Chapter Text
Oliver Queen’s P.O.V.
Oliver was really trying to sort it all out in his head, but it was hard. Emotions were something he was never great at to begin with.
Before The Queen’s Gambit, Lian Yu and everything after it, his problem had been in figuring them out.
The last five years, however, had taught him the problem of trust, too. Trust was power in its purest form. And trusting somebody else gave them that power over you.
But he did trust Felicity. He had since the moment he met her. It was beyond strange and made no sense whatsoever when he thought about it, but he still knew it was true. Knew it, and even accepted it, which was even stranger…
If there was one thing that the last five years of his life had taught him, it was that trusting someone—even a little bit—gave them the chance to betray you. And the more you trusted them, the worse that betrayal could be: trusting more only meant you could be hurt more.
At some point Oliver had stopped seeing people as people. He’d like to blame ARGUS and Amanda Waller but even he couldn’t say for certain when it’s actually happened specifically. But he’d started seeing just threats and targets. Or threats and more threats. Sure, some people might not qualify as either one to him specifically, but most non-threats could still be classified as someone’s target.
It was why he had such a hard time accepting the idea that there was anything heroic about what he’d been trying to do since he came home.
That wasn’t a part of him that he could turn off…
Except around Felicity.
Ever since he’d walked into her office and found her completely lost in her work, chewing on a red pen and so easy to read he didn’t know what to do with all the information he was getting at first. She was pretty, but also really adorable somehow. And she was the same girl who’d almost caught him sneaking into the C.E.O’s office years ago for ARGUS, who’d told his picture he was cute and it was too bad he was dead—before telling herself off for talking to herself as she walked out. She’d made him smile that night, for the first time in who knew how long, and so he had to smile when he saw her again even as how he’d come to find her then meant she was a tech expert who worked too many hours, not a secretary or assistant like he’d once thought. That those wide blue eyes recognized him couldn’t be clearer, even before she’d pulled the pen out of her mouth and started babbling again that day.
The smile had been automatic around her, just like it was before. Just like it was every day. Like all the alarms going quiet around her always was, too.
Except he wasn’t turning it off around her, it just wasn’t there. And some of the time she could make him feel like that missing instinct wasn’t there anymore. Only around her, though.
Somehow Felicity didn’t fit either mold. Threat or target. She didn’t fit any mold. She was just… too remarkable for that.
There was just something about her.
Something more than the simple fact that Oliver had trusted her from the moment he’d walked into her office at Q.C and found her chewing on that red pen. The open surprise in her big blue eyes wasn’t it either, anymore than the fact that she was beautiful with or without the glasses she didn’t need.
She was so honest. Sometimes much more than she liked, especially in her inability to hide the fact that she was attracted to him. But Oliver found it reassuring that he knew what she was saying was real.
It might not be everything, he had no right to expect that from her yet—and maybe he never would—but what she told him he knew he could trust was true. And maybe if he told her more she’d return the favor…
“Well, at least you’re not doing the hand thingy,” Felicity’s soft voice drew his eyes back to her, and he wasn’t surprised to find those big blue eyes of hers were now open and watching him curiously.
“What hand thing?” Oliver blinked at her.
“That thing with your thumb, mostly, where it looks like you’re looking for your bow? Or an arrow? Or maybe both?” she held her hand up and demonstrated it for just a second, before she let her hand fall back down and started invisible doodles on his chest. “So are you thinking happy thoughts now?” she asked, and one eyebrow arched before he could even try to answer. “Or did last night not measure up?”
He blinked again. “What?”
“Well, if you’re trying to think of an escape already, you should know that I’m not going to stop you. Or make things weird between us because—”
“I’m not running away,” he cut her off, and then frowned. “Why would you think I’d want to?”
Felicity just looked back at him for a moment, then she smiled softly. “Because last night was amazing for me—I mean, beyond amazing, really, it was. For me. But if it wasn’t for you, then—”
Oliver stopped her mouth with his own to stop her there, and for several breathless moments all he could think about was the feeling of his lips molding with hers.
How well and how easily they fit together—and how good it felt—after only a couple weeks worth of practice sessions so far.
He had to take a long slow breath when they finally broke apart, and the feel of her breathing in the exact same air almost had him kissing her again, but he made himself move back enough to meet her eyes again instead, though with her pupils blown wide like that he almost had to go back to kissing again instead. “It was amazing for me, too,” he told her, smiling softly. “Beyond amazing. It was remarkable. Like you.”
“Oh, that’s good.” Felicity smiled as she drew in a slow, slightly shaky breath, then nodded. “I’m glad.” She shook her head, laughing lightly. “So… that happened.”
“I’m glad it did, too,” Oliver told her honestly, because he was.
That they’d each said about the same thing last night didn’t matter. The warm weight of the afterglow was gone now that they’d made it to the morning after. And repeating that simple truth seemed entirely too important to leave it unsaid.
Felicity smiled softly, then she asked him curiously, “So are you going to tell Thea that she doesn’t need to worry about me being sworn to pre-marital abstinence?”
“What?” Oliver blinked at her yet again. “No, I wouldn’t…” he trailed off, his frown returning. “Wait, you’ve been talking to my sister about our sex life?”
“No.” Felicity answered right away. “There wasn’t one to talk about yet. Not that I’ll talk to her about it now, either, but…”
“Why would you—”
“She brought it up. Kind of,” the blonde shrugged. “She was worried, I think, so she asked. Then she ran away. It was cute.”
Oliver shook his head, able to picture that all too clearly. But also not sure if he wanted to ask about it either…
On one hand, his sister and sex in the same frame of thought was not something he liked to think about. At all. That it was her sweet concern rearing its nosy head into his sex life rather than her own should-be-non-existent-one, didn’t make much of a difference. Not since he’d found her trying to hook up with some kid from her school a few months ago…
Oliver immediately shook that thought off, and the sound of the woman he was in bed with chuckling softly forced his mind back to her instead.
“She’s not a little girl anymore, Oliver,” Felicity reminded him gently.
“I know that,” he told her.
“Humph, I doubt that,” she responded disbelievingly.
“I do,” Oliver protested again, but she was smiling so gently at him that it was really hard to frown so he was wearing more of a pout.
Felicity chuckled, “She’ll always be your baby sister, you know.”
He nodded slowly, wanting to believe that. “I know.”
“Speaking as a baby sister, though, big brother’s over protectiveness can get annoying.” She lazily raised her hand to gently pat him a few times on the back. “You’ll learn that, when you meet my brothers.”
Oliver had to blink again at that. “Brothers?” he repeated, only letting himself frown a little. “Plural? I thought you only had one older brother?”
Felicity didn’t quite freeze, but her fingers definitely skipped a little before they kept gently etching a line along his shoulders now. “Adam, yes. But I meant the rest of my family. Not that I’ll let them all inflict themselves on you at once. I’m both too smart and too nice for that.”
Oliver considered her words for a long moment before he replied with, “Thank you?”
“You’re welcome,” she replied evenly, ignoring the questioning note he’d end his response with.
But, morning after now or not, Oliver still felt far too good to hold anything against her, so he let it go for now. It was almost easy. “So, Adam’s the one I’m meeting soon, right?”
“Um-hum,” Felicity sighed her acknowledgment. “I’m sorry, by the way. In advance.”
Making Oliver laugh shortly, “As a big brother myself, I’ll understand where he’s coming from,” he reassured her, and then added, “But he can’t be that bad.”
“Sure,” Felicity snorted, rolling her eyes. “You say that now.”
“I’m pretty hard to scare,” the vigilante shook his head. “Promise.”
“Try to keep telling yourself that,” she responded, almost off-handedly.
Oliver rolled his eyes again, but then he tilted his head as tried to figure out what she’d been distracted by.
It took him a few seconds to decide she was studying one of the few scars she knew the story behind. The one his mom had managed to give him, which had led to this wonderful woman finding him bleeding out in the back seat of her car and deciding to both save his life and keep his secret, too.
“Its fine,” he told her gently. “Just a scar now.”
“I know,” was her soft response. But she seemed to take that as permission to touch it specifically, her soft fingertips tentatively exploring the patch of skin that, though healed, would always be rough because of the wound that’d once been there. “Does it hurt anymore?”
“No,” Oliver answered honestly, her tender touch making him relax, and making it all too easy to talk. “Not that one. Not most of the time.” He hadn’t meant to add that last part, but her understanding nod made him a little glad he had.
“And this?” Felicity asked, her fingers moving to slide smoothly around the general shape of the ink given to him by Anatoly to mark him as part of the Bratva. “I’ve never had a tattoo.”
“Stings when you’re getting it, some more than others,” he told her, hesitating only a moment before he decided on the one that would always be a lot easier to talk about. It was the one she was studying right now, and the one she might need to know more about anyway. “It means I’m a captain in the Bratva.”
Felicity nodded again, and he almost clarified what that meant, but she spoke again before he could. “The Russian mob.”
“…Yeah. How’d you—”
“If it’s online, I can find it,” she reminded him lightly, her tone almost teasing. “I don’t even need to use Google or Wikipedia, unless I’m feeling particularly lazy.”
“What’s Wikipedia?” Oliver asked her, just to see what she’d say.
It earned him a quick look, followed by another eye roll.
“Nice try, but no matter how bad you are on pop culture, I know you’ve done research of your own online before, for your List if nothing else, so you must’ve come across a Wiki or two.”
Oliver gave her a little grin as he shrugged, neither confirming nor denying it because he didn’t have to. He tensed a little, his grin twitching, as her hand found it’d way lower, tracing delicately down his abs till her fingertips found the marks left by teeth on his abdomen.
“What was this from?”
“Some type of shark,” Oliver replied readily, continuing before she could ask anything else. “Don’t think it was a great white, wasn’t that big. But I didn’t really see it: just punched the thing that bit me—almost managed to punch it before it got its teeth into me, so it only got me on the front side, I wasn’t fast enough to stop that. It backed off then, and I swam like hell,” he paused to consider it, then decided, “Don’t think I ever even saw it, really. Thing was fast; seemed to come outta nowhere. But I was pretty closed to shore when it got me, so I got outta the water…”
“That was wise,” Felicity sighed, the soft tips of her fingers dancing delicately around the fearsome looking scar.
“Yeah, well, I watched Jaws as a kid,” he told her, smiling slightly as she chuckled but otherwise just kept on tracing.
It was an oddly pleasant feeling. Strange since he was pretty ticklish in that general area, though not around that spot specifically since he’d gotten that wound and it’d healed.
There was a vaguely familiar feel to it—not just her touch—but the way his skin was reacting right now. There was nothing especially sexual about it—other than the fact that there was a gorgeous woman doing it while she was lying next to him naked.
Somehow it was just nice though. Warm and comfortable. Revitalizing, almost like he could feel himself healing under her touch.
But maybe he was the one being weird right now.
“What about the burns?” Felicity asked him, her voice more careful now while she traced the edge of the scars that wrapped up around his side from where they’d scorched a lot of the skin on his lower back.
Oliver did stiffen at that, his memories of being tortured by pirates on the Amazo ones he liked to remember even less than his encounter with a predator of the deep. Because at least that shark wasn’t his friend anymore than those pirates were: Slade driven insane by the Mirakuru, ordering him tortured and tattooed for Shado’s death, would always be one of his worst memories…
“You don’t have to tell me if you really don’t want to,” Felicity sighed when he was silent a moment longer. She was still gently tracing the edges of the mentioned burns though. “I don’t like fire myself. Haven’t for a very long time.”
Oliver’s frown deepened as he tried to study her expression, but she still seemed to be consumed by her task of tracing all the marks that were littered across his skin.
“I don’t have scars like you do, not the physical ones anyway,” Felicity went on softly. “But fire and heights are still my major fears. Phobias, almost. But they’re not debilitating, just unpleasant. Though I can’t say I’m too fond of bomb collars nowadays either.”
Oliver didn’t even try to stop himself from wincing at the reminder of that. The sight of her hurrying towards him, her big blue eyes full of pure panic that was all too easily understandable with what’d been around her neck—that wasn’t something he’d ever be able to remember fondly either. No matter how hot she’d looked in the little gold dress she’d thrown on for the night.
“No, can’t say I like bomb collars either,” he agreed, almost managing to not growl until the last few words there. He hesitated a moment after that, just watching her still studying his abs while her fingers weren’t quite tickling him as they played along the edges of his burn scars. “Are you afraid of fire ‘cause of how your mom died? Your birth mom, I mean?”
Felicity’s fingers stopped tracing as she closed her eyes for a moment in visibly remembered pain, he tightened his arm around her automatically. “Not exactly. I mean, that’s kind of part of it, but…” she sighed, shaking her head. “Well, my last real relationship ended pretty badly. There was fire involved, so—you know. Bad memories and all.”
Oliver’s brow only furrowed more at that. “No, wait. What’d you mean ‘there was fire involved’?” he asked her worriedly.
Felicity finally looked up from her study of his scars at that, meeting his eyes again. Hers were a lot sadder than he was inclined to stomach. “How did you get burned?”
He blinked at her, but after a moment forced himself to respond, “I was tortured. More than once, over the last five years.”
It was easier to say than he’d expected it to be. Maybe because a part of him knew that was the only way he’d get some answers out of her. Even though he surely wouldn’t like those answers.
Felicity nodded, then she looked away, her sad eyes going distant as she told him, “We were getting married. But I’d kept a secret that I—well, I thought he should know the truth before we said our vows.” She swallowed, then said. “He didn’t take it well.”
Oliver stared at her, something hard solidifying in his gut at the idea. Not at the thought of her having secrets, he knew she did. Just like he did, just like everyone did, to some extent. But the thought of anyone trying to hurt her made him want to throw the hood on and find whoever this bastard was, whether his name was on The List or not. “What did he do?” he pressed, almost managing to make himself not growl it.
“He called me a witch,” Felicity answered, almost too softly for him to hear even right next to her.
She sounded even sadder now, and smaller somehow. He hated it.
“And witches were supposed to burn.”
Oliver stared at her in horror for a second, hoping he’d heard her wrong, but knowing he hadn’t. Still, he had to ask her, “What?”
“He called me a witch,” Felicity said again, and her sigh was small and sad, too. “There were places where they used to burn you if you were accused of witchcraft, you know.”
“Yeah, hundreds of years ago,” Oliver protested. “Why would he…” he trailed off when she winced, realizing he was asking the wrong thing. He was absolutely sure he didn’t want the answer that he knew was coming, but he had to ask for it anyway. “What did he do?”
“Tied me up, lit the pyre…” she shrugged. “I’m lucky though. At least my brother was there by then. He and some of my friends saved me.”
The vigilante relaxed a little at that, but only a little. “Who is he?”
“You’ll meet my brother soon enough, Oliver. And I know you already have a dossier on him.”
“No. Your—the bastard who did that to you. Who is he?”
Felicity shook her head again, “He doesn’t matter anymore.”
Oliver tried to accept that, but there was really only one way he could see that being true. “He’s in jail?”
“No.”
The vigilante couldn’t stop himself from scowling at that, despising this man he’d never met and not able to understand how she could be talking about her ex having tried to kill her so calmly. “Then who the hell is—”
“He’s dead.” Felicity cut in flatly, her face twisting from that bone deep sadness to pain for a long moment before she closed her eyes and visibility made herself calm.
That made him stop for a second, turning over the thought. “Oh, uh, okay.”
He had to accept that. No matter how much he wanted to kill the other man for trying to hurt her, he couldn’t kill someone who was already dead. More than that, though, he hated seeing how hard it was for her to hold that calm expression as she thought about the bastard.
So, after several long, strained seconds of silence, he asked her instead, “Why don’t you like heights?”
Felicity frowned, opening her eyes to consider him for a moment, then she nodded, smiling slightly as she answered him, “Oh, that’s my brother’s fault entirely,” she rolled her eyes. “I used to just dislike them, but a long time ago he had this bright idea that I should be made to face my fears. So that I could get over them.” She shook her head. “The end result was me actually afraid of heights, and not willing to be anywhere near cliffs, windows or balconies if my brother is nearby.”
“Why?” Oliver wondered hesitantly, his brow furrowed in concern. “What would he do?”
“Push me—sometimes, I mean. If you have any balcony’s near your pool at the mansion I won’t be willing to go anywhere near them around him.” Felicity shrugged. “Not that he’s pushed me in ages, but it’s a habit that I can’t really shake.”
Oliver nodded slowly, even though he didn’t really understand. Much as he used to enjoy teasing Thea—and at times he, and Tommy too, could be merciless—he’d never wanted to do anything that’d hurt her. Or scare her. Well, other than the occasional Halloween prank. But that wasn’t what this sounded like. “Why did he—”
“It was an object lesson,” Felicity interrupted, and then shrugged, “Just not a very good one, long term.” She finished with a sigh, before shaking her head and pushing herself up.
Oliver almost tried to stop her, not even remotely ready to get out of this bed. Even though that happy haze had to fade in the face of their semi-shared unhappy memories, he still felt better for sharing his a little. He hoped she could say the same.
But she wasn’t getting up. Instead she was reaching towards her bedside table, opening the drawer to take a bottle out of it.
Oliver blinked at it as he watched her pull a tiny cork out of the top and then tilt some of the semi-thick liquid into her palm. “What’s that?”
“Argon oil, mostly,” Felicity replied. “There’s some lavender and jasmine in here, too, but it’s mostly argon. Real good for irritated skin—and I doubt you ever paid much attention to these once they healed, huh?”
“No,” he admitted, blinking at her, but just watching as she started to run her hands over his torso again, this time coated in the silky substance with a vaguely familiar pleasant scent. It was semi-sweet—in the floral sense, not sugary. But he didn’t doubt that it was the specific flower he knew she favored that made it smell familiar, and he was sure it was why he was comfortable with it. He already associated the smell of jasmines with her…
There was something hypnotic about watching her fine fingers shimmer in the early morning light as she spread that same shimmer over his chest. Not seeming to target the scars specifically, she was definitely trying to get it all over him, though each scar was apparently going to get its own gentle, deliberate dose.
“Which ones do hurt?” Felicity asked him, her voice just as soft and gentle as her touch. So much so it took a long moment for the question in the words—and the fact that he was supposed to answer it—to register.
Oliver blinked once, then shook his head, “They don’t.”
“Liar,” she shot back straight away, then asked him again, “Which ones?”
The vigilante hesitated a long moment, then sighed. “The scars usually don’t hurt that much. It’s the bone’s I’ve fractured that don’t like the cold sometimes.” He admitted, and then shrugged. “But really, I barely notice it most of them time. I’m used to it.”
“You shouldn’t be,” Felicity replied with a frown. “No one should have to get used to pain.”
Oliver couldn’t disagree with that, but that didn’t change everything. “Everyone does. They have to.”
“Doesn’t make it right.”
“No,” he agreed easily, trying not to tense as she started to rub her magic oil over his abs. He couldn’t quite manage it, but the unspoken reminder that he was just a bit ticklish there only made the corners of her lips twitch up a little as she smoothly move on to focusing on the shark bite again, pointedly smothering each indentation before going on to the next. Then she stroked straight across his belly, and he couldn’t stop himself from shuddering slightly at the sensation.
“Wow, you really are ticklish around here,” Felicity chuckled. “I never would’ve guessed.”
“Surprised Thea didn’t tell you that, too,” Oliver shook his head. “Since she was so chatty—when, exactly?”
“When Verdant opened,” she replied evenly. “That’s really the only time we’ve had to chat.”
And he had to sigh, “Don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll ambush you at work soon enough. Surprised she hasn’t already.”
“Well, she does have school and her work at C.N.R.I,” his girlfriend pointed out calmly. “She is trying to be better. And she has—”
“Yeah, yeah, she’s doing a lot better,” Oliver cut in, pretty sure of what she was going to say next and not really wanting to know if his sister was still fooling around with the kid from the Christmas party or if she’d move on to some other boy he couldn’t kill.
Felicity’s smile grew at that, but she let it go, instead focusing on running her fingers over another mark on his body. “This tattoo’s interesting.”
Oliver didn’t have to look to know it was the mark that Constantine had magically transferred to his body. The protection the Brit had decided to give him on a whim when he said he had to stay on Lian Yu even after he’d saved the other man’s life. “Yeah.”
“It doesn’t look like a tattoo, exactly,” she opined as she traced the Chinese letters. “It looks more like paint someone put under your skin.”
Oliver snorted. “That’s kind of what a tattoo is,” he pointed out, even though he knew her observation wasn’t wrong at all. The broad, black letters did look a lot darker and neater than his other two tattoos. But that was because it wasn’t one, not really.
Somehow he couldn’t see this as the time to try and explain that magic was real. Especially since it wasn’t like he had any ability to show proof himself. Thinking about it, though, he was pretty sure she’d at least try to believe him. His girlfriend was definitely one of the most open-minded people he’d ever met. She seemed to simply care too much to close her mind.
“You know this doesn’t mean anything, right?” Felicity asked him after a moment, making Oliver snort.
“Yeah it does.” He corrected her mildly, grinning just a little as he remembered Akio insisting that the tattoo artist had either played a joke on him or was an idiot. Looking back, that memory of silently telling himself to ignore the kid that was so obviously trying to annoy him was a fond one. But that was because it was before everything in Hong Kong went to hell. “It means, Lǎoshǔ, Shēngjiāng, Yao, and Zhū.”
“Um-hum,” she hummed her agreement, then said again. “Mouse, Ginger, Distant, and Pig. And together, they don’t mean anything.”
“They don’t have to,” he gave her the same reply he’d so irritated Akio with a few years ago, and then he blinked. “Wait. You can read—”
“Like I said, you can find just about anything online if you know how to look for it,” Felicity cut in mildly, before she reached for the bottle again and told him. “Okay, roll over.”
Oliver silently obeyed, but turned his head on the pillow so he could watch her tip more of the liquid into her palm.
“But I am pretty good with languages,” the blonde admitted as she shifted and started stroking the oil onto his back now, starting with the burns he hadn’t wanted to tell her more about. That he didn’t want to think about. “My brother and I, we’re pretty competitive about that. About a lot of things really.”
“Really?” he asked her even as her gentle, soft and shimmery strokes started to make him feel a lot like he might be melting.
“Um-hum,” she hummed her agreement again. “It’s why I even bothered with getting a doctorate. It’s kind of unusual for my specialty, but—well, like I said; we’ve always been pretty competitive about stuff like that.”
Oliver’s brain stalled for a second when she suddenly climbed on top of him, bracing herself right over the area she’d just smothered with oil, a knee on either side as she leaned over him. He debated trying to turn back over for half a second, but then she started outright massaging his upper back and shoulders, and he couldn’t bite back a groan.
“Shh… try to relax,” Felicity coaxed quietly. “You need this.” Then, before he could even contemplate if he wanted to argue, she added, “I need this, too.”
And all at once any inclination to argue or even move went right out of him, leaving him lying there underneath her, enjoying her clearly experienced touch. He’d had massages before, of course, and a few of the other masseuses had even been naked a time or two, but that was a long time ago. Back when he was still that selfish brat that didn’t care about anybody but himself, with the exception of his family and friends when he cared to remember that he did care about them.
It meant a whole lot more with her. Just like everything else—just like everything—meant more with her.
After a solid handful of minutes, she sighed, sitting back—still propped up over him—as she went back to rubbing the oil into what was left of the wounds on his skin. “These are from a whip?” she asked him gently stroked some of the long lines Conklin and Reiter had both left there. Come to think of it, some of the burn marks left on his back almost had to be from Reiter, too.
“Yeah,” Oliver answered, speaking half into the pillow.
“More torture?”
He hesitated a moment, then admitted. “More punishment.”
Felicity’s hands never stopped their steady strokes over the raised, roughened flesh. “Punishment for what?” she asked him softly, waiting a long moment before she told him, “I can’t hold your past against you, Oliver.” She sighed heavily as she looked away. “Believe me, I have one of my own.”
Oliver almost rolled his eyes, because nothing the genius might’ve ever hacked into could compare to some of the stuff he’d seen and done. But something about that sigh and the faraway look in her eyes as she finished stopped him. He studied her for a moment, then frowned, “What—”
“But we were talking about you now, weren’t we?”
Oliver sighed, but made himself surrender at least a little bit. “The burns were a combo of punishment and torture, too,” he admitted reluctantly. “They weren’t all at once…”
She hummed softly again, but didn’t make any other sound as she started tracing around the dragon tattoo Slade had him marked with, to remember failing Shado. Betraying her and him, Slade had said, but again it was after the Mirakuru had made him crazy.
Oliver sighed again. “There were groups of mercenaries on the island,” he told her. “Different groups, at different times.”
“What were they doing there?” she asked the question so lightly it almost took away the weight of what she was asking about.
“The first group was looking for someone that China had exiled there.” He told her slowly. “I wouldn’t tell them where he was.”
“He was your friend?”
“Closest thing I had there, at first,” Oliver admitted. “He saved my life. More than once.” He sighed a he said, “He was a good man.”
A good man who didn’t deserve what happened to him, anymore than his daughter did. But the world was never really fair. If it was, he wouldn’t be the one still breathing today.
“Losing a friend is always hard to take,” Felicity said softly.
“I barely knew him,” Oliver admitted with a sigh.
“But he’d helped you. You said he’d saved your life,” she replied just as softly, and he was sure she was shaking her head. “So he was your friend. And then he was gone.” She paused, probably shaking her head again, but it wouldn’t be as obvious down as it was in her ponytail. “That’s hard. It’s always hard.”
“Yeah…”
“But Oliver,” Felicity paused as her slightly slippery fingers found his chin, not making him try to turn his head from where he had it only half turned into the pillow anyway, but flooding his nostrils with the pleasant scent of her special oil. “That doesn’t mean we’re wrong to go on living.”
“I know,” he replied flatly with a frown.
Felicity chuckled, though it sounded too tired and just a little too dark to be called that. “They call it survivor’s guilt for a reason, you know.”
He didn’t have an answer he could give for that, so he just leaned a little more into the pillow and her hand, savoring the sweet, calming scent.
Felicity gently withdrew her hand, and went back to rubbing his shoulders, this time somewhere in between spreading the oil and massaging the muscles she liked watching him work on so much she sometimes even made him like working on them. “It’s perfectly natural.”
Oliver only sighed at that, still not able to let himself admit that he felt guilty. He knew he did, but that he did—and especially why—wasn’t something he wanted to talk about in her bedroom as the early morning sunlight stretched in. Not that he ever wanted to talk about any of his past, really, but even he knew that he didn’t have much right to ask what she’d put behind her if he wouldn’t say even a word about what was behind him. And this wonderful woman somehow seemed to have too many dangerous secrets in her past for him to not ask her about them.
Sure, her adoptive grandfather’s murder maybe having something to do with why she’d taken up learning how to use a sword better than she’d yet admitted seemed like more than a bit of a leap, but he still couldn’t help but feel like there was a connection there.
He also had a better idea now of why she kept apologizing as she warned him about her brother being over-protective, too. He was more than a little protective of his own sister—who would also say he was ridiculously overprotective, he was sure—but no one had ever tried to hurt her. That a man Felicity had planned to marry had actually tried to burn her almost defied belief… but it also made it easy to understand why she was so secretive.
He half wondered if the sword stuff and her grandfather’s murder might be the secret she’d shared that her bastard of an ex-fiancé didn’t ‘take very well.’ But he knew it wasn’t the time to ask that. Not yet.
And then he remembered what she’d actually, specifically said about the unnamed man’s reaction to finding out her secret. He’d called her a ‘witch.’ So maybe it was time to give Constantine a call. He’d at least know if witches were real, right?
The thought made Oliver wonder if she might actually be doing some kind of supernatural—and not just natural—magic right now. If the wonderful, barely-there feeling of warmth that felt vaguely familiar might be her magic as she tried to heal him or something like that. But if it wasn’t, he’d sound crazy. And no matter how open-minded the woman was, he wasn’t going to give her reason to doubt his sanity. So any talk of magic could wait until the only person he knew who definitely could wield it was here to prove it.
Oliver groaned as she found a particularly tight spot between his shoulders, her fine fingers digging into his muscles with strength that he probably shouldn’t find surprising, what with both all the typing she did and the skill with swords she hadn’t entirely owned up to yet. Each deep stroke seemed to dig deep into his tissues with the ease he couldn’t help but associate with an expert. All but making him ask her, “So were you a masseuse at some point, too?”
Felicity chuckled, and this time it sounded right—full of her normal warmth. “Everyone pays the bills somehow.”
He almost frowned at that confirmation, some memories from the Bratva—where he’d learned that all too many women had no choice when they ended up in the sex-trade, which was sometimes concealed in spas and the like. It’d made him wonder about some of the times he’d gotten a massage himself. So he’d been relieved when Anatoly had assured him that there was no sex—or slave—trade in Starling City as far as the Bratva were aware. Not that he’d taken his Russian friend entirely at his word, but he hadn’t found any sign of it being managed by any of the organized crime syndicates here since he’d gotten back. But after her earlier admission about the man she’d almost married—
“But no,” Felicity’s calm voice broke into his thoughts like she was reading his mind. “I didn’t do this profession to get through M.I.T, or anything like that. My mom tried working as a massage therapist a few times, but she makes better money as a cocktail waitress so she let that license expire years ago.”
“Huh,” Oliver grunted in reply, relaxing again—and then letting out a deep groan as the muscle knot she’d been steadily assailing with deliberate, pointed pressure finally let loose.
“There it goes,” Felicity murmured with satisfaction, and the smile he could hear in her voice had him smiling, too. “This may have to become a thing, I think.”
“You think?” he repeated with a chuckle.
“Well, yeah. You know I love watching you go up and down that salmon ladder.”
“You know, I had noticed,” he agreed, still smiling.
She was probably right that some of his regular workouts, while they kept him in shape, did some damage, too. Not like the bullets and knives he occasionally couldn’t avoid, of course. And nothing like the rooftops he was running across on an almost as regular basis. But that tension she’d seemed to force from his shoulders with remarkable ease probably did have something to do with the salmon ladder. Well, the salmon ladder and the bow and arrow he was known for…
“Oh shut up,” Felicity shot back in response to the slight smugness he hadn’t even tried to keep out of his voice.
“Okay,” Oliver readily agreed, shifting a little as she started stroking back down the center of his back again. He let a little moan out as that pleasant warmth flowed from her purposeful kneading, dancing and tingling down along his spine. Making him shift again, not sure how long he could just keep lying here for this.
“I’m not done yet,” Felicity told him, her voice only somewhat stern as both her hands stopped right between his shoulder blades for emphasis.
“Pretty sure you’ve covered everything,” Oliver replied without any real drive, though he did remind her, “And I’m gonna have to take a shower soon anyway.”
“Not that soon,” she shot back.
“And, you know, there’s this thing called breakfast—and the coffee you like so much? We could have that, after our shower, right?”
“It is the most important meal of the day.” She hummed, sounding more interested now. “And breakfast is pretty important, too.”
Oliver snorted, “It’s a little more important than the coffee, Felicity.”
“Humph, blasphemy,” she denied, starting to move off of him.
As soon as she’d shifted just enough Oliver immediately rolled, shoving himself up and swinging his arm around to gently catch her and toss her back down on the bed he’d just been laying on before he climbed over her now. “Well, you’re right, it doesn’t have to be that quickly,” he pointed out as she giggled, smiling brightly up at him.
For a breath or two, Oliver could only stare at her. She looked so pretty: her smile shining even brighter than the sunlight on her hair.
Then she pushed herself up and her lips were on his again—full and soft—a perfect fusion that seemed to feel more and more right every time it happened.
Oliver nipped lightly at her lower lip, sucking it into his mouth before letting it go and tying his tongue with hers in the same semi-practiced movement as soon as it touched his upper lip.
Perfect.
For as long as it could last.
The End of
Double Date or Couples Therapy ?
NEXT STORY: A Hero?
Because it’s much more than a word…