A/N: I'm so excited for Season 6 that I just had to write this down. There's just something about seeing that ring finger photo of SA as Oliver and EBR as Felicity that inspired me to come up with something like this. (Go to Twitter account of mdupregj where I saw the picture, and then scroll down a bit and you'll see the photo by Frog Photography.)

Sharing this fic with you... The chapters will come from six different episodes, one from each season, and told from the POVs of Oliver, Felicity, or someone close to either or both of them. This fic is pretty much canon compliant, but I've tweaked particular scenes to give readers a sneak peek at BTS possibilities that would help shed light on Olicity's relationship from when they first met up to 6x07, like a "what if" concept. It's my first 5+1, so I hope you like it!

Disclaimer: I do not own Arrow because DC and the CW do. I only wish I did.

Chapter 1: IT'S GOOD TO KNOW (Oliver's POV, from 1x03)

"Felicity Smoak? Hi, I'm Oliver Queen," he said.

He was more nervous than he would care to admit, and he had to remind himself of the reason why he was now introducing himself to a stranger whom he was about to lie to.

He did have a legitimate reason for coming to the I.T. department of his family's company that day. He'd been trained – and quite extensively so – to fight, to strategize, to spy. But he could only do so much when it comes to computer technology. While he could use a computer better than an average person, he certainly could not fix a bullet-riddled laptop or recover files from one. He needed help this time.

"Of course! I know who you are. You're, you're Mr. Queen," she replied, her voice betraying a mixture of excitement and nervousness.

"No, Mr. Queen was my father," he responds quickly, more confident than he had been a few seconds ago. Truth be told, it flattered him a little that after five miserable years when nothing good ever happened, he still had that effect on pretty girls.

When Walter Steele suggested that he see a certain female computer genius several floors below the executive floor, he had wondered if this would be the day he would run into her. Since he'd been back in Starling City for the past weeks, he hadn't had the time to wander around Queen Consolidated, much less find out if she still worked there and search her out, even if he wanted to.

He did, however, wonder a number of times if he'll ever get to meet the special young woman that had made him smile a while back, when ARGUS had sent him back to his home city on a special assignment with Maseo. That special assignment necessitated breaking and entering into his father's office, and that had been the first time he'd seen the beautiful blonde from his hiding place in an adjacent room. She had placed some files on his father's desk and then noticed the framed photograph of him and his dad. He had heard her remark out loud that he was cute, regret that he was dead, and then immediately reprimand herself for talking to herself once more. He remembered thinking how adorable she looked when she babbled.

Like when she impulsively replied in sentence fragments. "Right. But he's dead. I mean, he drowned. But you didn't. Which means that you can come down here in the IT department and listen to me babble. Which will end, in 3-2-1."

Before he acted on Walter's recommendation, he had done his research. Imagine his delightful surprise when Felicity Smoak turned out to be the girl that had, time and again, crossed his mind in the last three years.

During those times when he felt lonely and homesick the most, fond images of her had helped him sleep through a number of rough nights – of golden blonde hair tied up in a ponytail, of dark-rimmed glasses framing the most perfect pair of blue eyes, of a black-and-white polka dot shirt, of pink lips and slender arms akimbo on shapely hips.

Nothing in her background and profile suggested that she couldn't be trusted. She was clearly a genius, having graduated from MIT in 2009 at the young age of 19; she could certainly help him recover files from the laptop he'd taken from Floyd Lawton. But he had also found no indication that she could be trusted to keep his secret identity if she figured it out on her own. For if she was indeed as brilliant as he presumed her to be, then she would easily see through his lame excuses. Who knows what she would do if she so much as suspects how he really spent his nights?

Still, there was just something about her that made him want to take the risk of seeing her again and asking for her help. Sure, she was practically a stranger, but he felt it in his gut that she would trust him. He considered that more important than him trusting her, because he didn't trust himself in the first place.

And he was right.

Even though Felicity Smoak saw right through the "spilled latte" and "bad neighborhood" alibis, she still agreed to help him retrieve files from the laptop. He made a mental note of how cute she looked with her head tilted to the side, her forehead a bit creased between the eyebrows, and her lips pursed. That had made him smile, yet again. When he came to think of it, he really couldn't recall if he had smiled at all in the last three years, between the two instances that she had made him smile.

She offered him a seat, and he took it willingly. He could have just gone and let her get to work on the laptop; he could just come back when she already had something to show him. Yet it seemed to him that she didn't really mind him staying and watching her work, and that was just perfect, because he wanted to. He not only wanted to find out what Lawton was up to and to figure out who his next target was based on the vital information and clues that could be extracted from the files in the laptop; he also wanted to get to know Felicity Smoak better.

In just a few minutes, he already decided that the way her fingers flew across the keyboard was just as fascinating as the way she spoke so candidly, that her manicured fingernails were just as charming (and positively distracting) as her luscious pink lips, and that the silver arrow-like piercing in her left ear, which peeked subtly through the strands of her ponytailed hair, intrigued him and made him want to reach up and touch it. Nevertheless, because he had been trained by the need for self-preservation to tame his impulses and control his instinctive responses, he simply kept his hands folded neatly on his lap and just stared at the computer monitor in front of them, stealing furtive glances at the blonde genius that he had grown so fond of in just a few silent minutes.

But what drew Oliver's attention and interest most significantly was not the blueprint that she managed to pull up on the monitor in no time. It was her ring-less ring finger.

It's good to know that she was still single, he thought. Not that he was interested in asking her out or dating her. No, not with his dangerous nighttime activities that would put a target on her back. Not with the kind of life he now led. He thought it wouldn't be fair to someone so innocent and pure as her. But, if he ever completed his mission of honoring his father's wishes and still ended up alive, if he ever decided to live a normal life with normal relationships, Felicity Smoak would definitely be someone he would love to be with. If that opportunity were today, it was good to know that being with her was at least possible. She was surely worth the trying, even for someone like him with an unbelievable past.

He stared at her ring finger, wondering what it would be like to rub the pads of his fingers around it. He actually cracked a smile unawares as his mind wrapped itself around that thought.

Oliver didn't realize that Felicity was already speaking to him until he thought he heard her say something about Hamlet and not wanting to be part of their "Shakespearean family drama." He certainly did not understand the references, and it wasn't just because he had not taken any classes on Shakespeare in either of the Ivy League colleges he had dropped out of (or been kicked out of). It was more because they were sitting so close to each other, and he could smell the sweet, subtle fragrance of cherry blossoms that matched the pastel pink color of her blouse. What was wrong with him? For a moment there, he couldn't focus, not when she was looking at him like that.

She only got his undivided attention again when she started talking about the Exchange Building where the auction for Unidac Industries was going to be held. (Now they were getting somewhere.) Oliver only realized that he hadn't been paying close attention to the obvious a minute ago when she started explaining. The name Warren Pattel was clearly seen on the upper left-hand corner of the screen, right on top of the blueprint of the Exchange Building, but he only noticed it when she pointed it out.

Oliver easily made the connection between Pattel and Lawton. The wheels of his mind started to turn, and he got his head back in the game. When a plan for the evening of the action began to hatch in his mind, he stood up and thanked Felicity for her help.

As he left her cubicle and walked out the door of her office, he knew that he would be back – to ask for more technical support when he needed it, and to get his weekly dose of sunshine and rainbows (which he would only realize two years later that he needed for him to rise above the darkness and harness what little light he had left inside him).

An energy drink in a syringe, a special type of arrow, a bogus friend's address to find, a mysterious blank notebook, and a gunshot wound to the chest later, Oliver decided it was high time for him to trust her with his secret. She, no doubt, already trusted him.

A/N: So, is this worth the effort of continuing? Do tell.