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Sunday
“I meant it,” Oliver says. His companion’s eyebrows shoot up and Oliver rolls his eyes. “Don’t look so surprised. You’ve known for a while.”
“Probably for longer than you,” Diggle says with a shake of his head. “But I am surprised you’re admitting it to yourself, much less to me.”
Oliver takes a shot of Russian vodka, the special bottle he keeps hidden in his island trunk, the bottle he only takes out when he’s got something to confess to Digg. In hindsight, that should have been Diggle’s first clue that this conversation was not going to be a light one.
“So?” Oliver asks. “What should I do?”
“You’re coming to me for love advice?”
“Well…Yeah. You and Lyla…You’re having a baby, you’re living together. You seem to have it all figured out.”
Diggle finishes his shot and considers his words. “Lyla and me, we’re in a good place. Now. This time. But the first time we were together…Like I said, we didn’t know how to be together without there being a war on. I was lucky, man. I got a second chance. But Felicity…Oliver, she’s the kind of girl you get one shot at. One. You mess it up, you go too far too fast, and that’s gonna be it.”
“I love her.”
“I know that. Everyone knows that. I’m asking if you’re ready to love her. To love her and handle all the stuff that comes with that. Are you ready? Is she ready?”
Oliver pours them each another shot and quickly downs his, a scowl marring his features. “What do you think?”
“I think you need to be patient, Oliver.” He claps the younger man on the back as he nods to his own glass. “And I think you might need that more than me.”
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Monday
“Again,” he says, and Felicity flies at him. Oliver evades her strikes, although he notes with pride that it isn’t as easy to do as before. “Good. Again.”
They’ve been training together for almost a month now, ever since she found him and Roy using her computers to play Grand Theft Auto. She’d tried to use his bow, but three attempts at firing had proved that it was safer for everyone if she stuck to self-defense for the time being. It’s become something of a thing for them now, a chance to spend time alone, just the two of them.
She blocks his punch and lands one of her own, right to his jaw. It surprises her more than him, because immediately Felicity covers her mouth and gasps out an apology.
Before the words can leave her mouth, though, Oliver is moving towards her. The men they face won’t give her a chance to think, so neither will he.
She reacts better than he thought she would, quickly using his speed and weight against him. With a move they’ve only practiced in real time for a few days, she has him over her back and then slamming to the mat.
“Yes!” she shouts, fist raised.
“Good,” he remarks from his position on the floor. “Just one tip, though.” He swings his arm out, sweeping under her knees. Felicity lands on her back beside him, heads aligned but bodies lying in opposite directions. “Don’t get cocky.”
Her only response is a groan.
“Break?” Oliver asks, and Felicity nods. She doesn’t move from her position on the mat, though, and Oliver is happy to remain still beside her.
“You think Digg’s proposed by now?” she asks after a moment. “Or re-proposed, I guess.”
“He said we’d be the first ones he’d call.”
“Yeah, but, you can’t call immediately after proposing. You need to spend some time with your new fiancé first, just the two of you. It’s basic proposal etiquette.”
“How do you know so much about proposing?”
“I keep telling you, I had a life before you and Diggle dragged me out of the IT Department.”
Oliver turns his head to look at her, trying to tamp down the tide of rising jealousy. “And it included being proposed to?”
“It included a lot more time to watch romantic comedies.” And the jealousy abates.
They stay in comfortable silence for a few more minutes before Felicity speaks again. Her tone is softer now, more reverent. “I think it’s really brave, what they’re doing.” She turns to him. “Not that what you do isn’t brave. Jumping off roofs and putting away bad guys with arrows. But this – marriage, having a baby – not just in this world but in our world…That’s a whole different level of bravery. I mean, I’ve played bait for a psychopath – twice, actually, now that I think about it – but I’m not sure I’ll ever be that brave.”
Oliver rolls so the he’s hovering over her, looking at her upside-down face. “You don’t want to get married? Start your own family?”
She shrugs. “I didn’t have the best role models growing up. And now,” her voice fades and she meets his eyes. “It’s like you said. Doing what we do, maybe it’s too dangerous to be with someone we could really care about.”
He knew those words would come back to haunt him one day. “Maybe I was wrong. What Digg and Lyla have…I think maybe that’s worth the risk.”
Her fingertips stroke the stubble on his cheek. “I don’t think I’m ready to take that risk yet.” And Oliver suddenly understands what Diggle meant.
He wants to argue with her, prove her wrong. But he knows Digg is right, that neither one of them is there yet. Yet. So instead he pushes up with his hands and bounces to his feet. “Come on,” he says, extending his arm. “Break’s over.”
Felicity takes his hand and lets him help pull her up. “One day, I’m going to be the one who lifts you.”
“You already do.” And then, before the words can carry too much weight, “Okay. Again.”
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Tuesday
“Oh my God, Oliver!” Felicity gasps when she opens her door to him at 2am. She pulls him inside. “What happened? Are you hurt?” He can feel her hands checking him for injuries, but it all feels so far away. Nothing in the past hour is real, not since…
“I’m not hurt,” he finally manages to say, but the words come out slurred.
“Are you drunk?” she asks with disbelief.
And he can’t help it. He laughs. “No. But I probably should be.”
Felicity leads him to the couch. “What happened?”
“Thea.”
“Thea’s back?”
“Thea’s the other archer.”
She sits down heavily beside him. “No. No. There has to be some mistake.”
“There’s not!” he shouts, and Felicity flinches. “There’s not,” he says again, lower this time. “She came to my apartment. Dressed like him.”
“She knows you’re the Arrow?” Oliver nods. “Did she hurt you?”
“Not physically.”
“Did you hurt her?”
“You think I could hurt my own sister?” he rages. “When they brought her home, Mom told me I had to be careful with her, I had to make sure I didn’t hurt her.” He buries his face in his hands. “And now Merlyn has her and he’s twisting her and I can’t fight her, I won’t fight her, Felicity, because if I do I’ll hurt her but I don’t know any other way to save her…”
“Shh.” She gathers him in her arms as best she can, holding him tight to her chest. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll find a way.”
They stay like that for a long while, before she takes him by the hand and leads him to her bedroom. In silence she undresses him, and although it’s intimate, there is nothing sensual about the act. They get in bed and Oliver wraps himself around her, holding tight, letting Felicity anchor him. His ear is over her chest, and it’s the sound of her heartbeat that eventually lulls him to sleep.
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Wednesday
“What happened?” he barks, his steps ringing out as he descends the stairs. He turns the corner in time to see Felicity, perched on the medical table, shoot Roy an icy glare.
“You called him?”
“Of course I called him!” Roy exclaims. “You said to call him if anything happened. I’d say you getting shot counts.”
“You got shot?” Worry laces Oliver’s tone.
“I got shot AT,” Felicity corrects. “It’s just a graze. I’m fine.”
Oliver is next to her in an instant, moving Roy out of the way (“Hey, I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”). He examines her wound, a nasty graze on her upper left arm. Felicity flinches as he begins to clean it. “What happened?”
She sighs. “I finally backtracked the source of some of that arms dealer’s funds. Henry Wells – stand up philanthropist and art collector who deals in human trafficking on the side. All we did was sneak up to his office and download a bug so we can track his extra curricular financials. It went fine.”
“It obviously didn’t go fine.”
“We missed a guard,” Roy says. “I knocked him out, but he already had his gun drawn. When he went down, the gun fired.”
“You should have told be you were going out.”
“First of all,” Felicity raised a finger. “We do not need your permission to go out. Second, you needed the rest.” Oliver opens his mouth to protest, but Felicity cuts him off. “You can’t help us or Thea if you’ve run yourself ragged.”
He grits his teeth, knowing she’s right but loath to admit it. “Did they see you?”
“Had the hood and mask on,” says Roy. “But you weren’t talking to me…”
“No,” Felicity answers, and Oliver swears her cheeks become a little pink.
“How can you be sure?”
Roy snickers. “Cause she was wearing this.” And he holds up a midnight blue hoodie. “Had the strings tied and everything.”
“Well, it worked, didn’t it?” And Oliver can’t help the grin from spreading across his face.
“I’m surprised it’s not pink.”
“Not exactly a stealth color,” she says, wincing.
“There,” he says, applying the bandage. “No stitches, but it still might scar.”
“Then we’ll match,” she says, running her thumb over the spot on his upper left arm, where the Count grazed him over a year ago. Oliver frowns at this, so Felicity reaches up to cup his cheek. “Hey,” she says softly, forcing him to meet her eyes. “I’m fine. Okay?”
He nods. “Let’s go.” He doesn’t need to say he’s staying with her for the night.
She knows.
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Thursday
“Don’t go,” she says, voice muffled against his neck. “We’ll find another way.”
“There isn’t another way. It’s Thea.” His arms tighten around her, holding her close for the last few seconds. “I’ll come back.”
“Don’t lie to me. Not now.”
“I never lie to you.”
He feels her scoff, a puff of air on his skin. “Right. Just about sports drinks and laptops riddled with bullet holes.”
Oliver smiles, as much as he can in the situation, at the memory of their early interactions. He pulls back slightly so he can see her face. “I’ve never lied to you about the important things.” Understanding washes over her features. Gloved fingers sweep back loose hair, his thumb brushing lightly against the scar at her scalp, the scar she got that night. “Felicity, I – ”
Felicity grabs the collar of his hood, pulling him down as she surges upward. She captures his lips with a kiss, hard and closed-mouthed. Before he can respond, before he can think, she’s pulled back, resting her forehead on his. “No,” she gasps. “No. You do not say those words to me, not like this. Not when you might – ” Her voice breaks. “Not here, and not over the comms. You tell me when you come back. Because you are coming back, alright?”
He does, four hours later, limping, bruised and bloodied, supporting Thea just as much as she’s supporting him. It was the hardest fight of his life, trying to keep on the knife’s edge between defending himself and not hurting his sister. “I love you, Thea. I love you, Speedy, no matter what.” These words had been his mantra. He’d repeated them between blows, between arrows, until finally, finally, they broke through and Thea had collapsed into his arms.
Now she sits on their med table, looking at Roy with a haunted expression as Diggle starts an inventory of her wounds.
“How bad is she?” Felicity asks. One arm is wrapped around her waist while her other hand worries at her throat.
“Physically? Not bad. Emotionally?” Oliver sighs heavily, the act causing his bruised ribs to ache. “I don’t know. I don’t know what Malcolm did to her, what he told her. She hasn’t said anything.” Not since she gasped his nickname while he held her tight.
Felicity turns to him. “And you?”
He stares at the shell of his sister. “I don’t know,” he finally whispers.
She takes hold of his hand, gives it a squeeze. “We’ll fix this. We’ll find a way. I promise.” She starts for the med cart, but Oliver pulls her back.
“Felicity.” His voice is soft. “Earlier…”
She shakes her head. “Thea, Oliver,” she says, her voice equally low. “Thea comes first now.”
He nods, thankful that she understands. Still, he can’t help himself from saying, “I do, though.”
Felicity smiles. “I know. I do, too.”
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Friday
I’m ready. 7pm, my place. You bring dinner, I’ll supply the wine.
Oliver smiles as the text comes through. He’s still staring at it when the follow-up arrives.
But not Big Belly because we had that last night. And not pizza because I’m having that for lunch. And now seeing that, maybe I should just eat carrots for dinner and we should probably start keeping veggies in the cave. V8, at the very least.
Because Felicity rambles when she texts, too.
“Thea looks good,” she had said to him last week after the younger woman left their base. It had been nine weeks since Oliver had gotten her back, and while she wasn’t yet totally whole, she also was no longer completely broken.
“She does,” Oliver agreed. Felicity started to swivel back to her monitors, but Oliver caught her shoulder, stopping the motion. He squatted in front of her, low enough that he had to look up slightly to see her face. “That conversation we keep putting off. I’m ready to have it. So, Felicity, you let me know when you are, too. Okay?”
She’d nodded, lips pursed, and he’d let her get back to her computers.
And now, finally, eleven days later, he’s standing in her doorway, holding a bag of Indian food and wearing a grin that feels almost foreign on his face.
“Hi,” Felicity says with a large smile.
“Hi,” he answers, and they both seem to be vibrating with nervous energy.
“Wine!” she says suddenly, loudly, rushing into her kitchen and leaving him to close the door and follow.
“I got Indian,” he says, putting the bag on her table.
He’s about to cross from the hardwood to the linoleum when she cries, “Stop!” He does, confused. “Just…Just don’t come in the kitchen. I won’t be able to do this if you’re right next to me.” She takes a deep breath.
“You alright?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I’m okay. Okay.” She bounces a little. “Okay. I’m ready. Tell me.”
Oliver smiles. “Felicity, I – ”
“I love you, too!” she exclaims, and then slaps her hands over her mouth. “Oh God,” she says, voice muffled. She removes her hands. “Oh God, I just ruined it, didn’t I? I’m sorry, say what you had planned. Unless it’s that you don’t love me, in which case…Oh God, that’s not it, is it? Because if it is – ”
Oliver never learns what she was going to say next, because in two quick strides he’s in the kitchen and kissing her, kissing her like he’s lost at sea and she’s a spit of dry land.
“I love you,” he says when the kiss finally ends, cradling her face and holding her so close that they still share the same breath. “I meant it, that night. I don’t think I knew until I said it out loud, but it was true. I love you. Felicity, I’m in love with you. We, you and me, we’re worth the risk.” He kisses her gently. “That’s what I was going to say.”
She lets out a shaky breath, because even though she knew what he was going to say tonight, hearing the actual words still leaves her spinning. “Oh,” she says, followed quickly by, “Yes,” and, “I’m in love with you, too, Oliver,” spoken as if the words were sacred.
And then they’re kissing again, and it’s different, this time. The first kiss was a declaration, an end and beginning unto itself. This one is the start of something greater.
“I washed my sheets,” she blurts out as his lips travel down her throat. “Not that I was planning on this to happen. I mean, I was hoping it would, obviously, but…”
He chuckles against her, then straightens to end her babbling with a kiss. He hooks her arms around his neck before gripping her thighs and pulling her up so her legs wrap around his hips. “Felicity,” he says seriously, though there’s a twinkle in his eyes. “Hold on to me tight.”
She stares at him for a moment, then tilts her head back to laugh. “Non-platonically?”
“Very non-platonically,” he answers, carrying her down the hall to her bedroom.
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Saturday
“Let’s go home,” he says. Felicity pauses from shutting down the computers and turns to stare at him. “What?”
“Nothing.” She gives her head a little shake, as if to clear it. “Nothing. Let’s go.”
It’s clearly not nothing, but Oliver doesn’t push until they are crawling into bed.
“What was that earlier? And don’t say nothing,” he says as the word tries to pass once more through her lips. “Tell me.”
She sighs and avoids his eyes. “You said, ‘Let’s go home.’”
“So?”
“I’ve just….I’ve never heard you call my place ‘home’ before.”
He looks around her room. Half his clothes are in the second drawer in her dresser. Dress shirts hang in her closet. His toothbrush is by her sink, next to hers.
If those aren’t the hallmarks of a home, one life nestled against another, he’s not sure what is. He just didn’t realize it until now.
“Huh,” is all he can say. After a moment’s pause, he adds, “Did it bother you, me calling your place home?”
“No.”
“Because, if this is too much, if we’re going too far, too fast…”
“No,” she says emphatically. She kisses him. “I like you calling this place home. I want it to be your home.”
“That sounds an awful lot like you asking me to move in.”
“You already are moved in,” she points out. He just gives her a look, so Felicity rolls her eyes and smiles. “You want an official invitation?”
“That would be nice.”
“Fine.” She straddles his lap and touches his forehead to hers. “Oliver, will you please stop throwing money away paying rent on an apartment that is basically a mattress on the floor – ”
“Hey!”
“– And move in with me?”
He tucks her hair behind her ear. “Yes. Felicity, I would love to share your home with you.”
“Our home,” she corrects.
“Our home,” he repeats.