The prompt was: "Oliver and Felicity share a bed."

"My college roommate was the one to get me into manga. She was obsessed. Instead of textbooks and workbooks – she was a biochem major – her bookshelves were stuffed full of manga and graphic novels and comic books. Her biggest regret in life – and she told me this one drunken night after a floor party – was that she couldn't read Japanese and had to wait for the English translations of everything. She used to say it was the single biggest strike against her 'geek cred' that she was so far behind. She dated a Japanese transfer student near the end of our freshman year just so she could improve her Japanese. I thought that was a little bit much, to be completely honest. And it work. I think there's a lesson in there somewhere."

"Felicity?"

Felicity hummed in response.

"Go to sleep."

"Can't."

"Try."

"Already have. Can't."

"Try harder."

Felicity heaved a heavy sigh and sat up in bed. Her hair fell loose onto her shoulders, swinging into her face as she slouched forward, and she reached up to tuck the long strands behind her ears. "It doesn't exactly work that way. I can't just will myself to sleep."

"Then count sheep."

"Can't do that either. I'll just end up overthinking that situation. Why are there so many sheep in one place? How big is this sheep-housing facility anyway? Is it outdoors? It had better be outdoors because keeping that many sheep indoors would not only be disgustingly smelly, but horribly inhumane. And what do I do with the sheep after I count them? Where do they go if their purpose is solely to be counted by me?"

"Felicity?"

"Yep?"

"I really need you to go to sleep."

"No. You need me to stop talking. I can just lie here quietly. You can tell me to shut up."

"I'm telling you to shut up."

Felicity ran her hands over her hair and leaned forward to peer over the foot of the bed onto the floor where Oliver had turned a blanket and the hotel bed's extra pillows into a makeshift cot. His face was illuminated by the pale light of the full moon shining through the balcony windows and gave just enough light for Felicity to make out that he'd already tossed aside the thin blanket that he'd grabbed from the closet. Even lying on his back on the floor, one hand under the pillow at his head, the other splayed across his stomach, Oliver looked more comfortable than Felicity felt and she was lying (well, sitting now) in a plush king size hotel bed with sheets of a higher thread count than she'd even thought possible. She wondered if that had anything to do with the years he'd spent sleeping on nothing but hard ground and even harder rock.

Oliver's hand shifted along his torso, revealing a sliver of bare skin (and one of the knotted scars on his hip, but she wasn't really looking that closely – really) between the hem of his shirt and the waistband of his boxer-briefs as it pulled the shirt up. Felicity felt heat rise into her cheeks and she quickly straightened until her view of Oliver was once again obstructed by the foot of the bed.

She glanced over to the window, brow furrowing as she tried to remember whether or not they'd pulled the curtains closed before they'd settled in for the night. She could have sworn she'd done it right before she'd hopped into bed and had made some admittedly poor crack about werewolves coming out on nights of full moons and maybe Oliver should have stocked up on silver-tipped arrows.

Pulling the duvet back, Felicity slid her bare legs slowly out from under the sheets, careful not to make too much noise as she lowered her feet over the side of the bed closest to the balcony and tiptoed over to the large windows. One hand poised to pull the curtains back over and plunge the room back into darkness, Felicity paused for a moment to appreciate the sparkling lights of the city sprawled out below her.

"Felicity?"

She jumped slightly at the sound of Oliver's weary voice, hand thumping lightly against the glass as she spun around, pulling the curtain along with her and over her shoulder. She dropped it a second later, her hands falling down to tug at the hem of the tshirt she suddenly decided was much too short despite falling to mid-thigh.

"Yeah?"

"What are you doing?"

"I thought maybe the light was bothering you and I could have sworn I'd pulled the curtains closed earlier, but here they are completely open and the light's coming in right over your face which is something I only know because of non-creepy reasons. I mean, it's not like I watch you while you sleep or anything."

"It's fine."

Felicity turned to tug at the curtain again. "I'll close them. I don't mind."

"I prefer them open."

Felicity froze, a hand on either side of the window ready to pull both sets of curtains closed. "Oh."

She heard Oliver sigh softly behind her as she watched him get up in the reflection off the window. She watched him pull a hand over his face and over his short hair before crossing his arms in front of his chest.

"You want to tell me what's bothering you and keeping us both awake on a night before an important reconnaissance mission?" Oliver asked quietly.

Felicity let her hands fall away from the curtains, one hand trailing absently against the cool glass before settling against her side.

"You prefer them open," came her reply, her voice barely above a whisper. She couldn't make out more than his silhouette in the window's reflection, his face no more than a blur amidst city lights and streaks of cars, but she could imagine the furrow of his confusion on his brow. She dropped her forehead against the window for a moment before turning slowly to face Oliver.

"You prefer them open," she repeated a little louder, her voice clearer but still quiet. "And you're sleeping on the floor."

"I lost at rock/paper scissors."

"You suck at rock/paper/scissors. It wasn't a fair play and you knew it when you suggested it."

Oliver cocked his head at her ever so slightly. His bright blue eyes were made pale by the yellow light shining in from the sky, but they were no less piercing than usual and Felicity had to stop herself from fidgeting with the hem of her t-shirt again under his gaze. His normally inscrutable face was made more transparent by the combination of a long day and the late hour. She'd taken him by surprise, Felicity could read it in the slightest widening of his eyes and in the way he opened his mouth as if to form a reply that never quite made it past the edges of his lips.

Moments later he seemed to come to some conclusion because he unfolded his arms, face softening as he bent down to grab a pillow off the floor and tossed it onto the bed. Stepping sideways, he sat down on the edge of the bed and gazed at her expectantly. "Are you going to sleep standing up?"