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Felicity doesn’t mean for things to get so out of hand.
What starts out as an innocuous suggestion rapidly snowballs into an intense debate that none of them are really prepared for, and she finds herself wondering if it’s really worth all the trouble.
(Then again, she should really have be surprised. It’s Star Wars.)
It all starts on a Thursday.
They’re at the Cave (Oliver still hates it when she calls it that but it sounds so much cooler than “the basement of Palmer Tech”), waiting for a crime. Oliver is meticulously sharpening arrowheads, Diggle is taking out his latest parenting frustrations on the punching bag in the corner (apparently it’s not called the terrible twos for nothing), and Felicity is at her desk, pretending to be reading the latest financial reports, but really looking at kitten pictures on Twitter.
(They’re cute, okay? Some of them are really cute.)
“So I’ve been thinking about things we could do for our anniversary,” she says.
Oliver frowns. “Our anniversary isn’t until April.”
Felicity swallows, trying to stem the blush rising in her cheeks. There’s really no reason to feel guilty. Going to see a movie with your husband is a perfectly normal thing to do. No excuses required. “I know, but we got engaged in December and you died and came back from the dead which is pretty momentous so I thought we might start celebrating early. You know, like four months of celebration.”
“Four months of celebration?” One eyebrow rises. “Don’t you think that’s a little much?”
Felicity shrugs, bracing her heel against the edge of the desk and twirling her chair back and forth. The pen between her fingers taps against her front teeth in a sharp, staccato rhythm. “Some people make it a whole year. Which is a little overkill if you ask me—I mean what’s the point in celebrating your anniversary for a whole year?”
Diggle chuckles, pausing from his attack on the punching bag to wipe his brow. “Lyla and I went to Big Belly Burger for our anniversary. Not having to babysit was celebration enough.”
“See?” she says. “Totally normal. Very casual thing to do. We should do something like that. You know, when the time comes, not now, obviously not now, why we would we celebrate our anniversary now—?”
“Felicity.”
Oliver and John are both looking at her with identically amused expressions.
“Am I babbling? I’ll stop. Go back to my work. Because, you know, I have a lot of it.”
Oliver sighs, still smiling. “What do you want?”
“What do you mean what do I want? Who says I want anything?”
John grins.
Oliver raises an eyebrow.
Felicity blushes.
“Okay, so maybe I really just want an excuse to go see the new Star Wars movie,” she mumbles.
“And you couldn’t have just said that because…?”
“Because I wanted it to be special! We haven’t had the time to do anything together in a while and I wanted an occasion—”
“—Like a first Christmas.”
“What?”
“It’s our first Christmas as a married couple. Our first Hannukah. Lots of people celebrate that.”
“Oh. Yeah. Uh, right. That’s what I meant with the whole early anniversary thing, you know.”
Oliver smirks.
Felicity throws her pen at him.
“You know I never would have pegged you as a Star Wars fan,” Oliver says. “It just seems too cliché.”
It’s Sunday, three days after Felicity’s most embarrassing attempt at asking Oliver out on a date. (You would think that she’d be good at this now. Since, you know, they’re married.) They’re in the Cave again, because they have nothing better to be doing with their time (well, Felicity has a lot of better things to be doing but she’d rather be here not doing any of those things so here they are), and Oliver is doing the salmon ladder with that stupid little grin on his face that says he knows how distracting it is.
(There’s a tiny bit of sweat trickling down his abs. Felicity is trying very hard not to think about it—or more specifically, thinking about what she’d like to do to it with her tongue.)
Felicity grins. “What, because I’m a computer nerd?”
“No,” Oliver grunts, hoisting himself up higher on the ladder. “Because it’s Star Wars.”
Laurel’s head shoots up. “Star Wars?”
“That is the worst non-answer ever,” Felicity says, rolling her eyes.
“What’s wrong with Star Wars?” Laurel, no longer paying any attention to the case files she was going over, folds her arms across her chest. “It’s only the most iconic film franchise of all time.”
Oliver shrugs (at least, Felicity thinks it’s a shrug; it’s hard to tell when he’s simultaneously hauling himself up on that damn ladder). “It’s a bunch of people fighting in space.”
Felicity is at a loss for words. How is it possible that she is married to a man who doesn’t care about Star Wars? That was the number one criteria on the list of perfect man traits she made in the fifth grade.
Laurel shakes her head. She looks profoundly disappointed. Felicity can’t blame her. “Don’t let Tommy hear you say that. I’m pretty sure Han Solo is his idol.”
“Is that the guy who’s friends with the giant bear thing?”
“Wookie, Oliver!” Diggle’s shout echoes from behind the punching bag in the corner of the room.
Oliver rolls his eyes. “Whatever.” He frowns, turning to Laurel. “Weren’t you obsessed with those princesses? The one with the gun and the weird hair?”
Felicity isn’t sure whether she should laugh or cry. Oliver’s lack of knowledge is appalling.
“If you’re talking about Princess Leia and Padmé Amidala, they both had ‘guns and weird hair’,” Laurel replies dryly. “And it wasn’t an obsession, they’re role models. They’re still role models.”
“And here I thought it was your father’s industrious law career that made you want to be a lawyer.”
“It’s okay, Laurel,” Felicity whispers loudly. “He doesn’t get it.” She always had more in common with Han Solo as a child (you know, the whole good with computers and raised by a semi-absent parent thing) but she certainly understands how Laurel, the daughter of a cop with an independent spirit and two male best friends, would identify with badass female politicians like Leia and Padmé.
Laurel smiles. “One of his more forgivable shortcomings.”
Oliver glowers at them both.
Things escalate at the first annual Flarrow Christmas get together at the loft a week before Christmas. (Cisco is responsible for the name. Oliver, of course, hates it.) The fact that it happens to be the same day The Force Awakens comes out is a coincidence Felicity does not plan on pointing out.
Until Cisco brings it up, of course.
“So, Felicity,” he says, perching on the sofa arm next to her, beer in hand. “On a scale of one to ten, how excited are you for TFA?”
Felicity swallows her mouthful of wine and tries to calm her suddenly racing heartbeat. “Like, eight?”
Oliver snorts into his drink.
“Okay, maybe more like a twelve, but I have a reason to be, Oliver—this is a momentous occasion. This is the moment every Star Wars fan since the beginning of time has been waiting for!”
Ray shrugs. “I never really understood the whole Star Wars appeal. Star Trek was way better.”
“Star Trek? Better than Star Wars? Um, no. Never.” Cisco shakes his head.
“I can’t believe we ever dated.”
“I’m with Ray on this one,” Barry says. “Star Trek is way better.”
Felicity glares at him. “Traitor.”
“You know,” Caitlin says quickly, trying to stop a full-on war before it starts. “You and Tommy are kind of like a real life Han and Leia.” She grins at Laurel, who blushes.
Tommy smirks. “I think you might have just made her day. She dressed up as Princess Leia for four Halloweens in a row.”
Laurel snorts. “Says the guy who had Star Wars themed birthday parties every year.”
“Hey, I seem to recall you coming in costume to every single one of those parties.”
“I guess that makes me Luke?” Oliver asks with an air of resignation.
“I don’t know what you’re upset about,” Felicity says, punching him playfully. “Luke is the hero!”
“Can’t be Ollie then,” Thea teases.
Oliver throws a pillow at her.
“He does kind of look like him, you know with the blond hair and blue eyes and the whole being in love with Laurel thing,” Caitlin says, tipping her head to one side thoughtfully. She pointedly ignores the looks from Oliver, Felicity, and Laurel. “Felicity would be R2D2, obviously—”
“—and Diggle can be Chewbacca!”
Diggle glares at Cisco.
He swallows. “Because, uh, you’re so tall, and uh good with guns, and—”
Lyla grins. “It’s because you’re so grumpy, honey.”
“What is Star Wars?”
Everyone turns to stare at Nyssa.
“Did you just—” Tommy swallows. “Have you never seen Star Wars?”
“No,” Nyssa replies coolly.
Cisco whistles under his breath. “This is a serious problem. Which needs to be rectified. Like now.”
Sara grins. “I’ll make popcorn.”
Malcolm shows up halfway through Episode V.
They’re almost at the end, Luke and Darth Vader are battling it out in Bespin, and Felicity is holding onto Oliver’s arm a little tighter than necessary even though she’s seen it a hundred times, and Vader is going to jump out at Luke any second, she knows it, when suddenly there’s the hiss of a lightsaber from right behind her and the sound of someone dropping off the staircase and Felicity’s scream is probably loud enough to break the windows.
“Sorry,” Malcolm says with an arrogant grin that is anything but sorry. “I couldn’t resist.”
Oliver isn’t happy about super evil lord Malcolm Merlyn crashing their party—he doesn’t like anything about Merlyn, really—but Tommy is really trying to repair his relationship with his father in light of the fact that he and Laurel are getting married this summer, and Malcolm knows more about Star Wars that anybody, so he stays.
(Plus there’s the fact that he’s a literal sword ninja so the potential for real life lightsaber battles is epic.)
By the time they get to Episode VI, no one cares that Malcolm Merlyn, the biggest baddie of all baddies, is sitting on the couch next to Thea, stealing popcorn and reciting Palpatine’s lines in a voice that is way more evil than the original. He and Tommy even get up to reenact the duel between Luke and Darth Vader, with Diggle looking on in a frighteningly accurate impersonation of the Emperor.
By the time they finish Episode III, Nyssa is more emotionally invested in the story than anyone else. She actually cries when Anakin dies, which might be a first
(Felicity wasn’t sure that scary assassin ladies could even cry).
“That was so awesome!” Cisco says as Oliver packs away the DVDs. It’s almost four in the morning and they’re all stupid tired, but also very giddy.
“I still think Star Trek is better,” Barry mutters.
Cisco tries to tackle him but Barry, of course, is way faster. Cisco ends up with a mouthful of carpet.
“They’re making another one, you say?” Nyssa asks, stifling a yawn.
Felicity nods. “It came out today.”
“And we’re all going to see it,” Tommy adds.
Which, of course, is how they end up reserving a whole row of the movie theatre the next day. Even Ray and Barry, the die-hard Trekkies, are game. (“I can’t say no to a 3D science fiction movie,” Barry says with a grin. “Especially when someone else is paying.”) Oliver gives her an apologetic smile as they wait for the previews to end, but Felicity isn’t upset that their date plans didn’t work out.
(Honestly, the result was so much better than she ever could have anticipated.)
Their first Valentine’s Day as a married couple is a big affair—Oliver wastes no time or money for that matter, (which should bother Felicity because it’s really her money but it’s so sweet she doesn’t have the heart to be mad) on preparations. Flowers, champagne, three course meal that makes Felicity wonder if Oliver secretly went to Cordon Bleu school or something during those five years he was away, literally mind blowing sex, the whole shebang.
But the best part is when Oliver rolls over in bed and pulls something out of the nightstand. He passes her the small red envelope, looking gleeful. There’s a small card inside:
It doesn't matter that Oliver has left the to and from spaces blank; Felicity is laughing so hard she can’t stop crying.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Oliver whispers.
Oliver nearly pees himself with laughter the next morning when he sees the Valentine Felicity has carefully taped to the mirror.
