AN: hey guys, so first let me apologize 'cause this chapter is shorter than the rest. Updating is taking me longer than I want it too, so I'm uploading this because I really want to give you guys something. I haven't abandoned this story or anything, just having a bit of a hard time juggling everything, so stick with me! I'll try to get the next chapter up quick! As always, I look forward to hearing what you think, and thank you so much for your continued support through reviews/favorites/alerts - you guys keep me going!

Oliver stays at the foundry long after Digg has left. He's still half seated on the long metal table that holds the case for his bow, his thoughts disordered and many miles away from the present. He's disappointed and apprehensive but mostly angry, because they have exhausted every idea they've had and still haven't been able to track down this Lord Tennyson person. Ten days have passed since the last attack on Felicity's life, and they have nothing to show in the form of progress – he has nothing to show. The threat to his IT girl's life and safety is still out there, and he's failed to neutralize it; the knowledge makes him irritable and boorish. He'd snapped at Digg more than once tonight even though it's not his fault that their quarry has apparently disappeared. He is aware of this tension and the way it makes him act, so he's made himself stay here longer than necessary so that he can master himself before returning to the mansion, because the last thing Felicity needs from him is short words and a bad attitude.

He takes his time changing out of his leather ensemble and slipping back into his normal t-shirt and jeans. When he's finally ready to make his way out into the streets, the clock on his phone tells him it's almost one in the morning. He's been staying later and later in the last few days because he just can't bring himself to accept that another of his targets has eluded him. He knows that Felicity is restless, that she wants to go home and hates being kept away from the foundry, and he doesn't know how to tell her that he can't guarantee her safety.

The route he takes home is long and roundabout. The growl of his motorcycle beneath him is soothing; he allows himself to relax and finally acknowledge all the thoughts that have been clamoring for his attention all night. Not surprisingly, most of them center on Felicity: he wonders if she's still awake, although he'd be surprised if she wasn't, and where he will find her. They have reached a silent agreement not unlike the one from those first nights at her apartment: she sleeps with him, and they don't talk about it. Despite this arrangement, she is never waiting for him and she is never in his room until the absolute last moment; she waits until he seeks her out – and he does – and then they make their way to his room together. Everything about their relationship seems strange to him these days because it feels as though they are suspended in a place that is not quite friends, and not quite lovers: he wakes in the mornings to find them wrapped around each other in various intimate ways, only to spend the rest of the day pretending as if it never happened. They are closer, more open with each other than they have been any time in the last two years, and yet there is something between them that neither of them has tried to identify or set aside. He has no idea why or when they reached this impasse. He wants to bridge that final gap, to sever that string that keeps them suspended and motionless so that they can rush headlong into lovers' territory, but he is afraid of pushing her. She is wary of him and he knows it; he respects that, he respects her, so he keeps himself in check no matter how badly he wants to do just the opposite. She needs his support and his friendship so that is what he gives her, and hopes that one of these days she'll decide that she wants more from him -because he is ready to give it.

There is no uncertainty left in him: he wants Felicity, and he wants her enough to wait for her.

His drive takes him almost an hour, and he can just hear the grandfather clock in the upstairs hallway chiming the two o'clock hour as he lets himself quietly into the manor. There is really no need for the stealth, because he's already heard the sounds of the television floating toward him from the living room; he slips out of his jacket and hangs it up, stows his motorcycle helmet and then makes his way toward the sound.

Upon turning the corner, he is surprised to see that it isn't Felicity curled up on the couch, but Kylie: she's staring intently at the television screen, and their blonde friend is nowhere to be seen.

"What are you doing awake still?" he asks softly.

The dark head turns to glance back at him over one petite shoulder before returning back to the screen. He interprets this as an invitation to join her so he moves into the room, and as he comes around the couch he glances to see that Felicity is, indeed, present: she's stretched out along the length of the couch, her head in Kylie's lap, and she is sound asleep. He can't help the little smile that upturns one side of his mouth.

"Didn't have the heart to wake her," Kylie answers him finally. "And the movie's not done."

"What are you watching?"

"Sense and Sensibility." He must have given her a blank look, because she clarifies. "Jane Austen."

He nods, not because he knows the movie but because he remembers clearly Felicity's love for the author and because even the most illiterate person has at least heard of Pride and Prejudice.

"Long day?" Kylie queries. "You look tired."

He sighs. "Long and disappointing," he admits.

"Is everything alright?"

Oliver pauses for a long moment to consider her question. There are many answers he could give, many ways that he could interpret and spin the truth, but he wants to be as honest as he can with this woman without giving anything away. He likes Kylie, not just because of her obvious devotion to Felicity but because she is a sagacious and spirited sort of woman that he has come to respect through their limited time together.

"I don't know; but I hope so. How long has she been asleep?"

"Maybe two hours? Not as long as I'd wish."

They fall into a protracted silence, and Oliver's attention is drawn toward the voices he can hear on the television. He doesn't know the premise of the story but he watches the characters anyway, happy to be drawn from the weight of his thoughts and fears. There are two women on the screen, one of whom has very curly hair in a shade of gold just a little darker than Felicity's, and his mind is automatically drawn to thoughts of said woman. He is glad to find her asleep, glad to know that she finally feels safe enough to fall asleep when he isn't there because it means that she is at least starting to heal and move on. At least, he hopes that she has; it eats away at him to see her so diminished and frightened.

"Do you know what I love about people, Ollie?"

Kylie's voice is gentle and it grabs his attention almost as much as her words do; it's only when he looks to her face that he realizes that his gaze had wandered away from the television to focus on Felicity.

"What?" he prods.

"They don't make sense." She smiles as if she's told him a great joke, but if she has then he has missed the punch line.

"I don't follow."

"I saw you on the news – months ago, now – and I don't remember what the story was, but I remember thinking that you were a person I was very glad not to know."

Her words are strangely lacking in any sort of censure or judgment, and yet he feels exactly that: in the next instant, he realizes that the feelings are arising strictly from his own sense of deeply ingrained shame, because he hates the persona that he has to portray and how wildly opposed it is from the way he now sees himself.

Kylie isn't finished.

"And then I met you," she continues, "and I was confused. You were so different from that person on the television; it was like you were a completely different person. You tolerated my teasing, were even gracious about it, and I was … surprised. And then, the way you acted around Lis, the way you treated her … whoever that man is on the news, that isn't the real Oliver Queen."

She's giving him such a shrewd look that a lesser man would squirm, but Oliver is not that man. There is a tightening in his chest, because he fears that she has somehow made the connection or at least some deduction of why he's always out late and why he might need a cover, but he is reassured by her next words.

"I may not like your television persona, but I like you, Ollie; the real you. Even if you are a bit broody and intense."

A choked sort of chuckle makes it way out of him and he arches an eyebrow at the woman seated across from him. "Broody and intense?"

"Oh yeah," and she grins widely at him. "You could be the poster boy for both. And that's another reason why people don't make sense, because on the surface the two of you shouldn't work."

Kylie glances away from him then to look down at the woman asleep in her lap, and the smile she gives her speaks to Oliver of a true and abiding love that could only come from years of friendship and shared lives. He resolves then and there to ask Felicity more about her friendship with this woman, because he has the feeling that they have known each other much longer than he's guessed. This is probably the friend that got her through the loss of her mother.

"Despite your differences, you two seem good together. Or maybe it's because of your differences that you work; who knows. Either way, I've seen the way you two are around each other."

"We're not …" He doesn't finish the sentence, because he's not sure what he was going to deny. They weren't what? Dating? No, but they were close. Weren't they?

"Not what?" she prompts.

"I don't know," he admits, passing a hand over his face and feeling suddenly tired.

To his surprise, Kylie smiles again. "Isn't it a bitch?"

"What?"

"Everything; life in general. Wanting something, and being terrified that reaching for it will somehow ruin it; feeling like you can't possibly take a chance, and knowing that if you don't nothing will ever change. It's stressful as shit."

"And exactly how stressful is shit?" he deadpans, and then they are both laughing quietly. "I get the feeling that you're younger than I am, Kylie, but you're very wise."

"Oh, I'm a genius – didn't I tell you?"

She grins and winks, but he's not sure if she's trying to tell him that she's joking about being a genius or that she understands that genius doesn't necessarily have anything to do with wisdom. He opens his mouth to ask her and then closes it almost immediately, because he actually likes not knowing.

"Lis," Kylie calls then, putting a light hand on her friend's shoulder. "Wake up."

Two blue eyes flutter open hesitantly, and he takes it as a good sign that she doesn't jump away from the pressure on her shoulder or instantly throw herself off the couch in a panic.

"Sorry, didn't mean to fall asleep," she mumbles, and then catches sight of him.

Felicity pulls herself up off of her friend's lap, yawning as she does so. She's starting to look better, he thinks, more rested and like herself, and he is glad of it.

"Go on," Kylie encourages them, waving toward the stairs. "Go to bed, I'll shut everything off."

Oliver is more tired than he'd realized and the thought of his bed is suddenly very inviting. His eyes automatically gravitate toward Felicity, who has taken to her feet, and he wordlessly holds out his hand. There is the tiniest bit of hesitation before she takes it, but takes it she does, sliding one smooth hand into his much larger calloused one; they make their way toward the stairs side by side.

"Anything?" she questions once they cross the threshold into his room.

He doesn't need to ask her what she means. "Not yet."

He can't bring himself to say more on the subject, but he still refuses to admit that he's failed. Giving up is not an option, so there is no reason for him to tell her that their searches have been fruitless: he'll simply keep looking, everywhere, and for as long as it takes.

"Oliver …"

"I'm going to find him, Felicity."

She's giving him a look that he can't decipher and he's too tired to spend long trying. He turns to his dresser and retrieves a pair of cotton pajama pants, and without thinking sets to stripping out of his jeans and t-shirt on autopilot. His thoughts are nonsensical in his exhaustion, jumping from his inability to find the man he's looking for to his conversation with Kylie. When he turns back to his bed, Felicity is already burrowed under the covers. Her pale hair is a stark contrast to his darker bed sheets.

He forgoes a shirt and almost collapses into the bed next to her; it's only as the tension in his body releases against the mattress that he realizes how much he'd been carrying. He's too tired to roll onto his side, but he's not too tired to be wildly aware of the feel of Felicity's body as she presses herself into her side: her head comes to rest on his chest, over his heartbeat, and one slim arm drapes itself across the exposed skin of his chest. The arm beneath her curls up and around her waist, holding her against him, and he instinctively tips his head toward hers until he feels her hair against his cheek.

They should talk about this; they need to talk about this - but not tonight.