#anna loring

The Cheese Festival

Summary: Ray Palmer invites the Queens to his home up on the mountains to do some business. The town is having their annual Cheese Festival and they have booked a double room suite but unknown to Oliver and Felicity, Thea cancels and all rentals are booked solid she even has Ray and his fiancé Anne agreeing to happily house them for a few nights.

Prompt: Only one bed/hammock- Olicity summer sizzler bingo card 1

Notes:Part 4 of the the Who Knew series.

snippet:

After the sweet introduction and walking around the wooden estate Oliver really thickly expressing his adoration for his wife in front of Ray and Anne clearly making a show of holding his wife’s hand. Felicity pulling it from him every time their hosts look away. Her glances at him clearly saying ‘cut it out’ but he is not having any of that. Oliver knows it is childish and one of the things she expressed him not to do.

She just wants him to behave well that wasn’t in his new list he had laid out in a green notebook he’s been keeping. He’s also a part of this marriage and if she can be fine and dandy playing house with him, when he has a chance, he’ll dig at her. Have her suffer just a tad because being platonic in this relationship is killing him.

“What kind of tea is hard to swallow?” Oliver doesn’t even care to answer as he waits for the answer Ray will provide soon enough. “Reality.”

Oliver keeps following Ray’s bad jokes in-between their guy conversation and when he gets to this latest one Oliver excuses himself to use the lavatory. Pushing himself to be a gracious guest and laugh at the lame joke. “Ha, that is a different kind of tea.”

“I know right.” Ray laughs and just turns to where the ladies are talking.

Oliver happily closes the door behind him and just looks up at the ceiling. He is not going to survive this encounter if this small chit-chat is the preview. He just wants to run around the grounds maybe find a gym for some weights and spend maybe a few hours at most with these hippy people. They are going to go out and look at cheese later. Why does his life suck so bad? He sighs and goes about relieving himself.

“Go big or go home,” is his motto. In regards to most things, but especially to romance. He’s not one to do things by half measures. He’s either all in, or not interested. 

It gets to be a bit…too much for some people. Overwhelming. To the point where, when he gets together with Kendra, he’s figured out how to tone it down a bit. She doesn’t want big gestures, she tells him, so he bites his lip and doesn’t fill her room with flowers. 

Felicity had appreciated…some of it. The time he bought out the entire fancy restaurant in Central City, not so much. She, at least, appreciated the flowers. And the chocolates, especially the chocolates. 

Anna had loved all of it, and responded with gestures that were just as grand, and Ray loved it. Loved her. 

Really, what Ray needs is someone with just as much flair, just as much love for over-the-top gestures, who takes just as much joy in dramatic expressions of affection. 

(I can do both.)

When he was young, happiness was something Ray felt like he needed to earn. Being lonely was not happiness, that much he’s certain. And so he worked, and worked, and worked, until he pulled himself out of his isolated childhood.

But it wasn’t until he was 30, when he met Anna, that he truly felt he knew exactly what happiness was.

Anna was passionate, kind, a bit hotheaded, stubborn, sometimes forgetful, plump, and a terrible, terrible cook (they used to joke that between the two of them, they’d give their child food poisoning before they could learn their first word). She was perfect, and Ray was in love. And Anna returned that love, just as much, just as deep, and it was the best feeling in the world.

They dated for two years, two of the best years of Ray’s life, and finally got engaged in early 2014. And Ray had felt like he’d done it, he’d gotten there, he at last had taken a step through the threshold of happiness, and he couldn’t wait to see where he and Anna were headed next.

He never expected it all to be so violently ripped away from him, two months later.

Losing Anna was losing a part of his soul. It hurt, it hurt, and suddenly happiness wasn’t within reach anymore. It was lost the moment Anna died, somewhere high above the abyss he’d fallen into. So he stopped thinking about it, placed it in the very back of his mind. It was unattainable, and Ray made peace with that.

Time went on, and more people entered into Ray’s life. Felicity, Kendra, almost Leonard, and while Ray loved them with all his heart, in his soul he never expected them to last, to stay. That’d be the good ending, the happy ending, and God knows Ray was never meant to head that way. He’d tried that, once, and he was pretty sure Anna would have preferred to still be alive.

Everyone leaves in the end. Ray loses them all, one way or another. He’s also pretty certain that that’s not how happiness works, either.

But then Leonard comes back.

He comes back, and Ray can’t believe it. Can’t believe this miracle, this second chance, this sheer improbable turn of events. Tentatively, Ray reaches out. Slowly, slowly, until Leonard responds, until they talk things out, until one night they’re wrapped around each other, holding on like their lives depend on it, and as they drift off into sleep together, Ray thinks maybe, maybe, happiness isn’t that far away after all.

Forgetting would be nice. Forgetting anything. 

Forgetting the way Anna looked, first thing in the morning, hair all tousled and eyes warm and sleepy. 

Forgetting the way Felicity touched him, soft and insistent, all at once. 

Forgetting Kendra’s smile, the press of her lips, the sound of her laugh. 

Forgetting Leonard’s smirk, the drawl behind his words, the intensity of his gaze.

Ray would rather root around in his brain for foggy memories, for the ghosts of the people he’s loved and lost. Some of them are ghosts, after all. 

But his memory is perfect, an iron trap, locking good and bad up tight together. He can see it all clearly like it’s in front of him, like it’s happening to him right now.