Chapter Text
Felicity stood outside the door of her new, temporary, apartment with the key in her hand when she paused.
“What is the protocol here? I mean, technically I live here, at least until Monday. But I probably shouldn’t just barge in, right?” she murmered to herself.
She lifted her hand to knock on the door when suddenly it whooshed open in front of her.
So that’s how Felicity Smoak met Tommy Merlyn. She was standing looking a little surprised and a little disheveled from her long travel day, and he, damn him, was looking handsome and freshly showered and wow are those dimples Felicity thought as he flashed her a charming, if confused, smile.
“Uhhhhhh,” Felicity began, her normally over-exhuberant gift for gab (or at least babbling) temporarily leaving her. Because if this was her new roommate? Damn, he really wasn’t a boy. He was a man. This suddenly felt like it was going to be 1000 percent more awkward than she’d first imagined. Not that she’d ever really imagined living with a man at all. Not really.
“Can I help you?” Tommy asked, clearly confused but still kind. “Usually I have to GO to the clubs first before I get the beautiful blonde to come back to my place,” he quipped, and yeah, ok, a charming but flimsy line is something Felicity could deal with.
“Yes,” she said, her eyebrows high in challenge and her temporary language loss a thing of the past. “I am actually your new roommate. I just got back from picking up my keys. And you, I assume, are Thomas Merlyn.”
Now Tommy was the one whose eyebrows rose upwards. “Roommate huh? I gotta say, you are the prettiest ‘Felm’ I’ve ever met,” he said, referencing the botched name that had appeared on their housing forms.
“It’s Felicity, actually. Felicity Smoak. The, uh, ‘Felm’ thing was just, sort of a ‘Tuttle/Buttle’ situation.”
“Huh?” Tommy asked, clearly confused by both the situation and her obscure reference.
“‘Tuttle/Buttle’? Brazil? Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece?” She could see that she was getting nowhere with her geeky film knowledge so she tried a new tact.
“What I mean is, it was a mix up in the system. A glitch. The start of my first name fused with my middle initial and…. ‘Felm’ I guess...” Felicity trailed off, not really sure where to go from there.
Tommy broke the silence by gesturing behind here. “Are those all your bags?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah, yep. But don’t worry, I don’t plan on unpacking them. I mean, eventually I will unpack and settle in somewhere, but it won’t be here,” she took a deep breath, trying to sideline the oncoming babble.
“What I’m trying to say is, I’ll call the housing office on Monday and have them arrange to move me. You know, in with a female roommate. But it was too late today, so I will be staying here for a few days. I hope that’s ok?” she finished, a little uncertain. This felt like very unchartered territory.
“Ok,” he said, smiling and nodding. At least he looks amused and not irritated, she thought.
“Well, can I help you carry them inside? I was just heading out to meet some buddies, but I can be a little late. Have to give you the grand tour of your humble abode, right?”
At her uncertain look, Tommy stepped out of the apartment and gently laid his hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be ok, Felicity, I promise I don’t bite. And even I can behave myself for two days.”
She smiled at him and bent to grab a bag while he gathered her other two suitcases.
“People call me Tommy, by the way.”
“Well Tommy, lead the way.”
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After a brief tour of the apartment, Felicity decided the best features were the storage in the bathroom (cause yeah, living out of a shower caddy for two years had kinda sucked) and the view from her window. She was at tree level and there was a beautiful willow tree right outside. Only, it wasn’t really her view, right? Right. Don’t get too attached, surely the next place they find for her will be just as nice.
Felicity turned from her musings of how beautiful Boston looked like this, painted pink and golden by the early evening sun, when she heard Tommy at the door.
“So, I actually do have somewhere to go. I’m meeting friends to help them unpack and then heading to RISE later,” he told her, naming a popular nightclub. “Do you want to join us? I could swing back by and get you on our way over there” Tommy suggested kindly.
“Oh, no. Thanks though! I’m not 21, so…”
Felicity saw Tommy’s eyebrows migrate north yet again, and while it wasn’t a bad look, she was starting to feel like this whole thing was just a little too ridiculous, even for her.
“I’m 19. I’ll be 20 in November. I finished high school early. I grew up in Las Vegas, and have you been to Las Vegas?” she asked, and when he nodded she continued on, “well, it’s definitely worse to live there. I needed out. MIT was my escape plan.”
“Wait, MIT? You don’t go to Harvard? I wondered why I hadn’t seen you before.”
Felicity smiled, wondering why on Earth he would have noticed her anyway, but just said, “I guess that the mystery and appeal of the multi-school housing system. Since we’re both seniors and students I guess they figured our life styles can’t be that different, right? Study. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.”
Tommy didn’t have anything to say to that, because if he was being honest, Felicity probably had no idea what it would be like to room with him. His hours were a little unconventional for, well, most people. And she was clearly a hard worker to have gotten so far at such a young age. But 19, damn!
“Ok, well, I do really need to get going,” Tommy gestured towards the door and then stopped to show her a stack of fast food menus on the counter. “I found these in the drawer. I’ll probably eat when I’m out, but it might help you get aquinted with what the neighborhood has to offer.”
“Ooooh, I could kill for some good Indian food,” she said, looking over one of the more appealing looking menus.
“I expect a full report on your food discoveries in the morning,” Tommy said with a wink as he closed the door behind him, shouting, “Don’t wait up!”
Alone for the first time in her first apartment, Felicity suddenly didn’t know what to do. She had looked forward to have her own place since, well since practically forever. Sure, growing up with her mom working the long, strange hours required of a cocktail waitress on the strip wasn’t unlike living alone, but this was a space that was hers. Or, well, theirs. For the next two days. After that, who knows, but she might as well make the most of it.
Felicity took a few minutes to hook her laptop up to the wifi and scrolled through Netflix while navagating the website for that Indian place that looked so promising. She placed her order and settled on the couch, ready to relax and watch one of her favorite episodes of Doctor Who.
Her food arrived forty minutes later, which she considered pretty good for a Friday night at 7 p.m. and Felicity decided to fire up the next episode. She moaned quietly to herself at the deliciousness of the saag paneer and tiki masala. This restaurant was definitely a keeper.
After the episode ended, Felicity grabbed her tablet, curiosity about her new roomie finally getting the better of her. She promised herself she’d only Google him, ‘cause googling isn’t that intrusive, right? There were definitely WAY more thorough searches she could run, but she was just looking for a few public, easy to find details. Because Felicity had a strange feeling that she’d met him before.
And that’s how Felicity came to realize that Tommy Merlyn, her Tommy Merlyn, was, in fact, THE Tommy Merlyn. Well, ok, she obviously hadn’t remembered his name, but once she saw all the articles about Merlyn Global and the “billionaire playboy about town” stuff, she realized that she definitely should have recognized him. Because she’d definitely read about him before.
But WHY, was her next question. Because it made absolutely no sense that a BILLIONAIRE would choose to use the completely random student housing finder that she, a scholarship student, had used. Couldn’t his daddy just hook him up with a million dollar penthouse to bring his super model girlfriend-of-the-week home to?
So, ok, he is definitely a puzzle for her to solve. A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Or something.
She had to find something else to do to stop herself from running a bunch of not so legal and definitely not so friendly searches on Tommy. She might not be planning on staying here for long, but that still didn’t mean she thought it was ok to invade his privacy. At least not more than the papparrazzi and a slew of tabloid journalists already had.
She decided to distract herself with some basic unpacking, just throwing her already laundered sheets on the bed and digging out her basic toilettries and other essentials. And since she wasn’t in the dorms anymore, she’d have to see to food. A quick search of the kitchen revealed that Tommy hadn’t done any shopping, so she placed a quick grocery delivery order online to be delivered the next morning.
That done, she felt like she should try to relax, but sleep seemed unlikely. It was after 9 in Boston, which was only 6 p.m. Las Vegas time. Sure, she’d been up early to get to the airport, and it had been a long day, but she just felt restless.
Out of good ideas, she decided to settle in on the couch to try to finish up a complicated coding project she’d been working on all summer. She plugged her earbuds in to the computer so she could listen to music and got down to work. She was so in the zone that she barely noticed the hours ticking by.
At some point she must have finally gotten tired, because she didn’t remember falling asleep on the couch, but suddenly she was awakened by the sounds of giggling and what was maybe a stampede of drunken elephants in the kitchen. Ok, no, not that. The voices, which were clearly NOT trying to be quiet, sounded like they belonged to Tommy and some girl, so, yeah, it seemed his reputation wasn’t too far off from the truth. Of course, it wasn’t fair to judge, she barely knew him. Maybe that was his girlfriend. But either way they sounded drunk.
She sat up on the couch, straightening her glasses that had slipped down her nose, and turned in time to see Tommy push the woman against the wall in a heated kiss. The way his hands were roaming, Felicity was worried she was about to get WAY more of a show than she wanted. She quickly stood up, trying to make noise and attract their attention.
“Felicity?” she heard Tommy’s voice call out. “Um, sorry. Did we wake you?”
“Oh, no, no, it’s fine. I didn’t actually mean to fall asleep on the couch. Not when there’s a perfectly good bed in there. So, I’ll just…. yep,” she murmured, pointing to her room.
Safely behind her door, she took a fortifying breath before changing quickly into her pjs and grabbing her toothbrush. Once she was sure the coast was clear she hurried to the bathroom to get ready for the night. There were definitely…. noises coming out of Tommy’s room. Yep, she was just gonna try to block that out and maybe dig out the ear plugs she packed for traveling.
Back in her room, she tried sleeping again, but found it surprisingly hard to settle in to sleep. She couldn’t get the image of Tommy and his rumpled shirt and kiss-swollen lips out of her head.