A/N: Here's the last chapter (maybe, but I may extend it to see how their dynamic works while they're dating if I get enough interest), and it's also my extra long birthday chapter!
I don't know why I'm writing you guys a chapter since it was MY birthday yesterday, (you should write me a fic haha) but here it is.
I'm still continuing Not Everything Goes Perfectly, but I'm kind of going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment, so bear with me.
Thank you all (in the case I don't extend this) for all the reviews and follows and favourites!
A half hour later, I'm almost asleep in the armchair after checking Felicity over, when the door is knocked. Roughly.
It's a very manly sort of knock and that thought made me giggle.
Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes (and hopefully my temporary insanity as well), I go to answer it, thinking it's Team Arrow.
Instead, I see two burly guys with an awful fashion taste standing (with really bad posture) before one of them spray me with something and I fall unconscious.
A WHILE LATER
OUCH.
God.
Have I been kidnapped - yet AGAIN?
That's it. I'm taking self-defence classes with Team Arrow's girls.
I AM SICK TO DEATH OF BEING A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS.
I wonder how long its been.
Now that I think about it - why is everything black?
I must be in that place again - the one that you see before you wake up.
I just hope there's no horrors awaiting me when I open my eyes.
I groan, letting the captors put their clothes on just in case they had just come out of the shower.
Then I open my eyes.
My first thought is: Eh, I've been in worse.
My second thought is no better. God, this decor is so depressing. Also, the mould everywhere cannot be good for your health.
There are three stocky guys, eyeing me up like a piece of meat.
At this point, I kinda wanted to be a veggie.
I realise my dress has been hiked up - and has stains (THEY BETTER COME OUT, YOU DICKHEADS) and my thighs are a free-for-all.
"Hey, this is embarrassing, sorry for flashing you guys. Let me out and I'll call it quits?"
The guys just grunt.
Great. This time I get thickheaded apes. What's next, Groddzilla?
"So, have you guys seen the news lately? There's a cute story about how a penguin and a puppy became best friends. Aww - and the pictures are just adorable."
I know I'm rambling, but at this point, it's better for them to underestimate me than overestimate me.
That's only my cover story.
The truth: I have no tactic and I'm probably gonna die.
"Oh my god, I love your jacket! Tell me where you got it?" I ask with a pout.
Well, now I'm just acting like an overexaggerated version of Felicity.
One of the guys give me a sneer. "Off of a dead soldier's body."
My face goes blank, and I pretend I'm doing a play in high school again. Not gonna lie - HUGE THEATER GEEK SITTING RIGHT HERE.
"Oh. Well, that's kind of hardcore," I say with a conversational tone, as if I was talking about work, or the weather.
Before the guys can get in a word edgeways, I start up again. (I don't think they're conversationalists, really.)
"You know, I don't really like what you've done with the place. It kinda kills the feng shui."
A different but equally bald guy gives me yet another sneer (seriously, is there a knucklehead school to learn this kind of thing?) and says, "That won't be all that's dead tonight."
"Wow. Just wow. You've killed my heart, Alfonzo. Nah, that's no gonna be your nickname. Too Italian. What about Al?" I'm digging myself a grave and I know it. But what did it matter anyway? I was already dead, might as well go out with a bang. "Okay, so you can be Al, you can be Cor and you can be Scar." I gesticulate with my head respectively to each man in question, since my hands were kind of bound in duct tape.
"I grow tired of this game," Al says.
"Me too," says Cor.
Scar's the nice one. "Well, the boss man didn't say to kill her."
Al's intelligence is slightly above 3 IQ points. "He didn't say to not kill her."
"Well, what if we do and he gets mad? Do you have a magic bring-back-to-life stick on you?"
He says, and I wriggle my coat around to cover my bare shoulder. Apparently these guys cared enough about me to make sure I didn't die.
"Personally, I'm all for the killing." I pipe in and the men stare at me, astounded.
"Well, I have an amnesiac sort of friend back home that has been sleeping in my bed at home since his accident, and then I kind of kissed him, and things got complicated because well, there used to be this other girl that he was in love with since forever, but she got a boyfriend and he moved on. So then my ex-fiance comes back from the dead after around the time when my friend kissed the other girl so I was just like, "Oh good for you and stuff - look at my undead boyfriend yay!", but I was kinda dying at that point -" I say, then stop, choked with the memories of my tangled and irreplaceable relationship with Barry.
A tear sneaks out, and I sniffle.
"I'm sorry for blubbing. Do you have girls back home?"
Al nods. "My mam," he says respectfully, which chokes me up a bit more.
"Jessa, my twin sister." Cor says begrudingly.
"Cat. She's my fiance," Scar says.
"Look, I'm so sorry. Please just kill me. I'm not that great, I don't need anyone, and no one needs me."
"THAT'S NOT TRUE!" A voice hollers from above.
"NO!" I yell. "Barry, STOP! DON'T HURT THEM!"
It's not too late.
He runs down to a stop in front of me. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah. How'd you find me?"
"Felicity woke up and you kind of butt-dialled me. Again." He says.
"Thank god for that."
"Why'd you stop me?"
"Well, I think they might just let me go." I say to my sort-of captors past Barry's shoulder, and they nod.
"It was nice meeting you guys," I tell them.
"Likewise," Scar says.
"Next time you're in town, hit us up. We're going to start a buisness together called MaxiCorp and we're going to do something that doesn't require killing or capture or maiming."
"That's pretty cool of you guys." I say.
"Let's go," Barry says. "We need to talk."
So he runs out, with the chair I was currently bound to, and goes back to the hotel room, where Felicity was sleeping. These guys even closed the door after kidnapping me.
Wow.
I take a deep breath as Barry unties me.
WHAT THE FREAKING HELL IS GOING ON?
I am literally so fucking confused.
It's driving me crazy. Why does everything smooth over so quickly?
Why do I have what seems to be the quickest case of Stockholm Syndrome ever recorded?
"What are we doing? What are we going to do?" I ask when I sit down on the hotel bed, rubbing my sore wrists and trying to get a little circulation going.
Barry pauses for a second or so.
"Look, I- I'm not sure what you want to do, but if you want to, I'd be interested in pursuing a relationship."
Barry blushes, then takes my momentary silence as a no.
"Of course, we can still be friends and stuff."
I decide to just bloody seize the moment and kiss him.
It's a very summery kiss, I decide later.
It's friendship and the ocean, it's sunlight and camping underneath the stars, it's those stupid moments that you look back on and laugh at.
He's as calm as the rolling tide, steady but with a power about him that draws me in.
And then Team Arrow decide to open the door.
"Oh. Oh" Felcity says.
Diggle hands Oliver ten bucks.
Oliver smiles. "IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME!"
I giggle and give Barry another quick peck before I get up.
"Should we go home Barry? I'm kind of tired."
"Cool. I think you could come over to my place and eat some Thai with me,"
"I think I could too." I smile, and Felicity yells, "Get a room!"
I get to Barry's bedroom in about thirty seconds. His apartment looks like an art studio, and the sun is just setting in Central City, so the colours cast onto the wall like pretty projections.
Barry sits down next to me for a second, catching his breath, then his phone bleeps.
He checks it, then pecks me on the cheek.
"I forgot something."
He comes back a minute later with my stuff and some Thai food, but I didn't find out till the morning.
I was curled up under Barry's dark grey sheets, on the corner of the white walls, as fast asleep as a bear in hibernation.
Barry curls in next to me.
He kisses my hair, says "Goodnight, Cait," then falls asleep next to me.