Notes: From over on Tumblr

Anonymous asked:

hi! um, i'm a bit awkward about this. i want to say you /absolutely/ do not have to, but if you wanted to write a fic with autistic!oliver, i would be so, so happy! i feel he could canonically be, & i'm surprised it's not a more common headcanon, but maybe i'm projecting too much! if you don't want to write that, for whatever reason, that's totally fine! i've never asked for a fic before, so i won't mind at all if you don't write this for whatever reason; please don't feel obligated! thank you

Anonymous asked:

same anon as that last ask. as i said, i've never prompted before, so i don't know if you want more info? i really don't mind—anything would be incredible—but if you need a ship, i'm more than a bit partial to Olivarry. but i don't mind Olicity! and any other mental health hc's would be amazing—you can't tell me Ollie wasn't suicidal in the s3 finale—but it doesn't have to get dark. actually, maybe that would be better as another fic? sorry, i'm rambling now! you don't have to write it! tysm!

This wound up becoming a bit of a slice of life thing set right after Oliver has moved in with Barry in Central City. He's definitely having some mental health struggles going on, but he's starting to find his feet here and Barry is someone he can let his guard down with so he's starting to let himself heal too.

It's largely just morning scenes as Oliver and Barry establish their routines together. Oliver doesn't have an official diagnosis for his autism here due to ableism on his parents parts and never really following it up on his own as an adult. And I wanted to leave it open ended as to whether he chooses to pursue getting that diagnosis or not because, as Barry points out, it's up to him to decide whether that diagnosis would help him or not.

Morning Routines

Oliver knows he burned a lot of bridges taking out Ra'as Al Ghul. He's still not sure he did the right thing leaving Nyssa in charge. But better her than Malcolm.

But things are tense now with Dig and Felicity. Laurel's forgiven Oliver, but he's not sure if it's because she actually means it or if it's because she's just so tired after Sara's death and everything that's happened since. And Thea blames herself for whole thing when everything is Malcolm's fault. Malcolm who is finally, truly dead. Or he'd better be.

Getting out of Star City, telling Ray he was the hero now... it felt good to be able to walk away from things. To focus on himself for a change. To... let himself actually have what he wanted instead of second guessing and telling himself he doesn't deserve that happiness.

And, well, he doesn't. Deserve that happiness. But when Barry smiles at him, all open and trusting...

Oliver might not feel he deserves happiness, but he knows that Barry does. So that makes it easier. To be happy. Knowing his happiness makes Barry happy too.

Part of him is still worried about how they're going to make this work. Going from... long distance flirting and the occasional no-strings date to living together and lots of strings attached as boyfriends. Barry is speed and chaos and Oliver... Oliver needed order and structure. So Oliver is more than a little afraid he's going to screw up this relationship just like he's screwed up everything else since he took Thea to the League to save her life.

The alarm clock goes off, startling Oliver from his thoughts and rousing Barry from sleep.

"Oliver?" Barry slurred, sleepy and sweet.

Smiling, Oliver ruffled Barry's hair and then turned off the alarm. "Go shower and I'll make breakfast. Okay?"

Barry kissed Oliver. "Or we could snuggle and kiss in bed?"

And certainly Barry's kisses were enticing. Oliver indulged in a few more. And then pulled away with a sigh. "You've got work this morning. So, shower and I'll make breakfast."

"Alright," Barry sighed, pouting teasingly as he followed Oliver out of bed. He went off to the bathroom while Oliver, having slipped out and then back in to bed earlier, went straight to the kitchen.

Oliver made lots of eggs, knowing what Barry's calorie intake was like. And bacon. It was soothing to be cooking for someone else. Oliver rather liked it.

This would make a nice morning routine, wouldn't it? Oliver knew Barry's schedule could be erratic. He was the only in house CSI a the CCPD, so Barry was often on call and sometimes he had morning shifts and sometimes he had afternoon shifts and... well, then there was the Flash stuff, which he was always on call for. Which Oliver understood. As the Hood - and later the Arrow - he'd been always on call for that too. But for mornings when Barry had to go into work...

Oliver could make this routine work. Hopefully.

"Is everything okay?" Barry asked, hair wet from his short shower.

"Yeah, just... finding my feet. New places are... difficult sometimes."

Barry hummed thoughtfully and then seemed to buzz in place before handing Oliver something. A small little egg made of stone. "It's a worry stone. My first stim toy. When I get anxious about new things, I always seem to come back to it. Maybe it can help you with your anxiety?"

Rolling it experimentally from one hand to the other, Oliver nodded. "It has a nice texture to it. Feels nice." He could get why it soothed Barry. And maybe it would help for Oliver too, even if all it did was make him think of Barry.

The problem with not having a job and not needing to be a vigilante anymore is that... Oliver doesn't really know what to do with himself. He rolls the little egg in his hands and thinks of Barry.

But he also thinks of the life he left behind in Star City. The friends he left behind. That he let down.

Oliver put Lyla and baby Sara in danger and he doesn't know how to make that right. Part of him is afraid he'll never put things right with Dig.

Felicity had wanted Oliver to be more than he was and he was as frustrated with her as she was with him.

Thea...

Oliver calls Thea before lunch.

"I might be going a little stir crazy," Oliver admitted.

"Already?" Thea laughed. "You are not made to be a home body, Ollie. If you're not going to be shooting your bows and arrows anymore, then you need to find something to do with yourself." Then, softer, she asked, "how are you feeling? Besides bored?"

"Uh, well..." Oliver wasn't sure what to say. What was it about that kind of question that always threw him. "I'm happy when I'm with Barry. He's so bright and... I feel less awful when I'm with him."

"But you feel awful when you're not around him?" Thea asked, tone careful.

"I think maybe things are catching up to me," Oliver admitted.

"Ollie... I've been seeing a therapist. To help with my anger issues. Which, despite not telling her about the Lazarus Pit or being Speedy, is actually helping. Turns out I still have some lingering anger with mom and dad. And Malcolm." Thea gave a little laugh that was more sad then amused. "Maybe it would help you, to talk to somebody. Lyla could probably help you find someone who could be trusted to honor an NDA. So you don't have to leave things out. I know that there's a lot that happened to you that you don't know how to talk about to me or... or anyone else you care about."

He doesn't know what to say. It's a good idea. It's also kind of... frightening. Trusting someone isn't Oliver's strong point. And telling someone about just this last year could be enough to make them hate him. Telling them everything? It's not a great idea.

So Oliver changes the subject. And Thea lets him.

But he also knows she hasn't let the subject drop. It's just been... tabled. For now.

Much as Oliver likes the evenings with Barry, eating dinner and snuggling on the couch. Or the nights where they fall asleep in each other's arms - with or without what is very clearly life altering sex beforehand (because, wow, Barry vibrates and nothing will ever compare). There is something uniquely special about waking up in the morning long before the alarm goes off and... watching Barry in his sleep.

He's younger than Oliver by about four years. But Barry looks so much younger - so much less burdened - in his sleep. He's beautiful.

Inspiring.

When Barry woke from his coma nearly a year ago with powers unlike anything Oliver had ever seen before, it hadn't even occurred to Oliver to be afraid. Barry was not the wisest man Oliver had ever met. But certainly the kindest. And Oliver had looked at Barry and seen... the kind of hero Oliver wished he could be. The kind that made the world a better place.

Oliver wasn't quite sure what kind of person he was, though. Barry could say he inspired him, but... it was hard to believe that someone like Oliver could inspire someone like Barry.

Yet here they were. Living together. In love.

And somehow that just made it all the more apparent that things weren't quite right in Oliver's head.

He keeps thinking about his conversation with Thea from the morning before. He needed to do something with himself. He needed... to help and to be helped. And neither was a particularly easy thing to do.

It's not the alarm on the clock that wakes Barry this morning. It's an alarm on his phone. And this one Barry snapped fully awake for.

"Flash alert?" Oliver asked, sitting up.

Barry was suddenly in his suit, cowl hanging off his neck. "Yup." He was checking his phone. "Armored car robbery. Shouldn't take too long. Unless the Rogues are involved."

"If you need backup, I'll be there," Oliver promised.

"I like it when we team up," Barry admitted, almost shyly.

It made something flutter in Oliver's stomach. "Me too. Now get going."

Barry ran off.

And while Barry didn't need back up, he did end up showering and grabbing a power bar at STAR Labs in order to make it to work on time. He called when he got to work. "Just barely on time. But I have been every day since we moved in together. I think Captain Singh may thank you for that when you finally meet him."

Oliver laughed. "Unless he gets annoyed with me distracting you on the phone. I'll see you at lunch?"

"Absolutely."

After they hang up, Oliver stared at his phone for a long time before calling Lyla. Her clipped speech says she isn't thrilled to be hearing from him. But she does hear him out. And promises him a list of therapists in the Central City and Keystone areas that have NDAs with ARGUS that would cover Oliver as a former agent and sometimes contractor. Her voice has smoothed out by the time they're saying goodbye. Which might just mean that being angry with Oliver for an entire phone call is too much trouble. Or it could be that him trying to make good mental health decisions is easing him back into her good graces. Oliver's better at judging that sort of thing in person, when he can see a person's body language.

She does tell him she'll let John know he said hi, though. And she lets Oliver know that baby Sara is doing okay after a weekend with a cold. Which then laid out Dig too. It's nice to hear what's going on with his family. Even if they are better off with him retired and gone.

Barry doesn't have work on the weekend. Which isn't always true, but this weekend it is. Oliver enjoys the lie in, trading kisses with Barry - and then a bit more than just kisses - until a speedster's grumbling stomach sent them laughing to the kitchen for food.

"So, you mentioned wanting to find something to spend your time on while I'm at work. And I'm assuming it doesn't necessarily need to be a paying job?" Barry asked, having practically inhaled his first omelette but taking his time on his second.

"The Queens are old money. Unless we really fuck it up, Thea and I could live without having a job for our entire lives and still have money left over for our kids one day." Oliver shrugged, adding, "honestly, what we make off owning majority shares in Qu... in PalmerTech," and it still annoys Oliver that Ray changed the company name. It was a good business move, separating the company from the Queen family drama over the last several years. But it was supposed to be his father's legacy. And now it wasn't. Not that Robert Queen had been... it was complicated. It was just complicated. Oliver had ultimately agreed to the name change and there was no going back now.

It was just... hard to live with, sometimes.

"I could probably live just fine off of that alone," Oliver finished, a touch awkwardly.

Barry nodded. "Then how would you feel about doing volunteer work?"

Oliver gave what he hoped looked like an interested look. "Oh?"

"Hartley reached out to me about Freespace needing more volunteers for the meta outreach program he's heading up. They could use someone who is calm under pressure, and doesn't mind throwing a few punches, to help keep order. There's been some trouble with growing anti-meta sentiment and there've been a few protestors trying to goad metas into a fight."

"So they can point to the fight as metas being inherently violent, no doubt," Oliver grumbled, incensed on the behalf the metas Hartley was trying to help. "I'm not sure having Oliver Queen play bouncer is quite what Rathaway had in mind; it'd certainly bring in some interesting press. But I can talk to him about it."

Barry beamed like the sun itself.

While Saturday wound up being a lay around at home day, Sunday they go out after showering together. It's a nice day for it and Barry was clearly excited to show off some of his favorite places in the city to Oliver. He's getting to know his new home better already. The once unfamiliar streets forming a map in Oliver's head.

It's comforting, being able to look at a street crossing and know approximately where he is in town without needing to ask. And while Oliver's not there yet, he's learning. That's a comfort all it's own.

"Mmm," Barry pulled back from the kiss and nuzzled Oliver's shoulder. "Shower and breakfast?" he asked sleepily.

"That's right," Oliver replied, amused by Barry's sleepy expression.

"I'm not good at routines on my own," Barry said, sitting up and stretching. Seemingly unaware of how that made his shirt ride up on his stomach.

Oliver considered - and discarded - the idea of messing with their routine by offering up a blow job. "But you're doing good with having a routine with me?" Oliver asked instead.

Barry nodded. "It's... routines are good for me. They help me manage my ADHD, especially since I can't medicate for it anymore. But of course... ADHD makes it hard to maintain a routine. Or focus. Time blindness is very much a thing."

"My parents... thought I might have ADD as a kid," Oliver offered, feeling rather relieved that the structure he craved was useful for Barry too. Helpful instead of a source of discontent.

"Really?"

He nodded. "I was acting out in class, my grades were suffering... I think they were hoping to put me on... on maybe Ritalin or whatever and have me magically transform into a focused and attentive student." Oliver tapped his fingers nervously. "But I didn't end up getting diagnosed. My parents sent me to three different specialists and they all wanted to have me evaluated for autism too. My parents were convinced I couldn't be autistic, so..." he still remembered his mother insisting her son was perfectly normal. As if being autistic were the worst thing ever and not even a hint of it should go in Oliver's medical files or else.

Moira Queen loved her children. But sometimes she'd made Oliver feel terribly inadequate. He knows rationally she'd wanted to protect Oliver from being bullied for being different. But her way of handling the possibility Oliver was neurodivergent in a way that couldn't be 'fixed' with medication had been, in many ways, far worse.

"Were you ever interested in getting diagnosed after you turned eighteen?" Barry asked. "I didn't get diagnosed until college when I thought all I was dealing with was bad anxiety, but then I was the kind of kid who could sleep through class and still ace the tests so it never occurred to Joe to look into the possibility I had ADHD. Which I didn't. Sleep through class, that is. Since I do have ADHD. But I did a lot of self study for advanced chemistry when I was supposed to be taking notes on Hamlet during senior year English, so in retrospect..."

Oliver snorted in amusement, imagining teenaged Barry memorizing chemical formulas and Shakespearean quotes all at the same time. And then trying not to mix the two up on his tests. "I didn't. I was afraid of letting my parents down. Of not being normal, whatever the hell that is. So I pretended not to remember even though it... it's not the sort of thing that gets forgotten. But I don't actually know if they were right or not." He suspects the therapists were right, though. He's read about autistic behaviors and masking enough to know that it explains some things about himself that he's never let himself talk about.

"It might help with therapy to find out," Barry encouraged. He kissed Oliver's cheek. "Sometimes knowing for sure doesn't help. But sometimes it does. And sometimes it just makes life less frustrating to know why my brain does the annoying things it does. And, trust me, no one gets more annoyed with my brain on executive dysfunction kicks than I do. But you don't necessarily need an official diagnosis to be get that understanding. It's up to you, however you want to approach getting a diagnosis or not getting one... but I'll be supporting you whatever way you go."

Sometimes not knowing for sure was like an itch Oliver couldn't scratch. And sometimes it wasn't. But, he supposed, he didn't have to decide now. And he he didn't have to take his parents feelings into account anymore either. Whatever choice he made could be entirely for himself. "Thanks, Barry."

Another morning, another breakfast started while Barry showered. "My schedule shifts to afternoons and evenings tomorrow," Barry warned before leaving. "Offsite CSIs will be handling the morning."

Oliver had known that was coming, but it was good to have a reminder. It would be nice to have their mornings together, but losing their evenings would be tough.

Once Barry was off to work, Oliver called Hartley. "I have more free time than I need and I hear you need some volunteers," Oliver told his fellow green-themed vigilante. They'd teamed up with Ray and Firestorm to help Barry against Thawne, which was how Oliver had met Rathaway. He seemed nice enough. Apparently a good enough fighter with his gloves to give Barry a run for his money. And he'd been an asset against Thawne in the end.

As long as he didn't go after Barry again, Oliver found the man to be relatively easy to get along with.

"Is this you offering to volunteer as Oliver Queen or as someone with decent enough aim to kneecap people with arrows from a distance?" Hartley asked, sounding amused.

"It is easier to deal with people when I'm sniping them from a distance, but I'm offering in a non-arrow related capacity," Oliver responded.

"How are you at dealing with the press? I've got an anti-meta news correspondent or something along those lines parked outside our door right now and I had to go inside before I punched the asshole when he tried to get an interview."

Oliver smirked.

(The reporter got plenty of soundbites that morning. Just... not the ones he'd been looking for. Or wanted.)

Oliver went in to STAR Labs with Barry the next morning. He wants to get to know Cisco and Caitlin better now that he's in Central City. If Oliver goes in to back up Barry, it'll be these two running comms for him. He needs to learn to depend on them for himself, not just for Barry.

It helps that Cisco reminds him, a bit, of Felicity. But Caitlin's harder to pin down. She's a bit like Lyla, in that she's strung up tightly. Different set of moral values, though. She isn't as easily accepting of Oliver as Cisco is either. More suspicious, less trusting. A bit like Oliver himself.

"I saw that interview you did yesterday at Hartley's meta outreach center," Cisco said en lieu of a greeting, grinning widely at Oliver. "That was great. I thought that guy was going to lose it on air at first."

Oliver grinned. Having a Queen show up in Central wasn't as big a deal as it used to be in Starling City, before the name change to Star, but being Oliver Queen still carried clout even here. The reporter had gotten them live on the air. Which... well, trusting Oliver's charmingly affable demeanor had been the journalist's first mistake. Oliver had perfected that mask at the age of sixteen and it served him well even now.

Once on the air, Oliver had skillfully twisted every question asked into something he could answer from a pro-meta stance while 'being so glad that there was someone drawing attention to the importance of not re-victimizing these people after all the hardships they're already suffering'. He had the reporter so twisted up and around that the guy was actually stammering out support for any meta seeking help with their powers by the end of it all. It was great.

Iris had texted him a bunch of thumbs up emojis, random colored hearts, and 'please teach Barry to handle the press like that' afterwards, which he was particularly proud of. He wasn't really sure where he stood with her and sometimes, even knowing that she was happily engaged to Eddie and Barry was happy for them, he felt a little jealous of the place she held in Barry's heart. So getting Iris West's approval for anything he did was probably the most important out of everyone's.

"I may not do it often, but manipulating the press is something I learned to do from my mother. Present what you say in a certain way and by the end of the interview they think the angle you pushed is the one they were wanting from the start." Oliver shrugged and smiled. "It was fun to do for an actual good cause."

"Yeah, well, as a meta I'm glad to have allies like you on our side," Cisco replied. "And I'm glad to have you around as a friend too."

Caitlin hummed in the background. A little non-committal noise. But she seemed a little warmer than the last time he'd seen her nonetheless. It hadn't been his intention yesterday to use the interview to ingratiate him with anyone, beyond maybe Rathaway. But... it was a nice knock on effect.

Nightmares were less of a problem now that Oliver fell asleep with Barry at night and woke with him in the morning. But, well... he didn't fall asleep with Barry that night.

Work ran late - both as a CSI and as the Flash. Oliver didn't wait up because it was nothing Barry couldn't handle and while that made it easy to fall asleep... he slept light and startled awake in the wee hours of the morning when Barry crept quietly into the room.

"Sorry," Barry murmured, nuzzling his way into Oliver's arms. "Didn't mean to wake you."

"I'm a light sleeper," Oliver replied, feeling better already. Barry might not seem like he was a tough guy - he'd always be a lanky nerd, even if he did eventually bulk up some. But he made Oliver feel safe. Like he could relax.

Barry made the loneliness of the last decade melt away.

And the unsettling dreams where Oliver would never be accepted or loved might creep in when Oliver was alone... but Barry's presence would always hold those fears at bay.

"Bad dreams anyway," Oliver admitted, holding Barry close. "I'll sleep better now."

The pleased noise Barry made, however, roused Oliver's interest in something other than sleeping.

"Though maybe first I should tire you out too?" Oliver offered, rolling on top of Barry and receiving a very enthusiastic kiss in reply.

Felicity called later in the morning. In doing so she interrupted the very important routine of Oliver getting a little time kissing and snuggling Barry before they got out of bed in order for breakfast to be made.

Since Barry didn't have work until later, he went to make breakfast instead of taking a shower so that Oliver could answer whatever it was that Felicity wanted to know. Which was important - it was about the List and a name on it that had recently surfaced in a court case that Dig and Thea were planning to deal with. It doesn't take long to answer everything Felicity wants to know. But Oliver is grumpy about it.

Because the morning routine was thrown off and now the whole days was going to be weird.

"You're cute when your grumpy," Barry observed in amusement.

Thankfully weird didn't necessarily mean bad. Even if Oliver was a little off the rest of the day for it.

"Not a fan of soggy French Toast?" Barry asked.

Oliver wrinkled his nose. If yesterdays routine being thrown off was just weird, today it was bad.

Iris and Eddie had shown up to join Barry and Oliver for breakfast. Which he'd known was going to happen. Planning for the interruption helped and he'd woken up a bit earlier than normal in order to partake in his cuddles with Barry.

But then their visitors brought breakfast with them and the texture of the food was... bad. Gross. How the other three could eat that, Oliver hadn't understood. He'd stuck to the eggs after the first taste of the soggy bread. But he must have done something wrong with those, being distracted by the antsy certainty that their guests would be there any minute. So the eggs tasted rubbery and that was a bad texture too.

Then again, he could have done everything fine and his sense of taste had been off due to the anxiety of sharing his space during breakfast time with two people who didn't live there and didn't belong there and were invading his routine with Barry...

"It was a bad texture," Oliver finally said.

Barry nodded, but it was like he knew there was more going on there than Oliver was saying. He just kissed Oliver's forehead, though, and didn't push. "How about I insist on lunch next time? Breakfast is just kind of early for meeting up like this. And it interrupts our wake up cuddles, which I don't like being interrupted."

Oliver smiled.

The next change for Barry's schedule will be a move to the early morning shift. It's going to suck for their morning cuddles and Oliver knows he'll need to work on establishing an alternate routine for those days. Or resign himself to waking up earlier than even he liked doing and then napping until lunch.

Now that he volunteers his afternoons at Hartley's meta outreach center, Oliver can't exactly be running on fumes by the time one o'clock roles around. And he can't skip out just because Barry has those afternoons off. (Barry would probably be getting some napping in at that point himself anyway.)

But it's all a problem for future Oliver. Today he gets to wake up and watch Barry sleep for a bit, cuddle and kiss his boyfriend, make breakfast, and enjoy the morning. In the afternoon his volunteering will be cut short due to his first therapy session. Which will hopefully go well, but Oliver suspects he may wind up shopping around until he finds the right therapist. Thankfully the list Lyla sent had a number of potentials on it.

It all feels like he's moving in the right direction, though. He's not drowning the way he was in Star City. And, with the time and distance from his childhood home already doing him some good, Oliver can even admit it wasn't just the problems he was having with the League that had been making him feel like he couldn't breathe anymore. He's not being pressured here to be the heir to the demon or the to be the perfect vigilante or the perfect son to live up to idealized versions of his parents that the press decided to remember in the wake of Moira Queen's death.

Here he could be Oliver, Barry's boyfriend, and not have to be more than that. Or less. He could be himself and it would be okay.

He kissed Barry's forehead and watched his boyfriend's eyes flicker open.

"Kisses," Barry demanded sleepily and Oliver grinned.

That was one demand that would never be a chore to fulfill.