Oliver wakes up with a stiff neck, curled up awkwardly in the backseat of the Range Rover, nauseas and thirsty. He inhales shallowly, squinting against the sunlight bouncing off the windows.
Fuck, he fell asleep.
Oliver swallows icy panic in his throat; he's so thirsty, fuck. He climbs over to the front seat and finds the keys to the car in one of the cup holders, his iPhone in the other. There's a plastic bag on the passenger seat that contains a fifth of Grey Goose vodka, unopened, half a bottle of water, and an empty sticky container of ice cream.
He grabs the water and chugs it even though it's warm and tastes vaguely like plastic. He can think a little clearly now, he remembers running last night, buying water at the convenience store.
Felicity.
Oliver has the nagging feeling like he did something stupid last night but he can't remember exactly what. He rubs his eyes and digs around in the glove compartment looking for a pair of sunglasses. He finds an old pair of black Ray-Ban wayfarers and he reaches for them without thinking before he freezes, sunglasses held tightly between his fingers, because these are his dad's sunglasses.
Oliver exhales and presses his forehead against the steering wheel until he isn't dizzy anymore, puts his dead father's sunglasses on and drives back to the mansion.
He gets the car back into the garage without anyone noticing but halfway up the back stairs he runs right into Thea coming down in her plaid school uniform, a quilted Chanel backpack hanging off one shoulder.
"Well, well, well," she says, smirking. "Where have you been all night?"
"Out," he mumbles.
His sister wrinkles her nose. "You reek of booze."
"Do not," he says defensively.
She arches one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "What's in the bag, Ollie?"
He blanches, clutching the convenience store bag with the full bottle of vodka inside. Thea takes the opportunity to twirl past him on the stairs. "Take a shower," she calls out. "You smell disgusting."
"Whatever," he eloquently retorts, and drags himself up the rest of the stairs and down the hall to his room.
Oliver drops the vodka lightly onto his desk and goes into his attached bathroom. He peels his clothes off and gets into the shower, turns the water on as hot as he can stand and breathes in the stream, presses his forehead against the cool stone tile while hot water rains down his back. Oliver halfheartedly scrubs shampoo through his hair and soaks a washcloth with some Bvlgari green tea scented shower gel.
He doesn't even know how this stuff gets into his bathroom. He just accepts it, the way there is a rack full of dress shirts in his closet he doesn't remember buying, razors in the bathroom cabinet, hair gel, cologne, all this stuff he forget he even had while he was gone and now that he's back he can't really remember why he needed half of it in the first place.
Oliver rinses off the soap, steps out of the shower and grabs a dry towel, scrubs himself quickly before filling up an empty glass at the sink and chugging the water down just because he can. He opens the medicine cabinet and shakes out the pills the psychiatrist prescribed plus four 200mg ibuprofen tablets and swallows them all at once.
He walks naked back to his room and shuts all the curtains, throwing his bedroom into darkness, and collapses facedown onto the bed, squinting at his clock to confirm that it's not even eight in the morning.
Oliver sighs and flips one of blankets folded at the foot of his bed over his bare ass, flops back down against the pillows, and falls asleep almost immediately.
/
He wakes up in darkness to an obnoxious, insistent buzzing. Oliver groans and gropes blindly for his phone, answers the call without even checking the number and presses speaker before flopping face first into his pillow. "'Lo?"
"Oliver Queen!" a feminine voice announces.
"Speaking," he mumbles.
"You have a lot of nerve buddy!"
"Laurel?" he half groans, because what other woman would call him just to yell at him?
"Who the fuck is Laurel?" the voice demands.
"Who the fuck are you?" he replies childishly, body still heavy with sleep, wrapped up naked in a chenille blanket.
"Oh me? I'm nobody, just the woman you sent a twelve hundred dollar bottle of wine to! And now everyone I work with thinks we're like, screwing each other, and I'm probably going to get fired or at least have a meeting with HR in which I defend my previously sterling reputation against rumors that I'm fucking the boss's stepson."
Oliver blinks his eyes open all the way. "Felicity?"
"Yes, Felicity, for God's sake Oliver how many girls are you special-ordering wine for?"
He rubs his eyes. "I honestly have no idea what you're talking about."
"You sent a bottle of wine to my office!" she shrieks. "A very expensive wine!"
He yawns and thinks about getting out of bed but decides to simply turn over onto his back instead. "I, um...are you sure?"
"Are you serious?"
He remembers buying her wine when they ran into each other last night, cheap gas station brand wine, remembers teasing her about it but still drinking half of it with her. Remembers thinking of asking Jake about... about... oh shit. "So uh...you're mad about that?"
"You are unbelievable," she snaps, and hangs up.
Oliver stares down at his phone, at the blinking call ended icon on the screen. He goes to his call log just to see it, Felicity Smoak, right there on the screen. Sighing, he opens up his email and confirms that he did in fact ask Jake to send a bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux that retails for $1199 to her office at Queen Consolidated, because Oliver is a complete idiot.
The worst part is that he feels bad; she'd sounded pissed off as all hell and Oliver vaguely recalls something about her reputation being called into question. Guilt is an emotion he wasn't terribly familiar with before, but after Sara, and Dad, it's his constant companion, a reminder that Oliver's decisions have consequences, that people die around him, because of him.
He sits up and cradles his head in his hands, wryly observing that it only took him about a week of knowing Felicity to totally screw up.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thinks, and gets out of bed in one fluid motion, stalks over to the huge armoire across the room and yanks on a blue henley and a pair of jeans.
He finds Diggle in the parlor downstairs, reading the paper, a china cup of coffee balanced on his thigh. "Somebody slept in," Dig comments without looking at him, idly flipping a page of his paper.
Oliver runs a hand through his hair. "What time is it?"
"After noon." He raises an eyebrow at Oliver. "Are you feeling alright?"
Oliver smiles stiffly. "I'm fine."
Dig drives them halfway to The Grind and Jolt Cafe before Oliver changes his mind and makes him drive all the across town to Stardust Coffee. He runs inside while Dig waits in the car, gets a red eye for himself and, after realizing he doesn't know how she takes her coffee, a vanilla latte for Felicity, because they make a shooting star in the foam and even if she doesn't like it he figures he'll at least earn points for trying.
"Ah," Dig says wisely when Oliver gets back in the car and tells him to go to QC. "This is about that girl, isn't it?"
"I don't pay you to comment on my personal life."
"You don't pay me at all," Dig says, and laughs quietly to himself all the way over to Queen Consolidated.
Oliver walks through the lobby with his head down, more aware than usual that people are staring at him. He's used to it, the way he attracts peoples attention like a magnet. It's something he's learned to live with - first as the adored child of Robert and Moira Queen, then as Ollie the playboy, adored by every young woman (and most of their mothers) in Starling City.
He takes the elevator to the IT department and wanders around until he finds Felicity's office. The door is already open so he steps inside, a cardboard coffee cup clutched in each hand. Felicity is staring intensely at her computer screen, earbuds in, her fingers flying over the keys.
Oliver sets her coffee on a little table by the doorway. Felicity is clearly completely oblivious to his presence and he takes a few seconds, just to observe her. Her hair is brushed back in another perfect ponytail, her lips painted a pretty lilac. She's wearing a pale blue scoop neck knit dress. It's short sleeved, he can see her bare arms for the first time and he finds himself scanning them, looking idly for her mark, but all he sees is creamy soft looking skin.
Oliver walks forward and knocks lightly on her desk. Felicity's head snaps up and she jumps out of her chair, yanking her earbuds out. "Oliver, what the hell?"
"Hey," he says, walking back to table and picking up her latte. "I brought you coffee."
Felicity blinks at him, one of her hands spread flat against her chest. Her nails are painted mint green. "What?"
"I didn't know how you took your coffee so I got you a latte, is that okay?"
Felicity shakes her head a little, like she can't get his words to process. "I yelled at you over the phone for sending wine to my office so you...came to my office. With coffee." She holds her hands out and takes the latte from him, examining it. "From my favorite coffee shop."
Oliver shrugs. "You sounded kind of upset."
She cocks a sharp eyebrow at him. "So you bought me coffee."
He winces at the tone of her voice, like she's suspicious of his motives. Maybe she thinks he's one of those guys, the ones who try to fix every problem they encounter by throwing money at it. "I'm sorry?"
"Sorry for giving my coworkers enough material to gossip about me for weeks, or sorry for buying me coffee?"
Oliver scratches the back of his neck, feeling a little flustered. "I was trying to do something nice."
"Oh." Her whole face kind of drops at that, Felicity turns away from her desk and pops open the lid of her cup, Oliver secretly feels a wave of delight when she smiles and dips a pinky into the foam before carefully securing the lid back on, sucking on the pad of her finger. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." Oliver feels his shoulders finally relax, she's annoyed maybe, but not angry, he can deal with that. "Do you want me to go talk to Walter? I can explain" -
"No!" she yelps. "I mean, it's fine, I'm not actually in trouble or anything." Felicity shoots him a tight smile. "Just, you know. Gotta look out for the nosy bitches in marketing."
Oliver winces. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make things more difficult for you."
Felicity shrugs and leans back against the desk. "So why'd you do it anyway?"
"I meant to have it sent to your apartment," he says, like that matters.
Felicity laughs nervously. "I kind of meant, what could have possibly possessed you to buy me an extremely expensive bottle of wine on a whim like that?"
Oliver finds himself closing the space between them, hands shoved in his pockets. "Because you looked sad."
A shadow falls over her face. "What are you talking about?"
He swallows, mouth dry. "Last night. You looked sad and I never asked if you were okay and I. Felt bad, I guess."
"You felt bad," she repeats slowly. "Because...I looked sad." She's staring him, like she doesn't know what to make of anything he's saying. "So you bought me a bottle of wine."
"Yeah," he nods.
Felicity's fingers tap against her coffee cup. "That was totally not necessary, like at all, but thank you for thinking about me. The wine looks really good, I mean it should be good, it costs as much as my monthly student loan payment and you. Did not need to know that."
She sets her coffee down and gives him a tense smile, like she's exasperated with herself. "Thank you, it was a very nice gesture," she says, sounding oddly formal.
Oliver thinks about mentioning that it's really not a big deal. He's a billionaire, he doesn't even notice spending that kind of money. But then he thinks about Felicity's face when she told him her car needed work, her ridiculous gratitude for buying that six dollar bottle of wine last night, the idea of student loans.
He reaches out instead, daring to rest two fingers on the inside of her wrist. "So, are you - is everything okay?"
And just like that she side-steps him, his hand dropping down by his side as she pulls away.
"I'm fine." Felicity smoothes her hands over her dress. "Yesterday is just - it's just a bad day for me, okay?"
Oliver thinks about his parent's wedding anniversary, his father's birthday, Sara's birthday.
He knows bad days.
"Okay," he says quietly, taking a small step back to give her space, to show her that he understands.
She smiles at him again but this time it's soft, more genuine. "Look, um..." Felicity tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, looking apologetic. "I actually kind of have a lot of work to do, which was really like eighty percent of why I lost my shit earlier on the phone, I'm sorry about that by the way."
"So where is it?" he asks. "The wine?"
Felicity rolls her eyes and walks around behind her desk, squats down and picks up a wicker basket. The wine is nestled in a huge swath of white tissue paper, a giant red bow slapped over the label.
"Yeah, I can't imagine why anyone would think we were sleeping together," he says dryly, feeling simultaneously proud and horrified at the wrap job. "Look, if you don't want it" -
"Oh, I want it." Felicity holds the basket protectively to her chest. "I earned this wine, buddy."
"Okay," he says, stepping back, hands held up in the air. "So I'll just talk you later?"
Felicity sets the basket back down, a hint of a smirk on her face, like she's won something. "Okay, Oliver. And thank you, for the coffee."
"You're welcome." Oliver smiles and, realizing he's being excused and doesn't have a bullshit excuse to stay, reluctantly waves goodbye and walks out of her office more confused than when he walked in.
/
The thing about Verdant is that no matter what night Oliver goes it's always the same: hot girls that all blur together in an endless wave of shiny hair and sparkly dresses, guys who all have the same haircut, Tommy in an expensive suit next to him, drinking and schmoozing.
It's boring, the endless repetition, but there's bottomless free liquor and sometimes the right girl will smile or shake her hair at him and Oliver will feel a glimmer of something, something electric and pulsing under his skin, reminding him of how he used to feel, back when he knew how to have fun.
The only anomaly tonight is the new guy Tommy hired to run drinks between the room and the back bar. He's young and almost absurdly pretty, crystal blue eyes, a sharp jaw that could give Oliver a run for his money.
"Is he even twenty-one?" Oliver mutters to Tommy, after the kid has taken his request for Stoli, neat, without batting an eye.
Tommy shrugs, one leg crossed over the other. "According to all his paperwork." He grins and elbows Oliver. "He just looks young to you because we're old men now."
Oliver snorts. "Speak for yourself."
Helena is here again, sitting a few tables away with a few other women. She's wearing a blood red dress with little straps, her lips painted to match. She's leaned back in her chair, hair parted down the middle and hanging down her back, holding a drink that's colored candy apple red. She catches his eye and doesn't smile so much as smirk, taking a careful sip of her drink so she doesn't smear her lipstick before turning her attention back to her friends.
She looks like a possibly psychotic Snow White in a cocktail dress. Oliver has to admit, it's kind of hot.
Their drinks come, the new kid passes Oliver's Stoli to him with a ducked head, mumbling, "Mr. Queen," the slightest trace of sarcasm in his voice.
"Oliver " he corrects, taking the glass. There's a lemon peel twisted around the rim and the vodka is ice cold, just as it should be. "Thank you, er..."
"Roy," the guy supplies helpfully. "Roy Harper."
Tommy sends Roy out to the main bar to deal with some apparent lime crises (again, Oliver is flooded with relief that he's not in charge of the staff) and drags Oliver out to the main room to do a loop around the dance floor, ostensibly to make sure none of the patrons are doing anything untoward like snort cocaine off the tables or starting a fight.
Oliver reluctantly takes a few selfies with some patrons, flashes fake smiles and follows closely behind Tommy lest he gets caught in the crush of the crowd. They end up at the bar, Oliver hops up to sit on the bar while he sips his drink because he's the fucking owner and he can, surveys the mass of bodies swaying together on the dance floor like a king observing his subjects from his throne.
Tommy is behind the bar conferring with the bartenders, talking while they're all mixing drinks and nodding frantically. That new guy, Roy, is here too, he's bar-backing, slicing up what one of the bartenders hysterically refers to as the last bin of limes. He's wearing the standard casual uniform, nice jeans and a black shirt. It's got long sleeves, which is why Oliver doesn't notice before, but he's got them rolled up to cut the limes, and when he lifts the knife Oliver can see his mark on the inside of his right forearm.
Oliver vaults over the bar and grabs Roy's arm with both hands so he can examine his mark. It's the King of Hearts, just like the playing card, except instead of holding a sword he's holding a yellow flower.
Just like Thea's, in reverse.
"Oliver!" Tommy is staring at him in horror along with half the staff. "What the hell are you doing?"
Oliver looks down where his hands are clamped around Roy, who's dropped the knife point down into the cutting board, face white, gritting his teeth against Oliver's hold.
Oliver yanks his hands away, feeling dizzy. "I'm sorry," he mumbles, stepping back and moving around Tommy. "I'm gonna go."
What the fuck? Tommy mouths, and Oliver shakes his head and escapes all the way to the alley before he feels like he can breathe again.
He calls a car back to the mansion and takes the back set of stairs up to his room, hovering at Thea's shut bedroom door for only a few seconds before continuing down the hall. He gets in the shower, turns the water as hot as it'll get as he turns it over in his head, his seventeen year old sister's soulmate working at his club.
Figures. Oliver goes out looking to forget and ends up only being reminded of how alone he is.
He doesn't know for sure of course, but it sure as hell looked like a match to him. He thinks briefly of telling Thea, but generally speaking that's considered interfering - if he really is her soulmate they'll meet face-to-face anyway, which leaves Oliver imagining a whole host of terrible ways his baby sister will possibly meet Roy.
He takes the sleeping pill in the cabinet even though he gets nightmares sometimes, because for some reason he still feels incredibly agitated, remembering the white marks his fingers left on Roy's arm. He wanders back into his room, pulls on a clean pair of boxer briefs and turns the lights off before getting into bed.
He lies there, heart thumping in his chest, thinking that if Sara was here she would laugh at him, flip her hair and whisper jealous? in that tone of voice that was sexy and teasing at the same time.
But she's not here, Sara is decomposing at the bottom of the sea because of Oliver, and here he is, jealous of his little sister, because maybe he was always nothing more than a selfish little shit.
Completely impulsively he reaches for his phone before realizing he doesn't even know what the point is. There's no one to call anyway. Thea's sleeping down the hall, Tommy's cleaning up his mess back at Verdant, Dig is at home with his wife and baby, and Laurel hates him.
Oliver scrolls lazily through his contacts anyway and stops when he gets to the F's, hovering over her name: Felicity Smoak.
They've texted exactly once, after she broke open the Chateau Lafite Rothschild. There was some banter Oliver managed to keep up with and it was nice even, but he hasn't texted her since, hasn't heard from her either. He stares at the text thread for a very long time before he gets up the courage to tap out hey and sends it before he can second guess himself.
To his surprise and relief he gets a response almost immediately: Hello, my favorite insomniac.
For some dumb reason his cheeks heat at the endearment, my favorite. He internally smacks himself, he used to have game, he used to not care about silly sweet things like that. Did I wake you?
Was up late working. No worries. You okay?
Can't sleep.
Yes, I gathered that.
This girl once told me about some math game that's supposed to work like a charm. Help a guy out?
Two minutes later he has a sudoku app downloaded and Felicity sends him texts instructing him on how to play. It actually works, he's terrible at it but it's a distraction, after awhile he rubs his eyes and sets the phone down, and just like she's psychic Felicity sends him one last text.
Sleep well, Oliver.