Chapter Text
One of the more interesting things Felicity had learned about John Diggle over the past year was that he was obsessed with the news. During their downtime in the Foundry—and despite the adventures the three of them got up to, there WAS a lot of downtime—Dig was constantly scrolling through the various news outlets, absorbing content. He was also into verbally sharing all the stuff he learned, until she used her loud voice that one time.
Eventually, for the sake of his eyesight—she had yet to convince Oliver that dungeon up lighting was not a cool trend—Felicity turned one of her monitors into a current headlines feed 24/7. John could hunker down in front of it and clean his guns while he followed the news of the world all he liked.
“It’s getting worse, you know,” he said almost casually, standing at ease behind her chair like it was his job to watch over her when Oliver was top side.
“What’s getting worse?”
“This virus. It’s gonna be a pandemic.”
Felicity shuddered. “I hate that word.”
“Pandemic? Or virus?”
She shot him a glare as familiar sounding feet jogged down the metal steps behind them. “Well now it’s both.”
“What are we talking about?” For all his brooding and solitary ways, Oliver didn’t like being left out of conversations. It was one of his more endearing qualities. Felicity spun around in her chair to face them.
John turned his head and watched Oliver approach. “That virus. It’s spreading fast. Most of Southeast Asia is already on lockdown. France and Germany will be closing their borders any minute. They say it’ll be in the States by the end of the week.”
Oliver stood and thought about that for a long moment, which was fine, it was totally fine to be a silent and introspective kind of guy, but did he have to do it while staring at her like she was the thing he was contemplating? It was happening more and more lately and it was starting to give her a complex.
“How far out are they from having a vaccine?” he asked.
Dig snorted, but not in a funny way. “Too far. It’ll be a year, easy, before it’s ready to deploy.”
Oliver finally changed his focus to a point above her head and snapped his bow up and back down, a move she had learned meant he was pissed there wasn’t more he could do. It was sexy, if you were the kind of girl who went for that sort of thing. Which she definitely was not.
“Keep an eye on it,” he said finally, turning away to rack the bow and start getting undressed. John and Felicity finished their own conversation with just a look.
———————————————-
It was an impulse buy; she was prone to them, despite her white-knuckled control over her meager adult finances. There were some things she couldn’t overcome, and being the daughter of Donna Smoak was sometimes one of them.
The shelves were already looking bare in the mask and glove department, but miraculously one box remained. Felicity removed it from the shelf without snatching and studied it as if she was trying to make up her mind. As if this wasn’t the only reason she’d stopped by the pharmacy. The woman on the front of the box was modeling the full face mask while sweeping a bit of hair behind her ear coquettishly. With only her eyes and the top of her head visible, she still managed to look like the man of her dreams had just proposed. If only, Felicity thought with a snort.
A middle aged woman appeared off her shoulder and looked sharply in her direction.
“Are you going to buy that?” she asked.
Felicity’s eyes flicked to her and back to the lady on the box. She turned away and headed for the cashier without answering.
—————————————-
“No.”
“It’s just a precaution—“
“No.”
“You don’t know where most of these low lifes have been—“
“No!”
“You already wear a mask. You think one more would cramp your style?”
“I SAID NO, FELICITY!”
She blinked once, hurt, and his face immediately fell in that way that made HER feel like the terrible person.
“Okay. You didn’t have to yell.” She used her sad voice. Take that, Mr Puppy Dog Eyes.
Oliver’s weight shifted, but he made no move to put any distance between them. She both loved and hated these moments, when his eyes looked like he’d rather eat glass than apologize but his brain had forgotten to tell his body. It made her want to lay hands on his chest and shove, hard, just to see what he’d do.
But she was more afraid of what she’d do.
“It’s here now. It’s in the city. You could have it and not even have symptoms. I know you pride yourself on always being healthy, but you could carry it home, to your mother or Thea, and not even realize it.” She’d intentionally left herself and Diggle out of the example part; Oliver didn’t seem to be processing this whole situation yet, and she didn’t want him to decide to break up their merry little band and go it alone over an abundance of caution for his teammates. Because he would totally do that.
“Felicity...”
There were well over a million words in the English language, but Oliver Queen had managed to condense everything he needed to say into just her name. It wrecked her every time. She dropped her head to stare at the flimsy blue mask with the white elastic band she was holding.
“Well wash your hands after you turn them in at the station, then.”
She didn’t look up to watch him walk away.
——————————————
The contagion counter on Dig’s monitor was causing her severe anxiety. He checked it every opportunity he got, and if the statistic was particularly heinous he’d make an announcement to the room at large. Sometimes Oliver would grunt in response from his work bench, but most of the time he responded to it the way he dealt with all bad news: silently. That left the burden on Felicity to respond with some kind of uplifting anecdote or nugget of positivity. It was exhausting.
“We’re officially under a stay at home order,” John announced the next night. He turned around and leaned back against the computer desk with his giant arms crossed, like he wanted to see their real-time reaction to the next bit of news. “It goes into effect tomorrow night. No congregating beyond family members in your household.”
Felicity made sure not to disappoint him with her reaction. “What does that mean? Does EVERYONE have to stay at home? Will the stores be closed? Because I don’t have to describe the condition of the inside of my fridge right now.”
John smirked, and something like humor—or it could’ve been pity—flashed across Oliver’s face. “Essential businesses will stay open. That includes groceries, Felicity.”
“But we have to hole up alone? For how long?”
He shrugged enormous shoulders. “Weeks. Could be months, they’re saying.”
Oliver had that look again, the far-off one she imagined he had a lot those years he was stuck on the island. That stoic, long-suffering look of acceptance, with a tiny spark of rage and stubbornness that kept the overwhelming pessimism from being a turn off. If one were otherwise turned on by broody, stabby men.
He offered to give her a lift back to her place on the bike, but she’d decided to bring home her favorite Foundry coffee mug, and her backup tablet, the spare charger cords, and that Harvard sweatshirt she liked to pretend had come from Verdant’s lost and found; the one she’d throw on when she was chilly because it smelled like she imagined a certain someone might if she ever got close enough. She couldn’t hold all that stuff and Oliver’s torso at the same time, more’s the pity, so John dropped her off instead.
He killed the engine at the curb and sat staring at the dashboard; Felicity froze in the middle of juggling all her stuff—why couldn’t she be the kind of girl who always had a reusable tote on hand?—and watched him.
“What does all this mean? For us. For the cause.” The Crusade with a capital C.
Diggle turned to look at her and shrugged. “He won’t stop. You know that.”
“I know.”
His expression started to veer dangerously toward Is There Something We Should Talk About, so she gathered up her spoils inside the sweatshirt and fumbled for the car door.
“You need me to make a run to the store for you?” he asked as she climbed out of the car, always so heartbreakingly kind. Felicity leaned down and shook her head.
“I’ll go tomorrow morning.” A little movement of her shoulders doubled as a shrug and a way to show off the things in her arms. “I have plenty of masks.”
———————————————
One day of virtual meetings at QC made Felicity wonder why anyone ever went into office buildings at all. She could conduct all the necessary business of the CEO’s EA in a smart looking blouse and pajama bottoms. It was heaven.
She used the laptop for Zoom meetings, her tablet up with a constant link to Oliver, and her phone for lifesaving NSFW comments to Dig. By lunchtime she even had a Dr Who tv marathon going on mute.
With Isabel-the-stick-insect temporarily out of sight, she could indulge in daytime snacking too, a treat that unfortunately ruined her dinner and then made her break into her sad little stash of single-serve gluten-free frozen pizzas at an ungodly late hour.
Which she almost dropped directly onto the floor, hot out of the oven, when she saw the bulky shadow in her kitchen window.
It was far from the first time a large man in tight leather pants had silently asked to gain access to her apartment, but it was always a surprise, nonetheless. She stalked to the window and hiked it up with a grunt before wedging the wooden paint stir stick into place so he could fold in half and climb through.
“You didn’t come to the Foundry tonight,” he growled without preamble. “Are you feeling sick?”
His hand, gloved as it was, reached out briefly like he wanted to brush her hair back and check her forehead for fever, but Felicity jerked back in surprise and his hand clenched on air instead.
“Social distancing, Oliver!” she hissed.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean...”
“You didn’t mean what? To come to my house when the whole city’s under quarantine? I knew you weren’t a good rule follower, but this...”
“That’s why you didn’t show up?”
She opened her mouth and then closed it, collecting her thoughts before trying again. “Did Dig show?”
“Yes, Felicity. We have a job to do, a responsibility.”
“But..the emergency order...”
Oliver looked like he wanted to sigh very deeply. “What about it?”
“We’re only supposed to be around family.” The words came out very small, which was pathetic and embarrassing; the perfect emotions to pair with the feelings of guilt and remorse she already had because she was about to eat a gluten-free pizza without ever once suffering a symptom of Celiac’s.
Above her head Oliver huffed a laugh, the one he only used when she said inside-her-head things out loud.
“Does it taste any different? Gluten-free?”
Her eyes snapped up to meet his amused expression under the hood. “I’ve never tried it. I would never normally buy a food that other people have to have for dietary reasons, but the frozen pizza aisle had been pretty well plundered by the time I got there, and I didn’t think it was smart to keep looking in other stores, you know, for safety reasons—“
His hand on her shoulder made her stop and take a breath.
“Are you hungry? I could make another one.”
The Arrow smiled.
——————————————-
She rounded the corner to the living room with one piping hot—and another not so much—pizza to find Oliver sitting on her couch, hood thrown back and mask on the coffee table, talking on the phone.
“...bring that too...we can always go back and get the other stuff if we need it...no...she’ll say yes.”
And then he signed off without saying goodbye.
“She’ll say yes to what?” Felicity set the two pizzas on the coffee table after awkwardly brushing his mask to the side. “I’m assuming “she” means me, in this instance.”
Oliver had the jacket unzipped and the black dry fit peeking out, which never failed to be A Look. He managed to pull off a sheepish expression.
“Dig’s enroute with the rest of the gear. And groceries.”
“Groceries?” Felicity dropped to her knees on the far side of the table and pounced on her cooling pizza. “How long are you staying?”
When he didn’t answer right away, she looked up from her plate. “Oliver?”
“We’re staying...as long as we have to.”
She blinked once. “Staying. Here?”
He nodded slowly as he lifted his first piece of pizza off the plate.
“As in, quarantining. Here.”
“Think of it as a new base of operations.”
He was working very hard to look casual, damn him.
“What about social distancing? What about, only family members in the same household, Oliver?”
He shrugged, just a bit, and maybe the lines of his abs got highlighted by the dry fit for just a second, and maybe he’d totally done that on purpose because he knew the effect it could have on someone trying to win their side of an argument.
She threw back her head and groaned, drawing the sound out until it became a frustrated yell. He may or may not have been smiling ever so faintly when she looked at him again.
“Technically we’ll be in the same household.”
THAT stopped her cold. “You want us...all of us...to live together...like a family...through a pandemic.”
He nodded, a twinkle in his eye now.
“But...you live in a mansion. You could go WEEKS without seeing anyone else...”
“You wouldn’t be there,” he said simply. “Or Diggle.”
Felicity just stared.
“You’d rather ride this out in the Foundry?” One of his stupidly perfect eyebrows raised to follow the question and she knew he’d won.
“We’ll have to work together, you know, during the day. While pretending to be working remotely. Won’t that be weird?”
He took a huge bite and talked around it. “No weirder than crime fighting with a bow and arrow from a secret lair under a nightclub.” Or something to that effect. His mouth was full.
Felicity grinned despite herself as the doorbell rang. “As soon as I figure out what you said, I will formulate a crushing reply.”
“I have no doubt.”
Diggle at least had the decency to apologize while he was still standing in the doorway, but she waved him off and opened the door wide.
“Welcome to Self Isolation, roomie.”
John grinned at Oliver over the top of her head and carried in the first load.