Arrow

by Bre (dust2dust34)

Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Arrow.
Rating: T
Author's Notes: I need a place to write the random Olicity-ness in my head while I write my first Olicity multi-chapter. It's become consuming in a bad way, and so this is my way of stepping out of it. These will include everything from drabbles to ficlets to short stories, depending on length.

Summary: AU, one-shot. Felicity and Thea go into a tattoo shop. (Based on a recent tattoo text post on Tumblr, and on a scene from a romance novel I read once upon a time. Because apparently that's my life: tattoos and fictional romance.)

Soft chatter and a very distinct buzzing noise filled her ears, making her skin feel extra tight and kind of itchy. The buzzing stopped and started intermittently, without any real pattern, and she had to wonder how that must feel, a bunch of needles stabbing into your skin over and over and over again… It was making her jumpy.

They'd already filled out all the paperwork, had their ID's checked and now they were just… waiting.

The random sound of Sin flipping through a magazine was putting her even more on edge. The barely legal teenager sat at the heavily-stickered-and-drawing-covered desk, fingers tapping, looking like sitting in a place where people came in to have something permanently etched into their skin was the most boring place in the world.

She could not be any more wrong.

Felicity Smoak stared at the wall, eyes darting everywhere, unable to find one thing to focus on.

The green neon sign in the window - "Green Arrow Tattoo & Piercing" - gave all the drawings an unearthly glow, highlighting all the colors and the greyscale and the tribals and the flowers and the dragons and the…

She blinked. The entire wall felt like it was coming to life, forcing a huge, very permanent life decision on her.

"I change my mind," she blurted.

Thea Queen sighed loudly. "This is the fourth time, 'Lis. You're freaking out."

"What if I don't like flowers in five years? What if I don't like the color blue? What if it isn't done right, or what if I get really fat and it stretches and then I lose all the weight and it's a saggy flower?" Felicity pointed at each picture as she talked, "Or a saggy dragon, or heart, or knife, or knife in a heart, or moon or sun, or knife in a moon, and wow, there is a definite theme with these, isn't there?"

Thea touched Felicity's shoulder and leaned in. "You're not getting a tattoo, Felicity."

"But this was supposed to be our rebellious college graduation gift to ourselves."

"That's what yours was," Thea pointed out. "Mine is some of that, some I like sunflowers, and some I want to see my mother's face when I show her."

"She will kill you."

"I know she will. You wanna switch moms?"

Felicity snorted. "Donna Smoak would definitely let out a loud, 'Oh my god, so cute!' if I ever did get a tattoo. She will with you too. And then she'll hug you. And possibly ask if you want to get matching ones."

"Yeah, I love your mom." Thea shrugged. "So I'll show her and we just won't mention any of this to Moira. Or we'll show her your very tattoo-less skin to take the attention off me."

"That is a great plan." Felicity hooked her arm with Thea's. "I see that going over very well."

The sound of movement behind a large partition wall caught their attention and they turned in unison as a young man stepped out, staring at a new watercolor cityscape across his inner forearm, followed by…

"Oh crap," Thea whispered. "He wasn't supposed to be here today."

Felicity's heart skipped a couple - or a lot - of beats as she watched Oliver Queen follow him out, sidling up next to Sin. He reached under the desk and pulled out a box full of tiny sample tubes of A&D as he said, "Put it on every couple of hours. Don't put too much on though, don't glob it on there, it can pull some of the ink out. Keep it out of the sun and…"

Felicity had first met Thea when she started MIT.

She had been there on a full scholarship, eager to earn her way out of her Vegas background and the perpetual smell of old sweat and fried food that had developed a permanent residence in her skin and hair from years of waitressing during high school. Thea had been there as a last ditch effort by her parents to force her to focus on something - anything - that would keep her out of the dangerous world of the Glades in her hometown of Starling City.

Felicity hadn't really know what the heck the Glades were - her mind had immediately jumped to a bunch of giant air fresheners as houses - or what Thea had gotten into when she had been there, but she had recognized the classic signs of someone who was lost and anchorless in a sea of despair. They were a pretty frequent sight in Las Vegas.

Somehow Thea and Felicity had been put in the same dorm, assigned to each other as roommates, and they had sparked a connection that had managed to keep Thea in for one painfully bad semester before Felicity found out why Thea was the way she was - and she only found out because the very reason for it appeared out of the blue and at their dorm room with a bundle of crappy flowers on Thursday morning.

Oliver had disappeared five years previous - completely disappeared. One day he was there, the next he wasn't. There were rumors that he had joined the military, that someone had kidnapped him, that his parents had gotten sick of his antics and shoved him off to another country for penance. There were even rumors he had died and the family was covering it up because it was a scandalous story. Even Felicity, all the way over in Vegas, had heard about the crazy stuff he had done before he'd vanished from the public eye.

Thea hadn't taken it well. From the little tidbits Felicity had managed to gather, they had had a connection, and when he left? It took about a year before that tethered connection drove Thea over the edge and she spent the subsequent years in a very dark place.

But the second he had come back - after the initial pushing him away again, getting angry, letting her grades tank… Thea had gotten better. So much better. She'd become a different Thea, and Felicity had reaped the benefits of it.

And by osmosis along the way, she'd seen the same effect on Oliver.

Well, the few times she saw him that is.

It had taken only three incredibly horrifying and awkward encounters with what she had immediately deemed as one of the most gorgeous men she'd ever set eyes on to know that she really should not be around Oliver Queen at all. Ever. Never ever.

Felicity felt the hot prickle of a blush climbing up her neck and spreading across her face as she remembered the few times they had spent more than five minutes together, alone. It was different when there were other people around, she could use them as shields and deflecting mechanisms, especially when she went to the Queen mansion for dinners or for the huge parties she somehow always ended up at despite her protestations.

In fact, the last time she had ended up alone with him without a buffer had been at the Christmas party last year, in one of the upstairs hallways.

He was always so nice, not laughing when she shoved her foot in her mouth or looking annoyed when she couldn't keep her lips glued together. He would give her this smile, a smile that sent a swarm of chills racing up and down her spine and left her feeling like her heart was pumping pure adrenaline instead of just blood.

Her crush on him had been instantaneous, from the second she had gone to lunch with them in the months after his return. It had started out so innocently and then it blew up in her face with a spontaneous smile and breathy chuckle when she blurted how much she noticed when he said he was pretty careful about what he put in his body.

That hadn't been the embarrassing part - the embarrassing part had been when she'd talked about what she put in her body, and how certain parts hadn't had anything put in them for a while, and oh god, she wanted to die from humiliation all over again because who actually talked about that in mixed company?

Just thinking about the way he'd pinched his lips to keep from laughing out loud and Thea staring at her…

Thankfully a man with a really mysterious past who ran a successful tattoo shop in the dead center of the Glades didn't come around too often, especially when Boston wasn't exactly a car drive away, and thankfully her study load at MIT had been heavy. So when he was there, she always begged off and avoided the embarrassment like a skilled ninja.

He wasn't supposed to be here tonight.

Thea just had to pick her brother's tattoo shop, didn't she?

Oliver stopped talking when he finally noticed them.

"Sin will get you the instruction sheet and take care of payment." Oliver murmured a figure to Sin before he offered the kid a friendly smile - one that even Felicity knew was the official Oliver Queen persona and not the man who had come back from his five years of wherever-the-heck-he'd-been - and shook his hand. "Thanks, man."

"No, thank you, dude, this looks amazing."

"I'm glad you like it."

When he looked at Thea again, every inch of congeniality disappeared as he made his way over to them.

"No," he said by way of greeting, shaking his head. "Absolutely not, get out."

Thea smiled thinly. "Sorry, Ollie, I kind of passed that part of being the little sister where you get to order me around a couple years ago." The edge of bitterness wasn't missed by anyone - so maybe Thea wasn't all the way over Oliver's disappearing-reappearing thing. Might have to do with the fact that he hadn't told anyone a thing about where he'd been or what had happened.

Or why he'd come back.

Or why out of all the things a billionaire heir could do, he opened a tattoo shop.

In the middle of the scariest part of Starling City.

Did he even have tattoos?

"You're not getting a tattoo in my shop, Speedy," he said, deliberately emphasizing the nickname she hated. "I don't think you realize what mom would do to me."

"She'll kill you."

"Yeahuh," Oliver said, nodding his head, his eyes wide and slightly shiny in a really terrifyingly menacing way.

Felicity felt Thea's arm tighten where they were linked and she involuntarily stepped closer to her friend. Despite how much Thea wanted everyone to think to the contrary, she knew she wasn't completely over the five years Oliver had been away; there were large parts of her that were still cut off from everyone, including her, mostly because Oliver was still cut off.

It usually came out when he tried to pull the big brother card. Like right now.

He pointed to the door. "Go."

"No. I already have it picked out, I already signed the sheet and my best friend is here. Do you know how rarely we get to see each other?"

Felicity gave her a side eye. By that she meant they no longer lived together, but that didn't mean they didn't see each other for breakfast every morning in the little breakfast nook of Queen Consolidated where Felicity had landed a job in the IT department or every other night for dinner or all day on Saturdays, which had been deemed Spa Day.

Oliver let out an agitated sigh, glaring a hole into Thea's face before he looked at Felicity. She desperately tried to ignore how her stomach bottomed out, especially when the ice in his eyes melted slightly, his face relaxing.

"Felicity," he said softly, offering her a warm smile. Well, a warmer smile than what he had just given his sister.

"Oliver," she replied, her voice coming out croaky. She cleared her throat. "Hi."

"Hi." He lingered for a second, just looking at her - Felicity fought the urge to cover her face because what if she had a pimple on her forehead? - when he said, "You're… are you getting a tattoo?"

"Yes," Felicity answered automatically before realizing what she said, just as Thea jerked to look at her too. "No! I mean no, no I'm not getting a tattoo. No."

"So no then?" Thea asked sarcastically and Felicity shot her a look.

"They're just so… permanent," she said lamely.

"Yes," Oliver said, looking at his sister. "They are. And you're not getting one."

"I'm 23, Ollie."

"Who in the hell actually agreed to this?" Oliver bit out just as Roy Harper came from the back. His model-chiseled face was covered in barely concealed excitement and joy, but it immediately melted away when he saw Oliver.

"Roy did," Thea said gleefully, dropping Felicity's arm and moving towards him.

The look Oliver sent Roy was enough to set the entire building on fire and Roy held his hands up in supplication. "She said you knew about this, boss."

"He does know about it," Thea supplied and she was already pushing him into the back before any of them could say another word. Felicity heard Thea say, "And thanks for telling me he was going to be here, by the way," and Roy's sarcastic response, "What am I, the princess' personal secretary?"

And then it was just her and Oliver.

Felicity wanted to rewind time and, instead of keeping herself planted in the same spot like a stupid gnome statue, follow Thea into the back. Instead she shoved her hands into her jacket pockets, watching Oliver growl something under his breath before scrubbing his hands up his face and over his closely-sheared skull.

Not that she noticed things like that. Or the way the sweater he wore did a great job - and when she said great, she meant great job - of accenting his arms and the V-neck collar looked like it had been specifically designed for this man's neck and shoulders. What an amazing thing the V-neck collar was, it was like an arrow highlighting everything good and pointing down to…

"Felicity?"

"What? Nothing!" Felicity's eyes flew to Oliver's face and she saw that stupid smile on his face again, which meant he'd caught her staring. Her face was on fire. Somehow her face was always on fire around him. She bit her lips and gave him a tight smile. "Hi."

"Hi," he said. The smile turned into a full-blown grin for a split second, leaving her slightly dazzled - honestly, who was dazzled by something as ridiculous as teeth? - before he pointed over his shoulder. "You can go back there, if you want."

"Oh, okay, good." She didn't move and that dumb smile didn't budge an inch on his face. "I'll just go… there. Then."

"Okay."

"Okay. Then."

Felicity made a wide berth around him, eyes averted, putting this down as her fourth wonderfully awkward Oliver Queen encounter. Hopefully it would be a decade before she added a fifth one.

The flower Thea was getting was wonderfully small and tasteful, but that didn't mean the tattoo was going very quickly.

Roy was taking his sweet freaking time, chit-chatting and giggling and being so cutesy-cute that Felicity had to step away. It was an amazing feat on his part considering the object of his infatuation's brother was literally three feet away from him, perfecting his dagger stare on the back of Roy's head.

And her needing to escape had nothing to do with the fact that when she glanced at Oliver, his eyes also happened to be on her at the same time.

Hello, butterflies, get the hell out.

Felicity wondered when she had gained the ability to actually feel someone's eyes on her. This was the super-aware phase of the crush - she had spent some time thinking on it. She had an overly-developed awareness of Oliver Queen, and thus she continued to convince herself he shared the same awareness.

She could only imagine what he was thinking. Maybe he was upset with he for letting Thea come here, maybe she really did have a pimple on her forehead that had grown an arm and was waving at him, maybe her glasses were doing the slightly crooked thing they had a tendency to do for which she had grown a wicked complex about since her ex-boyfriend had mentioned it.

Whoever decided on the word "crush" had been wicked accurate.

Felicity wandered around.

It was late, Sin having gone home after their last customer had left, leaving something of the rock music genre playing on low volume in the background. The shop was big, bigger than it looked from the outside; it had several separate bays, each covered in drawings and sketches that were specific to each artist. It was impressive, from a creative point of view, and she had to marvel at the skill it took to draw with needles on someone's skin.

Honestly, it was like magic.

"Magic, huh?"

Felicity yelped, spinning around, hand plastered to her chest to see Oliver standing right at her back. His hands were in his pant pockets, making his biceps do a ridiculously attractive bulging thing, and he was leaning around her to see what she was looking at. She didn't realize she had painted herself into one of the corner bays where she had been staring at a selection of creepy troll drawings until she saw she had no exits except for the one behind Oliver.

Oliver had always been huge in that endearing man way of his, but now he really seemed to take up all the available space around her, in the room, in the building, in the city, in the freaking air molecules…

"Sorry. I didn't meant to scare you."

"No, it's okay, I was just…" Felicity looked at the trolls. "Admiring."

Oliver hummed noncommittally. "Those are Sebastian's."

"Oh," Felicity said, nodding like she knew exactly who Sebastian was and exactly why he had chosen to draw the creepiest trolls ever.

"Were you thinking of getting one?" Oliver asked, his voice low and muted and Felicity shook her head.

"No. Well, yes, I was thinking about it, but thinking about it and actually doing it are two very different things." Sort of like wondering how warm your hands are. Felicity shut her mind down before she accidentally said anything out loud. Again.

Subject change.

"Do you have any?" she asked. "Tattoos?"

That was an honest question. She thought it was sort of assumed that when you invested your entire life into the art of tattooing other people, you sort of shared the same desire to have some yourself.

"A few."

"Oh?" Felicity specifically didn't look at him, staring at a half-naked mermaid. "Where?"

He paused and she looked back at him. A look she had never seen on his face before flitted over his features. "I'm sorry. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"No, you're fine," Oliver said. His voice said otherwise, but there was no edge to it. "On my back and shoulders."

"Oh, I didn't know that. I've never seen them. Not that I would have seen them, because that would mean I would have to see you shirtless, which I haven't. I don't even know where I'd go to see you shirtless - not that I would do that, I mean, go out of my way to find a way to see you shirtless. Not that you aren't worthy of seeing shirtless, I'm really, really sure you are, but that's kind of stalkery, right, and I'm not stalkery… and I am babbling about stalking you to see you shirtless, which I am going to stop in three, two, one…"

Oliver chuckled, and she was struck by the way the sound came out. He wasn't embarrassed by her or annoyed with her; if she was willing to go so far, she would say he sounded… charmed.

Which was ridiculous.

"Where would you get it?"

"What?"

"A tattoo."

"Oh. Um… well, I thought about my…" Felicity involuntarily touched the very space she had thought about getting it - her left hipbone - and Oliver's eyes followed her hand.

Her heart leapt into her throat. His eyes on her felt like a caress that was way too intimate and she was pretty sure she was imagining things when she saw his eyes flare, something dark crossing his face before it disappeared.

She swallowed. "My hip."

Oliver hummed again, and Felicity's traitorous mind let her eyes drop to his mouth - he had amazing lips, she could only imagine how they would feel against hers, how they would feel against her skin, pressing kisses, his tongue caressing the very spot she touched before he hooked his fingers into the waistband of her panties and started tugging them down…

Felicity forced herself to meet his eyes again, her face flushing at her thoughts, to find him staring at her.

The air was no longer air.

It was something tangible and really hard to inhale as they just looked at each other.

"You know… I could still put something… there." He rolled his eyes at the stilted sentence and it was her turn to feel charmed. She raised her eyebrows in question and he nodded to the bay in the farthest corner - his. "I have special pens I use for practice."

What he was saying caught up to her and Felicity had to wonder how she didn't just choke on her heart shoving itself up her chest. He wanted to… draw. On her.

"Oh."

"They're like permanent markers. It'll last for a few days, but it will wash off. So you can see what it's like."

"You mean like… you'll draw something on me?"

"If you want."

She wanted to say yes. She really wanted to say yes, because the thought of him being any closer than he already was was a heady, heady thought. So much so that Felicity's eyes flickered shut and she swallowed audibly.

"You don't have to do that."

"I want to," Oliver replied softly, and everything inside Felicity deflated. He held his hand out for hers, and just as quickly all of her organs came back with a vengeance, her heart the worst of them all as she struggled to take a breath. "Come on."

Before she knew what she was doing, her hand was moving and then it was in his. He pulled her along with him, the sound of Roy and Thea fading even more until there was nothing but the faint sound of buzzing and the low music coming from a speaker in the corner.

The lights weren't dimmer, but Felicity felt like they were when he asked her to take her coat off, his fingers staying interlaced with hers for a second longer than necessary before he dropped them.

He pulled out some trays and removed a variety of weird looking pens. "What were you looking at getting?"

His voice was doing the thing. It was a thing, she was sure it was a thing. She shook her head to reorient herself. "Uh, I hadn't really thought about it, actually."

"Well, since this isn't very permanent, you can pick anything you want."

"Anything?"

Oliver smiled at her, a real smile, and her heart actually fluttered. "Anything."

"Um… okay, well." She looked around to avoid looking at him, but she saw nothing. She couldn't see anything around her - all her senses were focused on him. She knew she was seeing things, logically, but she wasn't actually seeing them. It was like when she was reading, but her brain was fifty miles away, and she wasn't processing anything.

She picked the first thing that popped into her head. "How about an arrow?"

Oliver's eyes met hers, looking darker than they had a minute ago, and she bit her lip. His eyes dropped down to her mouth and she shivered, fighting the urge to step back and run away.

She had to be dreaming. This wasn't real.

Oliver cleared his throat.

"Okay," he said, touching her elbow and directing her to a tall table. "Hop up."

She eyed the leather-covered table. "Hop up?"

"You want it on your hip, right?" he asked, the words coming out gritty and she wanted to say, 'Nope, my arm is fine!'

Instead she nodded, and he nodded to the table. "Up."

She hopped up, laying down awkwardly. She had to readjust her ponytail and shifted her t-shirt so it wasn't crinkled painfully beneath her. He must have sensed she was nervous because he started talking. "Normally I'd have the table covered in plastic wrap, and I'd be wearing gloves to protect you from any cross-contamination and infection." Oliver pulled up a stool and sat down, rolling it closer to her. "Since this is just a drawing, none of that is really necessary."

"Well, that's good."

She wondered if it was actually possible to hear someone smile. "So… hip?"

Felicity nodded. "Yep. Hip."

He touched her waist through her shirt, above her jeans, and she inhaled sharply. "Here?" he asked, his voice low.

For a very long time, she would look back on this very moment and wonder what had changed. It was like something possessed her for a split second and in that moment, changed the entire course of her life. She shook her head in response, clasping his hand - ignoring the fact that his hands were very, very warm and they felt very, very good against her cold fingers - and pushing it down until his were pressed to the tip of her pelvic bone.

It wasn't something Felicity Smoak would have done. Not at all.

"Here."

"Okay." His fingers involuntarily closed around hers. "You'll need to… unbutton."

"What? Oh," Felicity said, face flaming back to life. She hadn't thought about that. She paused, mouth frozen open before she moved.

She lifted her shirt and unbuttoned her jeans.

Dear god, she was unbuttoning her jeans in front of Oliver Queen… and he was staring at the pens like they were the answer to all of life's problems.

Felicity quickly unzipped and pushed the jeans to the side.

"Here," Oliver said, and then he used those very warm hands to brush hers out of the way and fold her jeans in for her, tucking them into her bright orange panties - why had she worn orange panties? - exposing the spot she had pointed. She took a stuttering breath when his fingers lingered on her skin for a second, brushing against her pelvis, and something suddenly clicked in her head when she realized where his fingers were and how close.

Heat erupted in her core, and she let out a short breathy gasp, biting her lip until it stung.

So not what this was about, brain, so not what this was about.

She didn't realize he had stopped touching her until he said, "This will be a little cold," and she jumped when a wet paper towel wiped the skin clean.

"Oh, very cold," she said, her voice cracking and Oliver chuckled.

"Sorry."

She didn't trust herself to say another dang thing. Instead she closed her eyes, forcing her body to relax. He dried the spot off, his movements confident and at ease. Well, bravo for him that he was so comfortable right then, maybe he should give her some lessons in how to remain calm in a situation like this. Because right then? She was not calm.

"Ready?"

"Uh-huh."

His hands were so warm - she could not get the image of his hands pushing her pants down out of her head - and they were very calloused she noticed, when he leaned forward, one hand covering her hip while the other started to draw. Felicity waited for a sharp pen to prick her, but it was nothing like that; it felt like a marker, just like he had said, and it glided across her skin smoothly.

She let out a little laugh after he finished the first line.

"You okay up there?" he asked her with a smile.

"It tickles," she said.

He chuckled, and then all that was left was Oliver touching her, drawing on her.

After a few minutes the tension slid right out of her body and she let herself be lulled into a gentle state where nothing existed but his even breathing, his sure fingers holding her still, the gentle touch of the pen. What he was drawing wasn't big or outrageous, but it felt intricate. She sighed once, her body relaxing further into the table, and he paused for a second before continuing. He switched pens twice, adding a few things here and there before he was done.

He blew on the drawing and she let out a soft, "Oh," as goose bumps erupted across her stomach.

"All done," he said gruffly, capping the open pen.

This was the moment she got up and went to see what he had drawn on her, to see what she would have to look forward to for the next few days - although he could draw any damn thing he wanted to and she would still love it because Oliver had done it, because holy crap, Oliver had just drawn on her - but neither of them moved.

One hand was still on her hip, and his other hand gently rested across her stomach - and god, if her heart hadn't stuttered before, it was definitely past racing now - his thumb rubbing across the drawing. Every single nerve he touched was a direct line to her center and a wave of heat trampled through her abdomen.

"It's dry," he said softly, his thumb rubbing over it again and she inhaled quickly, waiting for something else… but instead Oliver sighed so quietly she barely heard it and then his hands were gone.

Disappointment whipped through her so fast and strong it took her breath away.

"Here," he said, offering his hand and she grasped it, letting him pull her up. His other hand landed on her back to steady her.

"Thanks," she said, looking up at him.

When their eyes met, electricity sizzled the air. He was so close, he was right there, and he wasn't moving, and how could her lungs simultaneously feel like they were full of concrete and full of so much air at the same time it was making her dizzy? His hand on her back slid up.

"Felicity," he whispered, spreading her name out so he hit each syllable.

"Yeah?" she whispered back, stupidly. He grinned, barely shaking his head and squeezed her hand in his.

She didn't know how her other hand had found its way to his chest, but she went with it; heck, she went with all of it even though the intensity surging between them was borderline too much. How could he be everywhere at the same time? Surrounding her, embracing her - it was like all those moments she had fought so hard to avoid, only this was about a hundred times more powerful.

She grasped the sweater she had admired so much into a tight fist.

She wanted to kiss him. She really, really wanted to. She had thought about it more than she should have, more than she wanted to admit to. But this was Oliver Queen - he didn't kiss girls like her.

Felicity opened her mouth to say just that when his lips slanted over hers, the kiss so soft and gentle it hurt her chest.

When romance novels describe how time stops when you kiss that special someone, Felicity always rolled her eyes. It was actually why she stopped reading them, it was illogical.

She was an idiot.

Oliver groaned, pulling her in closer and she let out a strangled sound of surrender, their clasped fingers holding on to each other as tightly as they dared. He yanked her towards him, a deep growling sound coming from his chest that she felt reverberate through hers, sending another wave of heat soaring straight for her core as their lips moved against each other. His hand snuck up to the back of her neck, cupping it, angling her head so he could go deeper and she moaned against him, pressing her chest closer to his, trying to mold her body to him.

He felt amazing. He felt more than amazing. He was hard and soft at the same time, rough and gentle, powerful and calm.

She was kissing Oliver. He was kissing her. He was really kissing her, like she was a glass of water and he hadn't had any in days. No, longer than that.

The kiss became harder, his movements harsher and uncoordinated in their rush to bring her closer to him and she went with him willingly, gripping the back of his neck, pulling herself closer.

He moaned, his hand moving up into her hair, dislodging her ponytail. His thumb brushed the shell of her ear and she whimpered as a shiver slithered down her spine.

"Oliver?"

The sound of Roy's voice popped the bubble and they broke apart at the same time.

They both panted, staring at the other, when Thea followed suit, "Felicity? Where'd you go?"

"Oh," Felicity breathed, realizing just where she was and who she was with and holy god, she was kissing her best friend's brother.

She pulled back just as he did, and she saw his face shutter up, going blank on her as he stepped back, giving her room to hop off the table. She didn't have time to think about what had just happened or why he was looking at her like that when she quickly readjusted her pants - she had been kissing Oliver Queen with her pants undone, what had her life just become? - when Roy appeared.

His eyebrows shot up - Oliver's lips were bruised and puffy and she could only imagine what his stubble had done to her face besides feeling really, really good while it had been happening - and the blush was back, but he didn't say anything when Oliver sent him a death glare.

"Hey, man, Diggle's here," he said, his voice way more serious than the current situation afforded.

"Yeah, alright," Oliver said. "I'll be right there."

"Okay," Roy said, a glib smile tugging at his lips before he disappeared, hopefully to intercept Thea.

Oliver turned, quickly cleaning up the space with short, efficient movements. Felicity tugged her shirt back into place, forgetting that he had just drawn an arrow on her in what had to be the most erotic thing to happen to her, ever.

And that kiss.

"I have to go," Oliver said, handing her her jacket.

"Okay."

He hesitated. "Can I…"

Felicity looked up at him. "Yes," she answered before he could continue and he laughed.

"Oliver, let's go!" a voice she didn't recognize shouted from the front and he rolled his eyes.

"I'm coming!" he shouted back.

Oliver grabbed her hand, giving it a quick squeeze, and instead of finishing his question, he pulled her in for a short but way intense kiss that had her toes tingling. He pulled back, leaving both of them breathless, his fingers lacing with hers.

"I've been wanting to do that for a long while," he said with a small, almost sad smile, and her heart stuttered. His eyes sparkled with emotions she couldn't even try to name; he definitely didn't look like he regretted anything, which was good, but there was a darkness she couldn't grasp.

Who was Oliver Queen, and what was he doing to her?

He traced a finger across her cheek, pushing her glasses further up her nose before tucking a piece of hair behind her ear.

And then he was gone.

She left the shop in a daze, Thea smiling knowingly when she saw Felicity's rumpled state but thankfully didn't push it. She chatted happily about her new tattoo, but mostly about Roy, and Felicity vaguely remembered her going into explicit detail about Roy's cheekbones.

Felicity barely remembered getting back to her apartment, barely remembered removing her clothes. The next thing she was aware of was being in her bathroom, touching her lips in amazement, wondering what had happened, how it had happened, and what happened next.

And when she looked in the mirror, she saw what he had drawn on her.

It was a delicate arrow, with a detailed shaft that ended in an elegant curl, interlaced with intricate detail and an arrowhead pointing up towards her heart.

It was green.

She didn't think about all the questions she still had about him, she didn't think about where he had run off to that night. She would think about all that later. Much, much later.

Until then…

Her finger traced the drawing.

Her arrow.

The End