Archive of Our Own ^beta

For the first time ever in the United States of America, S.T.A.R. brings to you USA’s very own Masterchef! Hosted by S.T.A.R. Restaurant’s Owner and Head Chef Harrison Wells and culinary genius duo Lyla and John Diggle as they look for America’s best home cook from among the top 12 amateur chefs. Auditions begin on 13 June, 2015, at the given locations.

“Felicity!” Donna Smoak screeched as she read through the list on the front page of the newspaper she snagged from a table at Caesar’s the previous day. “You have to apply!”

Felicity looked up at her mother from where she was flipping the omelette on the pan. “Apply where?” She asked, eyebrows scrunching up behind her glasses. “If you're trying to get me to apply for a job in some bar as a stripper, then let me assure you –”

“No, silly,” her mother interrupted her. She held up the newspaper page with the big Masterchef logo on it. “Masterchef US!”

Felicity laughed, a short amused chuckle. But her mother’s expression made her stop. “You're serious.”

Donna nodded. Felicity held up a hand. “No,” she said, getting back to plating up the eggs for breakfast. With her spatula she evened it out onto the plate and decorated it with fresh rosemary herbs.

“But you love to cook!” the older woman protested. Felicity turned her back to her as she went back to cracking eggs for the second omelette, and Donna followed her, moving to face her again.

“Yes, I love to cook,” Felicity admitted. “But that’s it. I'm not overly good at it, and they’ll be taking only the top 12. I calculated the probability of me getting selected and the math is not in my favour.”

“Not overly goo- Honey, you’re a brilliant cook!” Donna said. “The other day when the chef at Caesar’s fell sick and you stepped in to help, all the guests loved your food!”

“Mom, I have a double Masters degree in Computer Sciences and Cyber Security from MIT. I love coding and I will get a job in an IT department in one of the leading companies of the country. Not as a pastry chef. Besides, I love making desserts and they want someone who can cook all sorts of food items.”

“Honey, at least give it a try,” Donna pleaded.

“Fine,” Felicity said, dropping her spatula on the wood chopping board and gripping the counter with both hands as faced her mother. “But don’t be heartbroken when I don’t get selected.”

Donna Smoak squealed and pulled her daughter to her from over the counter, hugging her even though the spatula was digging into both their abdomens. “You’ll get in. I know it.”

-------

Felicity did get in, and Donna was over the moon, telling all her co-workers and staff at Caesar’s and every regular customer of hers that her daughter would be coming on national television.

The Las Vegas audition rounds took place on the 19^th of June. The procedure was that a top 5 would be selected from each state, after which there would be eliminating preliminary rounds till there were only the 12 of the best chefs remaining.

Felicity wasn’t too sure of her chances, but she tried her level best. She decided to do a dessert, since it seemed to be her forte, the one dish that was her comfort food during her years at MIT, the one that all her fellow classmates and even professors had loved – a classic Blueberry Cheesecake with a plain vanilla sorbet.

After a few tries, she decided to put her own twists to the recipe. Instead of the normal biscuit base, she substituted it with a macadamia nut base – the only kind of nuts that she could consume without having an allergic reaction – and make an apricot sorbet to go with it. Not having any access to fancy equipment while growing up, she had quickly learned to cook things using general home equipment, but it did take her longer than normal to make some dishes. She was grateful that she was allowed to make some preparations and go to the place of the auditions.

She was the first person to reach the large converted warehouse where the auditions were taking place, and therefore the first one in the door to the judges. She felt the butterflies settle in her stomach as she wheeled in her cart, her food covered by stainless steel cloches, only the last minute plating left to do.

The three judges were sitting on a raised platform, the Diggles on high barstools and Harrison Wells in his wheelchair. “Hello,” John Diggle greeted her. “What’s your name?”

“Hi, Felicity,” she replied. “Is my name. Felicity Smoak.”

“Hello, Miss Smoak,” Harrison Wells said with a kind smile. “Tell us about yourself, please, as you do the final plating.”

“Um,” Felicity thought, pushing a loose strand of blonde hair behind her ear as she uncovered the cloches. “I'm 22 and I'm from Vegas.” She used a spatula to cut into a slice of her cheesecake, lifting it onto the plate. “I've got my double masters degree in Computer Science and Cyber Security. I'm a genius.” She looked up at them with wide eyes. “Not that I'm being proud of boastful! I'm a really modest person. Honestly. It’s just the truth.”

She shook her head, clearing it a bit. Lifting an ice cream scooper, she dug it into her sorbet container that was resting on ice. “Anyway, I love coding and cooking.”

She presented the plate forward to them. A neat slice of perfectly triangular shaped blueberry cheesecake, the three layers properly defined, with a nice dollop of blueberry sauce dripping down, lay right in the centre of the grey round plate. A perfect quenelle of apricot sorbet rested next to it on the plate, almost leaning on the slice of creamy goodness, and was dusted with grated lemon zest. “It’s unconventional, but really goes well together,” she said as she explained the dish to the judges. The three of them walked up – well, Wells wheeled up – to the tasting table and dug into the dessert. Lyla took the first bite, and looked to the rest with raised eyebrows. They did not comment as they went in for the next bite, till the plate was empty, polished clean. They went back to their seats – Wells wheeled back to his original place – and silently communicated amongst themselves for a good two minutes.

Lyla turned to Felicity first. “What got you into cooking, sweetheart?”

Felicity fidgeted with the front of her apron. “My father... left my mom and me when I was a kid. She had to work 60 hours a week just to keep the roof over our heads. I was left alone a lot. At first I worked around computers. I built my first computer when I was seven. And because I was so smart, I learned everything about them pretty fast, so I had a lot of free time. My mom is a cocktail waitress at Caesar’s. She would get home packets of leftovers every night, and entire plates of extra food. First I started replicating the recipes and working around them with the ingredients and equipment I had at home. Then I started plating them in different styles. I never thought I was good at it though, not until I went to MIT and my dorm mates said they would actually pay me to keep feeding them like this.”

The judges exchanged looks. “Felicity,” Lyla said, “my mother’s favourite dessert was a classic BBC, and that,” she pointed towards the empty plate, “is the best BBC I've had since hers.”

Felicity heaved a relieved sigh, a smile cracking up her face. “Thank you,” she said simply.

John got up, a rolled up white apron in his hand. “Come get the very first apron of Masterchef 2015, Miss Smoak.”

Felicity walked up with a skip in her step, and John unrolled the apron and put it around her neck, turning her around to tie it behind her. “Thank you, Mr. Diggle.”

“Please, call me Digg,” he said, pulling her in for a hug. “You're a part of our team now.”

His wife got up for a hug too. “And you can call me Lyla, Felicity. Welcome to the team.”

Harrison Wells shook her hand. “Congratulations, Miss Smoak.”

“Thank you so much, all of you,” Felicity grinned, then sagged in relief. “Oh my God, I can’t believe this!”

“Believe it,” Digg said with a twinkle in his eye. “You’re expected to come to Starling City on the fifteenth of July for the next eliminating rounds, and we’re banking on you to make it to the Top 12.”

“Don’t worry, I'm your girl,” she said, and backtracked. “I mean, I'm not your girl. I wasn’t making a pass at you.”

They looked at her with amused eyes, and she winced. “I have a tendency to say the most inappropriate things at the most inappropriate times. I'm sorry.”

“It’s cute,” Lyla commented. “Now get going. You need to inform your mother. And leave the remaining cheesecake behind.”

-------

Felicity wasn’t sure how she made it through the next two rounds, but she did. She made it to the Top 12.

The first round of elimination was a gruelling round of testing the basic skills of cooking – chopping, dicing, slicing, julienning, and brunoising. The first fifty to perfectly execute these methods of cutting vegetables would go on to the next round. Lucky for Felicity, she had mastered the art of chopping by the age of 12. She was in the first ten to qualify for round 2.

In the second round, the participants were divided into two parts, by a simple draw method, and one section were to replicate a savoury dish by a hatted chef, the other team had to replicate a dessert by the same chef. Felicity had hoped to get the dessert, but was in the savoury team. However, she did not struggle as much as she expected to, and even finished making her dish faster by substituting certain techniques with her own home-cooking techniques. Her dish wasn’t the best, but she was in the top 6 of her group of people, ergo, in the Top 12.

For Felicity, cooking had been a challenge at first, a puzzle that her 11 year old mind had to solve. Soon it became an experiment, like she did in school in the bio lab. In college, when she was swarmed with the load of achieving a double Masters degree by the age of 19, it became her go to stress-buster, her escape from hard times when Cooper went to federal prison because of her code. When she got back home from MIT, choosing to not go to Wayne Industries in order to be closer to home, cooking became a hobby for her.

But in the Masterchef house, surrounded by other passionate cooks, their enthusiasm and zeal... it morphed into something else for her. Suddenly, it seemed like a real dream for her. She hadn’t ever entertained the idea of cooking for a living before, but now she could almost see it. During the auditions, when she had been asked what she would do if she won the Masterchef, she had shrugged and replied with an offhanded “Probably open a desserts bar.” Now, she wanted to do it, achieve that dream.

She wasn’t comfortable being surrounded by all that cameras and coming on national television, because, you know, broken brain to mouth filter, but her housemates made it easier. Well, most of them did.

She had quickly bonded with Sara and Laurel, the only sister duo on the show, making them a specialty. Tommy had been charming, giving all of them panty-dropping grins – a particular favourite of the producer, who always zoomed in on those gorgeous grins – wooing every woman, with special attention towards Laurel. Caitlin, Barry and Cisco were pretty cool people too. They were all from a science background, so Felicity had lots of intellectual discussions with them that bored the camera crew and was very effective in taking the spotlight away from her. Cisco was an engineer, and loved to use engineering techniques in his cooking, something Felicity was really excited to see.

Floyd wasn’t exactly friendly to be around, and it seemed that he preferred to keep it that way. He was an ex-Army who lost an eye during his tour in Iraq, causing his girlfriend to take their daughter and leave. She understood his bitterness, and felt bad for him, but couldn’t really help him if he didn’t want it. Plus, he wasn’t as bad as Amanda, or Isabel, or Carrie.

Those were the three most devious ladies she had ever seen. Felicity made the mistake of saying that out loud, in a conversation with Laurel and Sara, and suddenly the cameras were there in her face as she backtracked and stumbled over her words, not making her situation any better. Tommy Merlyn, the knight in shining smile that he was, saved her from further humiliating herself by flirting with both sisters together, effectively diverting the attention of the camera towards himself.

That night, she gained access to a computer and hacked into the channel’s main system and deleted that clip. She was grateful the show wasn’t live telecast.

Oliver Queen, though, was something else entirely. Everyone knew Oliver Queen. He was Heir-to-multi-billion-dollar-company Oliver Queen, lost-at-sea Oliver Queen, returned-home-castaway Oliver Queen. He had been the paparazzi’s favourite topic until his disappearance back in ’07 for all the wrong reasons, then again in 2012, when he came back after being stranded on an island for five years. Then, he had publicly declared that he had no interest in the family company and had dropped off the grid and the paparazzi radar.

When she met Oliver, there had been an instant chemistry between them, something that the cameras had picked up on. He had been intense, but there had been a break in his armour where she was concerned. He put on a fake smile for show, a mask on his face, drew up the hood of his green hoodie as if it was a barrier between his true self and the big, bad world, but she saw right through all of that to the man she thought he truly was. And the smile he gave her during their first conversation when she ended up mentioning his dead father... yeah, that felt real and genuine to her, as if she were the only to make him really, truly, smile.

Felicity had expected it to be difficult and trying, but damn, she was not prepared for this level of competition. She wasn’t the weakest, but she wasn’t the strongest cook among the top 12 either. Carrie was the first one to be eliminated, no surprises there. She was a good cook, but a bit psychotic in her behaviour. She was focused less on the cooking and more on falling into every man’s lap, not really discriminating between judge, contestant and crew. Her favourite targets had been Oliver and Floyd, but more than once shy and awkward little Barry had been scandalised when she dropped onto him with a lavish move and planted a firm kiss on his paralysed lips. Needless to say, every single person was relieved to see her go.

Cisco and Caitlin were in the next elimination, which was sad since they had become somewhat become best friends. It was a close call, and after a really tough decision, they decided that Cisco’s venison was better cooked, and even though Caitlin’s red wine jus was made to perfection, she had to leave. It was a teary goodbye, Caitlin had become a good friend of most of them, and Cisco had broken down, but Caitlin was glad to have worked with Harrison Wells and wished them all good luck as she left the kitchen with a teary smile on her face.

Next week, on Monday, they were woken up by a loud din in the house kitchen at 4 a.m. in the morning. Oliver was the first to reach the kitchen, body rigid and alert, his naked chest and back littered with scars. As the rest of them made their way to the source of the sound in varying states of undress, they found Digg and Lyla making cups of coffee and eggs and toast for everyone, their faces way too bright for early Monday morning.

“Good morning,” Lyla greeted them cheerily as she placed a plate of buttered toast on the table. “Get to eating, everyone. We’re starting early today.”

As the seats started to fill in, Oliver came back from his room after putting a shirt on. Felicity stared at him when he sat next to her. She had got a very good glimpse of his chest, and his highly toned abs, that morning. When he gave her a questioning look, she blushed and ducked her head.

“Right, guys,” John said as they all started eating, “Today’s the first Team Challenge.”

Around the table, people cheered, with the Lance sisters’ voices the loudest. Felicity grinned at the idea of getting to work with others. Across the table from her, Isabel grimaced, as if the very thought of her working with other puny participants was preposterous. Isabel, for some reason, had a general disdain towards humanity.

“There are ten of you,” Lyla said, clasping her hands together, her elbows resting on the tabletop, “So you’ve been divided into two groups of five. How have you been divided? Simple. Look at your plates.”

Everyone looked down at their plates, shifting the omelettes around to get a better glimpse. The plates were all either green or yellow, placed alternately. Felicity saw hers was yellow.

“Green plates – green team; yellow plates – yellow team,” John said.

“I've always liked green,” Oliver murmured next to her, his words intended only for her. Felicity realised that they wouldn’t be on the same team. She was startled to realise she was disappointed.

Her team included Tommy, Sara, Floyd and Isabel with her – she wasn’t particularly excited about the last one. Isabel had instantly declared herself team captain and put on the yellow apron with the embroidered ‘CAPTAIN’ faster than they could blink. The green team, unlike her own, had unanimously chosen Oliver has their leader. They had a long ride ahead of them to an orchard and vineyard, where they would be cooking a three course meal for 20 gourmet chefs, including their three judges, using nothing but the basic ingredients, a limited selection of meat and the produce available at the farm. Each team had one and a half hours to make the dishes and additional five minutes before each course for the plating. The winning team would get a shot at the very first Immunity Challenge. The losing team would go into elimination.

---------

6:30 a.m., they were struck by the ethereal beauty that was Lian Yu Orchard and Vinery. Climbing out of the SUVs, they were all stunned into silence, taking in the sprawling expanse of tree-covered land, spotted in shades of yellow and orange and green. Well, almost all of them were.

“I've been here before, with my dad,” Oliver said casually, his hands in his jeans pockets, a posture that would have been funny given his green apron in front but he still managed to pull off. “‘Lian Yu’ literally translates to ‘Purgatory’. This place was apparently a Southern plantation before the Civil War. The name was coined by the slaves who worked here.”

There were sounds of exclamation from the group. Diggle turned up from around one the cars and started leading the group ahead as he added, “Supposedly, all the workers who died in the field were left to be buried by nature itself. The land here is a giant grave of black men. Hence, ‘Lian Yu’.”

“Oh,” Felicity said, her face twisting in disgust. Most of the others had similar responses.

“I could have done with not knowing that last part,” Laurel grimaced. “Places as pretty as this should not have such gory histories.”

Sara grinned and bumped her sister’s shoulder with her own. “It’s called irony, sis. You should learn to enjoy the beauty of it.”

Tommy swaggered up front to Diggle and Lyla. “You know, if we’re cooking in purgatory, does that make you and the other judges Satan and his cult of demons?” he asked with a cheeky smile. The camera crew, which had been silently following them from the house, made sure to catch Tommy’s quip and his dashing smile.

Lyla laughed at that while Digg shook his head in amusement. They stopped as they reached the two makeshift working areas in the open space. Between them was an impressive pantry with a variety of fruits, vegetables, citrus, berries and wine, along with different types of cheese and other milk products. A wooden cart next to it held all the staples like eggs and flour. A picnic table carried the proteins – duck, chicken and quail for birds and beef and lamb cuts for the meat. A group of people mingled in nearby, holding glasses of wine and conversing with each other. They stopped talking as the group of amateurs approached.

“Participants,” Lyla called out, “meet your judges for the night.”

The team of professionals gathered around was swoon-worthy. There were Joe and Iris West, father-daughter food critic and journalist duo – Barry may or may not have swooned a little when Iris shook his hand – along with the Godfather of European cuisine Anatoly Knyazev. Australian Masterchef judge Slade Wilson was having an intense conversation with Chein na Wei, an expert in South East Asian food. Ronnie Raymond was there, owner and head chef of Michelin Star restaurant Firestorm, and an idol of Caitlin. Felicity felt bad for her friend missing out on this opportunity. This moment was epoch making.

They took their positions at the various stainless steel counters, focused on Wells as they waited for him to start the clock. At his loud “Go!” there was a flurry of activity as both teams started preparing their dishes. The Green team was doing exceptionally well under the pressure, and Oliver kept a cool head as he assigned duties to every member with practicality. The yellow team was a little less coordinated. Far less coordinated.

Isabel had taken over the dessert, an authentic Russian Ptichye Moloko, instead of letting Felicity handle it. Rather, she had Felicity and Floyd work together on the beef for the main, something she was very uncomfortable with since she’d sworn off of red meat. Yet Felicity took it all in stride. When life offers you lemons, you make lemonade and all that.

She was carefully cutting the meat into perfect slices when she a fitted black suit appeared in her line of vision. Looking up, she saw a handsome man with dark hair and a defined face smiling down at her. He extended an arm for her to shake. “Hi. Ray Palmer.”

Felicity felt her stomach flutter with excitement and nerves. “Of course I know who you are.” She said with a flustered grin as she took his arm. “You're the owner of Palmer Cakes. I love your cakes!”

“Thanks,” Ray said with a jolly tilt of his head, proud of himself. “You’re Donna Smoak’s daughter, right?”

“Yeah,” Felicity said, dropping her knife unconsciously as she focused on the man in front of her. “How do you know my Mom?”

“I came to Caesar’s once, to make a wedding cake. I met your Mom. She was really nice.”

“Oh, I remember. The chef who was supposed to make the cake fell sick and you saved the day at the last minute by stepping in. You made the 7 layer chocolate cake of yours. It’s really complex. I tried making it. Took me a week’s worth of tries to get it right.”

“Yeah,” Ray agreed. “It’s my most complicated dessert. You really need to get the different chocolates correctly melted to the perfect temperature so it doesn’t burn and doesn’t temper – ”

“- and is thick enough to not get soaked by the sponge cake but still fluid enough to not harden into a slab of chocolate,” she completed for him, and beamed at him. “I know.”

Ray was about to reply when their little moment was cut off by Isabel. “Felicity, you’re supposed to prepare the beef, not stand there and chat.”

“I’ll let you get back to it,” Ray said, walking away. Felicity smiled at his retreating figure, then noticed Oliver looking at her with a weird expression. When she raised her eyebrows in question, he shrugged and shook his head.

Under the guidance of Floyd, Felicity managed to survive cooking the beef. Their first course, a broccoli soup with crusty bread, had been perfectly made by Sara and Tommy. They were all pretty happy with the savoury dishes. It was in the last ten minutes of the competition that Felicity realised that Isabel had utterly, completely screwed up the dessert.

A ptichye moloko is a tri-layered dish with a sponge cake base, followed by a creamy soufflé and topped with a fine layer of tempered chocolate. Isabel had burnt the chocolate and her sponge was crumbling, but refused to acknowledge that. The dessert would be inedible if they served it like that. Thinking on her feet, Felicity dug out a can of drinking chocolate and mixed it with enough milk to make a thick sauce. She crushed some biscuits and the cake in a mixer and added butter to stabilise it. It all pissed Isabel off, but the rest of the team ignored her as they helped Felicity out. During plating, she served the dessert in a large round glass, piping the chocolate sauce in a swirl on top rather than a tempered disk.

Once the tasting was over, the teams stood in front of their work stations as their judges addressed them.

“Both the teams did a brilliant job today,” John said. “The level of food presented was commendable. All your guest judges today were floored by the brilliant food presented today. It was difficult for us to decide who the winners were.”

“Our decision came down to one thing alone,” Wells said, and they all waited with bated breath to hear their decision. “Yellow team, we understand that you had a dessert disaster today in the kitchen.”

“No,” Isabel said, just as the rest of the team said “Yes.”

“Felicity, the dessert you managed to put up despite the malfunction was brilliant. We also commend your quick thinking in salvaging a disaster. But it all boils down to the fact that the dish you presented was not the promised ptichye moloko.”

“Oh,” Felicity said, and her face fell as she understood what had happened.

“It is for this reason,” Lyla finished, staring at them with a sympathetic expression, “That the Yellow team will be in elimination tomorrow.”

They all looked crestfallen. Felicity felt guilty, and Tommy patted her on her shoulder before wrapping an arm around Sara’s.

“But,” John said and they all looked up at him, “it won’t be the entire team going into elimination. From amongst the five of you, you yourselves will decide which two of you were the ones at fault and only those two will go into elimination. You will let us know about your choice tomorrow when you come to the Masterchef Kitchen.”

It was silent in the garden as they all processed that information. Felicity, Tommy, Sara, even Floyd looked at each other at the realisation that they would have to out their friends.

“Green team, congratulations,” Lyla said with a smile, “you have won and now qualify for Immunity.” There was no cheering or any sign of happiness from the team, save for a proud smirk on Amanda’s face, and Lyla continued. “The challenge will take place day after tomorrow, where the five of you will go head to head against each other and the winner will go for the Immunity challenge against a professional chef.”

“Now,” Wells said, wheeling forward a little. “I would suggest all of you go back home, get some rest, talk things through and come back tomorrow ready to face the day.”

The ride back to the House was quiet and tense. When they were getting into the car, Oliver quickly gave Felicity a short reassuring hug. She was feeling guilty about the dessert, and it was apparent on her face. For someone who grew up in Vegas casinos, she really did not have a poker face. The other car had reached before them, and Isabel was fuming, waiting for Felicity in the living room.

“You ruined it, bitch!” she screamed as soon as Felicity entered the room, and Floyd bodily held her back to keep her from hurling herself at the blonde, and Oliver pushed Felicity behind him to protect her from Isabel. Suddenly, the camera crew was surrounding them, getting in between to get good angles and shots of a possible cat fight.

Felicity tried to keep her cool, conscious of the cameras. “I'm sorry, but how was I the one who ruined it?” she said, pushing Oliver away from in front of her with a nudge to his side.

“My dessert was perfect. You went ahead and changed it. You defied my orders.” She hissed the words icily.

“Your dessert was inedible. I salvaged it.”

“And look at where that got us,” Isabel said, pushing out of Floyd’s grip and moving forward menacingly. “That was your intention all along, wasn’t it? You know you're a bad cook, and you won’t win this competition, so you planned this to remove all the good cooks like me from the show.”

“That is absolutely ridiculous!”

“You were flirting with Ray Palmer too, because you know you need to butter him up so you can get a job once you get eliminated.”

Felicity narrowed her eyes at her. She had just had about enough of Isabel. “Fine,” she said, anger lacing her voice. “If you're such a good cook and I'm such a horrible one, then you won’t have any problem going against me in elimination tomorrow.”

“I'm not going into elimination!” she exclaimed.

Everyone was shocked when Amanda stepped in. “Why, Isabel, are you scared that Felicity will defeat you, and you will be eliminated?”

“Of course not! I’ll do it,” she said, turning to Felicity. “It’ll be the two of us tomorrow.”

“Umm, guys,” Tommy said for the first time, “maybe we should discuss this...”

“It’s decided, Tommy,” Felicity said, glaring at Isabel still.

----------

That night, after everyone had gone to bed, Felicity found herself sitting on the balcony, her legs hanging off the edge through the gaps between the railings as she stared up at the sky. It was clear today, and since they were in the country in the middle of nowhere, she could see the sky dotted with millions of brilliant stars. She felt a strange bout of homesickness, a longing for her mother’s comfort that she had never felt before.

“Hey,” a voice said behind her, and she startled, gasping as her hand flew to her chest.

“Don’t you knock?” she said, levelling Oliver with a dirty look.

“Felicity,” he said, a smile in his voice, “this is the balcony, not the washroom. Besides, the door was open.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked as he sat down beside her. His legs were too big to pass through the railing gaps like her, so he crossed them.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

She turned back towards the sky, a heavy wistfulness surrounding her. “I was missing my Mom.”

“Hmm,” he acknowledged. They sat together for a few moments in companionable silence, before he spoke. “You know, when I was... away,” he started, and Felicity turned to look at him. He paused, not sure if he should continue. Felicity understood.

“If you're worried about the cameras, I can assure you that I’ll hack into their servers and delete the clip.”

He swirled his head to look at her. “You can do that?”

“Of course,” she gave him a smug smile. “I've already done it twice.”

Oliver stared at her before shaking his head, his expression awed. She grinned at him. Then his expression turned serious.

“When I was on that island, there were times when I slept on a rock bed under the stars, I would stare up at the sky and imagine that, on the other side of the world, my sister or my mother was watching the same sky, the same stars as me. I somehow felt more connected to them.”

“Huh,” she exclaimed and looked back at the sky, as if seeing it with a whole new sense of clarity. “When I was a kid, my dad left us. I've never told this to anyone, but at night, when my mom would be working, I would sit at the porch, even though mom had told me not to leave the house at night, and I would stare up at the sky, hoping for my dad to come back. I never understood why I did that, but I did. Guess it makes sense now. Even when we had to give up that house and move to a trailer, I continued to go to the window and wait.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek, her face still tilted up towards the sky, and Oliver wiped it with his finger. He let the finger linger there on her cheek, tracing the curve of her face with it. She leaned into his touch.

“The cameras are having a field day today,” Oliver muttered, and Felicity giggled. “Between the cat fight in the afternoon and this,” he struggled for a word that could define their conversation, “deep moment between us.”

“I wasn’t flirting with Ray, you know,” she said quietly.

“Hmm?”

“I wasn’t. He came to talk with me because he knew my mom, and we started talking about his cakes, and how complex they are but I always try to make them. I wasn’t trying to ‘butter him’ so I could land myself a job once I leave, and I definitely wasn’t flirting with him.”

“Okay.”

“I just wanted you to know that.”

“Okay.”

“Because I saw your face in the orchard today, when Ray left and you were looking at me with –”

“Felicity,” he interrupted softly, “I get it.” He turned to the stars, looked at them for a second before turning back to her. “You should get some sleep. You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” she muttered, sighing. It was easy to ignore the consequences of the coming day when in their little bubble.

Oliver got up and offered her a hand. She took it and pulled herself up, and they did not let it go as he pulled her back towards her room. When they stopped in front of her closed door, he leaned in. Her heart thundered in her chest as his breath glazed her ear.

“You’ll do well tomorrow, Felicity,” he whispered, and she felt her eyes flutter shut as the silkiness of his voice wrapped around her and covered her entire body with tingles of pleasure. “You’ll beat Isabel and you’ll continue on in this competition. I know it.”

He pulled back and looked at her. Though slightly hooded, her eyes sparkled with emotion as they locked onto his. His hand crawled up hers and cupped her elbows, and she shivered. He searched her face, questioning himself before he leaned in and brushed his lips against her cheek in the faintest of kisses. He lingered there before pulling back slowly.

“Goodnight, Felicity,” he said, his voice heavy. He turned back and walked over to his room. She watched him till he disappeared around the corner, and let out a stuttering breath before walking into the room she was sharing with Sara and Laurel.

---------

The next morning, the ten of them walked into the Masterchef Kitchen with their heads held high. Oliver, Laurel, Barry and Cisco gave Felicity reassuring hugs and pats as they walked up to the observation gallery. The five from Yellow team stood in front of the judges in a single file wearing their black aprons.

“I heard you all had an eventful day yesterday at the Masterchef House,” Diggle said, sending a knowing look to Felicity.

She blushed under his gaze. She had a feeling he wasn’t talking about the fight only. In her Oliver-induced haze the previous night, she had forgotten to delete last night’s footage. “That would be an understatement.”    

“We’ll going to have a word later, Miss Smoak,” Wells said, and she felt a little bit of dread in her tummy when he used her last name, “about a little something you mentioned last night.”

Uh-oh, she thought, and she was tempted to look up at Oliver to see his reaction, but was interrupted when Lyla started speaking.

“Did you decide which two of the five of you will be going through elimination?”

“Yeah,” Tommy said glumly. “Felicity and Isabel decided the two of them would do it.” His tone made it clear he wasn’t happy with the decision.

“And what is the reason behind this choice?”

“They decided,” Sara grmbled, making it clear the choice had been Felicity and Isabel’s only, “that the two of them were to blame for the failure of the dessert yesterday.”

Diggle nodded. “In that case, Tommy, Floyd, Sara, please take off your aprons and go up to the gallery. You are safe.”

They weren’t particularly thrilled about it, but they went up. Felicity watched as Laurel hugged Sara, and Oliver clasped Tommy’s hand in a weird handshake. She hoped she could be up there with them at the end of the day.

“So,” Diggle said, getting her attention back, “since you’re here in elimination today because of a failed dessert, we decided, in order to redeem yourself, you need to make a dessert.”

Felicity felt a surge of relief as she heard that. She could do desserts. Desserts were her thing. She made them the way Jesus turned water into wine.

“But you’re not going to be making just any dessert,” Wells continued from there. “Since this is a pressure test, you are expected to replicate a dish made by a Michelin Starred chef. One of our guest judges from yesterday volunteered to present you two with a dessert of his making. Please welcome, Ray Palmer.”

Ray walked in through the main door, his signature grin on his face and a cloche covered dish in his hand as he waved at them excitedly with a child-like delight. Someone had pulled up a table in front of the judges, and when he placed the cloche on the table and shook hands with the judges before standing next to them.

“Mr. Palmer, would you kindly do the honours of telling our contestants what they will be cooking today?” Wells said, gesturing towards the covered dish.

“Of course,” he replied and walked up to table in front. His hand grasped the handle on top of the cloche and he looked at the two participants dramatically. “The dish that I'm about to show you is the most complex of my cakes. It involves eleven different cooking techniques, and over 30 different ingredients. This cake has my best patissiers stymied.”

He lifted the cloche, and on a white plate was a single long slice of chocolate cake. It was cut with perfect precision, and each of the seven layers of the cake was visible. The sponge was dark chocolate, with each layer of cake half an inch in height. They individual sponge cakes were separated by six different types of fillings. From experience, Felicity knew they were white chocolate cream, milk chocolate cream, salted caramel and dark chocolate filling, dark chocolate fudge cream, butterscotch and milk chocolate frosting and mint chocolate chip frosting. The topmost layer was covered with a fine sheet of decadent chocolate ganache. A dollop of whipped cream frosting had been piped on the rounded end of the slice, and a thin triangular shaped piece of tempered chocolate was laid across the top, its wide base seated on the cream dollop while the tip rested on the tapered end of the cake slice. The cake itself was 7 inches in height. Each layer was clearly defined and visible. The chocolate ganache was so finely spread that it did not drip on to the table.

“This is my famous 7 layered chocolate cake,” Ray said, shooting a quick wink at Felicity.    

He called them in front to taste the cake, cutting the huge slice further into two equal pieces. Felicity dug her fork in and grabbed the first three layers. Popping it into her mouth, she moaned.

“Oh my god!” she exclaimed. Even though she had tasted this before and even made it herself, it was nowhere near as good as it was today. “This is sinful. I’ll be going to hell for the thoughts I'm having about this cake.”

There was laughter around her, but she was too lost in the dessert to care. Ray explained the process of making the cake, and even though Felicity knew it, she still paid attention and catalogued any tips he gave. She could feel Isabel get more and more worried with every bite of the cake and every piece of instruction Ray gave, but Felicity was bouncing with excited energy by the time they got to their work stations to begin the process.

Three hours later, Felicity had plated up four perfect slices of the cake, each slice neatly cut and each layer perfectly made. Isabel was missing two layers in her cake, and her salted caramel was burnt. It was no surprise that Isabel was eliminated, and Felicity was safe. She took the remaining portion of the cake up to the gallery where the rest of the participants waited with cheery faces to congratulate her and celebrate. As Tommy popped open a champagne bottle that had been given to them specifically for such occasions and Cisco cut the cake further and distributed the slices, her eyes met Oliver’s. He smiled at her, and her heart skipped a beat as she smiled back at him.  

-------

That night, she found Oliver at the balcony waiting for her. He looked up as she sat down beside him and smiled at her.

“How much are you in trouble with Wells?” he asked her as soon as she sat down.

“Surprisingly, not much,” she said. “They berated me, sure, but Digg and Lyla were more amused than angry. Especially since I told them which clips I had deleted. They also told me that we’re recorded at night to ensure we don’t break any rules, but anything recorded between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. cannot be used for the show to give us some privacy.”

“Nice,” Oliver commented.

“But, just in case, I ensured that the cameras are in a loop for another hour. For all they know, you and I are still in bed.” She said, and immediately backtracked. “In separate beds. Not together in one bed. You and I are in our own, individual beds.”

Oliver huffed out a laugh. “Felicity, you're remarkable.”

She flushed at the compliment. “Thank you for remarking on it.”

She looked up at the sky. It wasn’t as clear as the previous night, but the stars were visible and shining brilliantly down on them. She felt Oliver’s gaze on her. “So, this is becoming a thing for us, meeting here at the balcony.”

“Hmm,” he nodded.

“You're quiet,” she observed. “Well, more quiet than usual.”

“Just appreciating the beauty,” he said, his eyes still on her.

She felt heat rushing up to her face and knew she probably looked like a red velvet cake. She turned her face away awkwardly, staring down as she tucked a strand of curly blonde hair behind her ear.

“You did well today,” he said. “I told you, you would.”

“Yeah,” she muttered. “Though I don’t know if it was a well deserved victory. Ray gave us that particular cake because he knew I had made it before. I feel like I cheated.”

“Hey, that wasn’t cheating,” he argued. “You had an advantage over Isabel in the challenge. There’s nothing wrong in that. Happens all the time. Plus, Isabel could not even finish her cake, and yours was absolutely delicious.”

She looked up at him. He was gazing at her with such pride and affection that it sent warmth straight through to her heart. “Thanks,” she whispered. She cleared her throat once. “Are you ready for the Immunity Challenge tomorrow?”

He contemplated for a moment. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I need to beat Amanda, Laurel, Barry and Cisco first.”

“I shouldn’t be saying this,” she sighed, “but Barry and Cisco will be easy to beat. Laurel shouldn’t be a problem either. Amanda will give you a tough competition though. She’s very... driven.”

“Yeah.”

“I asked her yesterday why she sided with me against Isabel, because she’s not particularly fond of me. She said she wanted me to remove Isabel from the competition before they could go head to head against each other.”

“That was... strategic of her,” Oliver commented.

“I agree. It also means she doesn’t consider me too big a competition for her.”

“That’s her mistake. No one should underestimate you.” There was an almost flirtatious tone to his voice, and it brought a grin to Felicity’s face.

“When I was hacking into the cameras...” she started saying, but stopped, debating whether to tell him or not.

“Yes...” he prompted her.

She bit her lip, silent for a few moments. “I found out which chef will be coming for the Immunity Challenge. The one you would go against if you qualified. It’s Ray Palmer again.”

“Huh,” Oliver said, leaning back on his arms. “Guess that gives me more incentive to qualify then. I really need to defeat that smug smile off his face.”

“Hey,” she slapped him on his chest with the back of her hand. “Be nice.”

“Can’t help it. I don’t like the guy, especially the way he winked at you today.”

“Are you... jealous?” He didn’t reply, and she felt a giggle escape her lips. “Oh my God, you’re jealous! Of Ray Palmer!”

He gave her a wry look. “It’s not funny.”

She giggled some more. “On the contrary, it is exactly that. You know, green’s not exactly your colour.”

But even as she said that, her eyes travelled to the green hoodie he was always wearing, and to the chest it snugly fit across. She remembered catching a glimpse of his eight-pack. She hadn’t expected him to be so... fit. And so deliciously built. She could imagine covering him with the chocolate ganache and the whipped cream she had made today and licking it off of every single inch of his hunky male body.

She suddenly remembered his scars. They filled her with curiosity. She fidgeted with her fingers nervously as she mulled over whether to ask him about them or not.

“What is it?” he asked, picking up on her nervousness.

“Can I –” she began, “Is it okay – I mean, can I ask you... how you got your... scars?”

Oliver sighed and looked away, and she immediately felt bad for bringing it up. “I mean, it’s okay if you don’t want to tell me. I’ll get it if you don’t want to talk –”

“No, it’s okay,” he interrupted her. “My sister always tells me that I should talk about my time on the island with someone.”

“You can talk to me,” she said.

“I know. I'm not ready,” he said. She nodded with understanding, but he still felt the need to explain. “It’s just – the island that I was stranded on... I wasn’t alone over there. The people there weren’t nice, and they made sure I knew that.”

“I'm sorry,” she breathed. “I'm sorry you had to go through that.”

“I'm not. My housemaid, Raisa, always says that whatever happens, happens for a reason. The island was a shocking wake up call for me. If I hadn’t been on there, I would have still stuck to my old playboy ways. I would probably be working in my family company, doing something that I didn’t want to but unable to tell my parents that from the fear of disappointing them further. I wouldn’t have discovered my love for cooking or come here.” He looked at her. “I wouldn’t have met you.”

Felicity tilted her head, moved. Without her realising it, her hand moved to twine her fingers with his. He looked down at their interlinked hands and smiled.

She took a deep, audible breath and released it. “I think I'm going to go to bed,” she said, but made no move to get up or release his hands. “Are you coming?”

“I think I’ll stay here a little longer.”

“Okay,” she leaned forward and pecked his cheek. His stubble tickled her a little, and she found she liked it. “Goodnight, Oliver.”

She got up and went back to her room, unaware of Oliver’s eyes following her retreating figure all the way back.

---------

Felicity, Tommy, Sara and Floyd filed up to the gallery as the remaining five, wearing chef whites and looking impeccably determined, stood in a row in front of the judges. To their left was a large table with cloches, numbered 1 to 40.

“The first round is quite simple,” Lyla said as she stood in front the table. “Under every cloche is a food item, ranging from fruits and vegetables to herbs to spices to proteins. You pick a knife,” she indicated to her right, where a knife holder held five knives, no doubt labelled 1 to 5, “to decide the order you will go about it in. In that order, you choose a number. We will lift the cloche with that number, and you will have to guess the ingredient it contains.”

“The ingredients can be as simple as a lemon,” John said, “or as difficult as charoli.”

Cisco raised his hand hesitantly. “What’s charoli?”

“Exactly,” John said. “You guess, you continue playing this. If you don’t guess, you drop out of the Immunity Challenge. Others will get a shot at guessing you ingredient too. This goes on till only one person is left. That contestant will go on through to the Immunity Challenge.”

They picked the knives. Barry was first, then Amanda, Laurel, Cisco and Oliver. Barry lasted two rounds, unable to guess Bird’s Eye Chilli, which Amanda instantly guessed. Cisco went out on a simple mistake – guessing the quail as chicken. Amanda, Laurel and Oliver held on for a lot longer, they were almost through the cloches, only 9 left, when Amanda picked cloche number 23.

The ingredient inside was red and glossy, and shaped like a tiny habanero chilli. One end of the cylindrical item was slightly puckered like the end of a deflated balloon. Amanda stared at it, stymied. She had never seen anything like that before. She racked her brain for something, trying to remember something from her tours around the world. She could come up with nothing. She couldn’t even hazard a guess. She hated to do it, but Amanda backed out of the challenge.

Laurel was no better. Her knowledge was far inferior to Amanda’s, and she couldn’t remember seeing anything like it in Sara’s multi-cuisine cookbooks. When it passed on to Oliver, he had a smug smile on his face.

“If you guess this, Oliver,” Wells said, “you proceed for immunity. If not, then you and Laurel will go about guessing again. So do you have any guesses?”

Oliver nodded. “It’s wolfberry, or goji berry,” he said confidently. “It’s native to Asia, particularly China.”

John and Lyla grinned at him. “Well done Oliver. Looks like you’re going to be running for Immunity.”

Felicity and Tommy cheered from the gallery. He looked up and grinned at them. They were given a break for lunch, and the nine of them sat around the round centre table upstairs on the gallery, enjoying gourmet pizza made specially for them by John Diggle and a decade old bottle of red wine. Felicity sat next to Oliver, their thighs practically glued to each other, and nudged his shoulder with her own.

“How did you know it was wolfberry?”

He grinned at her. “The ingredient may be highly rare, but not so much on the island I was on.”

The Kitchen had been sectioned off into two parts, divided by a large wooden frame that held all the utensils, crockery and cutlery that the two contestants could need. Stainless steel workstations were on either side, with two stovetops, one oven and a freezer/blast chiller. Oliver stood towards the left, and Ray Palmer to the right. His chef’s coat had ‘Palmer’ embroidered in a cursive font with the logo of his restaurant above it.

“The rules are simple,” John said. “Ray gets to pick the core ingredient. Whatever the ingredient is, it needs to feature exclusively in the dish. Oliver, you get a head start of half an hour. As soon as the 30 minutes are up, Ray, you can start cooking. After that, you both will have an hour.”

“Each of us will be scoring your dishes on ten,” Lyla continued. “Your dishes will be sent in to us anonymously – we will have no clue as to which dish belongs to whom. In order to win this challenge, Oliver, you need to get, on a total of 30, at least the same as or more than Ray. If you do, you win this pin.” She held up a small golden pin shaped like the Masterchef ‘M’. “You win this, and you can choose to sit out on any one elimination later on.”

“To guide you in this challenge and act as a coach,” Wells said, wheeling forward, “we have called a guest chef. You know her as the leading chef in Chinese cuisine. Her restaurant, Fei, was labelled the best restaurant for Asian cuisine this year. Please welcome Shado Fei.”

Oliver cheered along with the rest of the contestants. Shado was one of his chef idols, and he was excited to work with her. He had seen her come as a guest judge on Masterchef Australia, and hoped she would guide him just as well as she did on the other show. Ray chose the core ingredient as pepperoni, after being given the choice between pepperoni and bacon. The judges went inside the dining room, and Oliver’s time had started.

He ran into the pantry, and the first thing his eyes fell on was the cheese rack. He grabbed a block of mozzarella and parmesan each, grabbed eggs, tomatoes, onions, basil, garlic and olive oil. His staples basket had all the remaining ingredients he needed. He grabbed two sticks of pepperoni from the rack outside.

“Talk to me, Oliver,” Shado said, coming up to his workspace as he started taking out flour, butter and eggs. “What are you making?”

“Pizza cupcakes,” he replied, grabbing a bowl of water and dissolving fresh yeast in it.

“Use lukewarm water to dissolve the yeast,” Shado advised. She peered into his basket of ingredients. “How are you going to go about it?”

“It’s not going to be any different from savoury muffins. The frosting will be pizza sauce and it’ll have pepperoni and cheese toppings.”

Shado nodded, but otherwise kept quiet. With the occasional advice from his fellow participants, Oliver went about his work with quick precise movements. When his half hour advantage was up, he saw Ray run to the pantry. He came out with ingredients similar to Oliver’s.

“What do you have in mind, Ray?” he heard Shado ask.

“Pepperoni rolls,” was the quick reply of his rival.

“Is one hour going to be enough for that?” He did not hear Ray’s answer.

Oliver inserted his first batch of cupcakes into the oven. Felicity looked a bit doubtful. “Oliver,” she called out from the gallery. “Are you sure about using the yeast in your batter? It can cause the dough to inflate and stick to your cupcake wrappers.”

He stopped for a second and looked at her. “What do you think I should do?”

She chewed on her bottom lip as she contemplated for a moment. “Make another batch with baking powder and baking soda. Once they come out, you can check which ones are better and use them.”

Oliver gave her a quick nod and followed through her instructions. As he was running into the pantry to grab the items, she called out to him, “Maybe get some wanton wrappers too.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her, but did as she said. When he returned to his bench, she directed him to the perfect proportions of ingredients for the batter. “Make some wanton cups too,” she told him. “Fill that with your sauce and toppings. It’ll give you some variety from what Ray is doing.”

He shot her a quick grateful smile and got back to work. When he took out his half-baked cupcakes, he saw Felicity was right – his yeast batch was clinging to the cupcake wrappers, and there was no way to separate the two. Discarding that set, he quickly poured his tomato and onion sauce on top of the cupcakes, used a cookie cutter to make small rounds of the pepperoni and topped his cupcakes with it. He grated the mozzarella on top and cut thin, long slices of the parmesan and placed them strategically on top. Popping them back in, he did the same with his wanton cups.

Looking at the clock, he saw he still had 30 minutes left. Shado came over and gave him an approving look. “Looks like you’re all set without needing any help from me.”

Oliver shrugged. “My friends were quick to help me.”

“You still have half an hour left. Don’t waste it. Make a small side dish.”

Seeing he had lots of garlic left, he grabbed a small loaf of bread from the pantry. He cooked the garlic in some butter and spread it on small slices of bread. He popped them in the oven and made a simple cheese dip. His pizza cupcakes came out of the oven looking perfect. When the clock chimed to indicate that their time was up, Oliver had plated up three cupcakes and three wantons on his plate. Each pair had two sticks of garlic bread placed next to it, garnished with fresh parsley, and a bowl of gooey cheese dip. Compared to his dish, Ray’s plate looked very simple, consisting of pull-apart rolls dusted with cheese and parsley. Oliver felt pretty confident.

After tasting, the judges came out. They thanked Shado for her help first, and then asked which plate was whose. Ray’s was the first, Oliver’s second. They looked at each other with raised eyebrows at the revelation. They complemented both the dishes, especially Oliver’s, praising his idea of presenting the pizza as both cupcakes and wantons. When they revealed the results, Ray got a 25 out of a possible 30. They created some dramatic suspense as they revealed Oliver’s results, but he got a 28 out of a possible 30.

There was loud cheering from the other participants as Lyla revealed the 10 on 10 she had given Oliver. “Congratulations, Oliver,” she said, walking forward with the Immunity pin and putting it on his coat. “You’re the first ever Masterchef US contestant to win an immunity pin.”

The judges thanked Ray, and he shook Oliver’s hand and congratulated him as he left. Then Oliver was bombarded by his friends. Felicity ran into his arms and hugged him, Tommy patted his back, and Laurel and Sara clung to his arms as they cheered. When they all finally pulled away, he caught Felicity’s eye and mouthed “Thank You” at her.

-------------

The next few weeks were hectic to say the least. Tommy, Floyd and Cisco were the next to be eliminated. Amanda had managed to cook her way to the top, but Oliver was a close second. The remaining four – Felicity, Barry, Sara and Laurel – were close competitions too. Sara got a shot at Immunity after winning an Invention Test, but lost it against brilliant chef Nyssa Raatko.

Save for Amanda and Floyd, the contestants had all become really good friends. Tommy and Oliver discovered they had attended one semester together at Harvard before Oliver had been kicked out. Laurel and Tommy probably would have kindled their romance had Tommy not been eliminated. As for Oliver and Felicity – the cameras loved their dynamic, just as much as the fans. Every night had been spent together on the balcony after Felicity would put the cameras on a loop. They had become close friends and confidants, and their chemistry was off the charts. The heat between them could power all the appliances in the Kitchen, and this intensity was only growing.

It was Week 8 of the competition, as they walked into the Masterchef Kitchen that they saw wooden boxes on the six work stations – mystery box challenge. They stood in their line formation in front of the judges, who looked excited for the day.

“Welcome once again, chefs,” Harrison Wells greeted them, and a thrill went through all of them. This was the first time he had referred to them as chefs. “After all the trials and tribulations of the past few months, the six of you are now worthy of the title of ‘Chef’!”

There was loud applause from the participants, and heavy cheering from the Lance sisters. Diggle smiled fondly at them. “This is a big moment for all of you. I would like you all to remove your white aprons.”

Confused, they did that. Diggle indicated with his hand for servers to step forward. In a single formation, six servers walked up to the contestants, steel cloched trays in hand, and stopped in front of the contestants and lifted the cloches. Lying neatly folded on the steel platters were chef whites for each of the contestant.

“You may go ahead and wear your chef whites now, like the real chefs you are,” Lyla said. There was a flurry of movement as all six of them pulled on their coats, nimbly buttoning them. Cheerfully wide grins and joyous expressions faced the judges. “We decided to start the day with the classic mystery box challenge.”

“But we've tweaked the rules a bit,” John said, pinching his fingers together to indicate a small amount. “Some things remain same – you need to use at least four out of ten ingredients from the box, one of which should feature as your core ingredient in your dish. However, today you have only restricted access to the pantry, and within one hour you need to make one savoury dish and one sweet dish. At the end of this challenge, two of you who make the least satisfactory dishes will go into elimination.”

“You can go to your workstations and lift your mystery boxes now,” Lyla said. In unison all six of them raised the wooden lids to the boxes. There were ten ingredients in there – asparagus, kafir lime, cocoa beans, vanilla pods, Irish whiskey, custard apple, jalapenos, fresh rosemary, quail eggs and oysters. “You know the rules. Your time... starts... now!”     

They all ran to the pantry, grabbing a basket or two each. Since it was a closed pantry test, they wouldn’t be allowed to go back in there once they went back to their benches. Felicity already knew what dessert she would make as soon as she saw the Irish Whiskey – her own twist to a Portuguese Serradura that she had tried out at home before. Instead of going with the classic Sawdust Pudding, she will replace the tea biscuit crumb layers with chocolate cookies and the vanilla cream would be flavoured with Irish coffee. The quail eggs would go perfectly with asparagus and cheese for her savoury dish.

She had her cream beaten in five minutes, her cookie dough churning in the blender in another two, quail eggs set in a pot to hard boil. Pulling out another saucepan, she filled it with milk to start her white sauce. She was chopping her asparagus in long strands, cutting across the stems diagonally, when Oliver whistled to her from his work space behind her. She turned to see him juggling between three different pots and pans on the stove.

“What’re you making?” he asked her. As she explained to him, her body half turned to face him while she still worked on her dish, he nodded appreciatively. “That’s a really good plan. Care to help me out with my dessert?”

“What are you planning on making?” she asked him, checking her boiling milk. She added corn flour to it to help it thicken before moving over to her cheese.

“I haven’t decided anything concrete yet. I just grabbed some random things from the pantry and I’ll mess around with them.”

He rattled off some of his ingredients to her, and she helped him brainstorm as she made balls of her cookie dough and popped them in the oven. The camera caught their entire exchange, swivelling constantly between the two of them like a tennis ball. 45 minutes into the challenge, Felicity had all the components for her savoury dish ready waiting to be plated up. Her cookies came out of the oven, filling her work space with the delectable aroma of baked vanilla and chocolate. She peeled one cookie off the baking sheet and turned around and held it out to Oliver to taste.

“Hot-hot-hot!” he muttered, puckering his lips to blow on the cookie in a comical manner. Once he had swallowed it, he grinned at her and held up his hand in a thumbs-up sign.

Even though her cookies were still hot, she put them in a blender to crush along with some butter. She pressed the lid of the blender shut with a little difficulty, since the rubber around the lid was peeling off and giving her trouble. She put the blender in place and held the lid down with her left hand as she turned it on.

“Shit!” She cursed loudly, her voice high-pitched and pained. When she had turned the blender on, due to the hot cookies the pressure inside had increased, and the blender burst, blowing the lid off. Her left index finger went inside the still rattling and moving blender. Even though she had pulled her hand away in an instant, it was covered in red, blood dripping off her finger.

Hardly had she let out the expletive that Oliver was at her side, cradling her hand and calling out to the medics. The judges had rushed forward too, and Felicity was vaguely aware of the camera crew circling around her like hawks. All she could register was the mind-numbing pain radiating from her finger. Her vision was clouded with tears, and she was sure there were drops of her blood on her glasses. She thought she would puke if she wasn’t otherwise occupied with dealing with the pain.

A medic – an Asian woman named Tatsu – appeared in front of her and took her hand in her latex covered ones. With quick surgical movements she cleaned her hand and her face and her neck and other places where she had been sprayed with her own blood. The disinfectant stung as it was dabbed on her wound, and she buried her face into Oliver’s neck to hide her tears. Ice was pressed against her injury, and the pain numbed enough for her to become more aware of her surroundings.

“You’re lucky it’s not deep,” Tatsu told her comfortingly. “You won’t even need stitches. But this will take a few weeks to heal and you’ll need time to get over the blood loss.”  

Felicity opened her eyes and looked at the injury that Tatsu was dressing. There were three long jagged cuts on the pad of her finger, and her nail had been half cut with blood clotted behind it. She made a disgusted face. “Ugh. It looks like it’s been clawed by Wolverine.”

There were chuckles around her, but all Felicity could focus on was that she was sitting in a pool of blood. The floor, her coat, her workstation, they had all been sprayed with her blood. She almost gagged at the sight. She stood up to check on her food and would have fallen back down hadn’t Oliver been holding her. Her cookies were ruined, so were her asparagus. Someone held out a glass of orange juice for her to drink, but she pushed it aside. She didn’t think she could stomach it.

“Oh God,” she muttered, “How can there be so much blood from one small cut?”

“Felicity, it’s going to be okay,” Oliver murmured to her gently, pulling her away from her bench and over to one of the huge comfortable sofas in the dining area. A crew quickly started cleaning up the area, disposing all the ruined food items.

Felicity spied the clock. There were two minutes left in the challenge. “Oliver, your food!”

“Screw my food,” he said simply as he indicated to one of the helpers to hand him the glass of orange juice.

“But -” she started to protest but her cut her off.

“Don’t argue with me right now. Drink this.” He held the glass to her lips and helped her drink it.

John walked over to them and knelt down beside her. “You okay?” he asked her.

“I guess,” she shrugged with her right shoulder, not daring to move her left hand that she cradled against her chest. “I've been cooking since I was 10 years old and I've never had any incident in the kitchen before. I feel like this is an epoch making moment, and I should bask in it. Not that it’s a moment of pride or anything, just a highly significant point in my life.”

John gave her an incredulous look, while Oliver shook his head, a half amused smile on his lips. John stood up. “Since the round is over, we’ve decided to give the two of you extra 15 minutes to salvage your dishes. Felicity, we’ve moved your things to Sara’s work station, and she’s willing to help you out wherever you need her to.”

“Thanks,” she said with a grateful smile.

When Felicity went back to her station, she saw that her white sauce and eggs had survived, and her Irish coffee cream due to being in the cooler was safe too. Her asparagus was ruined, but she borrowed Oliver’s since he wasn’t using them. She couldn’t do anything about her cookies, and since the pantry was closed, she couldn’t get some readymade ones. Oliver didn’t fare much better either. Since he went to Felicity’s side in the middle of cooking, his vegetables had burnt and his custard apple had caramelised way too much to point of burning. There wasn’t much he could do.  

Both their dishes were incomplete. It wasn’t any surprise that the two of them went into elimination.

“Oliver, Felicity,” Lyla told them as they stood in front of the judges after the tasting, “we’re really sorry. But this is a competition, and the two of you are going to be in elimination.”

“However,” John interjected, “given Felicity’s condition, we decided to give you a few days to rest and regain your strength. The elimination challenge will take place three days later.”

Felicity nodded, but didn’t say anything as she stared at the floor with downcast eyes. She had her left hand held up and cradled against her chest, her finger kept elevated to prevent blood flow due to gravity.

“Oliver, you still have your immunity pin. You have three days to decide if you’re going to go through the elimination round, or you’re going to use your pin and sit it out. In case you do choose the latter, Barry will take your place in elimination.”

“Now go home, get some rest,” Lyla said and smiled at them. “We’ll see you on Thursday.”

----------------

Felicity slept through the rest of the day and didn’t wake up till the next afternoon. She woke up to breakfast (lunch) in bed, prepared by Sara and Laurel for her. She rested the entire day, being tended to by her friends. Oliver stood at her door the entire time looking over her, but he stayed aloof. It bugged Felicity.

That day, she also received a card from her mother, who had been informed of her accident. As much as Donna wanted to pack up her bags and set out for her daughter, she understood the situation and hand made a card for her, which she got all her co-workers and friends at Caesar’s to sign. Felicity teared up when she saw it, and the cameras hovered around her to get good shots.

She started cooking again the next day, practising for the elimination round. Her injured finger had seriously slowed her down, so much so that it now took her double the time to cook something as compared to before. Chopping was a problem for her, since she couldn’t use the support of her left hand. She felt really hopeless by the end of the day.

That night, she met Oliver at the balcony. His distant attitude the past two days had hurt her, and she would resolve things before elimination tomorrow. He was already waiting for her there, his legs pulled up against his chest and an arm resting over it.

“Hey,” she greeted him softly, gingerly sitting down beside him, careful of her hand.

“Hi,” he said, turning his head to face her. “How are you feeling?”

“Honestly? Equal parts hopeless, irritated and pissed.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his eyebrows crinkled.

“I’m pissed at you, irritated with my injury that isn’t allowing me to cook properly, and I’m feeling hopeless because I know I won’t be able to go through the elimination test tomorrow.”

“Why are you angry with me?”

She turned towards him, pulling her legs up and crossing them, and leaned her head against the bars of the railing. “You’ve been acting distant. Aloof. These past two days, I needed you with me, and even though you were there for me, you weren’t there for me. I know they sound the same but they’re different in my head.”

He sighed. “I'm sorry for my behaviour.”

“I don’t need apologies, Oliver. I want you to explain to me what happened. These past few weeks, I thought we had grown closer, that there was something here,” she gestured between them with her uninjured hand. He caught her hand in his own and interlinked their fingers together.

“Felicity... trust me when I say that there is something here, between us.”

“Then why, Oliver?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, his hand gripping hers a little tighter, as he contemplated for a moment. “When you hurt your finger, and I saw all that blood on the floor and on you... I almost couldn’t breathe. The fact that you were hurt, and in pain, I couldn’t take it. You mean so much to me, Felicity. And then I realise I have to go against you in elimination. I don’t think I could live with myself if I’m the reason you’re eliminated.”

Felicity lifted her head from against the railings, an expression of compassion on her face. “Oliver... look at me. I am in no condition to cook. It doesn’t matter who I'm up against tomorrow. I will be eliminated.” She looked away from him. “Which is why I'm going to quit tomorrow.”

His eyes opened in shock and he jerked up. “No! You can’t do that.”

“Didn’t you just hear what I said? I cannot cook. I cannot hold down my vegetables when I'm chopping them, I cannot stir the pans and I sure as hell cannot use a blender anymore!”

“Felicity, you need to try,” he begged her with pleading eyes. “I’ll use my immunity and you go against Barry. You’re a better cook than him.”

She snorted. “On a good day, I can defeat you too. But the point is tomorrow will not be a good day. It’s going to be a bad day. A very bad day. Even if I’m up against Barry, my injury has seriously slowed me down, and Barry is, like, super fast. Have you seen him slicing his onions? He gets them done in a flash!”

“Felicity...”

She looked down at their joined hands, her thumb rubbing soft comforting circles on the back of his hand. “Save your Immunity Pin. It’ll be a huge advantage to have a few weeks down the line.”

His hand travelled up her hand, tracing the line of her arm, cupping her elbow, mapping the curve of her shoulder. His eyes followed his finger as he teased the length of her neck with it before palming her cheek. She leaned into his pal, her eyes fluttering shut as she let out a contented hum.

“I don’t want to see you go,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion.

She opened her eyes to find his intense blue eyes on her. “We all can’t win, Oliver. I knew I had to leave sometime. And I'm glad that my Mom forced me to audition for Masterchef because this is the best thing to ever happen to me. I don’t regret a single moment of my journey here.”

A single tear escaped her eye, and he wiped it before it could fall. His eyes darted over her face, searching, before locking with hers again. “Are the cameras off?”

“Yeah, they’re on loop.”

“Good.” He pulled her up to meet him halfway as his lips captured hers in an intense, searing kiss. Still mindful of her injured finger, he pulled her body closer to his own, his hand still holding onto her face as the other wrapped around her face. Through hooded eyes he saw her eyes flutter shut, and he closed his own eyes and fell into the rhythm of their lips. His lips were slightly chapped and rough against her soft plush ones, and she moaned as pleasure shot through her at the sensation. He growled lowly at the sound, and then his hands were in her hair, pulling her impossible closer, and she had to put her hand on his shoulder to balance herself.

He pulled back slightly, resting his forehead against hers, their noses bumping, as he took in the view. Her face was flushed, her lips plump and red – redder than her favourite lipstick – and his thumb traced the line of her plump bottom lip before taking it in his mouth, nibbling on it. She whimpered and tilted her head to meet him in a passionate open-mouth kiss, their tongues tangling together, dancing to their own rhythm. Their pace was slow, unhurried, but the passion was simmering under the surface.

When they pulled away after a long moment, they were both breathing hard, their lips still torturously close, and her eyes were dazed and hooded with desire. He wasn’t ready to let her go just yet, and his lips pecked her nose before travelling up. He placed a gentle, loving kiss on her forehead. He pulled her in, arms wrapped around her, face buried in her hair as she burrowed into the curve of his neck.

“Do me a favour?” he said after a long moment. She nodded against his chest. “Wait for me to get out.”

“You make this place sound like a prison,” she murmured.

He chuckled. “Any place without you is a prison for me.”

She blushed at that, burrowing her head further into him, even though he could not see her face. “Do me a favour?” she parroted to him.

“Anything.”

“Win this for me.”

-----------------

Felicity left the next day with a tearful goodbye. When she reached home, she was surprised by the welcome home party arranged for her by her mother.

“Oh, my baby!” Her mother squealed as she gathered her in her arms, wrapping her in her honey and cinnamon scent. Felicity dropped her bag and hugged Donna back, holding onto her tightly. “Oh, I was so worried when they told me you injured yourself.”

“I’m good, Mom,” she mumbled into her shoulder. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too, sweetie,” She pulled back and started inspecting her. “You look thinner. Haven’t you been eating properly? You're not hurt anywhere else, right?”

“Mom, I am completely fine. Well, not completely, because, you know, Wolverine-d finger, but apart from that I am absolutely good.”

“Oh, okay, that’s nice to hear. Now come on, let’s go in. I've got food from Caesars’, and lots of wine.”

Donna’s co-workers and all their neighbours had gathered to welcome her home. They all gushed over her, listening to her stories of her time at the Masterchef House with rapt attention. When they had all left, Donna settled on the old couch next to Felicity, handing her a glass of wine.

“So...” Donna began, her finger lightly tapping against her own wine glass. “Top 6, huh? And here you were worried whether you would even be selected in the auditions.”

“Oh, Mom, my entire Masterchef journey... it was wonderful!”

“Does it have anything to do with a certain Oliver Queen?” Donna teased with a nudge.

Felicity blushed deeply, ducking her face, but she couldn’t fight the smile that broke across her face at the thought of Oliver. Donna grinned at her daughter. “Ooh, I can sense a good story here.”

“Mom, there’s nothing much to say,” Felicity said, waving it off.

Her mother mock pouted. “Fine. Don’t tell your dear mother any of the juicy stuff and she won’t gove you the good news.”

That perked Felicity up. “Good news? What good news?”

Donna tried to hold back to keep her daughter in suspense, but she was too excited. “I got promoted!” She squealed.

“Oh my God!” Felicity jumped up and hugged her mother, then pulled back suddenly. “Wait, what position did you get promoted to?”

“Head Waitress at Caesars’. After you appeared on TV, all the regulars at the bar recognised you and started coming more often, inviting more of their friends. The bar became even more popular, especially during my shifts. The manager was so impressed that he promoted me.”

“Congratulations, Mom! I'm so happy for you!” Felicity said.

“So, now you want to tell me what happened between you and Oliver that’s got you all smiling and blushing...”

------------------

Four weeks later, Oliver and Amanda had made it to the finals. After Felicity left, Laurel had been eliminated. Oliver had been in an elimination the week after that, but he used his immunity pin. Sara and Barry went head to head in a Pressure Test that Barry lost. The other Lance sister lost to Amanda the week after.

The finals were a massive event. Both Oliver and Amanda’s families had been invited, along with all the other Masterchef contestants. Felicity cheerfully greeted all of them with big smiles and warm hugs. They all inspected her finger, which had completely healed now, a long white scar the only sign of her injury. Isabel had refused to turn up. Tommy was flirting with Laurel while Carrie was all over Floyd, who looked like he was deeply regretting his life choices. Felicity grinned and shook her head at that.

She also met Oliver’s family. His sister Thea was a firecracker of a woman, her tiny body bursting with energy as she spoke with Felicity. While his mother Moira was cool and formal with her, his step-father Walter Steele spoke at length with her regarding her Master’s degree. He seemed to think she would be a good addition to Queen Consolidated’s Applied Sciences Division, should she choose to pursue that field.  

When Oliver entered through the massive doors, his eyes immediately sought out Felicity’s in the gallery. She was standing with Thea, Sara, Laurel and Tommy, enthusiastically cheering for him. He grinned at her before walking along with Amanda to the judges. The normal workstations had been removed from the Kitchen, replaced with two curved workstations that together formed a massive circle in the centre of the room. The finalists stopped before the judges, standing proud in their chef whites, arms folded at their backs.

“Amanda, Oliver,” John greeted them, a huge smile on his face. “Congratulations to you two. You have made it to finale. The person who wins today’s championship will be America’s very first Masterchef!”

Loud cheers and clapping ensued in the gallery. Someone (Thea) hollered “Go Ollie!” When the noise died down, Lyla continued, “Obviously, today’s challenge is going to be different. Bigger. Today, you’re making a three course meal for us.”

“But it’s not just a random three course meal,” John said. “You’re cooking our standard dishes today.”

Wells wheeled forward and leaned back in his chair. “My restaurant, S.T.A.R. is most famous for the spanakopita. So today, for entree, the two of you are expected to make a perfect spinach and feta cheese spanakopita along with any one accompaniment. You will get 90 minutes to make three plates of the pastry, one for each of us. We will each score your dishes on 10. Your marks will be added up till the end, and whoever gets the highest on a total of 90 will be declared Winner.”

A server brought in a dish of spanakopita for the finalists to taste. Wells guided them, helping them understand how he made it, giving them little tricks.

“The recipe for the spanakopita is on your work stations. Your 90 minutes start... Now!”

The next one and a half hours were a flurry of movement in the Kitchen. The others all watched from the gallery, engrossed, as the two chefs gracefully moved around each other and worked on their dishes. They both made salad accompaniments with their dish – Amanda’s a citrus salad and Oliver’s a cherry tomato based salad. At the end of the round, Amanda presented her dish first, and then Oliver. They both waited nervously at their stations, the Kitchen way too quiet, as the judges came to a verdict.

When they came out, everyone looked on with bated breath. They revealed Amanda’s scores first. John gave her an 8 on 10, Lyla a 7 on 10, and Wells gave her another 8 on 10, leading her total to be 23 out of a possible 30. As for Oliver – John gave him a 9 on 10, Lyla an 8 on 10 and Wells an 8 on 10, leading his total to 25 out of a possible 30. He was leading by 2 points at the end of the first round.

When the cheers died down, John spoke. “The entrees were brilliant, on both your parts, but now it’s time for your main course. Everyone knows my most popular dish is Chicken Grenobloise. You have 2 hours to prepare three portions of the dish for us. Marking scheme is the same as the previous round. The recipes are on your stations.”

The round passed much similar to the previous one. This time, Amanda managed to cover the 2 points lead Oliver had on her, and at the end of the round, both stood equally at 52 points out of a total possible 60.

For the third round, the dessert round, Lyla grinned almost evilly at them as she revealed the dish they were required to make for them. “This is a dessert that took me 13 tries to perfect. It is so difficult that even John cannot make it properly.”

A server brought in a huge cloche covered tray. Lyla lifted it to reveal a huge chocolate globe. The upper dome had perfect round holes in it, through which the items inside could be seen.

“This is my Black Forest,” Lyla continued. “Inside these chocolate domes is a chocolate sponge, a hazelnut gelato, cherry sorbet and kirsch semifreddo.”

She showed them all the individual items, let them taste them, and showed them how to assemble the dish. “Rules remain the same. You need to make only one dish, though. Once again, the recipes are on your workstations. You have two and a half hours.”

This round was by far the toughest. Both Amanda and Oliver struggled. The others in the gallery constantly shouted down reminders and instructions at them – “Get your gelato in the ice cream maker!”; “Don’t temper your chocolate!”; “Get the sponge out of the oven!” – and Felicity constantly belted out tips for Oliver from the gallery. He shot her grateful looks and followed through her instructions.

Towards the end, when they were both scrambling to complete their dishes, Amanda hurried to grab her sorbet and quenelle it into her bottom dome when her elbow nudged her other dome mould. The silicon rolled over the workspace before she could stop it and fell to the ground. There was a cracking sound as her upper dome came loose from the mould and cracked into hundreds of pieces. That was the moment they all realised it – unless Oliver had done something horribly wrong in his dish, he was a clear winner of the competition.

When the judges came back after the tasting, the guests had all come back down. Oliver’s and Amanda’s families stood beside them to show their support. As the judges gave their opinions, commenting on how good both their desserts were, how it was a difficult decision, not once mentioning Amanda’s incomplete dish, the tension in the room rose higher. One by one they revealed their scores. Amanda got 22 out of 30, her final total leading to 74 out of a possible 90. Wells gave Oliver an 8 out of 10, John gave him another 8. They all waited tensely as Lyla drew out the process of revealing her score.

“Oliver, in order to win this competition, you need at least a 7 on 10 from me,” she said. “I have given you, out of 10...” slowly she pulled out her scorecard “a 9!”

Oliver nearly crumpled to his knees with relief and shock.

“Oliver Queen. You. Are. USA’s. First. Masterchef!”

He was bombarded with hugs and claps. A balloon burst from somewhere above them, showering them with celebratory streamers and glitter. Amanda shook his hand and congratulated him. Thea jumped into his arms, hugging him with all her life while squeezing him to death. They all composed themselves once again for the judges.

“Congratulations, Oliver!” John said. “As winner of Masterchef, you get the prize money of $150,000 to help kick start your cooking career. You also get a deal for your very own cookbook.”

“Thank you,” Oliver said graciously. “This has been a wonderful experience for me. I have learned so much in my time here, and I am really grateful to you, to all of you,” he turned to his fellow contestants for the last part, “for it. Honestly, I couldn’t have done it without the support of my friends here.”

Lyla smiled at him. “You deserved it, Oliver. Now come get your trophy!”

She lifted a red velvety cloth from on top of a glass case to reveal a massive trophy – a golden round dish with the Masterchef logo. John lifted the trophy out, and Wells presented it to Oliver. They posed with the trophy a bit, allowing the camera to take pictures from all angles.

“Now let’s get the party started!” John popped open a champagne in celebration. Everyone gathered around Oliver, congratulating him. More party poppers burst and showered them with streamers.

Tommy had just released Oliver from a hug when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around to see Felicity grinning at him. Breathlessly, he returned her smile.

“You won!” she said gleefully.

“I did. I won it for you.” He breathed, stepping closer to her.

“Good. Because I waited for you.”

He grinned at her and then, in front of all the contestants, the judges, his family and all the cameras broadcasting to the entire nation, he bent down and kissed her.