Okay, I'm getting the distinct feeling that I'm taking too long for some people. But bear with me, guys: I have a plan. (And I promise you it's more than 12 % done ;-)). I just feel like Oliver needs some more time – and I hope this chapter will explain where he's at. Plus: There needs to be some bromance.

As always my most heartfelt thank you to all the wonderful people supporting this story. I feel like it's really liked and that motivates me so much. So: Thank you! Really: Thank you so much! The biggest hug goes out to my reviewers: sakura-blossom62 (;-) it wouldn't be Felicity, if she had resisted. Gotta love her for giving in.), Sarah (I am afraid the aching will continue a little longer, but SPOLIER ALERT ;-) I promise this FF will get there before the show does. I really hope I manage to improve your work day – which is already pretty good, because: Friday! Yay!), nrdhrd3 (haha, thank you!), Vickstik (I love Quentin, too. He's just a great character. I'm glad we share the same humor, because I managed to amuse myself with some aspects of the last chapter, too. And I am so excited that you liked the interaction between Felicity and Oliver. Because – really – isn't that was this is all about?!), lovelove94 (wow, you caught up with us. Thank you for taking the time to leave a message for each chapter. It's amazing that you like it!) and anja . quickert .9 (:-D - sorry for the misspelling, the doc manager is being complicated). You're all awesome!

5. I don't know what to do with myself (The White Stripes)

It wasn't like he wished for an increase in drug deaths, but he needed some kind of lead to follow to get his hands on the damn Vertigo recipe. It was still out there somewhere in possession of the wrong person. Oliver was sure of that, because anybody who wanted to know the formula of the most dangerous and addictive drug to ever hit the streets had to be the wrong person.

Oliver being the exception, of course. He needed to get his hands on it so that a possible countermeasure could be cooked up.

Felicity had hacked into SCPD servers and gotten a copy of the scan stored there before she had deleted it. But that didn't change the fact that the danger of it was still out there and he couldn't do anything about it.

Not even the fact that things had calmed down at QC could improve his mood. The stock price had shot up, the board members were more than happy, the prognosis for the upcoming corporate year was excellent – and all because Oliver had faked himself a fiancée.

That, in fact, managed to drag his mood down even further. And he didn't even have anybody to hit and distract himself from this and all the other things that were connected with said fake fiancée. But he didn't allow himself to dwell on the latter. Never.

Instead, he had upped his training routine. A lot. He had much energy to vent. His muscles were aching gloriously as he ducked in this moment, avoiding the jab Diggle had just thrown at him. Oliver knew from experience that you didn't want to be hit by that. Staying in his ducked position, Oliver stretched out his leg while rotating about his own aches, trying to knock his friend off his feet. But Diggle anticipated this, jumped up and came down with his fist aiming at Oliver, who rolled around and was behind his friend in the next moment, grabbing him and throwing him onto the mat in one swift movement.

All air was knocked out of Diggle and he needed a moment until he rolled himself onto his back. "Okay, good tackle. Were you a wrestler in high-school?"

Oliver held his hand out to his friend. "No. I learned that later."

Diggle took the offered hand and was standing next to the other man in the next moment. "I should have known." He brought his hand down onto his friend's back. "That's enough workout for today, man."

He was right, Oliver knew. His body told him to call it a night and hit the shower, but Oliver simply wasn't good with having nothing to do.

Suddenly, Felicity's voice sounded from where she sat at her desk, "Detective Lance called."

Oliver moved toward her, sweat glistering on his naked chest. "What did he want?"

"He requested a meeting with the Arrow. He said: the usual place at nine." Knowing that Oliver lost track of time while training, she added, "that's in 30 minutes."

Thank God! It was time to suit up.

"Detective." His deep, electronically changed voice startled Quentin Lance, who had been looking into the opposite direction toward the Starling City skyline.

The wind was shooting over the roof the two man were meeting on. Quite a few steps were separating them as they stood there facing each other, two unlikely allies who had learned to trust each other.

"Damn it! Do you always have to sneak up on people?" Lance snapped now.

"It was you who requested this meeting, Detective."

The other man sighed. "I did. I was hoping you'd have some news you just hadn't felt like sharing yet."

Oliver felt annoyance rise inside him. He had the feeling this meeting wouldn't go as planned. "News on Vertigo, you mean."

"I do. All our tries to figure out who took it out of the safe-deposit box came up empty."

Oliver hated to admit that, but they had faced the same problems. His growing anger was audible even in his distorted voice, "If I had any information, I would have given it to you." He was about to say more, when suddenly Lance's phone rang.

The Detective answered, leaving Oliver no room to snap at him – which was actually a good thing. The Arrow had never lost his cool around Lance, and it was better to keep it that way. The detective turned his back to the other man and walked away. Oliver looked toward where the skyscrapers with the illuminated windows contrasted against the sky and contemplated to just use the moment the Detective was distracted to disappear. Meetings like this were supposed to go according to the Arrow's terms, not the other way round. Everything was messed up lately. Only the possibility that the call Lance was ending right now might present him with something to do kept Oliver on the roof.

Lance still had his phone in his hand when he turned back to the Arrow, looking honestly disturbed. "I have to go."

"What happened?"

"A mass suicide."

Oliver throwing his bow onto the table normally was a clear sign to his partners to leave him alone. But nothing was normal lately, so why was he even surprised when Diggle didn't steer clear of him, but instead walked right up to him. "Your talk with Lance didn't go well?"

"It didn't go ANYWHERE!" Oliver's eyes were hard as he stared at his friend. "He wanted to know, if I had news. He's as much in a dead-end as we are. And then he got a call. Apparently, there was a mass suicide."

"There was," Felicity nodded and motioned toward her screens where Bethany Snow, Starling City's most famous anchorwoman, was visible while the moving letters at the bottom of the screen were reporting ten people dead. A mass suicide – that was a bad thing, but it wasn't something he could do anything about. There was nobody to blame for this, nobody to go after.

Oliver knew that he wasn't good with anger management. He knew he didn't have a healthy way to vent his feelings and that it was way too easy to put him in a bad mood. He knew that when things didn't go his way instantly, he was quick to snap at the wrong people. He knew all this, but that didn't change the fact that he felt like snapping at somebody, because things weren't going his way. Not one minute after he had entered the lair, he grabbed his bow again.

"Where are you going?" Diggle asked.

"I'll check out that mass suicide. That's fishy."

"No, you don't." Diggle dared to step in Oliver's way with his arms crossed over his chest. "You're heading to the shower and then we'll grab a bite to eat." He didn't even let his friend start objecting. "When was the last time you ate? We should all call it a night. It's been a tense few weeks. It's Saturday, we all deserve an evening off."

"Actually..." Felicity got up from her seat. "Thea asked, if I wanted to come to the club tonight. If we called it quits for today, I'd take her up on that. It's been forever since I went out dancing." Her eyes snapped to at Oliver. "I mean apart from gala-dancing, which is more like swaying while standing really close." She visibly flinched, "Not too close, obviously. I really didn't mind us getting close." She closed her eyes, thinking, before she decided, "I cannot save this. Which is why I'll stop talking in 3... 2...1."

Felicity was the only woman who came with her own countdown.

It caused Oliver's heart to beat a little faster without his permission. Acting unfazed, he sent her a quick glance. "You should go out tonight. Have fun with Thea."

"And you'll grab burger with me." Diggle still stared at Oliver. "Get a shower."

Oliver hated that John Diggle always had it all figured out. His friend was always so calm and collected, while Oliver felt like an overstrained mess. And as he sat in their favorite booth of their favorite burger restaurant, while the rain drummed against the windowpane restlessly, he also felt utterly exhausted. His heavy training regime was finally catching up with him as he dared himself to relax for the first time in two weeks.

The waitress had just put their burgers and fries on the table between them. The delicious smell of meat and fat hit Oliver's nostrils, and his stomach rumbled in protest. He hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, which was neither healthy nor unusual for Oliver, and he had to admit that no matter how much he hated it: Diggle always had everything figured out; Oliver really needed this. He took a few fries and stuffed them into his mouth. He chewed, enjoying the taste thoroughly.

This caused John Diggle to chuckle, "Best comfort food there is."

Oliver ignored that, because it hinted at things he didn't want to discuss – even though, he had the distinct feeling that Diggle would push these exact issues. Instead, Oliver looked at his friend who was always there for him. Oliver had sworn to himself that he would take more interest in his friend's life to really live up to all the definitions that friendship included. He had been selfish at first, had taken a lot and given little, but Felicity had rightfully thrown all of this into his face and he had learned his lesson. "Wouldn't you rather spent your Saturday night with Lyla?"

Diggle smiled softly. "She's out of town," he said, adding only one abbreviation as explanation, "A.R.G.U.S."

Oliver reached for his burger. "You said she had doubts about working with them?"

"She does. But it's the kind of job you don't quit so easily."

Oliver nodded, not wanting to say anything to THAT. Instead, he asked, "how are things between you?", before he took a huge bite of his burger.

Again, Diggle smiled. "Well, considering that it's the second try at a relationship with my ex-wife, who's hardly in town, I'd say it works pretty well." Diggle grabbed the bottle of tomato ketchup that stood next to the box of napkins on the table. "Maybe things even work out so well, because we don't see each other that often. It was too much closeness that drove us apart." He unscrewed the lid and looked at the man sitting opposite to him, "not exactly the best basis for a second try."

Oliver swallowed and took a moment to look at his friend. "All you can do it try, Digg."

"That's true." Now Diggle lifted his burger, "and good advice, actually. You should heed that yourself."

Instead of saying anything, Oliver took another bite of his burger and busied himself with chewing.

Diggle didn't follow his example. "Oliver, you're close to self-destruction. All you do it train and work – day and night. You cannot go on like this. You put all your energy onto those non-cases that we have at the moment only to not deal with what's really worrying you."

"I can't." Oliver looked at his partner intently. Without realizing what he was indirectly admitting, he went on, "If I go there, I cannot turn back. And that would be a mistake. I won't get into that."

"Wake up, man! You're in it already. And by the looks of it, you're in it far too deep."

Damn John Diggle for having it all figured out!

Unhappily, Oliver let his burger drop onto his plate and sank back in his seat. He sounded as exhausted as he felt when he said, "My mother wants me to get Felicity an engagement ring. Apparently, I'm making the Queen-family look cheap at the moment."

"That must be worse than the destruction of the Glades."

Oliver didn't react to Diggle's sarcasm. "The damn engagement party is next Friday. That's the ring-deadline. But I can't add a ring to all of this. Giving somebody a ring should mean something." He motioned at the other man across the table, "When you handed that ring to Lyla, it meant something, didn't it?"

"It did."

"Felicity doesn't deserve this. She deserves better! Can you imagine me giving her a ring?"

"After I saw the look on her face when you gave her that dress – yes, man, I can."

Her reaction to that had really been something else. It had caused a warmth to grow inside Oliver that was NOT supposed to be there. And it hadn't been supposed to intensify when he had seen her standing there in that tiny bathroom looking absolutely breath-taking in that damn dress. It had taken his breath away, and to lock this vision out of his mind had been seriously hard.

Why he now dared to strip some of the carefully placed layers of suppression away, he didn't know. Probably because John Diggle had it all figured out and it was better to allow himself an evening of weakness before he really self-destructed. Or maybe it was the utter exhaustion that clawed at his defenses which were normally solidly strong.

A smile played around Diggle's lips. "By the look on your face, so can you."

"That's crazy, Digg."

"What is? The idea of you and Felicity?"

"The idea of Felicity being with me. She needs a nice man, somebody save. Like Barry Allan. He was good for her."

"But she sent him away."

Oliver sighed and leaned his head back, resting it against the bench with his eyes closed.

John Diggle's next sentence caused his eyes to snap open again. "Felicity told Lance that you were a good man." Leaning forward, his forearms resting next to his plate, he continued talking, "Oliver, I'm not saying you should propose to Felicity. Because, please, don't! All I'm saying is that you don't get to decide what's good for Felicity. All you get to decide is what's good for you. And you need to do that and stop this denial-thing you have going on, because it's causing more harm than good."

Oliver stared at his friend, not knowing what to say, not even knowing what to think.

Diggle spared him from really reacting to what he had just said. "Okay. Enough with the girl talk. This is guys' night. I say we eat up and then head back to my place. I have beer and football."

Oliver knew what to say to that. "Football? There's no game tonight."

"No, but I developed the habit of recording games – since I have a night job that keeps me away from my TV regularly."

"Smart," Oliver complimented. "I haven't watched a game in forever."

Diggle smirked and nodded. He turned serious again. "One last thing, you really shouldn't get Felicity a ring under these circumstances. Your mother will get over it. After all she's not wondering why you and Felicity aren't living together."

Oliver sighed. "She doesn't have to wonder; I made it a habit to sleep in the lair."

The other man stared at him. "Okay, that's pathetic. You're crashing at my place tonight."

Thank God for John Diggle having it all figured out.