Work Text:
Felicity Smoak does not lead an exciting life.
She works. That is about it.
She doesn’t have any friends in Starling City. She should have thought about that when she was headhunted right out of undergrad. But when a large research and development corporation offered her a job in their IT department at the age of 21 (their youngest ever, thank you very much) when she hadn’t even graduated yet, she couldn’t turn it down. Still doesn’t make it any easier.
Everyday is pretty much the same. She wakes up, picks an outfit from her closet. Even that is boring. Just a small selection of button ups and pencil skirts that she mixed and matched. She had an entire selection of dresses, skirts, and shirts in the back of her closet that she buys and tells herself she’s going to wear, but she never does. She puts them on, looks in the mirror, and chickens out. So she pulls her hair back into a ponytail, adjusts her button down, puts on her glasses, and grabs her bag on the way out the door.
She takes public transit to work. She gets off one station before the Queen Consolidated stop so she can stop at her favorite coffee shop for two Nutella scones and thai chai tea. She even wakes up a half an hour early in order to make it in time to get the scones before their breakfast rush.
Sometimes the Nutella scone is the highlight of her day.
She walks to work, drinking her tea and enjoying the best scone that has ever been made.
When she walks into Queen Consolidated, she drops the extra scone off at the front desk for Charlie, the night security guard who is about to get off shift when she comes in. He always smiles, thanks her, and sleepily hands over the night’s reports to Ned, the day security guard.
Felicity hates her supervisor in IT. He thinks he’s the smartest in the department, but he isn’t. By far. By the end of her first week, Felicity knows that he would never let her do half the things she was capable of. But that’s ok. She’s just biding her time until she gets a promotion. Or he screws up enough to get fired. She thinks the latter is more likely.
She boots up her computer and gets all the work she has to do for the day done within the first two hours. Some days interesting projects come across her desk that take longer, but mostly it’s just routine maintenance and clean up.
So she spends a great deal of her day finding holes in the Queen Consolidated firewalls and security systems. She finds the holes, fixes them, and then tries to get through other places. It’s like a large maze that she gets to navigate every day. At least it keeps her entertained.
She usually has lunch by herself. She walks down to a deli that does a specialty sandwich every day. Sometimes it’s a veggie sandwich on rye with dill sauce, sometimes a gourmet BLT (which she knows she shouldn’t have because she’s Jewish, but she has to make an exception for the wonder that is bacon) with cucumber and avocado. When it’s not raining, she likes to sit in the park across the street and watch everyone else and imagine where they’re off to, who they’re meeting and what their lives are like.
After lunch, it’s more of the same. When her eyes start to cross from staring at code for too long, she plays Candy Crush. It helps the time pass. Sometimes she’s feeling daring and hacks into the SCPD database or rival company servers. She doesn’t do anything with the information she finds out, but it’s nice to know she can.
Once five o’clock comes, she packs up her tablet and bag and takes the train home. She cooks herself dinner and watches Jeopardy! or the crime drama that she missed the night before. Once she gets tired, she takes a shower, blow dries her hair, and goes to bed.
Just to do it all over again.
Felicity Smoak’s life really isn’t that interesting.
*
Looking up from her recent attempt to get into the SCPD database, Felicity sees Oliver Queen walk into her office.
Huh. That’s different.
*
Felicity Smoak lives a busy life.
She no longer has an everyday routine. Sometimes she still has time to pick up the Nutella scone on her way to work, but most days, Oliver and Diggle have her up late doing research at the Arrow Headquarters (could it be called a lair? Do vigilantes have lairs?). Which means she usually oversleeps and has to rush to pull out a dress and get to work on time.
She rarely stays at Queen Consolidated during her work hours. Something usually comes up and they have to run off and save the day. She ran into her old supervisor last week. He’d implied that her change of position was a step down. Felicity just smiled and let it roll off her back. And then hacked into the SCPD database to alert the force about his unpaid parking tickets.
Her DVR is full of unwatched episodes of Jeopardy! and NCIS because she’s never found the time to cancel her season pass and is never home to watch them.
She still plays Candy Crush, but it’s usually when she’s waiting for the program she developed to hack through some server. She’s gotten even better; something about the sound of Diggle and Oliver training helps her concentrate.
She still cooks for herself, but sometimes she has Diggle over for dinner. She hasn’t had the guts to ask Oliver yet; thinks it might sound too much like a date, and she isn’t that bold.
There are other nights that she, Oliver, and Diggle get burgers after a particularly hard mission. Felicity always steals Oliver’s pickle because he hates them but never tells them to take them off and Diggle orders extra fries because he knows the one order she gets is never enough.
Sometimes she misses the peace and quiet she used to get when she walked into her apartment after a normal eight hour day.
But now, looking at Diggle as she steals a fry and at Oliver as he laughs at her joke, she thinks that peace and quiet is overrated.
Maybe Felicity Smoak lives a fascinating life after all.