A/N: I'm finally back with a new story. Fittingly, I had the idea for this while talking to a stranger on a plane a while ago. I've been itching to write a friends-to-lovers multi chap story for Olicity, so this is my attempt at just that.

Title borrowed from You+Me's song You and Me.

Hope you enjoy my new story, and I hope everybody has a wonderful weekend.

Happy reading!

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Three hours.

Three fucking hours.

He's going to fire his assistant.

Well, that and have a pointed talk with his sister for just taking the QC jet to Europe.

Really, it's all her fault. Had she not decided to go on that big graduation trip through Europe with her high school friends, he wouldn't even be in this situation.

'This situation' being wedged into the incredibly small middle seat of a commercial airplane's economy class.

Sure, his trip to Gotham had been incredibly short notice and he was grateful that he was able to make the trip at all, and sure, he probably could've asked Bruce to send his jet to Starling to pick him up, but there was no way he'd give that smug bastard the satisfaction of doing him a favor.

He stares longingly at the empty aisle seat before sinking into his own and closing his eyes. The flight will only take a few hours, he can totally survive that.

"You doing okay?" a voice rips him out of his musings and his eyes fly open.

A blonde woman stands in the aisle, piercing blue eyes flitting over him. Her head is slightly cocked to the side, her blonde hair falling over her shoulders in soft waves and there's a sparkle of amused concern in her eyes.

He swallows. Hard.

Damn, she's beautiful.

"Yes," he croaks out, mentally chastising himself for reacting like a teenager with a crush. He clears his throat, satisfied when his voice is steady and controlled when he speaks again. "Just trying to force my body to supply my lower extremities with enough blood."

Her eyes drift down to where his legs are neatly folded in the little space in front of him. She raises an amused eyebrow. "Ah," she huffs out and then gestures towards the aisle seat. "You can have my seat if you want. I don't have quite as much body mass as you do. Not that you're fat, you're obviously very much in shape." He watches as her eyes grow wide. "I wasn't checking you out or anything. That would be so incredible inappropriate of me," she babbles on. "Just making an objective observation." She shakes her head at herself and continues, "Anyway, do you wanna switch seats? It should be at least a little more comfortable for you."

He looks between the seat and the woman. "If you're sure?"

She shoots him a wide smile and steps back a little, jerking her head to the side, silently asking him to get up. He quickly unbuckles his seat belt and steps into the aisle, coming to a stop right in front of her. He has to tilt his head down to look at her, and yeah, wow, she's even more beautiful from up close. Her make-up is kept down to a minimum, the only exuberance she seems to indulge in is her bright red lipstick.

"My legs and I thank you very much," he says, a grateful smile forming on his lips.

She just grins at him and plops down on the middle seat, while he maneuvers his body into his new seat, experimentally stretching his legs into the aisle. Yeah, that's a little bit better.

He turns towards his savior and grins widely. "I'm Oliver, by the way," he offers and stretches out his hand.

There's that little head tilt again as she studies him for a second. "Felicity," she finally replies and slips her hand into his. The effect is instant: warmth and a little buzzing feeling spreading from his fingers through his entire body. Who the hell is this woman?

They fall into an easy conversation that lasts most of the flight, making fun of the little bags of pretzels that the flight attendants hand them, and earning more than one annoyed glance from the occupant of the window seat of their row when Oliver makes a joke and Felicity can't stop giggling for a solid five minutes.

He learns quite a few things about her in those few hours. She's an only child from Las Vegas who's lived in Starling City for six years ever since graduating from MIT in '09, working as a computer specialist. She's twenty-five years old and tends to babble. Oh, and she dyes her hair. That tidbit about herself just kind of slipped out and she fixed him with a serious look and threatened to hack into his phone and replace all of his data with sound files of porcupine farts if he tells anyone about it.

"So what brings you to Gotham if you don't mind me asking?"

Her lips twitch a little and she looks down. "I got invited to a job interview for a department head position at Wayne Enterprises."

He scoffs a little. "And they put you in an economy class seat to fly you out?" Cheap bastards.

She tilts her head to the side and nibbles on her bottom lip. "They did offer to send their jet, but I declined. I didn't want to feel obligated to something just because they did stuff for me, ya know?" she shrugs.

"Huh, your current boss must be pretty shitty if you still decided to go on your own dime," he muses.

There's a mysterious smile forming on her lips. "His words, not mine."

His eyebrows knit together in confusion.

What?

"What?" he asks out loud, feeling like he's missing something.

She sighs and shrugs. "I work at Queen Consolidated. So technically, you're my boss."

Oh.

His mouth falls open in surprise. "You know who I am?"

An amused chuckle falls from her lips. "Like I said, I work at QC, so yeah, obviously I know who the CEO of the company is."

Right, that makes sense.

"Right," he says slowly, trying to sort through his jumbled thoughts. What are the odds of ending up sitting next to one of his employees who's going to have a job interview at Wayne Enterprises, the same company he's headed to to finalize a business deal.

He turns towards the blonde woman next to him to find out more about why she's thinking about leaving his company, but she's in an animated conversation with one of the flight attendants. He uses the time to log onto the plane's Wii and to send a quick email to his assistant, asking her to somehow find Felicity's personnel file.

He quickly sifts through his brain, listing all the department heads in his company, but comes up empty. She's definitely not in a high-ranking position or otherwise he would've probably run across her before now. But what really bugs him is that Wayne Enterprises wants to snatch her away from QC. If there's one thing he knows for sure it's that if WE wants Felicity to become the head of any of their departments she's got to be good. Really, really good.

His phone vibrates with an incoming email and a quick glance at the screen tells him it's from his assistant. He chances a look at the blonde woman that has become even more of enigma to him in the last few minutes, satisfied to see that she's still talking to the flight attendant. That will give him a few minutes to read through her file.

His mouth falls open after the first paragraph. Holy shit, she is good. Very good. She's worked for his company since '09; back then she'd been directly hired by Robert Queen himself. Interesting.

In her first two years alone she'd single-handedly rewritten the security protocols for QC's mainframe, fixed a gigantic hole in their firewall, thwarted a hacker attack, and developed the internal communication software that the company uses in all of their domestic and international offices.

But then, during her third year at the company her work had suddenly become more mundane, more or less reduced to doing day-to-day IT support within the Starling City office. None of her numerous project proposals had been approved by her superior, limiting her evident genius to help other people find the power switch on their computers.

Oliver quickly does the math. Her third year would have been 2012, the year his father had died. It all makes sense now. Her recruitment, her incredible achievements, the sudden stilt to her career. His father had been famous for finding the brightest young employees among the thousands of applicants each year, and for taking those select few under his wings, nurturing them towards making them QC's future leaders. Felicity must've been one of them, flourishing under Robert's guidance until his untimely death in 2012.

A warm hand on his arm rips him out of his thoughts. "Oliver?"

He looks up and meets her concerned blue eyes. "You doing okay? We're about to land."

Right. Land in Gotham. Where Bruce Wayne is trying to snatch what seems to be one of the brightest assets QC has to offer.

Oh hell, no!

"I'm good," he says, an idea forming in his head. "But I have a proposal for you."

⁂ ⁂ ⁂ ARROW⁂ ⁂ ⁂

"No."

His face falls, and she tries very hard not to be affected by his stupidly pretty blue eyes that look so darn confused and disappointed at her resolute answer.

"Just hear me out," he says, more than a hint of pleading in his tone.

She sighs. "Didn't you hear what I said about me declining the whole private jet thing so I wouldn't feel obligated? You paying for my hotel room and taking me out to dinner fall into the same category."

He clenches his jaw. And wow, can he please not do that? Even with his stubble covering his face, it just makes his Adonis jaw even more prominent.

"Fine, but let me at least treat you to dinner tonight."

"Oliver-"

"I want to convince you to stay at QC."

She narrows her eyes at him in suspicion. "Why do you care?"

"Because we need you." He makes it sound simple when it's anything but.

"You read up on me." It's not a question, not when it's obvious that he somehow managed to find out more about her and her work at his company in the span of the last twenty minutes. She's not sure if she should be flattered or annoyed.

"I did," he nods his head. "And based on what your personnel file told me, you're one of the greatest assets we have and I'm not willing to let you go without a fight."

She huffs out a humorless laugh. "What if it's too late for that? What if I've already decided to leave your company?"

An annoyingly confident smile forms on his lips. "I don't think that's the case."

She takes a deep breath, ready to say no, but then his hand is on hers and she momentarily forgets how to think straight. "Give me a chance here, Felicity. I don't know why you're supervisor stilted your career like he did after my dad died, or why you're still stuck in the same entry -level position despite your undeniable talent, but now that I've met you I'm not going to keep making the same mistakes. I'll get to the bottom of this and then make sure that my company treats you with the respect you deserve."

She swallows. Hard. What the hell are you supposed to reply after the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the country says something like that while holding your hand?

He watches her with alert eyes, waiting for her to say something, anything. When she just stares at him with wide eyes, mouth opening and closing without any words coming out, his lips twitch into a half smile and he lets go of her hand. She ignores the cold chill that runs through her at the sudden loss of contact.

He reaches into the pocket of his coat and produces a business card and a fancy looking pen. With nimble fingers he scribbles something down on the little piece of paper and holds it out for her to take. "Tell you what, I'll stop badgering you about this for the time being if you give me a chance and let me treat you to dinner." He holds up his hand when she opens her mouth to protest. "Do your interview tomorrow, see what they've got to offer, and by the time we meet for dinner that night I'll have an offer of my own for you."

What's even happening right now?

"I honestly don't know what to say right now," she mutters, shaking her head disbelievingly.

"I'll take anything, as long as it's not a 'no'", Oliver says with that stupid, hopeful glint in his eyes.

She stares at him for a full minute until the plane touches down on the tarmac. Seriously, how the hell did she get to this point in her life? She'd been hand-picked by one of the greatest business men in the country to come work at QC, he'd lent her his support and guidance throughout those three years she'd known him. He'd put his unwavering trust in her, giving her challenging and high profile projects right from the get-go. And then, after he'd died, her asshole supervisor who'd been jealous of her that whole time, had made sure to give her the most boring work he could find.

Needless to say that she'd become pretty unhappy with her position in the company and doubts about staying with QC had started to creep in when she felt like she was going nowhere in her career. So when Wayne Enterprises had approached her about making her the new head of the IT department at their company headquarters in Gotham City, she'd been over the moon, flattered beyond believe that they'd even considered for the position.

And now, she was sitting next to the freaking CEO of the same company that she's considering to leave, and he's more than willing to convince her to stay, dangling some sort of promotion right in front of her. Coincidence? Fate? The universe's weird sense of humor? Who knows.

The one thing she does know is that this opens up a whole new box of possibilities at QC. She'd very much like to stay at the company that started her career, so maybe with Oliver finally taking notice of her existence and more importantly her talent, she has a chance to stay at QC and move her career forward.

So, yes, she'll hear him out and see what he has to say. If push comes to shove she'll have a different job offer to fall back on (if the interview tomorrow goes well, that is).

"I hope you bring your A-game, Mr. Queen," she finally says with a challenging smile.

His lips spread into a wide grin as he steadily holds her gaze. "I always do, Ms. Smoak."

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A/N: Short chapter to get this started. Future chapters will be longer ;) We'll have a one year time jump and then see some flashbacks to the time in between. At least, that's the plan right now..

Let me know what you think and leave a comment and kudos.