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Every human being who had a soul possessed wings. That was how it had been since the dawn of time, and that was how it forever would be, for the rest of existence.
The Bible stated that Adam and Eve were the first humans created, and when they were, they were created wingless. When they committed the first Sin, tempted by the Serpent to feast on the forbidden Fruit, they were cast out of Eden to walk the earth and survive on their own. Vulnerable and defenseless, the two humans were approached by a kindly angel, who according to Scripture, plucked pairs of wings from his back (because apparently angels had had more than one pair, and that was what made them Divine compared to humans) and gifted them to Adam and Eve, so that they could traverse the planet by air and remain away from the predators that graced the ground. And so Adam and Eve were the first humans born without wings, and gifted them.
Every human since that first initial pair was born with wings. It was, of course, possible for humans to be born with wings but lose them, later on in life. As the wings were said to be reflections of the soul, if a human being were to corrupt, damage, or heaven forbid, destroy their soul, their wings would wither and die, fading away into ash, lost in the ether. This was very rarely seen, but still occurred. Psychopaths and mass murderers and people who committed reprehensible crimes often had weakened wings with thinned out feathers and atrophied muscles, so they could barely move them without pain. (Certain politicians also had wimpy and saggy wings. They tried to blame it on age or injury, but everybody knew. Everybody could see.) So seeing somebody with crippled wings was a warning sign to stay away.
On the other side of the spectrum, humans with strengthened souls had beautiful, bold wings, nourished by the passion and empathy in their hearts, and fortified by their sheer willpower to do good in this world. And while a lot of big-name philanthropists and humanitarians had wings like that, there were normal, ordinary people who had well-built wings as well: parents who would do anything to protect and care for their children; volunteer charity workers just wanting to help make somebody less fortunate than themselves a little bit happier and safer; scientists, doctors and nurses working on cures for diseases and developing medical treatments to save lives, quietly behind the scenes. A person with healthy and robust wings, was a good person with morals and an honest soul.
It wasn’t just the health and strength of wings that indicated a person’s demeanor, however. The size, shape, and plumage of somebody’s wings could reveal a lot about somebody, without them even realizing it. Larger wings signified larger and more boisterous characters, while smaller wings marked people with calmer dispositions. People with darker colored feathers were more likely to have something to hide and could, therefore, be counted as someone less trustworthy, than a person with lighter colored wings. People with the wings of raptorial birds like eagles, hawks, and herons often had more extroverted personalities, suited to leadership roles; introverted people could have seagull or falcon or raven wings. Because of how these things worked, it was entirely feasible for a person’s wings to change in accordance with a personality shift.
There was one more attribute that could contribute to a reading of somebody’s temperament - and it was incredibly rare and almost unheard of. There was a legend that once a century, a pure soul graced the earth, whose feathers, when shed, turned to solid gold. Usually, molted feathers eroded away into dust, but these cherished individuals’ feathers would transform into that of precious metals. Most of the human population agreed that it was ridiculous, but some wondered whether or not it was actually real, because there were tales and stories of people spread across the globe whose feathers, while not turning to gold, did turn into other things. There were rumors that Mother Teresa’s feathers had transformed into crystal-clear glass when molted, and that Martin Luthor King Jr’s feathers had turned into quartz. Whether or not those rumors were true was unknown, and would remain so. If people with feathers that turned into materials when shed did exist, they certainly didn’t go around flaunting it.
Felicity Smoak was a twenty-three years old and worked in the IT department at Queen Consolidated by day, and as the Starling City Vigilante’s technical advisor and partner at night. She had hyacinth macaw wings adapted for fast flight, sharp turns, and hovering, with an overall wingspan of twenty-six feet. Her alulas and primary and secondary flight feathers were metallic silver, and her covert feathers were deep sapphire blue.
And Felicity Smoak’s molted feathers turned into aluminum.
She knew that Oliver Queen was the Hood. Both of them had thirty-two feet eagle wingspans. But the Hood had pure black wings, and Oliver had the speckled hazel wings of a golden eagle, with black coverts and metallic golden wingtips.
Oliver’s wings weren’t always that color. From what Felicity could tell by reading old tabloids and gossip sites and the news footage they recycled from before the man’s five years shipwrecked and trapped on a deserted North China sea island, the millionaire playboy used to have the banded light grey wings of a smaller harpy eagle. People assumed that Oliver’s winged had darkened due to the trauma he had experienced on Lian Yu creating fissures in his soul - that his wings changing indicated that something fundamental had broken inside of him during his time away. But Felicity thought differently.
The significance of the shift between a harpy eagle and a golden eagle was one that did not slip past her; although harpy eagles were heavier and bulkier than golden eagles, they were not as intelligent or strategic. Golden eagles were agile and graceful, and so clever in their hunting tactics that they could carry off small animals, domestic livestock, foxes, coyotes, deer, and even caribou. They could tackle animals sometimes ten times their size. If Oliver was a golden eagle now, rather than a harpy, it meant that much more ferocity and power were packed into his body than before - he was a higher class predator and not somebody one would want to cross in a fight. It was one of the reasons why Felicity suspected that Oliver was the Starling City Vigilante from their very first meeting (not to mention his spectacularly awful excuses).
After Felicity saved Oliver’s life after he was shot by his mother and joined the team, they spent a couple of transition period nights in the Foundry together, allowing Felicity to update their computer set-up and get used to all of the equipment. It was during one of these nights when they were alone, Diggle out on a Big Belly Burger run, that she finally gave in to her curiosity and asked about how Oliver’s wings appeared black when he went out as the Hood.
“I have an ability,” the archer told her quietly, sitting on a stool and watching her explore his weapons racks. His gigantic wings were tucked behind him, but as he spoke, he flared them out to half-span - as wide as he possibly could in the Foundry without his primaries brushing the edges of the walls. “Sort of an acquired skill, really.”
Felicity observed in interest as Oliver closed his eyes, concentrating. Then, like magic, his wings began to twitch and his black coverts seemed to melt, an inky darkness seeping down to cover the speckled hazel feathers, until his entire wingspan was black.
Intrigued, Felicity couldn’t help but wander over to examine this miracle closer. Oliver held perfectly still, allowing her to gently stroke her fingertips over his wings. Usually, touching another person’s wings was an incredibly intimate thing - something that only family or lovers would do. There had been something brewing between her and Oliver since that day he’d walked into her office cubicle with that shot-up laptop; this cemented that it wasn’t something Felicity had just been imagining. Her own wings quivered and heat flickered in her abdomen as the blonde’s hand made contact with the archer’s plumage. She yanked her hand back with a silent gasp of shock when his feathers felt solid and hard beneath her palm. Oliver’s feathers weren’t feathers anymore.
“Carbon fiber,” he answered, before she could ask. “When I… my shed feathers, that’s what they turn into. It took months for me to learn how to do this. It’s not all of my feathers of course. It’s a very light outer coating, not even a millimeter thick. Just enough to make them appear black… and just enough to offer an almost bullet-proof casing.”
Felicity tried not to let her astonishment show on her face. She’d never heard of anybody shedding feathers that turned into something like carbon fiber before. Carbon fiber technically counted as a man-made material, and she’d been under the impression that feathers could only transform into naturally occurring elements and materials. “It’s got to be heavy,” Felicity whispered.
Oliver rolled his shoulders, flexing those wing muscles in his chest and back. The darkness over his wings retreated, revealing those familiar warm golden eagle wings. In the sharp lights of the Foundry, his golden tips glinted. “My muscles have compensated.”
As the archer was folding his wings back into his spine, Felicity slightly spread her own, glancing over her shoulder at her blue and silver feathers for a second. When she turned back to Oliver, she questioned, “Do you think you could teach somebody else to do that trick?”
“Maybe,” Oliver allowed, raising an eyebrow. “Why?”
Felicity opened her mouth to reply that she would like to learn, but then her jaw promptly clicked shut. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Oliver yet - it was just that she’d never told anybody about her feathers turning into aluminum before. The only person who knew was her mother. When Felicity had started molting her feathers as a child, Donna Smoak (with her coral pink flamingo wings) had always collected the metal feathers and snipped them up into tiny pieces with wire cutters before either throwing them out or selling them to local mechanics who needed cheap aluminium and didn’t care where it came from. Felicity had hidden this part of herself for her whole life and the idea of finally telling somebody on her own terms was terrifying.
She never got the chance to formulate a response as Diggle clanked down the entry staircase, bags of Big Belly take-out hanging from both his hands. Upon seeing Felicity and Oliver standing so close together, his black-speckled white snowy owl wings bristled suspiciously. “What are you two up to?” he questioned, his tone casual but firm.
“Nothing,” both of them answered hastily, moving away from each other.
Oliver returned to crafting arrows, his wings tight to his back, and Felicity and Diggle sat down on their stools in front of the monitor set-up, sharing fries with their feathers brushing up against each other companionably.
Every couple of minutes, though, Felicity cast a cautious glance over to the archer, eyeing those black coverts of his that had the ability to spread over the rest of his wings in carbon fiber… and she wondered.
It was several nights after the Huntress incident that Oliver discovered Felicity’s aluminum feathers. She’d been having nightmares since Helena had broken into her office, tied her up and threatened her life to force her into hacking the FBI, and she was starting to molt out of stress and sleep deprivation.
It was easy enough to quickly pick up and hide her shed feathers at work, because it usually took at least five minutes for her feathers to turn to metal, and her cubicle was a confined, small space where it was easy to spot them - not to mention the fact that her job was particularly boring this week and she had nothing better to focus on. But in the Foundry, it was much harder; it was a huge, drafty space, and Felicity was concentrating on writing some new algorithms to automatically track the police scanners and give them permanent access into SCPD’s main databases.
A sudden hot hand cascading through her feathers jolted Felicity from her absorbed state. She shuddered as a scorching tingling sensation rippled through her wings, down her spine and along her shoulders and arms. The person touching her shushed her gently; another hand joined the other and soon the pair of them were raking through her plumage, grooming her. Felicity slumped, completely boneless in her chair, her head falling forwards and nearly colliding with the desk. One of the hands was quickly removed from her feathers to cushion her head and then she heard the person murmur reassuring that it was okay, she could relax.
“Oliver…” she slurred, in a strange space between pleasure and dissociation.
“How long has it been since somebody preened for you?” the archer asked, her voice soft.
“I was seventeen. My mom did it the night before I left for MIT,” Felicity answered dazedly.
Oliver emitted an affronted noise. “Nobody’s helped you groom your wings for six years?”
“Nobody’s ever offered.”
“Well, I’m offering,” he said. There was a beat of silence and then Oliver continued in a steady voice, “The feathers that you’re shedding, they’re turning into metal. So what’s up with that?”
Felicity froze. Her heart fluttered in her chest. She instinctively wanted to draw her wings back in and away from the archer’s hands, but something convinced her not to. Instead, she remained tense and silent, waiting to see what Oliver’s reaction would be. She wasn’t scared of him; she was just wary. But he barely faltered in his grooming of her wings, straightening and layering her feathers in a way that made Felicity think, because there was absolutely no chance he became this skilled at helping others preen when he was on the island. Was there? He must have learned how to do this at home, before Lian Yu.
But the impression she’d got of Oliver ‘Ollie’ Queen from her research on him pre-Gambit was that he was… basically a rich selfish asshole who used people and dropped them as soon as he didn’t need them anymore. Ollie Queen wouldn’t have been caught dead grooming another person’s wings when he could have five people all at once doing it for him. This Oliver, her Oliver, was tender and gentle in his motions, methodical and careful, which implied practice.
Oliver dug his fingers into her plumage a little deeper to wrestle a particularly difficult set of twisted tertiaries, causing Felicity’s wings to rustle. Her eyes were half-lidded at this point and her chin was propped on her folded arms on the desk, but she could faintly see through the bleariness that every so often, a couple of loose sapphire blue and silver feathers would slowly to the floor, where they would sit being tussled by the Foundry’s draft before eventually beginning to solidify into metal from shaft to tip. Yes, that wasn’t something Oliver would be able to ignore.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Oliver said, misinterpreting her silence for fear, when in fact, Felicity was just a little reluctant to start talking about something so real. “I understand. I didn’t want anybody to know either, when it started happening on the island.”
Felicity startled. “Wait, your feathers started turning to carbon fiber on the island?”
“After my wings changed,” he replied.
“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say to that. Taking a deep breath and making sure her voice wasn’t too shaky, Felicity said, “Mine have been turning since I grew out of my fledgling feathers when I was five. My… my mom is the only person who knows. And now you, I guess.”
The archer hummed, and on top of arranging her feathers, began gently massaging her wing muscles as well. It felt heavenly; Felicity wasn’t much of an avid flyer, but whenever she did fly, she usually forgot to stretch, which strained them over time. “And Diggle as well, I think. He’s been carrying around this tiny metal covert feather in his wallet for the last month, since you joined the team. I thought it was one of mine, at first, but it’s not black - it’s not carbon fiber. It’s… silver?” he guessed hesitantly. “I guess it makes sense now why you were asking if I could teach somebody my feather camouflage ability.”
“Ah, no, not silver.” A small grin crept onto Felicity’s face as she glanced back at Oliver, who met her gaze with a smile of his own. “Aluminium. And I looked into the whole coating my whole wings in aluminum ability thing like you can do with your wings and carbon fiber, but I don’t think it would be possible, because that volume of aluminum would be too heavy for my wings to handle.”
It was like a switch had been flicked. Oliver’s eyes lit up, his wings jerked up, and there was a surprising excitement in his tone as he repeated, “Aluminium? Really?” He removed his fingers from Felicity’s plumage (much to her disappointment) and bent over to swipe up a blue feather from the floor that was halfway transformed into solid aluminum. As the archer held the shaft delicately between his fingertips, carrying it under one of the floodlights so it glittered, the remaining barbs morphed into metal. “Felicity… when’s your next molt?”
That was a rather random question. “Um, well, I had my autumn-winter molt back in September into my insulating feathers so I won’t be having another full molt until at least March.”
Oliver wilted. “Oh.”
“I’ll probably have a partial molt at the end of this month,” she offered. “I’m losing feathers right now and will need to replace them.”
“Could you collect your feathers for me?” he asked eagerly.
Felicity was confused. “Why?”
The vigilante exhaled, his wings arching behind him as he crossed the Foundry to pick up one of his half-crafted arrows. He passed it over to the blonde, who took it carefully to examine it. “Do you know what I make my arrows out of?”
“Carbon fiber,” Felicity answered. It was kind of an obvious answer considering that she’d seen Oliver picking up his own shed carbon fiber feathers and hoarding them to make arrow shafts out of.
“That’s the outer coating of the shafts, yes,” Oliver nodded. “But I make my shaft cores out of an aluminum carbon composite. The carbon I can get by breaking down my feathers with heat and chemical reactions. I normally have to buy my aluminum.”
Catching onto what Oliver was trying to say, Felicity quirked an eyebrow. “And now you’ve realized you’ve got your very own aluminum factory as your vigilante partner.” The archer’s eyes widened, worried he might have insulted her, but the blonde laughed. “It’s okay, Oliver. It’s not like I need the feathers after I molt them. If you want my aluminum feathers to make arrows with, you’re welcome to have them.”
He appeared pleased, and Felicity held her breath, her heart pounding, as Oliver dropped a kiss on her forehead in thanks. His lips lingered against her skin for a fraction of a second longer than would be deemed platonic. It was as Oliver was pulling away that Felicity caught his hand, pulling him down to sit on the stool next to her, and then prodding at his shoulder until he turned around, exposing his wings to her.
“Can I groom you?” she whispered.
Oliver flinched, but replied, “Yes. But I, er, haven’t had anybody help me preen since my second year on the island. I have scars.”
“I’ll be careful,” she murmured.
She was careful - achingly so. It was a struggle to groom the vigilante’s wings at first due to the tension coiling his shoulders, and the way his hazel and black feathers twitched away from her fingers, no matter how light her touch was. But after five minutes of Felicity gradually layering his feathers, straightening and untwisting and untangling them because really, Oliver’s wings were not in particularly good shape and she could only imagine how itchy and uncomfortable he had to be on a daily basis, the archer started to relax.
It was a shock to Felicity how many pinfeathers Oliver had, implying that he was technically in a partial molt; she soon realized, however, that the pinfeathers were indicative of tissue damage. When she dug deeper to gently massage the pinfeathers to hopefully release the newly formed feathers, her fingertips brushed over knotted, bunched skin. Oliver wasn’t kidding when he said he had scars. The idea of somebody deliberately hurting these beautiful wings was a devastating one.
A couple of Oliver's feathers did come loose, and Felicity collected them in her palm, watching in fascination as the small black bands across the brown and tan barbs engulfed the rest of the colors before solidifying, turning the feathers into carbon fiber. She laid them out on the monitor counter beside her one by one, imagining each of those feathers being crafted into arrows that would aid Oliver in his crusade against the criminals and corrupted of Starling City.
“Thank you,” Oliver said, his voice barely audible and trembling, when Felicity finished.
“You don’t have to thank me,” she responded. She pressed her own kiss to the archer’s forehead before sweeping her hand across the countertop so that the feathers fell into her other one. “Here. Now you have your carbon fiber feathers and some of my aluminum ones, and you can start experimenting with making arrows.”
He eyed her nervously. “Are you sure you’re okay with that?”
Felicity smiled, and reached out with her wing to rub it against Oliver’s, her flight feathers glancing over his undersides. It caused the archer to visibly shiver and clench his jaw. For a moment, she was afraid that she’d pushed too far and upset him. But when Oliver looked over at her again, there was an unmistakable hunger and desire in his eyes, and he ran his gaze up and down her, openly checking her out.
“Definitely okay with it,” she assured him quietly.
She was definitely okay with him kissing her as well, and kissing him if he didn’t initiate it, but Oliver strode away to start tinkering with his arrow crafting machinery before she got the chance.
Felicity’s partial molt slammed into her like a freight train a week later than she expected it to occur. Molts were usually spent alone at home, as employees were granted sick leave for them without question; molts were considered to be private and incredibly tiring for the people going through them. They weren’t dangerous, just exhausting, and the person had to focus all of their attention on looking after themselves to make sure they got through the molt healthily.
Felicity, however, was struck by a horrible bout of the flu only several days before her molt hit, and could barely get out of bed by the time it actually started. Oliver and Diggle were both concerned for her welfare so ended up spending most of their days and nights keeping watch over her. They had a simple operation where during the mornings and afternoons, the three of them would stick together in the Foundry, and in the evenings and at night, depending on whether or not Oliver’s family were at home or Diggle was babysitting his nephew AJ for Carly while she was on night-shift, they would take Felicity to one of their respective houses.
Tonight, Felicity was at the Queen mansion, in Oliver’s bedroom. When arriving - Oliver managed to sneak her in around the back - she immediately protested against spending the night in his room, but Oliver had insisted, wanting to make sure she was close in case she needed him during the night.
Collapsed down on Oliver’s huge bed on her front, Felicity groaned as her wings flexed and feathers fluttered onto the blankets. Her head was throbbing and she felt as if she was stuffed full of cotton; her vision was fuzzy and all of her limbs, including her wings, felt disconnected from her torso. “I hate this.”
“I know.” Oliver crossed the room from where he’d been drawing the curtains shut to perch beside her, picking up the shed feathers and dropping them into the cardboard box they were using to collect them all. “At least your fever is down and that cough syrup seems to have worked. You can have more Advil in twenty minutes, and Diggle is bringing up some ginger tea to stop your nausea.” He spread her wings out across the width of the bed and began his grooming routine, freeing the loose feathers caught in the other ones that were causing irritation.
“Being sick is the worst,” she said miserably. “Being sick while molting is the worst. I’m cold, Oliver.”
“You’ve got a temperature of 101, Felicity. Believe me, you’re not cold.”
“But I’m cold,” she whined, shivering.
“That’s just your internal thermostat being messed up by your flu,” he told her, stroking between her shoulder blades. “You can’t have another blanket, I’m sorry. We don’t want you overheating.”
Felicity huffed; his explanation was logically sound, but that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it. “Then cuddle with me instead.”
She thought this was a rather ridiculous request that Oliver was sure not to agree with, but to her astonishment, the archer rolled over onto the bed to lie on his side next to her, his wings hanging off the edge. He shuffled closer until he could slide his top arm underneath her wings and over her black, hugging her lightly to him. His body was warm and not really enough to make Felicity stop feeling cold, but his presence was immensely soothing. After a second, Oliver raised and draped one of his huge wings over her legs, like a giant feathered blanket.
“Better?” he asked, his voice deep and rough.
“Hmm,” she replied non-committedly.
When Diggle came in with the mug of ginger tea that was supposed to help Felicity stop feeling so sick, he said nothing when he saw the blonde and archer huddled together on the bed. He placed the cup of tea on the bedside table quietly and went to refill the empty glass of water in the bathroom. He rested one of his huge snowy owl wings over both of them like a protective shield as he checked Felicity’s temperature again, and got her to drink the tea and take her pills. Emptying the box of aluminum feathers - there must have been two dozen of them - into a plastic bag, he left the box by the bottom of the bed so they could fill it again with whatever feathers Felicity shed during the night.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” he whispered. “Sleep well, both of you.”
“Thanks, Dig,” she replied, muffled by her pillow.
She must have drifted off to sleep at that point, because the next thing she was conscious for was Oliver rousing beside her, slowly clambering off the bed to have a hushed conversation with two other people, who must have been peering in through the door judging by the ray of light cutting through the darkness.
There was a cloud of fog settled over Felicity’s mind and senses, and she was too tired to even consider turning around to face whoever was at the bedroom door. She managed to scrounge up enough awareness to recognize who Oliver was talking to: his mother, Moira Queen (huge white swan wings), and his sister, Thea Queen (sparrow wings with flecks of red). Felicity’s concern that they might think she was one of Oliver’s one-night-stands was overshadowed by her fatigue, and she soon found herself dropping off into slumber again.
The next morning, he was woken by Oliver poking at her shoulder, telling her quietly that he had food for her. He’d bought her coffee and toast, with various posh little individual packets of jellies and spreads to choose from. As Felicity alternated between draining the caffeine and eating her breakfast, the archer stripped the bed, gathering up all of her shed feathers and stashing them away somewhere out of site.
“I didn’t make things awkward between you and your family last night, did I?” Felicity asked.
“Why would you think that?” Oliver questioned, his brow furrowing.
“I know they looked in and saw us sleeping on your bed together.”
“It wasn’t awkward,” Oliver shrugged. “My mom and sister thought you were Laurel at first.”
Laurel Lance, Oliver’s ex-girlfriend who had been acting awfully towards him since his return from the island, had violet sabrewing hummingbird wings that couldn’t support her weight enough for her to fly. “But my wings are blue, not purple.”
“It was dark and the lights were off. They didn’t see that. I told them who you are, though, and that you’re a close friend. All I had to do was explain that you’re sick with the flu and going through your molt at the moment, and needed somebody to look out for you, and they left us alone.”
“And they believed that?” she asked in disbelief.
“It’s not exactly a lie, Felicity.”
“No, but -” She didn’t want to say aloud that she thought they might have misidentified her as some sort of floozy or bedwarmer.
Oliver seemed to understand despite the fact she didn’t finish her sentence. “My sister thinks you’re my secret girlfriend. My mom wants to invite you around for dinner. They don’t think anything unsavory about you, Felicity. And if they did, I wouldn’t allow them to believe that for long.” His cell phone beeps and he glances down at the screen. “Dig’ll be here to drop off a change of clothes for you in twenty minutes.”
“Great.”
Oliver did a quick ten-minute grooming session on her wings, coming away from it with handfuls of shed feathers. Most of her new pinfeathers were unfurling at this point, so he helped guide them out and layer them in with the others.
“Do you think you have enough feathers now?” she asked curiously, as she tilted her head, observing Oliver collect more aluminum feathers in his hand. She could hear them making quiet plink noises as the metal collided.
“Probably enough to make half a quiver full of arrows,” Oliver told her. “When we get down to the Foundry, we’ll get you wrapped up in blankets with a couple doses of flu medication in you, and you can watch me start melting them down to make the composite and then the shafts.” Felicity frowned down at the floor. “Or not, if it’s going to put that expression on your face.”
“No, I want to watch,” she assured him. “It’s just… going to be weird. Knowing that you’re going to be using something my body produced and then got rid of because of wear and tear, to make weapons out of.”
Oliver nodded, his wings rustling as he flared them out to glance over. “It was strange when I started using my carbon fiber feathers to make things. But it feels right, putting a piece of yourself into something you’re so passionate about crafting.” Felicity inclined her head curiously. The archer laughed softly and flicked his flight feathers over her arm lightly. “You’ll see what I mean later.”
When Oliver presented Felicity with the first couple of arrows he made from both of their feathers, she didn’t initially realize they were any different from his usual arrows. He was excitedly telling her about how her aluminum feathers had increased the strength of the arrow cores, making them even more deadly than before, with better penetration, and faster speed, as they were slightly lighter in weight.
When the archer told her to look at the bottom of the shaft, near the fletching, Felicity’s heart clenched. He’d micro-engraved two letters into the carbon fiber - a tiny little ‘O’ and a tiny little ‘F’. Nothing that would give away their identities, of course, but something to indicate that this arrow was crafted from both of them. If their wings were physical representations of their souls, then that meant by being made out of their feathers, this arrow was a part of them.
“Now you’ll always be with me when I’m out there,” Oliver told her in a whisper, squeezing her hand. “Not just here in the Foundry running tech and talking to be on comms, but protecting me in the form of my arrows.”
Felicity couldn’t stop herself from leaning up onto her tiptoes and kissing him.
She thought for a moment that Oliver was going to shove her back or remain utterly unresponsive, but then seconds after their lips connected, one of his hands rose to cup the back of her neck and deepen the kiss, while the other buried into the underside of her wing, clenching the feathers. It felt so amazing to be releasing that romantic tension that had been building between them recently, and it felt especially fantastic to finally know that Felicity hadn’t been imagining that magnetic attraction linking them and drawing them closer together. Oliver gave a gentle tug on her blue feathers, which caused her to shudder against his body, clutching the hem of his t-shirt.
“Oh thank god,” she whispered against his mouth, as they broke apart to breathe. “I’ve been waiting to do that for weeks.”
“Week? Try months,” Oliver replied, his voice husky with want. His wings arched above them, the gold tips glimmering, before he wrapped them around Felicity, encasing her body and her own wings, which were tucked to her back.
“And now I don’t think I can wait to do it again.”