She wakes up.
Her head hurts.
Felicity groans and the noise hurts her ears. She raises a hand to her head and the movement makes her dizzy.
She opens bleary eyes. Her eyelashes have that gritty horrible feeling that tells her she slept in her make up.
Her raging hangover tells her she was drunk last night.
A glint of gold on her ring finger catches her eye and sends an adrenalin shot through her brain, forcing her eyes wide open and focused onto the plain gold band on the third finger of her left hand.
What the fuck?
She doesn't swear much. Doesn't often need to, despite the many and varied parts of her life - especially the Oliver parts - that should really drive her to it.
She stays cheerful. She's always found that flusters people a lot more than breaking out the f-words.
But if there was ever a moment for swearing...
She's wearing a wedding ring on her finger and she can't remember anything since lunch time yesterday and -
Oh my God.
And she's naked in a bed that isn't hers.
And she's not alone.
Felicity sits up, pulling the sheets with her.
Okay, this is not her first rodeo. She's woken up with regrets before.
Not married admittedly but maybe this is all a bad joke. A really bad joke.
Ever so slowly she turns her head to the right, her eyes moving over the sheet covered male body beside her.
Until she spots the tattoo on his shoulder blade.
Oliver's tattoo.
Oliver.
If she got drunk last night and slept with Oliver and now she can't remember it she's going to be so pissed at herself.
She looks at the ring on her hand.
She couldn't have. Could she?
Could he?
Oh the great god Google forgive her, she just might.
Oliver, at least, still appears to be asleep.
Looking around, she realises she's not in her room or his room. This is a whole new room. And it's a whole new room that screams bridal suite in the most tacky language possible.
She's currently lying under red silk sheets. There are rose petals on the floor. There's a half empty bottle of champagne in an ice bucket and two glasses on the side. One of them has a stain the colour of her lipstick on the rim.
She shifts in bed and she knows - she knows - she had sex last night. Her body feels achy and sticky in all the best ways and she can't believe it.
She really did get drunk enough to sleep with Oliver - Oliver, her long-standing crush Oliver, gorgeous Oliver, completely unattainable Oliver - and she can't remember it.
This sucks.
She spies a shirt on the floor nearby. It's about the only clothing she can see, so she slips from the covers and dashes across the room.
Her head aches and her body resents her but she manages to pull the shirt on and button it up before she hears the first sleepy murmur from behind her.
Oliver's waking.
Felicity steels herself. She has no idea what his reaction will be - to the rings, to the bed, to her. The last time she asked him about his love life he informed her that Laurel had broken up with him - again - and that he didn't want to talk about it. She's respected that about as much as she can in the weeks since.
And now this.
She honestly doesn't know whether she wants him to have his memory or not. Which is worse? Which is better? She doesn't know.
She pads around to his side of the bed on silent feet. She doesn't have her glasses - and where are they, by the way? - but even her eyesight can make out the hickeys, scratches and bruises that litter his upper body.
She wonders just how many of them she's responsible for.
It's not fair.
If she was going to get drunk enough to sleep with Oliver Queen the world should at least have left her with a few memories. It looks like it was a lot of fun.
It feels like it was a lot of fun. Her body (or at least the bits of it not horrendously hungover) has that languid stretched feeling of the morning after sex, as if he pinned her down and pushed one knee to her chest as he entered her, or as if she rode him for hours. It feels like there might be stubble burns on her inner thighs.
Mental images assail her; glimpses from her imagination. She's sure the real thing was ten times better and now she'll never know. She threw away her shot with him on a drunken one night stand and things are going to be so awkward now.
She's blushing and she's nervous and he's waking up.
He rolls onto his back and stretches up.
The sheet slips down his abdomen, revealing a line of hickeys moving ever lower.
She flushes. She did that. And she knows how that particular move of hers ends.
And she can't remember a thing about it.
She sighs and Oliver is immediately awake, his eyes spring open and lock onto hers and his hands come down in a guard gesture before he realises it's just her standing in front of him and not a threat.
"Felicity?"
"Oliver," she greets him. She twists the ring on her finger round and round. She's only known she's had it for minutes and already she has a nervous tic about it.
"Felicity?" He says, his brow furrowed, "why are you wearing my shirt?"
"What do you remember?"
She has to give him this, he listens to her. He's got to want answers but she asked him a different question and he's immediately focussed on that. She can actually see him turn his attention inwards, searching for memories.
"Medium-rare steak," he says, "and red wine. Lunch?"
"Yeah that's what I've got too. Though I had a salad. Chicken Caesar."
"Felicity," he says, "why am I naked?"
"Oh Oliver," she sighs, holding up her hand so he can see the ring, "this is so much worse than that."