Chapter Text
It was a long walk from the diamond to the VIP box, made longer by all the people wanting to stop Oliver along the way. He made time for everyone--posing for photos, giving out high-fives, insisting that tonight he wasn’t Mayor Queen; tonight he was just another Rockets fan. He was only one landing from his destination when he saw her. A face from years ago. From a different life.
Not her. Couldn’t be her.
Had to be her. He wouldn’t make a mistake. She was etched indelibly in his memory; it may have been five years, but he knew her face better than his own.
A little boy who reminded Oliver viscerally of a young Tommy was admiring his hat, but Oliver had to go, had to find her.
“Here, buddy. It looks better on you.” He handed the child his hat and heard the excited “Thank you!” yelled after him as he began pushing his way to the edge of the crowd.
She had been there. Right there, by the concessions. He whirled, asked the startled elderly lady beside him, “Did you see--?”
But how could he finish that? “Did you see a young woman with brown hair?” There were hundreds of women there tonight fitting that description. Oliver tried to call up what she’d been wearing, but he could only put her in the clothes she’d had on five years ago.
Blue leggings. A red Justin Timberlake t-shirt. Red knock-off converse low-tops. All of it too little protection against against the icy Moscow air.
He kept searching, but with every passing second it felt more and more possible that it was just a trick of his memory. With everything on his mind recently, it made sense. He was playing in the past and so his subconscious was digging up ghosts.
By the time he reached the VIP box, he almost had himself convinced.
Felicity was waiting for him. “Nice pitch, Mr. Mayor.” She held out a hotdog. “Extra relish, just like you like, even though it physically pains me to watch you eat a processed meat tube covered in fluorescent pickle slime.”
“I do love my pickle slime.” They settled back to enjoy the game, and he thought he was doing a pretty good job of refocusing on the present.
“Wait, are your hands shaking? Oliver Queen, were you nervous?”
So maybe not.
His instinct was to deny it, but the trembling hotdog gave him away. He pasted on smile, searched for something like the truth. “It’s a big moment for the city. This team is something we can all rally behind. Throwing the opening pitch is a symbolic moment. If it had fallen short...I don’t know maybe that would’ve been symbolic too.”
“Whatever. You just didn’t want people laughing at you on twitter.”
“I haven’t thrown a baseball since I was twelve! It was a high pressure moment.”
“Oh how the cocky have fallen.”
He would’ve had a thing or two to say to that, but the Rockets made a double play. He was on his feet immediately. His mouth was too dry; he was light-headed. He told himself he’d just stood too quickly. He told himself everything was fine.
He turned to Felicity. “Did you see that? Text Barry that Central City is going down.”
She rolled her eyes but did it anyway. When her phone chimed a few seconds later she held it up for Oliver to see. “Barry says to remind you it’s only the first inning and that baseball is a very long game.”
He grabbed the phone from her and started texting furiously, his hands finally steadied. He was the mayor of the city he loved, and he had worked hard to make this night possible. His worries could wait; he was going to have fun.
He wasn’t surprised a few innings later when Felicity started dictating insults. One thing Oliver had learned about Felicity last summer, much to his delight, was that while she didn’t really care for sports, she cared very much for trashtalk. And she was good at it. She escalated things by sending poor Barry Allen, who was really out of his league, videos. Soon, Oliver and Felicity were laughing so hard they could barely get their words out.
The Jumbotron caught them like that--all smiles, doubled over, Felicity grasping Oliver’s forearm. It was brought to their attention by the chorus of “awwww” coming from the stands. They saw themselves on the screen, and jumped apart like they’d been burned. Luckily the camera had moved on before the “awws” became awkward whispers. He didn’t know if maybe he should say something or apologize, or if that would just make it even more weird. They’d been having such a nice time. Luckily Felicity’s phone chimed with Barry restarting their text war.
When the 9th was over and the Rockets managed a one point win, they sent a final video that included a really obnoxious victory dance, then Oliver stood by the exits shaking hands and chatting with fans...secretly searching for the girl he thought he’d seen.
But she wasn’t there. He’d made a mistake.
It had been a mistake.
When the last person left, Felicity joined him.
“Dig texted me a baseball emoji and a thumbs-up.”
“So he cared enough to find a way to stream the game from the Philippines. Did you ask him when he was coming home?”
“Oliver. You know he’s under a one year consulting contract. He can’t just come home, even if he wants to.”
Yeah, he knew that.
“And you could just talk to him yourself.”
He knew that too.
“I thought you weren’t mad at Dig?”
“I’m not mad at him.” He just missed him. And, truthfully, he needed him in Star City.
Felicity looked like she had more to say--she always had more to say--but she must have decided to let it drop. “This was a good night.”
“It really was, wasn’t it?” He’d gotten some pushback about prioritizing the baseball stadium when there was still so much rebuilding to be done, but Oliver knew this was important. People needed a place where they could come together and feel normal, even just for a few hours.
And maybe the success had gone to his head, or maybe talking about Dig made him nostalgic, or maybe the romantic in him couldn’t resist standing here alone with her under the lights of the stadium, but whatever it was he couldn’t stop himself from turning to her with longing in his heart and saying, “Felicity--”
“Oliver.” She was already stepping away from him.
“Why not?”
“You know all the reasons why not.”
He did. He’d even thought he had accepted them. “I’m sorry. I got caught up in something...all the winning.” The humidity was making her hair curl, and she kept twisting it up off her neck. He wanted so badly to reach out and help her. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked up at the stars. “It won’t happen again.”
“I like what we have. I don’t want to lose it.”
He would do whatever it took to make sure that didn’t happen. Even if it meant letting go. He smiled down at her.
“Not a chance.”
oOo
So, sleep was not going to happen. Felicity had been trying since 11:00 when she got back from the baseball game, and that was over three hours ago. She checked her phone, hoping for a distraction, but all that was waiting for her was another text from her father. She deleted it without reading and blocked the number. For all the good it would do her; he’d just start using another. Her father, despite his help in May, had shown her that he wasn’t good for her & she was going to believe him. He was going to have to take the hint.
Men.
She pounded her pillow in frustration and slipped to the floor to fold herself in a downward facing dog. Before the city had once again gone to hell, she’d “graduated” from physical therapy, but both Paul and Curtis were always on her to try yoga. “It will improve your flexibility,” Paul would say. “It will quiet your mind,” Curtis would add.
She could use a quiet mind.
One-one. Two-two. Three-three. She counted her in and out breaths. If she focused on numbers and breathing, there was no space in her mind for things like bad news dads and last May and the half-life of radionuclides and the dead and the survivors with cancer and chemotherapy in their future--
STOP. Four-four. Five-five. Six-six. See? Breaths. And counting. Peace. It hadn’t been her fault. She’d done her best. She’d saved millions, she’d saved millions, she’d saved millions.
Seven-seven. Eight-eight. Nine-nine. Anything else. She could think about anything else. Like how she should amend her Guidelines For Interacting With Oliver Queen to include “Do not look Oliver Queen in the eyes. You cannot handle it.” Which she could not, because she loved those eyes and she loved seeing hope in them the way there was tonight when he slipped and tried to convince her to try again. And when you combined those eyes with the way she still loved him and the way it fucking hurt to end it and how easy it would be to just fall right back in and then you mix in the way he still smelled so good and how his arms looked in that emerald Rockets t-shirt and how she would bet anything that he requested one on the small side on fucking purpose...okay, what kind of monster brain goes from thinking about the death and destruction of tens of thousands of innocent lives to wanting to jump Oliver Queen?
Ten-ten. Start again. One-one. Two-two.
This wasn’t going to work. Her mind was just as busy as it always was, the only difference being that she was upside down and uncomfortable. She pulled herself upright. A little too quickly, judging from the way the room tilted and she had to grab onto her dresser for support. Fracking yoga.
She needed more than something to focus on; she needed something to do. She needed to get out of this loft that mostly just tortured her with memories anyway. She needed work. Not her day work. She’d made a promise to Curtis that they would keep normal office hours and at this stage of the project there wasn’t a ton she could do without him. Plus, she’d already learned the hard way that he got very grumpy when you called him after bedtime.
She needed work of the nighttime variety. There had been far too little of that with the Green Arrow being kept too busy being Mayor Queen to do much vigilante-ing. Plus the citizens of Star City seemed to be in some sort of post-disaster honeymoon period where everyone was too occupied sifting through ruins and going to baseball games to commit crimes.
Which was totally a good thing. If not entirely helpful to Felicity in this moment.
Of course, there was this one question from the whole Damien Darhk debacle that remained unresolved and had been nagging at her…. She threw on a bra under her pajama top. This was something she should look into at the lair with its superior processor and access to facial recognition.
She grinned as she slipped into her flip flops. Finally. Night work.
oOo
Felicity’s entire body relaxed when she stepped inside the green glow of the lair’s computers. She’d been here every day, using it as a makeshift office for S & H Technology-- because why should all this space go to waste?-- but she hadn’t been here in the dark since the night she told Oliver she was staying. Now she had business here again. Arrow-ish business. If you squinted. And disregarded the fact that she wasn’t really planning to mention any of this to the actual Arrow. Yet.
“No need to say something until you actually find something.” She sat at her computer and flexed her fingers. “Of course, I’m not exactly sure where to start, which means I’m basically going to have to throw things at the virtual wall to see what-”
“I thought you were working on not talking to yourself so much.”
“Oh my god!” Felicity span too fast on her chair, spinning herself right off of it and right onto her ass on the concrete floor. “Dammit. My tailbone. Oh, that’s going to bruise.”
“Are you okay?”
She heard more amusement than concern in Oliver’s voice. He reached down to pull her up and she caught a wide grin spreading across his face. Good thing too, because him laughing at her annoyed her, and she could really stand to be annoyed by him right now, or else it might be hard to yank her hand away or not melt in the face of that smile.
“What are you doing here, Oliver?” She snapped, but then she remembered. “Oh. Right. You live here. I actually forgot that. I mean, I’m here everyday working and you’re not here, although, of course you wouldn’t be because you’re out Mayor-ing. And it’s really hard to picture someone who dresses the way you do as mayor sleeping in a secret lair. So, yeah, I...forgot.”
There was still amusement written all over his face when he stepped a little closer into her space. She fought the urge to back up. “You like the way I dress, Felicity?”
Yes, you look amazing in a suit. Was something she would not say. Ever. Ever, ever, ever. She smirked at him instead. “I see cocky Oliver is making a reappearance.”
He put a little more respectable space between them. “What are you doing here at,” he pushed a button on his phone, “nearly 3:00 AM? And what is it that you’re not saying something about until you’ve found something?”
She could answer that question, but the two books draped over Oliver’s arm provided an intriguing distraction. “Are you reading?”
“Why are you asking like that? I read.”
She snorted. “I have never witnessed you reading. Especially not books with titles like” she grabbed the books off of his arm, “ Failed States and Power Vacuums or Blood Brotherhoods: Organized Crime and the State. Oliver, what is all this?”
He grabbed the books away from her and sank into her rolling chair. Just like that he’d gone from amused to dejected, but Felicity was an experienced rider of the rollercoaster that was his moods. She hopped up on the desk across from him and waited.
“I am trying to be a good mayor.”
“You are a good mayor.” She knew this in her bones. She was amazed by what he’d accomplished in so short a period of time, and she wasn’t going to let him do that thing he always does where he convinced himself that he wasn’t enough. “I think tonight was a pretty good example of that. Not to mention all of the infrastructure projects that are well on their way to being completed.”
“That’s what I’ve been spending all of my time on. You can’t really focus on anything else when there’s a giant crater splitting your city in two.”
“Exactly. That is the one good thing about getting fired from Palmer Tech. If I still worked there, my commute would be a bitch.”
That bought her a smile. He rolled closer to her, and she tried to ignore how familiar, how right, this felt, the two of them processing together at the end of a day.
“I love being mayor,” he started again. “But it’s also...more limiting than I realized it would be.”
Felicity nodded. “Not a lot of time for night work.”
“There are things that I can’t really involve myself in. Working in the light makes it difficult to move in the shadows.”
She narrowed her eyes as it hit her he was talking about something specific. “Well, maybe that’s where you’re lucky I stayed. And maybe it’s one more good thing that comes from no longer being Palmer Tech’s CEO. I’m back to being a nobody in this town...which means, I could be your person in the shadows. In a vigilante way.”
“Felicity Smoak will never be a nobody, not in any town.”
It was a deflection. One delivered with patented Queen charm, but a deflection nonetheless.
“You’re not going to tell me what you’re worried about, are you?”
He opened his mouth and for a split second she thought he’d prove her wrong, but she knew him too well for him to really surprise her anymore. “It’s nothing.”
“Right. Well, I’m going to go.” Suddenly she was tired enough to sleep. He reached for her, but she didn’t turn around. Now was a good time to enact that “no eye contact” rule she established earlier.
“Why are you making me feel like I just failed some sort of a test?”
Because you did. Which was another thing she wouldn’t say because they were over and it wasn’t fair for her to have expectations of him anymore and she was extremely fucking fair. “No test, Oliver. I’m just tired.”
When she still didn’t turn around, he walked to stand in front of her and tilted her chin up so she was facing him. And damn him for that, because now she had to break her rule and look him in the eyes, or else it was just weird and everything was weird enough already.
“You never answered my question either,” he reminded her softly. “What brought you here in the middle of the night?”
It wouldn’t be a big deal to tell him; it was nothing she needed to keep a secret. She’d really like to think she wasn’t petty enough to refuse to answer him just because her feelings were hurt that he rejected her offer to help him. But she also hadn’t slept, really slept, since...she couldn’t remember when, and she was mad at herself for letting him hurt her again. Screw it, she’d be a grown-up tomorrow.
“Nothing.” She saw her disappointment reflected in his eyes.
“Good night, Mr. Mayor.”
“Night, Felicity.”
oOo
“And the fire, it symbolizes the way you will burn if you ever betray the oath you’ve made tonight.”
Serious talk. Designed to intimidate him. But nothing scared him anymore.
“Drink, Oliver!”
He swallowed the vodka in one gulp. It burned its way through him.
Oliver tried to return his attention to the massive stack of paperwork requiring his time, but thoughts of his first weeks in Russia kept intruding. He had barely been human at that point. He hadn’t given a thought to what he was doing during the initiation. He owed a debt, and Anatoly offered him a way to pay it. They tattooed the black sun over his heart, a symbol of protection they had said, and he had agreed to do whatever they asked of him….
Oliver scratched his signature onto the form in front of him so forcefully he tore right through the paper. He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stop the flood, not wanting to remember all the things they’d asked of him. Outside his office, his staff was bustling around, making phone calls, handling the press. They didn’t know who their mayor was, what he’d done. They didn’t know the kind of trouble that might follow him into the light.
For the hundredth time, Oliver picked up his cell and dialed the first few digits of a number he’d hoped to never call again. For the hundredth time, he stopped before hitting send. He wanted to know if Anatoly knew that the current mayor of Star City was also a (former?) Bratva captain. On the other hand, maybe the city and Oliver Queen were no longer on the organization’s radar. If not, that would surely change with a phone call from Oliver after two years of silence.
Seeing her last night, thinking he had seen her, had shaken him. Even though it had been nothing (it had been nothing) , it forced all the fears in the back of his mind right to the forefront. He knew that a city in freefall, even if they were doing everything they could to turn it around, was prime operating ground for any mafia organization. With his connections, some might assume that they’d have his tacit approval, if not his active support. These were the things keeping him up at night. This was what he couldn’t quite bring himself to tell Felicity. He knew what kind of people rushed to fill power vacuums. He had been one of those people.
He didn’t want any of it to touch Felicity.
And that was something he had to let go. She was all that remained of his team, and if he wanted to protect the city from the ghosts of his past....
Oliver ripped off the tie that suddenly felt like it was choking him and rolled up the sleeves on his shirt.
He made a decision.
oOo
He heard Felicity and Curtis laughing as soon as he opened the door; they stopped as soon as they noticed his footsteps.
“It’s just me,” he called, knowing they were probably wondering which super-villain was coming for them now.
“Oliver, man, hey! It’s been awhile since I’ve seen you down here in the daytime.” Curtis shook his hand. “Do I have to call you Mr. Mayor now?”
“Oliver is fine, Curtis.” He tried to make eye contact with Felicity, but she was determinedly ignoring him, pouring instead over something--a robot maybe?--at her workstation. Oliver took in all of the new equipment Felicity and Curtis had set up, equipment that was usually long put away by the time he came back here to sleep. “Wow. Look at all this.”
“Cool, right? When Felicity said she wanted to create a market-ready version of her spinal chip as soon as possible, she wasn’t playing. It’s not just the chip either.” Curtis put on his best Mr. Dennis voice. “We here at S&H Technology have already created plans for several other prototypes we think will lead to breakthrough treatments in spinal cord injuries.”
“This is...remarkable. The two of you really are the dream team. How could you even afford all this?”
Felicity finally looked up at him, and he could tell she couldn’t contain her excitement for her work. “Remember that deposit you made into my account when you decided to take a Lian Yu break?”
He cringed. That had not gone over well with her.
“What I didn’t spend on Arrow-related purchases. I invested. Well. Besides, I did spend a year as the CEO of Palmer Tech with a crazytown salary and since I wasn’t raised a bajillionaire, I didn’t take that for granted. Plus, I grew up with Donna Smoak, master of stretching a dollar--seriously, Oliver, you should appoint a single mother to take charge of the city’s finances--and, so, here we are.”
“Remarkable,” he repeated.
One of the computer screens caught his eye and he walked over to take a closer look, but Felicity nearly broke her ankle jumping up to turn off the monitor. He was surprised by how much that stung.
“What? You think I’m here to steal company secrets?” He tried to force it into sounding like a joke.
Felicity was nervous, he could tell by the way she started twirling her hair, but then she smiled at him brightly.
“You know what I’ve been meaning to tell you? You should move back into the loft.”
His heart stuttered and the sting of a few moments ago was immediately eased.
“You...you want me to move back?”
“Yes!” he vaguely heard Curtis shout from somewhere behind him. “I knew all y’all needed was a little more time.”
“Felicity-” And then he saw it. The way her face began to flame and her eyes widened in horror. His heart stuttered again, but not in a good way.
“Oh. Oh god. No, I just meant...the sublet is up on my townhouse...it’s been a year...I meant I could go back there, and you could go to the loft-”
“No, of course. I know what you meant.”
“Because it’s weird that the city’s mayor is kind of homeless, and the press are all over you, and one day they might start asking questions about where you sleep at night, and that could be bad, and I am so, so sorry if I wasn’t clear on that-”
“Felicity,” he interrupted her, “ you were clear. I didn’t think-” He did, though. He did think.
“Good. That’s good.”
“Um, the loft.”
“Yeah. You could go back there this week even. I can get my things out quickly. Curtis will help, right?” She turned to her stunned partner.
“Right-o, boss. Or, partner now, I guess. And I mean, I could help you too Oliver. Hell, I like helping people move. You know, just get me some pizza and beer,and-”
“It’s fine, Curtis.”
“Cool. Cool, cool.”
Suddenly Oliver wanted nothing more than to turn on his heel and go, his reason for coming in the first place all but forgotten.
“Felicity’s trying to figure out what happened to Damien Darhk’s creepy daughter!”
Oliver and Felicity whirled around as one to gape at Curtis, who was now standing with his hand clamped over his mouth.
“Curtis!”
“I’m sorry Felicity, but you know I can’t handle awkward silences. And I’m not really good at secrets either. Except your big green secret of course.” He looked at Oliver. “That one’s safe with me, Oliver. Or, you know what, let’s stick with Mr. Mayor, yeah?” He started backing up and with the way Felicity’s eyes were flashing, Oliver couldn’t really blame the man. “I’m...going to take my lunch break now.”
“It’s 10 AM,” Felicity ground out.
But Curtis was halfway out the door, mumbling something about skipping breakfast and hypoglycemia, and Oliver was alone with Felicity.
“Damien Darhk’s daughter?” He asked after a beat.
She waved him off. “I’ll explain later.” His skepticism must have shown because she added, “I will. But you seemed all huffy and in a hurry when you came down here before, so spit it out, mister. What’s going on?”
“I wanted to talk about last night.”
“Oliver-”
“Not...not that,” he assured her. After the whole “move back” fiasco, his dignity couldn’t take another reference to their relationship. “I was wondering if your offer to be my ‘person in the shadows’ still stands?”
“Yes. Absolutely. I’m your guy. Girl. Woman.” The way her entire face lit up at his invitation to get involved in something potentially dangerous should scare him, but instead he was happy to make her happy, relieved to share this burden.