Title: But it's these failures and faults that hold us together
Pairing: Oliver/Felicity
Timeline: not specified
Rating: T (and a couple f*** word)

Title inspired by Brooke Fraser's Who Are We Fooling.

A/N: First attempt at writing these two characters that I love so much. Hope you enjoy. I'd love to know what you think. :)

The more she pulls, the farther he pushes her until, he prays, it dawns on her that he's dangerous and damaged and it's in her best interests to stay away. He's not a mystery to solve. His tortured soul isn't seeking absolution or deliverance. He's on a mission, and if she wants to help, that's fine; if she doesn't anymore, he'll understand – he'll be relieved, even. She's too gentle and genuine to be around any of this darkness that's taken roots inside of him.

It's a dance that Oliver believes he's leading until her hand slips from his and they're tiptoeing around the edge of the end, wondering who will be the first to admit that they're finally over.

-:-

Felicity never bought any of his ridiculous lies – Oliver can't even pretend he ever thought she would.

She's smart. She's tough; tougher than he thought, tougher than she believes. She sees things in him that truly scares her; things that make her want to run away. But above all, she sees him.

Instead of tearing them apart, it only seems to make her hold onto this even more.

(That's something Oliver will never understand.)

-:-

He almost wants her to turn around and leave at the end of each day.

He's fooling no one, not even himself, when he tries to play it cool and act like she's a part of his world, of his life, of his fight – the first permanent thing in years of hurt and loss – and that he's not scared out of his mind of what could happen if (when) she decides that this just isn't worth it. She warned him; she's only in to save Walter, but is saving a man worth risking her life every day?

The world is a dark place and the city isn't safe – sometimes Oliver wonders if he's making it safer or worse with all the demons he brings – and Felicity is both very aware of it and completely clueless at times. She jumps into the fire for a man who's always been nice to her, with a man she knows nothing about except that he's neither a saint nor a sinner although he feels the latter in the very core of his being.

Smile bright, chin on, she takes on his world like she owns the ground she's walking on.

He knows, as surely as he could never leave the past behind, that he will be the death of her. And the harder he tries to loosen the knots bruising them blue, thinking that once untangled maybe she still has a chance of walking out of this with her heart and her soul untouched, the harder she fights him. Ponytail flying around as she shakes her head, eyes narrowed at him, and she looks at him like he's the biggest idiot ever and maybe he is.

For falling for her.

-:-

"Who do you think you're fooling?" Diggle asks him once, after Oliver shares his concerns with him about Felicity. About her kindness and her strength and how she's too good and too pure and Diggle stops him before he can finish that thought. "Her safety isn't the only reason you want her as far away as possible, Oliver. We both know it."

"She didn't sign up for this," Oliver insists stubbornly, head bent and shoulders slumped in defeat. Felicity isn't a prize to win or a damsel in distress, but he's failed her and he knows he's going to keep failing her because she's in danger as long as she stays close to him.

He can't let her be another casualty of his darkness. Everything he touches, he breaks. She's soft and warm and he's cold and broken and he can't feel anything but guilt and self-loath and fury and she deserves someone who isn't as selfish as he is.

(Months later, when she's so tired and infuriated and infatuated, and she grabs him by the lapels of his jacket and kisses him, she almost slaps him when selfish is the first word leaving his mouth in the aftermath.

"You, selfish? You?" she repeats, her eyes wide and her ponytail tousled from his hands in her hair. Her hands leave his chest to rest on her hips, and she looks like a mom scolding her kid. She tells him that he needs to quit it, now, with this idiocy about not deserving love because the only selfish thing she sees about this is not giving in feelings they've both been bottling up inside for too long.

"You've been lonely, too long," she whispers in the vicinity of his chest as he holds her in his arms that night.)

-:-

He parks in front of her apartment building and sits there for, what, two, maybe three hours, fully intending to spend the night there, when she appears out of nowhere, clad in cute pajamas, shy smile on as she opens the passenger seat door and steps in.

"Oliver," she says his name like it's not stained with blood, with that soft voice that woke a heart that'd been beating with anger and revenge and hate more than anything else for so many years. "Come on," she adds in a whisper.

Her small hand finds his much larger one, and she squeezes his fingers for a couple seconds that he wishes would never end. She's like a missing piece of him, his heart or his soul, more often than not his conscience, and she completes him in better ways than he does her. She's whole on her own, but he catches himself thinking that maybe she sees in him what he sees in her.

Felicity is her own anchor, but for better or worse they are tethered to each other and her hand in his makes him truly feel like home.

He follows her to her apartment, fingers still lightly entwined, her gentle tug crashing against what little walls remain around him. Tomorrow, he'll go back to keeping his distance, telling her he loves her when she's not listening, and looking at her like she's the redemption he never knew he was craving.

Tonight, though, he'll allow himself to hold her and relish in the fact that she's still breathing.

As she falls asleep curled up around him, her blonde curls tickling his chin and her arm lazily wrapped over his torso, he promises himself that he will die rather than to lose her.

-:-

Her hand slips from his and he sees it all, the cute head tilt, her adorable babbling, the hearty laughter that reverberates in the foundry. The hugging dresses at cocktail parties, her panda flats, his shirt on her.

Felicity Smoak, beautiful and brilliant and brave, and bloody on the cold hard ground.

She almost dies.

No matter how many times Diggle tells him but she didn't, Oliver only hears not this time. She's been injured too many times before; she's been threatened and hurt and even though Felicity has told him time and again that there was nothing to forgive, Oliver will never quite believe her.

If he had never climbed in the backseat of her car, none of this would have ever happened. If he had stuck to what he'd originally wanted, doing this on his own, probably dying in the process but protecting those he loves, she wouldn't be here, lying unconscious in a hospital bed, tubes and machines helping her stay alive when he failed her.

He takes her small hand in his, his thumb on her pulse point, and with every beat he recounts all the times he's almost lost her. All the bruises and scars on her body that prove it, all the fears lurking inside, demons that should have never crossed her path. When he's done, Oliver takes another look at her tiny frame, her pale skin, the reds and purples and blues, and she's so calm and peaceful and still when his Felicity babbles all the time and he just loses it.

Felicity has broken bones and limbs, but Oliver feels like he's the one coming apart at the seams. He's been fooling himself for months, he realizes, believing that he could have it all; that he could kiss her and hold her and know what it feels like to have the hole in his soul be filled by her sleepy smile in the morning or the telltale sound of her heels. He thinks of these movies she loves so much, where boy meets girl and falls in love and the only obstacles they have to face are distance and bad timing. There would always come a moment when after pulling and pushing too deep they'd fall right back to each other, in this perfect moment of clarity.

Oliver's had his epiphany a long time ago. He's in love with her, and there's no force in heaven or hell that could change that. He didn't need for her to almost die to admit it; he fell for the adorable babbling and the concerned frown between her brows, the way her feet don't quite touch the ground when she's sitting at her chair in the lair, those big, beautiful eyes that see all of his flaws and her heart that loves him for every single one.

So, when he presses his lips to her forehead and speaks the words, slowly, reverently, tasting them again on his tongue, it's not a love declaration.

It's a goodbye.

-:-

He thinks of leaving before she wakes up, and emptying his quiver in the chest of the man who put her in this hospital bed. He vowed not to kill again but where's the justice in letting the man who almost made him lose the woman he loves live?

He spends days thinking about it, but whenever he tries to stand up and walk away, he can't. Her hand in his is the closest thing he's ever felt to peace, and if she doesn't make it…

(He doesn't realize Diggle's hardly been there until he enters the room and tells him, It's done.

Oliver switches the TV in the room on, and he sees it on the news. The SCPD made an arrest, and the man who attacked them is spending the night behind bars and facing charges of assault and murder attempt on Oliver Queen and his formerly IT-girl/Executive Assistant turned into significant other.

The reporter goes on about the romance between Starling City's rich hunk and some girl next door, with footage of social events and Oliver throws the TV remote at the screen.)

-:-

"Oliver…"

Her voice is low and raspy but he'd recognize it anytime. Oliver's head snaps up from where it rested on the back of her hand, their fingers still entwined, and he's seen her die a hundred times but here she is, breathing and alive and she is by far the most beautiful sight he's ever laid eyes upon.

The words get caught in his throat, I love you or thank God or please forgive me, he doesn't know. All he knows is that he can't ever lose her, can't ever risk her life again. He wants to tell her, but she squeezes his fingers and fuck, he'll leave soon but for now he can't help but kiss her like there's no tomorrow.

(In retrospect, he realizes there isn't.)

He pulls back reluctantly, and the small sigh leaving Felicity's lips is almost his undoing. He knows every single sound she makes, and maybe it would be easier to walk away if he didn't know that. If he didn't know how her lips feel against his, the softness of her skin, her loud voice that she uses when only she can reach him. She's wormed her way into his life and no matter what he does, there's no getting her out.

Leaving her is the hardest thing he's ever had to do. But he has to.

"Felicity," he starts, and the frown on her face tells him that she already knows. Just with the tone of his voice, or the haunted look on his face. She knows him inside out. Their bond always amazes him, their silent conversations, how they always seem to know what the other thinks, but today it's making it so much harder because Oliver knows that a few well-chosen words from her could be enough to break his resolve.

Felicity doesn't say a thing. She simply looks at him, her eyes never wavering from his as he speaks.

"Because of the life that I lead," he goes on, "you're always going to be a target. Even more now that…" Now that what? That they've made official feelings that everybody seemed to know about before he admitted them to himself? "I can't do this to you. I can't," he says, shaking his head and closing his eyes, unable to hold her loving gaze a second more.

When he opens them again, she's crying. Silent tears roll down her cheeks, dying on the small smile she's forcing on her lips. He reaches out without thinking, wiping them with his thumb and cupping her cheek with his hand. "I love you, Felicity," he says, his tone firm, almost rough.

Felicity gulps hard, and nods her head. "I know," she says softly. "But you're leaving anyway, aren't you?" she asks, and Oliver knows she knows but still, she wants to hear it.

"It's because I love you that you are in danger," he replies, hoping that the more he repeats the argument maybe she'll finally accept it.

She sighs, and then winces from the pain in her ribs. "Because not being together is gonna make my life safer," she says, and he wonders how she can still find it in her to fight him when she almost died because of him. Any sane person should be running in the other direction.

It's funny, he thinks, how Felicity is his sanity and yet the craziest person he's ever met. Except it's not.

"I love you," he repeats, because he'll never get to tell her again. Because everything he's done, every promise he's made, was for her and maybe that's all they ever were meant to have, promises and memories but no happy ending.

He bends to kiss her again, and despite the pain in her arm, Felicity lifts her hand and twines it in the hair at the back of his neck. She feels his tears on her tongue, the salty taste of regret and mistakes, and this time, she's the first one to let go.

When the door closes behind him, it feels like a slap to the face.

(He promised she would never lose him.)

-:-

She spends two weeks in the hospital, and everybody treats her like she's Mrs. Queen because Oliver is paying for it, she knows. He wants the best for her, but obviously he has no idea what it is or else he would be there by her side, holding her hand and forcing her to eat that terrible hospital jell-o that Diggle insists she does.

He's not there all the time; can't be, really, since Oliver is always out patrolling, taking his anger and heartache, she supposes, on whomever he can find. But he still comes by whenever he can, and holds her hand in his warm, big one.

"Oliver's an idiot," he tells her one afternoon.

(He kisses her on the cheek before leaving, and she tells him he's her favorite).

-:-

Kelli with an I is a nice girl. She comes by her room one day, and introduces herself as her personal nurse; Felicity doesn't even have to ask to know she's been hired by the mysteriously absent (ex) boyfriend.

After she leaves the hospital, Kelli comes to take care of her at home. With a broken leg, a twisted arm and slowly healing ribs, there's not much Felicity can do on her own and Kelli is actually good company. Not once does she ask about Oliver, or why he never seems to visit her, or even about what happened to her. Instead, she tells her about her life, how she'd decided to become a nurse after what happened in the Glades, or Andie, the cute paramedic who is apparently the very definition of fiercely hot.

She had forgotten how nice it was to hang out with girlfriends. Talking about boys (and girls), watching cheesy romcoms, painting her nails. Not worrying about the safety of the city and the man she loves.

Yeah, right.

-:-

She loves Oliver, but right now she just wants to punch him in the face because he's doing a terrible job at staying away and oh my God, how can he expect her to keep her distance and let him brood in peace if he keeps asking Diggle to bring gifts that are so clearly not from him?

(Also, how can he expect her not to be angry at the fact that he apparently doesn't know how to use a phone anymore.)

"How are you guys doing?" she still asks Diggle, because even if Oliver seems to think that she's a porcelain doll who needs to be locked up in her apartment so nothing happens to her, he and Digg are still out there on their own, with no one to back them up like she used to. And she loves them and is scared for them both.

"You're irreplaceable, Felicity," Digg tells her simply. "You not being there… It's hard. Especially on him."

She tries to smile, her silly adorable smile. "Well, Oliver knows where I live," she shrugs. "I'm not going anywhere."

(When he knocks on her door, five months after the day at the hospital, she slaps him hard and then mumbles an apology as she holds onto him, swearing that she'll never let him go again.)

The third slap comes the morning after.

She wakes up after her first real night of sleep in five months, and the warm body she fell asleep curled up against the night before is no longer there. Instead, she finds his side of the bed cold and empty, and he was just there and now he's gone again and she can't, she just can't, it's too much.

Her sobs threaten to drown her but she can't stop crying. Drawing her knees to her chest, she welcomes the pain she still feels in her ribs sometimes because any physical pain is better than her heart breaking all over again. She feels it drumming in her veins, pulsing loudly in her chest, and Felicity wonders how many more times she can bear Oliver Queen walking in and out of her life like this.

"Felicity?" she hears, and here he is, the biggest jerk in the world, holding a pastry bag from the bakery down the street, a confused look on his face as he drops it to the floor and goes to her, one hand cupping her face and his other arm wrapping around her waist. "What's going on – oh god…" he says, horrified of what he's done.

(The fourth slap comes then. And maybe the fifth one, too. They stop counting at some point.)

-:-

Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough, that much Felicity Smoak knows.

After five months, nothing is as it used to be. One night cuddling with Oliver, listening to him apologize and tell her how much he's missed her and how much of an idiot he is for thinking that staying away would solve everything, doesn't really change that. Neither does it change Oliver's mind; he still thinks that being with her is only dooming her to pain and loss, and he won't have that.

Felicity is too emotionally tired to argue with him as he explains so. She knows it'll hurt, but at the moment, she allows herself to enjoy the feel of his arms around her, even if he's saying that they need to stop this. He loves her and she loves him and she stopped believing in fairytales a long time ago but she'll never lose faith in theirs.

It'll hurt – so be it.

-:-

She sits on her chair and brushes her fingers on the keyboard, and when Digg asks her how it feels, she answers honestly.

"Feels like home."

-:-

Routines are good. Most people hate them, but Felicity knows for a fact that the charm about unpredictability wears off pretty fast.

During the day, she's Oliver Queen's business associate, partners both in the job and in life. Apparently, the press didn't get the hint that not visiting your girlfriend for five months was a good break-up clue. So she smiles when he puts his hand on the small of her back, like the good eye-candy she must be. Diggle listens to her whine about how she didn't go to MIT to be anyone's trophy wife; Oliver pretends he didn't hear it.

When the day's over, they go back to their other business, each with their weapon of choice; Felicity with her computer, Oliver with his arrows, and Diggle and his legendary black driver charm – Oliver actually spits out his drink the one time Digg says it.

Routines are good. Until they're not.

He doesn't come back to the foundry in a bad shape after a particularly serious outing, because that would be cliché and their story is everything but cliché. She doesn't need to almost lose him to know she loves him, and she's already lost him once anyway. No. Nothing special happens. They're alone in the lair one evening, and Oliver is training while she reviews some files. Felicity lets her eyes roam over him, his toned body, the muscles tensing under the effort, the scars she's grazed with her fingers and her lips, and before Oliver can understand what's happening, she's tossing her dress to the floor and putting on her training outfit.

He blocks every punishing punch she throws at him with his hands, closing his fingers lightly around her fists before releasing them. They spar in silence for a long moment, the only sounds in the room his grunts and her tiny groans. Oliver lets her pin him to the mat and it infuriates her because he's treating her like she's fragile and vulnerable and fuck, she's not. Not anymore. She's trained enough with Digg to be able to counter his moves, and he's letting her win and she almost hates him for it – she doesn't want Oliver to be her punching bag, she wants him to see her as his partner again, not as the damsel in distress he needs to touch delicately or else she'll break.

One day, she'll tell him. He broke her once, it won't happen again. Because it's true, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and losing Oliver once didn't kill her. She's here and he's here and she's tired of letting him lead the dance when obviously he's doing a terrible job at it.

She's tired of letting him be in charge.

She knocks him off balance with her foot, locking her leg around his and Oliver falls to the mat, actually shocked by her sheer strength. Felicity follows, trapping him under her weight, knees around his hips and hands clasped around his biceps. She stares at him, breathing heavily, and okay, maybe this is cliché but she's really turned on and maybe this was a bad idea because this looks like a movie and she doesn't want angry make-up sex. She wants to punch him until he realizes how much of an idiot he is and how this selfless act is ruining both their lives. She wants him to tell her what he feels, not what he thinks he should do for her sake.

"Oliver," she says, and after all that he's done to her, he wonders how she can still say his name like that, with that much faith and love despite her anger and her pain. "Stop it."

"I'm not doing anything," he says, frowning, and god, she wants to punch that frown too.

"That's the problem!" Felicity sighs heavily. "You're not doing anything. This needs to stop. I can't do this anymore."

He flinches underneath her, because this is everything he's ever dreaded. He can't pretend anymore that he can be without her. Letting her go to protect her is one thing; watching her walk away is another, and Oliver knows that he just could never survive that. "What do you want me to do?" he asks her, his voice so low Felicity can barely hear him over the deafening beat of her heart.

"Stop holding back," she pleads.

And then she's on her back and damn, she really needs to train harder because Oliver just pinned her so easily it's embarrassing, almost as embarrassing as the moans coming out of her mouth as his lips find the sensitive skin of her neck and fuck, angry make-up sex wasn't what she had in mind but this is so much more. This is coming apart and coming home and it's the kind of story you tell your family and friends, the story of boy meets girl and they fall in love and there are obstacles on their way, of course there are, but it's these failures and faults that hold them together. It's the kind of story you laugh and smile about, years later, cuddled on the couch with your three beautiful daughters, because really, who is the idiot who said that love was not enough because it is.

(The only one who doesn't laugh at the story is Diggle, because he forgot his phone and walking on Oliver and Felicity, sweaty and mostly naked, is something he'd gladly forget.)

It starts with ridiculous lies she doesn't buy and a cute head tilt that surprisingly (except not) draws a smile out of him, and tears and blood and sacrifice, but it ends with love. That's what's important – it ends with love. Everything in between is just part of the journey.

the end