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All's fair in love and war — and coffee. ~Pam Brady, Trey Parker, and Matt Stone, South Park, "Gnomes,"
It was a really bad idea to come into SC Jitters at lunchtime just a few days before Christmas. Felicity bumped into the end of the line as soon as she stepped in the door. But she needed coffee, good coffee, not the dregs from the bottom of the break room coffee pot. She could wait a few extra minutes.
Jitters had figured out that people stuck waiting in line were more likely to buy last minute gifts if they were right in front of their customers, so Felicity entertained herself by looking over the various coffee mugs, bags of coffee, and other gift sets packaged for “easy gifting.” As the line shuffled forward slowly, an item marked down on the top shelf caught her eye. She glanced around, but didn’t see any duplicates of the item on the lower shelf. She moved closer to the shelf and reached up. Her fingers brushed the box, but it was just barely out of reach. Why had she opted for her shorter heels today? She reached for the box one more time, when it was snatched out of reach by another hand--and promptly pressed into her outstretched one.
“There you go,” she heard from behind her. She turned to see a tall, ridiculously gorgeous man standing very close to her, close enough that she was able to see his bright blue eyes and feel the brush of his wool pea coat.
“Thank you!” Felicity managed before she gripped the box close to her chest and spun back around, shuffling forward with the line. She took a few deep breaths and reasoned with herself. He was just spreading holiday cheer, like everyone did this time of year. He didn’t know how piercing his eyes were. Or maybe he did, but he was showing off for someone else in line. Maybe his girlfriend had been hidden behind him. In any case, she had her prize and was only two back from being able to place her coffee order.
“So what is it that you just had to have?”
“What?” Felicity blinked and turned to see the gorgeous man nodding at the box in her arms. She snuck a look, but didn’t see anyone distinctly waiting in line with him. “Oh. This. It’s a gingerbread house kit. Of Jitters. I thought it was cute.” She lifted up the box so he could see it, even as she kept talking. “It’s 40% off, so I thought, you know, why not.”
“Why not,” the gorgeous man echoed, looking down at the box. “So you got it to do with your kids?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding her head and sending her ponytail bouncing before she froze. “I mean, no. Not my kids. I don’t have kids. Why, do I look like I have kids? Oh, frak. I’m talking too much. Starting over in three...two...one…” Felicity took a deep breath. “It’s for my friends’ kid. They have an adorable little girl who won’t care what the house is supposed to look like but will totally have fun spreading all the frosting over me.”
She finally risked a look back up at the handsome stranger, who was just watching her with a little smile. After a moment of her silence, he said, “That sounds like you have a lot of fun planned.”
“Yes. Lots of fun,” she said, venturing a smile at the man. He deepened his smile, which unfairly made him even more gorgeous. “What about you? Do you have big plans for gingerbread houses?”
“No,” he replied a bit wistfully. “There never seems to be any time for that. And to tell the truth--” He leaned in, as if he was telling a secret. “I’ve never built a gingerbread house.”
“You’re missing out, mister,” Felicity told him. “Too bad this was the only one left, or I’d be telling you to buy one for yourself and challenge you to a contest..”
“Felicity?”
Felicity whipped her head around to see her favorite barista gesturing her forward to order. “Oh,” she said, then glanced back at the gorgeous guy. “That’s my cue.” The other barista gestured for the man to step forward as Felicity placed her order for her extra large nonfat latte with extra sugar and paid for her gingerbread house.
She stepped off to the side to wait for her latte. A moment later, the man joined her and gave her another smile. Felicity heard a gasp from behind her and a few whispers, but didn’t think anything of it until the man held out his hand and said, “I’m Oliver, by the way.”
Felicity gaped at him for a long moment as she finally recognized him as Oliver Queen, CEO of Queen Consolidated, one of the direct competitors of Merlyn Global where she worked. The very handsome, very single CEO. “I know who you are, Mr. Queen,” she said as she shook his hand.
Oliver gave a little shake of his head and laughed. “Mr. Queen was my father. But it’s nice to meet you, Felicity.”
“Felicity Smoak,” she supplied, giving him a full smile.
“Felicity Smoak,” he repeated, keeping his eyes on her for a long moment. Felicity was aware that there were names being called, and other people picking up their coffee, but for a few moments her world narrowed to a pair of blue eyes.
“Oliver!”
“Oh,” Oliver said, glancing towards the counter. “That’s mine.” He took the coffee off the counter, then looked back at her and smiled again. “Merry Christmas, Felicity.”
“I’m Jewish, actually,” she replied almost automatically, her trained response from many holiday seasons.
Oliver didn’t miss a beat. “Happy Hanukkah, then.” He hesitated another moment, then shook his head and turned to go. Felicity shifted her grip on her bag and realized she didn’t want this moment to end.
“Oliver?” He turned around eagerly, which made her smile and blush a little. “Would you like to come and help me put together this gingerbread house tonight with my friends John and Lyla and their daughter?”
His smile returned as he nodded. “I think it’s time for me to give gingerbread houses a try.”
Felicity’s latte was ready then, so after she grabbed it, she wrote down the address for Oliver, her phone number, and the time. As they parted ways, she wondered if he’d show up that night. Former playboy turned serious CEO, show up to decorate a gingerbread house? How likely was that to really happen?
As it turned out, extremely likely. Oliver showed up and survived scrutiny by John and Lyla. That night resulted in Oliver asking her out again. And for years to come, they never let the holiday season pass without decorating a gingerbread house.
Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. ~Harriet Van Horne
Felicity was severely out of her depth, something that apparent the moment she stepped into the room and saw her friend waving to her from his seat at one of the stations. She made her way around the crowded room, eying the setup of the kitchen at the honest to goodness cooking school like it might attack at any moment. “Curtis, I may just have to kill you.”
The man in question straightened up and flashed a grin at her. “You don’t actually mean that.”
“No, I do. I am going to take this--what is this called?” Felicity picked up a long silicone tube and waved it at him.
“A rolling pin?”
Felicity frowned as she stared at the silicone tube. “Oh, I thought--isn’t it missing handles? Don’t rolling pins all have handles?”
Curtis shook his head at her and got her back on her original train of thought. “So you’re going to kill me with a rolling pin, why?”
“Because I can’t cook, and now you want me to bake? You would think since it’s all science-y and step by step that I would be able to do it, but you would be wrong.” She set the rolling pin back down and took a seat next to Curtis, eying the room suspiciously again.
Curtis flashed her another grin, entirely undeterred. “That’s why we’re in a cooking class. So you can learn.”
Felicity just gave him another look. “You think you’re cute. Just wait until--who is that?” Her eyes widened as she took in the tall man who had just walked into the room. He was wearing a chef’s jacket that he filled out well. Felicity couldn’t help staring at him.
“That’s the teacher.”
She shook her head as she continued to stare. “No, that’s a model.”
“He is pretty hot,” Curtis conceded. He nodded towards where the Model Chef Teacher was setting up at the station in the middle of the room. “His name is Oliver.”
She frowned, then leaned over closer to Curtis so her voice wouldn’t carry. “Did you sign us up for this class because you knew the teacher was a Greek god? How else could you know his name?”
Curtis laughed, then pointed towards the Greek god. “It’s right there on his chef’s jacket.”
“Right,” Felicity said, feeling her face heat up as she noticed that yes, the chef’s jacket did have a little “Oliver” scripted over the left pocket. “Well, shut up so I can listen to him--how not fair is it that even his voice is sexy?”
Curtis, who she was now considering firing from Smoak Technologies even though he had helped start up the company, just grinned at her again. But he did shut up, which helped her focus a little bit more on the sexy man masquerading as a chef teacher.
It turned out that his sexy voice was not helpful for trying to learn how to bake. They were supposed to be putting together some sort of “easy holiday chocolate souffle,” though that seemed like an oxymoron at this point. Oliver had stopped talking and was making his way around the room as they worked on the first few steps. Felicity was focused enough on trying to follow the directions of the recipe that she didn’t realize Oliver had come up right behind her--at least until he spoke.
“How’s it going over here?”
Felicity jumped and accidentally flung the flour she’d been measuring out into the cup up into the air. For a moment, everything froze. Then the flour started coming down almost as if it was snowing inside. It covered everything, from the counters to Felicity to...Oliver.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Felicity moaned, reaching out and starting to brush the flour off his chef’s jacket, only to discover that his chest and abs--oh God, he had abs--felt very hard underneath her hands. And wow, she had her hands all over the model chef teacher and he was just looking at her. She jerked her hands back before muttering, “Sorry, sorry.”
But he didn’t seem mad at all. If anything, he looked amused. “Well, I usually wait to take a girl out before letting her feel me up…”
Felicity felt her cheeks heat up. Oliver noticed and gave her a reassuring smile as he held out his hand. “Why don’t we start with names. I’m Oliver.”
“I’m Felicity,” she said, noticing that the flour on his nose only made his blue eyes seem bluer. She slipped her hand into his, and gestured vaguely over her shoulder. “And that’s Curtis.”
“Felicity,” Oliver repeated, and how did he say her name in a way that made her tingle from head to toe? “It’s good to meet you.” He let go out of her hand, and reached out. Felicity froze as his thumb gently wiped something off her cheek. “You’re still covered in flour,” he said, his eyes crinkling as he smiled down at her. “But at least there’s none on your cheek now.”
Felicity couldn’t help smiling at that. “I told Curtis I was hopeless at any of this.”
“Nobody’s completely hopeless,” Oliver told her. “Let’s see if we can get you back on the right track.”
Despite the horrible flour snow incident, Oliver kept coming back over to check on them throughout the class. Curtis helpfully announced towards the end of class that Felicity was single. Felicity was about to melt into the ground when Oliver smiled at that information. “I am too,” he told Felicity before he bent down to check on her souffle in the oven.
Out of all the souffles in the class, hers was the most droopy, but at least the chocolate tasted right in it. And at the end of the day, wasn’t that the important part?
They were cleaning up when Oliver finally made his way back over. He looked nervous as he said, “Felicity?”
“Yes?” she asked, thinking he was going to ask her to help clean up the rest of the flour spill, or never mention that she took his cooking class so no one could blame her horrible baking skills on him.
“Would you like to go out to dinner with me?”
“Oh!” Felicity said, her eyes widening before she felt a grin form. She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes.”
Oliver looked relieved and smiled widely back at her. Curtis let out a whoop. And Felicity just kept smiling at Oliver.
When he proposed two years later, he used perfect chocolate holiday souffles, because nothing else would have seemed right.
There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good. ~Edwin Denby
“I never should have agreed to this,” Felicity moaned as Oliver helped her out of the silver Porsche. “I should have just checked the box marked ‘single’ and owned up to the fact that I’m too much of a workaholic to ever find a wedding date.”
“I told you, I’m happy to be your date,” Oliver replied. He smiled as he offered his arm to her, which she took with a sigh. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were ashamed of being seen with me.”
“Never,” she said, squeezing his arm--or trying to. The man was like a rock. “You're going to be the highlight of this wedding. Well you, and seeing Sara and Nyssa so happy.”
Oliver huffed a laugh in the way he did when he was truly amused by something. To most people, Oliver Queen was a reformed playboy who had grown up after the death of his father. He had a reputation for being a little too serious, but his passion for Starling City was undeniable. “So what's our cover story?”
“Cover story? What are we, spies?” Felicity glanced up at him and raised an eyebrow.
He shook his head. “Not quite. But if we're supposed to be a couple, shouldn't we have our stories straight?”
Felicity’s eyebrow raised higher. She stepped closer to him, like someone could overhear, and repeated, “A couple?”
“If we’re lying anyways, we may as well lie big, right?” He shrugged nonchalantly, and there was no more opportunity to “get their story straight” as they were ushered to their seats.
Felicity made sure to stick close to Oliver so they wouldn’t have to invent any conflicting stories on the fly once they got to the reception, but eventually she had to leave his side to use the bathroom. As she touched up her bright pink lipstick after washing her hands, Sara walked in.
“Congratulations again,” Felicity told her friend, giving her a quick hug. “I’m so happy for you.”
“And I’m happy for you,” Sara told her, smirking at her as she stepped back. “I always knew there was more to the story than you and Ollie just being friends. How long have you been secretly dating?”
Felicity opened her mouth to deny it all, then realized Sara was thinking exactly what she was supposed to be thinking. “A while,” she said, then made her excuses and went back out to find Oliver. He was talking to a couple she didn’t recognize, but as she came up to his side, he smiled at her and slipped his arm around her. It wasn’t the first time he’d ever done it, but this time it felt natural. It took another moment for her to realize that Oliver was recounting the first time he’d met her--a story he finished with a soft smile at her as he said, “If only I knew then that my whole life had changed.”
The couple both started to ask questions, but Oliver shook his head and insisted he’d promised Felicity a dance. It was only when they were out on the dance floor that Felicity was able to find her voice.
“You’ve always said you don’t dance,” she said, looking up at him. He was doing a good job at leading her without making her feel like she was being guided around the dance floor.
He shook his head slightly. “Dancing is not something I like to do, but I don’t mind it with you.”
“I’ll have to find excuses more often, then. You’re good at this.” Felicity remained silent another moment, then asked the question pressing on her mind. “Do you really remember our first meeting that well?”
Oliver’s blue eyes flashed to meet hers. It struck her how nervous he looked. “Of course I do.”
She laughed a little in disbelief. “I was chewing on a pen. Do you remember that part?”
“It was red.”
She stopped in her tracks, staring up at him, while the rest of the dancers continued to move around them. She looked at him intently, trying to figure out why he would possibly remember every detail of their first meeting as well as she did. She and Oliver had been close friends, partners even in a lot of ways, but she’d long ago accepted that Oliver would never see her as more than a friend.
And yet, here they were.
“Oliver…”
“Felicity.”
They both stared at each other for a few long heartbeats, before Felicity broke the silence. “Is the reason you were eager for us to pose as a real couple...because you want us to be a real couple?”
“Yes,” Oliver said without hesitation. “Because I want that--I want this--I want to build on the best friendship I’ve had, and take that next step. With you, Felicity.”
She kept her eyes on him for a few moments longer, then caught sight of something not far from where they were standing. “Okay. But we’re going to need to move a few feet to your right.”
“Felicity, what--” Oliver was looking at her like she was crazy, but he moved to his right. She nodded in approval, then pushed up on her tiptoes and pulled Oliver down for their first kiss.
And wow, did that leave her light headed.
As Oliver and Felicity parted, Oliver looked as dazed as she felt. He smiled at her, then turned more serious. “Why did I need to move to my right?”
Felicity grinned and pointed up at the ceiling, where amongst the holiday decorations there was tucked a little bundle of mistletoe. “Because when you tell the story of our first kiss, now you can say it was under the mistletoe.”
Oliver groaned, but drew her back for another kiss under the mistletoe.
(When he recounted the story of their first kiss at their wedding two years later, nobody believed it had been their first kiss.)
I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders. ~Jewish Proverb
Putting the salmon ladder in front of the computers had not been the smartest thing Felicity had ever done.
It had seemed perfect in theory. Instead of hearing the distracting clank of the salmon ladder halfway across the Foundry and craning her neck if she wanted to take a peek, the salmon ladder would be right in her field of vision. It would be easy to glance up and see Oliver ascending the ladder without taking her attention too far from her work on the computers.
It was perfect in theory. But somehow, Oliver had gotten even hotter those months he was away, and even more so in the months he’d been back, and his stupid abs were just....there....demanding she stare at them.
Which she was totally allowed to do, if she felt like it. Her searches were running on the computers, and they would alert her when she needed to pay attention, so if she wanted to just stare at the lovely curves of Oliver's abs,there was nothing stopping her...
"How's that search coming?"
Felicity jerked in her seat, dragging her eyes away from Oliver’s abs to his face. He wasn’t looking at her, though; he was still concentrating on the salmon ladder. He probably hadn’t seen her staring, not that it would bother him anyways. “It’s...searching away.”
He jumped down from the salmon ladder, and yep, putting the salmon ladder right there had been a particularly stupid idea. He was standing in front of her, all glistening and Greek god-like, and could she help if she was distracted by it? “So we have a few minutes.”
“Er...yes,” Felicity said after another quick glance at her computers. “Yep, this isn’t finishing yet.”
Oliver nodded and went over to his box. Felicity watched him for a moment, curious what he could possibly be getting out of the box this time. What she didn’t expect him to pull out was a blue and white wrapped...present?
Seriously, what else did he have in that thing?
Before she could grow too curious about what Oliver was doing with a present, he was walking towards her and holding it out--to her.
“What’s this?” she asked, taking the box from him. It was heavier than she expected.
Felicity had never seen the look that crossed Oliver's face before. It was almost...bashful? But that didn't seem to fit the Arrow and the normal stoic side of Oliver. “It's for you, “ he told her, shifting his feet.
“I guessed that much, “ she said, looking over the box more closely. “Do you want me to open it now? “
“You said we had a few minutes,” replied Oliver.
She was curious what Oliver could possibly be giving her, so she didn't need to be told twice. She unwrapped the present carefully but quickly, making quick work of the wrapping paper. The box itself was unremarkable, but when she pulled the top off the box…
“Oliver,” she exclaimed softly, setting the box down next to her computers so she could lift out the present. “This is beautiful.” She carefully set the menorah down next to the box, then reached in and pulled out a second box that turned out to contain candles.
“Is it okay?” Oliver asked, taking a step closer. If Felicity had been looking in his direction, she would have seen the slightly anxious look on his face, or the way he was rubbing his fingers together. But instead she was focused on the menorah, and on finding the perfect spot for it in the Arrow Cave.
“It’s perfect,” she declared, setting the menorah down in a spot where she could easily see it not only from her computers, but from other spots in the Cave. She admired it for a long moment, then turned around and threw her arms around Oliver’s neck. He stiffened in surprise, then grew more relaxed as the hug continued. He was much more relaxed than he had been just a week before, when Felicity had hugged him after he returned from facing Cyrus Gold. “Thank you,” she told him.
“I’m glad you like it,” he said, pulling back from the hug and putting a few steps in between them. Felicity didn’t have much time to dwell on the fact that Oliver had given her a Hanukkah gift, or that she’d hugged a very shirtless Oliver, because John chose that moment to return with Big Belly Burger. Oliver became all business after that, discussing the recon he wanted to do that night and any rumors regarding the man in the skull mask from on the streets.
The next night, the first night of Hanukkah, Felicity used the shamash to light the first candle at nightfall, reciting the Hanukkah blessing with Oliver and John respectfully watching. For the first time since she moved to Starling City, she felt like she was celebrating the holidays with family.
She felt like she was home.