Chapter 5
"Oliver, are you sure about this?" Felicity asks for what feels like the thousandth time as she stares at her computer screen.
"Felicity, would I be standing on a rooftop in the cold if I wasn't sure?" Oliver's voice comes in clear over her comms.
She sighs, looking around the cold basement and rubbing her hands together. Her favorite, warm sweater doesn't quite cut into the chill of the basement Oliver chose as their base of operations. Two months preparing as Oliver's knee healed, and they hadn't thought to bring a space heater down here.
The cold might be good for the servers she assembled in the corner, but it was not good for the IT guru sitting in front of the computer screens. Of course, Oliver the Human Furnace has no problem with the cold, so Felicity's left to bundle up.
Honestly, it was nice after the workouts Oliver gave her...
Felicity winces. "Even in my mind, I make inappropriate comments," she mutters. Oliver was teaching her basic self-defense. That's all. It was completely innocent...much to her chagrin. She learned first-hand that watching your hunk of a soulmate perform physical feats sorely tests her restraint.
Oliver had been careful about keeping his shirt on, not exposing any more skin than necessary. Scars cover his body: she's caught glimpses of them, but she hasn't crossed that line where she asks about his mark. It's a topic they've studiously avoided on this whole entire endeavor.
"Felicity?"
She shakes her head. Right. She's supposed to be working. Tonight's their first night, their trial run. If all goes well, they can move on to bigger fish. "On it. I've got a call into 9-1-1 about a home invasion at 47 Rondell Street." She flicks through the police notifications. "Or, if you want something simpler, I've also got a couple of calls about suspicious individuals hanging around a grocery store on Glacier Street."
"Alright. What can you tell me about the home invasion?"
Felicity pulls up the information on another screen. She may or may not have gained access to a Queen Consolidated satellite in the last month. The company belonged to Oliver's family so it wasn't really stealing, right?
Anyway, she was living in the morally grey area right now, what with the vigilante activities they were perpetrating right in this moment.
"I've got seven heat signatures in the house. The house is owned by a Samuel Grady. Four of those signatures are the family, which means three invaders. No details on the invaders. The call seems to have been made by the oldest son, who's eleven. Police are twenty minutes out."
"Got it."
Felicity turns to the map pulled up on another screen, watches the blinking red dot race to the address as Oliver lapses into silence. He doesn't talk: he's too focused. He doesn't like frivolous words, which includes over the comms.
Instead, she mutes her end of the comms and switches on her music, humming along to Florence and the Machine. Felicity lets her eyes track Oliver's progress in the map so she doesn't have to listen to the thuds and smacks of his fight.
So sue her, she gets worried. Oliver just barely got the all-clear from the doctor and he's running across rooftops and fighting criminals. This is so far out of the realm of normal, that she's pretty sure it's okay to be worried.
Besides, everything's going fine so far.
BANG!
Felicity jumps at the loud noise in her earpiece, a noise that forces everything else to the background as she blindly reaches to turn on her comm unit. "Oliver? What was that?"
No answer.
"OLIVER!"
For three painful seconds she contemplates the worst. He's probably there, bleeding out. The police are going to find him. The whole situation can only go from bad to worse. She's about to send a frantic call to Digg, her finger hovers over the button when the comm crackles back to life.
"I'm here! I'm here, Felicit" His voice is raspy, full of pain. "I don't think I'm going to be checking out the kids on Glacier."
"Are you shot?" Her voice rises in pitch to a squeak she's never made before.
"It's just...a graze. I'm coming in."
Felicity glance back at her phone and John's number under her thumb. A bullet wound. Oliver was shot.
She spins to the med bay Oliver insisted they set up. The only things she knows how to use in there are the band-aids. And the gauze. But she's never really done very well with needles. And by very well, she means she's terrified of needles. They're only slightly less scary than kangaroos, but that's a whole other thing.
Oliver finds her minutes later in the middle of the space they've set up, eyes fixed on the med station. The noise of the door has her turning, and before conscious thought can take over, she's already checking him over. Felicity zeroes in on his arm and the blood that leaks out in stark contrast to the green leather.
"Oh, God! You're bleeding!" She swallows the bile that rises in the back of her throat to help him slide the green jacket off his arm.
"It's a through and through. It's easy enough to stitch up."
She can hear the strain in his voice, but the next thing she knows he's got a needle threaded and is struggling to stitch together the hole on one side of his arm. Just the sight of the needle unsettles Felicity's stomach, yet as she watches him struggle with the third stitch, she steps forward.
She almost loses her cool as she pushes the needle through the first bit of skin. It's surprisingly resistant to the needle as she works, concentrating on closing the wound rather than the task itself. She's never sown a person up before, but so far it's not that much different from her Brownie Girl Scout patches.
Oliver hands her an antiseptic wipe as she finishes, and Felicity wipes up the blood, thankful to let Oliver handle putting away the needle. Only as she steps away does she realize this is her first glimpse of him shirtless.
And man, is he unbelievably fit. She wants to reach out and run her hand over his carved abs, memorize every raised scar on the muscled landscape. Naturally, her eyes drift to the spot on his side, the expanse of skin where her mark sits in black ink.
It's not there.
The mottled flesh that covers the area sends a tear down her cheek, her hand rests against the spot without a conscious thought to direct it. The mark, her mark, was erased from his skin, becoming instead another scar on his body. The thing that connects them isn't there. It's like it never existed.
Oliver rests his hand over hers on his side, and her eyes flit up to meet his in surprise.
"On the Island," he whispers, "there was a man who told me the best thing for me to do was destroy the mark so it couldn't be used against me. I didn't believe him until a year later when I saw a man use soulmarks to destroy people. So I melted it myself."
She grows somber at the information as she imagines him cold and hungry, desperate enough that he thinks the only way out was to injure himself. He did it to protect her before they even met.
"Hey." He cups her cheek to bring her eyes back to him. "This mark comforted me those years I was on the Island. And destroying it then protected you from A.R.G.U.S. when they took me to China. It was the right choice."
Oliver shivers as Felicity runs her fingers lightly over the mottled skin again. Slowly, she runs her hands over his exposed chest, lost in the muscles that jump under her hands. The scars are just another part of the landscape, another thing that makes Oliver who he is.
It hits her a second later what she's doing, and she pulls her hands back. Her eyes lift to Oliver's to apologize, but she can only swallow when she sees the desire stirring in his eyes, desire she's sure is mirrored in her own.
She doesn't act on the desire but neither does she step back to put distance between them, instead, she lifts her own shirt. She twists to give him a better view of the mark, their mark. He reaches out tentatively to give her a chance to change her mind, to step out of reach.
She draws in a shaky breath as he touches the mark for the first time, running his thumb across her skin. Gently, he pulls her closer as he inspects her mark; a look of wonder fills his face. Her eyes don't leave his face, carefully taking stock of his reaction, of the awe and reverence she finds there.
Her hand cups his cheek. The scruff there scratches her palm and sends a shiver down her spine. She's not thinking about it anymore, just acting. Her touch draws his face back up. He's only a couple inches away. His breath fans her face, and all she wants to do is lean forward, close the between them.
He pulls her closer by his hand on her waist, the hand still pressed on her soulmark. He seals his lips to hers, presses them against hers in a chaste kiss.
Felicity's mind short circuits. For once, the internal babble stalls, wiped out by the kiss combined with the circling of his thumb on her mark.
She takes a step closer, a step into his embrace. Her stance shifts to match his, her other hand lowering to his side where his mark used to sit. She gasps as he pulls her flush against his bare chest, and he takes advantage of that opening. Tongues tangle as the kiss turns dirty. He nips at her bottom lip and Felicity groans, deepening the kiss further.
Oliver's hands tighten around her waist, and he easily lifts her into the air, pulling him onto the table. Her legs fall to either side of his so she's straddling him. His hands slide up her sides under her shirt, her chest pressed against his bare one.
Felicity's arms wrap around his neck, pulling him as close as possible as soft lips and rough scruff navigate a path down to her shoulder, brushing clothes out of the way to keep contact with her skin. She presses kisses to every bit of skin she can reach, little sounds coming out of her unbidden.
He's lifting her shirt up when the shrill ring of a phone brings them shockingly back to the reality of making out on the cold med table.
Oliver's arms on her waist are the only things that keep her from falling backwards off the table. She clutches him as she catches her breath, reeling from the make-out session. Felicity relaxes into his embrace as he catches his breath, forehead resting against her shoulder.
The phone continues to ring next to her computers across their little base. The tinny sound reverberates around the open space, echoes off the concrete walls until it ends abruptly.
It's only then, right before the ringing starts up again, that Oliver pulls back to look her in the eyes. His eyes are so dark they're almost black, and the emotion swirling in them steals her breath...and her entire thought process.
She doesn't know how he has the mental capacity to reach out and grab his phone from his jacket pocket. He doesn't break eye contact as he lifts the phone to his ear.
"Hello?"
His low, husky voice does funky things to her insides, especially as he's not pulling away.
"Yeah, Felicity's with me," he tells the person at the other end of the line.
Their compromising position finally sinks in. She tries to move off Oliver's lap as he's distracted. She underestimates the distance from his lap to the ground and ends up clinging to Oliver's arm with a yelp.
He chuckles warmly, right in her ear, sending shivers down her spine. "Yeah, Digg, she's here with me...Sure, we'll meet you there...Bye."
Once again steady on his lap, still held tight in his arms. She knows she should move from his lap, maintain the distance they've managed to keep between them so far. Her body, however, has some other ideas, and so does his based on what she feels through his jeans.
"Fe-li-ci-ty," Oliver growls, gripping her tightly to hold her in place. Unfortunately his hand presses into her mark and draws a gasp from her. She leans forward for another kiss.
This time it's chaste, a calming touch of lips that ends too soon as Oliver pulls back. He lifts her again, lowering her to the ground, wincing as the movement pulls his new stitches. The only reason he managed to pick her up earlier was because he was otherwise occupied.
"Are you..." Her hand reaches up to check the stitches on his upper arm, check to make sure he's not bleeding again.
Oliver hops off the med table, keeping her in the circle of his arms. "I'm fine."
Her eyes latch on to his, stare into the depths of his blue eyes, gets lost in the love she finds there, love she didn't realize was there until just now. Sure she'd felt it growing over the past couple months, yet acting on it, is new and definitely preferable.
"We need to go meet Digg and Lyla," he reminds her gently, hands still resting on her hips, not showing an inclination to move.
"We do," she agrees. "Which means you need to put on a shirt...and change your pants."
He laughs and finally takes a step back. "Then I guess I should change."
...
It takes Oliver longer than normal to change as distracted as he is with Felicity's vanilla perfume lingering on his skin, the memory of her body pressed against his fresh in his mind. He shouldn't have let the situation get out of hand, yet he doesn't regret it for an instant. In fact, he wants more, and this is the first time he's actually willing to admit it.
It's going to be harder to keep his distance now that he knows the taste of her lips, the softness of her skin, the way she reacts to his touch. It's like a drug, a drug he struggled to avoid and finally tried. They say all it takes is one hit, and it certainly seems true at the moment.
Oliver's glad for the foresight in bringing extra button down shirts down to their little base of operations. His stitches aren't bothered as he slips his arm into the sleeve as opposed to what would have happened had he tried to pull on a t-shirt.
He takes a deep breath and exits the little bathroom. His eyes find her leaning over her computers as she shuts them down, the same way she methodically does every night. It's bizarrely domestic the way he knows her movements almost as well as his own.
"Ready?" He asks quietly. A hand reaches out to graze the small of her back to let he know he's there, right behind her
She nods, grinning up at him as she grabs her jacket. He slips his hand into hers. It feels natural, feels right, like her hand fits perfectly into his, like their hands are meant to be clasped together. His mind understood the practicality of distancing himself from her, but that was a memo his body had desperately ignored.
They reach the alley and he passes her a black helmet as they reach his Ducati.
"You know, it's starting to get a little too cold to ride your bike everywhere," She secures her jacket, a tug pulls it tighter around her before she slips the helmet over her head. "Besides, this helmet is not good for my hair."
The helmet muffles her voice, yet is still unable to hide the upward tilt of her head as she looks at him through the darkened visor.
Oliver smiles. He adjusts her scarf to cover more of her exposed skin. He doesn't want her to be cold. "Guess it's time to polish the car."
She snorts. "Or get your manservant to polish the car, little rich boy."
He grins at the teasing lilt in her voice. If she wasn't wearing her helmet, he would kiss her right now. Instead he dons his own helmet and straddles the bike. With an outstretched arm, he assists Felicity as she climbs on behind him. She slides close, arms wrapped tightly around his middle – probably the only reason he's still driving the motorcycle in this weather, if he's completely honest. He's craved her attention for longer than he presently wants to admit.
"What's wrong? Cat got your tongue?" She jokes through the Bluetooth headset of the helmet.
Oliver chuckles, more a rumble in his chest that he knows she can feel. "David is the one who takes care of the cars, so you're not wrong."
She hums in agreement and rests her head against his back.
He turns the motorcycle to her apartment where Digg and Lyla are waiting for them. It's preferable to the mansion where there are eyes and ears always nearby. Oh, he definitely prefers it for security reasons – and he's spend several nights on the couch so Felicity could stay somewhere safe while the Diggles took a night off, which would be why his mom thinks they slept together and why she takes every opportunity to hint at a wedding. This morning he came downstairs to a ring box and a portfolio of the pieces of jewelry in the Queen vault.
Oliver isn't sure what the rush is, but it's harder and harder to put his mother off the idea.
"We're going to need to talk about what happened in the Foundry," she whispers as wraps herself around him a little more.
He sighs as he rounds the corner. "I know."
"If something changed..." she shifts behind him, nerves evident in the fiddling of her fingers. "Or not. I get it. It was just in the moment. Adrenaline was running high. We just...reacted. It never has to happen again."
The bike comes to a rather abrupt stop in front of her apartment right behind her red mini cooper. He twists in the seat to face her as she climbs off the motorcycle. He's not going to let her walk away from this with the wrong idea.
"Felicity, that wasn't a mistake. I might have been the wrong time, but it wasn't a mistake. I could never regret kissing you." He pulls his helmet off and dumps it unceremoniously on the ground. Hers joins it a second later because he needs to look into her eyes for this.
His hands cup her face, his thumbs stroke her cheeks, and he lightly nudges her chin up. Her eyes bore into his, blue eyes full of trust if not a little apprehension. Oliver's thumb runs over her plump bottom lip as he leans back in.
"If we didn't have to worry about the Russian mob, or the state of the city, I would've kissed you a long time ago." And that's his logic: if they weren't in the middle of a war on crime, if they weren't in danger every day, is she wasn't in danger just by being associated with him...that's what he told himself almost every day since meeting the amazing woman in front of him. He's kept her at a distance to protect her.
But that mark, the ink on her skin reminded him that it doesn't matter because they're already bound together. His mark might not be visible, might only ever continue to exist in a couple of pictures, but it's still the one thing that binds them, that puts her in danger. And he can't change that mark or that bond with any force of will or desperate move. She's his and he's hers.
"But nothing's changed." Felicity concludes.
The thought is so staggeringly different from his internal monologue that it takes him a moment to realize he didn't say any of those things out loud. That moment is all she needs to pull away and start walking to her apartment door.
He jogs to catch up, and spins her back to him with a tug on her arm. "You didn't let me finish."
She doesn't let him pull her in this time, her way of resisting the intense chemistry between them. He resorts to simply taking hold of her hands.
"Everything has changed." He takes a deep breath to buy the time he needs to find the right words to explain his frame of mind. "Felicity, you are the most amazing woman I've ever met. In the past couple of months, you've proven to be the strongest, kindest woman I've ever met. And those reasons I mentioned earlier, they were just excuses. I don't want to hide behind excuses anymore."
Hope dances in her blue eyes. It steals the breath from his lungs and the words from his lips. How is he supposed to think when she looks so beautiful?
He brushes a stray lock of hair back behind her ear.
"So what do you say to actually dating? And kissing...lots of kissing," he mutters as his mind travels back those moments tangled up together in the Foundry. He knuckles brush her cheek and he's suddenly closer than he was a couple seconds ago.
She smiles, a smile that radiates pure joy, as her arms come to rest at the back of neck where she can pull him down to her level. "I think that sounds fantastic."
His lips find hers as she surges up into him and he gets lost in her. Oliver doesn't let it get out of hand this time. He keeps his hands from wandering, leaves one cupping her cheek and the other on the small of her back. He's more than a little aware of the face that Digg and Lyla wait for them just inside the building.
He senses more than sees the door to her apartment open, but he does hear the huff of exasperation from John as he catches sight of them. Well, they can't put off meeting with the Diggle's any longer. So he pulls back from Felicity. His eyes lock with her when they flutter open, and he feels no small amount of pride that he's the one who put that blissful look there.
"Really?" Diggle asks, unimpressed. "That's what took you so long?"
Noticing Digg for the first time, Felicity flushes bright red. "How long have you..." She gestures, apparently unable to finish her sentence in her mortification.
"Long enough," he responds gruffly. "Come on. We need to talk."
Oliver lets Felicity precede him into the apartment. John notices his hand on her lower back, but he just shakes his head and rolls his eyes. It's the closest look Oliver will ever get to approval from the bodyguard. Felicity has them all wrapped around her little finger. John and Lyla would side with her against him, even though they've known him longer. He can't really blame them since she did the same thing to him.
Oliver perches on the arm of the couch, across from Lyla's chair. "How are you feeling, Lyla?"
She glares at him. One hand rests on her swollen belly, yet the knowledge that she can't chase him down doesn't make her less frightening. "Like punching the next person who asks me that question."
He nods solemnly. He doesn't want to be the one on the other side of her fist, even pregnant she could still pack a punch. And she would punch him too.
"So what do we need to talk about?" Oliver asks.
"How about this?" Diggle asks, dropping a stack of pictures on the coffee table.
Felicity picks them up, sifts them, but Oliver takes one look at the black pictures and green hood: he knows why they're here. Waller recognized the hood and probably said something to John or Lyla. As far as he knows neither of them had seen the hood before.
"Care to explain why Waller just called us up demanding to know why you were running around Starling in a green hood shooting arrows into people?" Digg crosses his arms, ready for the possible confrontation.
"Digg, I don't know wh-"
"Don't lie to me, Felicity. We know you know about this. That's the only reason any of this makes sense." He frowns at her, the disappointment prevalent in his gaze. "And believe me, Waller has plenty of questions about the computer hacker working with Oliver. Honestly, you're lucky it's us and not a team of highly qualified A.R.G.U.S. agents. Now talk!"
Felicity sinks back into the couch with an annoyed scowl. She wouldn't be here if it was up to her, she would find a way to talk herself out of this situation, a way to confuse them and separate herself. Oliver doesn't doubt she could do it. He's seen her work miracle as they sorted through his father's list of names, made connections, and figured out how to take the players out once and for all.
It's his decision to tell them now. He knows John and Lyla, can work with them as tactical support without issue. Lyla's pregnancy and the position it would put them in with A.R.G.U.S. had caused him to keep them away from the whole situation. Since Waller knew, it doesn't seem like too big of an issue at the moment.
"I'm," he shakes his head and corrects himself, "We're helping clean up the city, righting my father's wrongs."
"By playing Robin Hood?" Lyla looks decidedly unamused from the armchair. The gun she rests on her thigh just adds to that impression.
"He's not Robin Hood." Felicity scoots forward on the couch, her hands wave through the air in her enthusiasm. "This isn't a stealing from the rich to give to the poor scenario. Oliver's just been helping people: stopping muggings, rapes, robberies, home invasions...that kind of thing."
Unimpressed, Digg continues to survey them, face impassive. He takes a deep breath and massages the bridge of his nose. "So, you're telling me that you've been doing this almost every night since you've been back."
"Not since I've been back," Oliver evades, unable to resist. "I was injured for a little while, Digg."
Lyla snorts behind her husband. "Alright, Wise Guy, cut it out. It wasn't until yesterday that you got cleared for physical activity, so please tell me you haven't been doing this for the last month like Waller thought you were."
Oliver stares impassively back, not bothered to confirm or deny.
"Really, Oliver?" She asks rather sharply, her irritation once again evident in her bearing. "You could have injured yourself further."
"As you can see, I'm fine." He holds his arms open wide. His arm twinges at the movement, a shock of pain he struggles to hide behind his nonchalant smile.
The conjoined disapproval of the other soulmates in the room hits him like a physical blow, a blow with so much force behind it Oliver shifts so he now sits squared off against them. Next to him, Felicity nervously chews her lower lip.
Silence fills the room. No one seems to know what to say next, what to do with the information now out in the open. Felicity opens her mouth to speak at one point, but Oliver stops her with a hand on her arm. He's still not sure how much John and Lyla want to know, how much they need to know. So he waits, as they try to figure out the answer to those questions.
"Are you going to show it to us or not?" Lyla finally demands from the chair that is more throne than chair at the moment.
"Sure you don't want plausible deniability?" He throws back.
"Just take us there," John adds, more than exasperated with the run around.
"This isn't me working for A.R.G.U.S. Just so we're all clear. This is my own agenda."
The Diggles nod and Lyla shoves her gun back into its holster. "Show us the damn place already, Queen."
A quick glance with Felicity to know they're on the same page, and the mismatched group heads back out of Felicity's apartment.
...
This is either going to end terribly or wonderfully, and while Felicity isn't sure which, she can't stop fidgeting from the moment they leave her apartment to the moment they enter the condemned building Oliver insists he can turn into a successful nightclub. Honestly, she can't really see it, but then she's never been one for clubbing anyway. Lyla and John look just as skeptical of their surroundings as they edge around the pile of debris and garbage that still need to be cleared away.
Oliver walks right up to the door and punches the code into the keypad, without any hesitation, no faltering, no moment to make sure he feels comfortable with this decision. Instead, he pulls the door open and waves the newcomers in before him. He locks eyes with Felicity then and offers a nod of encouragement before she too passes him to enter their secret headquarters.
The lights come on as they enter, a feature Felicity only recently added after tripping down the stairs one too many times in the dark. The new lights are also probably why the Diggles stop halfway down the stairs to ogle the redone basement.
"Welcome to the Arrow Cave," Felicity announces into the echoing silence. Three sets of eyes find her immediately.
"We don't call it that," Oliver corrects.
She shrugs. "I do...sometimes."
"Stop."
She would take the words more seriously if he didn't grin at her with amusement dancing in his eyes, so she simply smiles back at him, content to ignore the butterflies his expression gives life to in her stomach. She wants to kiss him again, but it takes most of her focus to not relive the last make out session they had down here less than an hour ago.
It does help that she knows she can kiss him whenever she wants now. This just seems like an inopportune moment with the whole show-the-Arrow-Cave-to-Lyla-and-John thing.
And man does she wish they were alone...
Felicity shakes her head, promptly dragging herself back to the present situation.
"Impressive." Lyla finishes walking down the stairs.
John lets out an appreciative whistle as he follows his wife down the rest of the stairs.
"Some of this stuff is almost better than the A.R.G.U.S. home office," Lyla whispers, running her hand over the worktable.
"Almost?" Felicity demands, offended on behalf of her state-of-the-art machines. Her computers were art.
Lyla chuckles. "They have stuff that hasn't been released yet."
She snorts. "Which they probably aren't even taking full advantage of." She has a full-length ramble prepared, a bubbling up of words on the incompetency of government agencies when it comes to technology, but John cuts her off sharply.
"Is that blood?"
Felicity's head immediately jerks to the med table. She remembers cleaning up before they left...right? Her brain was sort of mush after that make-out session. Sure enough, bloody gauze and the stitch kit are scattered over the table, a couple pieces even knocked to the floor.
"Um...," Felicity mutters.
Digg advances on Oliver. "This is why you don't go into the field without back up!"
"It was a simple bullet wound. I'm fine."
Felicity notices that despite his words, Oliver doesn't shrug or reveal his wound. She grabs the wastebasket from her computer and quickly sweeps the gauze away. She reaches for the stitches, prepared to remove the last remaining evidence when Oliver's hand swept it away and into the drawer.
"Oliver, all it takes is the wrong move at the wrong time, and you could have died." John pins him with a look. Felicity's happy not to be the focus of that particular gaze. That joy only lasts a second before Digg turns his stern look to hers. "Felicity might be good with computers, but she's not tactical backup."
She offers a guilty smile.
"I didn't want to get you two involved. This isn't an A.R.G.U.S. mission. This is me honoring my father's memory. You don't need to be a part of it."
Felicity steps up beside Oliver to provide a united front, because sure Oliver can be rash and act without thinking, but he has a point. And she promised to be with him the whole way even as he swore up and down that if things went south she wouldn't go down with him. What with their operation being illegal and all that...
"You dragged an innocent girl who couldn't protect herself into this without back up! We've been working together for the past year, and you didn't think Lyla and I would want to get involved?" Diggle's voice strays into dangerous territory, even Felicity recognizes that. He's moments away from drawing his gun.
"You don't want to be on Waller's bad side, Digg. Trust me: I've been there. It's not a pleasant place to be."
"And risking Felicity's life?" Digg brandishes a finger in her direction. "You put your soulmate in danger!"
"She's already in danger, Digg. I'm involved with the Russian mafia! As soon as the press gets wind of the fact that Felicity's my soulmate, it'll be a bidding war for a photo. She'll become a target because of me. At least when we're going this, I know she's safe down here."
Having enough of being treated like a valuable trinket that needs protecting, Felicity pushes Oliver back by the chest as she moves between them. "First off, I don't need protection every hour of every day. I might not be a soldier but I can protect myself just fine for a night. And I sure as hell can make my own choices."
Both men continue to indulge in their stare down without a single acknowledgement.
"HEY!"
They start at her shout and then lower her eyes to stare at the petite woman between them.
"My life, my choice: remember?"
She looks them both in the eyes, face set in a scowl until they nod their comprehension.
"Good." She grins and moves to her computers.
Lyla chuckles. "Yeah, I don't think we need to worry about your girl."
Felicity grins up at the other woman.
"Now we just need to work on your self-defense."
Felicity grimaces as Lyla pats her on the back: Lyla will definitely be a tougher teacher than Oliver.
...
It doesn't even last a day.
Oliver groans at the tabloid that greets him and Felicity when they walk into the kitchen for breakfast after a long night catching the Diggles up on their Arrow operation. They had both gotten only a couple hours of sleep – thankfully both in his bed because if he had slept on the couch again he wouldn't have gotten any sleep – so Oliver was marginally more awake to deal with the picture plastered on the front of said magazine than he could have otherwise been.
His mom grins at them like someone had just dropped a sure investment in her lap. He's sure they make quite a picture: him in low-slung sweatpants and a sweatshirt partially zipped but low enough to show off a significant portion of bare chest, and Felicity drowning in one of his shirts, only lazily tucked into a pair of short shorts in the front, her long legs gloriously on display.
"Long night?" Thea asks. She bounces on the balls of her feet by the breakfast bar.
Felicity sleepily trudges past him to steal Thea's coffee.
Oliver picks up the magazine. There are three pictures, taken outside her apartment last night. The largest one is of them holding hands in front of her building. There's another of them getting off his bike, the last a close up of their kiss.
"What I don't get is why you came back here last night, unless you knew they were taking your picture?" Thea smirks at Oliver over her reclaimed mug as Felicity pours herself her own cup.
She freezes with the cup halfway to her lips. "What picture?"
He hesitates, unsure how she'll react, but it's not like he can keep it hidden, and they knew this would happen eventually. So he hands her the magazine and steals her coffee as she examines it. Oliver pauses for a moment as the bitter taste of black coffee hits his tastebuds. He never paid strict attention to how Felicity took her coffee, only knew that she required a coffee machine down in the Foundry. Since she never bought creamer, he supposes it makes sense.
"That's..." She looks up at him with wide eyes. "That's outside my apartment."
"Yup," he agrees, handing back her mug of coffee. "We'll need to take Digg to pick up some clothes from your apartment. There are probably reporters and paparazzi camped out there already. It's probably best you stay here for a while."
Robotically, she lifts the mug to her lips, sipping the contents. "This is bad, isn't it?"
"They don't have your name yet, but it won't be long," Moira announces with a smile, like this is the perfect opportunity, like she has all of this planned. Knowing his mother, she probably did. "I've already called Queen Consolidated. A press conference has been scheduled for noon. You'll both be there, and we'll introduce Felicity Smoak to the public."