Chipped Blocks
An Olicity Flash Fic Story
Flash Fic Prompt #34: Lust Muffin & ABSolutely
Chapter Six
Felicity could be his friend. His confidant. His parenting guru. But that was it. That was where Oliver would draw the line – where he had to draw the line, because, no matter what he wanted, he had to do what Felicity, and her daughter, and even Oliver's own son needed. While he was in too deep to get out of the vigilante business at that point, he could decide who else he pulled down along with him, and Felicity and her family would not be on that list.
It would be enough, Oliver was convinced. After last night, after just eating some greasy fast food with another adult and engaging in a genuine, mature conversation, he had felt satisfied. His life was still otherwise a mess, but Oliver had gone home with a weight lifted from his shoulders, and that was without seeking physical comfort from Felicity. If friendship had sustained him then, it would sustain him moving forward.
As Oliver left work, as he blandly tried to pass off the mid-day meeting as a make-up parent/teacher conference to Diggle, as he avoided his bodyguard's inquisitive gaze when they stopped to pick up lunch, and as Oliver made his way down the now bright and airy with the afternoon sun and sounds of a busy high school hallway, he kept repeating this mantra in his head. The more he said it to himself, the more he believed it; and the more he believed it, the more determined Oliver was to see it through. And he'd do so in a way that wouldn't hurt Felicity's feelings or make her think that there was something wrong with her, something that had pushed him away.
But then he walked into her classroom.
Oliver walked into her classroom, and he saw her distant, haunted expression, and he realized that, at some point since he had left her the night before, she had completely forgotten about their lunch-time date.
No, not date. Meeting.
Looking out into the sea of unoccupied computer stations, Felicity appeared to be sightlessly staring at nothing. She certainly didn't hear him approach. Bearing in mind what happened the last time he startled her, Oliver side-eyed the little, portable heater which was tucked safely away behind her desk and took tentative steps. In one hand, she tightly clutched her cell phone, while the other was busy being mauled by her teeth. With her brightly painted nails, Felicity didn't seem like a candidate for that particular nervous habit, but then Oliver noticed that her lips were raw and cracked, bloodied, and long since abandoned in favor of her cuticles. Her anxiety was palpable.
He decided to treat her like a wounded animal. Perhaps it wasn't the most flattering of comparisons, but it was fitting nonetheless. So, taking an indirect route, Oliver skirted the edge of the classroom until he could round the room and approach Felicity directly. Upon entering her line of sight... even if she wasn't actually seeing anything, he made as much noise as possible. He used his entire foot as he stepped forward, especially the heel, and he knocked his hands on top of the computer desks that were to each side of the aisle he was traversing. Finally, just when he was about to throw caution to the wind and say her name, Felicity glanced up from underneath her wet lashes. Oliver could tell that she hadn't cried yet, but it had been quite the struggle to hold the tears back. Although she didn't say anything, he recognized the flicker of awareness that traveled through her features. She knew he was there.
"What's wrong," he immediately asked. Call it rude – after all, they had just met, so it was more than just a little presumptuous to forego all courtesy and just demand her confidence – or call it fatalistic, but, after nearly twenty years of the worst case scenario, Oliver didn't have the patience for and he liked her too much to entertain banal pleasantries or to ignore the obvious. The sooner she told him what had happened, the sooner he could fix it. If someone had hurt her, he would hurt them. After all, that's what he did. But then a stray thought – a little trickle of fear – made Oliver pull up short. What if it wasn't Felicity; what if... "Oh, god. Is it Connor?"
"What?" She shook her head as if to clear away the cobwebs, and, in his own, unexpected worry, Oliver stumbled forward, all grace forgotten in the face of the horrible things that could have befallen his son. It was irrational, but he couldn't... "No." This time, when Felicity shook her head, it was to deny his question, and Oliver felt his heart restart... only to immediately feel like a jerk. "Connor's fine."
"I'm sorry," Oliver apologized. He skirted the corner of Felicity's desk and then perched himself on the edge. With impossibly wide eyes, she looked up at him as he explained, "I shouldn't have just assumed... I mean, if it had been Connor, someone would have called me – either the school, or his mother, or my sister. To just automatically think that you were upset because of my kid, that... was dismissive."
"I'm the one who should be sorry," Felicity shocked him – not because she reached out and braided her right hand with his left but because she was taking the blame. "If you had any idea what kind of parent I thought you were after talking with Connor... Well, let's just say that my glass house has been shattered." She further bowled him over by saying, "if no one has told you this yet, Oliver Queen, let me be the first: you're a good dad. Connor will see that... eventually. And I get it – how you could just automatically think that, when there's something wrong, it's with your kid. Parenthood isn't rational."
"Yeah, but I've only been a parent for a few months. I shouldn't feel this... paranoid all the time, should I?"
"When they placed Mia in my arms for the first time, it was like... whiplash – all the emotions I suddenly felt. And that was with a newborn who had the capability of imprinting upon me."
"Imprinting?," Oliver questioned, chuckling silently under his breath. In his selfish worry for his own child, he was glad that he had been able to bring a little lightness back to Felicity... even if only temporarily.
She ignored him, however, plowing forward with her thought. "I couldn't imagine what it must be like to become a parent to a teenager. A baby has to love you, because they don't know any better yet, but a teenager? There is no tougher crowd than that."
As grateful as he was that he could provide Felicity with a moment of levity and that Connor was alright, he was still concerned about her and what had caused her earlier distress and distraction, why she had been battling back tears all day. Squeezing her hand once in reassurance, Oliver refocused them upon what was wrong. "Why are you upset, Felicity? Who hurt you?"
"I'm not hurt," she immediately protested. But then her pale with apprehension, pale with worry face screwed up in consideration, and Felicity started back-peddling. "I mean, not in the traditional sense. Physically, I'm fine. As for everything else, I guess you could say that I'm hurting, because I'm sad, and I'm disappointed, and I'm scared, and I'm..."
Oliver latched onto that, interrupting her. "You're scared? Scared of what? Who?"
If Felicity noticed his preoccupation with needing a target to focus upon, she didn't react to his insistence or comment upon it. Instead, she stood up, letting go of his hand in order to start pacing. Although she was no longer biting the cuticles of her right hand, she still held tightly to her cell phone. "Mia wasn't in her room this morning."
Oliver breathed a sigh of relief. This he could deal with; this he could handle. Teenage rebellion and promiscuity? Yeah, he was familiar with those. "Say no more. Tell me the kid's name, and I'll take care of this." If he couldn't scare off some teenage punk, then he had no business calling himself a vigilante anymore.
Stopping so abruptly that she rocked forward before regaining her balance, Felicity said, "if only it were that simple, Oliver." Confused, he wrinkled his brow, and Felicity took that as her cue to explain further. "I haven't been entirely... upfront about my relationship with my daughter or, well, about Mia herself, actually. I've hinted that things aren't great between us."
"What parent doesn't have problems with their teenage kid," Oliver offered in reassurance.
She ignored him. "But I haven't told you why. Maybe I was afraid it would scare you off. I've tried dating in the past." Oliver's resolve to remain just Felicity's friend should have had him speaking up then and telling her that their lunch wasn't a date, but, in the face of Felicity's obvious pain and devastation, he had forgotten every last reason he had resigned himself to maintaining a platonic relationship with her. "If I actually managed to find a guy who was alright with me having a teenage daughter, then they immediately broke up with me after they met Mia. Or I confided in them about... the complexity of our lives."
"Does this have something to do with Mia's father," Oliver guessed.
"Yes and no," Felicity answered. Compulsively, she glanced down at her phone's display and then sighed in resignation after confirming that it was still unchanged. Oliver noticed that her hands were now shaking. Refocusing upon him, she dismissed the topic of Mia's father. "But the whys have long since faded in importance, because debating them, trying to understand them, does absolutely nothing in helping me help my daughter." Taking a deep breath, Felicity swallowed thickly. As she pressed forward, she looked everywhere but at him, refusing to meet his gaze. "Oliver, Mia's an addict – has been one now for years. Every single penny I have ever earned and managed to save has been used to get her clean. I've taken out loans to send her to rehab. She's been in and out of treatment facilities since she was thirteen. It's been years since I've recognized my own daughter, but I keep fighting. I keep trying. Because eventually, one day, it's going to stick. Right?"
As his feet ate up the slight distance that separated them, Oliver noticed that Felicity's bloody, bottom lip was once more caught between her teeth. Not knowing what to say, he ineptly settled on simply saying her name. "Felicity..."
"When I went to make sure she was up for school this morning, her door was locked, and she wasn't there. My mom hasn't heard from her in days, and I was so tired when I got home last night that I just went to bed." Starting to panic, starting to yell at herself, Felicity rhetorically asked, finally meeting his eyes, "who does that? What kind of mother doesn't check in on her daughter – her addict of a daughter – every night, no matter what?"
Oliver was familiar enough with self recrimination that he knew better than to try to reassure Felicity in that moment. Instead, he focused upon being proactive. "Where all have you looked for her?"
"I've called the police; I've called all the local hospitals. I tried checking in with the few friends I thought Mia still had only to learn that she, apparently, doesn't have any friends. I've tried shelters, clinics, and every NA and AA meeting location in the city. No one has seen her. Short of going down to the Glades and trying to find her dealer, I'm now just stuck waiting until I hear back from... until she shows up."
There was nothing he could say... which was a good thing, because Oliver was horrible with words. So, instead, he followed his instincts – an entirely different set than those that had made him assume earlier that there was something wrong with Connor – and he pulled Felicity into his embrace, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tight. She didn't look away, and he couldn't have even if he had wanted to. Which he didn't. Noses brushing together, he once more realized just how petite and fragile Felicity was, her strength of personality, until he was actually embracing her, having deceived him. As he held her, Oliver didn't offer her platitudes, or empty promises, or pity. Instead, just as she had made him feel the night before, Oliver tried to show Felicity that she wasn't alone anymore – that he was there for her, that he would continue to be there for her. Unlike everyone else who had entered her life in the past, he wasn't running away. And she seemed to understand what his body was trying to wordlessly communicate, because her shoulders relaxed, and she sighed, and her hands came up to rest against his abdomen.
So, he kissed her. He took her battered lips, and he cradled them between his own, and he didn't let her go... not even when his son entered the classroom, slamming the door behind him.
