Author's notes: My official debut in the Arrow fandom! This started as a "role reversal" prompt over on my tumblr, and snowballed into a much bigger thing than an one shot. Whoops. I hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Arrow.

Tech Support

(Five Times Oliver Queen Helped the Starling City Vigilante)

i.

"Hi."

Oliver briefly glances up from the lines of code on his screen, ready to tell whoever has come to bother him that if accounting hasn't figured out that paper jam on their own yet, they can go fuck themselves, but the words die on his lips when he realizes who exactly is standing in his doorway and why he should definitely not tell them to fuck off. The Sharpie he'd been chewing on thoughtfully for the last 10 minutes nearly drops out of his mouth in surprise.

He knows who she is immediately — how could he not, with her face plastered all over the news channels for the last three weeks and, oh, the tiny, inescapable fact that her last name is chiseled on the side of the building he works in? — but he's still can't believe she's here, in the doorway to his tiny office. She is not his standard visitor, and generally, none of the higher ups are at all inclined to visit him at bottom of Smoak Industries; he just comes to them when they call and fixes whatever inane problem they may have. In fact, most of them probably don't even know where his office is.

So how had the infamous Felicity Smoak found him and what in the hell did she want with him?

"Oliver Queen?" she asks a little hesitantly, approaching his desk. Her blonde hair is curled down around her shoulders, shining like spun gold, and she's wearing a blue mini dress that does her curves all sorts of favors. "The guys upstairs told me you're the one to talk to about tech issues? I am in the IT department… right?"

"Yes!" Oliver exclaims just a bit too sharply, recovering from his surprise. He takes the marker out of his mouth and sets it aside, trying to recover his long lost cool. "Sorry, yes to both questions. I'm Oliver and this is the IT department. I didn't realize you worked here, Ms. Smoak."

Felicity smiles at him, as if she's used to flustering people with her general presence — and who is he kidding, of course she is. She's Felicity Smoak, heiress to a top Fortune 500 company and former queen of the spoiled, drunk rich kids of the world, famous only for being, well, rich and drunk. Now, she's famous for recently being rescued from a deserted island after being presumed dead in the North China Sea for the last five years. She's probably flustered people left and right since she got home, and Oliver's only the most recent victim.

"Oh, I don't work here, thank god. I just need to use some good ol' family connections," she says, pausing in front of his desk. Oliver narrows his eyes at this, not liking where this conversation is headed. "And you can call me Felicity, if you like. Ms. Smoak's my mother's name."

"But she's dead," he blurts out before he can stop himself. He curses internally; he's always had a problem with running his mouth and Felicity's arched eyebrow indicates he needs to say something to make up for it, fast, "I mean, she drowned! And you… you didn't, obviously, which is why you're here. In my office. Listening to me make a complete ass out of myself. Which is what I will stop doing here in just a few seconds, I promise."

Felicity's eyebrow goes down and her flirtatious smile doesn't waiver much, but her eyes darken as she studies him. "Do you always babble this much, Mr. Queen?"

"Not always, but enough to get me in trouble," he says with a long suffering sigh. He offers her his best apologetic smile, and adjusts the suspender slowly making its way off his right shoulder. "You have now discovered why I lurk in the dungeons of Smoak Industries with only computers for friends. Try not to use it against me."

"I make no promises," Felicity says, opening up her bag and pulling out her laptop. "Anyway, I heard you're a veritable genius with these things, and I definitely need your help. You won't believe what I did to this!"

Oliver has worked with computers since he was in middle school, and knows when a gorgeous woman is trying to use him for free tech support. He'd figured Felicity out right away — because why else would she be here? — but she'd startled him straight out of his usual grumpy attitude the minute she'd walked in the door and it's taking him longer than he likes to recover it. He does not appreciate being taken advantage of.

He has half of mind to tell her that he was simply tech support for Smoak Industries employees only and to come back when she actually has a job here. He nearly suggests she take her undoubtedly vodka soaked notebook to BestBuy, as the last thing he had time for today was helping her recover her iTunes library, but then he catches a good look of the laptop in question and any annoyance at her is dismissed.

"Jesus, what did you do, drop it in the middle of a war zone?" he exclaims, reaching for the computer and practically snatching it out of her hands.

"I was having coffee at my favorite shop," Felicity says casually, but Oliver hears the careful, rehearsed lie in her voice, "And I spilled a latte on it."

Oliver rolls the laptop over in his hands, and looks back up at her in disbelief. Will he get fired if he calls bullshit on his boss's daughter? Because he's seen damage like this before and it certainly isn't caused by Starbucks's best blend.

"Really?" he says skeptically, pointing at the case of the ruined laptop, "Because these look a lot like bullet holes."

Felicity freezes for just a moment, just long enough for Oliver to see her ditzy blonde act crack and for him to catch a glimpse of something else — something wickedly intelligent, cunning, and fierce — lurking underneath. She recovers herself within seconds, and then she's leaning over his desk, purposefully giving him a good view of her cleavage, and tossing her hair over her shoulder flirtatiously. She's trying to distract him and maybe it would have worked if she had actually spilled a latte on her computer, but not with this. Just what doesn't she want him to know?

Oliver likes mysteries, likes following information trails back to their source, and once he's been put on one, there are very fews things that can get him off track. It's what makes him a world class hacker, although if she asks about that particular skill, he'll deny it — he would, after all, like to keep his job.

"My coffee shop's in a bad neighborhood," she confides with a girlish giggle. "My bodyguard hates that I go there, but there's a really cute barista that I just have to talk to, you know? It's been a longtime since I've had some …ah, eye candy."

"Mhmmm."

He could still tell her no, tell her to take her laptop to some other tech she can distract with flirtation and her pretty smiles, but he won't. He could call her on her blatant lie and demand to know how she'd really damaged the thing, but he won't. He wants to know what's on the bullet ridden laptop just as badly as she does, wants to see her fierce other side again, and he won't get that if he demeans and pushes her. If he lets her walk out that door now, she won't be coming back and he won't get his answers.

So Oliver lets her sweat out her lie for a few beats, holding her gaze and making sure she knows he doesn't believe her at all, before he lets out a dramatic sigh, setting the computer down and opening it up. He notices Felicity's posture relax slightly out of the corner of his eye as he reaches for some connector cables.

"All right, I'll see what I can do for you. Luckily, it doesn't look like the hard drive was damaged much by your… latte," he says, adjusting his suspenders again and rotating his neck, "Pull up a chair, Felicity. You might be here for a while."

Few things can distract Oliver Queen from a mystery, and Felicity Smoak in her blue mini dress is not one of them. Especially not when she's just revealed she could be the most intriguing mystery of them all.