Chapter Two: It's a Hard Life

"I'm going to pass on the dinner invite," Quentin said, turning to leave and nearly running into Laurel. (To his relief, she was fully-clothed.)

"Aw, don't go yet," she said, having overheard. "Stay; eat with us."

"You don't really want me to stick around—"

"Yes, we do." She wasn't sure whether her father ate properly these days. Besides, she didn't like the idea of him being all alone on a Saturday night, which he otherwise would be. And since it was Oliver's idea to have him stay, he obviously didn't think this would be an intrusion upon their time together.

"Alright," Quentin sighed dramatically. "But only if he puts some clothes on," he added, jabbing a finger in Queen's direction.

"You drive a hard bargain, sir," Oliver smiled. "Laurel, did you notice whether I packed a shirt?"

"He's just kidding," she assured her father.

"Now if I can just remember where I left my pants…" the billionaire went on.

"Cut it out, Ollie," the attorney said, playfully smacking his arm.

~PB~

Putting a moratorium on work for the weekend had been John Diggle's idea. No one but Oliver's bodyguard-turned-partner would say that the billionaire worked too hard. (Well, that wasn't entirely true. Felicity Smoak had agreed with him.)

Ostensibly, Oliver Queen had not a care in the world outside of his nightclub, Verdant. In reality, taking a break from being the vigilante sounded like a good idea. And while he was at it, he could take a break from his family, too.

It wasn't that he didn't love them, but Queen Manor was rather tense these days. Walter and Moira were fighting with increasing frequency; Thea's new boyfriend was obsessed with finding the Hood and, oh yeah—his mother had shot him. Okay, she'd shot the Hood-him, not her son-him, so he wasn't holding that against her, but it was just a tad suspicious. And since he'd promised that the Hood would never bother her again (and she was his mother!), he didn't want to find anything that would add to those suspicions.

All in all, if he was going to take a couple of days off, he wanted to spend them with Laurel. Naturally, he pitched the idea to her as a weekend where the overworked attorney would just kick back and relax.

Who knew his girlfriend was as big a workaholic as he was?

But then, perhaps she took after her father that way. Her father, Detective-Sergeant Lance, the head of the Starling City Police Department task force charged with bringing the Hood down—who secretly grudgingly cooperated with the Hood from time to time. Come to think of it, Lance's stress level had to be at least as high as Oliver's. The cognitive dissonance alone would be driving him nuts.

And Oliver liked the guy, at least as far as quasi-allies went, so he'd invited him to stay for dinner.

Conversation wasn't as awkward as he would've expected it to be. At times, it was downright amusing.

"Detective, any leads on finding the vigilante?"

"Let's not get into this now," Laurel groaned. Having been the Hood's damsel-in-distress on more than one occasion, she was, predictably, a fan.

"Couldn't go into it anyway," Quentin said, seemingly relieved to have a way out. "You know I can't comment on an ongoing investigation."

"But you must have something. He was shot awhile back, wasn't he? You must have blood from the scene," Oliver persisted.

"It went missing," Quentin gritted out. "There was a computer glitch."

"That's quite enough talk about the Hood for one night," Laurel groped around for a change of subject.

Dinner continued on with the tension more or less defused. Afterwards, Quentin said his goodbyes, preparing to head home. (Night had fallen, but he had plenty of experience driving at night, so that wouldn't be a problem.)

And then they heard a noise. Someone had broken in.

Quentin was armed. He'd removed his gun holster for a while earlier, but he'd put it back on while getting ready to go. He brought the weapon out without thinking about it.

But would it be enough? He didn't have any backup; he'd left his police radio in the car. If the intruder was a threat to his daughter—

Oh shit. The intruder stepped into view, revealing herself as Helena Bertinelli, a.k.a. the Huntress. And she was armed with her crossbow.

They needed help. They needed—

Hating what he was doing, but unable to put it off, he reached into his pocket with the hand that was not holding his gun on Bertinelli for a cell phone.

He didn't need to take his eyes off her to dial; the number was already programmed in.

In the silence that was the calm before hell broke loose, Quentin heard a buzzing sound in synch with the ringing from his phone. A buzzing like…

The Hood's phone was set to vibrate. And the sound was emanating from the jacket Queen had abandoned on the back of a chair.

Author's Note: Do NOT expect updates to be this regular.

This fic is somewhat AU. I'm deciding what parts of canon to use as I go along. But I'm definitely leaving out Oliver's serial killer side. So in this 'verse, it's not that he's never killed anyone, but that he isn't trigger-happy and has kept it to a bare minimum.

Helena is being used as a plot device, not a major character. It was either use her or a random ninja or research characters.

Thanks to those who reviewed and/or added the story to your list of alerts!

Chapter title comes from the Queen song of the same name.