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Oliver watches Felicity out of the corner of his eye as she does her final system checks for the evening and he pretends to be cleaning the training mats. Digg and Roy left twenty minutes ago with knowing grins, after turning down Felicity’s offer to go grab a late night dinner before heading home. If their behavior is anything to go by, he hasn’t been as slick about his intentions for the night as he’d hoped.
All night, he’s been trying to come up with a way to ask Felicity out, but every time he builds up enough courage to say anything to her, something comes up.
He was going to do it when she first came in. Just get it over with so he could stop worrying about it. He’d even waited upstairs for her so that he wouldn’t have to ask her in front of Digg and Roy. However, when she arrived, it was in a storm of fury. Apparently some asshole customer at work had tried to feel her up while she helped him pick out a modem. When she slapped him, her boss wrote her up. She was so busy contemplating her revenge and texting back and forth with Laurel to see if there was any legal action she could take that Oliver hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise.
When Digg and Roy ran out to pick up dinner for everyone, he’d seen another opening. He’d just opened his mouth to ask her when Felicity’s phone rang. Her mother was calling her freaking out about something, by the sounds of it. She’d been on the phone with her for thirty-six minutes — Oliver counted — and by the time she hung up, Digg and Roy were back and the moment had passed.
After dinner came a shooting at 6th and 9th. Then Lance was asking them to look into a mysterious disappearance that had Felicity distracted the rest of the evening.
Now, it’s nearing 2am and she is packing up her bag and he still hasn’t gotten around to asking her out.
Maybe it’s just not the right time, he thinks.
****
“It’s just not the right time...” Digg repeats Oliver, giving him a doubtful look. “Listen Oliver—”
“That’s such crap,” Roy cuts him off. “You’re just too chicken shit to do it. Ask her out man. You know she’s into you. I don’t see what the problem is. We know she can protect herself, probably better than any of us actually can, so what’s the excuse now?”
“You don’t know for sure that she’s into me,” he says, causing them both to roll their eyes. “No, you don’t. Sure, she checks me out when I’m working out. She’s attracted to me physically, but I have no idea if she wants me beyond that. I’m not exactly the world’s greatest catch.”
“Oliver, you love her. You even told her so,” Digg says.
Oliver can feel a blush building on his cheeks and he hopes they can’t see it. He still regrets having to use Felicity like he did to take Slade down, but it had been the only way. But more than that, he regrets telling her that he loved her in that way. She deserves romance. She doesn’t deserve declarations made in the middle of what felt like armageddon. Declarations that he later let her believe he’d only said because Slade had been listening in.
“I was trying to fool Slade,” he says, knowing that it’s total bullshit. He’s just not ready to admit it for real. At least, not to Digg and Roy. Not until he knows what Felicity’s feelings are.
“Yes,” Digg says. “Except now the only person you’re fooling is yourself.”
Oliver shakes his head. It’s not that he’s fooling himself. He knows he’s in love with Felicity. He’s known it for awhile, really. It’s just that, he doesn’t know if she feels the same. He doesn’t understand how she possibly could. She’s… Felicity. She’s amazing. And he’s... Oliver Queen. Notorious screw up. She can do so much better than him.
“If you wait much longer, she will find somebody else,” Roy says as he grabs their empty glasses off of the bar and cleans them out in the sink. “And maybe they’ll be better. Maybe they won’t. But you’re going to miss your chance. Girls like Felicity don’t come around everyday. Take it from me, you don’t want to keep doing this alone.”
Oliver thinks of Thea, off traveling Europe and how miserable Roy has been without her.
Maybe he’s right. Does he really want to keep being alone just because he’s scared of taking the leap?
***
When Oliver walks down the stairs, he’s energized and has all the confidence in the world. They’ve just taken out a mob boss, found a missing girl they’ve been looking for, and randomly ended up stopping a serial killer on their way home.
It’s been a great day for the team. Which is why, Oliver’s decided that he’s not going to wait any longer. Roy is right; things are good for them right now. Slade is gone, crime is down, the SCPD and DA are on their side, and Felicity has come clean to the team about her powers. There isn’t going to be a better time than now.
He’s going to do it tonight. He’s not going to let anything get in his way.
When Oliver reaches the bottom step, he is about to call out for Felicity to join him upstairs to talk, but he grows concerned when he sees her. Her head is down on the desk and her hand is just barely moving as she attempts to type something on her keyboard.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, rushing to her side.
“Hm? Huh?” she sits up, looking completely out of it. “What?”
“Are you okay?” he asks, reaching over to put a hand on her forehead to feel for a temperature. She doesn’t feel warm, but she also doesn’t shock him either, which is unusual for her. Usually, she always zaps him a little whenever he initiates contact with her.
“I’m fine,” she says, shaking her head and sitting up a little straighter in her chair. She looks tired.
“Are you getting sick?” he asks, concerned that maybe she’s been working herself into exhaustion on this case.
“No,” she tells him. “I just need to rest.”
“Because you’re sick?” he asks, helping her to her feet.
She avoids his eyes as she looks around for her keys, and he knows there’s something she’s not telling him.
“Felicity…” he says, in a warning tone, praying there’s nothing seriously wrong.
“It’s not a big deal,” she says, finding her keys finally and grabbing her bag. He takes both items from her, causing her to look up at him in confusion.
“I’ll drive you home,” he says. “Just give me a minute to change.”
“I can do it myself,” she says, but she falls back into her chair and doesn’t protest any more than that, so he knows she must really be sick.
He changes faster than he probably ever has and soon they are both in her car and on the way to her house. When they arrive, he picks her up out of the seat and carries her to the door, causing her to grumble.
“I used too much of my powers,” she whispers as he unlocks the door to her place.
“What?” he asks, kicking the door closed behind him and dropping her keys and purse on the table by the door.
“‘m not sick,” she mumbles. “Used too much of my powers.”
Of course, he thinks. Felicity had told them all that she was out of practice, but they’d all assumed that she was fine. He’d trusted her to tell him what her limits were when it came to her abilities.
“The Amber Alert?” he asks, wanting to make sure they are talking about the same thing. Earlier this evening, Felicity had sent out a mass alert to every computer, cell phone, tablet or TV in the city in the hopes of getting a message to Samantha Carpenter, the missing girl they’d been looking for. It had worked. They’d found their missing girl, but Felicity had never so much as hinted that the cost of her using her powers that way was that she’d exhaust herself.
“It’s just… Been awhile,” she says through a yawn as he carries her back to her room. “Awhile since I used my powers this much, this often.”
Felicity nuzzles her face into his neck, but he can’t even enjoy it because he’s so mad at her for not saying something sooner.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asks, thinking back to all the times they’ve been calling on her recently to use her powers, now that they know what she’s capable of. He immediately feels guilty.
“Thought I could handle it,” she says as he places her in bed and starts to take off her shoes and her sweater. He’s not going to attempt to get her changed into her pajamas, that would be too much of an invasion, but he can at least make her as comfortable as possible.
“Just rest,” he says, pulling back the blanket and helping her situate herself.
“Used to be able to do more…” she mumbles, already half asleep.
“You said it yourself, you’re out of practice,” he says, annoyed at himself for never asking her exactly what she meant by that. He could have prevented this.
“Yeah… Practice… I need practice…”
“Shh,” he says, pushing her hair out of her face and giving her a kiss on the forehead. “Go to sleep. We’ll talk more in the morning.”
“With pancakes?” she asks.
“With pancakes.”
****
Oliver is walking up to Verdant and is happy to see Felicity just ahead of him.
“Hey! Hey!” he calls after her, rushing to catch up. “How are you feeling?”
“As I told you the last 5 times you texted me today alone, I’m fine,” she says, not unkindly. She holds up her hands, creating a small spark of blue lightning to prove her point. “Powers are back and all.”
“Good,” he says, relieved.
He’d given her the last 2 days off to recover. Well, more like demanded she take 2 days off to recover and after a lot of arguing, they’d come to a compromise that she would work from home. Today is her first day back since she’d exhausted herself. Digg has come up with some training exercises for her to help build up her strength so nothing like that ever happens again, and until she is stronger, they’ve made a “no powers” rule in the lair.
One he’s going to have to tell Felicity about.
“So how was work?” he asks.
“It is not work,” she says with disdain. “It is a soul crushing exercise in misery that offers health and dental. Suffice it to day, I am highly motivated to help convince the board to sell you back the company.”
Oliver still feels incredibly guilty about losing Queen Consolidated. If it was just him, it’d be one thing. But when he lost his job, so did Digg and Felicity.
“Unfortunately, you don’t really have the qualifications to run Queen Consolidated,” she says.
He’s not offended, because he knows she’s right. When he was CEO before, she did a lot of the work for him. He doesn’t know what he would do without her. Honestly. It’s no wonder he fell in love with her. She’s absolutely incredible. She’s beautiful, intelligent, and she doesn’t shy away from a challenge.
He’s so busy watching her that he misses the rest of what she says. It’s not until she pats him on the chest and says, “Gotta speak from the heart,” that he snaps out of it.
Oliver knows what he has to do. There’s never going to be a perfect time for it. He’s never going to feel 100% confident that she’ll say yes. He just has to go for it.
“Felicity…” he says, getting her attention as she’s walking away from him.
She turns around and looks at him expectantly.
“Would you like to go out to dinner with me?” he asks, holding his breath for her answer.
“I’m being serious here, Oliver.”
“So am I,” he says, preparing himself for a rejection.
She looks stunned. Like his affection for her hasn’t been as obvious as Digg and Roy have led him to believe.
“I don’t wanna read too much into this,” she says, taking a step towards him. “But are you asking me out on a date? Like an actual date? Like a date, date?”
Any other time, he’d think that her rambling was absolutely adorable, but right now? He just needs an answer before he explodes from nerves.
“Su- I mean… The implication being with dinner that you—”
“Usually I’m the one talking in sentence fragments,” she cuts him off with a smile and he has to laugh. He sounds absolutely ridiculous. He’s never been this awkward around a girl before. Then again, he’s never asked a girl out that he was already in love with. The fear of rejection has never been this high.
He takes a deep breath and repeats his question.
“Would you like to go to dinner with me?” he says, making sure she knows that he’s being completely serious.
“Yes,” Felicity nods, giving him that adorable smile and nod, letting him know that she might just be as happy about this new development in their relationship as he is.