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It starts the morning of her first day back at work.
Oliver wakes up from an all too familiar dream. Christmas. The proposal. Pulling Felicity’s limp body out of the limo.
So familiar, that when he wakes up with a thin layer of sweat covering his forehead, Felicity’s name on his tongue, he can almost think nothing of it.
In fact, it’s easy for his worries to fade away quickly when he sees the blonde in question slipping out of bed, probably trying to be discreet as she moves around the room in his gray shirt.
At the sound of her name, Felicity turns around with a guilty smile. “Morning,” she says. “Did I wake you? I was trying to be quiet.”
He shakes his head. “No,” he responds, his voice still coated in sleep. “What are you doing.”
Her grin turns proud. “It’s my first day back at work today. Well, more like a meeting to discuss bringing me back.” She says. “But I think we all know how that’s going to work out.”
“Right.” He sits up and leans against the headboard, covers falling to his torso. “You nervous?”
She almost scoffs. “Please, you know me.” She pulls a pair of yoga pants from the floor up her legs. “I could do this in my sleep. But I am running late, which means I can’t stay for breakfast, so I’m going to slip out. Is that okay?” she sits on the edge of the bed and leans in.
“It’s fine.” He pulls her close. “Good luck.” He punctuates it with a kiss that she breaks all too soon for his liking.
He watches her leave from his spot on the bed with a smile on his face, slipping into the shower shortly after, the memory of how he woke up forgotten.
Things fall into routine quickly. Days at work for both, evenings at home with William and nights in the lair. They squeeze in quality time and dates, making up for the lost time wherever they can.
He falls in love with her more every day.
It reminds him so much of their first summer together, all smiles and touches and late nights just talking and anything and everything. But somehow, it’s better. It’s the mutual understanding that they came so close to losing it all forever, that for a time it looked like the chapter on their story had closed permanently.
So they hold each other tighter, they savour every kiss just a little bit more, and they enjoy what it feels like to be together.
For a while, everything is perfect.
Until it isn’t.
Oliver is no stranger to nightmares. No, he and nightmares have been old friends for the last decade. More mornings than not have started with him jerking awake, forcing his heart rate to calm down and his breath to catch.
Felicity knows this too. Of course, she gets her own fair share. As callous as it sounds, by this point they know the drill.
Except in the weeks following their return from Lian Yu (or at least, what was left of it), Oliver feels it increase in a way he can’t explain.
Most nightmares repeat things he’s been through, a tired reel his mind plays again and again until he’s almost numb to it.
But soon his nightmares shift, leaving blank spaces in his memory when he wakes up, the only thing he can remember is Adrian Chase’s cold, unsettling laugh echoing in his head, and nothing can calm his racing heart.
If other nightmares steal a few hours from him, these ones steal entire nights, to the point where Felicity and everyone else starts to notice.
Felicity doesn’t say anything, but he can tell in the way she furrows his eyebrows and nervously bites her lip when she watches him that she wants to. She doesn’t need to, he can see it when he looks in the mirror, the way his skin gets paler and makes the purple circles under his eyes look darker. He can feel it in the way his mind works slower when he’s at work and some days in the field, when his bones feel heavy like he’s running through water.
Finally, after a night where Oliver takes three dumb hits and lets a drug dealer get away, Felicity speaks up.
She asks everyone to leave the lair quietly, and everyone knows better than to stick around for this, so they clear out quickly.
She doesn’t yell at him when he changes out of his suit and collapses on the chair by the conference table.
She moves slowly, running a hand down the newest cut on his mouth and chin. “Oliver, I love you.” She says softly. “And when I see you like this, when something’s going on, it hurts.”
Her other hand intertwines with his and grips tight. “Oliver please, what is going on?” she asks, her voice breaking. His heart follows suit.
It’s so reminiscent of their conversation almost two years ago, the night they got back from Central City. And he can tell by the way fear floats in her eyes that she’s thinking the same thing.
So he answers honestly.
“I don’t know.” He whispers.
It’s enough for Felicity, who leans in. “Then you and I will just have to figure out what is, okay?”
He nods.
For a while, it’s enough.
Things go from bad to worse fast. In one day, actually.
The day starts like most others, Oliver is at the Mayor’s office going over proposals with Thea. Usually, he steals moments of the day on his phone, exchanging texts with Felicity. It’s mostly harmless, a few links to articles here and there, plans for what to do for dinner, but he loves it.
But today is a little different.
When he steals a glance at his phone in between meetings to find nothing, he thinks nothing of it.
At lunchtime, Thea brings him takeout containers that they can enjoy at his desk. When he opens his, he presses his thumb on the home screen of his phone, a sinking feeling hits his stomach when he doesn’t see the familiar notification.
When he stares at the screen for too long, Thea asks him if he’s okay and he shakes it off.
He’s just being silly, and telling Thea what’s wrong will just make her laugh at him for being so smitten.
He pushes the thoughts aside, but suddenly his appetite is gone.
By the end of his lunch break, Oliver realizes they’re not petulant teenagers, and he doesn’t need to be worrying about the dynamics of their texts.
He sends her something harmless.
Going to be late at the office tonight. Pizza for dinner okay?
By late afternoon, he gets no response and his reaction is less than ideal.
Thea asks him more than once if everything is okay. Lance gives him odd looks. The interns around the Mayor’s office walk to avoid him and his uncharacteristic irritability.
When five p.m. rolls around, Oliver has shed his suit jacket and tie, letting them fall to the floor. His collar still feels too tight, so he frees one button.
He picks up his phone with hands that feel far damper than usual and dials Felicity’s number.
One. Two. Six rings before her voicemail message greets him.
He grits his teeth, ignoring the way his heart starts to race and the warning in his brain goes off, telling him that something is very, very wrong.
He slams his phone down with more force than necessary, just as Thea walks in, holding a stalk of folders in her arm. She opens her mouth to comment on the action, but decides against it.
Oliver turns to his computer, opening a newsfeed to see if anything is wrong in the area. Nothing.
But that doesn’t mean anything. He knows firsthand how slow the media can be in this city. How slow the police response time is. That’s why he and the team exist, to stop –
He cuts the train of thought off and picks up his phone again, this time his fingers are trembling as he dials a different number. Felicity’s office line.
Nothing.
Thea sits down in front of him, and she’s asking him something, but Oliver can’t focus right now.
Something is wrong, he feels it. It’s the same feeling he had when the Count tied her to a chair at Queen Consolidated. When Cooper Seldon took her and Donna. When she ran a simple errand and the call came to Ray Palmer’s phone that she was in the hands of a meta.
He’s all too familiar with this feeling.
He tries a different number. His hands moisten so much the phone nearly slips but he catches it. Thea is still talking but he can’t hear her. It’s like she’s speaking through glass. His breath starts coming out in shallow pants.
This time, he gets an answer.
“Jerry, it’s Oliver.” his tone falls dangerously to what Felicity calls his Arrow voice. “Where is Felicity?”
“Um, Ms. Smoak?” the young man answers back almost nervously. It makes Oliver grip his phone tighter. “I’m sorry, Mr. Queen but she’s –“
He braces himself. She’s hurt. She’s missing. She’s –
“—been in back to back meetings all morning, lunch with potential investors and then on conference calls with some international partners all afternoon. It’s kind of been a crazy day, she hasn’t had a second to sit down.”
Oliver feels himself deflate. He leans back in his desk chair.
“Oh.” Is all he can respond with.
“Yeah, I’m really sorry. I can let her know that you called.”
“Yeah,” he says faintly. “Please do.”
He hangs up slowly. The tremor in his hand doesn’t go away, but he can feel his breath regain its rhythm. He swallows and winces, his throat feeling dry.
When he reaches for the water on his desk, he catches Thea’s wide eyes looking back at him.
“Ollie, what the hell was that?” she demands.
“What?” he asks after a long sip. The water helps, but he’s starting to notice a dull pain forming around his forehead. He opens his desk drawer to look for a painkiller.
“Don’t –“ He hears her get up. “Don’t ignore me. What the hell happened to you just now? It’s like you completely shut down.”
No painkiller. Damn. He shuts the drawer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just needed to reach Felicity.” He says, keeping his voice monotone.
“Yeah, I saw that, but what was so urgent?”
He shrugs. “I just hadn’t heard from her all day when I usually do. That’s all.”
Thea furrows her eyebrows. “Okay, but you weren’t yourself. You were ignoring me and breathing really hard and –“
“And what?” He asks, suddenly feeling cagey.
“Ollie, it looked like you were having a panic attack.” He opens his mouth to retort, but she continues. “And that’s okay, I just don’t understand what happened.”
“Thea, it was nothing like that.” He says, trying to keep his voice steady.
“But I saw it, Ollie.”
“Thea,” he says warningly, but she continues.
“It’s like, you kept dialing different numbers and you weren’t listening to me and when someone did pick up you sounded like you were going to start yelling at the guy and I just –“
“She should have picked up.” He finally erupts. Thea’s hands, raised in argument, go slack.
“She should have answered.” He says again, his voice feeling thicker. “She needed to, because – because when she doesn’t, and I don’t hear for her – that means – it, it means –“ he cuts himself off, leaning over in his chair.
Beads of sweat form on his forehead and slide down the side of his face. Warm flashes travel up his neck and he presses a hand there, trying to thumb away his collar as if it’s suffocating him.
He gasps several times, but the air doesn’t come to his lungs
Thea moves around the desk and crouches next to him. He can see her hesitate before reaching out and placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Hey, just breathe. I’m here. Breathe with me. Felicity’s okay. Just focus on breathing, okay?”
When Oliver comes back to himself, what Thea says is no surprise.
“You need to talk to Felicity about this.”
He hears her come in before he sees her. He’s sitting on the love seat facing away from the door on purpose, as if it’ll help delay the conversation to come.
She walks around the space slowly. Her heels get kicked off first with a sigh, before her bag drops to the floor.
She sits next to him silently, tucking her legs under her and resting an elbow on the back of the couch. She doesn’t touch him.
“So, Thea may have told me what happened today.” For all the babbling she claims holds her back, Felicity Smoak does not beat around the bush when it matters.
He looks straight ahead. “It was nothing, she’s overreacting.”
“Really?” she pushes off the side and moves closer to him, resting a hand on his bent elbow. “It didn’t sound like nothing to me, Oliver. It sounded really serious.” She tugs gently, urging him to look at her.
When he finally does, the sight breaks his heart. Felicity looks exhausted. The signs of a long day are evident in the way strands fall out of a limp ponytail, pink lipstick mostly faded away except for a few spots around the edges, and tired eyes looking up at him in concern.
He shakes his head almost helplessly. How can he add more to the weight on her shoulders? “What do you want me to say,” he says quietly, “I overreacted when I shouldn’t have. It was stupid.”
“It was not.” She says immediately. “If it was stupid, you wouldn’t have reacted so strongly. This clearly matters.”
He looks at his hands for a few minutes. Her own still sits on his arm, rubbing small circles into his skin.
“When we were on that island because of Chase,” he starts finally, “the only way I could talk to you was through our comms. When he –“ he pauses, and forces himself through the words. “When he blew that island up, I didn’t know what to do. I tried to reach you again. But the line went dead. And I don’t know why I kept trying – but I did and it wouldn’t work and –“ he rubs a hand across his jaw. “I don’t know.”
“And when I didn’t answer today…”
“It just felt like it did before.” Tears blur his vision. “I didn’t know where you were. If you were okay. And I hated feeling like that. Like I was going to lose you again.”
Felicity is silent next to him for a few minutes.
“You’ve been having trouble sleeping for a few weeks now.” She says eventually. “More than usual. Is that related to it at all?”
He thinks carefully. When it began. Why it might be happening.
The answer only makes his self loathing grow.
“It started the day you went back to work.”
The hand making its way up his arm freezes. “What?”
“It’s dumb, I know,” he looks down again, “and selfish, but… just knowing you’re far away, not knowing where you were or if I could keep you safe, it was stressing me out. More than I led on.”
She doesn’t say anything, so he continues, the words tumbling out of his mouth. “And Chase may be gone now, but danger always has a way of finding us. And God, Felicity, I’ve come so close to losing you, more times than I can count. Just the thought of reliving that again –“
He breaks off into a half sob, letting his head fall into his hands.
He doesn’t manage to gather himself right away, taking several shuddering breaths before he can. Next to him, Felicity is silent.
When he does look up, tears have gathered in her own blue eyes.
“I don’t know what to say.” She says honestly. “I know that fear you have about losing me, I have it every night you go out there. Maybe it’s not the same, given what happened recently. But I can’t stop living my life. You know that, I don’t need to say it.
“This is something clearly out of my wheelhouse. I know you won’t like what I have to say next but, Oliver,” she shifts forward, taking both his hands in hers. “I think you should talk to someone. Someone qualified. I really think it would help with what’s going on lately.”
He mulls over her words carefully.
She’s right, he doesn’t like it. But that doesn’t change the truth.
“Maybe I should,” he says hoarsely. “It’s not your job to fix me.”
It’s the wrong thing to say, because Felicity moves closer, eyes blazing. “No, it may not be, but that’s because you don’t need to be fixed, Oliver, that’s not why I said it. I just can’t stand to see you in pain anymore.”
His heart swells in his chest as he stares at this woman, this incredible woman in front of him, that he’s so lucky to love.
He can’t say anything, and instead pulls her close, gathering her in his arms and tucking her head under his chin.
“I love you.” He whispers into her hair, so quietly she doesn’t hear it. “So much.”
He thinks he can feel a wetness on his shirt. “We’ll work something out,” she says, the sound slightly muffled as she speaks into his chest. “Some days you’re going to be busy, some days I will be, but we’ll figure it out, okay?”
And they do.
It takes time, several weekly meetings with a therapist Oliver is comfortable with. And communication, Oliver and Felicity both learning that some things cannot be unsaid. They leave notes when texts don’t work, and phone messages and send videos and talk through song recommendations and –
They grow from it.