#arrow angst

[samdeancass]

After the Storm

Pairing: Oliver Queen x Female Reader

Genre: Fluff, Angst

Characters: Oliver, Y/N

Description: A mission leaves Oliver physically beaten and unravelling. Y/N is the only person he allows close enough to see the cracks beneath his armour.

Rain pounded the bunker windows, making the glass shake. Outside, the city glowed with neon and thunder, but down here, everything was uncomfortably quiet.

You sat on the edge of the medical table, twisting your fingers in your lap while the elevator doors opened with a loud groan. Oliver stumbled out first. Your breath caught, and worry for Oliver quickly took over your nerves.

Blood stained his suit sleeve, bruises marked his jaw, and he looked exhausted. Diggle came in behind him, looking tired too, but you couldn’t take your eyes off Oliver. “Oliver-” “I’m fine,” he muttered automatically. His lie bothered you more than you expected. “You’re dripping blood on the floor.” “I said I’m fine.”

Diggle slipped upstairs before the argument could start.

Oliver took off his hood with a frustrated sigh and tossed it onto a chair. He gripped the table, his shoulders shaking a little. It wasn’t from anger. From pain. Your chest tightened. You grabbed the medical kit and moved closer without saying anything. “I can do it myself.” “And yet you haven’t.”

He looked like he might argue, frustration in his eyes, but then his expression changed. He just looked tired. He sat down heavily. It was quiet as you cleaned the cut near his ribs. Oliver hissed when the antiseptic touched his skin. “Sorry,” you whispered. “It’s not your fault.” The storm outside rumbled again.

You tried to focus on bandaging him, but your hands shook. It was hard to keep your mind from spiralling. Even as you pressed the gauze to his skin, you still saw flashes from just hours ago, the sickening moment you thought you’d lost him, the echo of a gunshot too close, that same, cold fear flooding your chest. Relief mingled with dread, turning your stomach inside out. You kept remembering all the times he’d barely made it back, every grim call, every fresh wound, every night where you counted the seconds until you heard the elevator and knew he was safe. Sometimes you pictured what life would be if he didn't come back at all, a wordless emptiness, his empty chair, his laugh gone from the room. The thought made your heart race, almost painful with how much you needed him. Lately, every mission felt like waiting for bad news, like the universe was just biding its time before it took him away. You wished for a future where he would always walk through those doors, where you could let go of fear long enough to hope that someday, this constant ache would fade.

Oliver noticed. His gaze softened immediately. “Hey.”You refused to look at him. “Don’t.” “Don’t what?” “Use that voice on me.” A small, tired smile appeared on his face. “What voice?” “The one that makes me forgive you.” His smile faded right away, replaced by guilt. “I didn’t mean for tonight to go sideways.” “That’s the problem, Oliver.” Your voice cracked despite your efforts. “You never mean for it to.” The words lingered in the air.

Oliver stared at the floor for several long seconds before speaking again. "When I was on the island..." he began quietly, "I got used to believing I was already dead." His jaw tightened. For a moment, you saw the memories flicker behind his eyes: building a fire with numb fingers in the pouring rain, burying the watch he took from Yao Fei, the taste of salt water as he dragged himself onto the sand after a firefight gone wrong. The biting sting of salt air in open wounds, the endless damp chill in his bones, the echo of distant gunfire. "Sometimes I still think that way."

You finally looked up. Seeing how vulnerable he was made your frustration fade, replaced by a deep compassion. “That doesn’t mean you get to scare me half to death every night.” His expression softened further. “You care about me that much?” You let out a shaky, disbelieving laugh. “You cannot seriously ask me that.” Oliver blinked, almost stunned by the answer. He could read his enemies so well, but he couldn’t see himself.

You finished wrapping the bandage carefully before murmuring, “I love you, you idiot.” You said it before fear could stop you. Time seemed to stop. Even the thunder felt quieter. Oliver stared at you like the world had stopped turning. Then, very gently, he reached for your hand.

"You shouldn’t," he said. He hesitated, then looked down, fidgeting with the edge of the bandage. For a heartbeat, something deeper flickered across his face—fear, not just for you, but of himself. Sometimes he wondered if he belonged anywhere outside the violence that kept finding him, haunted by mistakes and losses that clung to his conscience. "Every time you get close to me, you put yourself in danger. What I do, what follows me... I don't know if I can live with the thought of hurting you, too."

Your heart cracked a little. “That’s your response?” “No.” His thumb brushed over your knuckles. “That’s me trying to protect you.” “From what?” “Me.” His honest words hurt more than if he had yelled. You stepped closer until your knees touched his. “Oliver,” you whispered, “you don’t get to decide that for me.” He looked into your eyes, hoping to believe you. You leaned in and pressed your forehead to his. He finally let out a shaky breath.

For the first time that night, his body relaxed. "I love you too," he admitted quietly, like the confession terrified him. You felt warmth spread through your chest as you melted into his embrace, the press of his arms grounding you, his heartbeat steady beneath your cheek. The air around you was thick, carrying the scent of rain and antiseptic, mixed with the distant metallic tang of blood. Outside, the storm still raged, thunder rattling the glass and the rain drumming a wild rhythm against the bunker windows. But inside the bunker, wrapped up in Oliver’s arms, the world narrowed to the shelter of his body and the heat between you. Each breath you took was laced with the sound of water hitting concrete overhead, steady and relentless, a constant reminder that you were safe, here and now.

[winchester-mikaelson]

When Oliver was making the deal with the Monitor, all he was thinking of was saving his friends. His family. His world. Without an ounce of care for himself. When he shot that arrow into the book, he wasn't thinking about the sacrifice he made. He was focused on destroying the book. The book of destiny that brought nothing but destruction to destinies. And he succeeded. Against all odds. Of course he never mentioned his deal to anyone. Not even his pregnant wife. When Oliver found out he was about to become a father, he felt happiness beyond comprehension, but immediately, in some corner, the words of the deal resurfaced. And they loomed. Even after they defeated the Ninth Circle. They loomed every day the baby inside his soulmate grew.

And then the day came. When she was born. Mia. Named after his mother, the woman who was always there for him, even in her death. And Mia was an angel to him. When he held his daughter, he forgot everything, every dark corner of his mind, every fear he had, every pain he had ever felt. Until he saw Mia in her mother's arms. It resurfaced. The looming words of the deal. He choked it down, I still have time., he thought. I still have time.

That was, until he returned. The Monitor. Oliver felt as if the ground had been ripped under his feet. He knew what this meant. But he didn't know how he was going to tell his wife. That she would be raising their daughter alone. That he wouldn't be there. That he had to be the hero. One last time. After all, all of this started with him.

[theshipsfirstmate]

Arrow Fic: It’s the Side Effects That Save Us

Post-5x20, my attempt to sort through that wholly unsatisfying final Olicity scene.

“The last time they sat in a hospital room together, his eyes were sparkling like his mother’s ring and he was trying to cheer her up with promises she thinks they both knew, even then, that he wouldn’t be able to keep.”

Title from “Graceless” by The National. 

It’s the Side Effects That Save Us (AO3)

It says something about them, that he only apologizes when he thinks it might be the end, and she only does it when it’s time to begin again.

Felicity walks into Oliver’s room at the ARGUS facility on legs that still feel like pins and needles. But they’re working, well enough to be there when he asks for her, and that’s what’s important right now. Of course, it’s the first thing he points out, and she can’t help but remember the last time, how she stood again in front of him, how she walked, and how it led them to this moment.

The first time she lost her legs was a lot like the first time she lost him, a shock to the system that very nearly took her under for good. How do you unlearn something your body's known forever? How do you let go of something that's been there from the start? She had sat alone in a hospital room like this one, waiting for him, just like she had sat alone in the bunker after he left for Nanda Parbat. Both times, she wept -- first for him, then for herself, and then for what could have been.

Tonight, she lost her legs first, like some kind of cosmic retribution for learning to stand on her own. But that hadn’t been anywhere near as painful or devastating as watching Oliver collapse in the tunnel underneath the bunker, knowing she was powerless to save him. Even worse, somehow, had been the words he uttered before losing consciousness.

He had apologized like a penance, forcing out a confessional with what he thought might be his dying breaths, even as she begged him not to. She’s heard so many goodbyes trip from his lips and still, when he spat back up the poison that Chase had force-fed him, the last salvageable pieces of her heart had ground to dust.

“I don’t trust myself,” he had whimpered, begging her with everything he had left to believe him. And she did, Felicity knew for certain in that moment. She dug her nails into his chest, tears soaking through the front of his shirt as blood seeped through the back, and promised herself that if he came back to her this time, she’d remind him once again.

She knows who he is, even when he forgets. She’s known him since the day his blood stained the backseat of her old car and all the perplexing pieces of his persona fell together. She knows him well enough to promise him that the things that villain planted in his head aren’t true, and they never have been. She knows him well enough that she was ready to promise him “‘til death do us part,” even when they both knew that could be sooner rather than later.

The man she fell in love with. Every time she utters the phrase, Oliver shifts almost imperceptibly, as if he’s so sure she’s talking about someone else. But that’s who he is, even still. After everything they’ve lost and everything they’ve been through, she knows him, and she loves him. Felicity tries to cut through his tortured and battered psyche to tell him as much -- there are only so many words she can say out loud -- and then he saves them both all over again.

Now, mercifully alive in front of her, Oliver reaches for her hand and she clutches back tightly as a million memories of being tangled up with him flash through her mind. The last time they sat in a hospital room together, his eyes were sparkling like his mother’s ring and he was trying to cheer her up with promises she thinks they both knew, even then, that he wouldn’t be able to keep.

And so it's fitting now, perhaps, that this next chapter of their story starts with another mess of half-truths, strung together like an inelegant elegy.

She tells him that she’s sorry, again, even if she’s as unsure about saying the words as he seems to be hearing them. Maybe it’s because he's already said them once tonight, it's her turn. Maybe it’s because she knows that two wrongs have never made a right. Maybe it’s because she keeps realizing that it doesn’t hurt any less to lose him, now that he’s no longer hers to hold.

She doesn’t tell him that, when she pressed her ear to his chest earlier, desperate to hear his heart beat, a tiny part of her had been grateful that if this was it, they would at least go together this time.

She tells him about Billy, tells him that her quest for retribution started when Prometheus put an arrow in her next best attempt at happiness. She tells him that mostly to keep the guilt off of the broad shoulders that already carry the weight of the world.

She doesn’t tell him that she discovered how to turn heartbreak into vengeance years ago. She got a taste after Cooper, but it was loving Oliver that helped her perfect the practice. She doesn’t tell him that she’s been headed down this path since she stuck a needle in Slade Wilson’s neck and sneered in the face of three different Demon’s Heads. All for him. She doesn’t tell him that one of the reasons Billy’s death had knocked her so sideways is because she had only ever prepared herself to avenge one man.

She tells him that she's gotten a taste of what he's been through, though really it was a bitter mouthful.

She doesn’t tell him that it wasn’t his lack of support that she had longed for while diving headfirst and headstrong into Helix. It was him. Him and John and the rest of the team too, but mostly him. In a room full of similarly-minded peers, she's never felt more alone than when Alena pressed a gun into her hand with a smile that understood more than she did.

She tells him that he was right, she was becoming like him. But she makes it sound like it's something reversible. There’s no limit to what he can do if he thinks he can save her, they’ve already proven that a few times today, and more than anything, she wants to give him something to believe in. He's so beautiful with hope in his eyes.

She doesn’t tell him that he hasn’t been watching closely enough to see that her metamorphosis is already complete. Just like him, she had become someone else in Russia, ready to wrap herself around an atomic bomb to save the lives she couldn’t get back in Havenrock. There's no coming back from the place that she's sunken to, and the rational part of her knows that’s something Oliver would understand all too well. But she won’t give him more to carry, not right now.

She saves the biggest lie for last, and it nearly sticks in her throat.

She'll never understand why he lied to her about William. Never. Not when there was a diamond on her finger and room on their mantle for more family photos. She’s re-lived that moment a million times in her head, and not even in her wildest, most irrational imaginings, does she see herself reacting in a way that would justify his secrecy.

It wasn't about his trust in her, that's what he says. But there's nothing else it could be, and even if hindsight is 20/20, the secrecy, that specific deception had picked painfully at some of her oldest scars.

But there’s no time now, to cry for herself. Chase knows about William, which means that's what's coming next. And she can’t let Oliver shut her out again, not when his biggest battle lies ahead, not when his son’s life is on the line.

Felicity can't save the world, or even the city, but maybe she can save him from himself. And after their ordeal tonight, she's newly aware, with stark clarity, that she's still willing to die for him, no matter what role she plays in his living. She’ll give him anything if he’ll let her help, even an apology that she only half believes.

She tells him these lies, and then she tells him something true.

She’s tells him that it's time for him to figure out who he is, because she's not sure how many more times she can remind him. She tells him that because she can’t say I still love you, not out loud. Not just yet. She tells him that because this magnetic pull between the two of them feels as inevitable as it always did. For as long as they keep at this noble and unrewarding work, they'll be in each other's orbit and she can't stay by his side without remembering what it was like to be even closer.

She doesn’t tell him that she misses him so much she can’t breathe sometimes, doesn’t tell him that she can’t tell if the ache in her chest is hardened hollowness or the space he used to fill. She doesn’t tell him that tonight, when she returns to the empty home they once shared, she’ll cry -- first for him, and then for herself, and then for what’s to come.

[samdeancass]

The Jealous Type

Requested by: Anonymous

Pairing: Lonnie Machin x fem!reader

Genre: Angst, Fluff

Characters: Lonnie, Y/N

Description: Y/N never thought that Lonnie was the jealous type but when her ex rolls into town, Lonnie lets his feelings be known.

You had never known Lonnie to be the jealous type, in fact, you had never known him to be anything but sweet when it came to you. But when he seen you with another guy and his hands all over you and you batting them away, something inside him changed and he rushed towards you both without thinking.

He pushed himself between the two of you, his hands tight around yours. “Who do you think you are, touching her like that?!” The other guy laughed and leaned back against the wall. “I am Ben, her ex. Who in the hell are you?” Seeing the guy laugh about it made Lonnie’s blood boil. 

You felt Lonnie’s hand tense against yours and you knew that something was about to happen. You squeezed his hand in an attempt to calm him down, but to no avail. He let go of your hand and stepped towards Ben. “I am her boyfriend so I suggest that you go before I do something that you’ll regret.” 

Ben threw his head back with laughter. “Her boyfriend? No, I don’t think so. She belongs to me and she always has. The things that I have done to her, well...” He looked around Lonnie and winked at you. “I’m sure Y/N will tell you.” 

With a mixture of jealousy and anger Lonnie swung his fist forward and hit Ben square in the nose, sending him flying back and onto the floor. “Never talk about her like that. She is her own person and doesn’t belong to anyone. Now if you know what’s good for you, you’ll get the hell out of town and drive far away from here. If I get even a sniff of you around here again, you’ll get more than a bloody nose.”

Lonnie grabbed your hand and guided you out of the building and towards the car. When you were both inside, his facade completely changed. He was your sweet Lonnie again. “Baby, are you alright? He didn’t hurt you, did he?” He cupped your face with his hands, his eyes scanning for any sign of injury. 

You grabbed his hands with yours and squeezed. “He didn’t, don’t worry. I’m just glad you were there, Lon. I don’t know what would have happened if you weren’t. He’s never been able to get over us breaking up.” You looked into his eyes and slowly leaned in, placing a sweet kiss to his lips. “Thank you for saving me, my prince.” 

He gave a sad smile and shook his head. “You don’t need to thank me. I just wish you hadn’t seen me like that. I never wanted you to. I hate that side of me.” “Every part of you is special to me, Lonnie, the good and the bad. You never need to hide any part of you from me, alright? I love you just the way you are.”

Lonnie’s smile grew, tucking your hair behind your ears. “How did I get so lucky with you?” You blushed and he pressed a kiss to your cheek before starting the engine and driving home, your hands both intwined.

[theshipsfirstmate]

Arrow Fic: Can’t Bribe the Door on Your Way to the Sky

mid-5x19 angsty nonsense -- Felicity’s thoughts during the scene in the loft. “When it comes down to it, Oliver’s argument has always been that he couldn't be a hero and be with her. It's infuriating and heartbreaking that now, as the tables have turned, he won't let her be either.”

Title from “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles.

Can’t Bribe the Door on Your Way to the Sky (AO3)

“One of the reasons I fell in love with you…”

Felicity hears herself say it, and she knows it isn’t the first time.

She's always reminding him, in their darkest hours, about the virtues that made her love him, long before (and long after) she should have. She always tells him in the moments when there’s nothing left to say.

Telling him now feels a little like twisting the knife, only she can’t figure out which one of them has the blade in their back. Telling him here, in the home they used to share, feels like some kind of twisted bookend. None of it really matters. Oliver's returned to that mindset where he acts like he’s forgotten, or like he never really knew in the first place. She knows part of that is Prometheus’ undoing, and part of that is who he’s always been.

Over the years, she's watched him shove down every kind of emotion for the sake of being the hero he thinks he has to be. But Felicity can't do it that way. She's never forgotten, not for a second, and she’s never tried. At the core, it’s what her mission is built on: the love they shared, the purpose they found together, the city that was worth saving just because he was by her side, protecting it.

Even now that they're not together, she still had some tiny hope that when the time came, he'd back her play. And she hates herself a little for how disappointed she is when it just isn’t true.

He’s so stubborn. Maybe Helix’s plan isn’t the best option, but they’ve come at things sideways like this before, and they’re running out of time. She can do this, and even if she can't, she's already jumped off the cliff. He's the one who gets left behind this time, he can sit in the bunker and wring his hands and worry about all the things he never got to say.

“You, more than anyone else,” he grates out, with a look in his eye that Felicity remembers but hasn’t been privy to in months, “have seen the toll that it has taken on me.”

When it comes down to it, Oliver’s argument has always been that he couldn't be a hero and be with her. It's infuriating and heartbreaking that now, as the tables have turned, he won't let her be either one. If there were any measurable bit of her heart left to break, it would have gone at the look on his face when he practically begs her not to go. But there isn’t, and so she steels herself.

She knows he hasn't forgotten what it's like to love her, even if he never brings it up in big declarative ways, even if he never trots it out as part of the pep talk, as seems to be her m.o. Still, she knows, because every time their eyes meet for too long, she can see it there, that same longing that makes her stomach ache. But they've mostly spent their time since last summer looking anywhere but each other and Oliver just missed it, the metamorphosis that occurred as she grew an icy shell and rebuilt the walls he had spent four years tearing down.

She’s someone else now. He didn’t notice.

No one did, Felicity made sure of that. Curtis was working on his marriage and Thea was never around and her mother went back to Vegas and Digg was busy with an ARGUS-head wife and a toddler. Once Rory left, there really wasn’t anyone to see her, let alone notice, but it’s Oliver’s blindness that hurts the most.

He tells her now that he doesn't want her to sell her soul. She can count on her hands the number of people in this world who may believe there's anything left to hock. She's left pieces of it scattered around the globe. Lian Yu. Nanda Parbat. Havenrock. Russia. The street of Star City. What's left likely wouldn't fetch much of an asking price.

Still, he looks at her with pleading eyes and she wants to scream.

“You were willing to sell your soul to destroy a threat that I created.”

Felicity won’t realize it until later, but that line from him, the disbelief that laces around those words, is what ultimately fuels her determination to help carry out Helix’s mission. How dare he question her dedication to their cause, to the city they’ve worked for five years to save?

And besides, doesn’t he know by now?

Does he really not understand that she's already sold her soul for him, maybe ten times over? After everything they've been through -- life, death, resurrections and rebirths -- doesn't he know by now what she’s willing to sacrifice to makes things right? If anyone has shadow on their conscience, a list of wrongs to atone for, doesn’t he know that it’s her? She tells him so, even though her voice starts to shake. “How could I be any different?”

That special brand of reckless, selfless heroism is what makes him who he is. And it's shaped her the same way. She tells him so, even though she doesn’t mean to.

We’re the same now, is what she’s really saying. Let me show you how much.

It’s too electric, an emotional third rail they haven’t come close to touching in months, and she almost flinches. Even after trying and failing spectacularly with other people, even after suffering a few more of the kinds of tragedies that only happen to people like them, they still can’t face the spectre of what used to be, the smoky entrails of the fire that once burned between them. And Felicity thinks it would be even worse, perhaps, to look too closely and find it still burning.

“I can't,” Oliver tells her, and it’s nothing she hasn’t heard before. Some more vitriolic part of her just wanted him to know what it feels to fall for it. But they’re so far past that now. This conversation would have been a different one a few years ago. 

It would have been about his protectiveness, that way he used to stand close, towering over her to say “No,” back when he still thought physical intimidation would get him somewhere. At some point along the line, Felicity recalls, he stopped worried about her getting hurt and started worrying about the damage he’d already inflicted.

Even now, every part of this is so rooted in his own pain that it almost, almost makes her second guess the whole thing, and the self-loathing from earlier bubbles back up. She lets her nervous, righteous energy metabolize it into confidence and squares her shoulders under Oliver’s watchful gaze. She can’t look at him now without seeing him on that night he limped back to them from Prometheus’ captivity, with the last of his humanity seared away. She can’t forget the ringing in her ears that made it hard to make out his damaged voice, how the tips of her fingers burned to soothe across the permanent damage on his chest. When he said he was done for good, Felicity’s throat was on fire but her mind was made up. He's not the only one who gets to make sacrifices.

She can’t stop Helix, anymore than she can stop the desperate gnawing in her gut. God knows, she’s tried. And one of the qualities she admires most about him, one of the reasons she fell in love with him, is one of the reasons she has to follow through. She wishes that declaration would be enough to make Oliver understand, that the volumes of history between them and the look in her eyes would be enough to sway his support. But when he says he can’t let her go, she fists her hands into tight, painful balls and reminds them both that he no longer has the power to ask her to stay.

“You'll have to stop me.”

He nods, like it’s what he expected, and then she’s gone.

[juliesioux]

I’ve been reading a lot of folks on twitter asking for a novel about Oliver & Felicity’s roadtrip in between seasons 3 & 4.

Since that is basically what I am writing (I’m in Bali at the moment), I should totally package it up as one. It will be 3- 400 pages long by the time i am done...lolololol

ANYTHING TO TAKE MY MIND OFF OF TOMORROW NIGHT!

I can’t even work I am so preoccupied by the trauma yet to come lol

[arrowsmoaker-blog]

Taking the blame

He could still feel the loss of her face between his hands, how he started shaking when all he felt was the cold air on his palms.

He never knew what to do.

she could be standing there, pouring out her heart and he wouldn't know what to say. All he could think was how she would be in danger if she was with him. So after she asked him to say he didn't love her all he could do was ask her not to. All he could do was kiss her to try to make the pain go away.

But she walked away.

She was tired of waiting.

His happiness slipped out of his hands, his Felicity.

and he couldn't blame her.