#queensgeek

“Scoot over.”

He does, unquestioningly,without quite taking the time to register why. This is the reason that whenFelicity drops down onto the couch and onto him, none too gently, he makes asurprised oof! noise.

She’s got a cushion andeverything; it’s tucked between her head and his leg and he’s left staring downat her, hands half-raised for lack of anything better to do with them, as shemakes herself comfortable with a sigh. Her shoes have been kicked off,somewhere, and her bare feet tuck themselves between the arm of the couch andthe cushion, the better to keep them warm.

   “ – comfortable?” he asks, dryly, when sheseems to have settled.

“Very,” she confirms. Hedrops a hand to her back, and she arches into the warmth of it, just afraction.

“At least one of us is.”

“Quit complaining,” shedemands. “I haven’t slept in two days.”

“I didn’t ask you to dothat,” he points out. “In my defense.”

She lets out a huff ofamusement and curls a little closer into his touch. Thumb rubs idle circlesagainst the slow rise and fall of her breath. The whole place seems to becreeping towards something restful and still.

“You never have to ask meto,” she says, sleepily.

His hand stills on herback. This close to sleep, there’s not enough presence of mind for Felicity toback-track and double-up, to negate her own sentences or to cross back andexplain herself. The declaration simply sits, feeling more than it is, insilence. After a second she makes an unhappy, insistent noise, and Oliverescapes the breathless moment to coax his hand back into the same soothingmovements.

You neverhave to ask me to.

Felicity drifts towardssleep. Oliver, for all his complaints, doesn’t shift a muscle – not when hisdiscomfort grows; not when muscles, robbed of freedom of movement, protest. Hesits, and he waits. He watches.

He’s been here for hours, with nothing but the rhythm of fists and feet and the sting of sweat in his eyes and the sound of rushing breath in his ears. He’s been past exhausted and moved into numb, and still he pushes screaming muscles harder, further.

It’s better than the alternative. Than stopping and thinking.

It’s Felicity’s words that finally pull him from this forced ocean of calm. His blows falter, trail off into silence. His head hangs. Breathless, dripping sweat, arms and legs trembling, he almost doesn’t turn.

And then, because it’s worth it -- because he needs to -- he does.

“Felicity.”

She stops a few steps away. Her head turns, just slightly, but she doesn’t face him. Behind her hair, her expression is half-hidden. Oliver thinks he can imagine it. Somewhere between troubled disappointment and unwilling pity.

“Don’t go.”

That surprises her toward an intake of breath, and she faces him properly. He shakes his head, searching for the words. Palms open, armour down. He shrugs, drops his head only to shake it again.

“Don’t go.”

“Oh, Oliver.”

If he’s expecting to find that imagined disappointment in her face, he doesn’t manage. There’s only something soft, something gentle, something that cares but doesn’t pity. She steps towards him, uncertain.

When he reaches out, she doesn’t shy away from him, though he’s hot and sweat has gathered at the small of his back, the hollow of his throat, the slope of stomach towards hips. She doesn’t shy away from him, though she knows what these hands have done.

Instead, she reaches up to cradle his head, to hold him as he clings to her.

     “I won’t go anywhere if you don’t want me to.”

It sits like a promise. He breathes it in, head bent low to press against the juncture of neck and shoulder. “I’ll stay.”

It’s a long silence that’s punctuated by his broken gratitude, dressed in the shame of needing someone so badly.

[ for @godforsakenthing & @queensgeek ]

It’s just lucky that they’re the same height.

“Uh.”

“...I don’t know how to play hard to get.”