(A/N: In answer to a couple of questions, yes, there will be Olicity. Of course there will be Olicity! But y'all have to be patient because I really dig the slow burn and I want this to parallel canon as much as possible. The other question was about the timeline. These first two chapters take place, as will be obvious when you read further, on the day Oliver's return from the dead hits the news.)
"We've caught a case."
Felicity swept her TARDIS mug off the desk and into her purse before standing to meet Detective Lance's dark eyes. She'd been staring at the mug since he'd walked his daughter out, trying to decide if she should leave it out or put it in a drawer.
"What kind of case?" she asked.
"Home invasion," Lance said. "I'm driving."
Felicity snatched up her purse and bounced after him. He crossed the room in just a few long strides, and she could see herself doing a lot of running to catch up in the future of this partnership. She made a mental note to stop avoiding cardio in her workout.
She followed Detective Lance through police headquarters to the back of the building. He greeted several officers by name but never introduced her. He didn't even check to see if she was keeping up. He signed out an unmarked vehicle, having an entire silent conversation with the sergeant on duty as he took the keys.
Squinting in the bright sun as they entered the motor pool parking lot, Felicity lugged her purse along. The handle of the mug secreted within was digging into her hip. She wished she'd just left it on her desk instead of freaking out, but it was far too late to do anything about it. The car Detective Lance went to was a hulking black SUV. As the locks clicked free, she breathed a silent prayer of thanks that she hadn't worn a skirt.
Despite her sensible attire, getting into the SUV was problematic. Felicity wasn't tiny, but the vehicle dwarfed her and the running board was level with her knees. She had to brace her arms on the seat for leverage to climb up. Detective Lance, already settled behind the wheel, quirked an eyebrow but said nothing. With an aggravated sigh, she swung her purse onto the floor at her feet. The mug inside it clanked softly against her gun, even though the weapon was protected by a padded compartment.
"Detective Lance, Detective, or sir," he said as he put the SUV in gear. He pulled out of the parking space without a single glance at the view from the back-up camera. "We're not on a first-name basis, and you're my junior partner."
"Are you going to call me 'ma'am'?" she asked, pushing up her glasses.
"Detective, or Detective Smoak."
"Good, because 'ma'am' makes me feel like a spinster. One with a lot of cats. I only have one cat."
"A spinster?" he scoffed. "You're twenty-five."
She slid her eyes sideways to glance at him. She wasn't the only one who'd done some research.
"This scene we're heading to, it's in the Glades," he said gruffly.
"Okay."
The detective spared her a brief look before returning his gaze to the road. "You're not going to gasp, or even turn a little pale? Because I'm not walking in there with you hiding behind me, clutching my jacket."
Felicity shrugged. "My apartment is in the Glades. Well, it's more on the outskirts, but I think that counts. And I carry a gun."
She said it breezily like she was fearless, but just last night she'd gotten home well after dark. She speed-walked from her crappy parking spot beneath a broken streetlight to the front of her building with her gun in her right hand, covered by her long sleeve, and a high-powered Taser in her left.
"Why live there?" asked Lance. "You could afford better."
"I can't, actually," Felicity said. "I'm a tech nerd. I have a lot of equipment, and I'm always doing system upgrades. It's not cheap, so the lower rent helps."
He grunted. "Ever heard of Crispin Bayne?" he asked after a moment.
"Heard of him? Are you kidding me?" she gushed. "He's like the king of the nerds! He's a programming Jedi Master . . . Um, a Jedi Master is—"
"I know what it means," Lance said. "I'm not that out of touch."
"Of course you're not," Felicity agreed, quickly backtracking. "I didn't mean to imply—I mean, that is . . . Oh God, stop it," she said to herself. "Three, two, one." She took a deep breath and let it out. "Why are we talking about Crispin Bayne?"
"Well, apparently his home was just invaded."
"Here? Crispin Bayne lives here, in Starling City?"
"You know all about him, but you don't know that?" Detective Lance asked.
"No one knows," she replied. "He has this whole J.D. Salinger persona. Reclusive and mysterious."
"Reclusive, huh?" Lance grumbled. "This'll be fun, then."
Felicity didn't know what to say to that, but she was desperately trying to think of something. Before she could, Lance reached over and jacked up the volume on the police radio.
"—alive," an officer was saying. "It's all over the news."
Someone responded in static. A dispatcher told the officer to cut the chatter, but he wasn't finished. "Guess someone will have to tell Detective Lance."
Lance slapped at the volume knob, but Felicity could just barely make out the dispatcher saying, "Poor bastard."
"What was that about?" she asked. "Who's alive?"
His phone rang then. She recognized the ringtone as the theme from COPS. Felicity didn't say anything, but her eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline.
The detective snorted. "Yeah, it's a little on-the-nose. My daughter Sara put that on there after the last time I grounded her. To get back at me, I guess." He drew the phone from his jacket pocket and set it in one of the cup holders.
"Are you going to answer it?"
"I'm driving," he said. "I don't even look at it when I'm driving."
While the phone continued to ring, she did the math in her head. Sara Lance was twenty when the Queen's Gambit disappeared in a storm off the coast of China. She probably wasn't grounded after she started college. That meant Detective Lance had left his ringtone unchanged for at least seven years. And the phone was newer than that—she recognized the model. He had to have transferred over the ringtone along with his contact list and other important information. It was sad and sweet, the kind of thing Felicity's own father might have done. Except Felicity wouldn't have gone onboard a yacht with her sister's über-rich boyfriend. She didn't have a boyfriend at all, certainly not an über-rich one, and she didn't have a sister anyway . . .
"Stop. Now," Lance said through clenched teeth.
Felicity's hand went to her lips. "Did I just say some of that out loud?"
"Yes." His hands gripped the wheel even tighter, like he was making a concerted effort to squeeze it instead of her throat. She was not unfamiliar with that kind of reaction in response to one of her rambles.
"Which part?" she asked.
"Does it matter?"
Felicity shrugged. Lance's phone rang again—he continued to ignore it, so she did too.
"I do that sometimes," she began to explain. "I get so wrapped up in my thoughts that I don't realize they're not thoughts anymore—they're words. And they just come out. I don't get the chance to neaten them up."
"You're honest," he said. "I'll give you that." But his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel didn't ease up.
The phone trilled out a short series of beeps.
"Voice mail alert?" Felicity asked.
Lance said nothing, but there was another beep. And another. Text message alerts.
"Wow, someone really wants to talk to you." She reached for the phone.
"Leave it," he growled.
Felicity snatched her hand back. She waited in silence for as long as she could, which wasn't very long, and then spoke up.
"Can I turn on the radio? The regular radio?" she asked. "If there's something to occupy my mind, I don't ramble as much."
"Fine," he replied. "But keep it turned down low. And no teenybopper crap. I heard enough of that raising two girls."
Felicity opened her mouth to say something indignant about her music preferences, but the truth was, she had a fair amount of teenybopper crap on her iPod. And the whole point was to stop rambling. She tuned the radio to a local news broadcast and twisted the volume knob ever so slightly until she could hear it.
"—breaking news that we brought to you about twenty minutes ago. The Queen family has just released a statement, which reads in part, 'While we are overjoyed at the miracle that is bringing Oliver back to us, we ask for the media and the public to respect our privacy and the privacy of the families who were not so fortunate as to the return of their loved ones."
Detective Lance snapped the volume knob right off the panel. Felicity casually reached into her purse, hand closing over her own phone. Her need to know was stronger than mere curiosity. She was pretty much an information addict, and in this case it seemed to vital to her new partnership that she learn as much as she could about what they'd just heard.
She quickly became lost in the internet browser on her phone, paging through article after article. They all basically said the same thing, though tones varied from dry to hysterical. A Chinese fishing boat had picked up a bearded, bedraggled man who had later walked into the U.S. Embassy in Shanghai, claiming to be Oliver Queen. He was currently on his way back to Starling City.
There weren't many details, and no answers to the questions zooming through her mind. How was his identity confirmed? Why was he returning now? Where had he been for the last five years? What had happened to the others on the yacht?
No pictures, either. No new ones. All the photos were from before the accident and showed Oliver Queen blond, cocky, and grinning. Felicity had no idea what the attraction was supposed to be. When she looked at his pictures, she just felt like slapping him.
"That grin makes you want to slap him, doesn't it?"
Felicity jumped at the sound of Lance's voice. She thumbed off her phone and looked around. They were in an underground parking structure with the engine off. How long had he been waiting for her to finish?
"That's exactly what I was thinking," she confessed.
"Good. Now if you can just rein in your mouth a little bit, we might get along." He clicked the locks free and got out easily.
Felicity dropped her phone into her purse and opened her door. To her surprise, there was Detective Lance, holding out his hand. She took the help rather than fall face-first onto the concrete so very far below.
He dropped her hand as soon as her feet hit the ground and walked away from her, heading toward the elevator.
Felicity slammed her door and ran to catch up. "Are you okay with this Oliver Queen business . . . sir?" she remembered to add.
Lance pinned her to the spot with a look that could have frozen lava.
"Okay, I'm just not going to ever ask you that again," she said quietly.