#roliver

I’m ABSOLUTELY SCREAMING RIGHT NOW.

Ryan and Oliver ship it, I said what I said.

(Set around...idk, the early seasons, after Roy becomes Arsenal, but before he leaves in season....eh, whatever season that was. I’m not at all caught up.)

He's not sure whether it’s the fact that his phone is vibrating or  that it’s doing it in the preset pattern assigned to only one person that wakes him up. 

“You gotta be f’ck’n kidd’n me,” Roy mumbles to himself, reaching over towards the coffee table from where he’d apparently collapsed on his couch. He scowls at the too-bright numbers cheerfully telling him the time. “Better be godd’mn ‘mport’nt.”

“Hey, are you hungry?”

Oliver’s voice is alert, and more than a little breathless. If Roy had to guess, he’s either just finished a patrol or is in the middle of one. 

“It’s three ten in the goddamn morning,” Roy half-growls at the phone, putting it on speaker so he doesn’t have to exert the effort of actually holding it to his face, “on my night off.”

There’s a gentle rush of air and several metallic zip sounds in the background of the call—a grapnel arrow and Oliver swinging somewhere, probably—before there’s an unmistakable sound just outside Roy’s front door. Not over the call. It’s the sound of something human-sized hitting his landing, most likely in heavy boots. 

“I know, and I’m sorry,” Oliver’s voice is echoing slightly through his wall, and Roy briefly closes his eyes and prays to any deity that might be listening that he doesn’t murder someone in the next two minutes, “but I didn’t really want to eat alone, and—” 

His voice trails off, quiet for a moment, before he adds, so softly Roy almost misses it, “I thought you might want some company.”

Roy clamps his teeth over the “What I wanted was some sleep, asshole,” trying to claw its way up his throat. Swallows it down with a small force of will. Instead, he crawls out from under the hoodie he’d apparently been using as a blanket and pulls it on. Cracks his jaw on a soundless yawn that reduces his vision to slits as he scoops up his phone and plods through the front room on still-socked feet.

Oliver is standing on his stoop in full Arrow gear, phone to his ear, and looks almost startled when Roy actually opens the door. 

“Come in before the neighbors notice,” is all Roy tells him, tapping the End Call button and turning away from the door by way of invitation. When Oliver doesn’t move at first, Roy rolls his eyes and says, more forcefully, “In, Ollie. And shut the door behind you. I need to get pants."

The soft click of latch on frame is accompanied by silence. Oliver doesn't comment on the nickname, just like every other time Roy has let it slip out. Instead, he waits a beat before asking, “Does Big Belly Burger sound okay to you?”

~~

It takes Roy only a handful of moments to locate the collapsible bow he keeps hidden in his bedroom, right beside the bracer with a handful of arrows, grapnels, and flechettes hidden within. It takes him only a further moment to dig for a spare mask, in case they run into trouble and need the voice modulation tech Felicity had managed to cram into the mask’s lower rim. He still has no idea how that works, but he’s not about to question it. 

After that, his gear on and his hood up, it only takes them a few minutes to get to the nearest BBB. They touch down at the back of the building, carefully avoiding the man on a smoke break by the dumpster, and Oliver dutifully hands Roy a wad of cash. 

He stows his gear in his pockets, leaving the bow with Oliver, and walks around the building without asking for an order. Not like he needs to, anyway. Walks back out five minutes later carrying a bag with the Big Double, extra bacon, no ketchup or mayo, and extra fries. He has a milkshake sweating in his other hand, sucking on the straw with minimal results. 

“Did you get—” Oliver starts, before Roy digs into his hoodie pocket and pulls out a handful of mustard packets, dumping them into Oliver's palm.

Mustard. With fries. Roy almost shudders at the thought.

Five minutes grapneling finds them back at Roy's place. The couch he'd been using as a bed is serving its intended purpose, the two of them shoulder to shoulder as they eat. Their masks lie in a small pile of two on the coffee table, Oliver respectfully not putting his feet up even as Roy demonstrates no such compunctions. He's already shucked the jeans he'd pulled on, tossing them under the table.

Oliver lets Roy steal half his fries, and hasn't said a word as Roy dips then in the milkshake he'd gotten for himself. Roy, meanwhile, carefully does not say anything as Oliver rips open the mustard packets, adding one to his burger, and using the others to build a small mountain on the corner of his burger wrapper for dipping his fries.

They don't speak. There's a kind of silence that's descended over them that's not uncomfortable, but is instead familiar. Hundreds—if not thousands—of hours patrolling together mean that Roy can tell what Oliver's thinking just by the way he breathes, by the pattern his eyes make as they trace from one thing to the next. Just as many hours spent together outside of patrol—sparring, meditating, training, or otherwise—mean that Roy recognizes the little hitch to Oliver's breathing as meaning he's about to speak.

"Thank you."

It shouldn't surprise Roy. And yet, somehow, it does. Maybe it's the warm flutter in his chest. Or maybe it's the brush of knuckles against his own where he's holding the remenants of his shake.

"Are you going back out?" Roy asks, instead of saying all the other things scratching at his throat. He maybe feels a twinge at how needy the question had sounded, but the ache of weariness behind his eyelids is growing a bit too strong for him to truly give a shit. Besides, it's Ollie.

Roy watches as Oliver balls up his foil wrapper, carefully making sure the pieces of mustard packets are safely contained. He feels Oliver's shrug against his own shoulder.

"Probably. The city is never really safe."

"Right," Roy breathes, sighing through his nose. "Always more to do, right?"

Roy just hmmms in answer, fiddling with the zipper on his hoodie, before he sits up and tugs the red garment off. When he lays back, he twists until his feet are up on the couch, wrapping the hoodie around his shoulders as a blanket and using the hood as a pillow against Oliver's shoulder. If Oliver has any objections to the new position, he doesn't say them.

"Then I'm gonna try to get some actual goddamn sleep."

Roy huffs to himself. Tells himself he's probably imagining the fond-sounding, basso huh he hears through the ear in contact with Oliver.

"Goodnight, Ollie."

"Goodnight, Roy."

Just before falling asleep, Roy could swear he feels fingers carding through his short hair.

~~

When his phone alarm wakes him in the morning, Oliver is gone, and his place still smells like Big Belly Burger. But, Roy wakes covered, not in his hoodie, but in an actual blanket that smells faintly of Oliver. And, when he reaches for his phone to silence the screeching alarm, Roy finds a single green flechette, pointedly left on his coffee table.