Disclaimer: Okay, so if you haven't read this part of the story in the last eighteen or so chapters then I highly doubt that you'll be changing your patterns now. 'Cause you see, I normally like math and statistics and those kinds of things and probability suggests that you won't be changing your mind the nineteenth time if the last eighteen didn't do it. When you think about it, it just kind of makes sense. My point is, if you really feel the need to read a disclaimer for this story go back to one of the last eighteen freaking chapters!
Okay, the rant is now over. Read on!
Having watched Oliver Queen grow up and go through a veritable evolution of communication skills, Quentin Lance had to admit that he was extremely good with kids. He didn't shower that compliment lightly. In fact, for a reasonably large portion of Oliver and Laurel's dating life Lance was cursing that particular skill set of Queen's from the tip of Everest to the lowest circles of firey hell.
It wasn't because being good with little kids was a bad thing. As a civil servant Lance was essentially required to love small children and graciously accept their clumsily drawn and badly spelled letters written as third grade English assignments thanking him generally for his service protecting their city. He loved comfortable relations with kids. Three cheers for that!
The thing he wasn't so much a fan of was the expression Laurel got on her face every time she witnessed Oliver with little kids. It wasn't the reassuringly level headed look that normally characterized the face of his eldest daughter. It was an expression that was completely and totally unreassuringly warm mushiness combined with a sort of aspirational determination.
Lance could remember the first time he had ever seen that expression. They had all been at the park where Oliver was teaching a six year old Thea to ride her bike without training wheels. Thea had skidded to a stop in front of tree stump and fallen to the ground, her face screwing up as she tried bravely not to cry.
Oliver had shot a semi-panicked look at Laurel who had merely smiled encouragingly and extracted a small box of band aides from her school bag. Essentially every member of the Lance family happened to carry band aides. Between Sara's slightly careless and clumsy nature, Lance's high stress job, and Laurel and Dinah's hereditary propensity for paper cuts first aid supplies were a must.
Quentin had seen Oliver's small grateful smile as he took the box and ducked away to tend to Thea. He had been a perfect older brother. With discreet efficiency he had cleaned and patched over the scrapes on her hands and knees and helped her back up to her feet. "Are you sure?" Lance heard him ask Thea as he extracted the bike from the bush it had ended up in.
He had shrugged and handed the bike back to her with a seemingly untroubled expression. "Okay then Speedy. It's up to you. But how about you stick with the flat part of the park for a little while okay?"
Thea nodded and teeteringly got back on the bike and wobbled away down a flatter path. Oliver watched her move away with the sort of worried expression only older brothers ever really pulled off. It was the look that fell between fatherly worry and the kind of charitable bemusement of a best friend.
It wasn't his look that Lance was concerned with though. That look actually gave him hope that underneath everything that Oliver was beginning to show as an outer persona was still the normal, kind little boy that Lance had liked so much. The look that bothered him was Laurel's. It was his daughter's 'planning a future look', and even then Lance just couldn't see it.
That wasn't even just as a father disapproving of his daughter's boyfriend. It was the fact that as someone who had lived forty years could see when two people just weren't going to make it in the long run. As a father, he didn't want his daughter to build all of her hopes and dreams for the future around one erratic individual.
Those were the times that Lance absolutely hated the fact that Oliver Queen was somehow incredibly good with kids. That one single look on Laurel's face. It popped up at different times. When Oliver stopped to listen to a street kid playing the violin and paid him afterwards, or when he helped Thea swing across puddles on rainy days.
It didn't seem to be something he could help either. It was just something that seemed to be an inlaid part of Oliver Queen, like blue eyes or blonde hair. Hell if Lance knew where that particular gene came from though. It was something un-chartable like the apparent charm and broad smiles that Queen seemed to be able to produce on command. He was just plain good with kids.
Apparently not even the island was something that could change that which was something that Lance hadn't learned until a woman named Tatsu had come to visit to deliver a warning about stirrings within the League. Apparently Nyssa had been unable to come herself because she had wanted to avoid giving Malcolm Merlyn any time to find a weakness in her place in the hierarchy. She was trying to maintain control which Oliver supported quietly from a distance.
Tatsu had appeared like a shadow in the apartment Oliver shared with Felicity. Lance had been there in order to supervise Oliver in his attempts at cooking a dinner for his girlfriend. Oliver had insisted that during their five month foray out of Starling City he had actually become a highly proficient cook, but the image of a little boy covered in flour trying to waft smoke out the window as the fire alarm caused the sprinkles to go off in the Lance apartment. With that in mind, there was no way Lance was letting Queen cook alone.
"You are cooking," the women said in only slightly broken English accent with a light Japanese lilt. Quick brown eyes had flicked to the vase of flowers on the table and back to where Oliver was standing chopping vegetables at the kitchen counter. "And for a women. If this is not a sign that people can change then I do not know what is."
"Tatsu," Oliver greeted. Lance noted with a cold chill that his grip on the kitchen knife had changed, and not to one that was more deadly. Instead it had shifted back to the hold a typical person kept on a normal kitchen knife. The shift from average to deadly and back again had come ad gone in the same amount of time it had taken for Lance to notice that there was someone else in the room.
Oliver let the knife drop back to the cutting board and wiped his palms on the back of his pants before he went to greet the women with a warm hand shake. "I didn't expect to see you again so soon. How are things?"
"Their may be trouble with Malcolm Merlyn soon," she reported calmly. "Your friend Nyssa Al Ghul wished to come herself but was wary of arousing his suspicions. She sent me instead to warn you."
Lance could see a slight flicker behind Oliver's eyes but it was gone in a moment. It hadn't been fear or apprehension, but something far more terrifying. It had been a cold and resolute fury. "What is it?" he questioned. "Our deal only went through with the understanding that if he became my enemy again I would kill him without hesitation."
Tatsu waved a dismissive hand. "Kare wa kibun ga kare o yorokoba seru toki utsu kusa taiki-chū no hebi no yōna monodesu," she said in fluent Japanese. "He doesn't seem to be planning anything at all. That is what disturbs Nyssa. For Al-Saher to be planning nothing makes her feel uneasy. It seemed that you should know."
Oliver dipped his head in a gesture of gracious respect that startled Lance. He wasn't sure he had ever seen Oliver do something like that. "I'm very grateful that you traveled all this way to deliver your message," even his town had shifted to something more formal and respectful. He gestured to the open living room. "Please make yourself comfortable." He held up a hand to stop her upcoming protests. "It is the least I can do to repay the hospitality you showed me six years ago."
Tatsu still shook her head and looked down at the table and the food simmering on the stove. "I would not wish to disrupt your dinner," she looked back to him. "Especially given that you already have a chaperone for your cooking."
Queen rolled his eyes and sighed. "I guess I'll just have to call you when I'm doing my laundry." He said the words like they were a well remembered joke.
The women seemed to take the words in her stride. "No billionaire Oliver Queen. When you decided to do your laundry you will have to call a chef who is skilled in the art of cooking pork dumplings because that will surely be the day that pigs begin to fly." Tatsu's eyes seemed to catch on a small steal jar on the mantle and she threw up a hand over her mouth. "Akio," she gasped
Lance watched Oliver as Oliver watched Tatsu with interest. She didn't know what was causing such a reaction but he was perfectly willing to find out. "You keep him here in your home," she asked. Her eyes seemed almost to be welling with tears.
Oliver took a deep breath before he spoke again. "Kare wa kazokudeshita," he said in Japanese more fluent than Lance had expected. He didn't really know why the fact that Oliver Queen could speak another language besides the ones he already knew about was at all surprising anymore. "I treat him with the honor that that deserves."
Tatsu nodded. "Thank you," she said. With a final glance around the brightly colored and softly lit apartment. "I am glad that you are happy Oliver Queen," she said, and before Lance could blink twice she was gone.
Oliver turned back to the vegetables on the cutting board and again took up the knife to continue chopping. Lance watched him and waited for an explanation. When one didn't seem like it would be forth coming he decided to push a little. "So what did she say? And while I'm asking questions I don't think you'll answer how about I ask who Akio is and what he has to do with the canister on your mantle piece?"
"Akio was her son," Oliver said simply after another long moment. "He was killed by a lethal virus designed by a government agency six years ago in Hong Kong." He threw the vegetables in to the pot on the stove and began to manipulate it's contents with a wooden spoon. For another long moment the only sounds in the room were the ticking of the kitchen clock and the simmering of the stove. "I hadn't seen Thea in nearly four years then," he said with a gesture almost like a shrug. "Akio was ten."
Oh. Lance supposed that that explained pretty much everything. Suddenly he could picture Oliver with an untidy beard and a long mop of blonde hair playing matching games with a little Japanese boy sitting on a kitchen floor. Another flash came of Oliver sneaking that same imaginary little boy pieces of candy out of a high cabinet.
Because Oliver Queen was good with children.
When Oliver Queen had been a teenager Quentin Lance had lived in mortal fear of the day when that kid finally had kids. He could hardly handle one young Queen male. The entire world could hardly handle one young male Queen. The last thing it ever needed was two.
In fact, Lance had gotten it firmly in to his mind that the perfect Karmic and universal revenge for everything that Oliver Queen had ever done to girls was for him to produce daughters. Lots of pretty daughters who would share the same reckless dating policy that Oliver had had as a teenager. Yeah, that would be universal justice for all of the grey hairs on Quentin's own scalp.
But of course, because this was Oliver Queen they were talking about, the guy had had a son. And also, of fucking course, the two had met under less than ideal circumstances. In fact, people had been trying to kill them, and Connor's mom had just been killed.
A contingency of Connor Hawke's fifth grade class had been on a fieldtrip to see the museums and government buildings of Starling City with a few parents to chaperone. Unfortunately for the eighteen fifth graders chosen to participate in the trip, that tour had included a trip to the Starling City Mayor's office. Even more tragically for Connor Hawke, he and a little girl named Maya Heart had been the only two children who had needed to use the bathroom and hadn't managed to leave before the armed gunmen had entered. Sandra Hawke had escorted them.
Lance and the other members of the SCPD had been called in to clear the gunmen out of the building. Hopefully with minimal bloodshed involved. However, they had been too late to do much about it either way. John Diggle and Oliver Queen had apparently come to the mutual consensus that while secrecy was important, the lives of multiple innocent people had outweighed it.
The two of them had hidden Connor and Maya in a supply closet and proceeded to fight their way through all six of the hostile attackers. Then they had looped back and retrieved the kids. They had run into one last hostile who had held a gun on the two eleven year olds and Sandra. By the time that they had arrived both children were in shock and crying as Sandra lay on the ground in a pool of blood. Oliver hadn't even taken the time to think it through. He had performed something that looked a little similar to a tracheotomy only more lethal using a mechanical pencil.
Then he had ushered the two terrified and shocked children out of the building, his protective instincts in full force as he kept the kids close. By the time they had made it to the flocking paramedics waiting to check them over, Maya was riding piggy back on Oliver balling in to his shoulder while Connor stayed shocked and silent as Oliver bent over nearly double to guide him with an arm around his shoulders. Of course the police report said something a little bit different. Lance had only heard this version a little bit later.
Maya had been delivered in to the waiting arms of her parents who had thanked Diggle profusely. The bodyguard had been given most of the credit for the save and the mayor's security team had taken the rest. The news was already scraping together a story of the tragedy as they went to the ambulance. Sandra Hawke had been boiled down to nothing but a beautiful single mother who had worked hard to raise her son, and been killed in a horrible gun attack protecting two kids.
Connor however, had latched on to Oliver's hand and refused to let go. He had stayed silent and white faced the entire time. Oliver had obliged him without a single word of protest and boosted the little boy onto the gurney provided by the EMT. Lance had decided to hover relatively nearby until everyone he cared for had cleared the scene. That was how he had heard their conversation.
"Will you stay?" he had heard the little boy asked plaintively. His voice had been shaky and hollow "Please?" Connor swung his feet in the air and loosened his grip on Oliver's hand a little bit. "Please stay?"
Suddenly the little boy sitting on the gurney under flashing blue and red lights was replaced with a different one. Connor became another little boy sitting in his school nurse's office having his knees swabbed down with alcohol holding tightly to Lance's hand asking will you stay? with the same plaintive expression. Connor's huge blue eyes and dirty blonde curls formed the same cherubic innocence and fright that was impossible to turn down.
Oliver reached to the side and Lance saw his face fall for a moment before Oliver came back and wrapped a thick grey shock blanket around Connor's small form. "As long as you need," he promised. He said it with all of the serious conviction of someone making an oath. There was a long moment of relative silence before he leaned forward towards Connor. "Connor," he said softly. "Is there someone you want me to call for you?" Connor seemed almost like he hadn't heard her. "Do you have anyone to take care of you?" he continued gently. More gently than Lance had ever heard him.
Connor shook his head twice, and a few tears rolled down his nose. He rubbed them away and sniffed angrily. Oliver heaved a deep breath and reached out to pull Connor in to his chest. "Okay," he said quietly. "That's okay. We'll figure it out."
That was the moment that Felicity had arrived on the scene. She had looked around the emergency scene with a frantic edge and run in to Diggle. The bodyguard had pointed her in the right direction. Felicity had taken one look at the crying boy and caught Oliver's slightly panicked but equally determined expression and Lance had seen her expression calm and soften.
She walked over and brushed a hand over Oliver's back. She had stood there quietly until Connor's crying had slowed a little. His small shoulders had slumped and Oliver had a feeling he cried himself in to exhaustion "Oliver," she said. "The police and the paramedics need to know whose taking him home. They have papers that need to be signed."
Oliver looked up at her and then down at the boy who had been crying in to his chest until moments ago. "His mom just died," he said quietly as Connor nestled a little farther in to him.
Felicity sighed and reached out. She ran two fingers over the thick mess of curly blonde hair on Connor's head. "We're taking him home for now aren't we?" Oliver's jaw tightened a little ways and Felicity sat on the gurney next to Connor. "Go do the paperwork and make the phone calls. I'll sit with him until you get back." Connor leaned sideways into her blue coat and Felicity continued brushing through his hair.
Oliver nodded and leaned down to kiss her on the forehead before walking away to make calls to set things up for Connor at his apartment. He talked to the paramedics and then turned to Lance. "I'll take care of it," Quentin promised.
Queen relaxed a little. "Will you call Laurel to? I have a feeling we might need her for a while."
"I'll take care of it," he repeated. "Now go tell the kid he's got people to go home with so he doesn't wake up somewhere and think he's being kidnapped or something. I'm not sure I have it in me to handle having a traumatized kid call 911 tonight."
Oliver nodded and walked back to where Connor now lay passed out in Felicity's lap. He watched as the two of them woke the little boy up and broke the news as Diggle pulled the car around.
That was how Oliver Queen got his first introduction to his son. Neither of them new it until months later when social services had been unable to track down Connor's relatives. As Lance understood it, Oliver and Felicity had decided to adopt him. When they had checked Oliver's blood work it had been discovered by some brilliant lab tech that the papers really weren't so necessary. As Laurel proved in court you didn't really have to sign adoption papers if you were biologically the child in questions father.
It had been a bumpy road to break that one to all parties involved. But they had figured it out. Felicity managed as best she could to take care of Connor while not trying to replace his actual mom. In fact, the first time Connor had ever called her mom she had been reminding him to do his homework and he had made the comment offhandedly. She and Oliver had gone through their two year wedding anniversary and Connor had been living with them for a year and a half. Felicity had freaked out and started crying and a concerned Connor had called Oliver. Lance had heard that he had essentially said. "Dad, Mom is crying and I don't know what to do about it."
Lance had been next to Oliver to hear him say. "It's okay Con. Bring her her tablet and tell her the updates she wanted to install are ready to go. Do your homework and I'll explain what happened when I get home."
As he hung up Oliver had looked at him with a kind of slightly tired concern. "Detective, you're looking at me funny."
"You're doing okay at the whole dad thing is all," Lance told him. "You know. I might not ever say this again, and if I'm ever put on trial over it I will probably perjure myself. But you're doing okay as a dad Kid."
Then Oliver had surprised him and smiled. "Let's hope."
That comment had made sense about a month later. Felicity had had what Lance could only guess had been a rough day at work. She had showed up looking pale munching on saltines and sipping from a cup of tea. Oliver had provided constant refills of both things throughout the day.
At the end of it, he had come back from his patrol with a huge bouquet of flowers and a large container of sour gummy worms. Lance had been cleaning up his supplies from the foundry and everyone else had already left. "I thought they might make you smile," he said as he proffered both items.
Felicity had smiled, smiled like the sun was coming out and happily ate a gummy worm. Oliver watched her warily, as though he was waiting for something. "Are you good? I wasn't sure what would work. I didn't want you to throw up again since it makes you so miserable..."
"I'm good," Felicity told him cheerily. "Only threw up once this morning. Nothing since then. I think it's going away."
Lance saw Oliver let out a deep breath. "Oh thank God," he leaned over and kissed her for a long moment and Lance looked away. When he looed back again Oliver was crouching down on a level with Felicity's stomach. "See dusha? When you let you're mama actually eat she smiles again. And we like it when she smiles okay? So let's stick with it." Then Oliver stood up and wrapped an arm around Felicity's waist. "What do you want for dinner. I'll make whatever you want."
"Stir fry sounds pretty good," Felicity mused.
Oliver leaned to the side and kissed her on her forehead. "Done."
They had announced it officially a month later. But Lance had been the one to guess first that soon another mini member of the team would be joining up. Every member of the team had pulled together to protect her. Oliver had gone half way insane baby proofing their apartment. Connor had actually been the one to talk him down by getting him to go out to a basketball game with Diggle. Diggle himself had switched to a car with more airbags. Laurel and Thea had worked together to set Felicity up with every single baby book and craving food they could come up with as well as some non-alcoholic beverages.
One week earlier than expected Adrianna Meghan Dearden Queen came in to the world. Lance had rounded the corner in to Felicity's recovery room and found Connor curled up on a chair in the corner as Felicity slept. Oliver held the baby already nicknamed Addie cradled like a tiny pink and white blanket bundle in his arms.
"Hush little baby don't say a word.
Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird don't sing,
Papa's gonna buy you a diamond ring.
And if that diamond ring don't shine,
Papa's gonna sing you a lullaby."
He sang the song all the way through and then adjusted Addy gingerly. "And I'll do all of those things baby girl," he said. "I'll keep you safe. And I promise I'm going to love you, your mom, and your older brother forever." He took a deep breath and placed a tiny kiss on Addie's hat covered forehead. "I promise."
Lance slowly and quietly backed away down the hallway. Yeah, Oliver Queen was going to be okay as a dad. He had always been good with little kids.
At least, pre K-5th graders. Connor was still growing as a test sample.
The newly minted Queen family were all going to be okay.
A/N: So what did you guys think. Sorry that that took so long to get this chapter up. It'll probably going to be a while until the next one. I'm in school and doing tons of homework. Anyway, this was in part a hope that one day Oliver will be happy with a family, part avoidance of potential baby mama drama, and partly a reaction to Stephen Amell saying in an interview that being a father agreed with him and essentially made him hotter by the day. Hot guys and little babies am I right? Review for me! xoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxxoo