Cure: Chapter Ten (10/?)
Summary: Chloe is trying to find a doctor to help her with her meteor infection and a playboy-like Oliver Queen is trying to find a a physician for his Green Arrow wounds. They begin a sexual relationship, which becomes a problem once Ollie's softer side develops.
A/N: I feel incredibly blessed to have been nominated for this. Paths was also nominated as Best AU. Thank you for everyone who has supported me! I hope that this chapter won't let anyone down.
Chapter Ten
“It’s time, Oliver.”
He looked up, and saw Emil standing over him. Oliver straightened himself and ran rubbed his eyes before glancing at the still body on the couch, and then back at Emil.
“I don’t want to talk to you”, he said, moving to reach for the bottle on the table before realizing that it was empty. He frowned before getting up and heading over to the liquor cabinet.
Whisky was getting boring, maybe something else was appropriate here. He’d ordinarily reach for the tequila, but those were always fun when the salt was on a woman’s stomach, the shot in her cleavage, and the lime in her mouth.
There was only one flat stomach that he wanted to lick salt off of- and he didn’t want it to have his wounds on it; one pair of breasts that he wanted to take a shot from, one set of lips that he wanted to kiss instead of the colorless ones that were lying helplessly from his couch.
He gave up, and reached for another bottle of whisky.
“I gave you three days and she still hasn’t woken up.”
He rested the bottle on the table. “You didn’t give me anything”, he told him. “And you weren’t exactly invited here.”
“You gave me the security code months ago in case something happened, and you weren’t returning my calls.”
“Just giving you the same treatment you gave me”, Oliver told him, reaching for a glass, pouring some of the liquid in, and downing it instantly.
“And killing your organs is going to help?”
“Well, it’s a good thing I have a doctor, then isn’t it?” He asked sarcastically, pouring himself another drink. “Oh, wait, that only works if he picks up the phone when something goes wrong to begin with. Sorry, my mistake.”
“I was in surgery helping a gunshot victim before his lungs gave out when you called. My phone’s not sterile- I can’t touch it without risking the patient’s life”
“-so you risked mine instead.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not. But you want to know what’s also not fair? The fact that some poor innocent woman who barely gives a shit about me had to give her own life in order to save my pathetic ass.”
“It’s also not fair to her family to keep a corpse here and not even try to contact them to tell them that she’s dead.”
He neglected the drink in his hand for a second before focusing on Emil completely. “Don’t tell me that you did.”
Emil took a glass from the cabinet and poured himself a drink. “I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I looked at her medical files- there’s no emergency contact or guardian. And I checked out her address and made a couple of calls. She has a family, I know that she does, but on paper, she doesn’t. And tried talking to the people around where she lives yesterday, but they didn’t tell me anything. Her behavior imitates someone who is keeping her abilities a secret from the people she loves, but it looks like she’s completely alone.”
Thank you, barista with coffee and food. Maybe he should ask for her name.
“Well, there’s no need to call them if she’s going to wake up.” Oliver told him
“Oliver, I know that it’s hard, but she’s not going to.”
“She does this sometimes- she told me.”
“Did she say how long it usually takes?”
He tried to think of a time frame, but she never mentioned anything. She would just mention that she woke up in a morgue, and then move on to another topic. Or rip his clothes off. Or take her clothes off.
“No, but she’s woken up before. She’ll do it again.”
“Oliver, I can’t see how she’s going to wake up if she starts to decompose. Or if her body shuts down. You need to let me do an autopsy, it’s protocol.”
“No.” He said automatically
“It needs to be done, and I think that it would be good for you to just accept that she’s gone.”
“No.” He repeated. “I don’t know how many times she’s gone through this, or how long it takes for her to come back, and I don’t know how many times she’s woken up in a morgue, but she is not going to wake up in the middle of an autopsy, and I’m not letting an autopsy prevent her from being able to wake up.”
“What makes you think that she’s woken up in a morgue?”
“She told me.”
“You make her seem incredibly guarded. What makes you think that she’s telling you the truth?”
“She’s not lying.”
“How can you tell?” Emil asked
“You can’t lie to a liar. And besides, I promised her that she wouldn’t go to a hospital.”
Emil drank from his glass. “I’m supposed to offer to do it here, but I know that you won’t allow me to.” He poured more liquid into his glass and downed that too. “And now, I can’t.”
“What?” Oliver asked
“I can’t perform any medical procedures if I’ve been drinking”, he said, putting down the empty glass and walking towards the door. “See you around.”
“Wait.”
Emil turned around.
“I’m still mad at you, but I’m still not going to let you drive drunk.”
“I was going to walk.”
“No, you were going to shamefully walk. But you’re my friend, and here’s the thing- I don’t do any guilty walking unless it’s the walk of shame. And even then, I forget that I’m supposed to feel bad.”
He grabbed another bottle from the liquor cabinet. “So we’re going to drink and wait, and when Chloe wakes up, she can have a drink too.”
“Seems like a waste of time”, Emil said, walked back over and grabbing the bottle.
“You can tell your colleagues that you’re witnessing a medical miracle when she wakes up.”
“Or I can just witness it and keep it to myself.”
Good man. Oliver filled up Emil’s glass, and then his own. “A miracle’s still a miracle.” He smiled, and clinked his glass with Emil’s.
He was trying to be brave because he had no idea if she would actually wake up or not. He just knew that she had to.
If she didn’t wake up, there would be no one left to kick his ass. If she didn’t wake, up, he couldn’t kick her ass for risking her life to save his.
Two hours later, Emil’s phone started going off. One phone call at first that went unanswered, and then the voicemails, text messages, and more calls.
“Dude, it’s a good thing I don’t have any neighbors”, Oliver pointed out, laughing. “Otherwise people would start to talk.”
“Silent it is”, Emil said, grabbing the phone and pressing a couple of buttons.
It was when the emergency pager started beeping that Oliver started to feel guilty. The man really was biting off more than he could chew with his patients- it was understandable that he didn’t have time to take on another crisis.
“Why did you take on my case if you knew that you were so busy?” He asked as the man shut the pager off.
“Originally? Because I was curious to see how it would work out. And also because the more people you save, the less people I need to. Prevention.”
There was a silence before Emil continued. “I promised myself that I would be humble when I started my practice, but I failed. I’m one of the best in my field, and I don’t let the people that I work with forget that. I lost perspective, and then I started to hear whispers about people with extraordinary abilities in Metropolis.”
“People?”
“Yeah, there was a rumor going around about this kid who pickpocketed in the city. Angry teenager, no big deal, right? Except he does it with a remarkable speed- all you feel is a little bit of wind. Where Chloe comes from, there’s a whole town full of people with extraordinary abilities. I started compiling research, thinking that I could figure it out, but I haven’t been able to yet.”
“Emil, if you need funding”
“-Funding is just money. It buys equipment, and I already have the best equipment. It hires the best minds, and I already work with brilliant people. There isn’t much else that I can do.”
“I don’t believe that, Doc.”
“The best that I’ve come up with is that the abilities are emotion based. They have some sort of trigger, and it changes with the individual. I’m not sure if she knows what hers is yet, I don’t know how often she’s been doing this. But whatever it is, to undo death? It’s something big, and judging by the way she was freaking out when we met her, it didn’t happen often until then. That may have changed, or maybe my conclusions are incorrect, but that’s what appears to be happening. She needs to be careful of it.”
“She’s going to be fine”, Oliver told him. “Just as soon as she wakes up.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Oliver wanted to automatically say yes, that he was sure. The truth was that he was mad at how much it felt like he didn’t know her. Like he didn’t know the person, just the body.
He silently grabbed the bottle and poured Emil a drink. And then another. His friend was passed out on the floor, and Oliver just kept staring at the resting body on the couch.
Kept staring until he was sick of how pale she looked and how cold her hands felt. When he felt sober enough, he scooped her up, started a warm bath, and slipped her body in the water before hopping in fully clothed.
“Please”, he whispered, holding her shoulders. “There has to be something that I can do.”
There was no answer.
“You never said how long it takes”, he said to her. “You just said no morgues. I won’t let that happen to you, I won’t let them do an autopsy. But that’s all you said. The woman who has an smart answer for everything and you won’t tell me what to do. And I need you to tell me what to do, Sullivan.”
But she didn’t say anything back.
“You never told me what to do.” He felt a tear roll down his cheek, but he didn’t care. Nobody saw him. “You never told me what to do.”
Ten minutes later after he stopped crying, he was still sitting in a tub of water, head tilted downwards. He was holding a dead woman and not giving a damn about the world or checking up on his passed out friend in the other room when something strange happened.
Her hand moved. Barely, but it had moved of its own accord a split second before she took a deep breath and jolted forward, eyes snapping open.
He grabbed her body and held her tightly. “Breathe”, he said, more to himself than to her.
“Ollie, you’re going to have to loosen the grip, otherwise I’m not going to be able to”, she said. “And don’t think I didn’t notice that I’m naked and you’re not. What kind of person takes a bath with their clothes on?”
He rested a hand on her neck and pulled her tighter. “I’m going to let that one go because you just died.”
“And I’m going to let that one go because you’re the Green Arrow.” She told him.
He froze for a split second and she pulled away for a moment. “You’re too easy”, she said, planting a kiss on his cheek.
He was about to do something less PG rated when he heard a groan coming from the other room.
“You have a guy over?” She asked “That answers so many questions.”
“I was drinking with Emil earlier and I have a naked woman on top of me now”, he said, getting up from the tub. “I’ll let him know that you’re okay. You probably want some privacy right now.”
She held on to his wrist. “I really don’t.”
He turned to look at the hand. He wished that it was because she didn’t want to be alone, that she just wanted him to stick around, but he knew that she didn’t operate that way.
She wanted to feel something, and he was the only available outlet. He shook his head. “I’m not having sex with you right now, Chloe.”
“Because Emil’s right there?”
He shook his head. “Because we’re going to talk about some things first.”
“We agreed that this would be simple.”
Because dying on a rooftop before magically being brought back to life was simple. Women are so weird.
He pulled her up from the water, reached for a towel, and covered her up. “I thought I said that you don’t get to block me out.”
“I don’t like that rule.”
And he didn’t like her dead, but he couldn’t say that. Instead, he took a lock of wet hair that was sticking to the side of her face and put it behind her ear. “Let me get Emil a ride home, and then the two of us will have a quick chat that we’ve both been avoiding for a while, and after that, I’ll get rid of this restraining towel.” He tapped a finger on the knot of the towel.
He opened the bathroom door before she could answer and pulled a slowly okay again Emil to his feet.
“Where are we going?” Emil asked. “Are we going back to the hospital? They’re not going to like that very much.”
“She woke up”, he told his friend, supporting him as the elevator doors opened. “And I’m sorry that I have to kick you out like this, but there are a couple of things that I need to go over with her.”
“Understandable”, Emil said, stepping in. “I’m glad that she’s okay.”
“Me too.”
“Mind you, I have no idea how that’s possible, what with the decomposition of her body that was supposed to have start occurring.”
He hit L. “No clue here either. Listen, the car’s right outside. I’m going to pay the driver extra to make sure that you get in your apartment okay. Gary’s a cool guy, you’ll be fine.”
“You don’t have to do that, not after you almost…”
“-I want to”, Oliver cut him off. “The other night? It’s more my fault than yours. We’re good, Emil.”
“We need to develop a better system to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.” He continued to ramble. “I thought that a secure system was in place, but obviously, it’s not secure enough.”
Oliver rolled his eyes. “We’ll come up with one when we’re both more sober.”
He walked him out of the building and helped him get into the car.
“How are you so controlled?” Emil asked him
“Years of practice”, he answered before shutting the limo door and giving the car two pats before it drove away.
“One down”, he said to himself before taking a deep breath and heading back upstairs, wondering if Chloe had gone to the extreme of escaping out of the window in order to avoid having a real conversation.
She wasn’t in the bathroom or on the couch that she had spent three days on when he got back up. No, she just had to be clever.
She was upside down on his yoga mat, doing a hand-stand. And she was naked. His eyes travelled from the hands that were supporting her body on the floor up to the arms to the spine that was completely perpendicular to the orange mat before his eyes drifted to the naked bottom that was right in front of him.
He realized that there was no way for him to get her down from there without touching her in some way that would prevent him from being able to control himself. So he just stood there, arms crossed, and staring at her ass appreciatively for a couple of seconds more before looking back down at her arms.
Her body was starting to shake. Either her body was still weak from the recovery or she hadn’t been practicing yoga daily like he had been.
Regardless of the reason, she couldn’t hold that position forever, and now, the two of them knew that. So while he might have stepped back into the penthouse with her holding the advantage, it wasn’t going to last long.
He smiled to himself, and at her cleverness. Her method worked in distracting him for the moment. “You’re going to have to come down sometime.” He said, trying to keep his voice steady as he picked up the discarded towel.
He watched as she tried to come back down gracefully, but instead of her feet planting back down on the floor and standing back up, she fell. Oliver saw the incorrect positioning, and caught her as she started to topple down, one hand behind her head so that it wouldn’t bump on the floor.
He tried not to notice her leg wrapping around his body and the little smirk on her face.
“Do yoga a lot?” He asked
“I pick up on things here and there.” She answered, catching her breath
“I can see that. Jack of all trades?”
“Master of some.”
“Are you okay?” He asked her
“Yeah”, she said, getting up. “Just fell down a little bit, no permanent damage done.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She grabbed the towel and wrapped it around her body before taking a deep breath and looking up at him. “I know.” She
swallowed and looked down for a second before looking back up. “There’s a lot of shit that isn’t my story to tell, so I don’t know what you want me to say.”
He nodded and walked over to his desk. He activated the fingerprint scanner, opened a drawer, and pushed a button before shutting the drawer again. He stepped over to the gears of the clock where the retina scanner had appeared, and scanned his right eye.
The door to the Arrow room opened, and they stepped inside to the place where he normally felt the safest. Except now, he felt like he was the one who was giving some sort of speech behind a transparent podium that allowed the entire world to see that he was actually the naked one.
“The wound on my leg happened because a guy stabbed me with his knife as I zip-lined up.” He pointed to a spot on the floor. “I stitched myself up right there.”
He opened a door to a small incinerator. “I burned my suit the other day right here, and I ordered a new one from an old man in Italy because it was covered with so much blood. And as much as people turn their heads when you throw enough money at them, I couldn’t explain anything to a local dry cleaner in Metropolis.”
He walked over to some of the arrows. “I designed these myself, and I engineered most of the workings of the trick arrows.” He ran a finger through the feathers of one arrow. “Designed to stun, not kill”, he added.
“You already know that I was on a deserted island for years instead of the traditional college route. What I didn’t tell you is that I learned how to shoot an arrow while I was there. That I started this all when I came back. They all suggested that I go to a therapist, that I might have some form of post-traumatic stress disorder. This is what I did instead.”
He couldn’t stop himself from thinking that he had inadvertently given her an exclusive interview. That she was going to run away, write an article about everything that he had said, and put it on the front page.
This story was going to get her out of the basement of the Daily Planet and probably into the top floor with a full office and a plaque on the door. It’ll get her a Pulitzer.
“I’m not crazy”, he said loudly, over his subconscious telling him to stop before he dug a hole too deep to talk his way out of. “And I know that I’m throwing a lot at you”, he said, turning to face her. “But you understand all of this, don’t you? With everything that you can do, that you’re capable of doing, you get this, right?”
She stood still, silently blinking at him.
“Chloe?” He asked nervously
She held a hand out, and for a split second, he cringed, thinking that she was about to slap him. That maybe slapping was a new version of kneeing him in the balls. Instead, she held his face in her hand, tracing his cheek with her thumb for a second, staring at him.
“You’re not crazy”, she whispered, before kissing him softly.
He broke the kiss, and looked at her. “Then you need to give me something, here. Because you were dead for three days and I felt like I didn’t know anything about you.”
“You know me”, she said, as she pushed his arms up and pulled his shirt off. “You know me.” She repeated.
“You haven’t told me anything. I don’t even know who to call if something happens.”
When she looked at him, there were tears in her eyes. “My phone didn’t ring at all in the three days that I was out”, she said evenly. “There’s no one to call.”
“What about Clark?” He asked
“Focusing on other things. Other people.”
Other women.
That was when he realized that his original suspicions were right- she wasn’t the type of girl who randomly slept with people. She wasn’t the type who randomly got undressed or felt comfortable doing naked yoga.
She was forcing herself to work past the vulnerability.
He leaned down and kissed her, nudging her mouth open slowly with his tongue and touching her tongue gently before pulling apart. “You’re wanted”, he said as clearly as he could, looking directly into her eyes.
She cleared her throat for a second and stepped back. “You…don’t have to lie to make me feel better, Ollie. It’s okay.”
He took the remote to the Arrow room and pressed the button, closing the door.
He was nervous as he unbuttoned his pants and pulled them down. He considered taking off his boxers too, but left them on. He had never done anything like this in this room.
“I’m not lying.” He took away the towel that was covering her body and let it drop to the floor.
“And I’m not lying when I say that you’re incredibly beautiful.”
He nibbled on her earlobe before kissing her neck and travelling down to her collar bone, sucking on it gently for a split second before kissing down her cleavage and stomach.
He trailed down one of her thighs before licking towards the inside of her thigh and travelling over to her clitoris before his tongue plummeted deep into her core, only egged on by her moaning and the fingers that were threaded in his hair.
He continued to lick the juices that were pouring out of her, needy, as if the world would end if she didn’t get an orgasm from this. As if he would have failed her somehow the one time that she let him do this.
He withdrew his tongue and replaced it with a finger hitting her clit and her G-spot at the same time before pulling back slowly and inserting two fingers, and then three, feeling triumphant as her hand gripping his shoulder tighter and tighter as she screamed his name loudly, letting her orgasm claim her.
He licked his fingers clean and pulled down his boxers, entering into her body before going in and out slowly. “Look at me”, he said, forcing her to face him. “Tell me that I’m lying to you when I say that I want you.”
“I can’t let you”, she let out a choked sob.
He thrust into her forcefully. “Then tell me that I’m lying.” He challenged
He saw the terror in her eyes right before he came. The words spilled from her mouth and etched into his brain. “You’re not lying.”