Notes: Thank you for choosing to read my story.

This is a continuation of my earlier story, The Ties That Bind. If you haven't already read it, I recommend you do so or this story might be confusing.

The Arrow characters and universe do not belong to me.

Oliver woke with a start. Taking a deep breath, he allowed his lungs to completely fill and as he exhaled he cleared his mind of the nightmare that had woken him. In his dream, Felicity had been shot by a faceless man and had plunged into the dark water of the harbor, vanishing beneath the waves just out of his reach. Felicity! His eyes shot to the bed and he stood when he realized she was no longer there. He was about to call out for her when the light from under the bathroom door provided the explanation for her disappearance. Dropping back into the armchair, Oliver rested his elbows on his knees and placed his hands on the back of his neck. He wanted to knock on the door and ask her if she was okay, but decided she would appreciate her privacy more. He was worried about her. Between the kidnapping, her mom's involvement and subsequent murder, Vic breaking up with her the day of her mom's funeral, well, Felicity was having a really bad week and Oliver wasn't sure what to do to help her. His head shot up as he realized he could hear her speaking. He couldn't tell what she was saying, but he recognized the tone. She was using her patented, trying to sound calm while furious voice. Unfortunately, he knew it all too well. He quickly moved to the bathroom door and was about to knock when he heard something clatter to the floor. "Felicity, I'm coming in." He waited a beat for her to respond before he slowly opened the door.

She was seated on the tile floor with her back against the linen closet, her knees drawn up under her chin. Her phone and its shattered case were on the floor. She was dressed in a borrowed nightshirt that belonged to Thea. When Walter divorced Moira and purchased the 30th floor apartment, he had turned one of the bedrooms into a room for Thea. After the Undertaking, Thea had stayed frequently at Walter's penthouse. In his life, Oliver had done many things he was ashamed of, but none more than disappearing to Lian Yu for five months when his sister had needed him the most. When he finally realized how much pain he'd caused Thea, his mom, Diggle and Felicity with his actions, he vowed he'd never run away again. He hadn't been able to keep his vow long because, when his mom died, he disappeared on them again. He knew that if he'd been stronger and had been able to face his guilt, Thea wouldn't have run away and he'd know where she was and if she were safe. He failed to help Thea then, but he could help Felicity now. Oliver sank down onto the floor next to her. "Hey, you okay?"

She nodded her head, but didn't look at him. "I'm sorry I woke you."

Oliver placed a hand on her shoulder. "You didn't. Was that Vic?" He asked, trying his best to sound interested but not jealous.

Felicity shook her head and then turned to look at him. She sounded tired when she said, "No, it wasn't Vic." He watched as she silently debated with herself. Before she said a word, he knew she was about to lie to him. "It was someone who knew my mom. He wanted to give me his condolences."

He was wrong, it hadn't been a complete lie, she'd given him a half truth. His best guess, the call was about her mom but no one was calling with any sympathy. "Mmmm." Oliver and Felicity sat in silence, their eyes locked upon one another as they each tried to decide what to say next. He could see from her expression that she knew that he didn't fully believe her.

From the moment they met they had an uncanny ability to read the other. She always knew when he was lying and he always knew when she was keeping something from him. Most times, this ability came in handy, unfortunately, tonight wasn't one of those times. Tonight she didn't want to be confronted and he didn't want to confront her and with simultaneous tilts of their heads they both silently agreed to pretend that he believed her. He picked up her cell and tossed the broken case into the trash. "It's late, you should get some sleep. Walter wants to talk to us at breakfast." Oliver stood up and extended his hand.

Felicity took the hand Oliver offered and allowed him to pull her to her feet. "He wasn't upset I didn't make it to dinner, was he?"

Oliver placed a hand on her shoulder. "Of course not."

"Have you been in that chair all night?" She asked with concern.

"It's actually pretty comfortable." He wasn't lying. Oliver knew uncomfortable and had slept under far worse conditions.

"You really didn't need to do that." She rested her hand against his arm and gave it a slight squeeze.

Sometimes his partner amazed him. She had jumped out of an airplane and allowed herself to be used as bait for him, but she thought him spending a night by her side in an armchair, that probably cost more than a month of her rent, was beyond the call of friendship. He steered her towards the bed and pulled the covers down. "Come on, time to get some sleep." She got into bed and he removed her glasses, placed them on the nightstand and sat her cell beside them. He took the empty glass from the night stand and refilled it in the bathroom. "Drink this."

"Another one? I don't want to." She whined. He put the glass into her hand. "Oliver, it'll make me have to get up and pee again."

"Hmph." His eyes sought out the ceiling in the darkness. Felicity's capacity to argue with him over her own wellbeing never failed to try his patience or to make him want to protect her all the more."You'll thank me when you don't wake up with a pounding headache."

He could hear her drinking the water. The glass and her hand brushed against his arm. "Happy?"

He placed the glass on the nightstand. "Yes, very." Oliver turned off the bathroom light and stood in the doorway, unsure of what to do. He was still wearing his suit pants and button down shirt. Earlier, when Felicity had gotten ready for bed, she'd asked him to stay with her until she fell asleep. He'd dragged an armchair over to the side of the bed and sat down taking her hand in his. He'd fallen asleep shortly after she did as all the sleepless nights since she'd been taken had finally caught up with him. When she was missing, having Felicity out of sight and beyond his protection was almost more than he could bear. After he got her text, the afternoon she was discharged from the hospital, informing him she was spending the night with Vic, he nearly went out of his mind with worry. Even though he knew she was safe, he'd spent the entire night before the funeral pacing the alley across from Vic's building. Oliver didn't relax until Felicity's hand slid into his outside of the funeral home. Now, as he stood in the doorway, he felt awkward - it seemed presumptuous to sit down beside her. There was another guest room next door, he'd just go to that room.

"Are you planning on sleeping standing up?" Felicity asked with a yawn.

He couldn't help but smile. "No. I was just thinking."

"Well, stop. I can't sleep if you're hovering." He moved to resume his position in the chair when she said, "Not in the chair. You need your rest too." She patted the bed. "I'm sure you've had less sleep than me this week."

Oliver froze. Since the moment he learned that Felicity had been kidnapped, the line he'd drawn in the sand for himself had begun to blow away. When he downloaded the photo of a bound and beaten Felicity from Richie Thompson, everything he felt for her crystallized. He was in love with her and he'd do anything to keep her safe and by his side. Now that she was safe, he was still certain of his feelings but how to move forward, without ruining everything between them, continued to elude him. As he stood there debating whether or not to get into her bed, he reminded himself of the promise he made the day she told him his mom's secret about Thea. When he confronted Felicity about what she was keeping from him, she'd told him she was afraid to lose him. He told her that she would never lose him and as he spoke those words he promised himself he would never let his feelings for her screw things up between them. He was never going to do anything to jeopardize their friendship. As much as she feared losing him, he suspected, he feared losing her more.

The night of Slade's attack on the city, marked the appearance of the first chink in his resolve to keep things platonic. From the moment Slade reappeared in his life, Felicity had been by his side. She encouraged him to keep fighting when all seemed hopeless and yelled at him when he allowed his own fears to lead him towards surrender. When Felicity told him that the way to defeat Slade was to make Slade outthink him, he instantly thought of the cameras in the mansion. Slade was always ahead of them because he was always watching them. Oliver decided to use the cameras against Slade, but he had to do the unthinkable to defeat him. Oliver had to offer Felicity up like a lamb to the slaughter. Slade would never have allowed Sara or Oliver close enough to administer the cure, but Slade would be unable to resist the woman Oliver loved. Slade's madness would overwhelm his reason and he'd be too distracted with vengeance to see through Oliver's plan. By underestimating Felicity, Slade had underestimated Oliver. Oliver hadn't told her what he was planning because he hadn't made up his mind that he was going through with the plan until she questioned his actions. When he first walked through the front door of the mansion he'd decided to leave her there, safe, his plan abandoned. Of course, Felicity had argued with him and her insistence that she be allowed to stay in the fight convinced Oliver to move forward with his plan knowing in his heart that she was the key to defeating Slade. In a moment that took him completely by surprise, when he stood looking into Felicity's eyes as he told her Slade took the wrong woman, he knew, without a doubt, that he was in love with her. He decided he couldn't walk out the front door with any regrets. There had been a very good chance that either or both of them would die that night and he needed her to know that he loved her.

Every word he spoke that night was carefully chosen so Slade would believe that Laurel was the wrong pressure point. Oliver also needed Felicity to understand what he was silently asking her to do. When he told her he loved her, he whispered the words because they were for her ears alone and not part of his plan. Since that night, they were both pretending that he said the words to convince Slade, but he knew that she knew that he'd meant them. After they defeated Slade, the familiar terror of losing her returned. When they'd been facing one another on the beach of Lian Yu he'd lacked the bravery to repeat the words, but he also refused to deny them. His courage had been slowly increasing and he was moving towards confessing everything when Vic's arrival in their lives had taken them both by surprise. When Vic had dismissed him from Felicity's hospital bedside, it had taken all of Oliver's willpower not to refuse or to throw Vic from the room instead. Walking out of her room was one of the hardest things he'd ever done, but the look on her face told him everything he needed to know. When the panic attack overtook her, she cried out to Oliver, not Vic, for comfort. Now that Felicity and Vic were broken up, Oliver wasn't going to let anyone come between them ever again.

As he stood over her in the dark, he knew that if he got into her bed that line would become that much fainter. If he was honest with himself, he no longer cared. If the line disappeared with the morning sun he'd be happy. Except, now was not the time for declarations of love. She just buried her mom and had enough to deal with without him forever altering their relationship.

Oliver walked over to the empty side of the bed and was about to sit down when she said, "Aren't you going to get undressed? You can't be comfortable. You're wearing a belt." He could feel himself blush and was grateful she couldn't see him in the dark. "Oliver. I know we don't like to talk about this and we pretend like it has never happened, but I've seen you in your underwear before and not just once, lots of times." He knew she was teasing by the smile in her voice. "If it makes you feel any better, its pitch black in here and I'm not wearing my glasses, so I can't see anything," and then she muttered under her breath, "that I haven't already seen a thousand times before."

"Felicity." He didn't really want to be reminded about how many times he'd been injured and required her assistance to remove his pants. There had even been an awkward conversation about her looking into breakaway pants, like strippers wear, to make it easier when they needed to tend to a leg injury. Roy nearly stopped breathing, he was laughing so hard. Diggle could barely keep the smirk from his face as he explained to Felicity that professional athletes wore breakaway pants too. Felicity took that as encouragement to try and design breakaway leather pants. Oliver very rarely vetoed any idea Felicity suggested, after all, she was far smarter than he and was, more often than not, right. He did, however, summarily veto the breakaway pants. Felicity had muttered something about him being resistant to change and an enemy of efficiency, but she dropped the subject.

"Oliver. I'm just saying that you will probably sleep better if you're comfortable and I won't be uncomfortable if you want to get out of your suit." Felicity yawned again. Oliver decided that it would be more awkward to insist that he needed to remain fully clothed than to get undressed. He was in his undershirt and boxer briefs when he moved to lie on top of the covers. "Under the blankets." The exasperation barely contained from her voice.

Oliver lifted the blanket and crawled into the bed, careful to keep a respectable distance between them. "Good night, Felicity." When she didn't respond, he asked in a whisper, "Felicity, are you awake?" He was then aware of the slight vibrations carrying across the bed and the change in her breathing. She was crying. Without thinking, he slid across the bed and pulled her into his chest. "Ssshh, it's okay. I'm here." She turned into him, her arm wrapping around his waist as she buried her face against his chest. He could feel her tears soaking through his undershirt and his heart ached for her. Felicity's pain had become his and he could feel tears begin to well in his own eyes. He continued to whisper soothing sounds as he gently stroked her head. Eventually, her crying stopped and her breathing evened out as she fell asleep. He hated that he was powerless to take away her pain. There was a time when he'd been foolish enough to believe that he could keep her safe from ever being hurt. As she lay in his arms he realized that there were things he'd never be able to completely protect her from, but as long as he was alive, Felicity would never have to face anything alone again.