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The only thought Felicity has on the way to some three and a half star hotel is ‘thank god for silent Uber drivers.’ He doesn't ask why she's in tears when he arrives or why her legs are shaky, he just drives. Drives away from the loft where Felicity just broke up with her fiancé.
It's not that she doesn't want to talk though. As soon as she's checked in, she's talking to herself as she paces the room, trying to convince herself that she did was for their relationship. She wouldn't be able to love him the same if she had stayed.
So yeah, she really wants to talk more. Hell, she kinda wants to scream, but all she can manage when she calls her best friend is a whisper. “Barry?”
“Hey, Felicity. What's up? Is everything okay?” He can feel her distress through the phone and is already thinking of how to excuse himself if she needs him.
“I- uh– not really. I mean, I'm physically fine, I'm safe, but uh– I really don't want to be alone right now.” The hacker’s voice becomes shakier the more she speaks.
“Yeah, of course.” With that, he's about to hang up until he hears his friend’s voice call his name. “Yeah?”
“Don't go to the loft. I'll text you an address.”
He’s busy, but Felicity’s more important. He starts running before he gets the text. For her, he’s not late.
When Barry gets to her room, it's not the fact that Felicity isn't in her wheelchair that strikes him, but the fact that she's kicking her legs against the bed with ease.
Felicity starts to feel calm before he even opens his mouth. There’s something about him that makes her feel like she doesn't have to feel anything bad while he’s here.
“Felicity, you're…” His eyes widen as he comes to a loss for words, but he’s more excited than she is.
“Yeah. I know. —Is it too irrational for me to feel like if I stop moving they won't start back up again? Like how a shark dies if it stops swimming?”
“Actually, not all sharks have to keep moving to breathe. A lot of them rest on the ocean floor, and they don’t need to move stay alive—but that is not the point.” Barry offers her an apologetic smile as he takes a seat next to her on the bed. “Do you wanna talk first? Or should I make a grocery run?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’d be nice. Can you grab some ice cream?”
“Mint chip?”
“And wine?”
“Sure.”
He leaves, well, in a flash , and heads to the store. And while he doesn't want to take too long, the questions keep coming. Is this a two bottle night? Or just one? Is she going to want to remember anything from the last few hours? From what he’s seen, probably not, but in that case, does he get two bottles of the same wine or mix it up?
When he comes back, Felicity has stopped moving her legs obsessively, and instead, is staring at her toes. “Should I get a pedicure? You know, get the full ‘having-legs-that-actually-feel-things’ experience? You can come too.”
“Felicity, I have a feeling you didn't call me on the verge of tears to run 600 miles to get a pedicure with you,” he teases, pouring wine into a plastic cup for her. Of course, he wouldn't necessarily mind getting a pedicure with her, but now’s not the time.
“Yeah, no, you're right. Um…” Fingers tap on her leg as she exhales. “So William… Oliver’s son?”
“Yeah, is he doing okay? I never got an update.”
“Yeah, yeah, he's fine. He and his mother are going into hiding– which is kind of the problem, but…”
“But Oliver has a son.” Barry knows Felicity like the back of his hand and vice versa. When things get too emotional, one of them vents and the other gets to be their voice of reason.
She goes into everything, the details of the last forty-eight hours and all the warning signs that she was too in love to see. She tells him how much it hurt when Oliver told her he loved her for the first time as a ruse to get Slade. She tells him about that first date that ended in him saying that he couldn't be in a relationship and be the Arrow. She tells him about how Oliver had the nerve to get mopey and make her feel bad about dating Ray and about her blind trust in him in Nanda Parbat.
And in turn, Barry tells her about that alternate timeline. He tells her about the paternity test and the break-up there, how that too boiled down to trust. He tells her about the fight with Savage that ended with everyone dying. He tells her how he warned this Oliver and how Barry didn't want to see her get hurt a second time, but here they are.
(That's what hurts them both the most— the fact that Oliver knew and still didn't do anything. But then again, what did they expect?)
“So… I’m guessing the wedding’s off?” The speedster has mascara stains on his shoulder, but he really doesn't mind.
“Yeah. Unmark your calendars.”
“So, I kinda already got you a gift, but I want you to keep it though. It wasn't on your registry or anything, but Cisco helped me with it. It was more for you than Ollie anyway.”
Felicity genuinely smiles for the first time since she called him, and Barry can't help but smile back.
“You're too good, you know that? I don’t deserve you.” Okay, she may be more than a little tipsy now, but it's definitely a nice change— she's not thinking about (quite literally) walking out on Oliver as much.
“Yeah, well, I try.”
The blonde turns to put her cup on the bedside table, her hair falling out of place as she does so.
It all just feels right , so Barry pushes golden locks back behind her ear, his thumb grazing her cheek. He keeps his hand there for a second before pulling back quickly. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have…”
Felicity shakes her head softly. “It’s…” Eyes lock for a few seconds before their gazes flicker to the other’s lips. “It’s fine.”
As tempting as her pink lipstick is, he sees their plastic cups on the nightstand and remembers that they've gone through almost two bottles of wine.
“Felicity…” He warns, not wanting her to do something she’ll regret.
Her small smile grows wider as her gaze shifts back from his lips to his eyes. “Yeah?”
“You're drunk.”
“So?”
“You're really drunk.”
“That hasn't stopped you before.”
The comment has him scooting back to the other side of the bed. “Nuh-uh, that was a one-time thing. We promised it wasn't gonna happen again until we each figured out our stuff.”
It's called liquid courage for a reason, and this courage is accompanied by a sing-song voice. “We’re both single now.”
“You've been single for three hours. And we pinky promised. You can't break a pinky promise.”
Felicity flops back and lets out a sigh of defeat. “Yeah… Yeah, you're right.” She can hear Barry starting to clean up, but makes no move to help. “Barry?”
There's a bit of relief when she speaks again because he can hear that she's getting tired. “Yeah, Felicity?”
“I don't have clothes. I mean– I have clothes on now, but clothes for tomorrow.”
He gives a small nod and he’s off. Barry knocks on the loft door instead of racing through and running the risk of Oliver shooting first and asking questions later.
“Hey, Oliver… um—”
“Now’s not a good time, Barry.”
“Felicity asked—”
At the mention of her name, Oliver cuts him off. “She's not here.” His speech is just as slurred as Felicity’s and Barry gives him a sympathetic smile.
“Yeah… I know, uh–” His hand rubs the back of his neck. “She asked me to grab some stuff for her.”
If Oliver had any hope that Felicity was coming back, it's gone now. He can't come up with the words to say, so instead, he moves out of Barry’s way.
While he does have a few things he wants to say to Oliver, Barry understands that Oliver’s hurting too and quietly steps into the loft. The ring’s still on the table and the wheelchair’s in the middle of the room like Felicity had described to him earlier.
When he gets up the stairs, he’s thankful for having grown up with Iris, because he has some idea of what to grab, especially after a breakup. A few regular outfits, sweats, slippers, and her makeup bag (complete with waterproof mascara) make it into a bag he finds in the closet. He also grabs anything he thinks Felicity can't live without.
And he's right about those things, because when Felicity opens up the bag and sees her laptop, she beams up at the speedster.
She gets ready for bed rather quickly, and as Barry’s about to turn off the lights for her, she grabs his hand. “Stay until I fall asleep?”
“Yeah. Of course.” He nods and sits on the bed next to her. He leans down to press a chaste kiss to the top of her head. “Goodnight, Felicity.”
“‘Night, Barry.”
She falls asleep within a few minutes, and Barry gets off the bed quietly. He leaves two aspirin and a glass of water next to the bed for her and scrawls a note to leave next to them.
You drank to forget. I'll call your assistant in the morning and let him know what’s up.
-Barry