QUEEN'S GAMBIT

[ text ] please never ask how I figured this out, but

“Five years, Queen.”

He points an accusing finger across the center of the seat, and has to stop himself from leaning over again before they pull out of the alley and onto the street proper. 

Dean’s always had a head for directions, give him a map and the sun and he’ll find his way anywhere. But Starling City is slipping into the short list of places like Lawrence and Sioux City, where he knows the street names and turns from memory, not from good sense. 

“Blizzard of Ozz came out in 1981.”

He slides fingers warmed by Oliver’s skin against the dial, turning up the heavy bass riff of I don’t know until it fills the car around them, intimate in the spaces where public decency and laws don’t allow. 

(This short drive is way too damn long.)

“No excuse for your crappy taste in music.”

It’s true; five years on the island doesn’t excuse the preceding clueless years he spent wrapped around supermodels, buying champagne so expensive that he could have instead fed a medium sized family for a month, and generally muscling his way into the magazine gossip columns.

He lets out a laugh, quirks his brows in acquiescence of Dean’s point.

The music seems to intertwine itself with the low rumble of the engine, so that Oliver feels rather than hears the music, carries it deep in his chest. He closes his eyes for a moment, lets it fill the hollow cavities of his bones, before he cracks one eye open to peer at Dean.

“Five years,” he agrees, and then, a deliberate beat --

                                                                   “ -- before I was born.”

The tease -- old man -- hangs between them, good-humoured and unspoken, for all that Dean himself could only have been two when the album came out. 

And because he’s impatient, and because he’s had to train himself not to be, he reaches out to slide a hand onto Dean’s thigh, not quite high enough to tempt a sudden car-crash. It’s part to tease, but part, too, because his self-imposed exile from this kind of easy intimacy is one of the harder parts about being who he is, doing what he does.

To reclaim it is addictive, breathtaking.

“Deal.” Oliver was abducted by aliens sometime between last night and right now.

 An apology and a reasonable truce? There can’t be any other explanation. The amused look she gives him probably spells out enough of those thoughts that she doesn’t have to say them out loud (and ruin the moment). She can find her filter sometimes.

“Does…that mean we get to meet him— with his clothes on, this time?” Probably not. “Do we get to know his name?” Which she will not use to look up this guy’s criminal history, obviously. She’d just rather not call him Showerman in her head. 

And now, for the grand finale…

“Does he know about your other half?”

Her face says enough that her lips don’t have to, and he fixes her with a stern sort of look, one eyebrow cocked, as if to say don’t make me regret this, Felicity. 

It is, apparently, too late that for that. At her onslaught of questions he lets out a huff of air, half annoyance and half amusement. Head shaking, he half turns away from her, before thinking better of it and facing her once more.

“No,” he says, firmly. Enunciates clearly, so that there’s no chance of her mistaking it for maybe, or sure, drop ‘round later. “And another no, for good measure. That’s not mine to share.” Dean is, after all, a private sort of guy - and with good reason. Oliver’s heard enough stories to guess what Felicity will find if she even so much as googles the name, let alone starts to run background checks.

And as for the last question --

           -- his hesitation is answer enough, and arrests his lie.

“He knows who I am.”

A true statement, and truer even than it might first appear.

The pen falls out of her mouth.

“…———did you just say you’re sorry?” This isn’t fair. She wasn’t recording, and there are no cameras around that could have immortalized this moment. Diggle is never going to believe that it happened.

Except that shouldn’t matter, because Oliver looks as awkward and uncomfortable as she’s never seen him, and yeah. Probably not the best time to make light of the situation, Felicity.

“Okay, no, wait—”

Felicity waves her hands in front of her face. Time out. Do over. 

“You don’t have to apologize.” An easy smile and a shrug. “It’s none of my business, for one thing, and I shouldn’t have just let myself in, for another.” She makes sure to meet his eyes now. “Just…maybe let me know if you’re taking the night off? I can keep an eye on things here for you, if you and uh…Showerman — decide to hang out again. And I can definitely make sure I don’t show up at your apartment and ruin the fun.”

She’s going to stop talking now, because her point has been made. Yeah.

“ -- well don’t get used to it.”

It’s a joke, the kind he’s capable of making, sometimes -- when he isn’t getting too caught up in something else, something serious, something that he thinks matters more. He smiles, an apologetic little thing, tucked away with a duck of his head as he raises a shoulder in uncertainty.

“Felicity.”

How many times has he said her name, just like that? A whole sentiment wrapped up in the syllables of it: calm down, stop talking, just listen. 

“I made it your business when I put you in the middle of it without warning.” It’s not the first time that he’s had Dean in there, and it’s not the last, but it is the first time that anyone else has turned up. Too comfortable in himself to much think about it, when he’s with Dean. Too busy revelling in the ability to be.

“And I gave you a key. It’s not like you broke in.” Another shrug, a hopeful look: truce. “You keep using it, and I’ll tell you when I’ve got -- company.” For all that he’d rather Dean she and Diggle didn’t have to wonder about this one -- about this relationship, about how long it will last, not quite understanding that this time, his violent, double life is no obstacle but rather a sort of common ground -- he respects them too much to lie outright to their faces. To claim Dean’s just a friend.

Doesn’t mean they’re going to braid each other’s hair and talk about love, though.

People like us. 

All his life, Dean had spent his time searching for people like him, wanting someone around who got it, who he didn’t have to make explanations with. But like everything else in his life, once he got what he thought he wanted, it wasn’t what he wanted at all. 

Oliver didn’t deserve this life, he didn’t deserve the road map of misery carved into his skin through burns and bullets and blunt force trauma. He deserved that pretty boy life that had been stolen from him in one night. 

“Yeah.”

He deserves more of an answer, but Dean’s never been much good at anything but coming up short. He thumbs the button at Oliver’s sleeve, tugging at the fabric for a moment before he smooths a callused palm along the other man’s neck, grounding them both in one long touch. 

The world would come crashing in soon enough. Maybe he could keep from screwing this up until it did. 

He stays there for a long moment. Revelling in the situation defused, in the slow return of unguarded peace, he closes his eyes and breathes in Dean -- smelling like Oliver’s soap and Oliver’s shower and Oliver’s linen -- with a heady satisfaction.

And then he pulls back, just a little, Dean’s hand still curled at his neck, so that their eyes meet. He looks serious; his expression indicates that he’s about to say something important.

     “ -- were you naked?”

Well, important to him. Firstly so that he can refine the mental image of Dean, at ease in his place, and secondly because the thought of Felicity coming face to face with a naked man where she least expects it is funny enough to chase off, for now, the worries about what she might think, and how she might react.

for @godforsakenthing, ft. a poor rendition of @ashxnfeathers muse.

“It’s like there’s a whole friggin’ network of them.” Dean weighs down a corner of the map with half-empty beer bottle, smoothing it out as fingers trace red that spread out at odd and violent angles across neat and ordered city streets. “What happened to ‘solitary’?”

If Sam has an answer, he doesn’t get the chance to voice it.

“It’s not them you have to worry about.”

Dean just about loses a year off his life. He knows that voice – or rather, he knows the real voice behind that one. Which is why he knows exactly what to expect when he turns, hand pressed to his jack-rabbit heart.

Still, it’s surreal.

There is a moment, a long one, where the air between them crackles with electricity. Standing at the edge of a storm, and Dean swears he can hear the freight train wail of a tornado building in his ears. Because Oliver’s eyes have that dangerous stillness that comes before all hell breaks loose. 

Dean stiffens beneath that touch, mental inventory looking for weapons that aren’t in hand, and it speaks more to this situation than any words that might ever trip off of his tongue. 

His gun is in the glove box, the knife from his boot tucked under “his” side of the mattress. Close, but out of sight. 

Just in case. 

The moment breaks, and something inside of Dean breaks too. 

“People like me don’t get this.”

Those ragged parts of his ego are soothed at the words, the way he hears family in the spaces between the words when Oliver talks about Felicity. He thinks of Cas, of Sammy, Kevin and Charlie. He gets it. 

They don’t do this in the daylight. This is dark of night talk, and Dean’s gaze is skating between Oliver and the floor in front of his feet. 

How many times has one of them woken up breathless and petrified? When it’s Dean, Oliver soothes him with reality, with fact. You’re in my apartment. Your shoes are under the bed. Your shirt is on my couch. Tiny pinpricks of real that ground him in the moment. 

All Dean has ever been able to give is the lullaby of his voice and his hands, strumming out something like safety with breaths of you’re okay, I got you against his skin. 

“They don’t get happy.”

   “People like us.”

A soft, slow, sad correction. A reminder: he understands. He is the same. Still, something meant for a smile tugs at one corner of his mouth. A hand reaches out -- gentle, this time, its intention to soothe and not to force. Fingers splay wide across Dean’s chest, skate down ribs to hip.

This time, when he moves into Dean’s space, it’s with head curled down to breathe warmth across Dean’s neck, and no edge of danger save for that of their vulnerability. 

This can’t last forever.      (They’d never figured it would.)             This can’t be kept.                     (They’re neither of them the keeping kind.)                               This is oxymoronic.                                        (This is everything it cannot be.)

The world is going to try hard enough to fuck this up for both of them. Oliver’s eager not to give it any help; determined not to let an inch slip. He’s holding on tightly to it. He’ll fight, if needs be. And yet, here he stands, in this very room, and tells himself it’s just this or just that. Just, just, just. Only, only, only.

@permortempatris

Why, no, she is not avoiding eye contact while she trolls through every mainframe available for villainous activity. 

On a slow night.

A very slow night.

Seriously, where are all the crazy colorful miscreants when you need them? God! This is ridiculous. What happened to all the criminals in this town?

Doesn’t matter. Even if they’re taking a smoke break, Felicity is going to find them.

And continue to avoid eye contact.

Felicity’s avoiding him.

She’s got every reason, to be fair. Oliver can tell them that he was hanging out with an old friend until his breath runs out; Felicity’s not an idiot. She’d run into a freshly showered, mostly naked guy hanging out at his place, their clothes strewn and entangled together across the couch. Not really just-hanging-out sort of behaviour.

And he’s capable of listening to advice, sometimes. Sometimes.

      “Sorry.” 

Dean needs a drink something fierce. 

“It’s not a crime.” Agitation meets agitation, and Dean’s hackles are raising in response to the shift in Oliver’s tone, in the way he’s holding himself. Fine, the guy wanted to get mad?

Dean could get mad.

“But your girlfriend came in here and found me naked in your goddamned apartment and looked pretty surprised about it.”

He’s up and out of the chair, hands clenched into loose fists at his side. “All I’m saying is that if you don’t want people knowing what queer shit you get up to behind closed doors, then maybe you should stop handing out keys to people who might get a glimpse of your dirty laundry.”

And damned if he can’t see his old man behind his eyes, shaking his head in disappointment. 

It’s funny how he can still hear I raised you better than this in the back of his head, even though his Dad has been dead for years. 

I couldn’t do any of this without her. 

It lands like a cheap shot to the liver, low and fast and kicking the breath right out of him. 

“Whatever. I’m out of here. I got a case I should be working on anyway, instead of playing house with you.”

Oliver’s hand drags across his mouth in frustration, the last remnants of a peaceful solution dissipating like just so much mist. Something’s rising in his blood -- an anger that’s borne more of hurt than anything else. A selfish sort of anger, and he’s disturbed to find that even when they’re fighting, it feels like indulgence.

It’s the whatever that gets him, casualness tossed out like a hand grenade. He snaps.

Without quite meaning to, he’s got a hold on Dean’s arm, gripping hard enough to keep him from moving. Swinging into the other man’s space, he’s there and he’s unavoidable, and he’s dangerous. Here’s the man who came off the island. Here’s the man those scars have made.

He stays there for a full three seconds, until he’s forced to admit that he doesn’t want to do this, to be this -- not with Dean. Something in him softens from the tempered edge of anger. He’s just Ollie once more.

“She’s not my girlfriend.” He sounds tired, all of a sudden. “She’s my team, Dean. She was one of the first to know what I was, and she’s kept that secret even when it might kill her.”

“I couldn’t do this without her. She’s saved my life a dozen times over. Every time I save this city, she saves it too. Without her, the Green Arrow would be nothing.” There. The truth, for Dean to do with as he sees fit. He drops his hand, steps back.

“I’m not playing at anything.” If Dean wants to go... well. Who’s Oliver to stop him? “House or otherwise. I’m here because I want to be here. With you.” 

The words are unbearably frank; how long since he felt this vulnerable.

                          “So -- why are you here?”

That pause gives him enough time to think of about ten worst case scenarios, and each one is worse than the last. Girlfriend. Wife. Love of my life. Oliver pauses and Dean swears he can feel his stomach shrivel up and lodge itself in his throat. 

“Tech support.” 

Does he have to call bullshit? Because that sounds pretty much like bullshit to him.

“Look. You don’t owe me any explanation or anything.”

He holds a hand up, and it feels like a retreat, like the worst possible thing to do, but Dean’s got his back to the wall here and he needs to cut and run before it gets too obvious that he’s…invested. 

“I’m just letting you know she saw me in here. So if you need to come up with something to tell people, give me the heads up and I’ll rock your alibi or something.”

If you need me to lie about what this is, just tell me. 

This has spiralled too far out of control too quickly.

Normally, he would be quick to pull back those last vestiges of control, to shore them up with foundations of his own determination, his own preparedness, his own firmness. Here, now, he’s not determined or prepared or firm -- he’s reeling still from the whiplash-change from the peace of untroubled existence to... this.

“Alibi? I don’t know about you, but I really wasn’t considering this a crime.”

Here’s the defensiveness, rapidly rising; Oliver is stung by the assumption, hurt by the ease with which Dean proposes to negate all this. It manifests itself in squared shoulders and tight muscles and that sharpness his jaw takes on when it’s clenched.

     “She monitors my systems.” Way to make it sound less suspicious, Ollie. “My computer systems. She hacks and she keeps an eye on me, and the bad guys, and everything in between.”

The t-shirt is thin, well worn and well loved, always at the top of the pile, and it stretches across Oliver’s shoulders in a way Dean has no shame in soaking up. Who doesn’t like seeing someone else look so damn good in their clothes?

He says nothing, drumming his fingers on the roof of the Impala until Oliver slides into the passenger seat. Then Dean is dropping behind the wheel, his baby purring to life under his fingers. 

This is one of those things that’s just supposed to be fun. A bizarre one time hook up that became two times, and three, and four and…

The leather seat squeaks as he slides across the bench, a hand warm on Oliver’s hip as he leans into a kiss, slow and lazy and the kind of bone marrow deep territorial that he can’t think about or it’ll drive him to drinking. 

Fingers feather against the soft cotton, and Dean lingers in that space for a moment before he clears his throat, turning up the radio and getting his hands back on the wheel.

“Yeah, I do.”

There’s a smile teasing itself out across his lips as he watches Dean coax the car to life. He continues his staring -- unaffected, knowing -- even as Dean moves towards him, and when the kiss comes, the smile is still pressed against his teeth.

It’s lethargic and it’s slow-soft, like the quiet spread of summer sun across cool skin. He basks.

Whether intended or not, he chases the retreat of Dean’s lips when they go, before he falls back against the seat in defeat, thwarted. He can be patient, when needs must; it’s not a long drive. His fingers drum against his thigh, vaguely in time to the music that he’s not familiar with.

@permortempatris

“So who’s the hot blonde?”

This definitely feels like an ambush, even as much as he’s trying not to make it. (Dean’s fully clothed now, boots on and up on the table, prepared to hit the road, to be told to get scarce and never come back.)

“Because she got an eyeful when I got out of the shower earlier.”

Yeah. Oliver clocks the boots, the keys in the pocket like they’ve just been stuffed there, as though they might have been tangled in fingers only seconds before. He clocks the slight tension, too, the defensive-come-offensive challenge to the words that’s not all that well concealed.

           Shit. He’s known a few blondes in his time, many of them hot, but really, there’s only one these days -- and there’s certainly only one who’s free to come and go as she pleases.

“Felicity’s my...”

It’s a terrible time for words to fail him. But it’s difficult to define what Felicity is to him, and every phrase he thinks of sounds more euphemistic than the last.

“Felicity mentioned you had a guest tonight. I figured someone should be manning the police channels, just in case.”

The chastising hangs more heavily on Felicity than it does Oliver taking the night off. John understands, he’s a man, they have needs. But Oliver wasn’t exactly being discreet here. 

He cocks a brow, leaning back in the chair. 

“So are you going to tell me about it, or do I have to get Felicity to do it?”

There’s enough of the evening’s goodwill left over to draw an amused huff of air from his lips, any annoyance little more than perfunctory. “You two spying on me now, Dig?”

Well, Felicity might be -- unintentionally, at least. There’s a twinge of guilt, there, tempered by the part of himself that’s convinced that Felicity fell out of her feelings for him a long time ago. She’s a good woman -- honest and kind and loyal -- and he’s not always those things. Can’t afford to be. She may believe in him for what he does, but not who he is.

At least, that’s what he tells himself.

“I don’t hover.” It reminds him all too much of another conversation, years ago. ‘I’m not here to perch on your shoulder’. Castiel is still a soldier, despite everything that’s happened. He may not follow Heaven’s orders anymore — but he will follow Dean.

“You won’t know I’m there.” He has no intention of remaining visible while he keeps an eye on Oliver. 

He’s tempted to put up more a fight; the only thing that stops him is the fact that it’s Dean who’d sent him -- the very best of selfish intentions. Though he might not realise it, they share a loyalty that lends to the stubbornness of each. Looking physically pained to do it, he gives in to the compromise.

“Yeah?”

Fondness sits low and warm in his belly, watching Oliver smack a hand against his baby. It’s a familiarity thing and he’s greedy with it, with the fact that he’s here and they’re them and no demon or monster is going to swoop in and try to take it from him. 

“Then we’d better get out of here.”

We. 

Dean clears his throat and gestures to the trunk. “There’s a change of clothes back there if you don’t want to ride shotgun in your kink suit.”

Let it be known that Dean Winchester has no problem with the kink suit. But it’s pretty damn conspicuous and there are enough streetlights and stop signs between here and Oliver’s apartment that someone could catch sight of him along the way. 

(It doesn’t cross his mind that the Green Arrow might want to get back to his place any other way.)

“Just don’t drive off with it.”

Truth told, his bike is stashed around the corner. That’s how he got here, and that’s how he’d been planning on getting back, but he doesn’t even bother to raise the fact. Instead, he circles around to the back of the car and pops the trunk, un-self-conscious as he peels himself out of the hood.

Dean has seen his scars. Dean even knows about the stories behind them all, pretty much, though they’ve never run through a catalogue of them, exactly. He pulls out a t-shirt -- grey and crumpled and probably clean, save for the faint smell of guns and metal that must linger around it.

He doesn’t bother with the pants, the boots. They’re only driving. The trunk is slammed shut, and soon enough the passenger door is opened, Ollie swinging himself in with a hand on the roof above him to steady himself.