Title: Fixer Upper

Rating: M (for language, some mild violence and probable *cough*definite*cough* sexual situations later on)

Disclaimer: I don't own Arrow or any of the characters used within this fic.

Author's Notes: Yes, I know, I am a terrible person – I can't believe I haven't updated this in so long. I swear I never abandoned it, I just got an extreme case of writer's block for a while (partly exacerbated by problems as work which could not be ignored, partly by various ~feelings~ about the current season). It doesn't help that a great deal of my inspiration for this fic comes from scenes which I imagine to take place several chapters down the road and I'm desperate to skip ahead. Anyway, I'm back in the swing of writing and I'm not going to let it slip again (she says, fingers crossed).

Many thanks go to Abbie and girlthursday, to whom I made various vague promises about working on this story and then went radio silent for a ridiculous amount of time – thank you for being so lovely and not murdering me (although your stories may kill me anyway so maybe I shouldn't be so free with my gratitude!)

"To celebrate!" Felicity declares giddily, holding the match to the candle atop the specially-purchased cupcake. "Not only the achievement of practically rebuilding the lair – yes, I'm calling it that, Diggle, don't you dare rain on my parade – but also the utter miracle of not losing our minds over the last six weeks."

Diggle's wry smile suggests he's in firm agreement with her on that score. "I would have gone insane if I'd had to do all this without you," he says, shaking his head as he glances around the foundry. "Hell, I would have gone insane months ago if you'd never come on board."

She can't help but grin as colour rises to her cheeks. "Hmm – might not argue with you on that one," she remarks, casting a glance around the dim, chilly basement. "There's an awful lot of testosterone in here at the best of times."

Diggle's eyebrow flickers. "Says the totally impartial third party observer."

She shrugs easily. "Somebody has to keep a close eye on you two."

The foundry is now structurally intact, and she and Diggle finished the re-wiring last night. She's almost sick with excitement at the prospect of setting up all the new equipment and getting her new technology online. Part of her is excited to think of Oliver's face when he comes back and sees it, all bright and shiny and new; the other part holds the somewhat more pessimistic view that he might not come back at all.

She frowns, her lips thinning as she pushes this thought out of her head. He'll come back, even if they have to drag him kicking and screaming. As if to punctuate this assertion, she blows out the candle with one strong puff of air.

As they're setting up the training area – salmon ladder already in place – Diggle glances over at her. "How's it going with Merlyn?"

"A little better," she replies thoughtfully. "He's talking a little more. Not about anything significant, you know – just small talk, mostly. But that's something, right?"

"Right," Diggle concedes with a smile.

"And anyway," she huffs, clumsily dragging one of the exercise mats to align it with the wall, "putting myself in his position, I don't really know if I'd be opening up to… well, me… about anything really personal."

Diggle makes a noise of disagreement. "I don't know. I think I would." He kicks his own mat into position and abruptly sits down on it, stretching his legs out in front of him. "For example… Carly and I broke up."

"Oh, John…" She crosses the distance to sit down next to him, her fingers curling over his forearm for a few moments. "I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he assures her – and he actually does seem to be at peace with it. "It happened a week ago, but the truth is, I knew it was inevitable. Carly spent a long time mourning my brother, and now she's ready to move on – and I'm glad. But I'm not ready. Not with Deadshot still out there." He presses his lips tight against a sigh, and glances down at her hand on his arm. "Believe me, I wish I could find some way to move forward – I don't mean forget about Lawton, just… put him on the backburner enough to have a healthy relationship." He lifts his other hand, and taps two fingers against his temple. "But he's in here, and he won't get out. I can't tell Carly about everything I'm doing, and she deserves somebody who isn't half-hiding all the time."

Her heart twists with sympathy, and she curls her fingers tighter over his large wrist. "You'll have that," she says urgently. "You will, John. There's somebody out there for you – maybe it's Carly, maybe there's another woman… or, hey, a guy even… cause, you know, that's totally your business and I don't want to make any assumptions…" She stops and blows out a harsh breath. "Feel free to stop me at any time. But what I'm saying is – maybe some of it is about coming to terms with Deadshot and your brother. And maybe the rest of it is about finding the person who'll be there for you even if coming to terms takes the rest of your life – somebody who'll share the burden with you."

She blinks, and turns an impressive shade of red. "Just to be clear – I was not trying to proposition you just then, I swear."

Diggle claps his other hand over hers before she can remove it, smiling fondly at her. "Believe me, I'd have to be plain stupid to turn you down if you were – though God knows Oliver would tear me to shreds for even thinking about it – but trust me, I've heard enough of your accidental innuendos to know when you mean it and when you don't."

She pulls her hand away to smack his – ow, rock solid – chest. "What the hell, John? I never mean it, that's the whole point!"

(She carefully avoids addressing his off-the-cuff comment about Oliver's perspective, and he doesn't seem inclined to circle back, for which she's grateful.)

Dig laughs suddenly. "Remember, 'I said not noticed, right?'"

"Oh, god." She buries her face in her hands. "I can't believe you're bringing that up. I felt mortified for days." She tilts her face up, fingertips pressing into her cheeks. "But… I've said worse, you know."

She can tell Diggle wants to ask – and there's a silly, slightly reckless part of her that wants to tell him, even if just to claw back a vague sense of normality. She wants to pretend that she has that kind of friend again; the kind who'll ply her with alcohol and ice cream, and drag from her the secrets that she would have spilled anyway – secrets like, 'I want to climb him like a tree', and 'his ass, oh my god, just… how?!' and 'is he ever going to come back?'

Diggle is a wonderful, loyal friend. But the truth is, much as she knows he'd take her secrets to the grave, there's still a part of her that feels like an outsider when it comes to him and Oliver. They're both cut from the same cloth – both warriors with a goal and heavily-armoured hearts. They've always had problems on a greater scale than hers. She doesn't want to keep her feelings to herself for the sake of martyrdom, but really, what is John going to do with this information?

She knows exactly what he'll do.

He'll sympathise, but he'll warn her away nonetheless. He'll say whatever he needs to say to make her think twice, and she really doesn't need that, because she's already on her sixth or seventh round of 'this is a terrible idea'. (Maybe it's more than that. She's pretty sure she went through two or three iterations of that same thought on her first drive to the foundry with a bleeding vigilante in her back seat.)

More specifically, she doesn't need another reason to feel like one day, the two of them are going to regret bringing her on board. She's not going to be a liability just because she has feelings for Oliver, but they'll disagree – and the idea of being on the receiving end of Oliver's weird brand of guilty pity is profoundly uncomfortable.

When she doesn't elaborate, Diggle half-smiles and says, "Well, I guess that's one benefit of working for the most taciturn guy in Starling City – whatever stuff you've said and regretted, it's almost guaranteed that he'll never bring it up again."

"Nope," she agrees, relieved. "He'll just dump a million dollars in your bank account and run off to an uninhabited island."

"Yeah, not exactly the most emotionally healthy way of handling things," Diggle concedes.

She taps her fingers on her chin speculatively. "I still can't decide if that amount means, 'thanks for being a great friend and not spilling my secret' or 'this is probably what I owed you in overtime anyway'."

John glances up at the salmon ladder. "I'm thinking both of those with a side of, 'paying people off is an easier way of dealing with my soul-crushing guilt than actually going to therapy'." He holds out a hand, and they climb to their feet together. "Either way, he'll be hoping we follow his lead and never mention it again. Even if it will be obvious what you've spent yours on." He gestures to the new desk, pristine and shiny, just waiting to be loaded up with first class tech.

"Yeah, I guess so – oh!" She winces suddenly. "Oh my god, John, I just remembered that I spent, like, a month telling you to put some of yours aside for AJ instead of using it for all of this – I'm so sorry. You should have just told me to shut up."

"Felicity," he says sternly, squeezing her shoulder, "before you spend the next few weeks feeling retroactively bad for every reference you made to Carly, you need to understand that I'm fine. I'm not broken-hearted. And… you were right about a college fund for AJ, and I'm proud to say I took your advice." He grimaces briefly. "Carly won't like it, but hey – at least that's a fight I can put off for another few years."

She lets him shoo her away from the exercise mats after a while, because he claims he wants to get a feel for the best way to set the area up, but she knows he's caught her glancing over at the desk more than once. Her fingers reach out to skim the edge, and unexpectedly, a lump catches in her throat. This will be hers. Not like her cubicle at work, scattered with knick-knacks and computers that belong to other people. Not like her sunny, messy apartment with too much dust and static to really work on anything more sophisticated than a store-bought laptop with just enough of her own programming to make it a different animal altogether.

Not even like the desk that sat here before, repurposed from somewhere and covered in dents and scratches. She'd been fond of that desk, yes, because of what it represented. She'd even loved the computer that sat on top of it, for the freedom it had given her in finally being able to put her skills to good use.

This time, she can do exactly what she wants.

And holy crap, she has so many ideas.

She's reaching into her bag for the notepad she's been sketching in ever since she realised she could make her wildest technological dreams come true when she notices the faint glow coming from her phone. She picks it up and catches a brief glimpse of the message notification before the screen goes dark again.

It's from Tommy.

Stupidly, she panics, because in that moment the only possible explanation that races through her mind is that something has happened – he's injured, or sick. Hot on the heels of this idea is one a thousand times worse – that maybe he has done something drastic.

She isn't sure, in these circumstances, whether a cry for help or a final message goodbye would be more likely.

Truthfully, she doesn't want to find out.

She squats there, staring at the dark screen, thumb hovering over the home button for who knows how long. It's the loud thwack behind her that breaks the trance – she turns to see Diggle squaring off against one of the new training dummies.

She knows exactly what he would say if he knew she were frozen here like this. Fortified by imaginary Diggle advice, she swipes at the screen and promptly botches her passcode twice.

She takes a deep breath when the third attempt succeeds, and tries to ignore the nausea rising in her belly. Her messaging app opens automatically. Tommy's message is short but mercifully unambiguous: 'Can you find Thea's new number?'

She stares down at the screen, turn between blissful relief and irrational outrage. Doesn't he understand that she's on thin psychological ice here? That every day she is spinning the plates of a million fears and insecurities, and it will only take the tiniest stumble for everything to come crashing down?

No, of course he doesn't. Because he assumes she's normal, for one thing, and because he has his own plates to deal with, for another.

She's about to reply when an addendum to his previous message comes through: 'Please?'

Felicity snorts softly and types with a steady thumb, 'Insulted you have to ask. Give me 5 mins.'

Bracing her back against the desk, she reaches for her tablet and lets herself follow the old familiar routines. It would be so easy to pretend, sitting here, that everything has returned to the status quo – that the loud thumps and grunts are not from man versus solid wood, but brawn against brawn (a word she doesn't particularly like, but accurate nonetheless when it's wall-to-wall rippling muscles and sweat-slicked skin). Any second now, she'll get her result and congratulate herself out loud, effectively summoning the two of them over to see what she's found.

She misses Oliver, but she misses the work, too.

'That quick?' Tommy replies, breaking her introspection.

She's almost there, so she ignores it in favour of investigating Thea's call and text history. Finding her number had been easy – Thea has been smart in ditching her old phone, especially since the nastier members of the press are known to be especially unscrupulous about not only hacking, but leaking information to the worst possible people in hopes of stirring up drama for the front page, but she has still bought a phone with her own credit card: a rookie mistake – and Felicity certainly isn't going hunting for gossip, but she's more than a little worried about Oliver's sister, and she'd like to at least know she's safe.

There are hardly any calls or texts from the last few weeks, which suggests she's staying in one place, hiding. Felicity doesn't blame her.

Interestingly, though, the main recipient of these calls and texts appears to be Roy Harper. Felicity really wishes that she could somehow overwrite the memory of seeing his head hanging low with bitter defeat as he invites a murderer to end his life.

A little quick detective work via GPS tells her that they're together right now, in a residential block right on the edge of the Glades. It's an area that survived mostly intact, but it's still supposed to be uninhabited right now while city volunteer teams check every property for structural and electrical safety.

Lots of people have ignored that advice. For most, she imagines that it'll be difficult to trust anybody in power ever again.

Felicity's glad that Thea has somebody. She wouldn't have known what to do if Thea had been alone. Approaching Tommy and essentially forcing her way into his life is one thing; storming the Queen mansion and demanding to be allowed to pester the highly protected heiress is another exercise in stupidity altogether.

She retraces her steps, covering her tracks, and she's almost there when a couple of numbers in Thea's call history catch her eye. They're local numbers, and they look slightly familiar, but she can't remember why. Felicity frowns, and makes a note on her tablet, closing out of everything in Thea's system. She texts Tommy the number quickly, wondering if he'll make a comment about the fact that it's been nearly eight minutes.

He doesn't reply. She rolls her eyes, unsurprised but still a little annoyed.

When she does the most basic search for the unidentified numbers, though, she forgets all about Tommy's gratitude (or lack thereof).

One is for a well-known contractor whose name Felicity has seen on scaffolding across the city, and the other is for Reynolds & West, Verdant's main supplier.

"Dig," she calls out, hardly raising her voice but knowing he'll hear her nonetheless. "I think we're about to have a problem."

Tommy doesn't call Thea, and he hadn't planned to. He'd just wanted her number, just in case, but if somebody put him in a room with her right now, he has no idea what he would say.

'Sorry our parents killed a bunch of people and your brother abandoned you at the worst possible time?'

Even inside his head, his own flippancy brings a guilty sting. Five hundred people, they're saying. Or, actually, five hundred and two. That's not exactly 'a bunch'.

It's hard to comprehend, Tommy finds. His nearest equivalent in terms of sheer scale is one of those really big summer galas, like the ones the Queens used to host in association with one of Starling City's nearest and dearest charities. Moira Queen somehow managed to pick the perfect night every time, he remembers; warm and dry, with just enough of a breeze that the old dears didn't keel over into a rose bush or something.

He remembers sneaking off with Oliver to the media room, playing Mario Kart and Grand Theft Auto until Raisa caught them and – after reducing the two of them to begging, pleading children – was persuaded not only to leave them alone but to bring them food which sat in their stomachs for longer than a micro-second.

Five hundred people used to attend those galas.

Tommy tries to imagine leaving the safety of the media room to find that some sort of mini-apocalypse had taken place, and that every single person outside had been killed – not because he's a twisted person, he thinks (he hopes) but because it's a scale he understands.

It's still impossible.

Part of the problem, he recognises, is that he's been hiding from reality for so long now. It's nearly two months since the earthquakes, and all he really knows of the aftermath is what he's seen on TV.

Lou Carracci, Merlyn Global's CFO, is still trying to contact him. He doesn't seem to know about Tommy's new address, and of late, his voicemail messages have been reduced to lacklustre pleas for a return call. Tommy wonders how long it'll take before he stops trying.

And then what?

Either he watches Merlyn Global collapse into ruin from a distance – the fragments to be picked over and taken by scavengers – or he eventually gets off his ass and at least leaves this goddamn apartment for once. The thought is frankly terrifying.

He glances back down at the phone, not at Thea's number this time but at the sender's name.

Felicity.

It's actually not the first time he's found himself staring at his phone, thinking about texting her. He doesn't know why he's so uncertain about it all the time – god, if Old Tommy could see him now. He's pretty sure she'd be happy to hear from him. It's obvious that she's worried about him and wants to make sure he's OK. Granted, a text asking for Thea's number probably hasn't been super reassuring, but it's better than nothing.

She'd been pretty quick, he thinks, a corner of his mouth pulling upwards. She really is good. He wonders why she's working in IT at some boring Fortune 500 company when she could be a software mogul by now, or maybe one of those intelligence analysts working for the CIA – that sounds kind of cool.

The fingers of his free hand tap nervously against his thigh. Seized by a sudden fit of annoyance, he tosses the phone aside and folds his arms across his chest, scowling. Such a coward, he chastises himself. Literally two letters – hi. You can't even do that.

God, what is he doing, anyway? Forming some kind of weird attachment to Oliver's friend-slash-employee-slash-genius-on-retainer is just, really, the worst idea he's ever had.

She brings you food, he tells himself. It's like some kind of mother complex, probably.

Old Tommy would have had a comment about that. Several, in fact.

Old Tommy can shut his cakehole for once.

New Tommy's leg bounces up and down as he snatches the phone up again, swiping to the home screen and bringing up Felicity's last message. Before he can second guess himself, he stabs the keyboard fiercely: 'Thanks. More than five minutes = free pizza though'

Her reply is oddly shouty: 'Pizza ALWAYS FREE. Check freezer. VEGETABLES!'

He can't help his little huff of laughter. He has no idea if that's an instruction, a threat, or an expletive. Possibly all three.

He texts back: 'Vegetable pizza?'

'NO,' she replies. 'Microwave sachets. V simple even for you. DO IT.'

'V offended,' he tells her. And then, a thrill of nerves gripping his stomach, he adds, 'Come and supervise.'

There's a very slight delay before her next message, which is prefaced with a sad face emoji. 'Can't tonight – having my abdominal muscles severely tested by a merciless man. Tomorrow?'

Tommy stares down at the words in front of him, blinking as if this might either erase or make sense of them. "What…?" he murmurs aloud, screwing his eyes up tight. "What?!"

The heavy, uncomfortable feeling in his gut is hard to ignore, but he pushes through and tries to find a way to say, 'Okay, have great sex' without sounding weird.

His phone pings alarmingly. And then again, several more times.

FS: Oh my GOD

FS: That sounded so terrible, I can't believe I hit send on that

FS: I'm talking about crunches, I swear, not something weird

FS: And the merciless man is my personal trainer… sort of. Oliver's bodyguard, actually, but he's my friend, too. So obviously our relationship is totally platonic.

FS: I mean, full disclosure, sometimes I stare at him when he's not wearing a shirt, but I think that's actually pretty normal given how incredibly built he is. I'd show you a picture but I deleted them all after the police took me in for questioning. Not because they were incriminating, I just didn't want them to be shown in court in case anybody got the wrong idea.

FS: The thing with the police was a misunderstanding, in case you were wondering. Definitely no tangible proof of anything whatsoever.

FS: Anyway my point is: crunches. Not sex.

FS: See you tomorrow. Please delete these messages and never, ever mention them again.

Tommy balls his hands into fists and tries to force the grin from his face by pressing his lips into a thin line.

It doesn't work.

He goes and eats some vegetables instead.

Author's Note: Posting this makes me realise how much Dig/Felicity I've included. I think I may be fighting latent Dig/Felicity shipping urges, which is a problem for a different story because Tommy/Felicity and Oliver/Felicity are going to be more than enough to deal with in this one! I am already underway with Chapter 4 and hopefully it won't get delayed by four months like this one. In the meantime, I will be beyond grateful for all of your feedback. Hope you've enjoyed reading!