Chapter Text
This was for friends who were stuck in Secaucus, NJ during the HVFF and the snowmaggedon situation. It's weird, it's wonderful, it's Team Arrow dealing with Sara and Nyssa in full drugged mode. I hope you enjoy
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Felicity had come to appreciate the necessity of responding to emergencies quickly and with limited understanding of what to expect. Team Arrow had spent years jumping into situations, only to have those situations jump back. She felt like she had seen it all.
She had absolutely no idea how weird things could really get. Not until New Jersey.
When they had gotten the distress call from Sara, they hadn’t known why she was in New Jersey or what mission she was on. The call had been brief and had ended with howls of laughter, which was unusual in itself. Felicity couldn’t remember the last time she had heard Sara laugh. When they had landed, Felicity remembered why she had never ventured to Jersey when she had lived in Boston. There was no a whole lot to recommend it, and even fewer reasons to stay - save for the beeping dot that suggested Sara was nearby.
They had ordered a car. It was sleek, black, and Oliver drove it like they were being chased. She agreed with his worry. They knew even less than normal. And it was Sara. They had far too many close calls. Hurrying was their only course of action. She stared at the dot that represented Sara as snow started to swirl in the gusts of wind that had been constant since landing at the airport.
“This snow might make things tricky if we have to make a quick escape,” Oliver said, his shoulders hunched over as he gripped the steering wheel tightly.
“It’s going to get worse,” Felicity returned. “A lot worse. They’re calling for a foot, maybe more.”
Oliver’s response was to grunt. She rolled her eyes at him and tried to figure out a possible escape route that would get them out of the city if they needed to run in the middle of the snowstorm. Her hopes weren’t high. The snow was already sticking. In another hour, they would be stuck. She just hoped that things weren’t as terrible as her imagination lent them to be.
Thirty minutes later, she was just trying to figure out what the hell had happened.
They parked in a grey parking structure and hurried through the mostly empty streets, their chins tucked and their shoulders hunched to stave off the wind. Felicity’s entire body rattled and shook. She had not had time to pack properly. Oliver - the asshole he was - barely looked affected. He only held concern and a defensive preparedness she had seen hundreds of times before a fight. She didn’t know if his preparations to fight meant he didn’t feel the weather, or if the warmth he always radiated, was the cause. She just knew she envied him and his stupid ability not to feel cold.
He stayed close to her, helping her when the wind gusted particularly hard, but otherwise staying silent, trusting that her beacon would get them there. They were both confused, but trying not to show it. Where they were just…didn’t fit. It was a complex, full of hotels, restaurants, stores for babies, and movie theaters. It was exactly the sort of place Sara avoided at all costs.
They turned the corner and Felicity came to an abrupt stop, Oliver’s hand on her elbow the only thing that made him stop as well. She stared at the dot, then up at the building, then back down at the dot.
“What the what?” she asked into the howling wind.
“What’s the problem?” Oliver asked.
“She’s there,” Felicity said, pointing.
Oliver followed her finger and also frowned. In front of them, lit up like a tree in what she realized was now a fairly deserted area was a Carrabba’s. It was nothing special, nothing was on fire, and there were no armed soldiers shooting at anything that moved. The only thing she heard was the sound of laughter, music, and many voices raised in conversation.
“Is it a trap?” Felicity asked.
“Could be,” he said. She shivered against him and his hand snaked around her waist. “But I think we need to go inside either way. Staying out here is more dangerous.”
“Catching a cold versus catching a bad guy, dilemma of the day,” Felicity said.
“I think it’s safe,” he said.
“Based off what? Your Spidey senses?”
“Based off the lack of screaming,” Oliver said.
“Was that a joke? Did you make a joke?” Felicity asked.
Oliver narrowed his eyes at her.
“It was tooottallly funny,” she deadpanned.
His lips twitched upward, before his gaze returned to the building. He had already made up his mind, and she had decided long ago to trust him with every part of her. She knew that if it felt that something was off, he would make her safety a priority. He always did. Too, she was really fucking cold.
His arm still around her, warmth seeping through her flimsy jacket, they walked to the front of the building and into the packed restaurant. There were more people standing than sitting; the bar was packed and full of people talking, flirting, and complaining about the weather. Felicity heard enough from the others to know that some kind of comic book convention had been in one of the nearby convention centers. She perked up at the thought, but then remembered that they were on a super secret, super deadly mission to rescue their friendly, recently not-dead assassin.
Except that they weren’t.
A song started up, loud and familiar, and a girl jumped onto the bar, with the protestations of no one. She was gorgeous and radiant, and Felicity felt her jaw drop open as Sara started to lead the crowd in a singalong, even while she drank gin from the bottle and laughed when she messed up the lyrics. It was clear that the crowd was under her spell.
“Are we dead? Did we die?” Felicity asked, turning to stare at Oliver, who was staring wide-eyed at Sara. He didn’t reply. She didn’t blame him.
A second later, and more importantly, Nyssa jumped up on the bar. It was clear that she didn’t know any of the words, but she could dance, and she was more than willing to dance a whole lot. Felicity felt her shock fade to glee. She might not understand exactly what was happening, but she was absolutely not going to let this moment pass without recording it. She was one of the smartest people on the planet, after all. She raised her phone and was proud that she managed to keep the camera so steady around her laughing.
“I think they might be okay,” she said.
“I think they might be drugged,” Oliver returned.
That sobered her up. She stopped recording as Nyssa jumped off the bar and pulled Sara with her. There was a lot of cheering and people yelling drunkenly in response. A couple of thuds followed the yells, which were then immediately followed by hasty apologies.
Oliver pulled Felicity after him, ignoring the harried hostess who asked if they wanted to make a reservation, and zeroed in on their friends.
“Sara!” Oliver called.
Sara turned, pushed several men, who by the crowds around them seemed to be famous, out of her way, and then jumped into Felicity’s arms. She hugged her tightly, nearly suffocating her.
“Here they are! I knew you’d come! The heroes who can’t help themselves. Sunshine and guilty boy!”
“Guilty boy?” Oliver demanded.
“Have you been drugged?” Felicity asked into Sara’s ear.
Nyssa heard the question. Probably her ninja training at work. “It was a drug that lowers inhibitions and creates euphoria in its users. It is not deadly. It was, however, deadly to the man who poisoned us with it.”
“Why were you chasing a drug dealer?” Felicity asked.
“Not a drug dealer. A human smuggler, specializing in young women,” Sara said. “Used the drugs to make his victims pliable. He’s at the bottom of the river. It’s totally cool. Dance with me!”
Sara started rocking Felicity back and forth, making Felicity stumble a bit as Sara swung her around the packed space. Felicity started laughing as Oliver came to her rescue. He gently pried Sara away from Felicity and looked around the restaurant.
“Maybe we should get a hotel and you two can sleep it off.”
“Oh, Ollie, I thought getting with the love of your life would make you less of a stick in the mud,” Sara pouted.
“My love would like to dance,” Nyssa added. “Unless you wish to see my blade, you will let her.”
Felicity thought that entirely threat Nyssa - a mixture of romance and bloodletting. Even drugged, she was deadly. Felicity put her hand on Oliver’s arm and looked up at him with that look, the one she had perfected with him that meant she got her way.
“They’re not hurting anyone, and I need the blackmail. Let them dance…or whatever, and I’ll record it for later. If they get out of hand, you can get into a fight then.”
Oliver rubbed his forehead, as though considering every single mistake that had led him to this very moment. She fought the urge to laugh. Her lips twitched as she continued to look up at him with puppy dog eyes. He glanced over at her and she knew that she had won.
Silently, he guided her over to the bar. Two places opened up for them nearly instantly, the perks of dating a man whose glare had quelled hardened criminals and she ordered a glass of wine and watched the crazy, excited joy that surrounded her.
Outside, the snow continued to swirl. It built up; it created mountains out of parked cars and buildings. It was a full-on blizzard, and she knew, even if Oliver didn’t realize it yet, that they would be staying for a couple more days at least. The crowd ebbed and flowed, but Sara, and by default Nyssa, stayed in the action, interacting with everyone, being joyful, and Felicity recorded as much of it as possible.
Nyssa kept going outside to play in the snow. Felicity found that particularly hilarious. Oliver followed her out each time. The second time he came back in a huff, wet spots all over his clothes.
“What?” Felicity asked.
“She’s trying to start a snowball fight,” Oliver said. “She called me…” His ears reddened. “She curses colorfully when she doesn’t get her way.”
“Oh! Snowball fight!” Felicity said eagerly.
This caught the attention of Sara, who immediately organized the entire Carrabba’s into sides, and took everyone outside. That was how Felicity ended up shoulder to shoulder with Oliver throwing snowballs in the freezing cold, while the wind howled around them.
The fourth time Nyssa went outside, Oliver decided to give up trying to monitor her with a huff. He rolled his eyes as he accepted his glass of wine from Felicity. Felicity grinned at him until he spilled the truth.
“She’s tackling people and making them stay until they make snow angels with her,” he told her.
Felicity burst out laughing.
Finally, Nyssa and Sara got tired. It took until midnight and the Carrabba’s employees nearly sobbing as they asked them to leave. Oliver and Felicity took them to the hotel attached to the restaurant, checked them in, made sure that they were safely in their room before going to theirs, and then collapsed on the bed.
“I hate my friends,” Oliver said.
“They make things interesting,” Felicity said.
“Mmm,” he agreed.
“You know we’re not leaving tomorrow?” Felicity asked. “This isn’t stopping.” She waved at the dirty window, which was darkened by the snow. The gusting wind rattled it every few seconds and the trucks that were scraping the roads rolled by every minute or so.
He grunted.
“You do know what snowstorms are good for, though, right?”
He frowned and turned to look at her, looking far too sexy in the dim light for any one man. It still startled her sometimes that he was hers, that she could look at him however she wanted, whenever she wanted. “No,” he replied, a small crinkle in his brow.
“Sex. A lot of it,” she said. She shrugged. “I mean, what else are you gonna do?”
His smile was languid and full of laughter as he reached around her and pulled her tight against his body. “I like the way you think,” he said.
“That’s why you love me,” she replied, inching her lips closer to his. “My brain.”
“It’s a very sexy brain,” he said.
She giggled as her lips finally landed on his. The snowstorm, and all the chaos that belonged to it, faded away as their focus narrowed to each other and the space between them. Across the hall, Sara and Nyssa were learning the benefits of a snowstorm as well.