A Little Too Much Togetherness—#6

Felicity wouldn't wake up. Oliver wasn't sure how long it had been since he'd come to, finding himself handcuffed to Felicity in some kind of empty room, little more than a closet. Hours, maybe, and she was still unconscious. Fear was beginning to well up from the pit of his stomach. She was tiny compared to him, so it stood to reason that whatever they'd been drugged with would take longer to break down in her system. But it had been so long, and she hadn't moved, hadn't even twitched.

Oliver looked her over, though he'd already checked her for injuries more than once. Her glasses had come off at some point. Without them, Felicity looked a little younger, and more vulnerable. As he lightly pressed his fingers to her neck to check her pulse for the tenth time, her eyes fluttered open.

"Felicity?"

She coughed. He helped her sit up, and she turned and vomited on the floor.

"Wh-what's going on?" she asked, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. The hand that was cuffed to his. Her eyes widened. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me. Does originality not count for anything anymore?"

"This does happen to you a lot, doesn't it?" He said it with a smile on his face, but his heart was pounding and part of him wanted to weep with relief.

"Said like someone who wasn't responsible for the last time." She squinted at him. "Are you okay? You're . . ." Felicity touched a fingertip to his cheek. It came away wet.

"You were—" His voice was rough. He cleared his throat. "You were out for a really long time."

"The last thing I remember is you walking me to my car, which was—" she checked her watch. "—half an hour ago."

"Seriously?" He rubbed his free hand across his face. "it felt like a lot longer."

"So what did you do, just stare at me while I was passed out?" Felicity asked.

"What? No, I—no."

"Because I've got to say, I'm kind of surprised you haven't done anything about this yet." She rattled the handcuffs. "Where's your handy little lock-picking kit?"

"In my other pants," Oliver replied.

Felicity sighed, shifting so she could draw up her knees.

"Weren't you going to start carrying a key on you?" he asked her.

"I did, for a few weeks." She rested her chin on her knees. "But nothing happened, and then Joanna got sick . . ." Her voice trailed off.

Dig and Lyla's baby had come down with a virus, and it had gotten very serious. She had just turned a corner and was on the mend, but things had been tense for days before that. Felicity had asked Oliver to train with her. Since it seemed to work for him to process his feelings, she wanted to give it a try, she'd said. It was either that or ice cream, and she had so much to process that all that ice cream would have made her sick. Oliver had been walking her to her car afterward, and that's when they'd been grabbed.

"I wouldn't have kept a key in my workout clothes anyway," Felicity continued. "Sara go us out with a safety pen. Is there anything like that in here?" she asked, looking around.

"There's nothing," Oliver said. "I've never been in an emptier room."

"It's too tight for me to get my hand out." She showed him, pulling at the handcuff encircling her slender wrist. The cuff was leaving a red mark on her skin. "So I guess it's up to you to get us out of this."

"And how would you suggest I do that?" Oliver asked. His tone was harsh, but only because he was trying so hard to keep the amusement and affection out of it.

"I don't know. Can't you just intimidate the lock with the power of your glare?"

There was no hiding the smile this time. No one could pull a genuine smile out of him like Felicity.

"I don't think my glare is consistently intimidating," he said. "it works on hardened criminals, but it doesn't work on you."

She arched an eyebrow. "I like to think I'm more discerning than most hardened criminals."

"Oh, you are. Most of the time." Oliver took her cuffed hand in his. She didn't seem to notice.

"Oh! Sara said Nyssa dislocated her thumb once. Could you do that? I know it would hurt, but not as much as some things."

"I'd rather not try something like that on my bow hand, even if I knew how," Oliver said. He looked down at their intertwined fingers. She still hadn't noticed, or she was really good at ignoring it. Which was better than if she'd pulled away, he guessed.

"I didn't think of that." Felicity sighed. "I could try it. It couldn't be that hard. Probably just pull until it hurts, and then keep pulling—"

"No." He squeezed her hand, and she looked down—finally—and then up at him. "You put yourself in the line of fire enough as it is."

Her eyes narrowed. "Are we going to have that conversation again?" she asked. "I thought I made myself clear about you making decisions for me."

"And it's a conversation we'll keep having because I haven't changed my mind." He felt the gaze that had never intimidated her soften. "I will never be okay with putting you in danger."

"Well." She looked away first. "As long as you know you'll have a fight on your hands every time it comes up, then I guess we can just agree to disagree."

Her hand shifted in his, and he tightened his grasp. "Don't," he said, his voice just a breath above a whisper.

"You're probably right," she conceded. "I don't know what I'm doing. There could be permanent damage, and my magic hands are way too valuable to your nightly endeavors."

He chuckled, then froze at the sound. But Felicity kept going as if nothing had happened. She could have no idea of the moment's significance.

"Wow," she said. "Just when I think the rambling can't get any worse. How about you just quit looking at me like that, and we'll pretend I stopped talking after 'permanent damage'?"

"Sounds fair."

He averted his gaze but couldn't suppress a smile. Oliver had never expected it to happen like this—he'd never expected her—but he wasn't surprised at all that Felicity was the first person to make him genuinely laugh again.