Chapter Text
Moira marched into the Arrow Cave and announced, “Felicity, Sara, you’re both having a day off. You’re coming to the spa with Thea and I and we’re going to have a girls day with just the four of us. Walter is looking after Connor, your team is staying here and nobody of the male gender is going to be allowed anywhere near you.”
If Felicity and Sara were anything, it was gobsmacked. Sara placed her bo-staff back on her weapons rack and shot the other blonde a look. Diggle, Roy and Oliver were glancing between them all, wide-eyed and confused. After a moment, Felicity just shrugged, stood up and pulled her jacket on.
“No arguments from me,” she said. “You can smell the testosterone in here. I need a day without men surrounding me.”
“Me neither,” Sara agreed. “As much as I love working with you, Ollie,” she shot towards the archer, “Sometimes the brooding shirtless-ness gets annoying. Let’s go.”
…………………………..
“Oooh my god. Goooood.”
Moira glanced up sideways, amused, as Felicity limply lay on a bed with one of the spa ladies massaging her shoulders. Thea was currently reading a magazine while getting a pedicure and Sara was having her nails painted a lethal shade of black.
“Hmmmm,” Felicity groaned in content as another knot was worked out of her shoulder.
“You know, I don’t know whether to be amused or alarmed that you’re making orgasm noises at this point,” Thea chuckled.
Felicity hummed again happily. “Don’t judge. Sara gets to leap around off rooftops and swing from the salmon ladder; I just sit at my desk hunched over my set-up all day and night. Forgive me if I’m a little wound up.”
“Are you complaining that you’re an IT nerd?” Sara raised an eyebrow.
“God no,” Felicity replied at once. “I love being your IT nerd.” She paused. “Not your IT nerd, the team’s IT nerd, but if I belong to anybody, I belong to Oliver and oh god, this has escalated very quickly into awkward accidental sexual reference territory and I’m gonna back out and shut up now before I embarrass myself any further.”
“This happens to you a lot, doesn’t it?” Moira questioned sympathetically.
“You have no idea.” Felicity sighed and rolled over as the spa lady finished up and prepared to start her pedicure. “I have no filter at all.”
“Bet that can be attractive,” Thea smirked.
Moira barked, “Thea!”
“Ollie thinks it’s cute,” Sara offered.
“Nuh uh, Oliver doesn’t count.” Felicity shook her head as she picked out a dark emerald green for her nails. “Oliver always thinks I’m cute. It’s required, he’s my boyfriend. Not that it's like, something he has to think, the reason he's going out with me is because he thinks I'm cute, and probably there are other reasons as well..." She winced. "And no offence but I really don’t wanna talk about my relationship with Oliver in front of his mom and sister. That pushes the boundaries of the awkwardness scale.”
“You have no idea how relieved we were when you and Ollie finally got together,” Thea commented, glancing up from her Vogue magazine, amused. “Every time you guys are in a room together, it’s like nobody else exists. He follows you around like a lost puppy.”
“I wouldn’t say lost,” Felicity rolled her eyes. “But I can’t argue with the puppy part. Luckily, I love dogs.”
“Really? I would’ve thought of you as more as a cat person,” Moira commented as one of the spa attendents began painting her nails red to match her dress for the gala she was attending the next day.
Felicity shook her head. “Nah, I’m a dog person all the way. I had a dog just before I met Oliver actually, when I first arrived in Starling after finishing MIT.” Her expression turned wistful. “He was called Rhaegal, he was an Australian Shepherd.”
Thea stopped and put down her magazine, frowning before a grin broke out over her face. “Oh my god, you named your dog after Rhaegal the dragon from Game of Thrones? Why am I not surprised?”
Sara snapped her fingers. “Rhaegal’s the greeny-yellow dragon, right?”
“Technically, he’s green and bronze, with yellowish wings,” Felicity corrected absentminedly. “But yeah, my dog scared away drunk gangbangers trying to break into my apartment the second night I got him, and it really reminded me of the way the dragon was really protective of Daenerys, so Rhaegal he became.” Her expression shifted slightly as she sighed sadly. "He was a shelter dog though and already quite old, so he had to be put down due to illness after a while." She frowned. "Huh, actually, if I think about it, he was put down only two months before Oliver came back from the island."
"I can so imagine you naming your pets after your favourite book and TV characters though," Sara laughed. "I mean, naming your dog Rhaegal? Pretty nerdy, Felicity."
“Are you referencing that TV show with the magic, dragons, incest and decapitation?” Moira questioned.
“Yes,” Felicity, Sara and Thea all answered all at once.
Moira just sighed and shook her head, picking up her magazine and skimming through it again, muttering about ‘kids these days’. The other girls just shrugged and resumed their relaxation, discussing random things idly and enjoying their spa day away from the boys and the tension of the Arrow Cave.
After ten minutes of comfortable silence of so, Thea put down her magazine, quirking an eyebrow. “So, Felicity, when are you expecting Oliver to pop the question?”
“Thea…” Moira said warningly.
“You can’t expect me to think you don’t want to know the answer to that question as well,” Thea snapped at her mother.
Felicity blinked innocently. “What question are we talking about here?”
“The big one,” Sara prompted. At Felicity’s confused look, she oh so helpfully elaborated, “You know. THE question.”
Felicity still looked puzzled.
“I honestly can’t believe you call yourself a certified genius sometimes when you don’t even know what ‘the question’ refers to, ‘Lis,” Thea groaned.
Moira took pity on her son’s girlfriend. “When do you think Oliver is going to propose?”
Felicity instantly blushed, and ducked, red-faced and struggling for words as she uttered out, “Oh. Oh. That question. The - uh. Okay. Uh…” She flicked a stray lock of her blonde hair behind her ear, obviously uncomfortable and embarrassed. “I mean, I haven’t really thought about it.”
Sara tilted her head, shooting her the ‘come on, gurl, don’t play that game’ look. “Felicity, you live together, you share a bed, you’re practically married already, I bet you’ve even talked about the kids situation.”
“We have not!” Felicity squawked. “And anyway, Oliver and I agreed that even if we were going to have kids, we’d talk it over with Connor first before -” She cut off, blushing an even deeper red.
“You have sooo talked about it,” Thea squealed. “Oh my god, am I going to be an auntie?”
“You already are an auntie, Thea. Connor is your nephew.”
“Yeah, but I missed out buying baby clothes for him and babysitting him and stuff,” Thea said defensively. “It’s great going riding with him and taking him to charity galas and all, but I never got to hold him as a baby.”
“I get the point, you want Oliver and I to have a baby.” Felicity sighed and picked up a magazine of her own to flick through as she examined the green colour of her nails in approval. “Back to the proposal point. Yes, we’re talked about it, not much, but we have. But we decided everything’s perfect as it is, we’re together and happy. We don’t see how a piece of paper is going to change that.”
“When you two get engaged,” Thea pointed at her. “Mom and I are planning the wedding. No buts, ‘Licity. No objections.” She sighed dreamily. “I’m thinking white. Lots and lots of white, paired with a lot of emerald green. Hmm. Yeah. Bride in white dress, bridesmaids in green, groom in a black tux with a green tie -”
“Don’t you think green is a little too harsh to have at a wedding?” Sara frowned.
“You’re getting a little ahead of yourself there, Thea,” Moira told her daughter, as if she hadn’t even heard Sara. Then she flashed a smile. “Before thinking of the dresses, you have to think about the location…”
“Yes! Something exotic, maybe abroad. Lake Como, Italy… the Bahamas, Hawaii, Corto Maltese. Beaches and sand and the heat!”
Sara turned to Felicity. “It’s like we’re not even here.”
“I know, right?”
“Wait, the island thing might not sit so well with Ollie… so maybe not abroad. But we could go big, elaborate, right here in Starling!” Thea was bouncing in her seat. “It would be the wedding of the century!
Moira nodded enthusiastically. “It would be front page for weeks. And of the course, we’d have to have a fantastic cake.”
“Oh, it would have to be classy,” Thea agreed. “Either classic victoria, coffee and walnut, rich fruit or chocolate hazulnut fudge.”
“No nuts!” somebody called out.
The four of them looked up in surprise. Oliver was striding towards them casually, flashing wide grins at all the swooning spa attendents as he made his way towards them, dressed casually in a pair of light tan pants and a tight-fitting blue shirt, cuffs rolled up to below his elbows.
Thea, however, just shrieked and covered her eyes. “No! It’s a male man person! They can’t be here! It’s meant to be a female woman only day! Go away, horrible intruder of the opposite gender!”
Oliver rolled his eyes with a playful grin as he stood in front of the four women, hands in pockets and appearing completely relaxed, however Felicity and Sara could see the tightness of his shoulders and the tensed alertness of his body. “Very funny, sis,” Oliver teased. “But seriously, though, no nuts. Felicity is severly allergic.”
Moira replied, surprised, “Really? I didn’t know that.”
“And that’s something we probably should know, considering the number of family brunches and dinners we have at home,” Thea added, unimpressed.
Oliver ignored his sister completely, seemingly deep in thought. “I think we’d prefer to keep the wedding close to home,” Oliver said, his blue eyes easily meeting Felicity’s and they both exchanged easy, warm smiles with each other. They knew each other well. “Have the reception in the mansion grounds. Keep it only close friends and family.”
“So you have been thinking about a wedding!” Thea crowed triumphantly.
“I’m not opposed to marrying Felicity. In fact, I would love to. But we’re not like that.” Oliver reached forwards to take one of Felicity’s hands and caressed its palm with his thumb, smiling softly at her. “Our love surpasses a useless piece of paper.”
“That’s what I said,” Felicity nodded, meeting his lips as her boyfriend leant down to kiss her quickly, brushing one of his hands through her hair.
“We’d have a rabbi as well,” Oliver said as he straightened again. “Felicity’s Jewish. And we’d have to sort out travel arrangements for Donna and Team Flash.” He sighed. “On a completely different note, unfortunately I’m gonna have to tear Sara away.”
Sara stood up and began packing up her things. “What’s happened?” she demanded.
“Nothing bad,” Oliver reassured.
“Ollie…”
“Well, unless you count your girlfriend coming to visit bad.”
Sara immediately perked up. “Nyssa’s here?”
“She didn’t bring her assassin friends with her, did she?” Felicity asked, obviously concerned as she sat up slightly in her chair. “Not that I don’t like her assassin friends. They’re cool, they helped us with Slade and the Mirakuru men. But wait no, they’re not cool at all, and I can’t really like them because I’ve never spoken to them, never spoke to any of them while they were here. Not because I didn’t want to speak to them, but because they speak Arabic. And I don’t speak Arabic.”
Fortunately, at that point everybody seemed to have gotten used to Felicity's babbling and they all just smiled at her; Oliver was grinning at her with a biggest smile on his face Thea and Moira had ever seen, and Sara looked between the two of them happily, almost proudly.
“I’ve never met your girlfriend, Sara,” Moira said, interested.
“She’s scary,” Felicity replied immediately.
Sara rolled her eyes, shrugging on her jacket. “She’s not scary, Felicity.”
“Intimidating, then,” Felicity insisting. “I mean, come on, when she found out Oliver and I were together, she sharpened her swords in front of him for weeks after.”
“That’s true,” Oliver nodded.
“That’s because she likes you,” Sara told Felicity. “It’s actually a little bit creepy how fond she is of you; I’d feel threatened if I didn’t know you were already a taken woman.” The Canary paused, sending a look over at Oliver. “Also, I don’t think she likes Oliver much.”
“Well, I did date you before she did. And we dated very briefly when you first came back to Starling,” Oliver shrugged. “So yeah, I can imagine she doesn’t like me much.”
“I think she’s more pissed at the fact that you used me to cheat on Laurel and at the fact I got on the Gambit with you and almost drowned, twice,” Sara added. “But yeah, I suppose the fact you’re my ex adds tension.”
“It explains why she takes such pleasure in bruising me during our occasional training sessions,” Oliver responded dryly, crossing his arms.
“Alright, it’s settled, you’ve piqued my interest,” Moira commented, standing and shaking her hands to dry her nail varnish. “I think I might tag along and meet this Nyssa.”
“Yeah, me too,” Thea agreed, stretching. “Anybody able to bruise Ollie must be absolutely awesome.”
“You’ll love her, she’s so cool,” Felicity reassured her. “She’s the heir to an assassin army empire in the Middle East, a massive cliff temple with a network of creepy catacombs and caves that I’m pretty sure are used as dungeons and over ten billion dollars worth of resources.”
Thea blinked before muttering, “I’m not touching the dungeon thing with a ten foot pole.”
TO BE CONTINUED