Guys, I know I said it a lot lately, but I'm really sorry I made you wait again. My only excuse is life. But since things seem to be going back to something more normal and I hope to post more regularly again. Feel hugged and appreciated, even though I've been so awfully MIA lately. But I have definite plans to change that.
A huge thank you to Albiona for being amazing.
Okay, I feel like we all waited enough. Time to shut up and get to chapter ten. I hope you'll enjoy it. Love, Jules.
Entirely platonic circumstances
Waking up to an arm that's fallen asleep isn't the best way to start the day.
It turns into a lesser evil if the alternative's not waking up at all.
Felicity blinked against the brightness shining down on her, a groan escaping her as she tried to shield her eyes against the florescent lights above the table she was resting on. Her arm felt numb, but the blood rushing into it brought pins and needles. Another soft groan passed her lips and she squeezed her eyes shut, doing a mental inventory. Her body felt heavy, a throbbing originating in her left shoulder spread through her entire torso, her mouth was dry and she felt somewhat sweaty. Somebody had draped a blanket over her, she realized. Letting it drop down, Felicity sat up, slowly opening her eyes now that she wasn't staring into an industrial lamp anymore.
"Easy." Sara appeared next to Felicity, steadying her friend with a hand on her back.
"How—" Felicity's voice was scratchy after many hours of disuse. She cleared her throat, but it was as dry as her mouth.
"Here," Sara said, handing her a glass of water.
With a thankful nod, Felicity took it in her right hand while trying to shake blood back into the other. The water was soothing. She took tiny sips before emptying the rest in one huge swallow. Her voice sounded stronger when she asked, "How long was I out?"
"Thirty-six hours." Seeing the stunned shock on her friend's face, Sara nodded. "Yeah, it's Sunday around noon."
"My mom—" Felicity started, remembering the scheduled shopping trip (a result of Felicity complaining about not owning any pants).
"…is very happy that you spent your Saturday with the guy you went to the movies with."
Another groan escaped Felicity. Because, yeah, that sounded like an excuse Donna Smoak-Lance would gladly accept. It also sounded like something her mom would want to talk about.
"It's not even a lie," Sara continued, smirking. "He was here the whole day, sat by you that whole first night, holding your hand. I sent him home around one last night. The poor kid didn't need to spend two nights in a row in that crappy chair."
A happy tingle rushed through Felicity. She remembered waking up once and seeing Oliver. She remembered the look of relief taking over his face and she remembered not being able to look away from him, because he was there, by her side. After she had revealed her big secret, showed the ugly side of herself to him; after she had climbed into his car, scaring him, putting him in an impossible situation; after she had passed out and left him to fend for himself, he had been there. And to now to hear that he hadn't just made sure she pulled through but that he had stayed made her feel like she was floating.
"That's a pretty big smile you got there, Fe." Sara was smirking herself, teasingly, fondly.
"I told you he's not like all the other guys."
"Seriously? That's how quickly you want to give me the 'I told you so'?" Sara raised an eyebrow. "Guess you're really feeling better."
Moving slowly, Felicity turned on the metal table toward her friend. Her legs dangling down, she looked at Sara. "Thank you."
Sara's hand rested on the other woman's knee, giving a gentle squeeze. "Sure. You were lucky, Fe. That accountant nearly took you out."
"I know. Won't happen again. I made a stupid mistake."
A snort escaped Sara. "Yeah, no kidding."
Felicity kept quiet; there really was nothing to say. Getting distracted by a photo was such a rookie slip-up. It was stupid and Felicity was supposed to be smarter than that, better than that. She had underestimated James Cliffort, hadn't taken him seriously while distracted by the fact that she was crashing through a window of her family's company when she'd much rather been at dinner with Oliver. Being that distracted was reckless. She should have learned that lesson years ago—actually she had learned that lesson years ago. But, apparently, she had needed a reminder.
She wouldn't forget again.
Sara's hand gave her knee another gentle pat. "Make sure you're not that stupid again."
"I will," she promised, her voice filled with determination.
The two women shared a look of silent understanding when a click cut through the silence. It was a soft sound but in the huge room it travelled far. Sara moved to the workbench instantly, getting her gun. She had barely aimed it toward the stairs when she lowered it back down. "Oliver," she greeted.
"Hey," he said, heading toward them. "I brought food and coffee." As proof, he lifted his hands, showing off the brown paper bag in his left and the cup holder in his right. His eyes were glued to Felicity the whole time. Relief was visible in them and it resonated in his voice when he said, "You're up. That's good." He stopped right next to Felicity, nearly inside her personal space. "How're you feeling?"
She couldn't help but smile at him. There was no denying it: she was happy to see him, happy that he'd came back to her…. And Sara. To their base.
"I'm okay," she assured him, adding a small smile, and felt the worry leaving him.
"What did you get me?" Sara's question snagged Oliver's attention.
He set the bag and the cup holder down onto the med table. "Slim caramel latte, extra sugar."
"Oliver," Sara said, earnestly, "you really are one of the good ones."
Felicity couldn't help the slight irritation that Oliver knew Sara's awfully specialized (and awfully awful) coffee preferences. She watched Oliver hand Sara a paper cup. She nodded a "thank you," then dug into the paper bag, took a sandwich out, winked at Felicity, and left, walking up the stairs soundlessly.
"Here," Oliver handed Felicity a cup. "Sara said you liked regular lattes, so…."
The corners of her mouth gave an upward tug. "I did," Felicity admitted. Before the island she did. Since then coffee had been an un-necessity, very low on the nutrition list, and very hard to get—especially with foamed milk, especially in the areas of Asia she'd been frequenting. Now, after the island, she didn't really care if her coffee was black, decaf, or a latte. She took a sip of the lukewarm liquid. Looking at Oliver, she nodded, "Apparently, I still do."
Oliver shifted his weight a little awkwardly. He looked paler than usual. His eyes seemed tired behind his glasses. A pang stabbed through Felicity as she saw those reminders of worry, the evidence of what she had put him through on this weekend that they'd planned to start with a causal dinner.
"Hey," she said, her voice sounding unusually soft and gentle in her own ears. Hearing it, his eyes met hers. Felicity sent him a small smile. "Thank you." A heartbeat of silence followed spent with simply looking at each other—until Felicity felt the need to clarify, "And not just for the coffee, but for… everything. I know I asked a lot of you, but…. You saved my life."
Oliver gave a half-shrug. "I guess that makes us even. I never got to thank you after the warehouse."
"You really impressed me that night," Felicity stated honestly. "You were very brave, refusing to get those launch codes." She saw a light blush creep over his cheeks, his eyes dart away from her, uneasily, but a smile ghosted around his lips. Remembering Sara mentioning Oliver holding her hand while she had been unconscious, Felicity followed a sudden urge from deep within her. Gazing at his hand resting on the tabletop next to her, Felicity placed her own over it. She felt his surprise. His eyes snapped back to her, connected with hers, while her fingers tugged around his, giving a gentle squeeze. "That showed me I could trust you. And that you'd help me."
His blue eyes sparked, coming to life with the smile he gifted her. They gazed at each other and Felicity saw a teasing gleam enter his. "As exciting as all of this was, I admit I would've preferred our original plan of going to dinner."
A chuckle escaped Felicity. "Yeah, me, too." She stressed her words by tightening her fingers around his hand once more. "We'll make up for it." He nodded agreement and she let go of his hand.
"Well," he said, reaching into the paper bag, "I brought you a sandwich." He handed her one. "I also upgraded your security system. Seriously, that looked like it was from the eighties. And not the fun eighties like Space Invaders, He-Man, and Indiana Jones, but the sad eighties like perms, legwarmers, and E.T." He pinned her with a stare. "No self-respecting vigilante should use a three digit security code."
"Yeah," Felicity bit back a smile. "I dimly remember that discussion." She unwrapped the sandwich. "And I liked E.T. It was a good movie."
"I'm not talking about the movie. I'm talking about the video game. It was so bad that they buried it in the desert."
"Oh." Felicity didn't know what to say to that. She simply took a bite of her sandwich and chewed. Oliver took a sip of his coffee (she couldn't see through the paper cup, but she remembered he preferred it black), when a sudden thought hit her. She swallowed. "How many digits will I have to remember to get into my own base?"
"24."
"24?! During an emergency, you want me to punch in 24 numbers to get to my gear?"
"My original plan was 48. Sara called that excessive." Felicity stared at him. He didn't appear fazed in the slightest. "I blocked them in six separate groups of four, each will have to be decoded separately. If somebody shows up at your door with a decryption device, he'd get your old three-digit code in three seconds—max. But the new code gives you a ten-minute warning—minimum." He let that sink in and added, as if it'd mean anything to her, "256 bit encryption."
Severity shone from his face, and Felicity realized how damn serious he was about those security measures he deemed necessary. She could strangely relate to that.
He set his coffee down again. "I also started improving your firewall using 256 bit encryption, but I want to redo your whole server, make it untraceable and unbreachable." He brought his coffee cup up again.
She nodded, the barest smile on her face. "Tell me what you need and I'll get you the equipment."
A surprised jerk went through him, causing coffee to spill past his lips and onto the red t-shirt he was wearing (the helmet on his chest was Iron Man, Felicity knew now). "That," he wiped at the stain on his chest, rubbing it in more, "is a sentence you should never say to a geek."
"You're in charge of the tech." She shrugged. "It should be up to your standards."
Inhaling soundly, Oliver nodded. "I have high standards." There was a certain teasing.
Felicity matched that easily. "I wouldn't want it any other way."
He shook his head, smiling, set his cup down, and got a sandwich out of the bag.
Felicity took another bite of her own, feeling ambiguous. Oliver knowing her secret, becoming a part of it, felt natural, right even. But at the same time she knew that it shouldn't. He shouldn't be a part of this. It was too dark and too dangerous. Neither darkness nor danger should be anything Oliver faced. Strangely this thought entering Felicity's head marked the moment she realized that she was sitting next to him only in her Arrow-pants and a sports bra (one strap cut). Her scars and burns were perfectly on display, the ugly, disgusting sight bared to his eyes. Nobody but her female family and the doctors at Starling City Memorial had seen them—she had made sure of that. And now here she was, presenting her scars to him—and it didn't matter. She didn't feel self-conscious or ashamed. It was okay. Because Oliver seemed okay with it, he didn't seem fazed or awkward.
He'd probably had time to get used to the sight in the last 36 hours, a voice inside her reasoned, but it triggered another voice stressing that, apparently, he was used to and fine with them. The thought that she was also fine with showing Oliver more of the things she kept hidden from everybody else hit her completely unprepared. But she couldn't deny it to herself, she didn't want to deny it: she wanted him to get to know her, the real her, all the sides of her—and she wanted to know everything about him, all the different layers she had only gotten a glimpse of so far.
But she cared about him and that feeling made her want to utter a word of warning. She couldn't deny the dark danger her past and present actions brought. She couldn't just take his help for granted. She had to offer him an out, because she knew that that was probably the better option—no matter how much the thought of him turning his back on her hurt.
Seriousness shone from her eyes as she fixed him. "Oliver. All of this, it's…." She swallowed, starting anew, "You don't have to feel obligated to—"
"I don't," he cut her off, his eyes drilling into her, wordlessly telling her how serious he was, how he wouldn't turn his back on this, on her, how he wanted to do this. "James Cliffort," he continued, surprising Felicity. "Sara said you think he stole from SI?"
"Yes." Felicity looked around. "Did Sara show you the tablet I got from that Triad casino?"
"No." Oliver blinked. "She actually never mentioned a Triad casino." He shook his head as if chasing that thought away and cleared his throat, getting back to his own point. "Friday evening somebody tried to infiltrate SI's servers. Hunter and I were able to keep them out while Bob saved Accounting's files—but that felt like a big coincidence. The crash made the servers vulnerable."
"I don't believe in coincidence."
Oliver's nod came with an unspoken 'Me neither.' He unwrapped his sandwich. "I'll check out the tablet after we eat. Maybe, I'll find something Sara missed."
Felicity nodded and took another bite. That sounded like a plan. It also sounded like something she could really get used to: having Oliver's expertise and support. All in all she had the feeling that this would become one of the better memories involving a bullet wound.
Felicity had skipped her morning jog.
Recovering from a gunshot wound, it felt like the right thing to do.
Considering she had stood her mother up on Saturday, having breakfast with her mother and her mother's husband had felt like another right thing to do. (Especially since Sara was MIA. As always. If she kept that up Quentin Lance would probably hunt his daughter down and tie her to a chair, then force her to tell him what was going on in her life.) It seemed much less 'right' now that she was actually sitting at the kitchen table, sipping black tea, eating buttered toast. Quentin Lance sat at the head of the table, hidden behind a newspaper, ruffling the pages loudly, huffing in displeasure quite regularly. He was a fairly low-key breakfast companion.
Unlike her mother.
Donna Smoak-Lance was peeling an orange, sitting opposite Felicity, grilling her daughter about her Saturday. "A movie, talking, and coffee? That's your official version?"
The disbelieving tone in her mother's voice and the way she raised an eyebrow made Felicity feel like an annoyed teenager. "Why are you asking like that? Why should there be an unofficial version?"
"Because you didn't come home Saturday night." Donna's smirk was surprisingly dirty. "I'm not judging or complaining. It's healthy. After five years alone I'm sure you have needs—"
"Uh, mom, no!" Felicity groaned.
"I'm just saying: after that many years taking care of yourself, it's good that you found somebody to take care of you."
Quentin folded the top of his paper down, fixing his gaze on his wife. "Do you think this is the right conversation for breakfast?"
Felicity gestured to her step-father—the voice of reason and decency—sending her mother a look that said 'There!'
"Fine," Donna huffed. "Then why didn't you tell me that the guy you went to the movies with is Oliver Queen?"
"Because he's your employee." Felicity would've rather taken the physical pain of running than this mental torture. "And nothing happened between Oliver and me."
"You spent the night with him," Donna insisted.
"And I love spending the night with him." Her words registered with Felicity after one second. She flinched. "Platonically. I'm talking about entirely platonic circumstances." Involving bullet wounds and nearly dying. If anything was anti-sexual it was that. Sadly, she couldn't reveal it.
"Sorry, Felicity," Quentin said, "I know bad excuses from my day job—and that's a bad excuse." Sending her one last look, he brought his paper back up.
"It's the truth." Really, it was.
"Okay, fine," Donna said, clearly not believing her daughter. "So tell me a little bit about him. What's he like?" Seeing the glare her daughter sent her, she clarified, voice strict, "I mean in your entirely platonic circumstances: what's he like?"
"He's really nice." Knowing her mother wouldn't let her get away this that, Felicity added. "He's really easy to talk to and I feel like I can be myself around him. He's funny, like… quick-witted. He does this stupid thing where he rates my small-talk abilities and it's—" Seeing the expression on her mother face, she stopped mid-thought. "What?"
"Felicity Megan Smoak, you're smiling."
She hadn't even noticed, but—yes—she was. "And?"
"And that's the first truly genuine smile I've seen on your pretty face in the last four months." No knowing what to say (or how to really feel about this), Felicity stayed quiet. Donna filled the silence. "Okay, any guy that makes you smile like that is a keeper. When we go pants shopping we should also buy you something sexy for underneath—in case your dates turn less platonic."
"Mom," Felicity sighted, annoyed. "Please, stop it."
"What?! You've been alone for years, Felicity. Really, I don't think you have any time to waste."
"Mom!" Felicity's annoyance grew. "Please, I really like Oliver. And after all these years, I…. Can you just let me do this in my own speed?"
Hearing that, Donna's shoulders dropped a little, folding a little on her chair. "Sweetie, of course." Sincerity and a distinct softness took over her features. "We just never talk anymore. You used to tell me about the guys you liked and what went on in your life. I miss that. And you're right. You need to do this at your own pace—and you have lots of time."
"Thank you." Felicity sent her mother a small smile. "And I miss it, too. I'm sorry I forgot about our shopping trip. How about you and me and too many changing rooms cubicles today?"
Donna sighed. "I'd love to, but not today. I'll be putting out fires—all because that damn vigilante felt the need to crash into our headquarters and injure one of our employees."
Felicity stiffened in her seat.
Quentin spared her from having to say anything. "The fires might burn hotter than you think." He let the paper sink. "Beth Brinley's asking why the Arrow went after an SI accountant when she normally only targets members of organized crime. Which…" he looked apologetic at his wife, "is a good question, even if it's not helpful to you."
"Did Brinley seriously connect Smoak International to organized crime?" Donna stared at her husband, who nodded.
Felicity frowned. "Who's Beth Brinley?"
"She's a reporter with the Starling City Chronicle," Quentin answered. "She mostly did political pieces—until the Arrow showed up."
Donna snorted, looking much more like a CEO now than a mother prying into her daughter's (non-existent) sex life. Her features were harder, as were her eyes when she said, "Now she's a vigilante-obsessed know-it-all who throws accusations around without offering the least shred of proof!"
Mercilessly, Quentin answered, "When she questioned the sense of the Arrow-taskforce, and 25 police officers working full time to catch a woman who had rescued 200 women from modern-day slavery, instead of trying to catch the men forcing 200 women into slavery, you were very much on her side."
Donna glared at her husband. "Smoak International is not connected to the mob!"
"But something's off about that accountant," Felicity said evenly, the eyes of the other two people at the breakfast table snapping to her. "Oliver told me the guy made a server crash on Friday. And while the servers were vulnerable somebody tried to hack in."
"What?" Shocked, Donna stared at her daughter. "I haven't heard anything about this."
"Oliver and two of his coworkers kept the hackers from getting in. Apparently, the Head of IT wasn't any help, refused to send more people, because it was Friday. All of it sounds fishy to me."
Donna blinked. "What?!" This time there was less shock and more aggression in her voice. Forcefully, she shoved her chair back. "Quentin, I need you to take me to work."
Her husband folded the paper up. "Yes, dear, that sounds like a good idea."
"Felicity, thank you for telling me about this," Donna stated. "I promise to leave Oliver out of it as much as possible. The poor guy has bad enough as it is."
Felicity frowned and now it was her asking, "What do you mean?"
"He didn't tell you? His colleagues don't appreciate him… spending time with their boss's daughter." Seeing the look on Felicity's face, Donna smiled fondly. "Don't worry, I'll handle it discreetly."
Felicity really, really wished she hadn't skipped her morning run—if there were two things that were really hard to connect, they it were Donna Smoak-Lance and discretion.
Felicity's text worried him. Even if he didn't understand it entirely.
"I should've gone running, stitches be damned. I told my mom. She said she'd be discreet. Also: she might be thinking we've spent the night together. Couldn't change her mind about that. I'm sorry."
What exactly had Felicity told her mother?!
Oliver had experienced enough of Felicity's Freudian slips to imagine her telling Donna Smoak-Lance that she'd spent the night with Oliver. Normally, he found her unintentional double-entendre charming. She might mean it in a completely innocent way (despite how it sounded), but telling that to her mother, Oliver's boss, (actually, she was the boss of Oliver's boss) really, really didn't have a charming ring to it.
The first signs of an internal freak-out of epic proportions had just started when another text arrived—one that was way too snappy for somebody who had accidentally put him on the boss's radar as the guy sexing up her daughter. "And you should've told me about the situation at work! I didn't appreciate my mom telling me that your colleagues don't like us spending time together."
Seriously?! She had to be kidding him! His desk's phone ringing stopped him from texting her back. Mrs. Smoak-Lance's EA Gerry Conway asked him to come up to the top floor.
Walking toward the elevator, horror scenarios that ranged from getting fired to being told he wasn't good enough to spend time with the heir of Smoak International piled up in his mind. Oliver felt sweat collect on his forehead. Nervous, he checked his tie, tightening it. His thoughts came to an abrupt halt when he rounded the corner into the hall with the elevator and saw Hunter Livingston and Bob McDeary. Quickening his steps, he slipped into the cabin before the door closed. His two colleagues looked as worried as Oliver felt. "You're on your way up, too?" he asked. It was an unnecessary question, the button for the top floor was lit, indicating it as their destination.
Hunter swallowed heavily. "I've never been up there."
"I have," Oliver said, calming down with the realization that maybe he had understood Felicity's text even less than he had thought. "It will be fine."
Hunter nodded, but Bob gestured at Oliver's blue sweater. "You have something there."
A groan escaped Oliver when he saw the white dust on his chest, the leftovers of the powdered donut he'd had for breakfast (this morning he had been on the rowing machine for 45 minutes—he deserved some sugar). Hectically—and unsuccessfully—he wiped it away just as the elevator stopped.
Gerry Conway waited for them in the hall and ushered them into Mrs. Smoak-Lance's office. The CEO got up when the three men entered, greeted them politely, and motioned to a sitting area. Her EA sat down behind her desk, a tablet in hand.
"Gentlemen, thank you for coming," Mrs. Smoak-Lance said, as if they actually had the choice not to. She continued with a clear order, "Please, tell me about the attack on Friday."
Feeling Hunter's elbow dig into his ribcage, Oliver sat up straighter in the modern-looking but uncomfortable black leather seat and gave his boss a short summary. At some point Bob cut in, informing Mrs. Smoak-Lance about the saved data, about his talk with the IT head, Eugene Hill, about his suggestion of instituting rotating shifts to make sure the IT department was available 24 hours a day. That request had been declined.
Afterward, a moment of silence followed. Mrs. Smoak-Lance sent her EA a short nod before placing her attention on the three other men. "Mr. McDeary, Mr. Livingston, Mr. Queen. Please, let me thank you personally for your efforts. Apparently, you are the only three members of IT willing to stay late on a Friday in case of emergency. Your commitment and your work was exemplary and I am honestly grateful." She exhaled noisily. "I'd like to inform you that I accepted Mr. Hill's two week notice." All three members of the IT department froze. The head of their department had been fired? None of them knew what to say. Luckily, Mrs. Smoak-Lance continued. "Mr. McDeary, you've work for our company for 15 years. Exemplary work, I might add. I saw your suggestions for improvements—they are all approved. I'd like you to supervise their installment as head of IT."
Bob swallowed heavily, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Me?"
"You." Mrs. Smoak-Lance smiled a smile that reminded Oliver of her daughter. "Are you interested?"
"Yes," Bob's answer came instantly. "I am."
"Good. We'll discuss salary once we're alone. Mr. Livingston, I'd like you to go through James Cliffort's digital stuff." Oliver managed to keep his face even and not roll his eyes at his technologically challenged CEO. "If he caused the crash on purpose, I want proof. I also need all his files," she glanced at Gerry, speaking carefully as if she had memorized her next words, "backed-up and deleted from the main server." Gerry nodded. Oliver managed to hide a smile. "I need to know what happened on Friday and I want you to find out. Mr. Queen, I know this is your last week at the IT department, but I want you on this project as well. You three will help me understand what happened—and, yes, Mr. Queen it might take multiple tries to explain your cyber-whatever to me, but I know you have the patience to do it. I want to know what is going on in my company and you are the experts to find out for me."
Wow, Oliver thought, looking at his boss, that woman being the mother of the Arrow makes so much sense.
The men nodded and Mrs. Smoak-Lance got up, signaling for Bob to stay to discuss his sudden promotion. She shook Hunter's hand, thanking him again, and then she turned to Oliver, offering her hand as well, accompanying it with a smile. "Mr. Queen. Good work." There was a strange tone in her voice that gave this phrase a certain heaviness Oliver couldn't quite place.
He tried to seem unaffected. "Thank you, Mrs. Smoak-Lance."
Leaving the office and walking toward the elevator, Oliver finally understood Felicity's text. He'd have to text her back, telling her that her mother was the boss at being a boss—and was actually discreet.
