back. He wanted to blow the whole thing off and just be with her but she didn't seem to feel the same way. He reluctantly prepared himself to leave. "Okay, well, I guess I'll see you when I get back?"

Felicity nodded. "Okay."

Oliver couldn't think of anything else to say or do to prolong his time with Felicity so he was forced to turn around and head towards the elevator. Once inside the elevator and the doors had slid shut over slumped back against the wall of the thing and let out an unsteady breath. So, that could have gone better but it also could have gone a whole lot worse. Felicity had come back. In his darkest moments Oliver had doubted even that possibility. Now that she was here, Oliver felt like he at least had a chance to state his case. Diggle's warning of not going too quickly was still rolling around in his head and Oliver was trying to take his advice. But Felicity needed to know how he felt, that everything he'd said in the cabin had been true. Oliver needed to make sure that she knew that and wasn't thinking it was all down to him being poisoned. What happened after that he'd have to leave up to Felicity but they needed to have that conversation first. This day was just going to drag by, Oliver could tell.

#

Felicity finished tidying up the last of her email back log and sat back in her chair. One job down. She glanced out at the corridor, knowing it led to the little filing room of horrors. Wrinkling her nose, Felicity looked for a reason to procrastinate before diving into that mess. She pulled out her phone and for not exactly for the first time, she scrolled through and pulled up that picture of Oliver passed out in her bed. Felicity stared at all that relaxed beauty, surprised she hadn't worn out the pixels in the screen from the last couple of weeks. She couldn't count the number of times she'd taken out her phone and looked at this exact picture, wondering how Oliver was, what was really going on with him. Their rushed and broken phone conversations hadn't given Felicity any real idea what he was thinking. Which left her to fill in some pretty big blanks and the picture she kept painting always ended up being bleak. He looked so amazing in her bed, like that was where he belonged but Felicity knew that was just a girlish fantasy on her behalf. Oliver didn't have the same intensity of feelings for her and she just needed to try and forget about everything that had happened leading up to and including the cabin. That wasn't the real Oliver. It was a mantra she'd been repeating to herself over and over, desperate for it to penetrate her stupidly hoping heart.

Felicity's hand tightened on her phone and knew she needed a dose of reality after finally being in the same room with Oliver again. It was all she could do not to throw herself into his arms and hug the life out of him but he hadn't made any kind of move towards her and Felicity had thought better of it. It was obvious he was looking to let her down gently and she wanted to make sure she was ready for it and took it like an adult. Even though she felt like neither of those things on seeing him again. It had been intoxicating to see him again, be so close to him but Felicity forced herself to remember that best case scenario between the two of them was going back to how they used to be. She found the online article she was looking for and stared at the image accompanying the write up to reinforce her determination to keep this all in perspective.

"Queen Heir Looks to Re-kindle Spark with Old Flame."

Oliver was obviously at a party with some impossibly gorgeous red-head, about to kiss her. During the long periods of sitting around and waiting in the hospital, Felicity had taken to checking for anything on the news or media about Oliver or the Arrow. It was a way she could feel not so far away from him and her place by his side. Then this article had popped up and Felicity had wanted to burst into tears. She tried to console herself that this was a good thing, Oliver was back to his usual self, romancing women he wasn't looking to make a commitment to. Ones he could easily slot into his life and then just as easily discard. Status quo returned. All was right with the universe. Only Felicity's universe wasn't in such a great place. For all the numerous amount of times she'd told herself what had happened between Oliver and herself wasn't real, this picture and article still really hurt her. It was because it had been real for her, even though it hadn't been for Oliver. She'd meant her declarations of love and devotion. For Oliver it was the XR-320 talking. Felicity had tried to tell herself that over and over but her stupid hopeful little heart hadn't protected itself enough. Was there any kind of protection strong enough to remain impervious to Oliver Queen telling you he loved and adored you, wanted to make a love story with you? Felicity doubted it.

Felicity resolutely closed the picture. "Stick with the plan, Felicity," she ordered herself. "It's a good plan where we don't end up looking like the idiot we know we are." Felicity grimaced. "And stop talking to yourself. It makes you look weird and we don't need to advertise that stuff."

"Who are you talking to?"

Felicity jumped and swung her chair around to see Diggle walking towards her. "Just me," she said blushingly. "Don't judge."

"Hey, I talk to myself all the time. It's the only way to get intelligent conversation around this place." Diggle grinned down at her. "Although now that you're back maybe there won't be such slim pickings in that department."

"Don't count on it," said Felicity ruefully as she stood up and gave the older man a big hug. "I've missed you, John."

"Missed you too," said Diggle, returning the hug tightly. "It just hasn't been the same around here without you."

"I know, I've seen the file room," said Felicity dryly.

"Yeah, Oliver's made quite the mess of that room, no way round it," said Diggle in amusement.

"How hard is it to put a file back where you found it?" asked Felicity in exasperation.

Diggle chuckled. "Beyond our guy's skill set it would seem."

"Did he make the meeting on time?"

"Just but yes, he made it. Everyone was suitably impressed, me included, now that I know you're back."

Felicity gave him a funny look. "Why would that make a difference?"

"I pretty much assumed he'd want to stay with you."

"Why?"

"Because you two have a lot to talk about."

Felicity didn't like the way Diggle said that. "What kinds of things?" she asked nervously.

"That's between you and Oliver but I know you haven't had a chance to really talk about everything that happened between you and Oliver really wants to do that."

Of course he did. He wanted to make sure Felicity hadn't taken any of the things he'd said to heart. Felicity couldn't blame him. "We can talk later," said Felicity, keeping up a brave face. "It's not really a big deal."

Diggle eyed her speculatively. "It isn't?"

Felicity shrugged. "Of course not. Just another day at Team Arrow. No biggie."

"Mm," said Diggle, not sounding very convinced and Felicity made a mental note to try and make sure she did a better job convincing Oliver of her casualness over this whole situation.

A/N: And so the dance begins…