This was NOT the direction I meant for this to go in, but I like what it is- even if it broke away from the prompt, sort of.

Action: Learning something stereotypically for the opposing gender

"How did hacking and coding become your thing?" He glanced down at the blonde who had her head in his lap.

"Hmm?" Felicity murmured sleepily. Again he looked down at his sleeping girlfriend. Gently he pushed some of her hair back, before stopping, leaving his hand on the nap of her neck, massaging slowly. He felt her shift slightly and knew she was awake.

"Can I ask you something?" She didn't answer. "Fel-ic-ity." She groaned.

"What do you want Oliver?" He couldn't help smiling. A half-asleep Felicity was one of the sides Oliver loved the most.

"I just wanted to ask about you and coding and stuff. I mean that's usually a guy thing. Plus, no offence, but your mother isn't exactly an IT genius like you." She snorted.

"Ain't that the truth." Taking a deep breath she started her story.

"I had a good guy friend who would watch me when my mom was working.

"He was IT and I idolized him. Spending every night with him certainly put me on a fast track to computer science. He was the reason I managed to build a computer at age 7. He let me pull apart his old computer and spread across the whole living room." Oliver could just see a slight uptick in the corner of her mouth.

"He was good for you wasn't he?" Oliver started playing with her fingers.

"He was more of a parent to me than my mom was. Without him I'd probably be a cocktail waitress in Vegas.

"It was him who convinced me that I could get into MIT, and convinced me that it was okay that I was the only girl in my high schools Advanced Computer Sciences Program. At one point in my freshman year he drove across the country because I asked him to. Plus he attended both of my graduations while my mother didn't attend either of them. He is literally the reason I'm in Starling now. He never let me give up. I would never be able to truly explain how much I owe to him, especially for introducing me to computers." She let the grin cover her face this time.

"What was his name?" She hesitated now.

"Henry. Henry Smoak." She bit her lip. "When I turned 16, and of course realized he was more of a family than my own flesh and blood, he took me to court and we got it legally changed to Felicity Smoak."

"Where is he now? Why haven't you ever spoken about him before?" Now Felicity pulled away and sat up beside him, wrapping her arms around her knees.

"He died." Oliver didn't know what to say. "It was shortly after I accepted the job here. He told me on the phone that night how proud he was of me. I wasn't able to talk much over the next week; I was too busy with work starting." She paused. He could see tears trying to slide down her face, no matter how hard she tried to stop them.

"My first weekend here I got a call from the hospital back in Vegas. All they'd tell me was that I needed to get there ASAP. That my "dad" was there. Apparently Henry wouldn't let them tell me what was wrong. I went anyway, as quick as I could; and learned that he had cancer. He'd had it since my sophomore year at MIT, and he'd never told me, worried that I'd drop out and come home." She didn't have a chance of stopping the tears now so she let them go, obviously retreating into her mind. Oliver pulled her into his lap, holding her tight against her and waited. Eventually she seemed to come back to the living room, but before he could speak, she finished her story.

"By Sunday evening he was gone. Even after death he took care of me. There was an account of funeral money, and then left everything else to me. Turns out he didn't have a family either…" She trailed off.

"Of course after that I couldn't stop coding even if I wanted to. At his funeral I made a promise to him that I would always use what he'd taught me, and in a way that was a sort of remembrance of him." They sat in silence for a few minutes.

"He would have like you. Maybe tried to scare you off at first, but eventually he'd have calmed down and accepted you were okay. He knew I could make my own choices, but still. It wasn't true "parenting" until he scared off a boyfriend." Oliver moved one hand to hold her chin so she'd meet his eyes.

"I'm sorry I never got to meet him. I would like to see the guy who basically put you in my life." A smile broke out across her face.

"I never thought of that." She turned and stared at the ceiling. She didn't have to say anything for Oliver to know she was thanking Henry.

When she glanced back down, he stood up, still holding her.

"Ready to go to bed?"

"Yeah. Let's go." They were on their way up the stairs when Felicity spoke again. "Thank you Oliver for asking. I had been avoiding thinking about him for so long because I was alone and it hurt." She smiled. "But now I'm not alone anymore, and you know, so I don't have to keep it all to myself. Thank you." She wrapped her arms around his neck. "Thank you." She whispered into his ear. He smiled.

"Anytime Felicity. Anytime."