Author's Note; I know that it has been a while since I updated, but I'm not going to apologise. I have a life outside of writing, and other things that I've been doing.
Things have been changing quite drastically for me, all exciting changes, which I'm looking forward too, but it hasn't left me with a lot of time to write. Also, my muse has been kind of reluctant to cooperate, which has sucked. Watching the remainder of the season threw me, and I was getting frustrated trying to work my way through mixed thoughts and trying to stay on track with the story, so I decided to take a step back from the story for a while so I could get my head on straight.
Thank you all for your patience! I've not had one person pressuring me to update, which I really appreciate. I've had the occasional 'I really hope you've not abandoned this', but nothing more. Guess that could be taken two ways, but I choose to take it positively :)
Just to let you know, updates on this will be completely irregular, so you will get the occasional surprise. I have a lot of tests/assignments/exams coming up, but will try to keep writing. Because of this, I will make sure each of the updates are roughly 6000 words, if not a bit more.
So please hang in there guys! I really appreciate the support! Read, review, enjoy :) x
Previously in At Least It Wasn't Dirty Dancing:
"So where does that leave us?" She asked, smiling back over at her.
"This leaves us almost back at square one. Maybe square two."
"Square two. I can do that." Sara smiled as she walked through the lounge to the door, Felicity trailing after her. As Sara left, Felicity held the door, getting ready to close it when Sara spoke again.
"Outta curiosity, what square were we on before I fucked it up?"
"Guess we'll find out." She smiled one last time before closing the door.
Felicity wasn't lying when she said that she wouldn't just forget. The remainder of the weekend she spent at home, alone. In a strange way she was thrilled. She missed having her alone time. When she was in college she spent a lot of time by herself, but since moving to Starling, or more precisely since she'd started moonlighting as the vigilantes tech support, she seemed to be swarmed with people all the time. Working in the IT department, originally she had had a cubicle and was very social with those around her. After being moved to an office (she still wasn't sure exactly how that had happened; whether through her own hard work or Oliver's intervention so that his visits to her wouldn't be so public) she had left her door open and people flitted in and out either with problems or just to say hi. Of course since being "promoted" to Oliver's EA upon his return she couldn't avoid people, let alone Oliver and Diggle. The Arrow Cave didn't offer a reprieve either. Most of the time the rest of the team were coming and going as they please, and if she was the only one physically in the Foundry then she was most likely on comms with the others while they were in the field. The only time in her new life that she spent alone alone was when she came home for the night, but that time was all too brief to really appreciate it. She came in, she showered and changed, made herself a cocoa and watched something on her DVR before crawling into bed and sleeping. The next morning she went through her morning ritual to get ready for the day, snagged an apple and a coffee-to-go, and was off again. Her weekends were split between the Foundry, doing her bit to help out the Glades (she alternated working with small businesses based in the Glades helping them get their tech up and running properly, and doing some type of voluntary community service which ranged from helping at any of the homeless shelters or doing physical clean up of the streets), spending time at the gym that Diggle had signed her up to and catching up with friends that she tended to neglect during the week. Contrary to popular belief amongst the team, she did have friends from work and even a couple from college who she kept up with. She no longer went out for casual drinks after work on a Friday with the IT department, but instead she made plans to catch up for coffee with the select few who recognised that her "promotion" was not granted because she was "banging the boss".
In general, she kept herself busy - probably too busy, if she was being completely honest.
Monday was... taxing, starting from her arrival at the office.
Sara pulled up in a taxi as Felicity crossed the courtyard outside the QC building.
"Felicity!"
Turning, she saw the other woman and had a brief moment of immaturity where she was tempted to turn on her heel and keep going, but, remembering their discussion and Sara's attempts to make amends on Saturday night, she thought better of it, choosing instead to stand her ground with a smile on her face.
"Sara. Not your usual spot on a Monday morning," she said, before registering her words. "Not that I know where you typically spend your Monday mornings. Or any mornings, for that matter, and it's really none of my business either, and I'll stop talking. Now."
Sara shook her head, a fond smile on her face. "It's not my usual spot, you're right - that's the clock tower, just so you know – but Ollie asked me to come by."
"Oh. Okay." Felicity wasn't entirely sure why Oliver would call his girlfriend to QC, but that was none of her business either. A moment of awkwardness ensued, with neither blonde being entirely sure how to proceed. "Shall we... head up?" She asked eventually, motioning to the looming building. "You can bypass security and come up the executive elevator with me."
"Sure." Sara took the lead, setting a comfortable pace for Felicity to keep up, even whilst wearing her towering heels. "How was the rest of your weekend?"
"Quiet." Felicity appreciated Sara's attempts to keep things normal, it made it easier to focus on rebuilding their friendship. "Roy spent the rest of his weekend with Sin, I think seeing as he didn't come back to mine, and I just took some 'me' time; caught up on housework, cleared some of my DVR, read a book, I even did some baking."
"You know, sometimes I forget that you have a normal life." Sara's comment wasn't hurtful, more just a mused thought spoken aloud.
"Tell me about it. I do my bit to try and keep things as normal as possible, especially on weekends, but everything still has a tendency to filter in regardless of what I want."
"You should cherish it."
"Oh, I do when I have the time."
The chime of the elevator brought their small talk to an end and they stepped out simultaneously. Felicity quickly crossed to her desk, stashing her personal affects after retrieving her tablet. Taking a bracing breath she pressed the intercom.
"Oliver? Sara's here to see you." She often thought that the intercom was pointless, seeing as the wall separating their work spaces was made of glass, but apparently it was just what was expected of a CEO and secretary, and they had to play their parts.
"Send her in." She allowed herself a moment to appreciate that this side of their interactions were apparently to be spared any awkwardness before glancing up at Sara and giving her a smile.
"You're clear."
"Thanks." Sara tossed over her shoulder as she darted into Oliver's office.
Rather than dwelling on the fact that Diggle, Oliver and Sara were having some kind of animated discussion that was reminding her of why she felt the need to go after the Clock King alone, she turned to her work.
An alert on her tablet drew her back into the real world from the virtual.
0945: Meeting 10 w/ IR
Felicity rolled her eyes. These were usually the worst parts of her Monday; the weekly briefing from Isabitch Rochev. In all honesty it wasn't just the way that the Russian treated her, but it was her whole approach to business. She was cold, hostile, petty, and just plain rude to her, as well as Oliver. But what irked her more was that Oliver just let her. Sure, if she was overly insulting to Felicity Oliver would bring the attention back to himself, but that still left him open to being the other woman's target, something which she still didn't like to watch.
She looked towards Oliver's office and felt a slight twinge in her chest as she saw Diggle chuckling and shaking his head as Oliver eyed Sara with a disbelieving look and Sara smirked mischievously. She couldn't help but notice how attractive the smirk made the assassin look, but she shook her head at her own self-esteem issues.
"Mr Queen, you're expected in the conference room downstairs in 10." She said calmly over the intercom, turning to look into the office again to make sure he got the message and hadn't "accidentally" muted the intercom, which had happened several times since they had taken up their public identities. He looked at her and nodded, letting her know that he got the message, not bothering to reply. She saw Digg looking at her too, so she made sure to give him a smile as she turned back to her work. A couple of minutes later the door from the CEO's office swung open and the trio came out. Digg came to a stop in front of her desk, successfully drawing her attention.
"You heading down too?" He asked.
"No, I've got a few things to do up here, searches to run, papers to file, reports to collate, all that jazz." She smiled, indicating the aforementioned papers and files spread across her desk. Digg nodded, giving her one of his should-be-patented knowing looks.
"I'll see you later Felicity?" Sara inquired from where she and Oliver were now at the elevator bank.
"I don't think so." She replied, trying to detract some of the sting from the rejection with a small smile.
"Fair 'nugh," the other woman smiled too before stepping into the elevator. Felicity didn't miss the hurt look that Oliver threw her way before he followed his girlfriend in.
"Shouldn't you be shadowing him?" Felicity asked Digg, who remained posted in front of her desk.
"Yeah," Digg snorted, taking a seat on one of the guest chairs opposite her, "'Cos he needs a shadow."
"Isn't that your job? At least to the public?" She tried again, knowing it wouldn't help her cause.
"Yes. But since we're in a secure building it's not strange that I'm not with him all the time. In fact, it's expected." He actually sounded smug at his reasoning, which caused Felicity to roll her eyes. They may be grown ups, but they still took joy in the simple things like pulling one over on one another. Digg took extra pleasure in it due to her 'unfair advantage of having a genius IQ', as he'd put it one day.
"Fine, but couldn't you be making yourself useful with security somewhere?" She retorted, sticking her tongue out. She had a point, but knew it was still futile.
"I am. I'm protecting the executive floor. Big responsibility that."
"Yeah. Big. Not like the CEO is probably more capable than you at protecting himself."
"Er, ouch!" Digg cried in mock outrage, glaring at her. She gave him an exaggeratedly innocent look, all fluttering lashes over wide blue eyes and a simple smile, knowing that he would let it drop. He'd let it be known once while trying to diffuse yet another argument between herself and Oliver that he himself could never argue with her 'doe-y eyed innocence'.
"But seriously, John, I do have work to do. I need to catch up with the things that I missed while not at the Foundry this weekend, and get some things running seeing as I'm not planning on coming in for a couple more days unless there's an emergency."
"And I get that, I do," he started, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his knees so he could catch her eye, "But you need to know that we are not going to be avoiding all this and that I think we all need to have a sit down, get everything straight. Or at least you and Oliver need to."
"I'm not ready for that, John," Felicity sighed, fiddling with some of the papers on her desk.
"I see you and Sara talked," he said, temporarily letting that line of questioning drop.
"She came by Saturday night with wine. We talked."
"And?" He asked after a pause, his tone leading.
"And I got her side of the story, as much of it that she could tell me anyway, and I told her that I'll forgive her but I'm not just going to forget. She's going to have to earn back my trust. So's he for that matter," she sighed, giving Digg a tired smile. She was really tired of rehashing all this. She just wanted time to wallow in it for a while, before having to deal with the consequences of her outburst.
"Okay, Felicity." Diggle must have sensed her reluctance to continue the conversation, because he let it drop, sitting back and let her get lost in her work.
A plastic container with a Caesar salad and plastic utensils being placed carefully on her desk startled Felicity from her work. Glancing up she saw Oliver looking at her carefully, as if she might suddenly detonate.
"You worked through lunch," he said quietly before turning to go back to his office.
"Thank you!" She called after him, realizing that she hadn't acknowledged him expect for over the intercom all day. He stopped in the doorway to his office and turned to face her.
"You're welcome," he murmured, allowing the corners of his mouth to twitch. As cliché as it was, her full attention was focused on him. In that moment she could see his unexpressed plea for forgiveness, the guilt that he always harboured, and all the hurt that she caused him with her speech the other night. She didn't know what her own expression was telling him, but if she had to hazard a guess, it would be something along the lines of her own pain at his betrayal, her guilt for causing him more pain, understanding of why it had happened, but also her hesitance to forgive.
The abrupt ringing of the phone on her desk brought them out of the moment. She cleared her throat and picked up the receiver with a shaking hand.
"Mr Queen's office."
"Miss Smoak? There's a Roy Harper here to see you?" The officer on the security desk in the lobby asked.
"Oh, okay. Yeah, send him up." Glancing up she saw that Oliver had disappeared back into his office and was now sitting at his desk, full attention on the computer in front of him.
The elevator arrived and delivered Roy. The young man looked exceptionally uncomfortable to be there, which immediately made her worry.
"Everything okay, Harper?" She asked, walking around to meet him halfway across the antechamber of the executive suite.
"What? Oh, no, yeah, everything's fine. I just thought I'd stop by and see if the offer was still on the table." Roy said, pointedly not looking towards Oliver's office.
"Give me a minute," she said, crossing back to her desk to snag her cardigan from the back of the chair. She looked at the intercom before deciding against it. She poked her head into Oliver's office, clearing her throat to draw his attention.
"Oliver? I'm just going to step out for a couple of minutes."
"Everything okay?" He asked immediately, pushing back from the desk as if getting ready to rise.
"Yeah. Roy just stopped by for a moment," she smiled, reassuring him that she wasn't in trouble.
"Roy?" He asked, standing, "I've been trying to get a hold of him. He hasn't been at the Foundry-"
"Oliver, that's probably not a good idea," she interrupted, holding her hands up to stop his approach before glancing back over her shoulder towards where Roy was now standing with his back to her at the elevator doors, "He's not exactly happy with you at the moment. He needs time to cool off. I'm just going to grab a coffee. I'll be back in 20. You have a conference call with the Applied Sciences department from Luthor Corp in 15." She gave him one last smile before ducking out, not giving him time to counter.
"Queen not happy you're running around with a criminal?" Roy asked as she joined him, pressing the button to open the executive elevator doors.
"Oliver isn't in a position to be telling me who I can hang out with." She replied tersely, letting him know with her tone that they were not doing this. They fell silent for the rest of the ride, and while they were crossing the lobby. Felicity parted ways with him briefly to order a coffee from the vendor that was always stationed in the courtyard. When she got back Roy was chowing down on a roll that she assumed had been in his backpack that was slung over one shoulder.
"So when you asked about the offer I'm assuming you meant the offer to move in to my place," she said, getting right down to business. Roy chewed slowly and swallowed, taking his time before he answered.
"Yeah."
"Of course it is," she smiled, taking a sip of her coffee, "Can I ask why you decided to take me up on it? Cos the offer is not on the table still if it's only because you want to protect me from Slade."
"That's a bonus," he said, taking a sip from his own drink he pulled from his bag, "But that's not the main reason." He paused, seeming reluctant to continue.
"Is it about Thea?" She asked gently, laying a hand over his fist that was balled on his thigh, feeling the slight tremble.
"I guess, yeah." He sighed, glancing at her out the corner of his eye and giving her a weak smile. "When I went back to my place on Saturday to spend time with Sin, seeing it empty of her stuff, it was... painful. Everywhere I looked I just saw what was missing, all of her things that were missing..." He trailed off, the shaking in his hands becoming more violent. Felicity scooted closer to him and wrapped the arm that had been on his fist around him, giving him a squeeze before laying her head on his shoulder.
"Then mi casa et su casa," she said softly, hoping to calm his temper slightly like she had when she dragged him back to her place after he broke up with Thea. He sighed heavily but dropped his head to rest against hers. Silence descended on them, and they sat like that for a while before sitting up, him finishing his lunch and her her coffee.
"You need a hand packing up your place?" She asked eventually, standing as she did – her 20 minutes were up. He shook his head.
"Me and Sin spent the weekend doing it."
"Sin and I," she corrected with a smirk.
"Whatever," he huffed, but his grin let her know that he was only teasing. "So can I bring my stuff over tonight?"
"You still have a key?" She asked, tossing her empty coffee cup. He nodded. "Then no need to wait for me to get home."
"Any requests for dinner?" He asked casually, standing and pulling his backpack on properly.
"Your choice, Harper," she smiled stepping in and kissing his cheek quickly before ruffling his hair. He scowled at her, but there was no heat behind it.
"Then I'll see you at home, Flick." He said, as she re-entered the office.
The first thing Felicity saw when she got home that night was the pile of boxes spilling out of the spare room and into the entryway. For the most part, they were still full, making her smile.
"Hey Harper!" She called, hanging her coat up and kicking off her shoes before venturing into the lounge, "If you moved in at lunch time why are there still full boxes?"
Roy was in the kitchen stirring something on her stove top. He looked at her and rolled his eyes, but a smile was on his face all the same.
"There are still packed boxes because I didn't know where to put that stuff. I didn't know if it was okay to spread my stuff out."
"Of course it is," she smiled, joining him in the kitchen and collecting a wine glass and the bottle of wine Sara had brought by on Saturday night, "I meant what I said at lunch. Mi casa et su casa."
"Ignoring the fact that neither of us actually speak Spanish," Roy smirked, turning his attention away from the food to face her as she poured her wine, "We need to sit down and have a proper conversation about the practicalities of this."
"Okay. Like what?" She asked, getting out of his way and sitting at the dining room table.
"Like... rent. I'm not taking charity," he said firmly.
"Fair enough," she nodded. She knew Roy wouldn't want to take charity. He was almost as proud as Oliver, and was most certainly as stubborn. In fact, their similarities were, she thought, perhaps why they didn't got on most of the time.
"But food first," Roy said, tipping out the contents of the saucepan into a serving bowl.
"Roy, what is that?" She asked, sniffing the air, "It smells divine!"
"It's just an old soup recipe." He shrugged, ladling out a spoonful for her and placing it in front of her gently.
"Where on Earth did you learn how to cook, Roy? Everything you make is some degree of fabulous," she asked, only partly flattering. The other part was genuinely curious. From what she knew of Roy's home life growing up he didn't exactly have someone to teach him how to cook. He shrugged again and she was about to change the topic when he spoke up.
"Shelters mostly. I would head in early for meals and they would get me doing stuff around the kitchens to help out."
"Well, it was a good decision," she smiled, bringing the topic to a gentle close. In the short amount of time they'd spent together they seemed to have to a silent agreement that childhoods were a topic they'd rather steer clear of for the most part. Hers was tainted by an absent father and a mother who worked more than she was present in her daughters life out of necessity, and the brief glimpse of his she had got from the background research she'd done when he'd been taken by that maniac the previous year showed that his childhood was the other side of the coin from her own. If she hadn't had the mother that she did she would probably have ended up in the same situation as him. Honestly, that was a huge part of the reason that she ended up bringing him home that night.
The next few hours were passed in companionable silence. They ate, she did the dishes while he squared his room away some, then she made them both coffee and they migrated to the lounge. Sitting on the couch together she snagged her tablet from the coffee table and opened a document.
"So first things first," Roy started turning so he was facing her, "I said it earlier, but it needs to be said again: I won't accept charity. I know I'm jobless at the moment, but I'm going to start looking tomorrow morning. I do have enough saved to cover me until then."
"That's fine," she smiled, sipping her coffee. He nodded, obviously glad that she wasn't going to try and bull doze him.
"Rent. What were you thinking?"
"Honestly," she said, finishing her coffee in one gulp and putting the empty mug on the coffee table, "The house is mine completely, no mortgage or anything-"
"Seriously? How much does Oliver pay you?" Roy interrupted sounding slightly incredulous. She couldn't blame him. She was under 30 with a house that she didn't have a mortgage on. It was unheard of.
"It wasn't Oliver," she smirked, kicking his leg playfully, "Being the only grandchild when my Nonna passed away while I was at college I got a fairly decent inheritance."
"Only grandchild, huh," he said, giving her foot a brief tickle before releasing it.
"Yup. Anyway, back to rent. Cos I don't have to cover the mortgage I would suggest something around $250 a week?" She asked, smiling at him tentatively. In all honesty she had no idea. $250 was what she had paid for her hole-in-the-wall while at MIT, so it was the only figure she had to go off. It was probably on the low side, but whatever.
"That sounds low, Felicity," he huffed, crossing his arms over his chest, "I said no charity."
"It's not charity!" She exclaimed, kicking him again, "I have no idea what I'm supposed to charge for rent! That's what I paid in college, so we'll just go with that."
"Fine." He ground out, teeth obviously clenched.
"Settled then. Rent $250/week," she mumbled as she typed the agreement out on her laptop.
"It's only fair we go 50:50 on the bills, water, gas, etc, then." He said, his tone letting her know that he would not be budging on this.
"50:50," she agreed, adding that to her notes.
"What else?" He asked, finishing his coffee.
"Chores and cooking," she smiled.
"I don't mind cooking until I get a job," Roy said, smiling as she bounced happily in her seat.
"Yum!" She grinned happily adding that to the agreement. "Do we really have to do a chores list?" She asked after a moment of deliberation, "I mean, we're both grown ups, we know how to do cleaning, we've both lived by ourselves. It's common sense."
Roy shrugged, nodding in agreement.
"Anything else?" She asked, thinking on her own, "I know it's a Mini, but you're welcome to use Martha if I don't need to."
"Flick, I'm not gonna take your car," he sighed, shaking his head.
"I didn't say anything about taking it!" She shook her head at his stubbornness, "I'm just saying, it's there if you wanted to use it while I'm not. I'd rather have you use my car than 'borrow' someone else's without permission," she joked. She had heard from Oliver about Roy's tendency to 'borrow' cars if he was desperate. Roy growled at her, but when he didn't protest again she made a quick note of it on the agreement.
"I think that's everything then," Roy said.
"Yup," she smiled, saving the document and depositing her tablet back on the table, "You want a hand finishing to unpack?"
"Erm, sure. I don't know where I can put some stuff," he said, standing and pulling her up too.
Looking at the remaining boxes in her entryway she raised an eyebrow at her new room mate.
"You ever hear about labelling boxes when your packing?"
"We started to," he said defensively, showing her a flattened box that had 'bedroom' scrawled across it messily.
"Uh huh."
"We just got bored of it..." He shrugged, and slit the packing tape with a pocket knife. She pulled one of the flaps back and saw that it contained what looked like a jumble of free weights, wires, shoes, books, and some other not so easily identified things.
"Are you sure? Or was it that you got bored of actually being organized in your packing and didn't know how to label the boxes anymore?" She asked with a raised eye brow and a cheeky smirk. Roy's ears were as red as the hoodie currently hanging up on the clothing rack in the entryway, making her laugh out loud. She's never actually seen someone that embarrassed before. "No wonder you couldn't work out where you could unpack things."
"Yeah, yeah, okay." He grimaced, tossing an odd sock at her that he'd just pulled out of another box. She laughed, but went back to her own box. She pulled things out and laid them out on the hallway floor, hoping to get an idea of what it was exactly that she was looking at. Roy followed her lead and soon they had all of the boxes unpacked, the contents spread over the floor, leaving the two of them stood in the open doorway to the guest room, surveying the damage.
"Right. So, what things here do you want in your room?" She asked, hoping that that would give them a good starting place.
"I can put the lights in my room," he offered, picking up the coiled lights (almost faerie lights) which had what looked like chilli peppers dangling from them, and a red neon puma-looking light, "I don't think they'll go anywhere out here anyway."
"Sounds good," she said, helping him gather up leads and various other lights, "You want the signs too?" There were several old road signs, as well as caution, bio-hazard and a few other ones.
"Yeah, sure," he tossed over his shoulder. She followed him into what had once been her guest room, but was now strewn with the basic belongings of a young man in his early 20s. One thing in particular caught her eye: a hula dancing figurine on the dresser.
"Er, Roy. What's this?" She asked, trading the signs for it.
"Oh, it's nothing. Stupid." He said, trying to side step her and go out the door again.
"Now you've got me really curious."
"Flick, it's nothing." There was something in his tone that made her pause. It wasn't like he was warning her off, or that he was embarrassed per se, it was more nostalgic than that.
"Is it- Was it from your parents?" She asked quietly, putting the figurine back down and following him back out to the hall. He was silent for a while, and she thought he was going to ignore it until he spoke up again.
"I was nine when they left," he started quietly, sitting down heavily on the floor with his back against the wall, "They left me with my Mum's brother – he was a worker in the Queen Steel Factory. Ironic, huh." She sank down the wall opposite him, giving him a grim little smile as she did. She honestly hadn't expected him to talk, but if he wanted to open up she wasn't going to stop him. "I don't know where they went. All I know is that there would be the occasional card for me in the mail on my birthday. Some generic 'Happy Birthday' on the front, like they couldn't even be bothered trying to remember how old I was. They never really said anything. 'Dear Roy, Happy Birthday. Love M & D.' Then, when I was about 12 there was this hula doll in a package. No card. No message. Just the doll. The only way I knew it was from them was I recognised the handwriting on the wrapping. That's the last I heard from them. My uncle stopped getting money from them, and then Queen closed the factory and it was too much, too expensive, and Uncle T threw me out."
"So you were on the streets from when you were 12?" Felicity asked, almost not wanting the answer.
"Yeah." His tone was bitter, understandably, but Felicity didn't know if she could say anything to make it better. The silence that consumed them was thick.
"I was 4 when my Dad walked out." The words surprised her. Telling Diggle was inevitable – he was closer to her than her own mother. Telling Roy? She would never have guessed that happening in a million years when she'd first looked into the troubled young man. Now though, she realized that he was quickly becoming as important to her as Digg. "Mum and Dad had been fighting a lot, I don't know what over, but even a four year old couldn't not notice the way that they went from being fine one morning, to silent at dinner, and then after they'd put me to bed, I would wake up to screaming and shouting. I used to hide under my bed with my blanket. Mum could never work out why I was there when she came to wake me up in the mornings, but I think I managed to convince myself that it was a scary monster that came into out house each night." At that Roy gave a quiet huff of laughter and she glared at him. "Hey, I may be a genius, but I was still a four year old child. Anyway. One morning I woke up to the screaming and I was confused. I mean, monsters only come out at night, right? But then I remember hearing my mother's voice saying, 'well go then'. Doors were slammed, something sounded like glass breaking, and then nothing. I remember running out to the hall and seeing my dad at the front door with a big suitcase and my mum was on the floor surrounded by broken glass, and she was crying. I'd never seen my mum cry before. She'd never let me see that. But there she was on the floor, crying. You know, some days, I think that if he didn't turn around, if he didn't turn back and see me standing there in the hallway, that it would be better, that it would make things easier somehow."
"It wouldn't." Roy's voice was void of emotion.
A silence came over the two of them. They stayed where they sat, on opposite sides of her hallway, both leaning against their respective walls. It was heavy. Uncomfortable. But neither of them did anything to alleviate it.
Oliver's POV:
The day had been uncomfortable. It felt like a physical weight pressing on his chest. He couldn't quite catch his breath whenever he caught sight of her sitting so stiffly at her desk. He'd seen from the moment she came in with Sara how uncomfortable she was. There was no one particular thing she did or said; it was more how she held herself, her body language. Where she was usually loose and relaxed, always gesticulating. But this morning she was stood a little straighter, more rigid. Her hands weren't flying everywhere. And then when he, Sara and Diggle were in his office he kept catching glimpses of her in the ante office. She radiated hurt.
And there was nothing he could do about it. He'd caused it. And he would keep causing it. She would be better off away from him. While he wasn't entirely comfortable with the arrangement, having Roy move into her little town house was one way to ensure that Slade wasn't going to get to her. Better, probably, than having Digg watch her place every night. He knew that Roy wouldn't let anything happen to her. If anything it allowed for him to focus all the control and attention that he had placed on Thea onto Felicity, to protect her. Of course, he wasn't going to just leave it. Like he said, he wasn't exactly comfortable with the arrangement. He would be lying if he said that he wasn't going to watch her place every other night just to make sure. To make sure that she was safe, from friend and foe.
"You okay?" Sara stood in front of him, arms crossed over her chest. He heaved a sigh, looking down at her. For a moment he was distracted at how much shorter she always seemed compared to another blonde woman in his life, but he knew Felicity only seemed taller because of the crazy heels that she loved so much. Catching himself thinking about her again, he shook his head quickly before Sara's question registered and he realised how his head shake could be construed.
"Sorry. Yeah, no, I'm fine." He sighed, his hands coming up and scrubbing over his face. He wasn't fine.
"You're not." Sara's words were unexpected. He at her sharply, his brows drawn together in a frown. "Oliver, it doesn't take a genius to work out that you're not fine. And that's okay."
"Sara, wha-"
"Look, Slade coming back, Roy being injected, Thea, your mother, me and Laurel; you have so much to deal with right now. This thing with Felicity can't be helping, and I'm sorry that it was my interfering that caused it, but you need to work it out. If not for her sake then for yours, or even the teams. You know that nothing has been going right the last couple of nights because we haven't had her there on comms."
Oliver stared at her. She was right. He did have a lot on his plate, but there was something that she hadn't got quite right – it wasn't just her fault that caused his problem with Felicity. It was his. After everything she had thrown at him the previous Friday (God, was it just Friday?) he had felt drained. He'd spent all weekend just thinking through everything.
He'd tried to distract himself. He'd tried training, punishing himself on the salmon ladder before he remembered how she used to watch him and that had brought everything back. He'd tried helping Thea with stuff at Verdant, but since she'd broken up with Roy she hadn't really wanted the company. He'd even tried distracting himself with QC work, but that had been a long shot. Not only could he just not engage with the reports he was supposed to be reading, but everything had her handwriting scrawled on it, comments left on brightly coloured Post-It notes, changes to figures or the occasional grammatical correction, even little doodles she'd sketched in the margins when they'd been in meetings. (Her artistic talent was something that had surprised him when he'd seen the first sketch, and when he'd asked her about it she'd flushed and babbled something about keeping herself entertained in classes that were just not challenging enough.)
Sara's fingers tangling with his pulled him out of his musings.
"I think you should just take the night off. Things have been relatively quiet. I'll head out and do a patrol and Digg can be backup. You can man the comms if you feel the need to, but you've been working yourself to exhaustion lately. Just take the night. Relax a little."
"Sara, when have you ever known me to relax?" He asked with a rueful smile.
"You used to relax just fine."
"Yeah. Well before I was an selfish jerk who didn't care about anyone or anything." He winced when his words registered. "Sorry."
"No, it's okay." She smiled, standing on her toes to give him a quick kiss. "But I meant it. Take the night off."
"Fine." He sighed, pressing a quick kiss to her forehead before he turned and headed to the lair bathroom, knowing that he was going to be straight onto the salmon ladder as soon as Sara and Digg were gone.