Chapter Seven: Feel Your Heartbeat Grow Faster

"I'm thinking of breaking up with Ollie," Laurel announced in the morning.

Her father nearly choked on his coffee. The two were having breakfast alone. Oliver had already eaten and was out shopping for groceries.

"He told you?" Quentin gasped out once his throat was clear. Queen must have told Laurel that he was the vigilante. It was the only reason he could see for her breaking up with him, though he'd been so positive that the truth wouldn't end the kids' relationship.

"Wait—has he already confessed his feelings for you?" Laurel demanded. It was one thing for Oliver to go behind her back with one relative, but to do it twice…

"What are you talking about?" Quentin asked.

"What are you talking about?" Laurel turned the question back on him.

So she still didn't know Oliver was the vigilante. Then—wait, what the hell had she said?

"I asked you first. What feelings are you talking about?"

"Oh come on, Dad. I'm not blind. There was something cooking in the kitchen last night other than pancakes," Laurel replied.

"What? No!" Quentin exclaimed. There hadn't… Well… Okay, he'd been having a good time with Oliver, impossible as that seemed; he no longer wanted to strangle him (as often). But, "he's your boyfriend. I couldn't—that's just..." he pretended to gag.

"He was my boyfriend about five years ago, but that didn't stop him from running off with Sara. Oliver's afraid of commitment, or maybe he's just afraid of committing to me, but either way, I think I've finally outgrown him.

"I mean I'm twenty-eight years old. When mom was that age, she'd already had me and Sara."

"Your mother and I started early, though. People wait later to start families these days," Quentin pointed out.

"I know that and I have, but maybe I'm tired of waiting. I don't want to wait around another five years to see if Oliver's ready to get serious with me."

"You should talk to him," Quentin suggested. "Tell him how you feel, give him a chance to—"

"A chance to what? I realized something last night, Dad. Oliver and I just don't click. It's over and I'm going to tell him after he gets back."

"Well, if that's how you feel," Quentin said, uncertainly. "Maybe it's for the best. I mean, he is an arrogant, overblown jackass."

"He can be," Laurel giggled before turning serious. "But you know, sometimes he shows a depth you wouldn't expect from him. You get a glimpse of a different Oliver, the one that he could be, the one I think he wants to be. You've seen that, haven't you?"

"I might have," Quentin cleared his throat.

"Dad, if you can handle it, you should give it a try—you and Oliver," Laurel advised him.

"Oh sure," he snorted. "After we've just established how he's an unfaithful louse, who would run at the first sign that things were getting serious," not to mention the little fact that Queen was the Hood! "Not going to happen, Laurel."

"You're only saying that because you think that Ollie and I had sex!"

"That's not the only reason." But it was a perfectly good reason. Quentin's face went crimson. Curious way she phrased it, though. He averted his gaze as he followed up on it. "Well, you did, didn't you?"

"Never, not even close," Laurel responded quickly—too quickly.

"Oh really?" Quentin asked skeptically, managing to make eye contact with her again.

"…Okay, maybe close," Laurel said, smiling at apparently fond memories—and how the hell had Quentin gotten into this conversation? "Look, before the shipwreck, I was still living at home. You threatened Ollie with bodily harm if my bedroom door didn't stay open at all times, remember?"

"Yeah," he remembered. He was afraid that that hadn't been enough, though. It wasn't as if he'd been able to maintain twenty-four hour surveillance of his daughter. "But you've got your own place now, so I'm pretty sure there's no one around to deter your boyfriends."

"When we agreed to give it another shot, we also agreed to take things slow, okay, slow-ish," Laurel smiled again. "I think we probably would have, uh, 'gone all the way' last weekend, but, well, you know—"

"Saved by your old man's heart attack," Quentin supplied.

"Something like that," Laurel nodded. "So, you see, technically I didn't have sex with Oliver. Although, I can't speak for Sara… right, not helping," she added, when she noticed her father's grimace. "But look: I got back together with Oliver despite what he probably got up to with my sister. You shouldn't let the past stand in your way, either."

~PB~

When Laurel walked back into the beach house that afternoon, Quentin tried to pretend that he hadn't been spying on her through the window, watching as she and Queen talked, as the blonde had hugged her, kissed her on the forehead, but neither had shouted or looked angry…

"How did it go?" Quentin asked, feigning nonchalance.

"It couldn't have gone better," Laurel replied. "All break-ups should be like this. He said our fate was to be friends and… Oh, my god, he broke up with me!" The realization was sudden and unexpected.

"No, he wouldn't have," he insisted. Oliver was head over heels for her.

"He did," she countered. "And, you know what? It doesn't matter because it's over and we're both happy." And now you can go for it, her expression added.

~PB~

"Why didn't you tell her?" Quentin asked over dinner that night. His daughter had long since gotten into her car and driven off.

"Tell her what?" Oliver asked blithely.

"You know what I'm talking about! That you're the vigilante! I told you she'd forgive you, she'd understand. It would have brought you closer together. She's half in love with the vigilante as it is, she wouldn't have," he paused, looking at the billionaire's face before finishing, "she wouldn't have broken up with the Hood."

"You might be right. I guess now we'll never know," Oliver replied. "But I don't need someone staying with me because of some romanticized ideal. The Hood isn't a hero any more than a villain and you know that.

"The Hood is just… a thing, a tool for fixing the city, a necessary evil, you could say."

"I wouldn't say necessary—"

"No, of course you wouldn't," Oliver stifled a groan. "The Hood's broken too many laws for you to see it that way. But I'd wager even you have your doubts about the system, Detective. You know it's not perfect; the Hood wouldn't be roaming the streets if it was."

"You don't seem heartbroken about Laurel breaking up with you," the cop observed, trying to steer the conversation back on track.

"I'm not. I suppose I should be disappointed at having failed another relationship and I don't mean to imply that Laurel isn't quite a woman. You raised her well. She'll be a good catch for someone, just not me. And I'm okay with that."

"How old are you?" Lance blurted out.

"Ask random questions much?" Oliver raised an eyebrow.

"It's no more random than when you asked me the other night." The detective felt chagrined, but he needed to know. "And I told you my age."

"Fair enough," Oliver conceded. "I'm twenty-seven."

For the second time that day, Quentin nearly choked.

"But that makes you younger than Laurel!" he exclaimed, after he could breathe again.

"By about a year," the vigilante had the temerity to shrug, as if the fact that he was younger than Quentin's daughter meant nothing.

"That would mean you're—"

"Twenty years younger than you, yes, it would," he interrupted before shrugging again. "Is there a problem, Detective?"

Quentin shook his head slowly. Of course there wasn't a problem. The age difference could only be a problem if they were involved, which they were not and they were not going to be, so it was fine.

"Everything's fine," he said aloud, earning a smile from Queen.

"Glad to hear it." For a moment, it looked as though Quentin could finish his meal in peace. So obviously Oliver had to spoil it. "As long as we're discussing random facts about ourselves, you know I'm bisexual, right?" the billionaire asked innocently.

Another tidbit about Oliver Queen: he knows the Heimlich maneuver. It's a good thing, because Quentin was getting tired of visiting the hospital.

~PB~

By Wednesday afternoon, Quentin had given up pretending that Laurel was imagining things. He'd stopped ignoring the fact that he and Oliver had been flirting, for who knows how long.

He was not feeling Zen about it; the fact that Queen had dated both of his daughters hadn't gone away, nor had the age gap magically shortened and, alas, the Hood hadn't been proven a mere figment of his imagination.

But the physical attraction was there and was patently mutual and denial wasn't going to make it go away. (And for whatever it was worth, Laurel had given him her blessing.)

The skies opened up above them as the men walked along the beach, so they headed back to the house. They got back to find that the electricity had gone out in the storm. They lit candles because, hey, they still needed light.

The rationalizations took Quentin no further than that because then—

"I kissed you," Quentin said, stunned, but not ashamed.

"No, I kissed you," Oliver contradicted him, though he conceded mentally that the detective had kissed back.

That sounded too much like Queen being a wise-ass and issuing a challenge.

Quentin Lance doesn't back down from challenges.

"That," Quentin said after they eventually parted, "now that time I definitely kissed you."

"Lance, don't keep score," Oliver added, before returning to the engaging task of devouring Quentin's mouth.

At some point, the two wound up in Oliver's bedroom.

It turned out that Quentin could climb a flight of stairs, after all—repeatedly.

Author's Note: And that's the end of the chapter. Personally, I'm thinking Oliver would be the dominant one here.

Chapter title is from Queen's "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy."

Thanks to mw and IronAmerica for reviewing! Mw, I'm glad you're enjoying the fic!