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A ha! Gotcha! You can run, but you can’t hide!” Felicity exclaimed, reaching for the cable nestled between the top shelf and the wall of her walk-in closet. She braced her weight on her elbows atop her dresser under the shelf in order to give her height, much to her demise.
“No, no no! Ow!” She yelped. As she grasped the cable, she fell back and the dresser followed, toppling on her shin.
Albeit her multiple attempts, she failed to shove the heavy lump of oak away. “This isn’t what I had in mind when I envisioned this scenario. And now I am talking to myself under a piece of furniture. You’ve hit a real low, Felicity,” she grumbled to herself as she glared at the cable still in her fist. “You have failed me, cable.”
How was she going to get out of this one? Typically, when she was in a hazardous situation, it had to do with a mission that Oliver begrudgingly allowed her to participate in. Wait a second. She could still talk to her vigilantes, right? She felt for the Bluetooth device in her ear, and it was still there. This was one of those moments where she prided herself for being surgically attached to her tech gadgets. The shame could come later, but not today.
She dialed Sara first. Surely, Sara would help. They were kinda friends, the way that an IT geek and former League of Assassins member could be, right? No answer. She dialed Diggle next, and no answer either.
“Where are your crime-fighting heroes formerly known as vigilantes when you really need them?” She sighed and dialed Oliver next.
He was experiencing an unhuman amount of peril, after losing QC Consolidated to Isabel “constipated-face-secretive-ninja-gone-Slade’s-minion-since-two seconds-ago” Rochev. The sudden crumbling of his relationship with Thea only added to his grief. But, surely, this was an emergency, right? It is ultimately for the common good of Team Arrow because her babies, Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin, aka her computers wouldn’t hack themselves?
The phone rang. And rang. She was about to give up, but Oliver, in typical Oliver fashion, answered on the last ring. “Oh thank goodness! I was beginning to wonder if any of you were on a secret mission I didn’t know about!”
“Felicity? Wh-what’s going on?” Oliver stammered.
“Um, kinda stuck underneath a dresser, if you have to know. Could you just come over, and ask questions later? I think my leg just got numb, and I’m very attached to my leg. I really didn’t want to bother you because of, you know, reasons, but Sara and Diggle didn’t answer, and Roy, well, is Roy. Even if he has the strength of ten warriors and ripped muscles like -”
“FELICITY. I’ll be there in five minutes.” Click.
Five minutes seemed to last five hours, but a call from Oliver interrupted her thoughts. “I can kick the door down, but do you have a spare?”
Felicity rolled her eyes at the image of Oliver barraging through her apartment to lift her dresser. She could just imagine the headlines. “Billionaire CEO Oliver Queen saves EA from a Death by Dresser.”
“If you go to the right of the door, there’s a ceramic panda bear. It’s under his butt,” she described.
“We’re going to have a talk of how unsafe that is after I help you.”
“Oh, I know you will. Just get me out and then I’ll do whatever you’d like, just not anything sexually, because that would not be okay since you’re seeing Sara, and I’ll shut up…” She could not rein her tongue back as quickly as she would have liked. Perhaps her pain amplified her blabbering symptoms.
She heard the key turn and yelled, “Polo!”
“What?” Oliver appeared a moment later. His jaw dropped slightly, and his eyebrow arched.
“Please tell me you’ve played the game Marco Polo, and don’t use your five years on the island as an excuse. This game is as old as dirt.”
“How about we get that dresser off of you first.” Oliver schooled the crooked grin forming from her comments. She couldn’t be that much in pain if she was still rambling. He lifted it with ease.
“Wowow. What a difference the lack of a dresser can make on a leg.” Felicity wiggled her toes and began to bend her injured leg.
“Don’t move. We don’t know how bad it is,” Oliver extended his hand to help her up, “can you stand on it?”
She winced as she tried, and Oliver promptly scooped her up in his arms. She gingerly placed her aqua-painted nails around his neck. “Where do you want to sit so I can look at it?” His asked in a low voice. Felicity could feel the dewy warmth of his breath on her face. Focus on the pain, focus on the pain, she told herself, not his gorgeous scruff or his striking blue eyes.
“The sofa?” She quavered.
He gently set her down on the couch, propping her leg with a cushion. He rolled up her pajamas, filled with smiling clouds and flying cats. He merely glanced at them and stared at her.
“No judgy face. These are my favorite pair and I can wear whatever I want in the comfort of my own home.”
“They’re kinda cute,” he replied and finished rolling up the pajama to her knee.
“Thanks?” She felt his fingers, especially his thumb, feather over her leg, as he checked her injuries. Usually he was a lot more aggressive treating Diggle. It still didn’t help the tingle she felt with every touch.
“Not to impugn your injury assessment skills, but if my leg is broken, it probably won’t break if you pressed a little harder…and that was not supposed to be an innuendo, I swear.” She cringed, closing her eyes. She took a long breath in and out before opening one eye, realizing the room had not imploded on her.
Even if he knew what she did not mean to say, he did not let it show and continued to press on her shin. Felicity’s shoulders shuddered with his touch. Her whole body tensed every time his fingers trailed up her leg. It had to be considered a pain response in some parts of the world, right?
“Whoa, er, ouch.”
“Sorry. It doesn’t look broken, just a little swollen. Do you have an ice pack?” He didn’t even ask her where it was, walking straight to the kitchen and rummaged through her freezer. She was a little relieved because she had time to regain her senses.
“No ice pack, but my frozen peas always do the trick.”
“You know I pay you enough, right?” He did not cop a smile, but his eyes twinkled. He placed the bag of peas on her leg, squatting in front of the sofa.
“Of course. Old habits die hard, I guess,” she shrugged and smiled. “Picked that up from college when I was actually broke. You know, there’s enough room on the couch for two.” She patted the spot by her feet and scooted over to give him space. As he sat down, he lifted her legs up and placed them on his lap.
“Uh, you really don’t need to do that. Besides, you’ll be uncomfortable.” What she really meant was that she would be uncomfortable, but thankfully, she did not let this phrase slip.
“You’re uncomfortable?” So, her tongue did let that one slip. “Maybe we should get it checked out in the hospital just in case.” He was either playing the clueless card, or he really was that thick. She desperately needed to believe in the latter.
“Hey! I did perfectly fine with a bullet wound, so I am sure a simple bruise is nowhere near badass injury territory to warrant a hospital trip,” she quipped.
“You’re pretty ‘badass’ on your own, Felicity. But I want to see if the swelling goes down. Otherwise, we go the hospital,” he said, smiling at her. She blushed and threw her hands up in defeat.
“Fine,” she scoffed.
She knew he meant well, but he was being overprotective. Slade meticulously exposed his vulnerabilities and past grievances, so she didn’t fault Oliver for acting in this way. That idea didn’t mean she was going to hold back her reservations. “But I’m pretty sure I can check my own leg and drive there myself if I need to. We don’t need Oliver Queen traipsing with his former EA into the ER.”
Oliver sighed, softening the wrinkles that formed on his forehead. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll rest better knowing that you’re safe.”
He sure knew how to soften her resolve.
“Okay, but homeowner, which is me,” she pointed to herself, “picks the food and entertainment, and I choose Chinese takeout and watching Thor 2.”
“What’s a Thor?”
She contorted her face into a look of pure disgust. “Your lack of knowledge of superheroes is ironic. Well, I guess we’ll have to watch Thor and educate you first.” She leaned over to pick up the remote; the infamous cable still fisted in her hand.
He chuckled, “I’m no superhero, Felicity. Never will be. Any chance you’re going to put that cable down?”
“First of all, you are to me…and to the rest of Team Arrow, yes I will keep using that name. Second, after all I’ve been through? Not a chance I’m letting this baby out of my sight.” She shook her head and managed to grab the remote without falling off the couch. Oliver amusingly watched her juggle her balance.
He would never get used to Felicity calling him a hero, but he did feel warmth in his heart because she carried an unconditional faith in him.
“All right, Felicity. Educate me,” he smirked and patted her on the knee. She blushed again.