Disclaimer: I own nothing. I get paid for nothing written here and obviously if it's not my idea then it is probably the idea of the CW, DC Comics, or Warner Brothers. And if it was their idea then I wouldn't be writing it. Unless they were paying me. Which they are not. Because I own nothing. I've accepted it, so should all the rest of you.
Captain Lance had learned early on in his life, as so many people do, that no one should ever underestimate the word please. One word and one syllable which when properly deployed had an almost incredible power to get you what you wanted. When he had been four or five and couldn't reach something on a high shelf, Lance had done what every other little kid which was to find a tall adult and say please.
As an adult he had learned that not all people received that lesson exactly the same way. To some people the word please was nothing more than a formality, an irritating but unavoidable social convention. For some people it was ironic, and to some others the word was nothing more than a method through which it could be made through that the speaker really wasn't asking.
Oliver Queen had been someone who had learned all of these methods and then some. The thing was, when you were as wealthy as the Queen Family and used to it, please just wasn't a word you had to use very much. In fact, Quentin can almost count on his fingers the number of times he had actually heard Oliver Queen say please. Maybe it was just that those particular moments stood out in his head more, and he had missed the other times.
One of the first times had been simply enough. He had gone by Queen manor to discuss the organization of a charity benefit for the police station and made a stop by the kitchen when he had heard banging and rattling from that direction. He had found a five year old Oliver perched on a high stool at the kitchen island, kicking his foot and chattering away as Raisa cooked.
Raisa had extracted a trey of cookies from the oven and placed them on a plate to cool. Oliver's blue eyes had seemed to widen to take up most of his then small face as he jumped from the chair to the ground and made his way around to the counter. Lance remembered watching as Oliver had reached up and tugged on the hem of Raisa's skirt to get her attention.
"I wanna cookie," he had stated expectantly.
Raisa had bent over closer to him. "We'll see about that Mr. Oliver. How about you try and ask again using the special words I taught you?"
Oliver had frowned as though he was searching his brain for the right vocabulary. Raisa had stood by patiently waiting and Lance had remained in the door way out of curiosity for how the situation would turn out. "Raisa," Oliver had tried again, looking like he was working hard to form the words right. "Can I hava cookie please?"
Raisa had smiled and reached for one of the cookies, bending to place a kiss on the top of his head. "You are a good boy Mr. Oliver. Can you remember to say it in Russian?"
Oliver beamed up at her, already stretching on to his toes to try to reach the cookie. "Pozhaluysta," he said with the sweet innocence only really small children could ever really pull off.
Raisa nodded and placed the cookie in his hand. "Now go medvezhonok," she shooed. "Out of the kitchen so I can make dinner. Remember your mother and father say no TV until one of them gets home."
The ending of the message was wasted. As soon as she had told Oliver to go the kid had already been skidding out the door. He had waved at Quentin as he went by and vanished up the stairs at the end of the hall.
Their were other little moments similar to that one existing in Lance's memory of Oliver Queen. Not many were very distinct. Normally they came either with adult prompting or when Oliver knew he didn't have another choice. One such time had been when he had overheard a fourteen year old Oliver asking for an extension on his history paper. The extension had been granted immediately after.
As Oliver got older and more accustomed to simply receiving whatever he wanted as long as he paid for it, Lance noted that the word please receded farther and father from his normal vernacular. Please was for when you needed other people to do you favors, not for things you could buy anyway. Tommy Merlyn was the same way. Please was just another cheap word to throw out when they felt like it.
All of that said, Lance found it most disturbing when Oliver utilized the word please the way his parents did. Lance had seen Moira or Robert Queen ask someone to please do something in a tone that brokered absolutely no argument. "Come in and shut the office door behind you please," was a fairly common refrain. It was a way of issuing an order while still maintaining the illusion of choice.
"Sit down and listen to what I have to say please," was a sentence that Lance had heard Moira issue to a sixteen year old Oliver. It was a pleasant and motherly enough tone that brokered absolutely no argument. Parent teacher conferences had just occurred at Oliver and Laurel's school and from the toe Moira was using he was willing to bet that the report hadn't been favorable. A corner of Lance's mind muttered that that was probably to be expected when it was the first out of nine such conferences that Moira or Robert had actually made time to attend.
Oliver had sat and Lance watched with a sort of quit horror as he glanced down at the floor and seemed to rearrange his own features. When he had looked up again he was wearing a mask nearly as blank as to Moira's own. Every line had been smoothed blank, Oliver's jaw had relaxed into a pleasantly neutral position, and it was almost like the light behind his yes had been shuttered. A light and focus still existed there, it had just been muted.
A slight flicker of expression had passed over Moira's face as though she to was slightly shocked at the change her son had been able to wrought on his own features. As soon as it had come the emotion was gone again. "You must know that your teacher's comments were less than satisfactory," she began.
Lance felt a new chill run down his spine. Her tone was all business, as though they were discussing a performance review of a knew marketing product. Oliver produced a shallow and still inhumanely neutral expression. "Were they?"
"Yes," Moira nodded. "Your teachers all had the same thing to say about you which was that you are a very bright young man who could do exceptionally well if only you could be a bit more bothered to actually attend class once in a while."
"Interesting," Oliver had commented off handedly. "Here I was thinking that a one in every five attendance record was average." He had raised his own eyes to meet his mother's. "Was I wrong?" His expression never changed from one of blank semi-curiosity.
Moira had taken a breath and leaned forward just slightly. "Your father and I would like you to please put in a bit more of an effort. There's still time before the end of the semester and we believe that that should provide ample time for improvement with a tutor." Oliver tipped his head to the side as though he was waiting for a follow up and Lance was shocked to see that Moira seemed to have one. "Your success would of course have a small effect on the duration and even occurrence of the trip you and Thomas Merlyn have been planning for this spring."
"Great," Oliver said, standing. "Well then I believe I have homework to do." He looked at her with the same pleasant blankness he had maintained through the entire rest of the conversation. "May I go then please?" The please was delivered with the same unarguable intonation that Moira had used when she told him to sit down. Oliver barely waited for Moira to sigh before he left.
That was when Moira had noticed him waiting and waved him in. "I believe Laurel is collecting her homework supplies, she should be down in a few minutes" she supplied as she offered Lance a drink which he declined. He still had to drive home that night after all. Moira took a deep breath and tossed back her drink, staring at a photo of Oliver standing next to Robert. "I swear he gets more like his father everyday," she murmured.
That was when Lance fully understood the chill that had raced up and down his spine through the entire conversation. Oliver's parents used please in business deals when neither side could afford to say no and knew it. Oliver had picked it up from them. Please with them was not polite a polite request. In the Queen family the word was barely short of a threat.
Every once in a while Lance saw Oliver use the word please with Thea. The times were few and far between, and before the island they were normally only in regard to trying to the kid trying to keep his little sister safe. Strangely, even after the island that one particular category of pleading hadn't seemed to change much.
The Lance family plus Oliver and Thea had taken a hike when the little girl was six years old in the woods outside of Starling City. They had made a stop for lunch and Thea had ended up wandering off. Oliver had been understandably panicked and immediately begun to search the surrounding woods. That reaction had been one of the few reactions from Oliver as a teenager that Lance had ever actually approved of.
Thea had eventually been found playing by a little stream a few hundred yards off of the trail. As soon as Oliver had seen her his entire body had relaxed, shoulders dropping a full two inches. Thea had bounced over and happily grabbed Oliver's hand to drag him over to see the little dam she had built out of rocks and twigs. "Ollie come see!"
"In a minute Thea," Oliver had managed. He dropped down in front of his sister and gripped her shoulders. "I will come and look at whatever you want me to, but first you have to promise that for the entire ret of this trip you will stay where I can see you okay?"
Thea's face had wrinkled into a pout and Lance made every effort he could to prepare himself. Wide eyes, wrinkled nose, and puckered mouth was a face he recognized. Tantrum mode.
"Ollie!" Thea whined. "Why?"
"Because I can't lose you!" Oliver spat out, nearly shouting. "Mom and Dad need me to take care of you. I need to take care of you! And I can't do that if I can't even see you!" He took a deep breath and Lance saw him shut his eyes for a moment like he was trying to put his brain back on track and calm down.
Thea's eyes were now welling up with tears and Lance could watch Oliver's expression comment. "Sorry if I scared you Speedy," he said in a much softer voice. Again, one of Oliver's few Lance approved teenaged responses. He reached up and used the sleeve of his shirt to wipe away a few the tears that had begun to leak out."Just promise me, okay Thea? Please just promise you'll stay where I can see you. Please."
Thea sniffed and nodded. "Okay."
Oliver had barely let go of her hand until they had all gotten in to the car on the way back to Starling City.
Fourteen years later Lance was forcibly reminded of that day in the woods when Thea had been running main infiltration on one of Damian Darhk's compounds. It had had to be Thea because their only viable point of entry had been a street level window. Oliver had been on over watch.
"Be careful Speedy," Oliver had told her. Lance had only been able to hear it because a few months ago Felicity had all but shoved a com link in to his ear and told him to start being "more electronically reachable." That had been the end of it.
"I'll be fine big brother," Thea told him, making her way towards the entry point.
Lance could practically hear Oliver's tension vibrating through the electronic link. "Okay, and just remember to stay where I can see you okay? I can't-"
"-get me out of trouble if you can't tell that I'm in it," Thea finished for him. "I know."
"Just let me be a worried older brother for a minute Speedy," Oliver responded, sounding slightly annoyed. The beat of silence on the line seemed to be Thea's response to the request so Oliver kept going. "Just please be careful, and watch your back."
Most of the few times that Captain Quentin Lance actually plead with someone were when he was really and completely terrified for the health and safety of his little sister. However, none of those times had anything on one night that he witnessed late one night in December just before Christmas.
There had been a kidnapping which had led to a rescue which had led to a tree lighting which led to a proposal. Then, because certain universal forces of he world had apparently decided that they didn't quite owe Oliver Queen anything happy yet, there had been people with machine guns. Then there had been a call on Lance's radio telling him that mayoral candidate Oliver Queen had just been seen sprinting away from armed men firing guns towards the hospital. Carrying his fiancé.
To say that Lance and Donna had hurried to the hospital had been the understatement of the century. It would be better to just say that it was really, really good that Lance's car came with flashing lights and a siren. There was really nothing better to cut through holiday traffic.
When they had arrived at the hospital the sight that had greeted them had made Lance's blood run cold. Oliver Queen sat slumped on the floor outside one of the . Lance could easily guess why nobody had tried to move him despite how much he might have been in the way. For one thing, the kid was a walking talking embodiment of muscle and not easily moved. Secondly, the look on his face was nothing short of terrifying.
His expression wasn't empty. Empty would have been better than this. Oliver's face was completely and utterly blank apart from his eyes. The blue would have looked blank too if Lance hadn't known better. Layers an layers of grief and worry seemed to be wrapped around a nugget of cold hard rage.
"She's going to be in surgery for a while," Oliver said without ever looking away from the door he was sitting opposite. "I was inside but they needed room," he swallowed thickly, making the action look painful. "Room for all of the doctors."
"Oh honey," Donna said, tears beginning to stream down her face. Lance wasn't exactly sure what the best move in that situation was so he simply watched Donna sit down beside Oliver and wrap an arm around him. Oliver remained motionless, staring ahead but not seeming to be seeing. Lance sighed and brushed a hand over Donna's shoulder and then after a slight pause, over the top of Oliver's head like he had when the Kid was seven and fell off of his bike.
For a brief moment Oliver's eyes shut and his entire chest seemed to deflate, tipping his head back against Lance's hand and the wall like the weight of it had suddenly become to heavy for his neck to bare. Lance stayed where he was for a moment and then stepped away to go find coffee. He had a feeling they were all in for a long night.
He had been one hundred percent correct with that assumption.
By the time Felicity Smoak possibly soon to be Felicity Queen was out of the operating room and stable it had been seven hours and five cups of coffee later. Oliver hadn't moved more than six inches in that entire time and Lance had a feeling that if he wanted to he would have been able to count the number of times he had blinked. Donna had fallen asleep against his shoulder sometime during hour four.
The rest of Team Arrow had shown up as soon as the shooting had hit the ears of the news channels. Diggle had gotten there and then refused to leave. Thea and Laurel had been making rotational stop ins between scouring the streets for news of Damian Darhk. The most surprising stop in had been a very discrete and still red hoodie wearing Roy Harper. The kid had heard that Felicity had been hurt and immediately started driving.
Oliver had only moved to resettle himself in to the chair in Felicity's recovery room and had gingerly taken her hand. The girl had looked so small in her hospital bed attached to machines and wires that it had made something in Lance's heart feel like it was being repeatedly whacked with a two by four. Oliver looked even worse. In fact, if Lance's heart was being hit with a two by four then Oliver looked like each and every internal organ in his body was being put through an industrial powered paper shredder.
That had been another seven hours ago.
Lance had been on his way back from retrieving yet another cup of coffee when he had stopped in Felicity's doorway and seen Oliver actually move. Queen shifted in the hard plastic chair he was seated in and looked down at the hand he was gripping. After a long moment of examining the tips of her fingers he finally spoke. "I love your fingers," he said quietly. "And I love it when you type. I would be training in the foundry and I'd just hear your fingers tapping on the keyboard and be able to relax. When you were in Central City with Barry the Foundry was silent and I couldn't stand it. It was like every little sound was scraping against my eardrums."
Oliver sat back a little ways and seemed to be lost inside his own head for a minute. "When I was in college I couldn't stand silence because it made me have to think. Then on the island and... after, for such a long time silence was all there was. And I was fine with it. Then I met you, and suddenly I couldn't stand silence anymore." He paused again and dropped a kiss against the knuckles of the finger the engagement ring was on. "I think that probably happened when I fell in love with you," a small laugh seemed to push out of his chest and get stuck in his throat. "When did that happen by the way? I've been trying to think back, and I cant- I can't seem to figure out exactly when it happened. My dad told me once when he met my mother that there was definitely a moment. And I can't think of the moment."
Lance shook his head slightly. In his experience, you weren't supposed to fall in love all at once. He had done that with his wife and very clearly that had ended in divorce. When you fell in love all at once you could fall out of it all at once. Love was supposed to happen by so many tiny little degrees that it made it impossible to figure out where and when and how it happened so you never want to even think to consider where and when and how to get out.
"You've got to wake up," Oliver said finally, breaking the last moment of silence. "You have to wake up," Oliver repeated. "You have to because I'm selfish and I need you to be here. I need you to be here with your smile, and your bright hair, and the clicking of your heels and your voice, and the tapping of your fingers on the keyboard. I need you to be awake and okay and alive."
He paused another moment, and Lance could see the Kid starring down at her face with an intensity that suggested he was trying to see through her skin to see the damage underneath, demanding to see the problem so he could try to fix it. "Please," he finally breathed out. "Please wake up Felicity."
When she continued to lie there with her eyes closed and her head on the pillow Oliver blew out a trembling breath, rocking back and forth in his chair. His eyes were screwed tightly shut and he held Felicity's hand to his face, just barely above his chin against his face with both hands. "I have a son," he breathed out. Lance bit his tongue so hard it bled to keep from making an exclamation. He supposed thinking about it objectively it shouldn't have been that shocking but still.
"I have a son," Oliver repeated just as quietly. "I found out in Central City and I've been wanting to tell you about it but his mother said if I told anyone wouldn't be able to see him. So I lied, I did what I never ever wanted to do and I lied to you. And now you need to wake up so that I can apologize for being an idiotic, lying, undeserving moron who will never ever be a good enough man..." he broke off and shook his head. "A good enough person to ever be able to spend the rest of my life with you. But I need you to wake up for that. I need you to wake up to shout at me like I deserve for keeping secrets and I won't mind and it'll break my heart when you leave but I just know- I know that however much that'll hurt everyday for the rest of my life that that pain will be a thousand times better than this one."
He pressed kisses against her palm. "Wake up," he pleaded. Then he moved down placing another kiss to her wrist. "Please." He shifted, placing kisses on each of her fingers, repeating the same words each time. "Please wake up, please wake up, please wake up."
Then Lance saw the only miracle that had happened that Christmas. Felicity's mouth opened and moved, forming words. Oliver's head snapped up and he leaned over her. "What was that? What? Please say it again. Please talk to me."
"You're welcome," Felicity said. Her voice came out hoarse and cracked but it was coming. "And ouch," she continued. "Like really and seriously ouch. Which makes sense since I'm pretty sure I got shot. Did I get shot? I really really feel like I got shot. Not that I've been shot before apart from that one time where Digg gave me Asprin that was definitely not Asprin. But all of the hospital stuff seems very shot-like. Not that I would know since I haven't actually been a patient in a hospital since the last time I had a nut reaction." Slowly her hesitant babbling trailed off and the hand Oliver was still holding moved up.
Lance watched as her shaky fingers wiped at Oliver's cheeks. "Never seen you cry," she commented.
Oliver's mouth opened for a moment and then shut and he shook his head pressing more kisses against her skin. "You died," he managed to stutter out. "You died once and they used a defibulator. You were dead and then you wouldn't wake up." Lance then noticed that Oliver's entire body had started shaking, tears slipped off the end of his nose and splashed on the blanket covering Felicity's chest. "You died," his voice cracked and then stopped.
"Not going anywhere," Felicity murmured. A yawn stretched her jaw. "Promise, 'kay?" her hand drifted a bit to cup the side of Oliver's jaw. "Not going anywhere, but we should probably call a doctor or my mom maybe? One of those'd be good." Lance saw that Felicity managed to open her eyes ad actually focus on Oliver. "I'm gonna get better," she assured. "Then we're gonna go home and get you elected mayor and stop Darhk 'cause your a hero and that's what you do. Then we're going to go see your son. Sound good?"
Oliver nodded wordlessly, looking for all the world like he had been granted nothing short of a miracle straight from every single force in the universe or supreme being in high heaven. "'Kay," Felicity acknowledged. "We're gonna talk more about it later 'cause you didn't tell me. But then I'm gonna forgive you and make you cook all my favorites before we go shopping to make up for however many years of missed birthdays."
Oliver continued to nod and her eyes drifted shut. "I'm gonna be a badass stepmom," she murmured. Lance saw Oliver's grip tighten on her hand as he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against her shoulder. Felicity's head tipped sideways to rest on top of his. " Get a doctor. I'm not going anywhere."
The kid nodded and pressed a hard kiss against her temple, and another in to her hair. "Please keep your promise," he whispered. "Please."
Lance had known Oliver Queen long enough to know that this time when he use that words it wasn't empty or mocking. It was begging, pleading, heart crushing fear, impossible levels of relief, and love. This team that one little word from Oliver Queen was everything. Just that one little word:
Please.
A/N: So what did you think. I'm so sorry about how long it's been since I updated. I've had midterm exams and prep time for them for the last two weeks but now I'm free! That might mean lots more updates if inspiration strikes or any of you have ideas you want to send me. I had a request to do something about Felicity being in the hospital and frankly I personally needed the fact that Oliver has a son he's not telling Felicity about to stop hanging over everyone's head as a plot device for the sole purpose of relationship drama. So, two birds with one stone. Review for me!xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxxoxoxoxooxoxxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox