Chipped Blocks
An Olicity Flash Fic Story
Flash Fic Prompt #43: The Mistress
Chapter Fifteen
It felt like someone was watching her.
As Felicity stood outside of Oliver's home, looking up, up, and up at the massive structure before her while she mentally prepped to face Mia for the first time since Oliver kung-fu'd her daughter to sleep, she could admit that maybe she was slightly paranoid, but... Nope. Side-eyeing the shadows that lurked with her beneath the portico, Felicity felt that her suspicions about the house were accurate. After all, she was standing in front of a freaking gothic castle. Fo shizzle her nizzle... but, no, wait. Don't. Scratch that. Because, for Felicity, nizzle always sounded too much like nipple, and, while she didn't know what exactly 'fo shizzle' was, it didn't sound pleasant.
Where was she?
Oh, yeah! Gothic.
Like... she was pretty sure there was a headless horseman roaming the woods off to her right. And, if she walked way around until she circled the east-north-east wing (because you could not use only the cardinal directions to describe all the offshoots of the Queen Family Mansion), she knew that she'd eventually find some ghost haunting a moor under the full moon. Plus, if she wasn't mistaken, Felicity was pretty sure that scuffle she had just heard was Emily Bronte killing Mary Shelley in the library with a candlestick... or her name wasn't Felicity Codebreaker Smoak.
Okay, so her name was Felicity Megan Smoak, and Megan didn't translate into Codebreaker in any language... not even Navajo (which was just wrong – so wrong), but, still, it was her middle name in spirit, and that counted, right?
Anyway, Codebreaker or Megan, it didn't change the fact that Oliver's home was beyond creepy. And crawly. "Insert two finger snaps here," Felicity mumbled to herself. Breathing in deeply, she exhaled through her nose and mouth, her shoulders rising and falling with the effort.
"Impressive, isn't it?"
"Oh, dear sweet Time Lord," Felicity swore. (Well, sort of.) And gasped. And she would have stumbled, too, if the person off to her side would have spoken just a second later, for she had been about to step forward and ring the bell.
"Time Lord," the other voice repeated in question. Inside of her own mind, Felicity amended that it had been the other woman who had asked her the query, because 'the other voice' made it sound like the words had been disembodied, and she had already freaked herself out enough already, thank you very much.
"Yeah. As in Gallifrey, Tardis, and the Doctor."
A petite brunette sauntered forward and into the light so that Felicity could finally see who she was talking to. "The Doctor who?"
"Exactly."
The pretty young woman shook her head. "I have no idea what just happened."
Felicity nodded sympathetically. "Welcome to my world."
Instead of replying, her companion came to stand beside her so that they were both facing the Queen Family residence, redirecting the conversation back to her original line of thought when she had so startled Felicity. "The house is impressive, right?"
In disbelief (because, seriously, that's what she was going with?), Felicity snorted and rolled her eyes. "That's one way of putting it, I guess."
"And how would you describe it?"
"I don't know. Maybe imposing," Felicity suggested, shrugging her shoulders. "Or you could go with intimidating as well. But, really, if we're being honest with each other, the first thing I thought when I saw this place was that somebody was feeling a tiny bit insecure when they dreamed up the square footage of this monstrosity... which, now that I'm thinking about Dracula again, I can admit was a poor choice of words."
"So, then, you're not imagining what it would be like to be the lady of this house?"
She had to give the other woman props for not saying 'mistress of this mansion' or even worse 'queen of this castle.' But, still, no! In fact, she was still stuck on the fact that she might have just given the brunette the wrong impression about Oliver's... security. Turning with wide, beseeching eyes to her left, Felicity said, "I wasn't talking about Oliver. Like at all. Trust me, there is nothing tiny about that man." Realizing just exactly what she had admitted to a perfect stranger, Felicity froze. And then cringed. "Not that I'm saying that we've had sex. Or haven't. Oh god," she moaned, lifting her hands to cover her face in mortification. "I don't know what's worse: confirming Oliver Queen's sex life to a reporter," because who else could the stranger be?, "or allowing said reporter to think that the size of his house is overcompensating for his lack of size, um, elsewhere."
A chuckle behind and over her right shoulder had Felicity spinning around and flaming with embarrassment. Standing propped up in the doorway, she found a very amused Oliver grinning in her direction. Despite the sticky and hairy situation (it was so bad that it was both), Oliver appeared casual and relaxed. His hands were in the front pockets of his dress pants, and his posture radiated warmth and joy. Felicity's confusion towards his reaction (or, perhaps, more accurately his lack thereof) was only trumped by the carefree way the brunette sauntered by Felicity and shoved past Oliver to stroll right into the Queen mansion. Although she didn't understand what exactly was going on, Felicity followed, her ignorance slowing her steps.
It was only once they were all inside and Oliver had closed the door behind them that he told her, "Felicity, Speedy isn't a reporter; she's my sister."
"Oh god," she groaned. Felicity could feel all that former self-conscious color draining from her face. "That's even worse."
A quirked, finely sculpted brow and a curt, "excuse me," greeted her in return from the sibling in question.
"I mean, not worse... worse. Obviously. But worse." Biting her lip, she looked at Oliver out of the corner of her glasses, but he was just smirking at his little sister, so he wasn't any help. Refocusing back on Thea (because, now that she knew the stranger was actually Oliver's only living family... besides Connor, she knew the woman's name: Thea Dearden Queen Harper – a person so intimidating, she didn't have just one last name; she had three. Thea was like the opposite of Madonna. Or Prince. Or Alf. But just as notorious. And, looking at her now, Felicity was almost convinced she ate kitties, too.), she shuffled her feet. "Um... you're really pretty?"
Yes, because stating the obvious... even if it was a compliment... was the way to go there instead of, you know, an actual apology. Or even begging for mercy. Her skirt was short, and, yeah, it was a little tight, too, but she was a teacher for Pete and Pete's sakes. Felicity could still manage a curtsey. Heck, she might even be able to wiggle down onto her knees to make her pleading seem more sincere. If she just hiked up this one side, while she...
She was just about to risk permanent arthritic damage to her knees when a chuckling Oliver slipped his right hand into her left, squeezing Felicity's digits once in reassurance. "Felicity Smoak, I'd like you to meet my sister, Thea."
Thea stepped forward, but she didn't offer to shake Felicity's hand... which was a good thing, because physical contact just seemed like begging for trouble at that point. Plus, her palms were as moist as the Okefenokee Swamp, so... poor Oliver. Instead of a formal introduction, the younger woman ticked her head to the side and observed Felicity closely. "You honestly didn't know who I was?"
"Yeah, she does that," Oliver answered for Felicity. She didn't mind. In fact, if she could fit him in her purse, she'd take him everywhere with her so that he could always say words – all the words – for her. "She didn't know who I was either."
"Yeah, well, I'm prettier and more popular than you," Thea taunted her brother. "Your girlfriend practically said so herself. So, she should have known me. How did she not know me?"
"It's called some people have a life, Aunt Thea," Connor taunted. "And Starling City isn't the center of the world."
As he made his way down the stairs towards the three of them, Felicity tugged her hand out of Oliver's grip and made a bee-line for her student. Connor wasn't her kid, but perhaps, through age association, he'd be capable of jumpstarting her mommy filter again. On her way over towards the teenager, Thea snarked back, "well, maybe it should be. After all, I'm here." Felicity could tell that the other woman was being facetious (or, at least, she hoped she was), but Thea's glibness was doing nothing to make her feel more relaxed and comfortable. (And here Felicity had been afraid of facing Mia. Ha! Shows her what she knew. Only, yeah, she was still nervous as Nelly about talking with her daughter.)
"You and me, Mister," Felicity sidetracked the conversation by snagging Connor's attention. Even at ground level, he still stood neck and shoulders above her, and it made Felicity want to scramble around him and jump up onto the stairs herself. "After I see Mia, we need to talk."
For a brief second, Connor looked at his father... which was interesting?... before meeting Felicity's gaze and asking, "what did I do?"
"You didn't do anything. This isn't one of those kinds of talks. Instead, it's a talk to make sure that you don't do... the do."
It was official. 'Three Last Names' Thea had broken her mommy filter. Without waiting for Connor to respond, Felicity turned sharply on the toes of her flats to stride away. Only... she had no frakking idea where she was going. Luckily, Oliver was immediately right there at her side. As he directed her down a hall (not the hall, because sixteen wings, remember?), Felicity could hear Thea and Connor bickering in the foyer behind them. But she could pay their familial squabbles absolutely no mind, because Mia was waiting for her at the end of their walk, and Felicity had no idea what that meant, what kind of Mia she would find.
At this point, she knew that her daughter was at least sober. But 'at least' wasn't the right way to qualify Mia's sobriety, because there was nothing to compare against let alone trump such an accomplishment. Felicity just meant that she didn't know how Mia would react to her, or how she would look, or what type of mood she would be in, because, quite frankly, it had been so long since Mia had been consistently clean that Felicity wasn't even sure if she knew her own daughter at that point.
Before Felicity had enough time to really prepare herself, Oliver had led her into what appeared to be his home office, and he had her stand in front of a laptop. On the screen, she found Mia waiting. Though her little girl seemed impatient, she also looked... calm, grounded, and, if not strong, then at least not so fragile any more either.
As soon as she saw Felicity, however, the teenager scowled. "Are you shitting me," Mia grumbled. She was already standing up, already getting ready to walk away. Addressing Oliver, Mia challenged, "you told me that, for all my hard work, you had a treat for me. Well, she is not a treat." Mia paused long enough so that Felicity could hear two sets of footsteps approaching from behind: Thea and Connor. She would have been uncomfortable with them overhearing her daughter's animosity towards her if she wasn't so hurt, if she wasn't so disappointed. "I'd rather slap another bowl of water than talk to her." Just before the screen went dark on Mia's end, her daughter's laptop slamming closed, Felicity heard her complain, "this is bullshit."
Emily Bronte her only child was not, but Felicity was in the library, and Mia could wield her words with the precision of a deadly candlestick nonetheless.
