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Everything I Want From This Life
“I start to think you’ll make a beautiful mother,
I like to think I have everything I want from this life.”
-fun. “Sight Of The Sun”
When he asks her, they’re trying their best to brush the sand from their bodies and belongings, having learned the hard way that the private beach wasn’t so private. They hadn’t been quite “in flagrante” yet, thank god, but they had been damn close, so hot and heavy that it took a few seconds for either of them to register the screeching sound.
Oliver had already basically been on top of her, but at the sound, he braced himself on instinct, shielding her body even more completely, and for once she didn’t totally curse his protective tendencies. Because she realized at about the same time that she was essentially topless and that the screeching was coming from a pair of young children racing over the dunes, followed closely behind by their exasperated parents.
The kids paid them no mind, headed for the water, but Oliver had flashed the slightly shocked couple a sheepish, apologetic look as Felicity giggled and wrapped herself in the blanket, grabbing her phone as they scrambled back the car to Google if there were was a word for lesser stages of “delicto” that one could be caught in.
So, when he asks her, she’s thinking about interruptions and disaster and not getting a ton of sand in this beautiful Porsche.
“Do you want kids?”
It’s like all the breath has been forced from her chest and she uses it to huff out a little laugh.
“God, no.”
Because that’s the right answer, right?
They’ve had their share of their hiccups so far on this trip, it hasn’t been all sunsets and Porsches (though there’s mercifully been a lot of that, too). The transition hasn’t quite been seamless, he keeps treading back into the uncertainty that’s plagued their last year together, doubting himself just a little here and there.
He keeps saying he’s not sure he can be what she needs. She keeps assuring him that he already is.
It’s been pretty easy for her to handle so far. They talk, she wins, they have a bunch of sex about it, lather, rinse, repeat. But this one feel different, almost immediately.
Dinner that night is quieter than usual. He still holds her hand across the table (by day three she’d given up trying to explain how much harder it was to eat that way), but their conversation is stilted and he barely meets her eyes and by the time they get back to the motel room, she can’t help herself.
“Oliver?” She asks him as they start to undress, separately. “Was that the wrong answer, earlier?”
She expects him to play dumb, to skate around it a bit. She’s fully prepared to point out his stubborn tendencies, to force him to talk about their issues. But then, he sits down on the edge of the bed, unbuttoning his shirt, and he does just that.
“Not if it was the truth.”
“Really?” It’s so easy to read his face and she’s genuinely shocked at what she sees. “You want kids?”
He just shrugs, still refusing to meet her eyes.
“I’m think I’m more surprised that you don’t.”
“It’s not something I’ve ever really…considered,” she tells him honestly. “Growing up, you know, the objective was not getting pregnant. Then, between working with you and falling in love with you, I just didn’t… It didn’t seem like something that was going to happen for me.”
“Felicity, I…” She belatedly realizes how he’s taken her words, how they’ve cut him to the quick, and she moves to stand between his legs, placing her hands on his now-bare shoulders.
“No, Oliver, this isn’t supposed to be something for you to torture yourself about,” she continues. “I honestly figured even if there was a world where we ended up together, that it wouldn’t be in the cards, I didn’t think you’d want it. I didn’t think you’d believe that it could work.”
“Diggle makes it work.”
His comment is off-hand but it draws a memory from her that makes her pull away from him and take a few steps back.
“Diggle was making it work,” she grits out, “until the League of Assassins kidnapped his wife and left his baby daughter alone in their apartment.”
He’s quiet for a long moment after that, and she lets him brood, because honestly, that’s one he deserves.
“I left Maseo there with Sara,” he says softly, eyes fixed on the hotel carpet, and she can tell he’s not trying to make an excuse, just that he needs her to know. “He was there until the second you guys came in. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. I couldn’t.”
“I know that I have to forgive you for that,” she says, still not touching him. “Because it’s going to be a long time until John can and you don’t deserve it from the both of us. But...when I realized what you had done, when I saw John realize, Oliver…it was so horrible.”
“It was,” he agrees, his voice cracking. “She started crying as we took...as we left. And I…”
His voice finally breaks and he drops his head to his chest in a silent sob.
“Oh, Oliver.” This is why they can’t just be the couple who runs away on a road trip, she thinks. Because, for as much as they’ve left behind, there’s still so much trouble they’ve brought along with them.
She finally sits next to him on the bed, reaching for his hand, but that must not be enough for him because he wraps himself around her, hauling her back until they’re propped up against the pillows. He’s still got his pants on and she’s still in the fancy underwear he bought for her on their last stop, but he pulls the comforter up around them, and takes her hand, lacing his fingers through hers and studying the way they intertwine.
“When I was younger, there was...a situation,” he says softly. “But she lost the baby.”
Her rational brain wonders if it’s wrong in a way, for her to feel so heartbroken at this revelation. But then her heart takes over, flooding her with devastation at the knowledge that there was yet another part of him, however small, that had been lost forever.
“I’m so sorry,” she breathes, kissing the back of his hand.
“I know it would have been bad,” he confesses. “I’m sure I would have fucked it up. But I think about it a lot. I thought about it constantly on the island. How maybe, if I had a kid, I never would have gotten on that boat in the first place. How different things could have been.”
“You can’t think like that,” she counters, almost too quickly. “That’s too much weight for a baby to carry. It can’t be about redemption.”
Her heart races with the realization that she’s maybe not entirely talking about the child he almost had all those years ago.
“A baby is supposed to be about love,” she continues. “About two people putting the best parts of themselves together and making something even better.”
“And you’re so sure you don’t want one?”
“No, I’m not,” she says honestly, breathing a tiny sigh of relief as his expression changes subtly from heartbroken to hopeful. “I thought that’s what you needed to hear. I thought we were doing another round on the Oliver Queen Carousel of Guilt.”
He smiles sadly at her and tilts his head down to peck her lips. “I don’t deserve you.”
“Hey, yes you do,” she puts her hand on his cheeks, scratching at his stubble, and he closes his eyes in contentment for just a second before looking down at her with love and hope and every other good thing. “I want every part of you. Forever.”
“And If that means kids,” she continues, “well, those are going to be some damn lucky kids."
“Every part of you,” he repeats, and it’s not lost on them that these words feel more like vows than anything that was said in Nanda Parbat. “Forever.”