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He can feel a pressure headache building in the back of his head, and he tries to rub at his temples to alleviate the pain, but it doesn’t help. He sighs. It feels like the executive elevator is going three times slower than its normal speed. He has about twenty things he still has to do and he only has about an hour and a half to spare before he has to be at Verdant.
To top it all off, Felicity’s gone for the day.
He’d gotten a text from Diggle during lunch, a straightforward ‘Felicity has a terrible migraine. She doesn’t want me to, but I’m taking her home,’ and another from Felicity herself, ‘Oliver, Dig has forcibly removed me from my desk and taken me home. Don’t tell him, but it’s actually better here where I can stay away from sunlight and windows. All the paperwork you need is on your desk, call if you need anything.’ He’s talked to Felicity already and she assures him she’s fine, I swear, I’m alive and breathing, Oliver. It probably wouldn’t hurt to drop by her place to make sure though.
He’s suddenly feeling restless and agitated. He still has an hour and a half to go.
The elevator dings and he’s finally finally at his floor. He breezes past the temp HR has sent to man his phones with barely a nod, into his office and straight into his private bathroom, the lack of a door he can slam shut agitating him even more.
The cool water he splashes on his face helps a little, though, but his sour mood comes back in full force when he blindly reaches for a towel by the sink but catches only air. He wipes at his eyes with his hand and ducks down to grab one from the cabinet under the sink.
He dries his face, closing his eyes and taking several deep breaths to center himself. He folds the towel and goes to drop it into the laundry bin when he sees it – a smear of pink lipstick on a towel almost exactly like the one in his hand sitting in the bin. He smiles despite himself.
Walking out of the bathroom and back into his office, his catches on something on his desk – he must’ve missed it when he first hurried in, but he's not sure how.
There’s a cat sitting on his desk.
It’s a small plastic figurine, all white, not even the size of a medicine bottle. He picks it up with his thumb and forefinger and studies it, checking to see what it is, exactly.
The fact that it seems to be made of some kind of weird plastic material and that it was sitting on top of the paperwork that needed his signature helps him figure it out pretty quickly. He laughs to himself and pockets the little cat. She's probably named it already.
He walks into the foundry and she’s there, dressed in sweats and wrapped in a large brown blanket. She turns to look at him descend the stairs and he’s caught off guard by the fact that she’s wearing large, dark sunglasses that cover almost half of her face.
“Migraine,” she explains, gesturing to her face, “Dig wanted me to stay home longer, but I already took a nap, and all I really need now is to be super comfortable and block like, 50% of the light I can see and I don't have to be at my place all the time for that because we obviously don’t have a dress code down here, so.” She shrugs, and he turns to look at Diggle who shrugs too.
He walks to her desk and sets the cup of tea he brought for her to the right of her keyboard, and sets the cat on top of the lid. “Tea. It should help.”
She picks up the figurine and waves it around. “Oh good you found Miss Allie! I think my first foray into 3D printing was a success, don’t you?”
“Miss Allie?”
“Miss Allie Cat,” she clarifies and laughs like she’s proud of the name she’d thought up. He can’t help but smile. She sets Miss Allie down and grabs the tea, cradling it with both her hands and takes a sip. “This is still pretty hot. How did you know I was here and not at home?”
He shrugs. “I had a hunch.”
Diggle raises and eyebrow at him and he chooses to ignore it. He decides it’s better not to tell her what actually happened.
(He’d knocked repeatedly on her door, steaming cup of tea in hand, and when no one answered, he called Diggle in a panic asking if he knew where she was. When he laughed and told her she’d shown up at the foundry, he threw away tea that had cooled down, bought a new one and quickly made his way to Verdant.)