Oliver, Sara murmurs. She's so close, right in front of him, bright blue eyes and a mess of blond waves. She's smiling. She looks happy, peaceful even.
Oliver, she sing-songs. Oliver, Oliver.
He blinks his eyes open and Felicity is kneeling in front of him, her hair pulled back in a messy topknot, a gentle smile on her face. She's touching him, he realizes, her hand sliding through his hair.
"Hey," he croaks, reaching up to scrub at his face.
Felicity strokes his scalp with her fingertips. "Hey. How're you feeling?"
"Good," he realizes, surprised. "I think I was tired."
She laughs gently. Her skin is bare, no makeup, lips peachy pale without lipstick. "I'd say so."
He looks around, realizing for the first time that sunlight is streaming in through the windows, lighting up Felicity's hair.
It's morning.
"I slept through the night?" he asks in disbelief.
"And most of the morning," she adds. "It's almost eleven."
"I'm sorry," he blurts out, because he's pretty sure it's not cool to show up at a girl's house wasted off his ass and commandeer her couch for ten hours straight.
"It's okay," she says softly. "You looked like you needed it."
He shrugs, helpless, sitting up, suddenly aware that he's still wearing suit pants and a navy blue Calvin Klein button down over a white vee neck.
"Do you want some coffee?" she offers. "I just made a pot."
"That would be great, thanks." Oliver pulls himself off the couch and starts to fold the blankets, Felicity shooting him a smile and leaning in close to help him.
There's a sudden boom and he jumps about a foot off the ground, one of his hands flying out to cup the back of Felicity's head, to protect her vulnerable skull. Oliver whips around, holding her close to his chest, trying to assess what the sound was and where it came from.
"Oliver," Felicity says softly. "It's okay. Its just thunder."
He blinks, looking down at her in confusion before glancing at the windows across the living room. She's right; it's storming out, the sky a sickening green-grey, a violet flash of lighting in the distance. It doesn't make any sense, just a minute ago he was looking at Felicity lit up by sunshine, and now the trees outside are shaking violently in the storm.
"Oliver," she says again. She's rubbing his back, her hands gliding up and down the crisp fabric of his shirt. "Are you okay?"
He steps back away from her, gives her his worst pretend smile. "I'm fine."
She eyes him up and down, her lips twisting like she doesn't believe him at all. "You should stay here until the weather clears up."
"Are you sure?" he asks. Who does that, offers that to a guy she barely knows, a guy who showed up drunk on her doorstep last night?
"Yeah, you shouldn't be out in that." Felicity shifts back and forth in front of him; she's wearing a little pair of grey gym shorts and a soft looking blue crew neck sweatshirt, white knee socks covering her feet. "Do you want to borrow a pair of sweatpants?"
"Sure." Because what else is he supposed to say?
She disappears back to her bedroom and comes out with a pair of worn grey men's sweatpants; MIT printed in block letters over one hip. "These should fit."
"Thanks." Oliver grips them in his hand, wondering who they originally belonged to, why Felicity keeps a pair of some guy's sweatpants in her room.
She directs him to her bathroom down the hall. Oliver pulls off his button down and suit pants, folds them up and places them on the counter. He uses the toilet, washes his hands, gargles with mouthwash he finds in the cabinet, and splashes cold water over his face before pulling on the sweatpants. There's a faint C written in marker over the tag.
He finds Felicity in the kitchen, pouring coffee into two mugs. "Here," she says, passing one to him. "Creamer's in the fridge if you want it. I'd offer you breakfast but you don't actually want me to cook for you, trust me. You're welcome to scavenge."
"I can cook," he says absently, opening her fridge and scanning the contents:
A half empty bottle of red wine, a tub of butter, orange juice. An almost full carton of eggs, a few blocks of cheese, (pepper-jack and two varieties of cheddar). A few bruised apples, a carton of spinach, a pint of blueberries, one lone red pepper.
"How do you feel about an omelet?" he asks, pulling out a container of vanilla flavored creamer to stir into his coffee.
When he glances over his shoulder Felicity is leaning against the counter with her mug cradled in her hands, mouth open. "Are you serious?"
Oliver hesitates. "I can make something else if you don't like them"-
"No, no!" she interrupts. "That's like, so not what I meant. I would be incredibly impressed if you made that."
He shrugs. "I don't mind, it's not hard."
She snorts into her mug. "Speak for yourself, buddy."
He offers her a tentative smile. "I could teach you?"
Felicity smiles back over the rim of her mug. "I'd like that."
Oliver sips his coffee while watching her melt butter on a large pan. "Keep the heat low," he advises gently, taking the carton of eggs out of the fridge. "Bowl?"
She side steps him to take down a large bright yellow mixing bowl from a cabinet. "What next?"
"I'll crack the eggs, can you wash the spinach?"
Felicity takes a large sip of coffee. "You know, this is sort of way more work than I normally put into making a meal," she says cheerfully. "I'm more of a inhale-take-out-over-my-desk kind of gal."
He carefully cracks the first egg on the countertop and splits the shell open over the bowl, watching the egg slide down. "Some things are worth the work."
She lightly bumps her hip against his, pulling out a bunch of spinach and holding it under the faucet. "I agree."
Oliver finds a whisk in a ceramic jar along with a rubber spatula and a few spoons, whips up the eggs and pours them over the pan. "The key," he tells Felicity, "is patience."
She passes him the spinach. "So how'd you learn to cook?"
He busies himself with tearing up the spinach and sprinkling it over the eggs. "I used to hide out in the kitchen during parties when I was a kid sometimes. Mostly to steal food but sometimes it was just... so boring, talking to all my parents friends, and I hated wearing a suit, so I'd go there when I needed to escape. Our cook, Raisa, she taught me a few things."
"Well thank god one of us can cook. I burn everything," she says mournfully.
"You didn't burn the coffee," Oliver points out, walking back to the fridge to get out a block of cheese.
"That's because my life depends on it." She grins, offering a cutting board for him to slice the cheese on. "I'm a caffeine addict."
"The first time I had coffee after I came back I almost cried," he confesses, focusing on the thin slices of cheese peeling off the blade of the knife as he works.
"It sounds like hell," Felicity says. "What you went through. Actual literal hell."
Oliver can't help but laugh as he arranges layers of small cheese slices over the slowly firming eggs. "It was."
She gives him a look of horrified disbelief. "Then why are you laughing, it's not funny!"
"No, no, it's just, the island. Where I was. It's called Lian Yu. It translates to purgatory," he explains. "Literal hell."
Next to him Felicity sighs and briefly, just for a few seconds, drops her head onto his shoulder. "You want a refill?"
"Please."
He keeps an eye on the eggs, poking gently at the edges with the spatula while sipping his fresh mug of coffee. Felicity dances around him, laying plates down on the small table in the corner and washing the pint of blueberries. When she has the table set Oliver adjusts the flame on the stove a little and gestures for her to come over.
"C'mere, I'll teach you how to do the flip," he says, and hands her the spatula.
Oliver stands behind and to the right of her, his fingers light on her wrist. "So first you just want to slide the spatula under the edge of the omelet. If it breaks apart it's not ready but this is good, see?"
Felicity nods, looking down at the pan very seriously, like she's about to operate on someone's brain. "Now what?"
"You're going to slide the spatula under." He uses his fingers to guide her hand, until half the omelet is under the spatula. "Now nice and slow, you're going to flip your wrist, like this..."
Felicity flips it over with his guidance, squealing in delight when the eggs don't break apart. "I did it! We did it! I swear, this has never happened before, my apartment is usually where eggs come to die a fiery death."
"See, you can do it." Oliver watches her do a little victory dance, looking up at him with big blue eyes.
Felicity laughs self-consciously, ducking her head. "Do you want juice?"
"Sure." He gives the omelet another minute, tests it with the edge of the spatula before cutting it in half and sliding each portion onto the plates Felicity set out.
She comes to the table with a glass of orange juice in each hand, drops into the chair across from him and grins wickedly. "Not bad, Queen."
"You made the coffee," he says seriously. "We both know that's the most important part."
"I love a man who appreciates me," she says, eyes twinkling, before taking a bite of her eggs and moaning in a way that makes Oliver think about all kinds of sounds he suddenly wants to hear her utter.
"Oh my god," she sighs, pointing her fork at him. "You. You should do more of this."
He shrugs, popping a few blueberries into his mouth and chasing them with orange juice. He almost gets tears in his eyes swallowing, remembering five years of icy freshwater from a pond that tasted like ashes and sorrow and guilt.
"Do you like to?" Felicity questions. "Cook?"
"It's just a hobby," he mumbles. "It's not a big deal."
"So you like what you do then?" she asks, admirably pushing past his obvious discomfort. "At the club?"
"I just own it." Oliver drags his fork through oozing cheese. "Tommy's the manager, he does most of the work. My uh, my mother wanted me to come to QC, but I just... can't do the corporate thing. I hate it."
Felicity laughs. "I don't blame you. I mean, don't get me wrong, your family is a great company to work for, but after everything..." she trails off, giving him a sort of wistful look. "What do you really want to do?"
"Getting a full night's sleep was really the only thing on my list," he jokes uneasily.
To his relief she laughs and leans over to grab an iPad from where it's sitting on the counter. "We should check the weather."
Oliver leans back in his chair, reveling in the easy domesticity of the moment: coffee in his mug, cold organic orange juice in his glass, a warm meal on a plate, a pretty girl across the table from him. He can hear the steady sound of rain falling but for the first time since he's been back it doesn't feel like a threat. It feels, well, cozy, wearing a stranger's fleece lined sweatpants, drinking Felicity's coffee.
Like he's a normal person, doing normal people things like eating breakfast and talking about the weather.
"Oh man," Felicity sighs, flipping her iPad around so Oliver can see the screen. "Look at that."
It's the hour-by-hour forecast of the day - thunderstorm warning until four pm, flooding possible. "Guess I'm stuck here for a little while," he says, not feeling the least bit sorry about it.
They migrate to the couch eventually, sitting at opposite ends, Oliver's feet on the coffee table because she doesn't seem to care, while Felicity tucks her legs under herself, curled up like a cat. Oliver is distracted by her socks, wondering if her mark is hiding under the fabric, watching her lazily flips through channels, pausing on the news with her bottom lip held in between her teeth.
The newscaster is recapping the night before, apparently there was a protest in The Glades that turned into a riot, storefronts set on fire, people injured, police hosing down protesters.
"Well that's awful," Felicity mutters, pointing the remote at the newscaster and aggressively hitting the mute button.
"I don't understand what happened," Oliver says. "I grew up here, The Glades wasn't great but it seems like it's completely deteriorated while I was gone."
Felicity suddenly looks apprehensive, shifting to sit up a little straighter.
"What?" he asks, something in his gut twisting.
She sighs and hits guide on the remote, making the news report vanish. "There used to be a QC factory in The Glades," she says.
"Yeah? So?"
Her mouth twists. "The factory got shut down. A lot of people were put out of work. Not to mention the city is broke, and you'd best believe the first cuts they make hit people in The Glades first, but I suppose that's another story altogether."
"So... this is all happening because of my family."
"Of course not," she says sharply. "Don't do that."
"What?" he mumbles, staring down at his lap.
"Take responsibility for things that have nothing to do you." Her hand finds his and Oliver jolts a little at her touch. "This is not your fault. Okay?"
He nods jerkily. Felicity stretches out, so they're sitting side by side now, and flips the channels until she gets to HBO. "You ever seen Game of Thrones?"
He shakes his head. Felicity grins wickedly and turns the volume up. It's a little too much for Oliver to follow, too many characters with strange names but it's fascinating anyway, he finds himself getting totally absorbed, the storm outside fading from his awareness. Next to him Felicity is half watching, doing something on her tablet that to Oliver just looks like streams of numbers moving across the screen.
They ride out a few hours like this, stretched out lazily on the couch while the storm rages outside. He wanders back to the kitchen when he gets hungry again and makes grilled cheese sandwiches on the sourdough bread he finds on top of the fridge for lunch.
"Seriously, you have to stop," Felicity says, looking absolutely thrilled when he hands her one on a plate. "You're going to ruin me."
He freezes halfway to the couch, imagining her here but naked, the word ruin taking on a very different concept.
"I mean, for food!" she blurts out. "Seriously, breakfast tomorrow is going to be so depressing by comparison." She pauses, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Does a latte the size of my head count as breakfast?"
"I've had worse meals," he says offhandedly. "But, no, I don't think so."
Next to him she flinches. "I have got to stop doing that," she says softly, like she's embarrassed. "Speaking without even thinking about what's coming out of my mouth."
He reaches out and lays his hand over her wrist. "Please don't."
She goes very still under his palm, eyes wide and bluer than the ocean. "Okay," she whispers.
Oliver smiles in response and picks up his sandwich. "Okay."
/
Thea catches him sneaking into his room to change for Sunday night dinner, slipping into his bedroom after him and shutting the door behind her with a gentle click.
"Where the hell have you been all day?" she asks, arms crossed over her chest, intimidating despite her small stature.
"Out," he says shortly, pulling a pair of jeans and a grey henley out of his armoire. "Turn around."
Thea rolls her eyes but obeys so Oliver can take off his borrowed sweatpants (Felicity told him to wear them home, which certainly ensures he'll be seeing her soon if only on the pretense of returning the clothes).
"Did you even come home last night?"
Oliver pulls up his jeans and yanks the clean shirt over his head. "I was hanging out at Felicity's."
Thea looks over her shoulder, peeking at him between her fingers to make sure he's clothed before dropping her hand and turning back around. "The girl from QC?"
"Yeah."
"Oh my god!" she squeals. "Really?"
"We're just friends, it's not a big deal."
"Please Ollie, when have you ever been just friends with a girl?"
"I have friends that are girls," he says defensively.
"Friends you haven't slept with."
He winces; he still hasn't adjusted to the concept that his baby sister is a teenage girl, practically a young woman, who asks questions like this.
"Oh my god," Thea gasps. "Is she your soulmate?"
He snorts. "Don't be ridiculous."
"Why is that ridiculous? She could be, right?"
"As much as anyone could be, I guess. Come on, get real Speedy."
"You get real, Ollie! She works at QC, she works for Walter, our step-dad, come on, it makes sense!"
"That doesn't mean anything" -
"And you actually like her too, I can tell from the stupid look on your face."
"Speedy, I barely know her."
His sister gives him an appraising look he definitely doesn't like before hopping up onto a carved oak dresser, swinging her legs. "Tell me about her."
To his deepest humiliation he feels his cheeks get hot. Oliver was interviewed by Russian, Chinese, and US officials during the process of getting him out of China and back home (apparently finding a previously assumed dead American billionaire on a remote Chinese Island is a bureaucratic nightmare), but somehow nothing is quite as intimidating as getting interrogated by his little sister. "I don't know, she's my friend."
"Well, what do you know about her?"
He shrugs. "Stuff."
"Oh my god, you are hopeless. Okay, let's start with an easy one; where is she from?"
He flinches. "I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"She's um, not from here. She went to MIT and moved to Starling City after she graduated to work for QC."
"Boyfriends?" Thea asks crisply, all business. "Any other potential soulmates lurking in the background?"
"Not that I'm aware of." Remembering the faint C scribbled on the tag of the borrowed sweatpants.
"And she actually likes hanging out with you?" Her upper lip curves up in a teasing smile.
"We've hung out like five times, so I'd hope so."
"Five times!" Thea shrieks. "You didn't tell me that."
"Because it's not a big deal."
"Um, excuse me, I get decide if it's a big deal."
"It's really not. I took her to dinner to thank her for setting up my phone" -'
"Wait, you took her out to dinner?"
"I bought her a burger, it wasn't like, a date."
Thea tilts her head thoughtfully. "So you met at QC that morning when you got your phone" -
"No, wait," Oliver interrupts. "We met a few days before then actually."
"What are you talking about?"
"We, ah, ran into each other."
His sister wrinkles her forehead. "You ran into each other."
"Yeah, I was going for a run downtown and she was running to catch the bus. It was raining; she fell and broke her heel. I helped her."
Thea is staring at him. "Are you serious? That's how you met?"
"So?"
"So it was totally random... and then you just happened to meet again at QC."
"Yeah."
"Has that happened any other time? Randomly meeting?"
Felicity, waiting in line with a cheap bottle of wine at the convenience store, paying for a salad in that fancy dress, like a sleep-deprivation induced hallucination.
"Oh my god it has, hasn't it?" Thea says in a hushed voice.
"A few times," he confirms.
"Ollie, you have to tell Mom."
"No way. She'll freak out and drag us to a match analyst. I'm not going to put Felicity through that. And we don't even know - I mean, it's not like I've seen her" -
"Have you asked?"
"No, Thea, I haven't asked to look at her mark, are you crazy?"
"Are you?" she shoots back. "You've been sitting on this for weeks, acting like it's no big deal that you met your soulmate"-
"We don't know that she's my soulmate!"
Thea jumps down from the dresser and flips her hair. "That's why you're going to ask her on a date."
Oliver blinks. "What?"
"You, dear brother," she says with a smirk, "are going to call this girl. Or even better, you'll drop by QC. And you will ask her on a date, got it?"
He shifts his weight back and forth. "What if she isn't my soulmate?"
She shrugs. "Then you get to go out with a girl you like, what've you got to lose?"
She has a point.
/
The next morning Oliver gets up at eight, showers, scrunches in a little of the hair product that's been sitting in the bathroom cabinet, and gets dressed (nice jeans and a cream colored vee neck, causal, not trying too hard). He finds Raisa in the kitchen and sweet talks her into making a few blueberry scones while he and Dig work through a pot of coffee and watch the news.
"What's with the baked goods?" Dig asks, scooping his hand into the bowl of leftover washed blueberries and popping a few into his mouth.
"I want to drop them off for a friend," Oliver says casually, watching the newscaster argue with an alderman who represents a district in The Glades.
"Would this friend be Felicity?"
Oliver shrugs, following the argument on tv, trying to understand how shutting down the last health clinic in the Glades won't completely overload Starling General, as the city apparently claims, like sending the poorest people in the city who probably don't even have insurance to the Starling General ER won't cause a healthcare crisis when people will have to wait hours, maybe even days to get treated.
Dig chuckles. "So you really like this girl."
Oliver cradles his mug in his hands and sighs. He tossed and turned most of the night, had to drag himself out of bed when his alarm went off and he's not all the way awake yet. "She's nice."
Dig pats his shoulder in a paternal kind of way that makes his chest tighten. "Nice is good."
Raisa wraps the scones in cellophane when they're done cooling, passes them across the counter to Oliver and winks. Dig drives them to QC, the scones balanced on Oliver's lap. It's another rainy day, the leaves on the trees hanging limp and dripping as they fly past his window. Dig parks in front of QC with his hazards on and Oliver jumps out of the car, turning up the collar of his motorcycle jacket. He ducks his head against the wind and walks quickly to the entrance, pushes through the thick glass doors to the lobby.
He walks to the elevator looking straight ahead, ignoring the occasional glance from onlookers who obviously know him. He knows he has to get over it, the constant low-grade paranoia that people are watching him, observing him and finding him lacking. He takes the elevator to Felicity's floor and walks down the hallway to her office. The door is open so he sticks his head in; she's standing in front of her desk stretching her wrists, watching something on her computer screen.
Oliver clears his throat and her head snaps up. "Hey!" she says brightly, and smiles, and it's like feeling the sun shine down, just for him.
"Hey." Oliver smiles softly back and steps inside her office, holding out the wrapped scones. "I brought breakfast."
"You - what?" Felicity blinks owlishly, fingers twisting in the skirt of her plum sweater dress.
"It's not a big deal. My, ah cook, made them, we had a few left over," he lies.
"You didn't have to do that," she says, but she's eying the scones hopefully with the look of someone who's been subsisting on only caffeine for a while.
"You shouldn't just have coffee for breakfast," he says lightly, and sets them on her desk. "I thought we agreed that wasn't a real meal."
Felicity peels the cellophane delicately, grinning at him. "So you came here just to bring me breakfast."
Oliver straightens his shoulders. "No, actually. I have to ask you something."
"Oh?" Felicity breaks off a small piece of a scone, gesturing at him to proceed.
"Yeah, I..." Oliver swallows, watching her pop the scone between her lips, holding her palm in front of her mouth as she chews. "I wanted to ask you out to dinner."
She swallows, eyes widening. "Like...get a burger, have dinner, or like"-
"Like a date, dinner."
It's like falling, that moment when you know you've gone over the edge and there's no pulling yourself back, have no choice but to accept that you are plummeting towards the ground and will probably break every bone in your body.
"Okay. Yeah," she says, suddenly looking a little shy. "I'd like that."
"Oh," he says dumbly. "How's Friday?"
"Friday's great," she confirms, looking pleased. She picks up a scone and holds it out. "Did you want one?"
"I can't stay actually, I have to go do something," he says, still stunned at how absolutely easy that just was. "But, dinner, Friday?"
Felicity smiles, leaning back against her desk. "It's a date."