Work Text:
“Well,” Digg started as he entered the foundry to see Felicity standing by her computer, Roy and Oliver (still in their leathers) standing on either side of her. “I guess that explains your guys’ behavior the past few hours.”
Roy and Oliver glanced at each other, their expressions full of guilt, before quickly looking away. No one besides Felicity saw Oliver’s eyes touch her before quickly looking back at Digg.
“How’s the cop?” Roy asked carefully, crossing his arms so he didn’t have to look at his bruised and bloody knuckles.
“He’s fine,” Digg assured him, resting a heavy on the younger man’s shoulders. “If you’d still had the mirakuru you’d have killed him but as it stands he’s got a fractured cheekbone and is going to be hurting for a couple days. He probably needed a vacation anyway.”
“I still can’t believe I did that,” he murmured almost to himself.
“You were under Seth’s control,” Oliver reminded him, and Felicity noticed he was taking every care to avoid looking at her so as not to risk their eyes meeting. “You didn’t realize what you were doing.”
“Exactly,” Felicity cut in, her eyes finally meeting Oliver’s when he looked at her in surprise before his gaze darted away and down to stare at his feet. She looked back to Roy but in her mind she was still talking to Oliver, and he knew her well enough to know it.
“None of us hold you responsible for what happened when you didn’t have control. Seth’s drug took away your choice. Obviously if you could have made your own decision you wouldn’t—“ her voice tripped over itself, the words falling off her tongue in a tangle before she could reign them in. Closing her eyes, she took a breath, “You wouldn’t have done what you did. We know that.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Roy argued with a frustrated sigh. “I’m going to clean up and then head home. Let me know if anything changes.”
The trio watched Roy walk towards the showers before glancing at one another, Felicity was the first speak, her voice low to keep from carrying back to Roy, “Is Officer Stewart really going to be okay?”
“Yeah,” Digg assured her. “He was good at his job, he knew how to fight back, how to take a hit. He’ll recoup at home then be back on the job in a week or so.”
Again the silence fell and Felicity was all but screaming for Oliver to do something, to say something, but he was resolved to not interact with her unless it was absolutely necessary.
Well, she was damn well going to make it necessary, if for no other reason than she could still feel the trail of heat on her spine from the tips of his fingers, “You should let me draw some blood so I can send it over to STAR labs, they can make sure the drug has left your system and there won’t be any side effects.”
Oliver, brave hero and selfless martyr, could barely hold her gaze long enough for him to nod before he walked towards the medical table and sat on one of the stools.
“I’m going to grab Roy,” Digg decided. He knew Oliver and Felicity well enough to know when they needed to work through something without prying eyes or ears. “I’ll take him home and make sure he doesn’t beat himself up over this Officer Stewart thing.”
“Thanks Digg.”
So he could speak, Felicity thought with more than a trace of annoyance as she walked towards the medical table, so busy mentally planning the Scoldings of All Scoldings in her head she didn’t think twice about grabbing the tourniquet and reaching for his arm.
He flinched when she put her hand on his bicep, and when they’re eyes collided in surprise all she could think about was her holding on to him.
He’d pushed her against the column, almost painful, but she hadn’t had time to think about it before Oliver put his hands low on her hips, adjusting them until they fit together like a lock and a key. Fully clothed and highly aroused she’d felt every thread of fabric chafing against her skin even as the smooth glide of Oliver’s lips on her neck dragged her under.
She’d gripped his biceps for balance, for purchase, for anything which would keep her from floating away or melting at his feet.
She wanted to be there for it, for all of it.
And then he’d reached for the waist of her skirt and grabbed a handful of her silk blouse, which hours later still carried wrinkles from his fist and heat from his skin, and pulled.
The back door to the lair slammed shut, making Felicity jump, and from the color high on his cheeks she knew she’d been staring, that everything she’d just been thinking had been clearly written on face.
Clearing her throat, because that wasn’t obvious or anything, she adjusted her hold on the tourniquet and wrapped it around his arm, careful to touch as little skin as possible.
“So I guess Seth’s Super Serum explains earlier,” she started as she pulled on gloves.
“Felicity-“
She shook her head, cutting him off even as she slid the needle in to a vein, using it as an excuse not to meet his eyes, “Like I told Roy, you weren’t in control. I get that. Let’s just chalk it up to bad guy juice and…and move on.”
They were silent as the tube filled with the thick, life giving substance and Felicity marveled that a chemical could be mixed and poured into a person’s blood stream which could so completely alter their actions.
Was nothing sacred?
“You kissed me back.”
Her eyes flew up, and she wished for the protective defense of her glasses but alas she’d foolishly worn contacts that morning, “What?”
“Earlier, while I was on the drug, you kissed me back Felicity.”
She’d more than kissed him back she thought dryly, but she appreciated he didn’t use the term ‘climbed me like a tree,’ because honestly, what else was a woman supposed to do when a handsome, charismatic man whom you genuinely care for said he wanted to feel you come around him?
Which she’d clearly heard him say because his lips had been hovering next to her ear, the place beneath her earlobe still wet and shivering from tongue and teeth.
“I want to feel you come around me,” he’d murmured, his voice verging on Arrow, rough as gravel and hard as-well, as hard as other parts of him had been at the time. This was when he’d pulled her shirt from the confines of her skirt, and his fingers had traced her spine, a slow and methodical touch as if he was counting each vertebra and individually setting them on fire with the pads of his fingers.
Which was why she’d been holding on to his arms as if he was her sanity.
Then he’d kissed her, harder and more urgently then when he’d kissed her the first time after coming in to the lair. Cheeks flushed, breathing erratic, Oliver had come up behind her, spun her in his arms and kissed her like he’d die if he didn’t.
But pressed between the rough concrete and hard planes of Oliver she’d known nothing but the urgent need to kiss him back. She’d pushed at the leather jacket, relishing in the thud the leather made when it hit the floor.
She’d splayed her fingers at the base of his neck, feeling those cords tighten as she opened for him, reached for him, drew him in further and demanded more.
More.
It had been screaming from every nerve she possessed as his hand reached for the hem of her skirt.
Yes, she’d kissed him back, because there was nothing else to do when the man you loved kissed you like he’d hungered for you all his life.
“It was a knee-jerk reaction,” she told him, proud her voice was steady as it was. “You know, reflex.”
Oliver didn’t blink and for once he didn’t look away.
Okay, so neither one of them believed that.
“It happened Oliver, whatever responses we had-and if you remember properly we both had some reflex reactions,” the blush rose high on his cheeks again and he had the good sense to look away in what she could only hope was embarrassment.
“That doesn’t mean it has to mean anything, it was the drug. Once it wore off Roy remembered Seth telling him to keep the cops away and you remembered Seth telling you to keep me from finding his base of operations until he was finished. Well, Roy beat up a cop and you kissed me. Missions accomplished. So we can either act like two middle schoolers thrown into the closet for seven minutes of heaven, or we can be adults and just move past it.”
He didn’t say anything and she wasn’t in the mood to be patient, in fact all her patience had been drained a little more than an hour ago when a high pitched sound had pulled Oliver out of his hypnosis driven seduction.
And now she was going to have to go home and finish the job or she’d never get any rest.
“Oliver?”
“I can be an adult about it.”
Felicity nodded, grateful that was over so they could both forget (though she was never looking at that cement column the same way again) and get back to being friends.
Friends who had rounded third together and were well on their way to a home run when they’d been so rudely interrupted by reality.
“Good. Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He stood up but didn’t walk away and she barely bit back the sigh she could feel in the back of her throat, “What?”
“About what I said.”
She didn’t have to ask what he meant, while he murmured a lot of sexy nothings in her ear, there’s only one thing Oliver would feel the need to apologize for, “Don’t worry. It’s not the first time you’ve fake confessed your love for me, I’m getting kind of used to it by now.”
There was the ghost of a smirk on his lips which was what she’d been going for, “Good night Oliver.”
“Night Felicity.”
Alone at last Felicity slid in to her chair at her desk, tucking her legs underneath her and against all better judgment look back at The Column, as she would now refer to it for the rest of eternity.
Yes, she’d kissed him back.
Yes, he’d clearly described a half a dozen things he wanted to do her as the hand beneath her shirt had unhooked her bra and slid along her skin, over the tattoo only he and three other people knew about, to cup and mold her, to flick a thumb against that too sensitive point on her breasts which hardened instantly for him.
She remembered the growl she’d heard in her ear, felt in the chest all but pressed against hers.
He’d reached for the hem of her skirt, soft cotton and loose in deference to the late October heat, and slid a hand along the length of thigh. With an impatient sound he hitched her leg onto his hip, his fingers inching closer to the place he talked about touching, tasting, memorizing.
A knuckle against cotton was all he needed to do before she gasping, his name a breath between her lips.
He’d bit out her name in response and it sounded like a curse.
And then they’d tumbled out, those three words she’d heard before but never expected to hear again.
He’d told he needed her once, this time he followed his declaration of love with could only be described as a confession.
“I want you.”
Felicity. I love you. I want you.
And if it hadn’t been for the noise triggered by Digg she’d have said it back.
All of it.
Oliver. I love you. I want you.
And there’d have been no going back, because there had been no drugs in her system, no simulated hypnosis tricking her into saying things she didn’t really mean.
If she’d have said, it would have been real.
The beep on her computer caught her attention and with a sigh she put away all thoughts of calloused hands on bare skin and pulled up the video conference with STAR Labs.
“Hey Caitlin.”
The brunette on the other end of the call smiled, “Hey. I got your samples and I have to say, the chemical makeup of this is intriguing.”
“Intriguing how?” Felicity asked, pushing her hair behind her shoulder-briefly reminding herself to look for her hair tie later around The Column.
“Well, you said once the Arrow and Arsenal were pulled out of their hypnosis they remembered being injected with something?”
“Yeah, we figured it was something to make them more complaint?”
Caitlin tilted her head, her engagement ring gleaming for an instant as she tucked her hair behind her ears, “Sort of. What we found was a chemical which lowers inhibitions, not compliance.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What this guy did was inject them with this serum which lowered their inhibitions and maybe them easier to hypnotize.”
“The guys said they couldn’t remember what he’d said exactly, only that they had this thought repeating in their head; I have to delay Felicity, I have to stop the cops.”
“Right,” Caitlin nodded, her voice getting the pitch Felicity recognized as one the other woman got when she was excited. “Because the thing about hypnosis is you can’t make anyone do something they wouldn’t normally do. After all, you can’t hypnotize someone to commit murder, so when he told Arrow to distract you Arrow was the one who made the decision how.”
The world tilted, swayed, and Felicity was fairly certain her heart had, in the confusion of how to respond, spun in place.
“You’re saying anything he did or said-“
“Was something he had probably thought of doing or saying before,” Caitlin finished with an approving nod.
Felicity thought about Oliver pressing her against a cement column, how he’d seduced her with passion filled eyes and impatient hands. She thought about his hands around her thighs, lifting her up so her legs wrapped around him.
She thought about the way his hips rocked into her, how his hands had searched for skin while his lips demanded she meet him in the dark.
She thought about the words he’d murmured against her skin, a lover’s chant; I need you. I love you. I want you.
“Are you okay?”
Felicity blinked and looked back at the screen where Caitlin was watching her carefully. “Yeah, thanks for the info. I’ll talk to you later,” she exited out of the screen without waiting for a goodbye and stood up. There was too much inside her to sit still.
Anything he’d said or done he had thought of saying or doing before.
She held a hand to her heart, terrified of what it might do with this terrible, aching knowledge.
And because the fates were cruel she heard the door to the lair open and swing shut, Oliver’s familiar steps coming closer as her phone started vibrating on her desk, Daniel’s picture showing up on the screen.
Oh God. It was almost a prayer, repeated between heartbeats. What do I do?