I watched Ocean’s 8 again, and this happened in my brain. It’s probably not going to do anything beyond this (fingers crossed), but I wanted to put it somewhere.
Felicity rolls her eyes at the text. With an annoyed curse, she mumbles, “Missed you, too, jerkface.”
The rain is less a mist today and more a steady downpour. She can’t hear the radio over the persistent beat of heavy raindrops so she forfeits and cranks the heater up higher to add to the noise. Of course, he’s late. She wonders how well that habit of his went over when it came to curfew in a prison.
Finally, a shadow in a dark overcoat melts out of the trees and slips into her car, rain following him in and dripping off the fancy coat. Heedless of the moisture and her middling annoyance, Felicity leans over the center console to drag him into a fierce hug. The right lens of her glasses presses against her closed eyelid as she presses a smacking but quick kiss to the side of his face, covered in an unfamiliar dusting of stubble.
The clean cut, charming to smarmy white collar criminal she knew and lo—partnered with on occasion has disappeared. In his place is a rough-looking man, almost bearded and very well-muscled, who wouldn’t look out of place in an underground fight. Or so she assumes. Illegal sports betting has never been her thing.
In her surprise, she can’t hold back the probably unwelcome commentary. “You look—”
“Recently incarcerated?” Oliver cuts in with that quick wit she’s nearly forgotten about.
“Different,” she finishes lamely, chastened by his self-deprecation.
Just as he always has, he doesn’t bother to take offense to her faulty mouth. “I got you something,” Oliver offers, dropping a newspaper wrapped bundle in her lap.
“I’m guessing not from the same place you stole that coat,” Felicity mumbles, poking through enough of the paper to find the shiny lines of a piece of circuitry, probably a motherboard.
Her mouth twists a little, and she looks up suspiciously. Oliver is sitting there calmly with that same look he gets when he knows a job has fallen into place. Internally, she bristles at the implication of being a job and one so easily handled.
Oliver Queen doesn’t give gifts without strings. And Felicity Smoak has never met a string she hasn’t pulled. So Oliver wanted to pique her curiosity, and he’s accomplished that with one sentence and a badly wrapped “present.” She really hates how well he still knows her.
“What’s the job?” she sighs, tossing the board in the backseat. Oliver may be a master criminal but he’s never had a discerning eye for electronics. Hence why she was his favorite partner.
He hums enigmatically while she cleans the large smudge off her glasses. That would be annoying to drive with. When she has her full range of sight back, he’s still just watching her.
“Is it jewels? You know I’m not interested. Between the two of us, you’ve always been the one drawn to bright, shiny things that can’t actually feed you or keep you warm or be fenced without a laser to scrape serial numbers off of.”
“It’s not jewels,” he chuckles, obviously remembering the Geneva job.
“Oh he speaks!” Felicity exclaims. “I hate when you do this. You make me guess which makes me interested and because I’m interested, you assume that I want to be a part of it when really I just hate mys—”
That stops her cold. The glasses come off again so she can thoroughly rub at her eyes and temples and pull at her ponytail a bit. “It’s revenge,” Felicity corrects with a sharp look.
Oliver shrugs. “Partly. But I’ve had four years, ten months, and thirteen days, give or take, to plan this. It’s not just revenge, it’s retirement.”
“I’m listening,” she concedes, throwing the car into drive. “But, first, I want you to get all your shit out of my house. After all, it’s been four years, ten months, and thirteen days.”
