Mind Over Matter

All in Your Head

It's all Felicity can do to keep from screaming when she turns from her fridge to find a shadow lurking in her house. For not the first time, she hates her odd sleeping patterns and the strange desire for mint chip ice cream that suddenly assaults her at two in the morning sometimes. Having just been bent over in her bottom-drawer freezer—ugh, why did she ever think that was a good idea?—and her glasses still in the bedroom, the fuzzy silhouette takes her completely by surprise. Then she remembers her house guest and mentally slaps herself.

How the hell did she forget that Oliver Queen, a man the world still thinks to be dead, is staying in her spare bedroom tonight?

It was his thought to wait until morning to announce his return from the dead, and Felicity had offered him her spare bedroom when he'd actually suggested sleeping on the street until the morning. And, apparently, he's just as prone to roaming during the night, if his surprise presence is anything to go by—probably due to the nightmares. She poked her head in to check on him when she heard him screaming earlier, but she didn't know how to wake him. Something tells her that shaking Oliver awake would have been a bad idea.

"It would have," he agrees, and it takes her a moment through a fog of sleep to remember his uncanny ability to see what's going on in her head. Felicity can't help but notice that his voice is rough with either fatigue or sleep, making it low and gravelly in ways that make him seem either mysterious or dangerous. (It's hard to tell in her sleep-induced haze.) "I would never try to hurt you, but..." He trails off slowly. "But when I'm asleep, I... react."

"I know that," Felicity insists quickly, and it has absolutely nothing to do with reassurance. Even though she's known him for little more than twenty-four hours, she knows that Oliver would never try to harm her. It's a simple fact. The grass is green, the sky is blue, water is wet, and Oliver wouldn't so much as touch her without permission—let alone hurt her. After reaching around to grab two spoons from the drawer, she offers one in his general direction. "I tend to wake up and prowl on occasion. And right now seems like a perfect time for ice cream. Want some?"

"No, thank you," he answers, stepping forward into the light, toward her bar. Only then does she realize that he's shirtless, wearing a pair of sweatpants that hang tantalizingly low on his waist. Felicity's mouth runs dry suddenly, and she decides that ice cream isn't going to keep her from melting. She might actually have to stick her head in the freezer for this one. And too late she remembers again that he heard every word of her lust-driven internal monologue.

It would be absolutely lovely if the ground would open up and swallow her whole.

Surprisingly, Oliver chooses to leave it alone; he's usually quite keen to pick up on her thoughts and discuss them as though she's speaking aloud. "I heard you moving around," he explains his movements, "and I wanted to make sure that everything is all right." Then he drops onto one of her barstools, and how does he manage to look so ludicrously attractive while sitting on a wooden stool in her kitchen? It simply isn't fair to the rest of the world. "I usually don't sleep more than a few hours at a time."

She understands the message loud and clear, and, as she's discovered, apparently the first rule of vigilante club is that you do not talk about Island Things. The thought causes him to snicker at her, blue eyes sparkling a little in the light. "Vigilante club?" Oliver repeats, snatching the thought out of her head. While Felicity might not have any issues with him doing so, she admits it might take some time and familiarity before it stops surprising her. "Is that what you think this is going to be?"

He looks up at her from under his eyelashes, the smile slowly falling from his face. "This won't be easy, Felicity," he warns her again, as though they hadn't had this conversation on the plan repeatedly, and once more once they were on the ground. "I'm going to start a war out there. It's going to be violent." There's a brief moment of hesitation before he offers in a very quiet voice, "When I go out there, I might not come back."