Chipped Blocks
An Olicity Flash Fic Story
Flash Fic Prompt #39: Crashed
Chapter Eleven
When someone knocked on her door now, Felicity didn't automatically, despite common sense, hope that it was Mia, apparently having forgotten her keys when she ran off almost a week ago. And, when she opened the door to find Oliver standing on her doorstep, she no longer felt a wave of disappointment flood her chest. Just because she still wanted her daughter to come home, it didn't mean that she wasn't pleased to see her new friend.
Or maybe they were officially dating now? Felicity really wasn't sure.
It didn't matter that, six days into Mia's latest disappearance, the last thing Felicity should have been thinking about was her relationship status. But it was hard to shut down her thoughts, her feelings. If she closed her heart off, then she'd be numb to everything – not just Oliver but also Mia, too. To feel her sorrow and her grief over her daughter running away, Felicity also had to allow herself to be open towards feeling other emotions as well, and those other emotions were dominated by Oliver's sudden yet somehow not awkward presence in her life.
He gave her hope – hope that she desperately needed – and not just about Mia either. Oh, he was still out searching for her daughter. He claimed that it was his associate, Mr. Diggle, who was leading their investigation, but she could see the exhaustion underlying his movements, his smiles of reassurance; she could see the weariness pulling on his body. When Oliver updated her on the search's progress... or, more precisely, lack thereof, sometimes, his pronouns would slip. The 'he' would become a 'we', and, the longer Mia was missing... and the more exhausted they all became, the more often Oliver would falter in his ruse, regretfully telling her, 'I don't know what else to do, Felicity.'
Quite frankly, she didn't either. At this point, she had all but accepted the fact that their success rested solely upon Mia's tiny shoulders. If they were going to find her daughter, it was because Mia wanted to be found, because she came home on her own. That didn't mean that Felicity stopped looking, that she stopped making calls, that she gave up. She would never give up on her daughter, and the effort would never be in futility, because she had to try – for Mia's sake... and for her own.
Opening her door, Felicity paused momentarily to just... look at Oliver. As he smiled down upon her – the gesture warm with affection yet cloudy with guilt (she knew he felt like he was failing her because he had yet to find her daughter), she found herself returning the silent greeting, though her guilt came from knowing she had made his life just that much more complicated. When too much time stretched by and she started to feel embarrassed, Felicity bit her still bruised bottom lip, flushed with shyness, and glanced away. "Hi," she whispered, backing away and moving to the side so that he could properly enter her apartment.
Only... Oliver wouldn't allow her to hide from him – not even for a moment. With the door still wide open, he stopped before her. Although she had recognized that very first night just how much bigger he was than her, it was in that moment – Felicity leaning back against her front door, her right hand twisted behind her to still hold the doorknob, while her left hand held tightly to her silent, seemingly always silent, cell phone – that the disparity between their sizes really sunk in for her. Oliver wasn't massive. He was tall but not by basketball standards; he was certainly fit, but she had met Mr. Diggle once this past week to provide him with pictures of Mia, so Felicity knew Oliver wasn't alone in his muscularity. But he had this commanding presence about him, and, combined with the attraction she felt towards him, Oliver could swallow a room, make everything and everyone else disappear.
It made Felicity want to crawl inside of him and just... stay there. Forever.
His grin turned into a smirk... as if he could sense what she was thinking. At least, Felicity hoped he was sensing and not actually hearing, but she was pretty sure – call it a solid 86% conviction rate – that she hadn't said any of that out loud. Thanks to motherhood, that was the one thing that had improved when it came to her mouth. Mia had been too smart for Felicity's own good from a very early age, and mimicking had been one of her favorite amusements. While Felicity was still prone to babbling (and, apparently, her slang was grossly outdated), raising Mia had trained her to keep much of what she thought trapped inside of her own mind... despite what their first meeting might lead Oliver to believe.
"Hello, Felicity," Oliver returned. It wasn't until he kept talking that Felicity both realized why he had been smirking and that her mommy filter had not actually failed her. Even as his words of explanation slipped past his lips, she felt her phone being dragged away from her fingers. "I'll just take this..."
Her reaction was automatic. "But I need it."
"What you need is a break," Oliver corrected her. If his hand didn't wander back to and then linger on her own, she would have felt chastised. Instead, she recognized his need to take care of her – that he was worried about her, that he wanted her, but this wasn't the right time, and he was going to show her by making sure that she was alright. For the first time in far too long, Oliver made her heart ache in the good way. "You need to eat something, get some rest."
"I can't rest, because resting means stopping." As she argued with him, Oliver pried her fist off of the handle, closing and locking the door behind him. As she argued with him, Oliver somehow ushered her further into her own home, into her living room, and down so that she was sitting on the couch. "And stopping means..."
"It's not giving up, Felicity." When she went to protest, he stopped her by saying, "no one's giving up, but you're drained."
"So are you," she pointed out.
"I am tired," he acknowledged her point, but then Oliver continued to make his own. "But I've been eating three square meals a day. And I'm not out there alone. I have help." Felicity had a sneaking suspicion that, even when Oliver wasn't out there, as he said, he was still helping with the search. "And, when I go to work in the morning after a sleepless night, I'm not responsible for a bunch of teenagers. If I want to sit alone in my office all day, I can; if I need to take a nap during my lunch break, I do." Until that point, Oliver had been standing before her – still holding her left hand in his while looking down at her, his face tight with worry. But then he lowered himself to sit on the couch beside her, angling his body so that he was facing her. "Frankly, I don't know how you're still standing."
Without actually meaning to, Felicity's gaze skipped around the bright and cluttered, messy room, landing upon the dozens – and, no, she wasn't exaggerating – of empty and abandoned coffee cups. In that moment, she realized that it was ridiculous for one person to own so many mugs, especially when it wasn't like she was hosting book club Tuesdays or making them as a hobby. It was Oliver's resigned, "right. Well, that explains it then," that returned Felicity's fuzzy concentration and attention back to the man beside her.
Standing and already moving towards her kitchen, he announced, "food first, then."
Even the thought of eating, though, made Felicity nauseous. While she recognized what that meant – her body had gone too long without sustenance, it didn't change the fact that she just didn't have the energy to deal with being sick. "Oliver," she called after him. He paused in the doorway, turned, his hands braced against the trim on either side. "I... can't. I just... please."
Felicity could see that he wanted to fight her, but he didn't. Instead, he sighed and nodded his acceptance. However, Oliver didn't back down entirely. "A compromise, then?"
He was adorable... in a frustrating, almost heavy-handed sort of way, and Felicity found that she really wanted to kiss him. Well, actually, what she really wanted was to go to bed with him. And, yes, she meant bed. As in to sleep, preferably with Mia safe and sound down the hall in her own room. Then, after a good eight hundred hours of rest, would come the kissing. Lots of kissing. And not just on the mouth. And maybe not just kissing.
It was Oliver's worried, "Felicity?," which pulled her from her... thoughts.
"Huh?"
She was still shaking her head to clear her mind enough to focus when Oliver said, "what about something other than coffee to drink instead?"
"Yeah. Sure." Blinking a few times, because, yeah, she really needed to clear the images from her mind and her eyes as well, Felicity accepted his offer. "Something to drink. I could do that."
Then, with a small, appreciative smile and a nod, Oliver was gone. As she listened to him move around her basically unused kitchen – she stored things in it... and not just food and dishes, so she'd have to go in their occasionally to make her morning bagel or find a computer part when operating on a sick baby, but she and cooking were an arson charge waiting to happen, Felicity found herself restless. Which was absurd. Because she knew that restlessness stemmed from missing Oliver, from wanting to be with him while he reenacted Old Mother Hubbard, and she knew he wouldn't be gone long, because his options were pretty much limited to water and milk since coffee was unfortunately off the menu. Despite this, though, despite knowing that her desires weren't rational, Felicity found herself standing up and following Oliver.
As she shuffled her way into the kitchen, she found him stirring a small pan on her stove, and she had to admit, even if only to herself, that the image did nothing to keep her earlier thoughts at bay. "Even if it's only broth, Oliver, and I drink it, it's still considered food."
He chuckled and motioned her over to join him at the stove. He was a brave man. As Felicity peered around his shoulder, he revealed, "it's hot chocolate."
It didn't look like chocolate to her, and, if there was one thing Felicity knew... well, besides coffee and computers, it was chocolate. "It's white."
"This is just the milk," Oliver explained... though that didn't explain anything, because even Felicity could make hot chocolate, and all it took was a mug of water in the microwave for 60 seconds and a packet of hot chocolate mix. Just as she was about to ask for further clarification, Felicity gasped in surprise. One minute Oliver was stirring, and the next he was wrapping his very large, very calloused (huh, she wouldn't have thought callouses would feel so... nice) hands around her waist (and, wait, when did her t-shirt ride up enough so that she could feel those lovely callouses?) and lifting her to sit on her kitchen counter... as if she weighed no more than a MacBook Air.
She was still going to voice her questions until Oliver's hands fell from her waist... only to land upon her knees. Well, one of his hands – his left – kept brushing against the bare skin of one of her knees... and sometimes her lower thigh, left bare by her shorts, as well, while the other returned to his wooden spoon. Even though his actions made Felicity forcefully clamp her mouth shut – she didn't want him to stop, and she didn't want to say the wrong thing, and she was also really at a loss for words at that point, Oliver seemed to sense her confusion without it being voiced, and he began to slowly talk to her. (The fact that he had to dump all the extra screws Felicity kept in the pot out onto the counter and then wipe the pan out before using it might have given her kitchen cluelessness away. Maybe.)
"Growing up, I wasn't much for hot chocolate. I preferred cider. But Thea loved it. Even though I didn't drink it myself, I spent enough winter afternoons in the kitchen with Raisa and my sister to never forget how to make hot chocolate. But only from scratch. I didn't even realize you could buy mix in packets until... well, until I started dating." An uncomfortable cough later, and Oliver continued. "It's simple, really. Just milk, and sugar, and cocoa, and a tiny pinch of salt. Sometimes, Thea would have Raisa add marshmallows." Oliver looked away from the pan, asked her, "do you like marshmallows?"
"I like the fluff. It's a movie night staple for Mia and I... or, at least, it used to be when she'd actually stay in the same room with me long enough to watch a movie." Not wanting to ruin the moment they were sharing, Felicity quickly pushed the thought of her daughter's animosity aside. "And I like s'mores, Lucky Charms, Rice Crispy Treats. But you're not going to find any marshmallows in my cupboards, Oliver. In fact," and she frowned at the realization, "you're probably not going to find cocoa either. And I'm not drinking plain warm milk."
"You have it." At her dubious look, Oliver laughed. "Trust me, I was surprised as well."
"Huh. It must have been something Mia..." Felicity's words died in her throat. Despite the spasm of guilt that she had to swallow, she refused to finish her thought, because she just needed a few minutes without her daughter – just her, and Oliver, and them together. Maybe it made her a bad mother, maybe it made her a selfish mother, but she was more than just Mia's mom; she was also a woman, and it had been so long since she had someone in her life to remind her of that fact. And Oliver did just that – Oliver, his touch upon her skin, his body next to hers, his concern, his smiles, and his hot chocolate. Needing a distraction and genuinely wanting to know more about him, Felicity requested, "tell me more about your sister. Or Raisa. Was she your nanny?"
And so Oliver did just that. As he continued to make her hot chocolate, he explained how Raisa was more than just her title (whatever that may have been), her job, and how, even to that day, she was still a part of his life, that she still worked for him. As he transferred the heated up milk into yet another oversized mug and then added cocoa, and sugar, and what he called 'a pinch of salt' – somehow just knowing the amounts without actually having to measure, Oliver revealed that his sister now knew about them, that they were... a part of each other's lives. And that she wasn't too happy about that fact. And, as Felicity slowly savored the most delicious hot chocolate she had ever tasted (it was official: those mix packets would no longer cut it; Oliver would always have to make her hot chocolate from now on), he told her that, although Thea refused to help him help her by staying with Connor at night, his brother-in-law, Roy, had joined their search, pulling shifts day and night to assist.
By the time Felicity was lapping up the last drops of her drink, she was yawning and fighting to keep her eyes open. "Did you slip me a mickey or something?"
Oliver chuckled. "What?"
"Because I happen to know for a fact..." Felicity had to pause in order to yawn... which ended in a snuffle that would have been mortifying had she not been so tired. " … warm milk has not been scientifically proven to make people sleepy."
"You watched me make your hot chocolate, Felicity. I didn't put anything in it." Oliver came to stand before her, his arms going to her sides to cage her in. She didn't feel trapped, though. It was more like he wanted to make sure she didn't fall. Unconsciously, she widened her legs so he could stand between them. "You're just that exhausted."
Her head slipped down to rest against his shoulder – his very broad, his very strong, his very capable and comfortable shoulder. "Hm... yeah." Her eyes slipped shut. But just for a minute. Just one minute. Okay, maybe two. And then she'd get up, and make some more calls, and check the facial recognition scans she had running, because, despite what she had said to Connor, Felicity still had to try to find her daughter through every means at her disposal. "Maybe. A little," she mumbled.
The last thing she knew before oblivion swallowed her whole was Oliver lifting her off the counter and into his arms, a murmured, "goodnight," and a kiss against her forehead as he carried her into the darkness of sleep.
