Something struck me seeing Oliver without scars in 5x08.
Oliver came back to Starling, with broken bones that had never completely healed, second degree burns and his body covered in scars and tattoos.
He’d come back and tried to pretend he was okay, tried to placate the people who’d known him by wearing a mask of who he’d been. But under those clothes, his body lay bare, a testament to the fact that he’d become a changed man. A different man.
A man who was nothing like the boy he’d been.
But what I find intriguing is his first (onscreen) reactions to people seeing his bare body.
The first time it happened, it was Thea who barged in on him while he was changing and shirt, and asked him how he got the scars
and he got mad. He got defensive. He tried to hide. He closed off.
The second time it happened, it was Laurel who deliberately looked at those scars, asking him about the horrors he’d faced
and just look at the way he’s standing. Tensed. Still. Jaw clenched. Just waiting for her to pull back because his scars are horrific and it’s painful for him. He shut his mind down. Again.
(The third time someone sees his shirtless is Digg. But he’s a soldier. He’s faced war. He has his own scars. Oliver finds comfort in that, and hence isn’t worried, but I’m not including him because this is mainly a parallel to the way he behaves about his scars with women).
The next woman to see his scarred body is Helena but we’re never shown her reaction to seeing him bare.
But, what I find most interesting, is the way he responds with his body to Felicity.
The first time Felicity sees his bare flesh, he’s unconscious and bleeding
and she knows his secret. Not only that, she’s been aiding him and Digg in their work, trusting him with things without really knowing him, and for him, that’s something he really, deeply cherishes - her trust.
It’s obvious he knows she’s seen his body.
But the first time we see him, consciously shirtless in her presence? He’s not mad, he’s not shutting in, he’s not clenching his jaw or sleeping…
He’s working out. Vigorously. Skillfully. With rapid reflexes. Without a freaking care that she’s watching him (and he knows because he’s Oliver I-have-eyes-in-the-back-of-my-head Queen).
It gets more interesting because right after this time is here
He’s hanging right above her freaking head (because of course there were no other overhead pipes in the entire basement)
by one arm in a monkey move, flexing his butt and shoulder muscles, showing off his strength while taking about their latest mission and then jumping down
knowing she’s checking him out, feeling all smug on the inside, preening…
And he’s that way because she knows he’s a murderer but with an honorable purpose, trying to save the city; she knows he’s scarred and marred but trusts him without ever asking anything about it - unlike every other woman. She’s honest in her appreciation of his body, the body he’d come to keep only to himself, and it instills a sense of confidence in him, a sense of thrill.
She gave him the unconditional space to be himself, even in his body that he used as a weapon; he flaunted it, accepted it, scars and all with that silent aid. A man as serious as him learned to enjoy the playful thrill of using his body in her vicinity. A man as grim as him deliberately worked out in places where she had a direct line of vision.
He’s never, not once, been bothered to hide himself from Felicity, not since the very beginning, not even the scars he hid from everyone else. And I believe it’s her complete acceptance of them that allows him, over time, to be bare around other people as the team grows.
And you know what’s more beautiful?
Felicity has never, not once, acknowledged his scars. For her, it’s been a part of his body, like his hands and face, and she’s accepted them, every time, except this.
They’ve been like this since the very beginning - completely accepting of each other even at their worst, most flawed.
I just have a lot of feels.
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