Work Text:
Oliver Queen did not crush on anyone.
He was the captain of the varsity baseball team, he drove a Porsche, he was the embodiment of charm— girls had crushes on him. And he would flirt with them until he got bored and moved on.
Oliver Queen most certainly did not get butterflies in his stomach.
So it was rather unsettling that he found himself in his first period biology class completely distracted by a red pen. Or more specifically, the person chewing on said red pen.
Felicity Smoak.
She had shown up on the first day of senior year.
He was already running late to first period thanks to being detained in the principal’s office for his annual lecture about how if he didn’t start caring about school he was going to lose his spot on the team and blah, blah, blah—his parents had funded the extensive renovations to the school, their money mattered far more than his grades and Principal Carter knew it. He was all bark, no bite.
The halls were almost completely empty with everyone already in class and he took his time to leisurely stroll to room 103. He was almost there when he heard the sound of hurried footsteps behind him and he turned just in time to collide with a stranger who yelped as she slammed into his chest.
Taking a staggering step backwards, she adjusted her glasses muttering, “I’m so sorry, I—“ When she looked up at him, her big blue eyes widened ever so slightly—a reaction he was used to—before continuing, “Umm. I’m really late for my first class and somehow I got myself completely lost, which is why I’m running around like a crazy person. Are you okay? I mean, you’re pretty solid so I doubt I could actually hurt you but—“ She slammed her mouth and eyes shut and swallowed in embarrassment.
An amused smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “I’m fine. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Looking back up at him, her voice was small when she asked, “Could you just please show me where room 103 is?”
His smile widened into his signature charming grin, “You’re in luck. I’m headed there myself.” Holding out a hand for her, she looked at it like it might burn her and he dropped it quickly to his side. “I’m Oliver Queen.”
“Oh, I know who you are,” she responded as he continued walking towards his classroom and she followed behind.
He lifted an eyebrow, “You do?”
When he glanced over at her there was a faint blush creeping up her cheeks. “Umm… your picture—well the baseball team picture— is on the school website so…”
“Right.” They arrived at room 103 and he opened the door for her. “Here we are m’lady.”
She tilted her head and gave him an exasperated look that made his chest feel weird but he shook it off as they walked into the class where the teacher paused her monologue to level them both with a glare.
“Mr. Queen. I hope truancy is not going to be a reoccurring issue, but based on what I’ve heard from my co-workers, I shouldn’t hold my breath.” She turned her attention to the blonde standing awkwardly at his side, “And you—“
“Ms. Adams.” Turning on the charm, he attempted to save both of their asses from getting written up, “Uhh—“
He realized he had never gotten the new girl’s name so he gestured her and she spoke up helpfully, “Felicity. Felicity Smoak.”
“This is Felicity’s first day. Principal Carter asked me to show her around this morning and I lost track of time. I just wanted to make sure she had no trouble finding her classes today. My apologies.”
Ms. Adam’s face softened.
Queen Charm: 1
Teachers: 0
He hoped Felicity wouldn’t say anything contrary to his story but she seemed eager to just sit down and escape the stares of the entire class.
After that first day, he hadn’t really talked to Felicity again beyond a few brief interactions. It was clear that she came to school to learn and didn’t spare much time for socializing. Whenever he tried to make small talk with her, she brushed him off in a rush. At first he couldn’t understand why it bothered him so much that she didn’t gather around his locker in the morning or toss him flirty smiles from across the room like 90% of the straight female population at Starling Prep.
And then he was hit with the startling realization that the weird feeling in his chest from the first day he met her was… affection.
He had tried to shake it off. He really tried.
He didn’t get crushes, no one wielded that kind of power over him.
But here he was, months later in April, staring at her chewing on her pen with her attention transfixed on whatever Ms. Adams was lecturing about, and thinking about how pretty she looked with her hair down.
“Mr. Queen, do you know what mineral is essential for muscle contractions? Mr. Queen?”
He snapped out of his daydream involving running his fingers through blonde hair and gave his teacher a blank look, “Uhh…”
She pursed her lips, “Didn’t think so. Miss Smoak?”
“Calcium. It binds to the troponin to pull the tropomyosin off of the active site so that the myosin heads can bind to the actin filaments and form the cross bridge.”
She might as well have been speaking a foreign language.
It was a good thing she wasn’t in any of his other classes so he at least had some fighting chance of paying enough attention to absorb the information necessary to scrape out a D. Even so, his parents had had to write a nice check to make sure he finished this season with the baseball team and this school year with a diploma.
The bell rang then and Ms. Adams gave on last quick announcement before they all scattered. “Just a reminder, this weekend is the school sponsored senior trip to the Rocket’s game. For those of you that are in the senior class, make sure you pick up your tickets from the office.”
“Oliver. Are you listening to anything I’m saying?”
Oliver blinked, “Wha—“
“Who are you even looking at?” Tommy twisted in the booth to look behind him.
“No one. I was just spacing.” When Tommy turned around again, he asked, “Sorry, what were you saying?”
“I’m going to ask Laurel to prom, is that okay with you?”
His brow furrowed in confusion, “Why would that bother me?”
“Well, you two kind of had a thing last year and I know it was never official or anything but I—“
The waitress he had been watching since they arrived at Big Belly Burger laughed at something one of her coworkers said and his eyes darted back to her.
“Seriously man—“ Tommy reached across the table to shove his shoulder. “What has got you looking like a lovesick puppy?”
“I don’t look like a lovesick puppy,” he grumbled. Eager to steer the conversation away from the subject, he returned to Tommy’s original question, “You should ask Laurel to prom. She likes you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” A stupid grin appeared on his friend’s face and he smirked, “And now you’re the one looking a lovesick puppy.” Tommy glared at him and he just shrugged, “Well, I better get going. I’m supposed to pick Thea up from her horseback riding lesson.”
They vacated their table and he pretended to walk towards the bathroom while he waited for his friend to leave the restaurant. Once the coast was clear, he took a deep breath and rehearsed what he was going to say. Every time he almost approached her to ask her out he got butterflies in his stomach like some middle school girl meeting her celebrity crush, but he needed to conquer his irrational fear of talking to her if he was going to get over his ridiculous infatuation with her.
Moving back towards their table that she had started to clear, he leaned against the side of the booth and turned on the Oliver Queen charm he had used on her with no trouble the first day of school. Before he had come to the crippling awareness that she made his heartrate speed up just by existing.
“Hey.”
She startled a bit before looking over at him in surprise. “Hey…”
“Are you going to the baseball game this weekend?”
“I have to work.”
He kept the disappointment that he was too cool for from appearing on his face. Most of the students at Starling Prep came from wealthy families like his and had never worked a job a day in their life, but he knew she was there on a scholarship. Other than that, and the fact that she was brilliant, she was a bit of an enigma. Rumors had swirled around the first couple of weeks of the school year about where she had come from and why she had relocated to Starling for her senior year, but she had offered no information about herself and people eventually found something new to gossip about.
“Gotcha. Well, see you around.”
Confusion was clearly painted on her face as she offered a dismissive, “yeah, sure,” before returning her attention to wiping down the table.
Walking away, he cringed.
Update: In case you weren’t aware, talking to her did nothing to get rid of this stupid crush you have on her.
It only made it even more apparent to him that the reason she didn’t show him attention like the other girls at school, was because she couldn’t care less about him.
He hated how much that stung.
Saturday evening, he joined the group of his classmates at the stadium as they made their way to their reserved section. Finding the seat next to Tommy and Laurel that matched the number on his ticket, he watched the players warming up on the field and waited for someone to occupy the empty seat on the other side of him.
Maybe he would get lucky and it would be one of the hot girls from the softball team who could take his mind off of the girl who wouldn’t be in attendance that night.
Three innings in though, the seat remained unfilled and even what was shaping up to be an excitingly competitive game couldn’t entirely divert his attention from wishing she was there.
Which was why he nearly jumped out of his seat when he heard her voice.
“Excuse me. So sorry. I just need to get through—“
Looking down the aisle, he saw her awkwardly picking her way past people to make her way to her seat.
Her seat. The empty seat next to him.
Be cool, be cool, be cool—
“I thought you weren’t coming,” he remarked abruptly when she finally made it past everyone and sunk down into her seat with an audible sigh of relief.
“Wha—“ She looked over at him and the bright stadium lights that had flickered on as the sun started to sink below the horizon illuminated her blushing cheeks. “I umm… I was able to switch shifts so I wouldn’t miss the whole game.”
“Oh. Cool.”
He was glad Tommy was distracted by Laurel so he wouldn’t notice how not cool he was acting at the moment.
“Yeah. So…” She glanced over at the scoreboard. “We’re winning. That’s good.”
“Yeah,” he echoed lamely.
“I’ve never been to a baseball game before.”
“You haven’t?”
“Nope. Not even one of yours, although not for lack of trying. I just always get scheduled to work during them so—“ Her blush deepened at her admission and he tried to keep his heart from beating out of his chest at the possibility that she wasn’t as indifferent to him as he thought. “So yeah… first game.”
He latched on to the easy conversation topic of explaining all the rules and telling her about some of the players, and pretty soon the butterflies in his stomach disappeared and he found that talking to her was easy. They moved on to non-baseball related topics and he found himself wishing he wouldn’t have let his ego get in the way of admitting how much she had endeared herself to him when they first met. Wished he would have asked her out months ago.
It wasn’t long after he had gotten himself to relax though, that the announcement was made over the loudspeaker that it was time for the seventh inning kiss cam. He suddenly became hyper aware again of his proximity to the girl he had been mooning over like an idiot for months.
She hadn’t seemed to notice the announcement, her attention was on studying the program in her lap that he had offered her so she could keep track of the scorecard, knowing how much she would enjoy the methodical task.
It was a packed game, the chances of them appearing on that screen were slim to none.
What are you going to do if you do though?
He had thought about kissing her before.
More than once.
It’s not going to happen.
Watching the screen, he saw the camera sweep across a nearby section.
But it might.
He glanced over at her and suppressed a sigh at the way she was nibbling at her full bottom lip.
You’re going to get slapped in front of thousands of people if you kiss her.
It all happened in a split second, but he felt like time had slowed down.
She lifted her gaze just as their faces appeared on the screen and color flooded her cheeks. As his classmates erupted into a chatter, pointing at the screen, and she looked back down at her hands that were fidgeting nervously, he decided it was worth the risk.
Twisting in his seat, he gently cradled her face in his hands and brought his lips a micrometer from hers. The ball was in her court now and he felt her suck in a surprised gasp of air.
She barely brushed her lips against his but it was enough to make him feel like his heart left his body in favor of being tightly grasped in her hand.
Oliver Queen, who didn’t crush on anyone, was a goner.
Before he was ready, she backed away, adjusting her glasses awkwardly and avoiding eye contact with him.
She laughed nervously, “Uhh… so that happened. Sorry you got stuck sitting next to me for… that. I mean, there’s probably other people that could have been worse for you to feel obligated to kiss but—”
Obligated?
Cutting her off, he tipped her chin back up to kiss her again. Her hand fell onto his thigh and he groaned.
“Oh.” Her voice was breathless when he pulled back and her eyes darted around to their classmates who were watching them in interest. “I have to—“ She abruptly stood up. “I have to go. Uhh… bye.”
“What the hell just happened?” Tommy asked from behind him, echoing the question on his own mind and breaking him out of his stupor.
Ignoring him, he stood up to follow Felicity. Even with the head start she had, he caught up to her at the concession area at the top of the aisle and reached for her arm to get her attention.
“Hey… I’m sorry.”
Her eyes were swimming with confusion when she looked up at him. “Why did you do that?”
“I—“
“You can’t just kiss people like that—“
“I know, and I’m sorry.”
“—because then they might think that you wanted to.”
He inhaled sharply, “Felicity, I—“
“Ohmygosh. Do you like me?” There was a horrified expression on her face and it threw him for a loop, rendering him mute for a second.
When he finally found his voice, he responded as evenly as possible, “I do.”
For months it had just been a crush, one that he thought was ridiculous, but after hanging out with her that evening he knew it wasn’t one he was getting over any time soon. And he didn’t want to.
She crossed her arms over her chest, withdrawing into herself. “I’m leaving.”
Yeah you made that pretty clear when you ran off, but maybe we could at least finish having this conversation…
“Okay, but—”
“Like after the school year. I’m leaving. I already have college lined up on the East Coast. And I really wanted to get over my ridiculous crush on you before I left. Knowing that you like me doesn’t help.”
His heart definitely stopped for a second. He wasn’t sure how he was still standing. Someone jostled him on their way to the popcorn stand and he reached for her hand to lead her reluctantly obliging self to a less crowded area.
“I didn’t know that you…” he began.
“Well, good,” she cut him off. “I didn’t want you to know. And I really thought I had gotten over it, but then you just had to go and look disappointed at the fact that I wasn’t going to be at this baseball game—“
He really thought he had kept that off his face.
“—and I stupidly thought that—well I guess it’s not stupid since apparently you do like me,” The barest flicker of a smile passed across her face before it settled into a frown again, “But it doesn’t matter, because nothing can happen between us. I shouldn’t have come tonight.” She sighed, “You shouldn’t have kissed me.”
His brain was trying to wrap itself around everything she had said and he blurted out without thinking, “I don’t regret it.” Wincing, he pressed on and admitted sheepishly, “But I do regret not asking you out sooner instead of spending most of the school year creeping on you.” She raised an amused eyebrow and he added, “You’re just so damn intimidating.”
She wrinkled her nose in disbelief, “Me? Intimidating?”
“You are so far out of my league.” She gave him that same head tilt and expression that made him fall for her on the first day of school. “I’m serious. I knew I couldn’t use my usual bullshit on you, and I didn’t want to. And whenever I did try to talk to you, you never seemed interested in me.”
“Well… at first I did think you were the stereotypical jerk jock and I was annoyed with myself for having a crush on you just because you were hot and charming.” He did not think a smug grin was appropriate in this instance and he kept his face as neutral as possible at her remark. A soft smile appeared on her face as she continued, “But then I was walking past the baseball fields on my way to my car a few weeks into the school year and you were helping with the JV fall ball practice. I watched you helping some of the freshmen guys for a while and you were so sweet to them… I looked at you differently after that day.” He dipped his head shyly and she added, “So there, I creeped on you a little bit too. We’ll call it even.” She was quiet for a second, fiddling with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, before speaking up again, “Leaving Nevada abruptly to move here was really hard. I didn’t want to go through that again, I didn’t want to have anyone to miss when I left for MIT. That’s why I haven’t really tried to make any friends here, and I was afraid if I talked to you…” She shook her head, “I was almost over you Queen, until you had to go and mess everything up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She shrugged, “To be honest, I don’t really regret kissing you either. If we weren’t being projected on a giant screen in front of thousands of people, including most of our class, I might not have let you stop.” His eyebrows lifted and she sunk her teeth into her bottom lip. “But umm… speaking of our class, you probably want to get back to the game, your friends.”
Not really.
“Or we could get out of here and grab something to eat that’s better than concession food—“ She opened her mouth, presumably to protest, so he hastily added, “I know you said that nothing can happen between us because you’re leaving for college, but—“
Her face closed off again, “There’s no ‘but,’ Oliver. I’m sorry. I just can’t have anyone to say goodbye to.” She brushed past him and when he turned to watch her walk away, she added over her shoulder, “I had a really nice time tonight though. Thank you.”
As she disappeared into a crowd of people, he really wished it was true that he didn’t get crushes, that no one wielded that kind of power over him. The kind of power to leave him completely crushed.
So, this is why they call it a crush.
Monday morning, he was absolutely dreading going to school. He wasn’t sure how he was going to make it through first period biology and he strongly considered just skipping it, but he wasn’t in the mood to sit through one of Principal Carter’s lectures about his irresponsibility.
Putting an unbothered expression on his face, he entered the room and deliberately kept his eyes away from her desk as he made his way to his seat. He made it through the entire 50 minute period, pretending not to notice the few glances she threw back his way, and was prepared to bolt when the bell rang.
She was fast though.
Out in the hallway, she grabbed a hold of his arm and pulled him towards the lockers with a staggering step that brought them inches away from each other.
Looking down at her, he lifted a questioning eyebrow, “Yes?”
Instead of answering him, she grabbed a hold of the back of his neck and pulled him down to kiss her. Once his initial shock wore off, he decided it best not to contemplate what was going through her mind and just let his book drop to the floor to wrap an arm around her waist and press her against the lockers.
“Umm… excuse me?”
They broke apart at the small voice and both looked down at the small freshman girl who was watching them with bright red cheeks.
“Can I please get into my locker?” she asked timidly.
“Oh. Sorry.” Felicity looked like she suddenly remembered where they were and she hastily stepped to the side. He bent down to grab his book before taking off after her as she continued walking down the hallway.
“What was that for?” he asked, trying not to prematurely get his hopes up about what she might have meant with that kiss.
She paused and turned to face him, “So, I umm… I did some thinking after the game the other night.”
“And…”
“And I think that I’d rather miss you when I leave than just be left wondering what things could have been like if I had let myself get to know you better.”
“Yeah?”
She gave him a shy smile. “Yeah. If that’s okay with you.”
“That’s definitely okay with me,” he confirmed, no longer able to contain a giddy smile. Sure, it was probably going to suck when she left in a couple weeks, but he didn’t have to think about that now.
The warning bell rang then and she startled, “I should get to class. But I’ll see you later?”
He leaned in to press a chaste kiss to her lips before confirming, “See you later.”
“Okay.” She turned to walk away and he smiled at the spring in her step.
Oliver Queen did not crush on anyone.
Except for her.
For her, he would make an exception.