Chapter Text
Felicity considers her reflection in the mirror and groans.
Wow, long flights are gross.
It wasn’t the red eye, but apparently no-one told her eyes that. They’re bloodshot and watery behind her glasses. And her skin! God, it’s like something leached all the moisture out. She paws at it, frowning at the cruelty of airport lighting, before rummaging in her bag for some moisturiser and a tinted lip balm.
It’s really not that she’s vain, it’s just that Oliver’s standing right outside, waiting for her by some unspoken arrangement and yeah, ok, sue her, she wants to looks nice. Or alive, at least. At this point she'd settle for alive.
Re-doing her ponytail, she pauses to consider her reflection again.
Meh.
You know what, who the hell cares?
It’s not like anyone knows her here anyway. There’s no-one waiting in Arrivals to side-eye the baggy knees in her leggings. And besides, Oliver obviously thought the terrified, messy-haired, crumbs-all-over-her-shirt version of herself from the plane was worth talking to. And almost kissing, she remembers, with a jolt. Grinning at her pale-faced reflection, she heads back out to find him.
Oliver’s lounging against against the wall outside, her suitcase at his side, his suit carrier carelessly draped over it. Because yeah, he's got a suit carrier. For, y’know, suits.
“Shall we?” Felicity says, taking her case and jerking her head in the direction of the exits. Which, for the record, Oliver totally could have gone to already. If he hadn’t chosen to wait for her and extend their time together by ... about three extra minutes. Her stomach does this silly little flip because -- ridiculously hot guy! Waiting! For her! Baggy knees and all.
Oliver just smiles in greeting, kicking off the wall and following obediently beside her. Like a puppy, she thinks, absurdly. Can I keep him?
About ten paces from the exit door, it all starts to go wrong.
Oliver stops dead, so suddenly that she almost walks into him.
“Oliver?”
He’s looking at something on his phone, his face set, jaw rigid.
“What is it? Hey, what’s wrong?”
Oliver slips his phone into his back pocket, sighing.
“Hey,” Felicity tries again, reaching for his arm. “What’s going on?”
When her hand lands on his arm, Oliver seems to finally realise that she’s speaking to him. Jerking in surprise at the contact, he turns to face her.
Um. This is bad. This is very, very not good.
Oliver’s lips are set in a thin line, his eyes downcast and almost … ashamed? He looks like a man condemned, suddenly older and wearier than a moment ago.
“Felicity, I have to tell you something–”
Anxiety creeps up on her, unfocused and vague.
“And you’re not going to like it.”
“What is it?” she demands, his vague words setting her on edge. She starts walking again, drifting towards the exit. “What was that message? What’s out there?”
“Wait! Felicity, please let me explain first–”
Oliver reaches for her but she twists out of his grasp and walks on until she’s close enough that the automatic doors slide smoothly open, revealing the Arrivals Hall.
Oliver’s breath hitches and he calls out to her to slow down, to wait, but it’s too late.
The flashbulbs have already started.
Felicity pauses on the threshold, dazzled. “What–”
“I’m so sorry." Oliver murmurs, flicking one last pained look at her before squaring his shoulders and walking out into the crowd.
Felicity follows dumbly a few steps behind, so dazed by the flashes that it takes a second for the voices to even register.
They’re calling a name.
“Mr Queen!”
Over and over.
“Mr Queen!”
Louder and louder.
“MR QUEEN!”
Oh.
Hell.
No.
Oliver walks out into the small crowd of press like it’s no big deal, like paparazzi and shouting always greet his return home. Actually, come to think of it, they probably do.
Because he’s Oliver freaking Queen.
There’s actually only a handful of reporters but the constant flashes and the sheer noise of them makes it feel like a crowd, all of them trying to get close to Oliver, throwing out constant questions.
“Mr Queen, why were you in Boston?”
From nowhere another man appears beside Oliver, shepherding him through the crowd. The way he’s hovering like a shield between Oliver and the reporters … shit, he’s a bodyguard. Oliver has a real life, actual, bodyguard.
“Mr Queen, is the QC East Coast subsidiary in trouble?”
Unnoticed off to the side, Felicity watches Oliver become someone else. A smile appears on his face, good enough to trick the media - the flashbulbs are off again, capturing the moment for tomorrow’s papers - but she knows it’s not real. She’s seen Oliver smile and this isn’t it. There’s something off about it, something rehearsed, smug, and wrong.
“Mr Queen, what can you tell us about your mother’s upcoming trial?”
“C’mon folks, you know the drill,” Oliver says easily, and even his voice is different - smoother and more careless. “I’m not gonna make any comments in the middle of the airport. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a long flight, and a long day, I’d like to get home.”
And just like that, without a backward glance he’s gone.
The reporters drop their cameras at once, murmuring their disappointment as they disperse.
“What just happened?” Felicity asks aloud, to no-one in particular.
Ten minutes later, the shock of Oliver’s identity has fermented into something else.
Rage.
Pure, sweet, glorious rage.
Standing in an apparently never ending line for a cab, Felicity seethes silently, reliving all their interactions in a different light. The light of him being the CEO of her new company and not saying a god-damn word about it.
What a dick.
A dick who just so happens to be pulling up to the kerb beside her in his freaking limo, window down, contrition all over his face.
“You!” she growls, as the car glides to a smooth stop beside her. “What do you want?”
“Let me give you a ride?” Oliver offers, looking awkwardly around at the other passengers, most of whom are openly staring. “Please?”
“No,” Felicity snaps, folding her arms. The second she lets go of the handle on her suitcase it falls over, landing painfully on her toe. Kind of ruins the effect of her dignified rage to be honest.
“Felicity–”
“Why would I go anywhere with you?” she hisses, bending down to retrieve her case with as much dignity as she can muster.
“Please, just let me explain,” Oliver says earnestly, unblinking in the face of her vitriol. “If you still hate me after that then that’s fine, but hear me out first.”
“You know what, yeah!” She throws her hands up, letting her case fall again. “I want to hear this. I want to hear what you can possibly have to say to justify–”
Somewhere in the middle of her rant, the bodyguard she’d spotted in the airport appears at her side, smoothly leaning down to grab her case for her.
“This is John Diggle,” Oliver says, nodding to his companion. “He’s my driver, among other things. John, this is–”
“Yeah, hi,” Felicity snaps, distracted, before immediately thinking better of it. Abandoning her rant at Oliver, she follows the bodyguard around to the trunk, where he’s lifting her suitcase in easily. With one hand. What the hell? Do all the men in Starling City have arms like this?
“Sorry, that was really rude,” she says, clapping a hand to her forehead and massaging the skin there, where she can feel a headache brewing. “I’m mad at your boss, not you.”
“No problem,” the bodyguard - John, was it? - says, offering his hand. “John Diggle."
“Felicity Smoak.” She raises her voice, hoping it will carry into the car. “See? Full names! I wouldn’t be in this mess if your boss had done that in the first place!”
“You should tell him that,” John encourages, grinning at her now.
“I will,” she says, nodding at him. “Nice to meet you, John.”
“Dig,” he corrects. "That's what my friends call me."
“Dig,” she repeats, smiling. “Got it.”
“So where ‘we heading, Felicity?”
“Oh right!” She pulls up her hotel booking on her phone, showing him the address. “I don’t get my apartment keys until tomorrow.”
“No problem, it’s not too far from here.”
“Oliver doesn’t like … own the hotel or anything, does he? ‘Cause honestly, that’d be just my luck today–”
“Oliver doesn’t own any hotels that I know of,” Dig promises, stepping around to open the door for her, smirking all the while.
“You’re enjoying this aren’t you?”
“Go get him, Felicity.”
“You know, you should really change your photo on the company website,” Felicity says, by way of hello, as soon as she slides into the backseat.
Oliver blinks, completely lost.
“How was I supposed to recognise you?” She shoves her phone under his nose so he can see the page she’d been looking at before he pulled up. “How was I supposed to know that you don’t look like a baby faced serial killer anymore?”
From the front seat, Dig snorts a laugh.
Oliver grumbles his annoyance, pressing a button somewhere beside him that raises a screen between the driver’s seat and the back of the car. Dig throws her a wink in the mirror before he disappears from sight.
“Well?” She peers at Oliver, glaring over the top of her glasses. “You wanted to explain. So explain.”
“I thought you might want to yell some more first.”
“Don’t sass me, Mr Queen.”
“Ok, ok,” Oliver says placatingly, raising his hands. “I’m–”
“Actually,” she interrupts again, before he can get a word in, “why were you even on that plane?! I mean, I know you said you don’t usually fly coach but -- y-you’re a billionaire! I bet you don’t even fly commercially!"
"I do have a jet," Oliver admits. Easily. Like you might say you didn't take the car. "But-"
“Oh my god.” Felicity presses herself back into the seat, trying to ground herself. Except it doesn’t work because all she can think is how freaking soft the leather is in this car, which makes sense because it’s not a car, it’s a limo, which is no big deal to Oliver because he has - she says it aloud - "A jet. You have a jet."
Just then, the car emerges onto the freeway and Starling City rolls into sight, the skyline stretched out on the horizon.
One of those skyscrapers is the Queen Consolidated Building, Felicity realises, with a jolt.
That Oliver owns.
He has a building with his name on the side.
Oh, and did I mention a jet?
A fucking jet.
Felicity breathes in through her nose, out through her mouth, just like the internet taught her. Calm. Slow. Relax.
Yeah, no, nope. Not happening.
“So what, d’you just take random flights to pick up unsuspecting women–”
“What? No!” Oliver flinches, like she’s just slapped him. “I didn’t want this trip all over the papers, that’s all. There’s enough talk about the East Coast office without me taking a very public trip there. I was just trying to slip by the media, I swear.”
“Well,” Felicity scoffs, a little hysterical, “I think, I think, they might have noticed.”
“The text I got in the airport, that was Dig warning me they were out there,” Oliver explains, scrubbing a hand over his jaw. “I really wasn’t trying to trick you, Felicity–”
“Yeah right,” she interrupts, batting her balled fists against the leather seats. “I bet you were laughing your ass off inside weren’t you–”
“It wasn’t–”
“Just dying to get back into the office and tell all your buddies in the boardroom about the dumb blonde you’d have banged if only the paps weren’t there–”
“Woah, hey, enough!” he says roughly, blue eyes blazing with indignation.
Felicity swallows down her next retort, breathing hard.
Somewhere in the back of her mind it occurs to her that she just admitted she would have slept with him.
Well. That’s just great.
Sensing her hesitation, Oliver turns in his seat, seizing his chance.
“Felicity, I swear it wasn’t like that,” he promises, no trace of his momentary anger remaining. He looks weary to the bone and her heart clenches at the sight, despite herself.
“What was it like, then?” she asks, anger suddenly giving way to the teariness she’s been fighting off since he left her in the airport. “Because I was … I was really vulnerable on that airplane, Oliver, and–”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you,” Oliver says earnestly, making a sudden motion as if to take her hand but thinking better of it. “You were so worried about the flight and I just … I didn’t think it’d make it better if you realised you were sitting next to your new boss, that’s all.”
“You’re not even my boss,” Felicity mutters, huffing a little laugh at the absurdity of the situation. “You’re like my boss’s boss’s boss. Or something.”
Oliver laughs hesitantly, tipping his head back to rest lightly against the headrest.
Felicity finds herself staring at him, at the column of his throat as he swallows, and the line of his jaw, tense even in repose.
He turns his head back to look at her, blue eyes soft and thoughtful. “I just … I have some issues with … I guess you could call it anxiety, myself–”
“Oh my god, from the Island, right?” The Island where has trapped alone for five years. Shit. Felicity’s heart takes a nosedive. This is not where she imagined this conversation going. In her head, there was a lot more yelling. It was much more satisfying.
Oliver nods, brows drawing in. “I recognised the signs in you and I don’t know ... I wanted to help. I know how bad it can get.”
“I just–” She shrugs, still tearful. “I wish you’d told me the truth.”
“I tried to, after a while,” Oliver says, shrugging back just as helplessly, “but I couldn’t make myself do it. I knew when I did that everything would change–”
“Because you’re rich?”
“Because I’m Oliver Queen,” he says, as though the name is some foreign concept, something that isn’t his.
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“Historically, people seem to think so," Oliver answers, without a trace of self pity. "And after the Undertaking..."
The Undertaking.
Queen.
Of course.
It all comes back to her. Screaming back. News reporters standing in the wreckage. Makeshift shelters in the streets. All those funerals. And that speech, looped over and over again on all the coverage - Moira Queen, tears in her eyes, “I have been complicit...”
Felicity hisses in a breath, her stomach turning. "Oliver, I … I didn’t think. I'm–"
“No, no, don't apologise. I wasn't trying to–" he trails off, casting around as if trying to find the words. “It’s not an excuse.”
“Maybe not, but it’s an explanation,” she says, still berating herself for not connecting the dots sooner.
“I still should have told you,” he says, shaking his head. “I am sorry, Felicity.”
He looks over at her, his blue eyes fixed on hers - desperate and shining and so fucking earnest, she can hardly stand to look at him. She wants … something, she doesn’t know what. To kiss him? To save him? To slap him? Who the hell knows. All of the above, probably.
“Oliver, I–”
Suddenly, the screen slides smoothly down, just as the car slows.
“Sorry guys, but we’re here,” Dig says, flicking an apologetic look over his shoulder. “This is your hotel, Felicity.”
“Oh! Right.” Disappointment courses through her, sharp and unexpected.
“There’s a Big Belly Burger around here,” Oliver supplies, catching her dismayed look. “If you want to talk some more?”
Felicity blows out a breath, considering it.
The sensible thing would be to say no. No, thank you, I’ll go inside now. I’ll see you in the elevator at QC someday maybe, but that’s it. Goodbye.
The thought makes her sad.
Sadder than it should.
Oh, screw it.
“I could eat,” she says instead.