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As the great bard would say, something was hinky in the state of Denmark.
That's how she thought of them—the Queens. The glamorous, late Moira with her secret evil plans and sympathetic backstory. The oddly resilient Walter, who'd turned out to be more of a Polonius than a Claudius. It wasn't really fair to cast Thea as poor crazy Ophelia, but the girl did vanish into the night. Roy would be...Tybalt, Felicity decided. Wrong play, but it felt appropriate.
And of course, there was her Hamlet. Banished, betrayed, beautiful Hamlet: the angriest prince in all literature, showing one face to the world and another to the mirror. That probably meant she and Diggle were the comic relief sidekicks. On the plus side ? Not dead yet.
She'd tried to explain her Shakespeare/Queen meta theory to Oliver when they first met, back when there were still Queens, plural, but he'd been pretending to be the extra-airheaded version of himself that day. Much later, after learning all his secrets, she never got back around to asking him if he actually slept through Shakespeare. Violence, sex, drama...it was right up his motorcycle alley. Maybe she should download the audio book full cast performance to play over the comms the next time they had a stake out?
None of that was important, but Felicity tucked away the thought for later consideration. What was important was that it had become disturbingly obvious that something weird was going on with Oliver. Everything had seemed okay when they got back from Lian Yu—aside from the completely justified mourning period for his family—but that was two months ago. Between then and now a bug had gotten into Oliver and was eating him up, but no matter how many gentle olive branches she and Diggle held out, he maintained this...this... attitude.
"Hey," she said in her mildest, approach-a-growling-stray-at-your-own-risk voice. "Is everything okay?"
On her right, Oliver's shoulders tried to intensify their impression of the Berlin Wall. She watched his gaze flicker over their hazy reflection in the metal door of the elevator: a tall blob in a slate gray suit next to a short blob in a watermelon top and black skirt. He looked like he hadn't eaten in days. Which, now that Felicity thought about it, had to be extra horrible considering how many carbs he normally consumed to justify running around at night. She never let on how jealous she was of his calorie intake, because she knew he'd just assure her in his guilelessly affluent way that she was welcome to use the gym equipment any time.
"I'm fine," said Oliver, yanking her back to the present.
"Did you get any sleep last night?"
"I said I'm fine, let it go."
Attempting a smile, she replied in a sing-song verse, "But I can't hold it back any more..."
"What?" He turned his head to look at her so fast he probably strained something.
"Nothing!" gulped Felicity, wishing the floor of the elevator would open up and drop her into the abyss. Maybe he wasn't in the mood for pop culture jokes today...probably best to hold off on the Shakespeare plan. How long did it take to ascend sixty-five stories, anyway ? Corporate litigation experts waiting above and an ornery Oliver at her side...God, please let this ride be over soon.
"Wait," said Oliver, surprising her back to attention. He brought a hand up to pinch the space between his eyes. "I'm sorry. That was a joke, right ? That Disney thing. I shouldn't have snapped at you."
Well, it was small world after all. Okay, how to word this ? Felicity licked her lips and gave it a go: "I don't want to bug you Oliver, but I'm worried. You've been on edge the last couple weeks. I know you're in mourning, and if you're still trying to process everything that happened just say so, and I'll drop it. But if you want to talk to someone..."
Felicity observed his reaction carefully, mapping the parade of expressions. She never got tired of looking at his eyes, and her mental directory of Oliver Faces could fill a petabyte drive. Right now he refused to meet her gaze, and sucked in his cheeks as he breathed. Was he thinking about his mother ? Or Slade, rotting in that empty prison an ocean away ? Maybe he was obsessing about his sister again. In moments like this, Felicity wanted nothing less than to lift all those burdens from his shoulders and fling them into an underwater canyon. She'd like to stab Slade a second time, destroy Malcolm Merlyn's gravestone, then drag Thea kicking and screaming back to the brother that loved her.
Feeling like the offer wasn't enough, Felicity reached out, and whispered, "Oliver, you know you're not alone.” As she spoke, her fingers grazed the underside of his elbow to reassure him.
Then something happened she wasn't prepared for: Oliver flinched.
Felicity dropped his elbow as he if he'd slapped her. His head came up, those eyes she loved suddenly enormous, blue and begging in apology, but she almost looked right through him. Oliver took a step toward her, she stepped back.
"Felicity—”
He'd flinched from her. That her touch could garner such a reaction from him, it defied logic. It was wrong. Total system failure level wrong. Touching Oliver had always been safe. It'd become their thing…he would hold her cheek in his hand, or she would grab him into a bear hug. It meant they were alive.
Touch was safety.
Obviously, the output response had changed. It shouldn't be a big deal—not like Oliver was a piece of cake to live with normally anyway—but Felicity couldn't remember a time when he'd reacted to her as if she were...like everyone else. As if she were out to hurt him.
"Felicity, I'm—"
Before he could mouth an excuse the floor shook, there was a wretched screeching sound like a Nazgul dying, and the elevator car danced to a halt.
The lights went out.
The two members of the Arrow vigilante brigade waited one awful, silent moment. Maybe this was it: someone had made Oliver Queen as the Arrow, and nowhere were humans as soft and vulnerable to technology as riding a steel cage fifty stories up a hollow chute. Assassination as easy as cutting a chord.
Felicity's hand ached to find Oliver's in the dark, but she couldn't do it knowing that the dark would only better hide the flinch that followed.
After almost twenty seconds, it ceased to be a concern. They didn't fall to their deaths, or explode. In fact nothing happened at all except for the lights blinking back on. As one, they let out an enormous breath.
"It's just the power," Oliver declared. He tapped the lifeless button panel four times before giving up. "I'm sure it'll be back on in a minute."
Felicity leaned back against the rear of the elevator, and wondered what a human pancake would look like. After another stretch she had to ask.
"If this whole elevator fell, what do you think a human pancake would look like ? Would they still be able to see our faces ? Or would we be, you know, all slime?"
"It's not gonna fall," he said evenly, and jammed finger against the up button one more time for good measure. Oliver dug out his phone, dialed, and began barking orders to the hapless human on the other side.
"Just fix it!" he snarled at the end, then hung up. He moved across the tiny space like a caged mountain lion, all tightly bunched power contained where it was never meant to be. Felicity tamped down on the impulse to reach out to him, and refocused on her own anger. Trapped in an elevator ? Fine. They could do this here as well anywhere else.
"Oliver."
As if her voice had summoned him, he turned to her and just…shifted. There was no other way to describe the transformation. From hard to soft in a half of a breath. Oliver planted himself in front of her and placed his hands over her crossed arms. Gone was the vitriol for the repairman on the phone, or the awkward distance from before. He focused entirely on her, as if they were right back in his mansion two months ago and nothing had changed.
"Felicity," he entreated, and his thumbs made little circles on the fabric on her sleeves. "Please."
She wanted to lean into that touch, to bask in it the way she had a thousand little intimate touches before it. He was here, meeting her gaze, apologizing. He was with her, a partner and friend. For her, he would be Oliver.
But the output response had changed. When she had touched him, he flinched.
"Hey, look at me, Felicity. I'm sorry."
"Are you ? For what, Oliver?"
His reply took too long. He knew exactly what had hurt her, but he chose to go with "For being a jerk when you asked about my sleeping habits."
Suddenly Felicity couldn't take his moody bullshit anymore, and she shoved his touch away.
"God, Oliver, if you can't be honest with me, just don't say anything. I'm a big girl. I'll get over it."
He backed up, just a step, and asked quietly, "What do you want from me?"
"I want you to be you again!" She hadn't meant to raise her voice, but once the words were out it was hard to reign them in again. Felicity faced him and laid it all out. "Be Oliver, not this Neanderthal zombie of the last five weeks. Slade's gone, Isabel's gone, so come down from the Hall of the goddamn Mountain King and be here. I want you to look me in the eye, and not flinch when I touch you. I want you to tell me what went wrong so we can fix it and I can have my friend back."
"I'm tired of being your friend!"
The words bounced around the steel and mirrored cage that entrapped them, echoing off the walls to slam against Felicity with brutal acuity. For one of the rare moments in her life, she could literally think of nothing to say.
She waited, almost perversely curious, as her lack of response had its own effect on Oliver. He’d closed his eyes instinctively but opened them now, watching her for any reaction. When she could only gape at him, Oliver closed the space between them and took her face in his hands. He pressed his forehead against hers, and at last Felicity could breathe again.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, feeling his lips a breath from her own. With her arms still crossed she clenched her fists to keep them from shaking; Oliver had never stood this close before.
“I'm tired of being just your friend,” he repeated. She could feel the exhale of his words on her skin. “I want things to be different. I think about it constantly…every time you say my name, every time you laugh or even just walk through the goddamn door. I wonder what it’d be like if you were walking toward me. But it’s tearing me up inside, because every time I let myself wish, I see your face when I handed you that syringe.”
To say Felicity was floored at this confession would be…well, given their circumstances it would be the pun of her life. She floundered, tried not to scream or cry, wrestled with a hundred responses and solved it by picking out the last part.
“You did that for a reason,” she assured him. As she spoke, her tone strengthened, because he did do it for a reason and Felicity would not resent him for his choices that night, not then nor ever. “You saved the city, and trusted me to save it too. It was frightening but it was worth it, Oliver. It worked, and it was worth it.”
His warm hands still cupped her face, and the look he gave her could pull the air right out of her lungs.
“I gave you up.”
Felicity shook her head. “No.”
“I gave you up!” he snapped, retreating to the other end of the elevator and curling in on himself like a rounded boulder. His focus shot back to her, suddenly angry. “Don't you get that ? I told you I loved you and gave you to Slade. Even if it worked, I still did it.”
“I'm not angry about that,” she protested.
“Well I am. What kind of person does that, Felicity ? What am I, that I could do that to you ? To someone I—to you.” His voice dropped, bent, and finally broke the last word. “I did that to you.”
A question balanced on Felicity’s tongue, teetering to fall: Why me ? You use people all the time do the Arrow’s work, why am I any different ? Why am I special?
Taking in his hollow cheeks, his tired eyes and his slightly rumpled collar, she knew it was the wrong question. He’d as much as told her, and as unbelievable—as unthinkable—as the idea was, the man before her was proof.
Okay, Felicity told herself, biting her bottom lip. Okay, I’m different. I’m special. I’m special to him.
She’d known that, maybe, but feelings and knowledge don’t always line up with someone as closely kept as Oliver Queen. So, a new approach was necessary. Felicity tried to stomp down the curl of butterflies in her stomach—the prospect of inclement joy that would hit at any second since knowing that all of it did matter because she was special—and asked her first question delicately.
“Have you been sitting on this since May?” Since the beach, since the mansion. Since the night of hell.
He didn’t answer her, just looked at the floor. Felicity approached him this time. Her hand curled around one of his, hoping to bring him back to ground with a touch.
“Oliver, what is it you think that I do when I hack something?”
He blinked, thrown by the sudden change of topic, and stared at her in question.
With a hint of a smile, Felicity squeezed his fingers. When he twisted to lace his between her own, securing their physical connection, she continued in soft, methodical words.
“It’s all down to code. And code is just communication. There's something that you want that someone else has. So you learn their code. Use their code. And then you rewrite their code. What we do to save the city is the same thing. Every night we use the tools we have to get the information and the results we want. Once you tell me what you want, Oliver, then you can put aside fear or guilt because they don’t matter to me. I will find a way to make it happen regardless.”
He worked his jaw sideways before forcing out the line: “What I want isn’t important in the big picture.”
Felicity let out a small sigh. “I know what I want. I want this.”
She laid her free hand over the buttons of his dress shirt, standing so close to him now that their bodies aligned.
“But that's the thing about working with another programmer,” she continued. Beneath her hand, Oliver was an unmoving statue. “You can't just go into their code and trample over everything, because then it stops being about both of you, and starts being just about one person. You have to find a balance. You have to work together and share the load, and no matter what, you communicate. Know what each other both want from the collaboration. Know that it’s worth the effort. If you don't trust each other, you can't make the program work.”
Oliver inhaled, and his chest moved under her fingers. Felicity touched one of the small buttons there, the pad of her finger tracing its shape.
“So tell me...what do you really want, Oliver?”
As she observed the question find its mark in him, she took a shallow breath. So this was it: stuck on an elevator of all places and she threw her cards on the table. Social timing was never Felicity’s area of expertise, but after Oliver’s confession she could give him nothing less in return. Location was irrelevant; she was all in.
Instead of an answer Oliver expressed himself with action: his lips suddenly on hers, his need abruptly consuming her own.
She wasn’t surprised when he kissed her, but the intensity of it nearly carried her away. He caught Felicity’s waist and held her in place while he almost attacked her mouth, as if desperate to erase any distance remaining between their bodies. One of his hands climbed up to rake through her hair, tilting her head and changing the angle of the kiss.
For a moment, Felicity was overwhelmed by the size of him. He arms trapped her in place and he was everywhere: his muscles, the fabric of his suit jacket, the scent of his sweat. Oliver was so much bigger than herself, and his personality expanded that effect until he could intimidate most people with a glance. Yet he’d always been so gentle with Felicity, as if she were made of feathers or lace. Being the focus of his attention and physicality in this new way was exhilarating; she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him just as hard.
Screw propriety, screw the lawyers still waiting for them upstairs, screw patience and perfection. If this moment was real Felicity would seize it without regret.
He backed her up against the rear of the elevator until the handrail pressed into the small of her back. She ignored it, focusing on the feel of Oliver’s mouth against hers. As she broke away to breathe he dragged his lips to her neck, around to her ear. He still had one hand locked at her waist, clenching tight around her hip as he dropped open-mouthed kisses on her skin.
Oliver breathed her name, came back to her lips, and kissed her like he wanted imprint the sensation on her permanently, until she could feel nothing and no one else.
The knowledge of what he’d been holding back staggered Felicity. She’d known Oliver wasn’t completely oblivious to her, that he liked and cared about her. She had guessed—hoped—that her affection was somewhat mutual even if it wasn’t what he wanted right now. When he’d said those damning words in the foyer of the Queen estate, part of Felicity wanted to believe it was true even as she rationalized all the ways it wasn’t. That was one frustrating symptom of being his companion: Oliver was reserved, Oliver denied, Oliver withheld. To learn he was withholding this much for months was like opening a fortune cookie and finding the key to Fort Knox.
They could’ve been doing this ages ago if he weren’t so busy beating himself up for asking her to make the same sacrifice he made every night.
Felicity cupped both her palms around his cheeks and broke the kiss, leaning back just slightly to catch his heady stare.
“Oliver?”
He smiled, slowly at first and then it spread across his face like sunlight through clouds.
“You’re what I really want,” he said.
“Good,” said Felicity, and she felt herself smiling too, so wide she knew her cheeks would hurt. It was worth it. “I can help with that.”