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This is totally how normal girls relax, right? Comfy bed, movies, t-shirt, panties, mixed drinks. I even downloaded the recipes from a bartending college. I am totally rocking the relaxation.
“I am tipsy,” Felicity informed her (stuffed) dragon. “I am definitely tipsy and my new job is suspiciously awesome and I am not going to think too hard about that or about Oliver or even about Barry’s abs which I totally did not sneak a look at. I am especially not going to think about how Oliver’s stupid broody face looks.”
Azure the dragon said nothing, which made him possibly the least frustrating man in her life. Satisfied, she downed another swallow of what the recipe called a Long Island iced tea - which was funny because it didn’t include tea of any kind - and then got down to serious business.
She was halfway through an electric blue pedicure when her phone buzzed on the table. She tried glaring at it, but that only stopped it for a second before it buzzed again.
“I am not answering you tonight,” she told it firmly. It was undeterred.
However, she was the boss of the phone and not the other way around, so it stopped buzzing eventually and laid there in a sort of sullen quiet. Like it was judging her. Stupid phone. She started the other foot.
A shadowy figure appeared on the fire escape outside her window. Felicity glared, stomped to the window and flung it open. “Oliver Queen, I will brain you with a bottle of vodka if you don’t take your little bow and your even littler arrows - and did I mention your bow is little - and go.... Oh. Oh. Um. Hi, Barry. You’re on my fire escape.”
“You, uh, didn’t answer your phone,” he explained, hand running through his hair nervously. “I was worried, because people not answering their phones is now a sign of danger to me and not a sign that I should mind my own business but I was never very good at normal people stuff.” A pause, his expression getting less nervous and more concerned. “I’m glad you’re okay. Are you...um...is this a bad time?”
“I’m not wearing pants,” she blurted out. “Which, um, I guess you can see. Um. Hi. Again.”
Now his smile was definitely concerned and he nodded at her drink. “Hi. How many of those have you had?”
“Two. Which is way under the limit for alcohol poisoning. I checked.” For some reason, she was now feeling righteously defensive about her personal prerogative to get as drunk as she wanted to in her apartment while not wearing pants. Stupid men and their stupid telling her what to do and their extra stupid brooding.... not thinking about Oliver.
She ran that sentence over again in her head and tried to decide if something had gone horribly wrong or right with it. Hard to say.
Holding up his hands defensively, Barry shook his head. “Hey, not judging. I would totally ask to get drunk with you if I could do that longer than a few seconds.”
“Really? How does that work?” She more or less grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him in the window, which was probably a little excessively enthusiastic or maybe said bad things about her as a not-exactly-crush. That would require more thought, but after she’d seen the instant sobering thing because that sounded fascinating. “Here, have some of this.”
Barry frowned at her and looked like he wanted to ask her just what the hell had happened, but he didn’t. Instead, he took the glass and drank.
“Oh my god. That’s disgusting,” he grimaced. “What’s in this?”
“Tequila, vodka, white rum, triple sec, gin, lemon juice. Gomme syrup - don’t ask - and a little bit of cola. Oh, and ice. The weird thing is, if you drink enough of it? You kind of get to like it.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” he complained, looking at the glass like it might further betray him. “If we’re gonna do this, just give me the rum.”
“Kitchen counter.” She pointed him at it, flopped onto the bed and looked at her nails. “Are you any good with nail polish?”
A slight movement of air was the only sign that Barry had gone to the kitchen and back. Well, that and the open bottle of rum in his hand.
His smile turned bittersweet. “Yeah.”
“Ooooh. Iris.” She winced. “Shot.”
Barry’s laugh was one of the warmer sounds she knew. “Yes, ma’am.”
A couple of swallows, and the bottle was two fingers lighter. “Y’know, rum still burns, but it has a relatively high sugar content,” he said, very carefully, blue eyes slightly muzzy. “It’s nice, though.” Was he smiling at her that way? Definitely the alcohol talking. Fortunately it wouldn’t last very long if their hypothesis was correct because it made her really, really want to blush and that would just be embarrassing for everyone.
The clarity came back to his face with in another breath. “And there it goes. Here,” he said, taking the nail polish from her hand. “You have any flat toothpicks?”
“Bathroom cabinet. Top shelf. Left side. I was just, y’know, using the brush.” She flopped back on the bed and pulled the pillow over her face for a few seconds. I have a boy in my apartment and I am tipsy. This has literally never happened before. That doesn’t even count that he has actual superpowers and I could probably send him to China for real chinese food except that would be totally mean and I wouldn’t want to do that to Barry except that I kind of do.
Something brushed her foot. She squeaked, pulled the pillow off and looked down. Blinked.
“You retouched all of them?”
Was he smirking? Bastard. “Yeah. Cleaned up the edges, too. You still have to sit through the normal dry time, though.”
“Lame. Do your nails dry faster? I mean, if I put nail polish on you and then you went all superspeed, would it dry quicker?”
He started to roll his eyes, then looked surprised, then glared at her. “I really, really wish that question was less interesting.”
“Why?” She wasn’t going to gloat. Really. It was unladylike.
“Because I’m going to let you paint my nails. For science.”
“Oh, come on.” Picking up a bottle of bright red nail polish from her nightstand, she snagged his right hand and took a deep breath to steady up her hands before she got started with his index finger. “It’s going to be cool. Plus I bet you’d look totally awesome with lipstick and a manicure. You have really nice hands.” Oh God. “Oh God, did I say all of that out loud?”
Barry was looking a little pink around the cheeks and ears. “I am choosing to remember only that you think this is going to be cool. And that you’re drunk. I’m surprised you haven’t painted my whole finger.”
“I will have you know,” she said very precisely, “that I have excellent hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity.”
“Uh, yeah. Okay.” Barry cleared his throat. It made Felicity aware of how close he was. And warm. Except voice and physical temperature shouldn’t have that strong of a correlation in her head. Except for the part where touching and grunting did have a strong correlation in her mind. Probably his, too.
He really did have nice hands. She took a very deep breath and moved from his ring finger to his pinky. “I have leftover Thai in the fridge if you get hungry. You know, after I do you. Um. Your nails. I mean finish painting your nails.”
He laughed again, definitely nervously. “Sounds great. You know I can go through twenty thousand calories a day sometimes? I’m just glad they feed me at Star Labs or I’d spend all my money on food.”
“So do they just order pizza in bulk or do they have some crazy hyper-dense sugar and vitamin paste in a tube that you just knock back?” She dipped the brush back in and bit her lip. “Give me your other hand.”
“No,” he smiled, pulling away from her. “Experimentation regarding time, right? Not in exploring my feminine side.”
Before she could answer, he dissolved into a blur before her that may or may not have zoomed around her apartment. It was hard to tell.
Barry re-solidified on the bed next to her. “You were right. Check it out,” he said in excitement, showing her his hand.
“Huh.” She took it and leaned in, staring at the polish like it was, well, a lab specimen or something. “It’s kinda streaky, though. Like you melted it and redried it a couple of times. Friction, right? I’m surprised your clothes don’t catch fire more often.”
“Depends on how fast I’m going. I have learned not to wear polyester, though. This one time, I was late for a crime scene, zoomed on over, showed up with a shirt like a guy at a dungeon club.”
“Total shrinkwrap.” She blinked, visualized, then bit her lip. “Um. Wow. That would be bad. I mean terrible. I mean embarrassing.”
“Definitely embarrassing,” he agreed. “Should I get off the bed?”
“What? No!” More blinking. More lip biting. Oh, God, there had to be a reason she’d said that which did not involve terminal personal humiliation, but it wasn’t coming to her. “I’m not done looking at your nails. Yet.” Very smooth, Smoak.
Which meant that she had to stare at his hand some more, which meant she couldn’t see what his face was doing, and also that she had to keep looking at his very nice hand and try not to imagine what his knuckles would feel like in her mouth and okay, maybe she had a little bit of a thing about guys and hands. A little. And he did have very nice hands.
Great. Now she was warm and aching between her legs and calculating the absorption potential of neon pink cotton. (Spoiler: not much.) This was not relaxing, no matter what her body might think on the subject and no, she was not holding consulting hours for her libido right now.
Thankfully - unfortunately? - Barry’s stomach chose that moment to growl.
“Sorry,” he laughed. “Be right back.”
She flopped back down on the bed and buried her face in the pillow. “Felicity Smoak,” she told herself firmly, “you are not going to think about Barry Allen naked for the rest of the night. It is not going to happen.”
Barry made a slightly strangled sound in his throat. Not from across the room.
“You’re sitting right next to me, aren’t you?” she moaned into her pillow.
“The Thai was good. Thanks,” he said, angling for casual and missing by about a mile. “You...want to watch a movie? I’m not really into action-y explosions lately, can’t imagine why, but you like documentaries, right? And if you don’t have any documentaries you like, I could totally run home and get this really fascinating one about the part ... wait, no, bad, how about I get the one about the one about Mongolian dinosaur excavations instead because that’s one of my favorites assuming that you still have a VHS play....”
“Shut up, Barry,” she said, and kissed him. Which was totally not her fault because he was the one with superspeed and if he didn’t want to be kissed he pretty much had all the time in the universe to be anywhere else.
Okay, maybe a little her fault. But the babbling thing was really cute, in her defense.
He kissed her back softly, then brought a hand to her shoulder. “You’re still drunk,” he pointed out.
“But in the morning I’ll be sober, and you’ll still be stupidly gorgeous,” she muttered, still thinking about the softness of his mouth. The fine line at the corner she wanted to nibble on. The silk of his hand under her hair. “And I really want to actually see your abs. Is that shallow? Because it sounds kind of shallow, but it doesn’t feel - you know - shallow. I need a better word.”
Barry swallowed, looked away, looked back. Now his smile was the worried, hurt one. Had she done that? Why was he smiling that that? “Felicity, you aren’t shallow. And now that we’re talking about it, you have great legs and hair and an amazing smile and I have enjoyed looking at them. Seriously, have you checked yourself out lately? But what I’m trying to say is that this is more complicated than just being attracted to each other and even simple attraction isn’t when one of us is drunk.”
“I am not that drunk,” she pointed out, slowly and very carefully, while she leaned up to kiss the corner of his mouth. “But if that’s a problem for you, kiss me and come back. In the morning. Tomorrow. And I will try really, really hard not to lose my nerve. Because we deserve to have something good happen, right? And it’s not like it’s hard for you to get here. Well, maybe hard on your shoes.”
He found her hand and squeezed it. “I have a whole closet of these.” A really nice hand with a bad manicure pushed a strand of hair out of her face. “It’s a deal. Tomorrow morning.”
“But you have to kiss me first.” She grinned at him a little, which felt really good. When was the last time she’d grinned like that?
On the train. With Barry. Promising to come running if he needed anything.
She could have made it easy for him. That would have been ladylike. But given that he was going to leave her high and dry because she’d had a couple of drinks, maybe he didn’t deserve to get off so easy. Heh. She giggled into her hand, gently shoved away from him, then stretched herself out on the bed and dangled her hands over her head because she’d seen a model do that in a picture on the internet once and it’d looked like the kind of thing that would make a guy’s head explode.
Judging by the dazed stare Barry was giving her, it was at least partially effective.
“Kiss,” she reminded him in a whisper, refusing to blush.
Barry blinked, shook his head a little, and leaned down. The angle was a little awkward, sort of sideways, but he cupped her cheek and kissed her anyway. It felt like his steady heat was spreading through her whole body from his mouth and hand, and she reached her arms around his shoulders. A quiet sound of pleasure buzzed in his chest, but he sat up again before she could think about getting more out of him.
“You’re really devious sometimes, you know that?” To her satisfaction, Barry sounded more than a little off-kilter. “See you in the morning.”
A short gust of wind, and she was alone. She buried a frustrated sound in her pillow, hauled the blankets up out of the way and crawled in under them, and then shoved Azure off the edge of the bed. Some things a girl’s best (stuffed) friend just didn’t need to see.
It was pretty late when she finally got to sleep, and she was pretty sore. She was also pretty sure the lights were still on, but she didn’t really care.
The insistent buzz of her phone pulled Felicity out of a dream that collapsed into nothing by the time she jabbed the snooze button. Only it wasn’t the snooze button, it was the ‘accept call’ button, because there was a voice on the other end.
“Hey,” said Barry. “You like lattes?” A bustle of voices, the hiss of an espresso machine, and clinking dishes set up a backdrop.
“I like lattes fine.” She nestled back against her pillow and stretched slowly. “Are you still in Central City?”
“Yeah. I don’t know the coffee shops in Starling as well.” She heard him thank someone else, then the cafe noises faded, replaced by an odd crackling hiss. “Huh. Hope you don’t mind foam. Maybe I shouldn’t travel with coffee.”
“My window’s still open,” she murmured into the phone, imagining the look on his face.
“I know,” he said from the fire escape. Messenger bag slung over one shoulder, pair of (leaking) lattes in a cardboard tray, he smiled. “Good morning, Felicity.”
“Those are not coming near me,” she informed him without sitting up. “Or my comforter. What did you do, boil them?”
Setting the tray down on the outer window sill, he pried at one lid. “No, I think it was the shaking,” he said, then yelped as hot foam gushed over his hand. “Ow! Dammit. I should definitely not travel with coffee.”
“Somewhere the second law of thermodynamics is trying to serve you with a subpoena, but it can’t find you.” She ran a hand through her hair and smiled at the (admittedly blurry) boy on her fire escape. “Come in and shut the window. Leave the coffee. Some bird will get addicted to it instead of us.”
He did, then walked at normal speeds to the kitchen. She heard the sink running, and then he was back with clean hands and glasses of water.
Handing one to her, he sat on the end of the bed. “How’re you feeling?”
“Surprisingly not hungover. Which just goes to prove that I was not, in fact, that drunk.” She took the water in both hands and swallowed it as quickly as was reasonably decent. “I should probably be embarrassed to let you see me before a shower. You’re even wearing slacks.”
Chuckling, he shrugged. “Oh, come on. You could make a bag lady getup look good.”
She blushed, did her best to glare and finally gave up. “Take your shoes off and get under here already. It’s cold. And don’t think you don’t owe me another kiss.”
Throwing a laughing salute, he stripped off jacket and shoes and settled in under the covers, leaning on one elbow to look at her. “You really are amazing,” he told her, slowly wrapping his free arm around her waist. “What the hell is wrong with us.”
This time, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him down against her, burying her rueful laugh against his throat before working her way back up to his mouth and kissing him - both corners first, then his lips. She was not, okay, an expert at this sort of thing and the nervous butterflies in her belly were not making it easy to just climb all over him the way she had the night before (and God, she was going to be blushing about that every day for forever), but the way his weight pressed down on top of her and his breathing started speeding up certainly felt like good signs. Positive indicators. Good data.
Shut up, she told herself, and kissed him some more.
His hand moved from her waist to her hip, then back up, then caressed her stomach through the oversized t-shirt. He seemed unwilling to venture further upwards or downwards, though, and she wasn’t sure if that was nerves, him wanting her to spell it out, or just being a gigantic teasing butthead.
“Barry,” she finally whispered against his ear, nipping the lobe lightly with her teeth, “I’m still not wearing any pants.”
The low groan was a pretty good answer. “Uh. Yeah. Hang on.”
He sat up, dragging the blankets with him, and in a blur removed the nice blue button-up shirt he’d been wearing. Then he hesitated over his belt and slacks before he caught the exasperated look in her eyes and grinned.
“Okay, okay, I get it,” he said, and then he was sitting next to her. Naked. Amazing abs and pecs and, well, all the muscles, and. Um.
Hard.
Whether it was the deer-in-the-headlights expression she was probably wearing or his own awkwardness, Barry leaned forward and started pressing kisses to her cheek, throat, collar bone, shoulder, hands warm and solid on her waist and in her hair. She wondered if he was going to make her do all the work when he started slowly pulling her t-shirt up, kissing each inch of her as it was exposed. He didn’t pay special attention to her breasts, but he didn’t neglect them, either, which made her think that he was trying to be methodical about it.
She could work with methodical. Methodical was kind of her thing. So she let him work on that for a while and focused on running her hands over his chest, his abs, his ribs, his hips.... and yeah, okay, checking his package really quick because it helped to know what kind of equipment you were going to be operating before you actually started, um, operating it. That metaphor would probably have gone better if she hadn’t been touching him while she tried it. Damn.
“Barry,” she whispered, rolling her head back to let him kiss along the back of her jaw, “I hate to break it to you, but superpowers kinda made you a stud.”
He laughed into her skin. “Gave me a couple of neat tricks, too, if you want to try them out.” Sucking her earlobe into his mouth, he hooked a finger in the waistband of her panties and tugged them gently downwards. “Do you like vibration?”
“Um. Is this an in-principle kind of question, or are we talking practical applications? Because I like my Fukuoko 9000 a lot, but I’m less of a fan of those tilty rides in amusement parks, so I’m really hoping that you’re talking about something that doesn’t involve the whole ....”
“This,” he said into her mouth, and pressed two humming fingers into the palm of her hand. They felt a lot like the Fukuoku, actually, except it was his bare skin, warm and a little rough. “Beta test?”
“One hundred out of one hundred testers agree that is the best thing since Tesla,” she breathed, thighs already clenching in anticipation that was less anticipatory and more a live wire of some kind pressed against wherever she kept her libido. Which, in a manner of speaking, was what he did with his fingers a couple of seconds later.
Screaming. She was pretty sure there was screaming. Also that if it weren’t for super cellular regeneration whatever, Barry Allen would have been sporting her fingernail marks on his shoulders for a week. Minimum.
“Holy fucking God,” she finally whimpered when he decided she was close enough to insensate to stop the single most glorious marathon she had ever been involved with.
Grinning like he’d just won the Internet, Barry kissed her temple. “You’re welcome.”
“I don’t think we can release you into the wild,” she murmured against his jaw as she wound trembling fingers into his hair. “You might meet a girl with a heart condition or something. Special training manuals may be required. FDA warnings.”
He laughed, nuzzling her throat. “Look who’s talking. I’m lucky to still have eardrums.”
“You can grow them back, right?” She purred and arched her back slowly, scraping her body across his, then gasped softly in her throat. “Okay. Note to self - sober sex is the best sex.”
Barry pulled back to give her a concerned look. When he opened his mouth, she more or less put her tongue in it to keep him from saying anything stupid. Which was not her best plan, but did have some awesome fringe benefits. After he seemed to have lost track of whatever it was, she disentangled their mouths and kissed his cheek.
“I went to MIT. I was shy and nervous about guys. I self-medicated. It worked out okay.” She smiled up at him. “I am not, last night’s evidence to the contrary, normally a three-drinks-and-then-grab-a-guy kind of girl.”
He studied her face for a moment, nodded, and kissed her. “Okay.” Then a smirk and an honest-to-God eyebrow waggle. “Wanna have some more?”
“A world of yes.” She gave his shoulder a gentle shove, rolled him over and then grinned down at him impishly while she ran her hand over him. Still hard. Awesome. “On the topic of which, has anyone timed your refractory period since the lightning?”
“Oh god, I hope not.”
“Because I think science really needs to know.”
“No argument there. Got a stopwatch?”
She grinned, wrapped her hands in his hair and pushed herself down on him with the impatience of someone who’d been waiting - okay, less than twelve hours, but it felt a lot longer. “Barry Allen,” she gasped into his mouth, “I’m offended you have to ask. Desk drawer, center divider.”
Moaning underneath her, he spared some of his dwindling brainpower to look like she’d gone completely nuts. “Your phone’s right there.”
“Oh!” She shuddered and tightened around him, burying her suddenly burning cheeks against his neck. “I can’t imagine what made me - God - forget.”
She wasn’t sure if he tried to reply to that, because the sounds he made as he thrust up into her were halfway between moans and prayers. His hands were everywhere on her, gripping her hips one moment, tangled in her hair the next, never too fast for her.
Her teeth were raking his throat when he pulled her hips down and didn’t let go. He wasn’t coherent or controlled enough to form a sentence, but she saw the question in his eyes.
“If you think about stopping,” she whispered, “I will find a way to lock you in a room with cable news science specials for a whole day. I swear I will.”
Something in his expression caught fire as Barry let go. The strength in his hands kept them locked tightly together, which was a good thing because his hips started to vibrate in a fast-growing intensity. The waves of it pulsed through her whole body, buzzing every nerve ending to life, her building orgasm resonating through her bones.
She was screaming again when he moaned low and loud, eyes opening wide, head thrown back.
He was holding her curled against him when clarity came back. The hair-stroking was really nice, even if her whole body felt like it was trying to melt through the bed.
“Time,” she finally rasped out into his ear. “You’re hard again.”
“Twenty-eight seconds. Give or take. I was a little distracted.”
She moaned and pressed her face against his shoulder. “Need more data. Going to have to call in to work.”
“I...should probably argue with you about that.”
Lifting herself up on her elbows, she looked up at him and quirked a grin. “Save time. Do your side and my side as fast as you can. Assume I win.”
“It was kind of intense,” he smiled. “Definitely needs make-up sex.”
“Reset the timer, Mister Allen.” A little grin started sneaking out - she could feel it - and then she threw the comforter off and started wriggling her way down his body. “Let me know if I’m doing this right... I’ve never actually tried it before, but I have done research.”
“What kind of...oh. Okay. Good research.” His gorgeous fingers clenched in her hair, and the feel of him against her tongue - not to mention the smell of him - drove her more than a little bit crazy. Nobody in her research had mentioned how much fun this was. “Oh God FelicityI’mnosureIcan....”
Whatever else he said after that ran together into incoherence, but the barely controlled vibration of his hips under her hand was definitely all the experimental feedback she was going to need on this one.
He tasted surprisingly pleasant, too.
“Thirty-one seconds,” she said a moment later. “I should throw together a spreadsheet for this. Maybe sort by position and duration, too.”
“I’m calling in. Then you’re calling in. Then I’m going to eat something because otherwise I’m going to pass out. You should probably have something, too.”
She gave him her best innocent smile. “Didn’t I just?”
Barry Allen did a genuine double-take, then buried his face in her pillows and groaned. “Anyone tell you you’re terrifying sometimes?”
Felicity reached for her phone, laughing softly. “I think you’re probably the first who wasn’t talking about a computer. But I could get to like hearing it.”