Work Text:
The day Oliver Queen walks into Felicity Smoak’s office, he asks her for more than just her help with a bullet riddled laptop.
He asks her for her number in case he needs her IT expertise again.
She gives it to him without hesitation.
He asks her if he can send her a quick text so she’ll know who he is when he calls her for the first time.
She agrees, and when she gets a simple message consisting of nothing more than “Hi, Felicity” and a smiley face, she laughs as she adds him to her own phone.
He asks her to pose for a picture because all of the important contacts in his phone have photos attached to them, and seeing as she’s already helped him once, it makes sense to include her among his important contacts.
She blushes slightly before sitting up straighter in her chair.
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” she says, but she’s biting her lip, a playful glint in her eye, and he knows she’s teasing him.
Oliver laughs, savoring the sincerity of the sound, and he holds up his phone and asks her to smile.
And she does. She smiles for the camera…and she smiles for him.
The day Oliver Queen walks into Felicity Smoak’s office, he doesn’t just lie to her about his coffee shop being in a bad neighborhood.
He doesn’t tell her that he hasn’t asked a girl for her number since he came back to Starling City.
He doesn’t tell her that he’s never sent a smiley face emoji to anyone before; not even his little sister.
He doesn’t tell her that none of the contacts in his phone have photos attached to them; not even his own mother.
When Oliver finally climbs into bed later that night, he studies her photo long and hard, replaying their conversation in his mind.
The ponytail and the glasses.
The nervousness and the babbling.
…The smile.
He stares at the photo so long that eventually the screen turns off.
“It is her,” he whispers to his empty room.
And then he smiles.
It’s the same smile he’d worn nearly three years ago, when he’d had very little to smile about.
The same smile he’d worn when a tiny blonde IT girl had walked into his life.
The smile he’d worn as he walked out of his family’s company feeling lighter than he’d felt in a long time.
And when Oliver finally tells her this story five years later - on the night of their wedding – he’ll realize that it’s the same smile he’d worn when he showed up at her cubicle and she changed everything.
…the end…