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Oliver does another patrol around the block, despite the fact that it’s been clear the last 5 times he’d checked. At this point he can’t even pretend that he’s doing anything other than avoiding the foundry and talking to Felicity. He’s secretly hoping that she’ll be gone by the time that he gets back and he’ll have some time to process everything that’s happened tonight.
Felicity’s a mutant. She’s been lying to him since the day they’ve met. Despite how close he’d thought they’d gotten, as it turns out, he never really knew her at all.
He’s so angry that he can barely see straight. He’d trusted her. He’d let her so far into his life that he’d almost started to consider the possibility of something more. It’d been stupid of him. Naive. Hadn’t he learned long ago that keeping people at arm's length is the only way to survive?
Oliver can’t see her right now. Not without doing or saying something that he’ll regret. So he circles the block another time and tries to calm down.
On any other night, he would have been back by now. He’d have showered and changed and he’d be headed out to eat with Felicity. Celebrating another successful mission completed. That girl, Caroline, is safe. She’s with the X-Men. Yet another thing that he’s still trying to wrap his mind around.
In a matter of hours, his entire world has changed and there’s no way for him to put it back. He can’t unsee the things he’s seen. He can’t unhear Felicity’s confession. He sure as hell can’t unfeel the knife that she’d jammed into his back with the sheer depth of her betrayal.
He does three more loops around the neighborhood before he turns back. The sun'll be rising soon and the last thing he needs on a day like today is to be seen wearing his civilian clothes, holding a bow and arrow. He never did make it back downstairs to change into his suit again.
When he gets to the foundry, he lets out a grunt of frustration at the sight of Felicity’s car. He’d hoped that she would have left by now, but it looks like he’s not so lucky. Bracing himself for what’s sure to be an argument, he keys in the code for the door and heads down the stairs.
He barely steps off the last step when Felicity’s breezing past him, barely meeting his eyes as she climbs up the stairs.
As if she’s the one that has something to be pissed off about. He rolls his eyes and bites his tongue. She can storm off acting upset all she wants. If she thinks he’s going to chase after her, she’s sorely mistaken. He waits until the door closes and the lock slips into place, signaling that she’s really gone for the night.
Once he’s sure he’s alone, he lets his shoulders sag with the weight of his emotions. He removes his quiver and places it on the table next to his bow. He’s exhausted. It’s been a long night and he just wants to sleep, but he knows that he’s never going to be able to with how worked up he is.
Oliver knows that the only way he’s going to get some rest is if he can work himself into an exhaustion. So he heads back to the training area, passing right by Felicity’s desk. He does his best not to look at it. He doesn’t want the reminder of how at home she’s become down here. He doesn’t want to see any evidence of her. It’s only going to drive the knife deeper.
Except, something’s off.
He glances at her desk and his heart starts to race. The empty coffee container filled with candy is gone. Her wireless mouse has been replaced with a standard one. Her favorite purple pen isn’t resting against the keyboard just waiting for her to pick it up to scribble notes onto post-its. The desk is unnaturally clean apart from a single white envelope with his name across the front.
He picks up the envelope, but he doesn’t need to open it to know what it means.
Felicity is gone and he can’t breathe.
Without thinking, Oliver bolts up the stairs and out into the alley beside Verdant. He’s calling after her before he even knows why.
He should let her go. He doesn’t want anyone here that he can’t rely on. For this team to work, there has to be a certain degree of trust and right now, they don’t have that. Except, the thought of letting her get into her car and drive off, never to see her again? It’s suffocating. No matter how upset he is with her, the thought of never seeing her again causes his heart to twist painfully in his chest.
“Felicity!” he yells after her when she doesn’t turn around the first time.
He watches as the hand that’d opened her car door drops to her side and she turns around to look at him.
“I just want to go home, Oliver,” she says.
She looks like hell. A surge of over-protectiveness rushes through him and he immediately wants to pummel whatever asshole has made her look so exhausted. Then he remembers he’s the asshole.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” he asks, doing his best not to let her see how affected she’s made him. She doesn’t get to see that side of him. Not anymore.
She doesn’t respond, which isn’t like her at all. She always has a response to everything.
“Felicity…” he whispers her name, praying for her to say something. To give him anything. If she would just answer him, maybe he would understand what he’s supposed to do.
On the one hand, This is Felicity . She’s is the woman that he loves — even if he’s been too afraid to admit it to her for real. She can make his breath catch just by walking into a room. She’s one of the only people in the world who can bring a smile to his face even on his darkest of days. He’d do anything for her.
On the other hand, she’d lied to him. They were supposed to be partners. They’ve spent practically every night together for the last year and a half. She’s seen him at his best and worst and has stood by his side through it all. Oliver thought he knew her and this entire time she’s been keeping a major secret from him. A dangerous secret.
Mutants are nothing to play around with. He’s dealt with them before and it’s never ended well. What if Felicity’s no different than Reiter or that Seismokinetic he’d encountered in Russia? He still doesn’t even understand what it is she can do.
“No,” she says, and he can hear how she’s holding back tears. “I wasn’t going to tell you.”
The words are a punch to the gut.
If Caroline hadn’t shown up this evening in need of help, Oliver would still be in the dark.
She barely looks at him as she turns to get into her car, and maybe it’s for the best. She’ll leave and he’ll get over it. Eventually. He’s sure that he’ll get over her leaving eventually. He watches as she turns her car on, convincing himself to let her go. But as soon as she starts to drive, he knows he can’t just let her leave. Not without at least trying to understand.
Oliver runs in front of her car, blocking her exit from the alley. She slams on the brakes to avoid hitting him and throws her hands up. He walks to the driver’s side door and opens it.
“What are you doing?” she hisses.
“I thought you might still be hungry,” he says, putting his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching out for her like he wants to do.
She looks at him like he’s grown another head.
“Big Belly is closed,” she says, leaning away from the door.. Away from him.
That thought alone has him second guessing himself. Perhaps it’s not entirely on her that they are falling apart. Maybe she was telling him the truth when she’d said that she was scared of him.
At the end of the day, no matter how hard he’s worked to walk the straight and narrow for Tommy — and really, if he’s being honest with himself, for her — he’s still a monster. Why had he ever thought he could be seen as anything but?
Felicity can give him all the inspirational speeches in the world, but they had clearly been empty words. He’d been so foolish to think that she actually believed them. To think that she believed in him. That she saw him as a good man.
All those things she’d said, she’s simply said them so that he’d get through the mission at hand.
He doesn’t say anything to her. He doesn’t know what to say. And after almost a minute of staring at each other, she laughs bitterly and shakes her head.
“Goodbye, Oliver,” she says, moving to close the door.
Not goodnight. Goodbye.
“Pancakes,” he blurts out, grabbing onto the door before she can slam it shut.
“What?” she asks.
“I want to understand,” he says, kicking at some rocks on the pavement, unable to meet her eyes. “Let me buy you pancakes.”
She looks reluctant to agree, but eventually nods her head and gestures to the passenger side seat. He doesn’t waste any time. He rushes to get in before she can change her mind.
The ride to their favorite 24-hour diner is awkward. Neither of them say anything to each other and after every station Felicity tried was playing some romantic ballad, she eventually flipped off the radio completely.
Oliver may be able to handle silence, but Felicity certainly can’t, and the way she’s squirming in her seat is making him anxious.
When they walk into the diner, it’s nearly empty save for a few truckers in the corner nursing cups of coffee. It’s not surprising. It’s just past 5am; too early for the business crowd and too late for the club crowd. It’s good. He doesn’t know how this conversation is going to go down and he doesn’t want an audience if things get rough. Oliver leads them to the farthest booth in the back, where they won’t be overheard.
Jake, their usual server, comes up to them immediately and Oliver doesn’t think about it when he places both of their orders. They’ve been coming here at least once a week since they started working together and she always gets the same thing. A short stack with extra syrup, a side of scrambled eggs with cheese, and a coffee.
When he looks back to her, she’s giving him a look that he can’t read.
“What?” he asks.
“You ordered for me,” she says.
“I’m sorry… I didn’t.. Did you want something else?” he asks, hating how awkward and uncertain he feels.
She shakes her head and sits back in the booth, wrapping her arms around her stomach.
“I know you must think that you don’t know me anymore,” she says, to which he can only snort. It’s the understatement of the century. “But you know my favorite meal here without having to ask. You know my favorite meal at every restaurant we go to. You know my coffee order…”
“None of those things actually matter,” he says, pushing his water and silverware out of the way so that he can put his elbows on the table and really look at her. “Tell me one real thing about you that I know.”
“You know that I’m allergic to nuts. That the first and only time I got high was off a pot brownie that put me in the hospital. You know that I am afraid of kangaroos and spiders. You know that I dye my hair even though I despise that it causes people to call me a dumb blonde.”
“Surface level things,” he argues, starting to realize that there may not be one single real thing that he knows about her. How is that possible after all of this time?
“Fine,” she says shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “You know that my dad abandoned me when I was young. And before you make some quip about how that doesn’t tell you anything, you should know that I don’t bring up my dad with anyone.”
Well, that’s certainly a start. He raises his eyebrows, waiting for her to continue.
“You know that I babble, but it’s worse when I’m nervous. You know that I eat when I’m stressed. That I cry when I’m mad. But you also know that you don’t need to worry about me unless I’m drinking Malbec instead of Pinot or eating Twizzlers instead of Skittles. You know me, Oliver.”
“I thought I did,” he says, shaking his head.
“You know that I’ve been working for the Arrow for the last year and a half because I believe in doing the right thing and helping others, even if it means putting myself in danger,” she says, putting her own elbows on the table and meeting his challenging look. “You may not have known everything about me, but you know the parts that matter — my heart. You know that I’m a good person. You can trust me, Oliver.”
He sits back in his seat, letting out a loud sigh as he tries to reconcile the Felicity that he knew with the woman sitting in front of him. Is it possible that the woman he loves is still in there somewhere?
If there’s even a chance of fixing this, he has to try. He cares about her too much to let her walk out of his life without at least attempting to understand.
“You told me you’d tell me everything I want to know,” he says.
She nods her head. “I will, but I need you to answer something for me first.”
He gestures for her to continue.
“Are you going to turn me in?” she asks and he’s taken back by the genuine fear in her eyes.
Oliver doesn’t know what he’s going to do when this meal is over. He doesn’t know if he’s going to let her walk out of his life forever or beg her to stay. But this is one question he does know the answer to beyond a shadow of a doubt.
“I think we’re well past the point of turning each other in, don’t you?” he asks.
When she doesn’t respond, he realizes that she honestly believes he’s going to go to the police. As if that will ever be an option.
No matter how angry he may be at Felicity, he could never do that to her. He’d seen how terrified Caroline was of this Essex Corp last night. How could he ever risk subjecting Felicity to that kind of danger?
In that moment, he makes up his mind. He can continue to look at Felicity as an enemy — somebody who betrayed his trust. Or he can choose to forgive her and trust that she had her reasons.
“You trusted me when you really didn’t have any reason to,” he says gently, trying to ease the doubt that is so clearly written in her eyes. “So I’m choosing to trust you.”
Felicity breathes a sigh of relief and he can see the tension leave her body.
“I still have a lot of questions, before I can feel okay about any of this, though,” he adds.
She nods in understanding and says, “What do you want to know?”
“What made you think you couldn’t tell me?” he asks.
He knows that she’s already answered this, but he still doesn’t understand how she could have honestly been afraid of him. Perhaps when they first met, sure. But later on? After everything that happened with Slade this year? He thought she knew that there wasn’t anything he wouldn't do for her.
“I was scared,” she says. “I mean, you’re… you . You can kill people with your bare hands. I saw what you did to that mutant when I first joined the team. How was I supposed to know you wouldn’t do the same to me?”
Oliver rubs his hands over his face while he tries to work out where to even start. There are so many things wrong with what she’s said.
“The pyro I killed murdered a bunch of people. And in case you forgot, you were the one who wanted me to take him down,” he says, trying his best not to get frustrated with her, because he knows the second he starts yelling she’ll bolt. However, it’s difficult when she’s rewriting history. “I told you that he wasn’t on the list and you begged me to go after him anyways. You can’t get mad at me for that.”
“I didn’t ask you to kill him,” she argues.
“Don’t act like you didn’t know exactly what you were asking me to do,” he starts to raise his voice, but they are interrupted by their food arriving.
“Is there anything else I can get for you?” Jake asks with a smile, clearly not realizing that he’s just walked into the middle of a fight.
“No thanks, we’re okay,” Felicity says.
Oliver waits until Jake is on the other side of the restaurant refilling the truckers coffee before continuing. “You knew exactly who I was back then, and still you asked me to take him down. And for the record, if I hadn’t killed him? He would have killed me. I’m not going to apologize for that.”
“I know… I just…” Oliver watches as Felicity struggles to find words and she never struggles to find words. She talks more than anyone he’s ever met, so to see her so frazzled is new. She’s stabbing her pancakes instead of eating them, which is also strange. Typically, she’s a stress eater. He’s never seen her unable to eat...
Oliver pushes his frustration back down and reaches out to grab her hand before she can completely destroy her pancakes. A shock runs through his body at the touch and he gives her a curious look.
“Sorry,” she says with a blush, biting her lower lip.
It takes him a second to realize that she’s apologizing because that shock is her power. She’s been shocking him like that for months and he’d let her convince him that it was just static electricity. God, he’s so gullible. How had he never put two and two together before?
“So you, what? Can shoot electricity out of your hands or something?” he asks, curious to know more about what exactly it is that she can do. He’s heard a lot of crazy stories over the years. Mutants that can walk through walls. Mutants that can change their appearance to look like anyone they want. Teleporters... Telekinetics... Telepaths…
Then there were men like Reiter, who gained immortality by absorbing the life force of others. He has no idea what he’s getting into by standing at Felicity’s side… Is their life going to become one giant circus of men that he has no idea how to even begin to defeat?
“Yes… and no. Not exactly,” she says. “I can control electrical currents.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” he admits when it becomes clear that she isn’t planning on explaining more.
“Well the human body naturally has a certain amount of electricity in it. Without it, you wouldn’t be able to do anything. It’s how your brain sends signals to the rest of your body. My body just happens to have a lot more electricity in it, and is able to control it differently than most.”
He shakes his head, still not understanding what she’s getting at.
“Maybe it’d be easier to show you,” she says. “Give me your phone.”
He pulls his phone out of his pocket and sets it down on the table. She glances around the restaurant nervously to make sure that nobody is watching them. Once she’s satisfied that nobody is paying attention, she reaches out her hand and places her finger on the screen. He nearly spits out his coffee when little bolts of what looks like lighting travel up her arm. Her eyes flash blue before she hands him his phone back.
“It’s dead,” he says when he attempts to turn it on. “Did you just fry my phone?” he asks, glaring at her.
“No, I just took power from it. Power that I can use to create electrical surges to protect myself against an oncoming threat,” she says.
“So you can shoot electricity from your hands, you just have to kill my phone to do it,” he says.
She reaches out for his phone and puts her finger on it again, he watches as it goes from 0% battery to 100% in a matter of seconds.
“So that’s why you never have a phone charger on you when I ask,” he says, inspecting his phone carefully for any sign that she’d done anything to it. He doesn’t know what he expects to find. Melted plastic, perhaps? But there’s nothing.
“That’s not all,” Felicity says with a smile, starting to come back to herself a little bit more with every passing minute.
“You can do more?” Oliver asks.
She raises her eyebrows at him playfully and pulls her tablet out of her purse and pushes her plate out of the way to make room for the tablet. She holds up both hands to show him that she’s not touching anything else, then places a single finger on the side of the tablet, not even on the screen. He watches in shock as the screen comes to life.
“Give me a website to visit,” she says.
“Um… I don’t know. QC?” he asks.
She smirks as the website for Queen Consolidated appears on the screen.
“Want me to view their private files?” she asks, not waiting before the screen flickers between budget proposals, inter-office memos, and private emails between the board.
“How does that work?” he asks, staring at the screen closely then looking up at her, trying to figure out how she’s doing all of that.
“Well part of controlling electrical currents is that I also interact with them. I understand the language, so to speak. QC’s technology all runs off of massive servers which are hard wired. Since our cities are built on massive, interconnecting electrical grids, so long as I have access to one device, I have access to every device. I just need an outlet or something that plugs in.”
“But your tablet’s not plugged in,” he points out.
“No, but it’s connected to Wifi,” she says with a shrug. “I just have to tell the device to access the internet and I can pull up any data I want.”
He nods as if it all makes sense, but it really doesn’t. However, if he asks her to explain it anymore, she’s just going to throw science terms at him and he really isn’t in the mood for a lesson. Oliver doesn’t care how it works, he just needs to know that it does.
If what she’s saying is true, it means that she can access virtually anything. In theory, she could touch an outlet here at the diner, and turn on a light at her apartment back home. Depending on how powerful she is, she could cause a city wide-blackout if she wanted to.
“So what you’re saying is, you’re not the world’s best hacker because you graduated MIT at 19. You’re the world’s best hacker because you’re a mutant,” he says, still trying to process everything.
“Well…” she says with a look on her face that tells him he’s not going to like whatever she’s about to say. “I didn’t go to MIT.”
“What?” he asks.
It feels like another slap in the face. Yet another thing he thought he’d known about her turning out to be a lie.
“My mom needed a reason to let her 16-year-old daughter leave the house and I wasn’t going to tell her I was a mutant, so I let her believe I’d graduated early and gotten into my dream school in Boston. It was far enough away that she’d never be able to afford to come visit,” she says.
So she hadn’t just lied to him, she’d lied to her mother, too. Oliver doesn’t know a lot about Felicity’s mom, just what little he’d dug up when he’d first researched her to see if she was somebody he could bring onto the team. But he knows that Donna Smoak deserves a hell of a lot more than a daughter who had essentially lied and run away from home.
He takes a deep breath and tries to calm his anger. He’d agreed to trust her, so he has to do that.
“Why did you have to leave home?” he asks through gritted teething, doing his best to sound light. Her glare lets him know he’s failing miserably.
“I needed to go somewhere where they could teach me to control my powers,” she says, crossing her arms. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone again.”
“Again?” he asks, shocked. He’d agreed to trusting her because he’d thought she was a good person. That she wouldn’t use her powers against another person, but if she’d hurt people…
He doesn’t want to think about the possibility that he’d ever have to view Felicity as a threat.
“Can we leave?” she asks, putting her tablet back in her purse and pushing her uneaten plate even farther away from her.
“What?” he asks, confused. “No. We’re not done here.”
“I don’t want to talk about this here,” she says, shifting nervously in her seat. “Can we go somewhere more private?”
Oliver wants to say no. He doesn’t want to have to wait for answers; he wants them right now. But he can see how uncomfortable she looks and he knows he won’t get anymore answers out of her here.
“Fine,” he says, picking up his coffee and draining it in one gulp. He then shoves several bites of his omelet in his mouth and grabs two pieces of bacon before standing up and throwing some cash down on the table. “Let’s go.”
She stands up and follows him out the door and back to her car.
“Where to?” he asks.
“I just want to go home,” she says.
His immediate response is to argue. Going to her house will place them on her territory and he’d much rather they be on neutral territory for whatever she’s going to tell him. But then he has to remind himself that this is Felicity. She’s not the enemy. She was his partner… still is his partner, he thinks. So he agrees. No matter how defensive he is right now, he can recognize that he shouldn't be.
They get back in the car and Felicity begins the ten minute drive to her townhouse on the edge of the Glades. She attempts to make small talk, but he’s not in the mood. He just wants answers, and the longer it takes to get them, the more frustrated he becomes.
When they get to her house, she unlocks the door and goes straight to her bedroom, letting him know that he should make himself comfortable. He rolls his eyes. There’s nothing comfortable about the conversation they are having.
Oliver remains standing in the entry way until Felicity comes back out into the main room wearing a pair of pajama pants and a tank top. Any other time, he’d be enjoying the view of her looking so dressed down. He’d be fantasizing about waking up with her in bed and getting to hold her close. But this isn’t any other time and he is too worked up to be distracted by her.
“You’ve hurt people before,” he says. It’s a statement not a question.
“Come sit down,” she says, gesturing towards her couch, but he shakes his head. He doesn’t want to make himself at home. He doesn’t want to do anything until he knows what it is that she’s done. He needs to know what kind of threat he’s dealing with here.
Felicity sighs loudly before sitting down on the couch and looking up at him expectantly.
Oliver stares at her, waiting for her to answer the question, refusing to move until she does so.
“I was 16,” she finally says. “I was walking home from school when a man put a gun to my head and tried to mug me. I was terrified.”
The thought of anyone pointing a gun at a teenaged girl enrages him. The fact that the teenaged girl was Felicity only makes it worse. Despite the fact that he knows it’s something that happened 8 years ago, his fist clench and he feels the need to punch someone.
“He asked for my money, and when I told him I didn’t have any, I heard him pull back the hammer. Next thing I knew, he was on the ground,” she says, playing with a fraying thread on the bottom of her tank top. He wants to reach out and stop her before she destroys her shirt, but he doesn’t. Not until he hears her entire story and knows what it is he’s dealing with.
“I’d electrocuted him. Me . I didn’t even understand how… I mean, I had some suspicions before… You don’t build a supercomputer at 7 without thinking that there might be something abnormal about yourself. But I didn’t know,” she rambles. “ And then he was on the ground and I’d done that. I hadn’t wanted to hurt him, I’d just wanted him to stop… I just… I joked that I was a mutant before when my mom asked why I didn’t fit in at school, but I never honestly thought it was true.”
“What happened to the man?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest.
“He ended up in the hospital with some nerve damage,” she says quietly.
He can see the guilt that she feels over what happened in the way she can barely look at him. It puts his mind at ease. Guilt is a sign of a conscience. It helps him believe that the entire thing had been an accident. The fact that the man had held a gun to her head also helps. Oliver certainly feels no sympathy for a man who’d been cowardly enough to mug a little girl.
“And what about you?” he asks, concerned. He can’t imagine what it must have been like to discover she was a mutant. Let alone how she’d handled the fact that her newfound powers had hurt somebody.
She shrugs, and he can tell that there’s a lot more emotions behind that day than she’s letting on by the way her eyes fill with tears.
“Can you please sit down, you’re making me nervous,” she says.
He takes a deep breath and sits down on the opposite side of the couch.
“What happened next? After you electrocuted the man,” he asks.
“I tried to explain to the officer that came what happened, but he told me not to talk about it,” Felicity explains. “He told me if anyone asked to lie and say that I tasered him then got scared and tossed the taser in the sewer. I don’t know if he was sympathetic to our cause or if he was a mutant himself, but he probably saved my life.”
That gets Oliver’s attention because he’s not sure what she means. If the police had realized what had happened, they would have known she was a mutant. He can understand why she wouldn’t want anyone to know. But to say that the officer saved her life?
“What would have happened if anyone found out the truth?” he asks, trying to figure out what he’s missing.
“Essex Corp would have found me. Or somebody else like them,” she says, biting her lip. “There’s no shortage of people looking to take advantage of young mutants.”
Oliver scoots closer to her as he processes everything that she’s told him.
“The people that were after Caroline today? They’re really dangerous, Oliver,” she says. “I wouldn’t turn my worst enemy over to them.”
The look in her eyes causes all of the hair on the back of his neck to stand up. He hasn’t seen her look that scared about anyone, not even Slade Wilson. He knows that he’s going to have to do something about it. He won’t be able to sleep at night knowing that there’s somebody out there who poses a threat to Felicity.
“They’re not going to get you,” he promises her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her against his side. “Anyone that tries is going to have me to answer to.”
She sucks in a breath and looks up at him with tears in her eyes. She’s surprised and there’s something else there. Something he can’t put his finger on.
“What?”
Felicity hesitates for several long seconds, clearly chosing her next words carefully before she finally says, “What if you change your mind?”
He looks down at her in surprise.
“What if you leave?” she asks.
She attempts to move out of his arms, but Oliver holds onto her tight, needing her to understand that he’s in this. He doesn’t have all of the answers yet. He doesn’t know how any of this works. He doesn’t know what their world looks like now that he knows about her powers. He’s not sure how long it will take to get over the sting of her lies, but he’s in this. He’s not going anywhere and he needs her to believe that.
“I’m not leaving,” he says slowly, making sure that she hears every word and meeting her eyes so that she can see he means it.
She stares up at him for several long seconds. She’s so close that he can actually see that her eyes aren’t just blue… it’s the energy inside of her. He’d always thought that she had unnaturally bright eyes, it’s part of what made her so beautiful. However, now that he knows what to look for, he can see the very subtle movement in her irises. It’s little bolts of blue energy that give her an extra glow.
Without realizing it, his hand makes it’s way up to cradle her face. His thumb strokes her cheek and he watches in amazement as his touch causes the light in her eyes to dance. It’s mesmerizing.
She closes her eyes and ducks her face away as a blush spreads across her cheeks. He puts his hand under her chin to get her to look at him again. When she looks up, she’s staring at his lips and licking her own. His heart stops. It’s everything he’s wanted from her for the last several months. Ever since his confession a few weeks ago where he’d told her he loved her only to let her believe he didn’t mean it two days later, he’s been trying to figure out how to make a move. Debating if he even should. And here she is, providing him the perfect opportunity.
And he’s going to kick himself later for it, but it’s not the right time.
They aren’t in a good place right now. They still have a ways to go before they’ll have worked through everything that happened tonight. There’s still so many more questions about her past that he needs answered. But they can get there. Of that, Oliver is confident. And maybe, once they do, they can revisit this. Revisit them.
Oliver lets the hand under her chin drop and lets the arm around her shoulder drop to the couch. He tries not to notice the way she takes a steadying breath, but he does. He’s always been hyper-aware of her every movement. She looks around the room, clearly eager to look anywhere but at him when her eyes land on the clock.
“Shit,” she grumbles, standing up. “So much for my nap! I have to work in an hour!”
She moves into the kitchen and starts pulling out items to make her morning coffee.
“I’ll just head out then,” he says standing up from the couch.
“If you don’t mind waiting for me to get ready, I can drop you back off at Verdant on my way. I’d hate for you to walk back,” she says, clearly worried.
“I think I can take care of myself out there,” he teases her. It’s a bit more forced than usual. The easy camaraderie they had before is gone. In it’s place are awkward movements and uneasy smiles, but he’s trying.
“Just sit down and accept the free ride, Queen,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “Not everything is an opportunity for you to prove to the world how tough you are. You’re a superhero. I got it. Doesn’t mean you have to walk 12 miles home in shoes that probably cost more than a month’s rent.”
He looks down at his shoes, about to argue that he’s poor now, she can’t make fun of him for being rich anymore. But he is wearing a pair of John Lobb’s that in all fairness probably cost at least 2 months rent, so he swallows his comeback and accepts defeat.
He also swallows a comeback about how, between the two of them, she’s the one with superpowers. It’s still too new to feel comfortable enough to joke about it. Maybe once the initial shock wears off… And once it does, is that really a conversation he’s ready to have?
Felicity’s always been a hero to him. The work she does is integral to their mission. However, with her having powers now, is he going to have to get her a mask? Would he ever be okay with her going out into the field? Superpowers or not, it’s still incredibly dangerous and he’d much prefer she do her crime fighting from behind a computer screen.
“I’ll make coffee,” he says, moving into the kitchen. “Go get ready.”
He moves to grab two coffee mugs out of the cabinet at the same time that she does and they bump into each other. They then spend a painfully long time apologizing and attempting to move out of each other’s way only to run into each other again. It’s disheartening. They used to have these mornings down to a science. Over the last few weeks Oliver’s spent a lot of time at Felicity’s place while she helped him come up with plans to get QC back. They’d gotten comfortable.
Now they are going to have to find a new normal.
She heads back to her room and he begins gathering ingredients to make her a quick breakfast with her coffee. He knows that she just plans on skipping it and then filling herself up on whatever food she can find from the vending machine and he refuses to support her sugar addiction.
He’s just placing an egg sandwich into a ziplock bag for her to eat in the car when she comes out of her room, dressed and ready to go.
“You made me a sandwich,” she says with a smile, taking it out of his hands along with the travel mug of coffee he’d prepared for her.
“Well I figured it was my fault you didn’t get a chance to sleep before your shift, so it’s the least I could do,” he says, grabbing her keys off the counter. He’ll drive so that she can eat in the car.
“I was going to leave,” she admits when they get into the car. She’s looking out the window with a far off look on her face. He’s not even sure that she’s talking to him, but he responds anyway.
“I never would have let that happen,” he says, reaching over the center console to take her hand, smiling when he feels the small burst of electricity between them. “Just, no more surprises. For this to work, we need to be honest with each other.”
“No more lies,” she says.
“No more lies,” he repeats, squeezing her hand before letting go to start the car.
“Perfect,” she says with a mischievous smile. “So, in the spirit of honesty. When did Oliver Queen learn to fly a plane?”
Oliver glares at her, because she knew damn well that when he said no more lies, it didn’t extend to anything pertaining to his 5 years in hell.
Though, he guesses since she’s spent the last several hours telling him her dark secrets, he can give her this one. Really, of all of his stories, this is one of the more innocent ones. He clears his throat and begins to tell her the story.
“Well, to tell that story, you should know… The five years I was away, I wasn’t always on Lian Yu…”