Irish Goodbye

The first time he meets her, they're both too drunk to know it .

"Buy you a drink?" He leans against the bar, striving for smooth, but there's already a bit of slur to it, because Tommy's been pouring tequila down his throat all night.

That's basically their thing since he's been back, between his days working at QC and his other "work" at night, the only time he sees his friend anymore is when Tommy kidnaps him for a night on the town and it's back out or black out. These nights all go the same way, with copious amounts of alcohol and women whose names he doesn't bother learning.

This one in particular is a stunner, even though he can't quite see her face, in a gold-sequined dress and matching heels, with curly blonde hair he wants to run his fingers through. He wants to run his fingers all over her, actually. His eyes scroll back up her body and he realizes he can see her face, meeting her amused gaze and choking a little on his neat scotch at the knowledge he's been caught. He composes himself and sheepishly motions to the bartender for an ice cube.

She gives him a look, a little frosty, a little detached, totally endearing, and motions to her mostly-full glass.

"Maybe when I'm done with this one." A little smirk. He knows the game she's playing. It's not hard to recognize, but it feels different with her.

"You're beautiful."

She actually rolls those killer eyes at him, scoffing audibly.

"And you're not trying very hard."

She's right. He's never tried very hard. At anything, for most of his life. But for the last five years he's done nothing but try, simply to survive. And now, he's just weary.

"Sorry," she blurts out, taking his silence for offense, flushing adorably as she takes a gulp of her drink. "That was totally rude. It's just..I'm not here to get hit on tonight. I'm celebrating. Fresh start, new job, new city…."

Drunk Ollie would have smarmed around the small talk and asked where she was from, where she worked, likes/dislikes/long walks on the beach. Drunk Oliver just leans in closer, almost mouthing his words as he cuts her off on a gasp. "Congratulations."

"Thank you very much," she smiles up at him and she's glassy-eyed and almost too adorable for him to handle. "Still not here to her to get hit on, though."

She flattens her palms against his chest to push him away teasingly, but freezes, eyes wide, when his pecs flex involuntarily under her touch.

"Not...here...for...that..." She blinks twice and recovers. "Not even by Mr. Tall, Drunk, and Handsome."

He just grins at the challenge. "What are you here for then?"

"I'm here to get a little sloppy," she tells him, motioning to her drink, matter-of-fact, "and I'm here to dance."

He's already tried one of those two things, and he's really not much of a...

"Let's dance then," his mouth blurts before his brain catches up.

Her lips quirk and his heart soars a little. There's something so different about her, she makes him feel lighter than he has in five long years. He can't put a drunken finger on it, but when she reaches out a hand, the last of his nerves evaporate in the warm knowledge that he's going to get to touch her now.

He tries to keep from shaking as she pulls him to a darkened edge of the dance floor, wrapping the hand she's holding around her waist and stepping back into him. He'd really like to see her face again, but then she swivels her hips in time with the music and he has no complaints.

He runs his hands down her sides and his fingers scrape and pick against the sequins of her dress. It's yet another reminder of all the ways he isn't himself anymore. Ollie Queen had the soft hands of a boy who never once had to pull his own weight. The man he is now carries more than just his share by necessity.

He shakes his head lightly to clear the storm clouds, and brushes his cheek against the side of her neck, zeroing in on the way she smells and how it evaporates the weight in the pit of his stomach into a thousand butterflies. He flinches back on reflex when his skin grazes hers, but then he feels her sigh and it draws him back to nuzzle at her ear.

He rolls his hips once, involuntarily, and hears her moan even over the thudding music in the club. When she swirls back into him on the next beat, his self-restraint goes straight to hell. His fingers flex hard on the side of her hips, grinding her back and he scrapes his teeth over her industrial piercing. Before he even has the chance to exhale a shuddering breath over her ear, she's turning in his arms and pressing up to her toes to kiss him deep

She tastes like red wine and cranberry juice and makes a sound in the back of her throat that nearly makes his knees give out when he presses his tongue to meet hers. He runs a hand up to her hair and touching it is everything he hoped and more.

Then, as quickly as it began, it's over and she's holding up a hand in front of him.

"Just, wait just one minute," she says shakily, eyes looking anywhere but him. "I'll be right back."

He's frozen, struck so stupid it takes him a full twenty seconds after she's gone to nod his understanding. He waits on the dance floor for ten minutes at least, jumping when an arm wraps around his shoulders and he knows immediately it's not the one he's waiting for.

"Tough luck buddy," Tommy says sympathetically. "She was a stunner, your little golden girl."

"You saw her?" Oliver spins around, surveying the club with blurry eyes. "Where is she?"

"I just saw her leave, dude, she didn't…" his friend stutters, eyes going wide. "Aw man, you just got Irish-goodbyed!"

"What?" Oliver's head is spinning, and not just from the booze. "What the fuck is that?"

He asks the question though he knows the answer, they both do. He should be able to laugh like Tommy is, but all he wants to do is run after her like some kind of goddamned Disney prince or something.

"Wow, Ollie Queen on the ugly end of an Irish goodbye," his friend chuckles, oblivious to his inner turmoil. "You're losing your touch, bro. You know, that's never happened to me."

"No?" Oliver fires back, trying to snap himself out of it. "What about that girl last week who passed out in the cab before you even got to her place?"

"Nah, that's different," Tommy smirks. "I think that's a Jersey goodbye."

The next time he sees her, she's not nearly as drunk as he is. In fact, she's behind the bar. He blinks, certain his bleary eyes are playing tricks on him, because he's become something of a regular here and he would have remembered seeing her.

He's had very detailed dreams about seeing her again, but no real plan to put in action. So he just stares dumbly . She's dressed more professionally this time, button-down blouse and a pencil skirt, glasses instead of contacts, hair pulled back low. but it's still her. He's surprised, but not that surprised, to find he wants to know this side of her even more.

He waits for her to scan the bar, to meet his eye, but she's focused on the computer for a few long minutes, before she pumps an adorable celebratory fist in the air. He can't help it, he chuckles to himself, and she turns towards the sound, eyes widening when she sees him.

"You again." If he weren't five drinks deep he'd swear she sounds almost wistful. But he's been keeping up with Tommy again, using the alcohol to dull the pain in his left leg after landing on it wrong last night. He's never wished for sobriety so hard in his life.

"This is where you work?"

"Just helping out a friend with his POS system." He must give her a confused look because she clarifies. "The computer."

"Stay for a drink?"

She smiles at her shoes, bashful, and he digs his teeth into his lower lip. He wants her in an all-consuming kind of way that feels so foreign to his recently-blackened heart. He wants to kiss her and hold her and talk to her and fuck her and know her, and he's wasted but nowhere near drunk enough to ignore how crazy that sounds. Especially coming from someone like him.

"I shouldn't."

She's right again. He gets the feeling that's not unusual for her. He, on the other hand, is a complete and utter mess, and incapable of not taking one last shot.

"One drink."

"Maybe, just one," she smiles. "Let me drop my stuff in the back."

This triumph, like all of his victories these days, is short-lived and his heart drops to his stomach when it takes him a few minutes to sloppily recall the last time she said she was coming back. He wishes Tommy were here to tease him about it, but he's not sure if it's scotch or cowardice that weighs his feet down when he accepts that she's gone for good.

The third time they meet, she's the one that's drunker, but it's only because he hasn't had time to catch up yet. He's fresh out of an unpleasant meeting at QC and hits the bar down the block, stopping dead in his tracks at the sight of her, leaning heavily against the end of the bar closest to the door. She's somewhere in between the versions of herself he's met before, still dressed in the pencil skirt and sensible flats, but her hair is down like she shook out her ponytail after work. He wishes he could have seen her do it, resists the urge to run his fingers over her curls as he sits down at the barstool beside her.

"Oliver?" She sounds surprised and he is too. She knows his name? Did she tell him hers? Did he forget it? The only thing he's really certain of is that she. is. drunk. She's wobbly on the stool and her eyes are unfocused when she looks up at him.

He had a whole plan this time, for what to do if he ever saw her again. But that's pretty much out the window now.

"Rough night?"

"Not really?" she says, maybe a little too loudly, gesticulating with her arms. "I'm here with co-workers and all they want to talk about is work. Which like, feels kind of pointless to me, so I've just been avoiding conversation by drinking too fast, and now I'm a little drunk and standing here telling you all of this which is a very bad idea..."

She pauses and he goldfishes, because was there a question in there?

"It's just not…" she continues, pursing her lips and scrunching her nose up. "I just...do you ever feel like you're destined for something more? For something bigger than just a boring nine-to-five job?"

She takes it back before he even gets to chuckle at how very definitively she's hit the unspoken bullseye of this conversation without even knowing it.

"I'm sorry, that's stupid," she covers. "Of course, you do. You are. You. Oliver."

She says his name again, like she knows him, and he wishes it were true. He wishes she could know every part of him and still look at him like that, still press herself up against him like she is now. He wishes it wouldn't feel like too much.

"Whoa, there." He shuffles a step back. She follows.

"Will you give me a kiss?" she all but whispers, looking up at him through lidded eyes. "C'mon, just one more."

He wants to, he really, really does. But she's too far gone and he's not there with her this time. And besides, she keeps running away from him. "Just one more." He's gotten pretty good at chasing down demons in the last few months, but he's got no experience with angels. He barely knows where to start.

"Will you give me your name?" he leans down to breath the challenge against her lips, and nearly misses some small bit of fear flicker across her face. It only lasts a second before she smiles teasingly. She's not as good at hiding from him when she's the drunk one.

"Meghan," she tells him, rolling her eyes even as she says it, and he narrows his at her because he knows that tone, has used this trick a million times.

"Nope," he pops the "p" and he can tell he's surprised her when her eyes go wide on the sound. "Real name."

"Fine," she whines with a flourish. Even her pout is adorable. "My name is Felicity."

He keeps his word, because he can't really resist, leaning down to peck her quick but firm on the lips and when he pulls back she smiles at him again. It's like Christmas morning.

"Felicity," he repeats as he turns back to signal to the bartender for another drink for them both. The guy just shrugs, and when Oliver turns back around, she's gone again.

Felicity.

The names repeats in his head for nearly a week, which is why he almost misses when Walter echoes it back to him as a recommendation for the IT department's best and brightest.

"Felicity Smoak," the man's accent makes the name sound like it belongs to someone totally different. Which it definitely does, he promises himself, as Walter continues, "Young girl, recent hire. She's quite brilliant."

As he rides the elevator down to the IT department, every chime of a passing floor sounds another denial in his head. It can't be her. It won't be her. It's absolutely crazy to think it's her.

"Felicity Smoak?" he finally gets to try the name out loud as he rounds the corner into the tiny office at the very end of the hall.

The fourth time they meet, nobody's drunk. But he's got a laptop full of bullet holes and she's got a red pen in between her pink lips. It drops to the floor when she sees him.

"Oliver," she breathes and it's the first time he's ever loved the sound of his given name. Especially in this building. "I mean, Mr. Queen."

"You knew who I was?" Correcting her with the "Mr. Queen was my father" line can wait, because she doesn't look nearly as shocked as he would have expected. "I mean, you know...and, that...and you were…."

"Of course I knew," she interrupts and he remembers the challenging tone.

"And you left. Every time..." It's not really a question, but it's the only thing his brain will allow him to ask. She's breaking his heart a little and it nearly cracks clean in half at her explanation.

"Because I knew who you were," she finishes, in a tone like he's tiresome. "I didn't know what else to do. I knew it would be a bad idea to...form...attachments."

She's right, he knows she is. And yet, it sounds like she's reading from a script.

She clears her throat when he remains silent, shaking her head and placing her hands flat on her desk. "So, how can I help you, Mr. Queen?"

"Oliver." He needs to hear her say it again. "Please."

"Oliver," she nods,with a smile, then turns her gaze downward and he remembers that he's got something in his hands.

He half-grimaces at the thought that at least he can have in her life this way. He's so grateful she's the same Felicity, suddenly ready to trust her with whatever she's going to find if she can salvage this hard drive.

"I'm having some trouble with my laptop," he says, setting the Swiss-cheesed machine down on her desk. She considers it for a long moment, before looking back at him.

"These look like bullet holes," she says cautiously.

"My coffee shop is uh, in a bad neighborhood," he shrugs by way of shitty explanation and when she tilts her head to the side in amused disbelief, that's when he realizes.

Every time he's met her so far, it's been under different circumstances, but something about it has always felt the same. And it's her, he realizes. She's beautiful and she's smart and goddamn is she cute, but it's something more. It's the way his body and subconscious don't go on high alert around her, how she makes him feel just that much lighter. She's not a threat to him, she's not a target, she's just a person. Felicity.

A crazy part of him wants to say all that out loud, but thankfully rationale prevails and he chokes it back. He can't ask her to save him, but he can ask her to fix his laptop and maybe after that he can ask her to dinner, and wait for candlelight and formal wear before he starts spilling his deep dark secrets.

"Whatever you can salvage from the hard drive," he says instead. "I'd really appreciate it."

She just nods, turning the laptop over in her hands, assessing the damage.

"I'll see you later, Felicity," he tells her, cocking his eyebrow as he turns to leave, almost like a warning, and she finally looks up to meet his eyes again.

"It would seem almost inevitable." Her serious expression splits involuntarily into a grin and he can't help but think about the next time he's going to kiss her.

He's halfway out the door, shaking his head in disbelief, when he hears her call after him.

"Oliver?" She could ask him for anything right now and he's poised to give it to her at the sound of his name on her lips.

"Yeah?" He pokes his head back in the door. She's still smiling, but gives him a pointed look.

"Goodbye."