IS IT REAL? [ Olicity | 5x05 | Balcony Scene ]
“Is it real?” he asked, his voice choking on an intake of breath before he steeled himself, his eyes on her blue ones, trying to understand what he’d been told.
Had the fact that they’d been together, happy and in love, about to get married, been real?
Had his happiness been real? His ring on her finger?
It all seemed like yesterday, yet so far away.
All those countless mornings spent waking up tangled in her arms and going to sleep with her head on his chest, feeling that sense of peace that had been an illusion for him for so long - had it been real?
Those memories that haunted him when he lay staring at the foundry ceiling at night - were they real, or something his tortured mind had created to survive?
The balcony he stood on, the very balcony he’d kissed her on once a lifetime ago, the balcony with a door that led to the first home he’d had in this city, with her - had it been real?
She was trying to move on - he understood that. He accepted that. He’d always admired her ability to forge ahead. It had been his mistakes that had sent her running and she was still running while he’d been standing at one spot, waiting for her.
Was it real? Was she really moving forward or just pretending to? Was she taking those steps away from him while still standing right beside him? Were the ghosts of happy memories shining her eyes real? Or was he only seeing what he wanted to see?
With the way she looked at him sometimes when she thought he wasn’t aware, with the way she sometimes raised her hand to touch him before curling her fingers in, with the way her breath caught every time he came back from a dangerous mission, Oliver somehow could not find any congruence in what her lips told him and what her eyes did.
Which was real of the two?
He didn’t even ask about the guy. Didn’t want to know. Because as much as he accepted her decision, it didn’t pain him any less. He could still see in his mind’s eye, the image of her kissing another man, and his blood didn’t boil any less than it had two years ago.
His eyes flicked to her lips - lips he’d lost his rights to, lips he’d tasted every which way possible, lips that were kissing another man these days.
But was it real? Or was she pretending?
Did she kiss him with her entire body like she’d done him? Did her arms grab onto his shoulders and fingers plunge into his hair? Did her hips move along with his while their tongues mated, like theirs had? Did she kiss him upside down like she’d loved to do with him, experiment? Did she remember his taste sometimes like he remembered hers?
He didn’t want it to be real.
He wanted her to be happy, but not with another man, not when he was right there. He didn’t want her spending her nights with someone else, not if it could be something real and not a phase.
Had the small moments these last few weeks, the ones he’d noticed but never commented on, been real? Those small touches and lingering looks and that passion he knew she kept quiet just under the surface? Had it been real?
Her eyes blinked up at him, the remorse in them evident, as was the battle she was waging inside herself.
They’d always conversed in silence, saying things with their eyes and hands long before their lips had gotten involved. That silence told him something entirely different.
His question hung in the air between them, along with so many things -unspoken but not unheard.
Was any of it real? Or just in his head?
She took a deep breath and his heart stopped, waiting for her to tell him, to confirm or deny every which way his thoughts were racing, something he was certain she knew of, knowing him as well as she did.
She took a deep breath, and spoke
Thoughts, memories, dreams - all invaded him for a moment. He let them wash over him, let the physicality of his racing heart and sweaty palms and pounding blood ground him. He reveled in the reality of it, watching her face even as she gave him the words, her eyes, her face telling him of a different reality.
She was as fighting. Inside. Outside. He didn’t know what she was fighting, but she was.
And that told him everything he needed to know…
He just didn’t know which ‘it’ was that yet.
Tagging beautiful peeps under the cut :)
areudirty
dededos
jacobvanloon
yousharknotpass
prguitarman
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
gummygunk
stormborns
romaincrisis
baratheonpilled
