A/N: Ok, seriously? I can't thank you guys enough for the awesome response to this fic. I didn't even know what it was when I started writing it and the comments and everything else mean so much to me as a new-ish fic writer. I'm so psyched to be able to contribute a little bit of AU fluff in these dark canonical times.
That said, I realized that I had some pretty serious timeline issues in the first chapter that I needed to address if I was going to move forward with this, namely that there would be no baseball happening if it was supposed to be winter hiatus. Oops! Now, the easy fix would have been to take the baseball stuff out, but there was already some more baseball in this chapter when I realized my mistake, so I'm shifting things around a little bit and making it the summer break instead of winter break. I also went back and made some minor changes in the first chapter to make it all work a little better.
(Also, I'm sorry if you're not into baseball, that's where my head's at right now, and I swear, it's mostly in service of Felicity being adorable, and we're all into that, right?)
Okay, sorry for the long and winding note, here's chapter two! Please keep the feedback coming, it's been so crazy awesome and I love you all. This fandom, I stg.
I'm a Slave to the Wires Ch. 2
Oliver's still staring at Tommy's phone, grinning like an idiot when his friend and publicist comes barging back into his trailer. He might have been able to school his features in time to fool almost anyone else, but there's no hiding it from the guy who's been his best friend since they were in diapers.
"And just what are you smiling at, Grumpy Cat?"
Tommy snatches the phone from his hand before he can close out of the browser window where he had googled Felicity's name, taking one look at the screen and letting out an exaggerated catcall.
"She's pretty," he croons. "Who is she...Felicity Smoak? You know her?"
"Just talked to her," Oliver snaps, plucking the phone back from his friend and closing out the window himself, selfishly taking one last quick look. "She was my last phoner."
"Did you tell her all your secrets?" Tommy's still teasing but his words rattle around in Oliver's skull for a few seconds before he's saved by the bell, or rather the buzz, as the tell-tale sound of a cell phone alert rattles through the trailer. When he realizes it's not the one in his hand, Oliver's eyes snap over to the trailer's desk/kitchen table where his personal phone is lying.
Tommy takes advantage of his distraction and snags his cell back as Oliver jumps up to check his phone, his heart thudding at a text message from an unknown number.
It's just an address, and when he clicks through, the map shows him that it's a bar, a little east of Hollywood. It's her he thinks, hopes, as the phone buzzes again.
I'll be there at 7.
*buzz*
It's Felicity, by the way.
*buzz*
I'm sorry I was trying to be mysterious and cool and then I realized it would come through as an unknown number and then you might just ignore it.
*buzz*
Oh my god, I'm babbling via text. I didn't think that was possible.
*buzz*
Please disregard. All of this. I'm so sorry. Have a great night, I'm going to go put my head in a bucket. Of tequila.
He taps out a quick reply when it seems like she's finally done, chuckling to himself.
At least let me buy you the bucket.
He can see her answering, watches that little bubble for what feels like forever, before she sends back a one word reply.
Seriously?
God she's cute, he thinks with a grin as he types the word back to her in the affirmative, leaving off the question mark. He can't even see her, and still he's struck by how cute she is.
I've got to see this babble in person, he writes. I don't think texts and calls do it justice.
When he finally looks up, his best friend is staring at him, looking nothing short of shell-shocked.
"Okay, seriously, what is going on with you, man?"
"Tommy, can I take your car for a little bit?" Oliver ignores him, mind singularly focused. "I took a black car to set this morning."
"Huh? I thought we were supposed to get dinner before we headed to the airport?"
"I just need to...I've got to meet up with…"
Tommy snatches his phone this time, scrolling through the texts.
"Will you stop doing that?"
"Ooh, tequila!" his friend laughs, skimming the messages. "This the pretty girl?"
"Felicity," Oliver corrects him, jaw clenched more than is probably necessary.
"Felicity's the pretty girl?" Tommy teases. "Ollie, level with me here, buddy. Is this like, a secret Tinder situation? Because you know I warned you about that."
"Just let me take the car, Tommy," he asks again, worried he's starting to sound desperate. "I'll meet you at the airport."
"Oliver Queen, I love you like a brother, but when you say you will meet me at the airport, you most definitely mean you will be late to the airport," his publicist scolds. "Just because it's a private plane doesn't mean it can take off whenever we feel like it."
"Tommy," he levels with his best friend then, playing Rich Boy Ollie for everyone's benefit. "That's exactly what it means. And even if it didn't, I will be there by 10 o'clock, according to plan. I just need the car for a little."
"9:30, Ollie," Tommy warns, even as he pulls his car fob off his key ring and tosses it at Oliver. "Van Nuys at 9:30. We take off at 10."
"Fine," Oliver concedes.
"And how do you suggest that I get there, by the way?" Tommy asks then. "Because I'm being so incredibly generous and letting you ditch me and all."
"I think you should ask Laurel for a ride," Oliver says, and then with a deep breath, because he's made more than one big decision in the minutes since he hung up the phone with Felicity, he continues. "And I think you should ask her to come on the trip with you."
"What?"
"We've been broken up for nearly two years now," he says, and the terrified look in Tommy's eyes tells him that this conversation is long overdue. "That's never gonna be 'on again', I promise you. And I know you and her.."
"Oliver, man I swear, nothing's ever happened," Tommy answers too quickly, holding up his hands. Oliver knows that he believes him, but deeper than that, he knows it doesn't matter either way. This thing between his best friend and his ex has been brewing for a while, and he's ignored it, selfishly, for too long. But not anymore.
"I know," he tells Tommy. "You're my best friend, and I know you've tried to shove down whatever it is you feel for her. Honestly, I think she's been doing the same thing. But maybe you shouldn't."
"I don't..." his best friend sputters for a second, but he doesn't try and correct him, just blinks at him with big baffled eyes. "Where is this coming from?"
"I'm not entirely sure," Oliver tells him, scrubbing a hand over his head, still buzzed short from shooting the finale. Part of him wants to tell Tommy about Felicity, but he doesn't know a non-insane way to say the girl on the phone sounded like sunshine and talked to me about baseball and if I don't see her tonight it's all I'm going to be able to think about. So he keeps that to himself and tells his friend the larger truth, the one that's been stewing inside him for almost a week now.
"I guess some of it's probably got to do with shooting three days worth of scenes where your character gets a sword through the chest and takes his last dying breaths thinking about the most important people in his life," he admits, letting out a humorless chuckle.
"Yeah, that sounds like that might do it," Tommy replies softly. His friend's serious eyes come out maybe a few times a year, but they never fail to sock Oliver right in the gut.
"I just think you and I have been messing around for a long time," he continues. "Maybe it's time we try things a different way. Take some shots that could be the real deal."
"Is that where you're going?" Tommy asks. "You're taking a shot?"
"I don't know," Oliver tells him honestly, though part of his brain is screaming the affirmative. "Maybe."
The editorial offices thankfully empty a few minutes into her interview with Roy Harper, as she tries to shake off the anxiety that built up over her one-sided text conversation with Oliver. He was sweet, but she's still mortified, and the feeling in the pit in her stomach only doubled when Ray Palmer shot her a look on his way out the door.
It's that feeling though, that allows her follow through with her plan, and Mr. Harper seems even more relieved than she does when she cuts their interview short, hustling him off the phone. She makes her way on unsteady legs from the conference room to her desk in the bullpen, opening the email that's been saved in her drafts folder for weeks and reading it over once, twice, before pressing send.
This is insanity.
And then it's evening rush hour on a Friday in Los Angeles, so she's crawling along on the 101, with plenty of time to just sit in her car, shuffling through Spotify and thinking about how late she's going to be and just how insane this is.
He's not going to be at the bar. Of course he isn't. He was just being polite, there's no way he's actually going to show. She'll never speak to him again, all she'll have to remember him by is the recording of their phone interview and a screenshot of their text message chain forever backed up on her black box external hard drive. Also, he's on television, so you know, she'll see him all the time.
She's tempted to call Iris, but where would she even start? Any combination of words that describe what's happened since she dialed the number for Oliver Queen's publicist sound absurd even in her head, she can't imagine saying them out loud to anyone with a straight face. Plus, there's no way this is actually happening, so she'll just call her friend and roommate from the bar when he's not there and calmly explain that she's finally lost her mind.
Oliver gets to the bar at 7 sharp, but sits in Tommy's car for seven full minutes before he goes inside. The darkened room is semi-occupied, with a few people seated at the wood-paneled bar and a few couples at tables by the front facing windows. None of them are her. Traffic, he tells himself, tamping down any disappointment or concern.
He takes a seat at one end of the bar, a few stools between him and the next patron, and admires the place. It's cozy but classy, with a mostly young hipster clientele, but he's pleased to notice that only one TV is silently turned to a black and white movie, the other is on ESPN. He catches a guy at one of the tables giving him a double, triple take before leaning in to whisper something to his date, but this isn't a part of town where he expects anyone to pay him any serious attention. Even if George Clooney walked in right now, he's sure 99% of the patrons would look once, tweet about it, then studiously pretend to ignore him.
He notices that the bar has a dozen taps of good craft beer and the wine selection looks impressive. It's not the kind of high-end Hollywood spot Tommy loves dragging him to, but it's no dive either. He kind of loves it.
"Got a good IPA?" he asks the absolute statue of a bartender, who looks like he should be a bouncer instead. He's got the build for it for sure, and a demeanor that says "let me punt your ass out the door," rather than "let me get you a cold beverage."
But he hands Oliver a beer list and pours his selected draft expertly, tossing him a coaster before essentially grunting a question at him.
"Need a menu?"
"No thanks," Oliver tells him. "I'm waiting for somebody."
Then, because she picked the bar and it's worth a shot, he asks, "Felicity Smoak? You know her?"
"You might be waiting a while," the man tells him as an answer, narrowing his eyes as he runs a rag over a section of the bar. "She usually works until eight or so."
"I actually think she might be a little early," Oliver tells him, puffing his chest just a little because he can't help it. This guy might know her, but she's on her way to meet him. Hopefully. "She said she was uh, quitting today."
The bartender pauses for a long second, eyes still narrowed at him, before nodding slightly.
"Good," he says approvingly, more of the news than him, but Oliver feels like he's got an opportunity here.
"Oliver Queen," he says, extending a hand.
The man's eyes flicker with recognition, but unlike the majority of people he meets in public these days, there's no spark of excitement to go along with it, just steely acknowledgement.
He reaches a massive hand out and shakes with what Oliver thinks is slightly excessive force, but the message is clear: mess with her, deal with him.
"John," he grunts before turning back to the taps.
Oliver figures that's the end of that scintillating conversation and turns his attention back to his beer and SportsCenter, before he hears the door swing open. He turns around and it's her. She's beautiful and she's here and she spots him from across the room. His heart thuds hard for the second or third time that day as she makes her way over, pausing to say hello to one of the seated couples and slap a backwards high five with one of the busboys. And then she's in front of him.
He blinks at her, only now realizing he's been picturing her face since they hung up the phone a few hours ago. But Google and his imagination had nothing on having her here in front of him. She's got her glasses on, but her hair is down, and kind of wavy, like maybe she had it up earlier. And she's got a blue dress on, he notices, so those eyes are out of control. She's beautiful and she's here.
He's here. Here's here and, oh shit, he's beautiful.
Felicity spots him at the bar immediately, because of course she does, and at first all she can do is mentally slap herself for the stupid assumption that he couldn't possibly be more handsome in person. When he catches her eye, she's so thankful that there are some friendly faces around to distract her, because the hopeful look he's got stretched across his stupid handsome face is too much for her to look at directly.
So she says hi to T.J. and his wife and she does her dumb handshake with Cesar and then finally, when she can't avoid it any longer, she walks right up and stands him front of him, pressing her knees together to stop them from giving out under her.
"Hi," she manages. "I'm Felicity."
"I know," he croaks out, like he's the nervous one, and wait, what did he just say? "I'm Oliver."
"I know," she parrots back slowly, teasingly, as she slides onto the stool beside him, turning to John, who's already setting a glass of red wine in front of her.
"Thank you, Digg," she says sweetly, and the bartender just shoots her a look before picking up a shot glass and placing it in front of her with raised eyebrows.
"Oliver here says there might be some congratulations in order."
"More like some begging you for shifts is in order," she admits with a little sigh.
"So you sent that strongly-worded email?" Oliver interrupts, innocently enough, but she immediately turns on him, eyes narrowing.
"You know, that's the second time you've said it like that," she says sharply, curious to see if he'll squirm, slightly impressed at her own forwardness. "I'm starting to think you're mocking me."
"I wouldn't dare," he says, holding up his hands, voice jumping an octave as he notices John glaring at him too. "I swear! I was just curious."
"Okay then, prove it," she challenges. "Do a shot."
"Okay, then."
"Digg, you too," she commands. "And where's Andy?"
Digg's little brother, a scaled-down version of the burly bartender, rounds the corner then, sliding a keg across the floor.
"Andy!" she calls to him. "Come do a shot with us!"
"Oh, no way am I doing a shot with you, Smoak," the younger man fires back. "You're my enemy this week!"
"Oh, come on, Andy," she whines a little, "I just quit my job! You can't be mad at me just because Team Pretty Faces is putting the beat down on you."
"Team Pretty Faces?" Oliver asks and she grins at him mischievously.
"Andy here is upset because he needed one more for his fantasy baseball league, and he literally begged me to do it," she tells him, admitting, "now he's mad because I'm better at it than him."
"She picked guys based on how cute they are!" Andy explodes in a clearly well-practiced rant. "And she ends up with a team full of studs: Clayton Kershaw, Dee Gordon, Bryce Harper, Mookie Betts! Even her later round picks are killing it. Joc Pedersen's her fourth outfielder! Kid hit a grand slam on her bench tonight and she's still beating me by fifty points!"
"Andy's not a very good loser," she turns to him with an exaggerated pout as the barback huffs his way into the back to grab another keg. Oliver so badly wants to kiss it off her face, but settles for leaning in close.
"You did your research, huh?" he asks slyly, remembering her line from their phone call earlier.
Her eyes widen in surprise for just a second before she nods silently, biting back her grin. He's kind of thrilled to have taken her aback, even momentarily, but she recovers quickly.
"Of course I did my research." she tells him, matter-of-fact. "Like, 90% of baseball players have pretty faces, Oliver, they're baseball players. I may not be a huge fan, but I am a huge fan of winning."
"You know I did play a few years of Little League," he says, trotting out the Ollie Queen smarm, just to see how it plays on her. She just swats him on the arm.
"So," he says, snapping back to himself, striving for nonchalance. "They know you here."
"They know you everywhere," she fires back. "Figured I'd even the playing field a little."
"Even?" he mocks teasing. "I'd say this is definitely tipping things in your favor."
"Well, this way," she says with a little glint in her eye, "if we have to deal with any of your adoring public, I've got some of my own around."
"Yeah, that guy definitely does not adore me," Oliver tells her, tipping his beer with a pointed glare towards John.
"Oh, Digg's a teddy bear dressed up like a grizzly," she waves him off as the bartender returns with two more shot glasses and a bottle. "His wife Lyla owns the place, she's the real hard ass."
"True enough," John says, pouring their shots before lifting his in Felicity's direction. He's actually cracking a smile, which would blow Oliver's mind except he totally gets it. She's like a goddamn ray of sunshine. It's no wonder this guy's all grizzly and protective, she's got him charmed ten ways from Sunday.
He echoes John's toast and throws back his shot.
"To Felicity."
He's got to stop looking at her like that. Because when he looks at her like that, and he looks like that, she just wants to smash her face against his and kiss him until he's so dumbstruck he reveals what kind of game he's playing at. She can't believe he's actually here, that he's smiling at her, that instead of being a massively awkward social encounter, everything with him is so strangely easy.
"I used to work in political news," she tells him a glass of wine later, because the usual first date "so hey, what do you do for a living?" conversation has pretty much been rendered moot by how they met. He knows exactly what she does, or used to do, anyway.
And she definitely knows what he does. Like, DVD-box-set knows. She's trying her absolute hardest to be cool, but what's really amazing to her is he doesn't seem to mind when she's not. She has to keep taking deep breaths and reminding herself that he's an actor. Maybe she should let her friend who works for the head of his network know that he does a really convincing "smitten."
"What was that like?" he asks, sounding genuinely interested even though she's nearly forgotten what he's asking about.
"Did you watch The Newsroom?"
"No," he admits, a little sheepish like maybe he thinks this is a test.
"Me neither!" she exclaims. "And I really wanted to! But I just couldn't because I was working in one. Just seeing their promos stressed me out."
He grins at her again, and to be honest, it's driving her kind of crazy that the only thing her babbles seem to do is make him smile. Because what an unfairly amazing smile it is.
"I hated it," she confesses, ducking her head back towards her glass of wine. "It was nice getting paid to write, but it's just such an upsetting world to work in day-to-day. It's just bad news and people being horrible to each other, all the time."
"I get that," he answers in a way that makes her think he's either dumb or takes his job as a TV superhero way too seriously. Incredulity must be written on her face when she frowns at him, because he continues quickly, turning away to stare intently into his beer foam.
"No, I mean for you," he says then. "There's just, ah, you're too...there's too much light in you. For a job like that."
Her breath catches in her throat and she can't really form words for a few seconds, so she's thankful when he continues with no prompting.
"I mean, I sort of get what that's like, a little," he says, talking quickly, almost like he's trying to cover up what he just said with a few layers of new words. "I did this movie a few years ago, during the summer break, and it was horrible. We were in the middle of the desert for six weeks, the director was a dick, half the cast didn't want to be there but were getting paid too much not to be. It was toxic."
She's still just staring at him, and she's knows that she's really going to have to come up with some words soon. She's literally never had this problem before, she thinks, taking a sip of her wine for courage.
"And THEN, to make matters worse," he barges on, chuckling self-deprecatingly. "I was so bad in it, they ended up redubbing all my lines in post with another actor."
She chokes a little on her wine then, jolted by a memory, and he furrows his brow in concern.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry," she sputters out, coughing around a chuckle and a swallow. "That might be my fault."
"Huh?"
"My friend Iris and I, we went to a midnight screening," she tells him, remembering with near-hysterical clarity now. "She's a reporter too, and I totally told her that it wasn't you. I think she broke the story, I'm so sorry. I mean, I'm not the reason they did it, but I might be the reason people kind of talked about it."
His eyes go wide. "I'm not even sure what to say to that."
"If it makes you feel better," she continues, laying a hand on his arm and grinning up at him. "That movie was really, really bad. And only a tiny little percentage of it was your fault."
He looks down at her hand on his arm, and then places his own over it, rubbing his thumb against her soft skin. When he glances back up, the mischievous part of her smile is gone and her eyes are wide, but she doesn't pull away.
Come away with me, Felicity.
That's what he wants to ask, but he settles for something safer.
"How did you know they dubbed me?" he asks. "My manager said they did a pretty good job covering it."
"You never saw it?"
"Didn't see the point," he admits with a sigh. "I'm not really in it. It's like, whatever the opposite of an animated movie is. I'm just a shell."
She looks at him for a while then and he feels the heat of her hand pressing against his arm and he thinks he'd love to keep surprising her, because it makes her blue eyes look bottomless.
"I just knew," she tells him with a shrug, her voice a little softer. "I..we had done a couple phoners for the first season of the show and I could just tell. The first line where your back was turned, I could tell. I whispered something to Iris, she sent a text. By the time we were out of the theater, her story was filed."
"I just can't believe you saw that piece of crap on opening night," he huffs out a laugh to lighten the concern in her voice, but it backfires on him when it breaks her little trance.
"Anyway, you're kind of lucky," she says, pulling her hand away and wiping it absently on her upper thigh, even though he knows firsthand that it's not sweaty. "At least a crappy movie shoot ends eventually."
"That's true."
"I stayed at that news job way too long," she goes on, sliding her finger around the rim of her wine glass absently. "That's why this time around, I promised myself I'd get out as soon as things got intolerable, not two years later."
He's pretty sure now that there's something she's not telling him, but he aims for levity, wanting to see her smile again, remembering what she said to him on the phone.
"Just couldn't keep up with the Kardashians?"
"Yeah, something like that," she says quietly, with a little sigh that makes him certain it's nothing like that.
He's silent for a second and she can't understand why he cares, but she's pretty sure he's about to pry deeper into her employment misfortunes. So, when he speaks next, he floors her in more ways than one.
"I think you should come to San Francisco with me," he says simply.
"Oh yeah?" she's chuckling at his joke before she glances over and realizes that he's not making one.
"Yes," he says, like he's simply suggested she have another drink. Which, by the way, she's totally down for right now. "My friend Tommy and I are going north for the hiatus. You just quit your job, so i know your schedule's wide open."
"Yeah, but…" her laughter dies down and he talks over it anyway.
"Come with me, tonight," he says, looking right at her, dead serious, locking onto her with those beautiful blue eyes that look so earnest she forgets how to breathe. "Get on a plane and come to San Francisco for the weekend."
Something in her brain is shorting out. That's the only explanation for this, and when she finally manages to spit out a response, it's far less graceful than she had hoped.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm trying to get you to come to San Francisco with me," he says again, like it's that easy.
"I can't," she answers quickly because, really, it's the only thing to say.
"Why not?"
"It's not that I'm worried about what I've read about you," she tells him, maybe a little too honestly. "Or what I've written about you."
"Okay…"
"I just, I made sort of a pact with myself not to get involved with guys in the industry," she admits, leaving the anymore unspoken. "Not that you're trying to 'get involved' or anything…"
"I am," he cuts off her babble and her breath again. "I know it's kind of fast and a little crazy, but Felicity, I don't want to spend two weeks out of town wondering what could have been if I had just asked. And, for the record, I am. Trying to get involved."
"You are," she breathes. "And you are right, smack dab, in the middle of the industry."
"But you're not," he points out and he's right, but damn her if that doesn't sting a little. "At least, not at this very moment. Not this weekend."
"Plus," she recovers, ignoring what's starting to sound like logic coming from his lips, "it's a little Don Draper, isn't it? The whole 'Come away with me, Felicity' thing."
"But do you want to come?"
"That's irrelevant," her brain insists, and her heart's trying to pound its way out of her chest to shut it up.
"But do you want to come?"
"It's not that simple."
He leans in then and damn him for smelling so good. Damn him for being so close and so warm and so stupid handsome.
"I think it is simple," he says, dropping his voice in a way that makes her whole face feel hot. "Come away with me, Felicity."
And she bolts.
He sits frozen for a few seconds, debating whether or not to go after her, but when he catches John's eye behind the bar, he knows immediately what to do. He'll swear for the rest of his life that the guy gave him the most imperceptible of nods, but in any case, the way his icy protective look had nearly thawed to one of approval is all the reassurance Oliver needs, as he throws too many bills down on the bar and bolts for the door.
He finds her around the corner, in the driveway that leads back to the parking lot, but she's facing him, like she had turned back, maybe debating whether or not to come back in. When her eyes finally raise from her shoes, they lock on him and she lets out a huge breath.
"I'm sorry," she says. "I was worried if I sat there any longer, I was going to kis-"
He cuts her off with his lips, wrapping an arm around her waist and threading one through her hair. She makes a little sound into his mouth, shooting her tongue out to touch his and honestly, that combined with the way her hands thread around his neck and scratch a little at the back of his head is enough to weaken his knees a little. Or maybe that's just the excuse he uses to justify pressing her back into the side of the building.
"Yeah," she sighs when he finally pulls away. "That."
"Come away with me, Felicity" he asks again.
"You know," she smiles, still breathing a little heavy. "That's the second time you've said it like that."
"Please," he's just flat out begging now, pressing his forehead to hers and locking eyes, feeling the little brushes of her eyelashes against his own.
Her eyelids flutter once, twice, but she doesn't break his stare, until he hears her whisper.
"Okay."
Then he kisses her again.
A/N: So THAT was way longer than I thought it was going to be! Let me know if you're still on board. Next stop San Fran? And maybe a slightly-awkward plane ride with Tommy and Laurel?