A/N:This is the final chapter, hope you all enjoy :)
He spends the next week working on the healthcare event with Tommy, hanging out at home with a grounded, moping Thea, and seeing Felicity. They go out to eat during her lunch hour with Dig, spend hours making out in dimly lit bars, get coffee and walk around the city. For the first time since he's come back from the island he feels normal, or close to it.
It's strange, this new thing in his chest, this warm steady feeling that everything's going to be okay.
Like hope.
The morning of the charity event Oliver changes into a henley and jeans, goes into the kitchen for a cup of coffee before he has to head over to Verdant to help the staff set up. His mother intercepts him, catching him by the arm as he's draining his mug.
"Take your sister with you," she instructs, tapping an email out on her phone. "I've had enough of her lying on my couch pouting at everything in sight."
"I thought she was grounded," Oliver says lightly, thinking of Roy, who's supposed to already be at Verdant to sign for the liquor deliveries for this evening.
"Put her to work, it'll be good for her." His mother waves a dismissive hand and swishes out of the kitchen, leaving a cloud of Chanel Number 5 in her wake.
Oliver sighs and wanders through the mansion until he finds Thea in the den, sprawled out on the couch in boxer shorts and one of his old hockey jerseys watching The Real Housewives of Coast City.
"Hey, time to get dressed, you're coming to work with me." Oliver walks over to the remote and switches the tv off.
"Hey, I was watching that!"
He catches the throw pillow Thea chucks at him and tosses it back to her. "Mom said I have to take you with me to Verdant, let's go."
"Ugh, boring."
"Come on, go get dressed, I'm gonna be late."
Thea scowls but allows him to heave her up by the arm and push her out of the room. She stomps upstairs grumbling but comes back down five minutes later in a pair of worn in skinny jeans and a cropped grey tank top, a stack of bangles covering her mark.
He drives the Range Rover to Verdant with Thea in the passenger seat, using the mirror on the back of the visor to apply a thick layer of lip gloss. He parks in the back, holds Thea's hand as they cross the alley, ignoring her complaints that she's not a baby, god Ollie, you're sooo embarrassing. He walks her through the back hallway past the stockroom and into the main area of Verdant, pulling out a bar stool for her to sit on.
Tommy was insistent on sticking with the tropical theme; the bar has been transformed into a tiki hut, stung with garlands of fake purple hibiscus and little unlit torches. It's all hands on deck today, servers are scattered across the dance floor blowing up plastic beach balls, setting up tables across one wall, and dumping fake sand into a cordoned off 'beach area'.
Roy is here, Oliver catches him conferring with one of the bar backs, a clipboard in one hand. Oliver catches his eye and waves him over, resigned to the fact that there's no avoiding this, his baby sister is almost eighteen and her soulmate is waking right over to them, his ridiculously blue eyes taking Thea in.
"Hey," Roy says, leaning up against the bar and offering a light smirk. "Who's the kid?"
"I'm not a kid," Thea immediately protests, giving Roy a dirty look.
Oliver chokes back a wave of laughter. "Roy, this is Thea, my baby sister."
"Oh my god Ollie, screw you, I'm seventeen!" Thea buries her face in her hands for a brief second before reaching out and smacking his arm.
Roy raises an eyebrow. "You brought your underage sister to your bar?"
"Yeah, she's helping out today," Oliver confirms.
Roy sighs, looking a little put out. "No offense but I've got a shit load of things to do, I don't have time to babysit."
"No problem." Oliver yanks Thea off her stool and pushes her at Roy. "Consider her your personal assistant."
"I have to work?" Thea looks thunderstruck and this time Oliver does laugh.
"Mom's orders," he says, smirking. "Consider this phase two of your punishment."
"What'd you do?" Roy asks curiously. "Max out your credit card? Spend all your trust money on cocaine?"
"If you must know I crashed my car," Thea says primly. "I'm being unjustly punished."
"Thea," Oliver warns shortly.
She glares at him but Roy just shrugs and pushes his clipboard into her hands. "You know how to take inventory?"
Thea gives him a blank stare and Roy rolls his eyes dramatically. "Come on princess, it's easy, I'll show you."
Oliver watches them walk back towards the stock room, feeling a modicum of relief that Roy's wearing a red hoody with long sleeves that cover his mark, before going upstairs to Tommy's office. Tommy has all the paperwork ready for Oliver to sign, he approves the drink menu (they're sticking with the topical theme, everything heavy on rum and tequila). He sits on the edge of Tommy's desk while Tommy runs the staff meeting, wanders back out to glance down at the main floor where Thea is following Roy around the bar, scribbling things down on the clipboard.
He drives Thea back to the mansion that afternoon when they're done. She doesn't say anything in particular, it's clear she hasn't figured out who Roy is, but she's smiling from ear and to ear and when Oliver asks her what she's so happy about she just shrugs, giggling behind her hand.
He manages to get in a workout in the backyard, showers, wolfs down a quick dinner in the kitchen before driving back to Verdant that night. He's wearing a sky blue tee shirt and jeans, as close to the theme as he's willing to dress, Tommy will just have to deal with it. They meet down the block from the club, where a freaking red carpet has been set up, photographers are crowding each other on the sidewalk taking pictures of scantily clad young women waiting behind velvet ropes.
"Really?" Oliver says to Tommy, raising an eyebrow.
"What?" Tommy says innocently, smoothing out his hideous bright orange tropical print button down.
Oliver sighs reluctantly but poses with Tommy outside the club before going inside. They have a photo station set up by the fake beach, Tommy gets Oliver in a plastic lawn chair, a daiquiri in one hand, before calling over the photographer and a staffer to organize a photo line.
"I can't believe I let you talk me into this," he grumbles, taking a healthy gulp of his drink.
"And I can't believe girls are willing to shell out twenty bucks a pop to take a picture with your ugly face but there you go," Tommy says cheerfully, and disappears into the crowd.
Oliver sighs, chugs his drink and sets down the glass, big fake smile on his face when the line starts moving. He takes pictures for what feels like hours, smiling so hard his cheeks hurts, reminding himself that he's doing this all for a good cause. The line finally winds down, the staffer manning the line grins at him, shaking a glass jar stuffed with twenties at him, before she saunters off to get Tommy.
"Got time for one more?" a girl's voice asks shyly.
Oliver snaps his head up. Felicity is standing in front of him, wearing a pretty blue and yellow floral sundress, her hair falling in beachy waves down her shoulders.
"Hey, you came!" Oliver jumps up from the chair so fast it tips over but he doesn't even notice, tipping his head down to give her a kiss.
"Of course I came, you've been talking about this all week." She slips her hand in his, surveying the massive crush of bodies on the dance floor, beach balls flying over their heads. "Looks like this was a massive success by the way."
"Yeah, we're thinking of doing a monthly thing," he says. "Hey, do you know what time it is?"
"Almost eleven," she informs him. "I would've been here earlier but the line was all the way down the block, it was insane."
"Great, let's go then," he says, eager to get out of the crowd and be somewhere with just Felicity.
"Don't you need to stay?"
He shakes his head. "I helped set up earlier, the photo station was the only thing Tommy needed me for tonight."
"Oh." Her lips curve up into grin. "In that case I know somewhere close by."
Oliver drives them to her condo in the Range Rover, parks outside on the street and follows Felicity up the walk, shifting impatiently as she gets her keys out and unlocks the door. She kisses him as soon as they get inside, her keys clinking as she drops them onto a little dish by a side table. Felicity starts to walk backwards, her hands hot on Oliver's hips, heading towards the bedroom.
"God, do you know how hard that was?" she breathes, kicking off her cork wedges and dropping five inches in height. "Watching a million hot girls in bikinis take pictures with their arms all over you?"
Oliver follows her into the bedroom, leaving the light off so he can take off his shirt without showcasing his scars and mark. "I barely even noticed them," he says in a rush, hands all over her dress to locate her zipper and undo it. "I just want you."
Felicity lifts her arms over her head and Oliver yanks her dress off, undoes her bra clasp with one hand and unceremoniously tosses it onto the floor. Her hands go to the fly of his jeans, he reaches down to help her and shoves them down his hips to kick them off, leaving them both in only their underwear. Oliver scoops her into his arms and she shrieks, laughing as he tosses her onto the bed and crawls up the mattress.
She's wearing a lace thong, it's too dark to tell what color. Felicity lifts her hips off the bed, her bottom lip sucked in between her teeth, and Oliver rolls the fabric off before setting down on his stomach, his hands on either side of her hips. He reaches down and presses a kiss to her hipbone, hearing her sharp intake of breath.
"Is this okay?" he murmurs, running his tongue over the bone.
"Yeah." Her voice is unfamiliar, high and tight. "Yeah, definitely."
Oliver pushes her thighs apart with his hands to settle between her legs. It's too dark to see properly, he walks his hands up to the apex of her thighs and finds her by touch, using his thumbs to spread her open where she's already wet, like she's been anticipating this.
The first touch of his tongue on her has Felicity bucking into his mouth. Oliver chuckles at her eagerness, using his hands to pin her hips to the mattress. He goes slow, licking into her until he feels her relax against the mattress, soft little sighs spilling out of her mouth. He draws circles onto her with the tip of his tongue, spells out secrets letter by letter, until Felicity's hands are buried in his hair and she's babbling, oh god, Oliver, please, Oliver, oh god, oh oh oh oh!
He works her down slowly, lapping her up, reveling at this - the taste of her in his mouth, her trembling thighs in his hands, her blue eyes wide open in the dark. He kisses his way up her body to sprawl over her, dropping his head to her chest to hear the sharp staccato of her heartbeat.
"Here." Felicity reaches down and presses a foil packet into his hand.
Oliver glances up at her. "You sure?"
Felicity smiles, serene and debauched, hair spread around the pillow like a halo. "So sure."
Oliver rips the packaging open with his teeth, kneels between her legs and slowly rolls the condom on. She's watching him, her hands running up and down his sides. Her fingers accidentally trip over his mark and Oliver jolts like he's been electrocuted. She doesn't seem to realize what's she's done, it's too dark to make out much more than the outline of their bodies, the tip of her nose, her light eyes refracting the sliver of moonlight spilling through the crack in the closed curtains.
He braces himself with one hand planted next to her head and reaches down to guide himself inside her. He forces himself to go slowly, a long torturous slide, until he's seated all the way inside her, and Felicity makes this broken noise in the back of her throat.
He puts his weight on his forearms, dropping his forehead to rest against hers. "Okay?"
Felicity smiles up at him and she looks like an angel like this, like something pure and sweet that Oliver just wants to ruin. "So okay," she breathes. "So, so, okay."
"I don't want to hurt you," he mumbles, turning his head to kiss her temple.
"So don't," she says, like it's that easy, and wraps her legs around his back.
Oliver rocks slowly into her, hyper aware of everything - her breath in his ear, the beat of her heart, the hot wet drag every time he pushes into her. He turns his head to the side so he can bury his face in her neck, licking and suckling whatever flesh his mouth comes into contact with. Her heels press against his lower back, her arms slung tightly around his shoulders. It's like drifting in a sea of Felicity and he doesn't want it to stop. He wants to feel like this forever, like every molecule in his body is lit up and glowing, just for her.
Felicity starts to moan, rolling her hips along with him. He forces himself to focus, keeping his pace steady and even when she starts to whimper, tightening up against him, nails digging into his neck. Heat pools low in his stomach, a warning sign, and he doubles his efforts, arms shaking with the effort of holding his body over hers.
"Oliver," she pants urgently. "Oliver!" Her head is thrown back, the white column of her neck exposed.
He finds her hands and laces their fingers together, kissing down the side of her throat. She squirms under him; Oliver slams into her again and again, until Felicity begins to cry out, her whole body shaking. She's close; he can feel it.
It only takes two more thrusts before her body tightens like a bow, one long line of tension. Oliver drops his mouth to kiss her and Felicity comes sobbing against his mouth, her hands squeezing his. He shudders, insistently fucking her through it until he can't hold back anymore; his hips stutter and he spills into the condom with a grunt.
After a few moments of just breathing, Felicity's head tucked under his chin, Oliver regretfully pulls out of her and walks over to a corner of the room to trash the condom. When he turns around Felicity's curled over on her side watching him, naked and smiling and content. He has to rush back over to the bed just to kiss her, burying his hand in her hair as he lies back down. Felicity curls into him, finding all the places where her body fits right up against his body.
"Stay," she murmurs sleepily, kissing his chest.
"You got it," he breathes, and falls asleep with a naked Felicity wrapped up against his side.
/
Sara is crying, reaching her arms out for Oliver. Water is everywhere, he pushes through icy waves trying to reach her. Oliver screams for her, plunging under the water, hands searching for Sara's body. He finally connects with an arm, a wrist, but when he hauls her up it's not her. It's Felicity, bloated and blue and dead.
Oliver screams in terror and water rushes into his mouth, he chokes and chokes, Felicity limp in his arms as the water pulls him under. His mouth still opens in reflex, a scream tearing out of his throat and bubbling under the water, but when he opens his eyes there's just darkness and he's sitting up, head in his hands, and Oliver falls right off of something soft, a bed, idiot.
He stumbles around in the dark, choked sobs fighting to tear out of his mouth. He can hear someone calling his name, Oliver, Oliver, but he's lost in the dark and Sara is dead or maybe Felicity and he can't handle it, he can't fucking breathe. He walks right into something, a wall, and he follows it blindly, stumbling into a room, his hand smacking against a light switch.
He's in a bathroom, it floods with light and his eyes burn. Oliver gasps for air, hands over his face, and then someone is there, small hands all over him and he thinks of Felicity, dead Felicity, with blue lips and a white face, and he yells, jerking away, and rams the back of his head against the wall. He groans, trying to inhale but he can't breathe, he can't get any air, and everything slowly fades to black.
/
"Oliver." The voice is different than before, deep and masculine.
It's Dig.
Oliver squints his eyes open. He's on the floor, his bare ass cold against the tile, and his head is fucking pounding.
He groans and shuts his eyes.
"Open," Dig says, fingers against his lips.
Oliver obediently opens his mouth and dry swallows the pill Dig places on his tongue. Dig touches the back of his head and Oliver rolls away, arms coming protectively to his face on instinct. From far away he can hear someone crying or maybe its just Sara in his head.
"Oliver," Dig says softly. "Tell me where we are."
"Bathroom."
"Whose bathroom?"
"Fel… Felic" –
Dig barely gets him up in time for Oliver to heave bile into the toilet.
"Alright," Diggle says. "It's alright."
He somehow has clothes for Oliver, who is too dazed to feel humiliated as Dig gets him dressed. Oliver blinks heavily, wondering where Felicity went. Dig leads him out of her apartment, Oliver's eyes on the floor so he doesn't have to see her, wherever she is, can't make himself face it. He lets himself get manhandled into a car and buckled in; Oliver tips his aching head back and shuts his eyes.
Dig gets into the driver's seat and just sits there for a minute. "Do you want to go to the hospital, just to get checked out?"
"No," he mumbles. "I just want to go home."
"I had a feeling you'd say that," Diggle says grimly, and turns the ignition over.
Oliver emphatically sends Dig home when they get back to the mansion because it's apparently five in the morning, quietly lets himself inside and stumbles up to his bedroom. He head hurts but it's not so bad, and he's not dizzy, he's pretty sure he doesn't have a concussion. He's sure at least that Dig wouldn't have left if he thought Oliver wasn't okay, which is good enough for him.
He's fine. He just needs to sleep, and then he'll figure out what the hell to do about Felicity.
Oliver goes into his bathroom and swallows two sleeping pills, gargles with mouthwash to get rid of the sour taste in the back of his throat, and strips down to his boxers. He shuts off all the lights in his room, closes the curtains, sets his phone on the nightstand and crawls underneath the covers, drifting off to sleep to the sound of distance crying echoing in his head.
When he wakes up it's to the sound of buzzing. Oliver groans and stretches, rolling over to snag his phone and unlock it. He has a text from Felicity, only two words but they make his whole body go cold.
Call me.
Oliver swallows and dials with shaking hands. It only rings twice before she picks up. "Hey," she says softly. Her voice sounds hoarse, like she's been crying.
"Hey."
"How… how are you?"
"I'm okay," he lies fluidly, without even thinking about it.
"Good, that's good. Um, I was wondering, do you think you could come over? Like, now, maybe? Unless you can't, but I really need to talk to you in person."
Of course she does. She's breaking up with him.
"Yeah," he says casually, like it's fine, like he doesn't care. "I'll be right over."
"Oh." She sounds surprised. "Okay then, I'll uh, see you soon."
He hangs up and covers his face with his hands before turning over and screaming into a pillow. It's a little after noon now, which meant he got over six hours of sleep at home, so his head is clear enough to get through this even though driving himself over to Felicity's so she can let him down easy like the nice girl she is is the last thing he wants to do.
He changes into a clean pair of jeans and a grey henley, grabs his brown jacket and jogs downstairs, and gets into the car. He drives all the way over to Felicity's and when he parks he realizes he doesn't even remember the drive, he's that out of it.
"Come on," he mutters to himself, gets out of the car and forcefully slams the door shut.
Felicity must be waiting because her door swings open right as he knocks. She's wearing a pair of dark jeans and a soft looking pink sweater, hair pulled back in another perfect ponytail. And then Felicity launches herself at him, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck.
"Hey," he murmurs, one of his hands coming up to cup her head. "It's okay."
"I was so worried," she says into his chest, her words coming out muffled.
"I'm fine," he says softly. "Really, I'm okay."
She sniffs and pulls away, giving him a fragile smile. "So I guess when you said you'd be a terrible soulmate this is what you meant?"
Oliver nods tightly, one of his hands coming up to nervously scratch the back of his neck. "Look, I get it, I can just go if you want."
"Wait, what?" To his surprise she looks confused. "So you had a nightmare, so what? No, that's not even what I want to talk to you about."
He squints at her, baffled. "Okay?"
"Wait," she says. "Did you think I asked you to come over because I was breaking up with you?"
"Uh… maybe?"
"Oh my god, seriously?" Felicity huffs, and grabs his hand. "Come on."
Oliver allows her to lead him to the living room. "Sit," she orders, pushing him at the couch.
He sits down more out of shock than anything else, watching her sit down next her and then bend down and take off her socks.
"What are you doing?" he asks slowly. "Felicity, you don't have to do this."
"I saw your mark," she says, and Oliver's stomach curls up in a knot.
"What?"
"In the bathroom, last night. You weren't wearing a shirt."
Oliver blinks at her, his ears ringing, watching as Felicity pulls her legs up and lays her feet in his lap. "It's the right one," she says softly.
Oliver slowly brings his hands to the sole of her right foot and there, right where he saw it the night they met, is her mark.
It's an arrow.
Or rather, the thin outline of an arrow with a line of script, a word in another language that Oliver doesn't know, written down the middle. He runs his index finger down the length of the shaft and Felicity gasps. When he glances up her eyes are glassy and her cheeks are flushed.
"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I don't know if this is really the way you'd want to find out" –
"No, no," he shushes her, transfixed by her foot is his hands, his arrow on her skin. "Do you know what the word means?"
Her expression softens. "Yeah. Beshert. It's Yiddish. It can be used to describe any fortuitous event really, but it's most commonly used to mean. Um. Soulmate. It means soulmate."
"Felicity," he murmurs, and releases her foot to hold his arms out to her.
She launches herself into his lap, pressing her face into his chest, and it feels so right, so perfect, and Oliver realizes he doesn't even need a mark to prove it, he knows she's his soulmate. He can feel it.
"Are you okay?" he whispers. "I know this is…" he exhales in frustration. "You'd be signing up for a lot. Media attention. Lawyers. My mother."
To his surprise Felicity laughs. "Hey, you haven't met my mother yet either, that goes both ways."
"True," he concedes. "Look, if you want to go to an analyst, just to be sure…"
"Oh. Um." Felicity shifts off his lap, suddenly looking bashful. "We don't need to do that. I uh, I have a prototype for an app on my phone that matches marks with up to 99.99% certainty."
He blinks at her. "What?"
She reaches for her phone, pulling up her camera app. "We're beta testing now but I wrote the code, trust me, this is going to put match analysts out of business in a few years." She holds the phone over her foot and snaps a picture of her mark before gripping the edge of his shirt. "Is this okay?"
"Yeah." He lets her lift his shirt, his cheeks heating, and she takes a picture of his mark before sitting back cross-legged on the couch, phone in her hands, turning shoulder to shoulder with him so Oliver can see the screen.
Felicity pulls up both pictures of their marks in the app and taps a little bubble that says Match Me! A blue wheel appears on the screen, spinning and spinning and spinning. She reaches over with her free hand to grip his palm and Oliver squeezes her fingers, staring down at the phone.
The screen flashes green, and then text appears, in big bold letters. Congratulations! Perfect Match!
"Holy shit!" Felicity exclaims, and drops her phone.
She turns to him and they both start laughing at the same time, Oliver scoops her into his lap, his chest so warm and full it's almost scary. Almost.
But then Felicity kisses him and it's exhilarating, it's everything he's been aching to feel and thought he never would.
"Hey," she says against his lips, giggling. "You want to take a walk or something?"
"A walk?" he parrots.
"Oh, it's just, I feel like things are going to get crazy, you know, when everyone finds out, and I thought maybe we could just like. Process. Just the two of us. Go get coffee or something?" she asks hopefully.
Oliver smiles. "Yeah. I'd love to."
He waits patiently for her to put her socks back on and retrieve her shoes. Oliver follows her out the door, stopping to squint up at the perfect cloudless sky, bright sunshine everywhere he looks.
"Oliver?" Felicity calls out. "You coming?"
Oliver smiles, nodding, and steps out into the light.