Chapter Text
She’s standing in his kitchen, slowly stirring the soup on the stovetop and waiting for him to return from the grocery store with that specialty finishing sea salt he’s put on just about everything for the last month. On the way over, she’d asked if he needed anything, but he’d only remembered when her car had rumbled up his driveway so he’d exchanged her keys for a wooden spoon and taken off.
The family’s coming over for dinner. By the family, she means Moira, Walter, Thea, and a newly resurfaced Roy. Roy Harper, alias The Arrow, had been fully pardoned by the newly elected Governor Queen, and it had taken no time at all for the younger man to crawl out of the woodwork and back to the life he deserves.
She, on the other hand, is a different story. She has no idea when she ingratiated herself into the Queen family. Probably the near decade of friendship and partnership, both in the Arrow cave as they clean up the city and in legitimate business as she rapidly climbs the ranks at QC. Except the same can be said of John, and he isn’t such a standard fixture in Oliver’s home that when Moira enters the kitchen, the matriarch placidly notes Oh, Felicity before continuing her conversation.
Soon enough, Oliver will slide back into the kitchen, shoo her away from the appliances, and engage Walter with a quick download of the state’s new economic incentive packages. She’ll engulf Roy and Thea in their usual bear hugs, because she still can’t believe that he’s back or fully express how happy she is that they’re so happy. Then everyone will gather around the island, drinks in hand, as Chef Oliver pulls together the final details of dinner. The man has never used his formal dining room, and she doubts this will be the first occasion for it.
For the moment, Thea sidles up for a quick side hug, depositing a glass of red in her hand, before Walter starts discussing the new Applied Sciences project. She can overhear pieces of the stilted conversation between Moira and Roy, as the woman again tries to figure out what exactly he’s been doing for the last several years without learning anything that might implicate her. Thea saves him with an exasperated Mom and redirects to her considering a new business investment.
It’s torturous.
This weekly glimpse of what life with Oliver could be weighs on her soul, like the expectant gazes of his family every time they gather. Now? Is it time yet? Finally? She’s used to shrugging off the silent inquiries with polite smiles.
It’s been years since she and Oliver had acknowledged both the consuming thing between them and his unwillingness to take it anywhere. For the greater good. So she had tried to move on and so had he, except no one had ever stuck, and between their day jobs and the night job, it became far too complicated and took too much effort to keep trying.
That’s how they’d fallen into this holding pattern—together but not, married but not. She has let so many self-imposed deadlines—before I turn 30, when he breaks up with this one, when I break up with this one—pass by that it feels like breathing underwater.
Sure enough, Oliver sneaks in through the side door beside the pantry. He drops the salt on the counter and doles out hugs and handshakes. When he returns to her orbit, he rests a hand on her hip and leans down for a quick kiss, but instead of tilting her head up to meet him because it would be that easy to obliterate the final barrier, she freezes in place and lets his lips land on her forehead. He slips the spoon out of her hand with a grateful smile, and she retreats to the safety of her friends.
Oliver takes a moment to observe the scene inside from the French door leading to the kitchen. It’s a beautiful reminder of everything he’s worked for since returning from Lian Yu and everything he thought he never deserved.
He slips in silently using the ninja skills Felicity still grumbles about. After enthusiastically greeting his family, he approaches the blonde at the stove. His sigh is quiet when he grounds himself with a hand on her hip, leaning in to erase any notion of personal space. It would be so simple to tip her chin up and brush his lips against hers. His family would probably react to the unexpected move with applause. Instead, he ignores how she freezes and presses his lips to her temple. Once he takes the spoon from her, she steps away to join Thea and Roy.
It’s not the right time or place. But neither is the Arrow cave with Dig and not-so-baby Sara, or his new governor’s office with its nosy staff, or her Applied Sciences workshop with its glass walls, or any event where they’re each other’s de facto date out of sheer laziness and familiarity.
He’s always regretted putting the brakes on them years ago because she took him to heart and now he can’t seem to buy more than a moment of non-platonic affection. It’s his own fault, he knows, and if anything is going to change, it’s up to him to make the first move. She’s respected his stupid boundaries so far, and he's learned the hard way that he can’t reap the rewards without putting in the work.
Thea has spent many lunches accusing of him of stringing Felicity along, dangling maybes so that she put her life on hold for him. He likes to think that isn’t true but he knows her process. Before every breakup, she would invite him to dinner, regardless of whether they made it out to a restaurant or stayed down in the bunker. They would talk freely about life, family, how far they’ve come, when he’s going to hang up the bow. After, she would warn him that she wouldn’t be on the comms for the night—and the next day she would be entirely unavailable, wallowing in the breakup that she initiated. He knows that she spends those dinners assessing him, determining if he—the possibility of them someday—is still worth it.
His most frequent nightmare is the day her answer is no.
A touch to his elbow startles him into turning, and by the looks of his mother’s sympathetic expression, he’s spent too long morosely staring into this pot of soup. So he rallies, starts lining up the dishes on the long counter. The kitchen island is informally set; most of the time will be spent wandering around and grazing on the various dishes, rather than the stuffy sit-down dinners of his childhood.
Oliver lets the happy chatter fill up the empty spaces inside him. For now, he has this—good, loyal people who love him unconditionally—and a small smile from the woman he loves.
Felicity’s stayed on purpose.
He knows because she’d had to move her car from where he’d left it blocking in Moira and Walter and had come back in after the older couple left. His mother had departed after another deliberate look, and he’d ducked his head to avoid her all-knowingness. She’s grown to respect Felicity, if not begrudgingly like her. So much so that years ago Moira had handed him his grandmother’s ring and told him to get on with it already while she could still play with her future grandchildren. That’s about when he seriously started his campaign for governor—and getting Roy pardoned.
Felicity’s sending off Thea and Roy with tight hugs before going back to loading his dishwasher. The couple comes up to him and he’s subjected to more knowing looks and subtle threats before they take off, hand-in-hand and all but skipping down his damn driveway.
He must spend too much time just gazing at her—the midsummer days are long and the golden hour light streaming in from the kitchen windows cast her in an ethereal glow—because suddenly she’s drying her hands and swinging her purse onto her shoulder. After a brief hesitation and an even briefer kiss to his cheek, she steps past him. His hand darts out suddenly and catches hers, quite literally, by the fingertips. She stops in her tracks, and he tugs lightly, leveraging her hand closer to his until he can trace a path to her wrist, up her forearm, to finally curl around her bicep. Her breath audibly catches, and he knows she’s holding her breath like he is his.
“Stay.”
She turns to face him, slowly, by degrees, and the careful look in her eyes—weary and wary— is disheartening. He can feel the weight of her stare assessing him again, wondering if this impending scar on her heart will be worth the experience, and he prays the answer is yes, just this once more.
“Always.”
She wakes to blinding sunlight. She’s unsure why since, true to her goth hacktivist roots, she keeps her bedroom shrouded in darkness. It takes a long moment to become aware of the quiet grumbles from the hard body underneath her. Then she’s flying upright, clutching the sheet to her bare chest, and scrambling backwards on the enormous bed.
Oliver fully wakes at the tornado of movement and lazily grins at her look of horror. He patiently waits as the events of the night come back to her: family dinner, the long overdue talk, her inadvertent challenge re orgasms in one night, a ring. Her eyes land on her left hand, and she absolutely goggles at it until he grabs her hand with his.
She finally settles her gaze on his eyes, and they’re the same they’ve always been—steady and true—but so, so different—content and loving—that she tackles him back onto the bed.