Felicity has a chance to plant the seeds to her plan.
xxXXXxx
"Have you taken control?" Felicity used her serious, commanding voice to inquire through the comm link.
There was static on the line. Today's operation appeared to be proceeding like a worst-case scenario in the Arrow Cave – one where things didn't sound very good on the other end and she was powerless to do anything but listen. The League of Assassins team operation to take an oil platform for ransom, led by Al-Saheem, was well underway, but something wasn't right. Felicity studied her monitors, had been providing some useful intel, such as long distance video from an orbiting satellite. But now she had no video feed from the incursion. She tapped on buttons anxiously, trying to re-establish picture.
The mission had begun quite routinely. Of course, Felicity had worried anyway. Oliver and watercraft didn't really have a good track record. Had he even been on a boat since the Queen's Gambit? It hadn't occurred to her to ask in advance and she felt bad about that. If there was any residual tension about the mode of transportation, Al-Saheem masked it with other tension, reflected in his steely glare as the 8-man crew approached the target in a sleek black cigarette boat. Daylight was just about to break as they sped toward the platform owned by McMaster Oil against the choppy sea. Already hard to spot from above, they cut the engines and moved closer.
The security team patrolling on the platform was spare and lackadaisical. Likely the crew had been out at sea for some months and tedium had lowered their attentiveness. They were taken out by arrows from a distance away. Then, Al-Saheem and his men, soaked from sea spray, tethered their speed boat to the platform and scaled it. As they approached the offices on the bottom level, the picture had cut out, leaving the League Digital Command Center with sound only. And Felicity didn't like the sounds she was hearing. There was yelling and then discernable scuffle noises. Violence.
"Fedil," she whispered, covering the microphone on her headset, "Please man the other station and see if you can establish visual contact with Al-Saheem's second." Both Al-Saheem and his lieutenant were outfitted with video and audio monitoring devices. Every team member had a tracking device, which could be seen on a digital blueprint on one of the monitors. Felicity furiously tapped on her keyboard.
"His name is Husam," Fedil responded for clarification. "Yes, I will do this." He moved quickly and sat down at the comm desk that mirrored hers. He also began work, but his keystrokes were slower and more deliberate.
"Saheem." This name felt strange on her tongue, but she knew using it was necessary. "I repeat have you taken control?" she spoke again, slowly and clearly.
Moments later, a League member appeared in the doorway. "Ra's Al Ghul will be here momentarily."
"Frack!" Felicity willed her fingers to type even faster as windows of data opened and closed with blinding speed in front of her. She needed to make progress here without the distraction of Nanda Parbat's Napoleon.
"We are busy neutralizing the opposition," Al-Saheem's voice roared through the comm speakers, causing Felicity to wince.
"Please stay in verbal contact. We have no visual."
A kerfuffle at the door signaled The Demon's arrival – that and Fedil muttering "Frack," quietly from his station before rolling his eyes toward the heavens. Apparently the blonde was rubbing off on him already.
Ra's Al Ghul and his gravitas entered the room, changing the energy with the swish of his heavy robes. Fedil stood up, but Felicity did not succumb to ceremony. She remained laser-focused on her mission. Ra's scowled at first as he moved next to her, but soon he became mesmerized by the activity whizzing by on the monitors.
"Keep talking to us, Saheem."
"What's wrong?" Ra's asked, agitated.
"Their cameras aren't working."
"This is unacceptable. You were supposed to assure their performance." Ra's' anger was evident in his voice. Felicity continued typing and didn't even look at him.
"The cameras we had on hand, the ones we were forced to use, are fine for work in the dry desert, but it seems they are compromised by moisture. I suspect Saheem and Husam got them wet, which can happen in the middle of, you know, the sea. But we are tracking every member of the team," Felicity pointed to a window on the screen that showed dots moving around the platform. "And we still have audio, so the mission is moving forward. There are new cameras coming on the market that are much more suitable for this work. I would like to acquire them as soon as possible. Now if you will excuse me, I am trying to…" She waved at the monitors.
"You are a bold girl with a bold tongue, aren't you?" Ra's put his hand on Felicity's shoulder. Felicity tried not to cringe while thinking...you have no idea. There were a couple of ways one could interpret that observation. Over recent nights with Oliver her tongue had grown quite bold. But it was the brazen way she was using the League's systems at that very minute to contact faraway friends right under his nose. John Diggle would receive a mysterious text that pinged his phone just as he was putting baby Sara down to sleep. Cisco Ramon, working late in the lab, would discover a mysterious coded email that raised his pulse and got him thinking all night. And Ray Palmer would return to his penthouse after a night of patrols as The Atom to find an intriguing, but worrisome message from the smartest woman he ever met.
Suddenly, Al-Saheem's voice growled deeply over the speaker. "We have secured the facility." Ra's looked toward Felicity and nodded his approval.
Felicity's confident, feminine voice filled the air. "Fedil, please initiate the untraceable ransom note to the President of McMaster Oil." Fedil sat up a little straighter and began typing at his station.
"Initiating the missive to Joseph McMaster," he stated coolly.
"Saheem, we will contact you later with a status update on the ransom. We will also be monitoring the waters to assure that McMaster does not try to send a rescue party. Sit tight." Felicity sat back for a moment, relaxing for the first time in quite a few minutes.
"Now we wait," Ra's spoke coolly. He could be a patient man when his plans were falling into place, Felicity thought. Of course, she could be patient too.
Luckily, Ra's decided to wait elsewhere. His presence in the Digital Command Center was distracting and Felicity wasn't the only one who exhaled a breath of relief when he left the room.
"Ra's Al Ghul is a great man," Fedil proclaimed quickly, worried he had sighed too loudly.
"Of course," Felicity countered. "Ra's reminds me of a professor I had once. We called him Dangerous Dave. He was obsessed with the Red Sox and wore this stupid backwards cap all the time. Anyway, he liked to hover over us while we were coding. Really close. He smelled like hot dogs every single day. It was very distracting and I still can't eat hot dogs. But maybe I should thank him now because if he hadn't, I couldn't possibly have kept working just now. I don't consider what we do here a spectator sport."
Fedil smirked at the rant. "His eminence thinks highly of you. That is a great honor."
"Yup," Felicity replied. "I would like you to monitor McMaster's communications. Hopefully this guy is smart and we can wrap this up quickly. If he tries to reach out to anyone who isn't a bank in the next few hours we may need to alert Al-Saheem. Meanwhile, I am hacking into their company security to make sure no red flags are going up. I'm also monitoring the waters nearby to make sure no one crashes the party. I'd also like to order those new cameras."
"I will send you the credentials for purchases," Fedil replied. Now it was Felicity's turn to smirk.
The rest of the operation proceeded rather perfectly. Four hours later, McMaster had wired three million dollars to the League's untraceable account and the strike team was on its way back to Nanda Parbat.
xxxXXXxxx
The night air was warm and surprisingly still. Then the sound of people, armed men in heavy boots grew louder. They were escorted by minions and torches lit their way up the path to the courtyard where Felicity had paced for nearly an hour waiting for Oliver to return. It didn't matter that she was by herself. She wasn't even afraid. Perhaps that was because her sword was securely set under her robe. Or because everyone in Nanda Parbat now knew that threatening her in any way was a suicide mission that would be completed by Ra's Al Ghul himself.
She spotted Al-Saheem immediately, even though his head was covered in his black hood. Maybe it was his shoulders that were so familiar. Or maybe it was just that she had grown accustomed to seeing him cloaked all these years. As he raised his head, Felicity noted he was still wearing the leather mask that covered the bottom portion of his face. She found it creepy, but couldn't deny that it made his eyes look bluer in the firelight. Unfortunately, those eyes were hard as marble at the moment.
She watched him march mindlessly past her and felt a pang of panic. Maybe he didn't see her. Felicity closed the distance between them and followed behind him without speaking. When he finally peeled off from the rest of the crew, down an exterior corridor, she tugged at his arm. With little effort, his enormous form whirled around and pinned her up against a wall in a dark alcove with just his forearm. His other hand had already produced a hidden dagger and raised it high above her head. Felicity let out a gasp.
"It's just me," she bleated, pulling her cowl away from her face and revealing her blonde hair. She studied his weary eyes. Felicity trembled as she sought recognition from him, but he remained still and deadly. "Just me. Your girl."
Felicity forced herself to brighten and smile at him. Then she slowly slid her hand around to cover the one he had clenched near her abdomen, pinning her to the cool stucco wall. She massaged his strained knuckle with her thumb for a while and watched the darkness in his eyes fading. Her eyes darted from his face to the dagger he held above her. When he finally lowered the weapon, achingly slow, she reached up and carefully removed his mask, dropping it unceremoniously to the ground. His mouth was set, hard as he swallowed. Her fingers gently touched his cheek before her hand palmed his jawline and slipped around his neck, his muscles there taut with tension. Felicity pulled his face down towards hers.
"It's me," she said again. Al-Saheem looked confused just before she kissed him. Granted, it wasn't so much a kiss as it was an assault on his mouth. Felicity wasn't waking sleeping beauty here. She was trying to reach him through a shock, sensory overload. Her lips parted and her familiar tongue found his quickly, massaging it and licking the inside of his mouth until he moaned and pressed more than just arm against her. When they finally disengaged to gasp for breath, Felicity saw that he had sheathed the dagger and slipped his free hand around to cradle her head, stroking her familiar pony tail. She buried her face in the hollow of his neck as his eyes closed.
"Oliver, I love you." she whispered. He only panted in response. "Come back to me. Take me. Right now."
At first, there was no response. "I mean it. Right here against this wall, Oliver Queen," she hissed. All she felt was his breathing as his chest raised and lowered against hers. "I am so ready for this and I think it's a really good idea. Technically we haven't had wall sex yet. We had tapestry sex that one time, which was great, but it didn't count because it was kind of, you know, civilized. And inside. I want dirty, hard, outside wall sex," she panted in his ear. "And I am getting so wet just talking about it. Come back to me, Oliver."
She felt him shift against her. He sighed audibly. "You didn't think tapestry sex counted?"
Felicity bit her lip and smiled. "Well it was good, but you know, not…hard. It could have been dirtier is all I'm saying."
Oliver pulled back and faced her. "How dirty are you going for, exactly?" He moved in to nibble on her soft earlobe, sending heat right through her.
"I hadn't given it that much thought," her head tilted to give him more access to her exposed skin. Oliver started moving his nibbles down towards the area where her neck and clavicle met – the last skin he could reach before her robe started. "Somewhere between filthy and…ah, right there." Her head lolled back and she grinned, grateful that she'd managed to turn him away from the darkness again.
"Okay," was all he said. The next fifteen minutes was a fevered blur. Oliver's body still pinned hers to the wall. He rubbed up his heavy wool uniform up against her. His hands moved to her hips, slipping under her tunic and warming her skin. Next, his fingers zeroed in on her warm breasts and he explored her nipples, discovering all over again how much he enjoyed touching her. He knew his girl appreciated what he was doing because she reacted…enthusiastically. Even in the dimmest light, anyone could tell that his body was pretty pleased as well.
Felicity's hands caressed his short hair while she drew his lips to hers like a magnet. Their tongues grew hotter as they teased and tasted each other. Oliver disengaged from the exchange to focus on getting access between her legs. It wasn't easy. He ended up tugging down several layers of clothing before successfully stripping her bare from the waist down. A button fly in his uniform freed him and soon heated whispers and desperate moans were accompanied by the torrid sounds of needy flesh making contact.
When they finished, Oliver, in a much better mood than when he'd arrived, helped her dress. He stole a few last kisses, one pressed sweetly against her cheek. "So, was that tawdry enough for you, baby?" he whispered into her skin.
"Mmm hmm," her blush was lost in the dark.
"Let's go hit the showers, then," he was ready to retire and relax for the night.
"Wait, before we go back." She grabbed a fistful of his tunic and tugged. Her voice became very quiet, forcing Oliver to listen closely. "You didn't say how things went today."
"You heard most of it."
"Yes, I did. The video failure worked perfectly, by the way. Thank you. I was able to do a lot. Even with Ra's literally breathing down my neck."
"He really does have a thing for you," Oliver shook his head.
"I'm just irresistible to men from all walks of life, Oliver Queen. Better stay attentive."
"I'm not going anywhere," he caught a stray strand of golden hair with his finger and trained it back behind her ear.
"Good." She placed her palm on his chest, feeling for his heartbeat. "Oliver. You had a bad day, didn't you?"
His head dropped forward a little and seemed to get heavier at that moment. "Yes…there were casualties. Not ours."
"You can't be responsible for these lunatics, you know." Felicity found his hand again and resumed her soft play against his knuckles.
"I know. It's just hard."
"We are going to end this craziness soon. I promise." With that, she wrapped her arms around his solid torso and hugged him close with everything she had. "And I always keep my promises, Oliver. Always."
xxXXXxx
Well, things are really starting to heat up with Felicity's plan to undo the League's hold on Oliver. I hope you are enjoying the story! Please do leave a comment if you are inspired.
