He feels her wobble and reaches out to stable her balance. He sucks in a breath when her hands brace against his chest. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she breathes, and he can smell the smoothie she had earlier. Berries. Her forehead drops to rest on the top of his sternum. “I think I twisted my ankle.” Her knee - or at least he thinks it’s her knee - sweeps across his thigh and then he hears one of her shoes drop against the concrete ground before she shifts and the sound of the other hits as well.

When she straightens again, the top of her head is level with his chin, and his heart fills with a sudden rush of protectiveness over how tiny she is.

He’s getting restless just standing here so he carefully reaches out for the door to stretch his back and resist the temptation to bring her into his chest. The action ultimately traps Felicity against the door, but the darkness makes it easier to ignore the repercussions of how good it feels to have her this close. “How long do you think ‘til they let us out?”

“Who knows,” she murmurs, her hands sliding out to grip his sides and a foot he presumes that holds the ankle she twisted rests on top of his.

He sighs and drops his head forward, which brings his forehead to hers. If he squints and concentrates he can see the outlining features of her face. He thinks it’s beautiful that in this darkness, her strongest qualities shine brightest. The light seeming from the cracks along the edges of the door provides the light he needs to map out the tip of her button nose, and through the slight reflection of her glasses, he can see the whites of her eyes against her dark irises. His eyes drops down to her lips, drawing from memory the deep pink of her lips that look more like a dark shade of midnight blue in the dingy closet of the foundry.

“I still can’t believe they locked us in here.” They’re so close he can feel the vibrations of her words. Then she laughs lightly, and it’s warm and sweet and toying with the delicate rhythm of his heartbeat.

He smiles too. One day, they’ll have quite a story to tell. “Sara said she’d do something like this.”

Her head thunks back against the wood of the door. He can feel her frowning at him. “She told you she’d trick us into a closet together?”

Clearing his throat, he shakes his head. “Not exactly, just something along the lines of forcing us to…” Forcing you two into confronting your feelings for each other. God, Ollie, watching you two dancing around each other is killing me, was exactly what Sara had told him over lunch yesterday, but Oliver’s not going to tell Felicity that. Looking for something to distract himself, he slides a hand down to the doorknob and twists it. To his surprise, it turns easily, and he pulls Felicity toward him while pushing the door open.

Sara and Diggle are sat on the desk a few feet away. Their heads swivel at the sound of the door creaking open. The corner of Digg’s mouth lifts in a crooked smirk, Sara has her eyebrows raised as her face splits into a shit-eating grin, and both have their arms crossed.

He looks down at Felicity in disbelief, who has her head tilted back, eyes wide and mouth open in a rare moment of stunned silence.

Diggle chortles as Sara quips, “What were you guys doing in there for so long?”

—

“Oliver,” Felicity admonishes with a disapproving stare, and from the corner of his eye he watches her carefully bringing her injured wrist to her chest, the familiar glint that catches in the light lulling most of his displeasure.

Oliver doesn’t let up his hard gaze on the man until he takes a step back. Spending almost twenty minutes in the harsh lighting of the doctor’s office with cold white walls adorned only by medical certificates, watching the supposed best doctor in town make eyes at Felicity has put him in a sour mood. It doesn’t help that it smells like antiseptic and bad cologne, the mixture of the scent hurtled at him every time the fan hits his face.

“I’m so sorry, Mark,” she shakes her head, her voice apologetic and sweet. “He’s normally not…” Her nose scrunches. “Actually he is. Oliver, he’s just being nice.”

“Too nice,” Oliver mutters, frowning at Logan, who only chuckles and looks down at the pad he’s writing on, not at all intimidated.

Felicity makes a noise from the back of her throat, the one that tells him he’s being rude and she’s not happy with him right now.

He reaches for her elbow, but she twists away from him. He’d smile at how ridiculous the action looks if her face isn’t pinched with a disappointment that stabs at his gut. “I’m not paying him to flirt with my wife.” He sighs when she avoids his attempt to meet her eyes. His mouth contorts as he momentarily shuts his eyes before dragging his gaze to Logan. “I’m sorry,” he grates out, “you’re only doing your job.”

Logan smiles and hands him the prescription form he tears out from the notepad. “You’re a very lucky man, Mr. Queen.”

“I’m aware,” he ripostes, offering his hand to Felicity. The mood he’s been in lightens when she takes it, and he helps her off the bed.

“Take regular breaks, Mrs. Queen,” Logan calls as they head out. “I don’t want to see you here again, you hear me?”

“I bet you don’t,” Oliver retorts under his breath.

Felicity moves to push at him with her right hand, but he catches it in his left and brings it up to his lips. “Sometimes I don’t know why I bring you places.”

He pushes the door open, letting her walk through first and they step out from the cold building and into the warm sun. “Because you love me.”

Her sigh is mournful, as if the fact is a burden or unfortunate, but he catches a smile that says differently and his own grows when she intertwines their fingers. “I do,” she finally pronounces.

—

2. Recommend one fanfiction that has stuck with you. everything puckleberry written by smc-27

3. What show ended/got cancelled too soon for you? YOUNG JSUT ICE DON'T TALK TO ME

4. Quote/lyric to live by? Funny things are everywhere.

5. Favorite American Idol/The Voice winner? I don't watch many reality/competition shows. But Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood are the ones that I listen to.

6. Worst pet peeve on fanfiction (thing that makes you quit reading)? No paragraph spacing, proper punctuation, etc.

7. What character are you most alike? i feel like i'm pam halpert (née beesly) most

8. Name five films you love (I’m always looking for suggestions of things to watch :) Iron Man 3, A Walk to Remember, HP and the Half-Blood Prince, She's the Man, Tangled. idk i don't watch many films

9. What gif most accurately portrays you?

10. Favorite tv friendship? i thought long and hard about this. chandler and joey.

2. If you could have one super power, what would it be? telekinesis. you can practically see my laziness

3. You’re alone in your house at night. You hear something outside of your door. What’s the first thing you think it might be? pizza? probs the fam

4. If you were guaranteed that the worst thing would never happen if you tried to do something, what would you try to do?

eat fried chicken all the time idk i'm not adventurous

5. If your life had a theme song, what would it be? idk i don't think i know one

6. Look to your left! What’s there right now? PILLOWS!

7. Look to your right! What’s there right now? a sock. (i'm wearing the other.)

8. What’s something about you that you can share with me (and all of Tumblr) that very few people know?

i prefer to form my own opinion of something after hearing/reading everyone else's

9. If you write, give me one line you’ve written that you really like? Otherwise, give me one line that you’ve read that you really like? hm. the only thing that comes to mind is something i wrote in better near to you (which now that i read it again it's not as good as i remembered):

She can honestly say that she’s mostly content with that as she races out the door, her heart pumping to his words that echo mercilessly in her mind, a beat sounding strangely like I love you, I love you, I love you.

10. Can you wink? Left eye? Right eye? Both? (No, I don’t mean blink.) i can wink using both eyes

11. If you could ask your future self one thing, what would it be? What the hell am I doing in life.

My questions:

Coffee or hot chocolate?

Tell me your deepest insecurity (that you're comfortable to admit here).

Favourite comedy film?

Any physical scars? How'd you get it/them?

An artist in your playlist/library you're most embarrassed about having.

If you ran into someone who used to bully you, what would you say/do?

Have you ever bullied someone?

What is your ultimate dessert weakness?

Are you introverted, extroverted or both?

Favourite trope?

The rest of the summary published is about Oliver/from his perspective. And that's understandable. I've mostly talked about it from his side the same way. But I want to talk about Felicity now.

I love her so very much, and I've said before that I don't want her rumoured love interested being linked to Oliver and his other life. That being said, I don't want her to be pining after Oliver if he does actually ask her out and their date gets interrupted before/while it happens - and then turn around and date Ray because things between her and Oliver don't go they way she planned.

I don't know if I want Felicity to confront Oliver about his decision to put their relationship on the back burner. I don't even think she would. I see Felicity as someone who is confident in her abilities and who knows her place. But relationships is something she's uncertain about. This is the girl who from a very early age found out one day that her father - someone I believe was the only male figure in her life - had left her and her mother.

It's difficult enough with the secret they have to keep about their second life, I don't think she would push him on this. I don't think she would challenge him because he turned her down (plus would you want to be with someone who seems to not want to be with you - at least not now?). She wouldn't see it as him stripping away her choice by making the decision of their relationship for them because I feel like she doesn't completely understand what this relationship is/could be. She doesn't know exactly what Oliver feels for her, and she still hasn't sifted through her own feelings for him.

We're also forgetting that the Arrow is a team; Oliver isn't the only hero here. She is too, and although she's not the public figure of the work, she's the wires of the operation who works behind the scenes. While Oliver can't be Oliver Queen, Felicity also can't balance her own life on top of a complicated romance with her partner (with whom can potentially damage the dynamics of the team if things go sour between them).

The deadly villain, I think, is Count Vertigo. This is an identity that not only Oliver, but Felicity was deeply affected by too. It would be so scarring for Felicity to find out that the Count was resurrected. She was kidnapped by a man who distinguished himself as such, after all. So they both can't afford to be distracted by each other and whatever complicated feelings they'd dug up and sprinkled into the wind.