be us against the world - t - olicity - part 5 [b]
title: we keep all our promises (be us against the world)
category: arrow
genre: drama/romance
chapter rating: pg-13/teen
overall rating: nc-17/explicit
inspiration: gif (source)
word count: 12,166
summary: [au - no island] Oliver Queen has no idea what he's doing with his life, but when his father gives him an ultimatum, he has to figure it out. After meeting Felicity Smoak, he finds himself on a new path and his eyes are opened to what happiness really means and how finding it takes more courage than he ever thought he had.
[Return.]
Oliver found a routine pretty quickly.
In the mornings, he took Jasper out for a jog and played fetch in the park. After dropping her off at the shelter, he returned to Tommy's apartment for them to go over the business proposal to work out any kinks. In the afternoon, at least three times a week, he found himself visiting the homeless shelter in the Glades. Sometime he helped with laundry or food prep or just cleaning up and other days he made coffee and handed out sandwiches. He liked it there. He liked feeling like he was helping in some small way. In the evenings, depending on the day, he split his time between visiting Thea and his parents, checking in with Laurel, and meeting up with Felicity. Twice a week we stopped by his parents' house for a family dinner, every Sunday and Thursday night. Depending on Laurel's school schedule, he dropped by her place a couple nights a week for them to catch up over take-out and relieve stress. And finally, every other night he was with Felicity. When she recovered from her cold, she got a hold of her friend to set things up with the commercial. Unfortunately, her friend was out of the country for the next few weeks, so all they could do was wait. Oliver used the time to prep.
Felicity smiled from her seat on her couch, an excited Jasper sitting on the couch beside her, leaning against her side.
"Wait, wait, that wasn't how it started." Oliver sighed, waving his hands. "This would be easier if Tommy was here. I keep waiting for him to pick up where I left off."
"It's cute how you guys finish each other's sentences," Felicity teased.
He glared at her, but there was no heat to it. "We're still figuring out who's going to open. I think Tommy's better at that stuff." He paced back and forth, his hands on his hips. "He's always been good with stuff like that. In high school, I always made sure to partner with him. He always got the class going with a joke or something."
Felicity smiled lightly. "He's more of a show-man than you?"
Oliver nodded. "But is that what this needs? Should we be toning it down?" he wondered. "We have a meeting with Tommy's dad, and he's never really… He can be really abrupt. And Tommy panics around him. He can't focus. He's like…" He snorted. "Me, around my dad."
"Maybe that's why he should lead into it," Felicity suggested.
Oliver looked back at her, brow furrowed.
"You got to face your demons with your dad, even if it didn't pan out the way you wanted. Maybe Tommy needs to do the same. I know it sucks getting rejected and I'm not saying Mr. Merlyn definitely will. But maybe he needs to do this to show his dad that he cares, just like you did. If he's struggling with it as much as you are, then he deserves the same chance, right?"
He stared at her a long moment before nodding. "You're right."
Her mouth curled up on one side. "I try."
"Careful," he teased, "your modesty is showing."
Felicity rolled her eyes and then turned to Jasper. "What do you think, huh? Do I need to be more humble?"
Jasper yapped at her, excited that she was being paid attention to, and turned herself over onto her back, her head resting in Felicity's lap. She panted cheerfully, wiggling her head around and looking up at Felicity hopefully.
"Well, I don't know about you, but I think that was clearly a 'no, Felicity, you have every right to boast.'" She rubbed a hand down Jasper's chest. "Thanks, Jasper. I completely agree."
Laughing, Oliver walked over to sit down on the couch, rubbing Jasper's belly and shaking his head. "Your ability to read her is astonishing."
Felicity grinned at him, readjusting her glasses. "It's a gift."
Oliver clapped his hands then and Jasper turned back over, looking at him expectantly. "Who wants to go to the park?" he asked.
Scrambling off the couch, she rushed toward the door, her tail wagging eagerly as she nudged his jacket on the coat rack, sniffing for the leash in his pocket, alongside the treat he kept there, the ball in his other pocket. He was obviously getting predictable.
"Coming?" he asked, looking down at Felicity.
"Sure," she agreed, standing from the couch and joining him by the door to slip on her flats.
Oliver took her jacket from the rack and held it up for her to slip her arms into. He tugged her hair free while she buttoned the front and turned to face him when he pulled his own jacket on. She pulled the leash out from his pocket and knelt to clip it on Jasper's collar before standing and passing him the handle. It wasn't until they were standing in the elevator that he realized just how domestic and familiar they'd become with each other. He couldn't stop grinning the rest of the ride down.
Meeting with Malcolm Merlyn felt almost as daunting as it had when he'd had to sell the club idea to his own dad, and subsequently failed.
For as long as Oliver had known Tommy, he'd always thought his father was intimidating. Not in the same way his own father was, but in a way that made his skin crawl. Maybe it had something to do with being completely confused why anybody wouldn't think Tommy was pretty much the greatest guy to ever live, loyalty and all that, but there was something about Malcolm that always set Oliver's teeth on edge.
The presentation went off without a hitch. They didn't stumble, stutter, or oversell themselves. All of their practicing had paid off, Oliver thought, because there was no way they could present the club any better than they just had. But, as much as he felt like they'd just explained the club to a degree that anybody would be hard-pressed to say no to, Malcolm Merlyn looked unmoved.
Much like Robert had, he asked if he could have a moment to speak to his son privately. Oliver knew then and there that it hadn't worked.
As he sat in the hallway waiting for Tommy, he dug his phone out and called Felicity.
"On a scale of one to ten, how incredibly did you do? One being mildly awesome and ten being cherry cheesecake."
Oliver's mouth twitched up in a faint smile despite the disappointment he knew was coming. "What if I didn't like cherry cheesecake?"
"Well, then I'm afraid I'd have to question our entire friendship and the very foundation it was built on."
He chuckled under his breath, his head falling back. "Sadly, because I do like cheesecake, it felt like a ten that somehow became a negative-five…"
"Oh no… What happened?"
He closed his eyes, shaking his head. "We sold it. We sold the idea, but he just… He wasn't interested. I could feel it the whole way through. He was just waiting for us to stop talking. But I thought-I hoped-that if we just kept talking, he'd come around."
"But he didn't."
Oliver gritted his teeth. "No."
"It's okay," she reassured. "I know it sucks and you guys tried really, really hard, but… It's going to be okay. This only one set back. You don't need Mr. Merlyn's help. There other options, right?"
He appreciated her encouragement, he did, but he wasn't sure he was ready to feel it yet. "You remember when you said we'd probably get rejected a lot?"
"Yeah."
"I suck at rejection." A muscle in his cheek twitched. "I mean, I really suck at rejection. Go and get blackout drunk suck."
"Well, if you do, you have my number and my couch is still available."
He sighed softly, relief flooding through him. "I don't want to do that again. I don't want to be the screw up you scrape off the sidewalk and drag home. I just… I want to stop being rejected."
"The world's full of rejection, Oliver. Believe it or not, I've been rejected a time or two myself. And it sucks, it does, but just because two people say no doesn't mean that your idea, your club, isn't worth it. You've worked too hard, you and Tommy both, to give up now. If you want this, if you really want to do this, then you get up and you try again. Dust the dirt off, wipe away the tears, get back in the game, that's what my dad always says."
"You don't strike me as someone who played a lot of sports as a kid..."
"Oh, I wasn't. He was talking about the kids that bullied me in grade school. It was metaphor, I guess, for not letting those things stop me from being who I was and facing the people who thought I couldn't do it or wouldn't go anywhere in life. And you know what? He was right… Maybe I am arrogant about it, maybe I boast too much, but that's how I remind myself that I worked my ass off to get into MIT and graduate at the top of my class. That's how I showed those kids who used to make fun of me that being smart wasn't a bad thing. It was my ticket to doing something I loved, to having a job I wanted."
Oliver nodded, imagining the spitfire that was Felicity Smoak getting up and facing those bullies every day, with her head held high and her chin up. He imagined her graduating early and going to MIT and silently rubbing it in the faces of everyone who doubted her. He imagined her getting a job at QC and happily telling anyone who would listen, all the while patting her own back. And she deserved to.
"So get up, Oliver. Dust off the dirt, wipe away the tears, get back in the game. 'Cause one day, you're going to be standing in front of Sapphire, the most successful club in Starling, and both your dad and Tommy's will have to eat that rejection."
Oliver smiled slowly. "I think you have a bit of a vengeful streak, Smoak."
"One I'm extremely proud of."
He chuckled low under his breath, but before he could answer, the door nearest him was opening and an upset Tommy was walking out. His eyes were red and his mouth barely managed a smile. "We can go," he told Oliver before walking ahead.
Oliver sighed. "I have to go. Tommy's not…"
"It's okay. I understand."
"Thanks. I'll call you later."
"Sure."
After hanging up, Oliver hurried after Tommy, grabbing up his briefcase as he chased him down. He knew Tommy didn't want to talk about it, and probably wouldn't until they were a little drunk, so he kept pace with him silently, offering him quiet support. As they stood in the elevator, descending to the main floor, he pretended he hadn't noticed Tommy swiping a tear away, because that's what they did. When Tommy wanted to talk, Oliver would listen, until then, he would wait. And after he would tell him what Felicity had told him.
Get up. Dust yourself off. Wipe away the tears. Get back into the game.
And they would.
It was after hours and most of the employees had gone home for the day. Robert had waved his secretary off when the clock struck six. He still had some paperwork he needed to go over before he'd have a chance to get home, not that he was looking particularly forward to that in any case. Moira had been colder to him, more than usual anyway. He wasn't unfamiliar with his wife's exasperation with him. It had built up over so long a period of time that now it was just a given. Oh, he loved his wife, as any man would the woman who had given him two children. But he wasn't in love with her, and hadn't been for some time. Maybe in the beginning he was. Back when he'd left behind the dirt poor life his father had provided him and had built a successful career. Back when he could impress Moira with the upsides to the life he lived. She'd long become used to their upper-class world, however. It was her playground to rule while he simply maintained it enough for her to continue to reign as queen.
Was he a bitter man? Sometimes. He'd worked hard all of his life and the only thing he had to show for it was a full bank account. Sure, he had his family, but there were days that he wondered if he'd ever really grown to know them at all. Sometimes he woke up, turned over, and saw a stranger beside him. Had so much time passed that his wife had changed so completely? Moira was still a beautiful woman, but not the same as she'd been when he married her. Of course, he wasn't the same young man she'd married either. But it was a jarring feeling, to witness just how much time had truly passed while he was sitting in an office.
He regretted that some days. Regretted how familiar he was with the layout of his office that he could suddenly find himself blind and still know exactly where everything was. But bring him to his house and he wouldn't have the faintest clue where he was going. One might say that was an issue of size, Queen Manor being far larger than his office. But Robert didn't consider his house 'home.' He was more at ease in the comfort of his office, pacing the length of it as he went over business proposals and talked shop with his investors. He was a man who lived in a glass office, overlooking the city that he'd built his livelihood off of.
When Queen Consolidated was first built, he had a clear view of the Glades. He could see the exact spot that his father's house was. With some imagination, if he squinted, he could see his mother's garden, tended to by his father long after she'd passed. Robert didn't have a green thumb. He couldn't grow anything without killing it. But he remembered sitting outside, staring at her garden, watching life peek out from the dirt. He remembered watching her, with her overlarge, floppy hat to keep the sun off her face, digging in the dirt with her floral gardening gloves. And she would smile back at him, "Come here, Robbie. Come help momma." But he never would, afraid that he would ruin the beautiful things she did. And she would kiss his forehead as she left her garden. "My beautiful boy, you couldn't hurt a fly." His mother, for all that she was the most beautiful soul he had ever known, was wrong about him. Oh, he could hurt a fly. He could hurt more than a fly.
Sometimes he wondered if her death was the catalyst for the man he became. Things were better when she was alive. He couldn't accept them when his mother was still there. But when she passed away, that all changed. He no longer enjoyed the simple life his parents could offer. He couldn't stand the house they lived in, with the draft that always made his mother shiver, muttering that it would be the death of her one day. He hated the squeaky stair on the porch and the swing that always creaked ominously, waiting to finally give up. He hated how his father could barely scrape up enough money to pay for the bills. He hated cheap clothes and cheaper food and the way the other kids looked down on him at school. He hated how his father couldn't sew like his mother had, so his clothes went on untended to, with tears and stains that never came out. He hated all of it. He hated that his mother died and his father lived and that the world kept going.
When he was fifteen years old, he told his father he never wanted to be like him, he never wanted to have his life. He quit working at Queen's Corner Store and he never looked back. He went home and he focused on his homework, promising himself that he would make himself into a better man than his father ever was. He ignored the quiet knock at his bedroom door, his father asking to come in, to talk to him. He ignored three years of that same knock, of his father always reaching out, trying to make it better. When he was eighteen, Robert got a scholarship to Harvard and studied business. After that, it was determination and sleepless nights and constantly doing everything he could to get his business off the ground.
Queen Consolidated was his greatest accomplishment, and also his greatest downfall.
He put everything into his company; sweat, blood, tears and time. Everything. And in the end, he had very little to give anybody else.
He met Moira after he became successful. She came from a comfortable family, living far enough away from the Glades that the poverty there never touched her. She was enamored with him, with how he doted on her with gifts and expensive dates. She was the kind of woman a man like him should marry. Beautiful, sophisticated, smart. His mother was those things too, only she didn't have the beautiful clothes or the expensive house, not like she deserved. If she were still alive, he knew he would have given her anything she wanted. Instead he gave it to Moira. And she gave him two beautiful children. However, having a company as he did, being the CEO that he was, dedicating himself from the moment he decided to be better than his father, it all meant that sacrifices had to be made. He sacrificed being a father and husband to be a businessman.
The first time Oliver got into trouble, he was thirteen. He'd been caught smoking in the bathroom; Robert wrote it off as experimentation. Oliver was growing up, he was learning, what was one cigarette? But it escalated. Smoking turning into drinking turning into fighting turned into sneaking out turned into sleeping with every beautiful girl who smiled at him turned into drunk driving turned into multiple arrests turned into paparazzi turned into peeing on a cop car, and on and on and on. Robert thought he'd raised a spoilt brat for a son. He could just imagine what his father would say: Maybe if you spent a little more time with that boy, he'd stop looking for attention somewhere else. And he wasn't wrong. Robert hated that his old man was never wrong. But he didn't listen; God, he never listened. So Oliver continued on his destructive path, a vicious cycle of screwing up and giving up and apologizing just to avoid the lecture. Robert let him. He let him get away with it for so long until finally he had enough and he put his foot down. Shape up or ship out.
Oliver surprised him when he actually started showing up to QC on time, shadowing him every day, putting in the hours needed and keeping up appearances as expected.
But then something else happened.
For the life of him, Robert couldn't figure out what Felicity Smoak saw in his son. Oh, Oliver was a good looking man, and he could be charming when he wanted to. But Miss Smoak was an MIT graduate; she was educated, possibly one of the smartest employees in his company, so he couldn't imagine what she and his son had in common. But there she was, sitting beside him every day during Oliver's lunch break. He rushed to meet her, lingering by her cubicle as soon as the time came to leave. Robert had never seen him so attentive to, well, anyone. Oliver had always appreciate immediate gratification over patience and effort. So far as Robert could tell, they weren't in a romantic relationship, but if he was reading his son right, Oliver wanted to be.
He should have expected that Oliver wouldn't last in his world. He wasn't built for it. What he hadn't expected was that Oliver had a plan for something else. Sapphire. His own nightclub, as it were. Robert's first instinct was to balk at the idea, but then Oliver and Tommy were laying out a very detailed plan for exactly what would go into Sapphire. They had stats on the other clubs in the area, graphs on what they expected to spend each week and what they estimated they'd be bringing in. They had blueprints for the club, a location picked out that would be perfect for what they were planning. On paper, it all looked perfect. If this were anyone but his son, he would've signed on, impressed both with the presentation and them. But it was his son. A son who he'd been teaching to become his protégé, who he'd thought was finally taking everything seriously.
He realized part way through that, in fact, Oliver was taking something seriously; it just wasn't his father's company.
Oliver wanted the club. Robert recognized the desperation in Oliver's eyes that he'd once seen in his own when he'd been so eager to get out of his father's house and make something of himself. Oliver was finally looking toward his future. He was planning for it and he wouldn't let anything get in his way. But Robert wondered if he was as much like him as he saw in that moment.
He rejected the club for two reasons.
One, Oliver needed to do this without him if he was ever going to be proud of what he'd done. He needed to fund this project without the help of his father so he could see just how much of an accomplishment it really was.
And two, he owed it to Oliver to stop picking him up when he fell. If he was ever going to get his feet under him, Robert needed to stop being the hand that helped him up.
Which is exactly why he called his old friend Malcolm up and asked him to do the same when they came to him. When Tommy and Oliver started their business, it wouldn't be with their father's financing. They would have to work for it, they'd have to shop it around and prove just how much they really wanted it. It would be easy for them to come home with their hands out, asking their dads to take pity and let them back in. But it would be all the more rewarding to see them finally grow up and take care of themselves.
He was just hanging up with Malcolm when he noticed her pacing outside of his office. She was wringing her hands, chewing her lip, moving to and fro frantically. Her ponytail swung at her back, swishing almost violently with the way she was moving. He hit the button on his speaker, the one that connected with his assistant's phone, and said, "Is there something I can help you with, Miss Smoak?"
Her head raised abruptly, eyes landing on the phone before she turned to look at him through the glass walls of his office. She gave him an awkward smile and raised a hand in a tiny wave. "Oh, uh, it can wait, actually. Yeah, now that I think about it-"
"Come into my office, please," he ordered.
Her shoulders sagged slightly before she pulled the door open and stepped inside. She shifted on her feet for a moment before raising her chin and walking toward him. He remembered now, what he'd liked about her when he'd first interviewed her for a job in the IT Department. Gumption. She had so much of it. He hadn't realized that might translate outside of her job, too, transferring itself onto his son, giving him what he needed to get traction in his life.
"What can I do for you, Miss Smoak?" he wondered.
"I'd like to preface this conversation with the fact that I'm off the clock and therefore anything I say here, I hope, won't be held against me as an employee."
Laying the pen he'd previously been using to write with down on the desk, he clasped his hands together and looked up, pinning her with a stare. "Am I to assume then that this conversation has nothing to do with work?"
"It has to do with your son, Oliver." She frowned. "Obviously. Because you only have one son. Well, as far as I know. Oh my God, not that I'm implying you have illegitimate children in the world. Or that it'd be wrong if you did. I have no right to judge. Your personal life is completely your own. And I'm going to stop this incredibly embarrassing and slightly intrusive ramble in 3… 2… 1."
Robert raised an eyebrow. "You wanted to speak to me about Oliver? Who, for the record, is my only son."
"Right, um…" She swung her arms behind her before walking forward. "He doesn't know I'm here. He didn't ask me to do this. In fact, I don't think he'd really appreciate what I'm about to say. But I'm going to do it anyway, because it needs to be said and you need to hear it and Oliver deserves for you to hear it and he probably won't ever say it. So yes, it's definitely crossing a line and I'm sure, if or when you tell him, he'll be upset with me, which I will deal with when the time comes. But for right now, I just… need to say this, so…"
Taking a deep breath, she raised her chin and looked him in the eye, "Your son is a good man. He's made mistakes, a lot of them, not the least of which was urinating on a police car not so long ago. And while I haven't known him anywhere as long as you have, I do know him now, so when I say this, I'm talking about who he is now. Not the boy he was or the man you think he is or the person the tabloids make him out to be." She bit her lip for a moment before shaking her head. "Oliver is a really good man. He is smart and funny and probably too charming for his own good. He's loyal and kind and, for the lucky few who get to be his friend, he is giving and warm. And I know that he's done things, things that he regrets, and things that might make him out to be someone that you can't rely on, but if you could see him the way I do…"
She stepped forward, until she was just a few inches from his desk. "Every day, he wakes up at five in the morning so that he can go down to the dog shelter as soon as it opens and he takes one of the dogs there for a run. Her name is Jasper and Oliver dotes on her like no one else…" She smiled softly. "After work, he goes and picks her up to take her for another walk, because he hates that she's cooped up inside all day… The first time I saw him play fetch, I've never seen someone light up like that. He was so proud of himself for making this dog happy, for being able to give him something… A week ago, I was so sick I could barely function, and he spent the whole day with me, making me tea and watching Disney movies and feeding me cough syrup. He even painted my nails for me because he knows how much I hate it when they chip… And the week before that, he took clothes to the homeless shelter and while he was there, he offered to take help out any time they need. He's there three days a week!"
She sighed then. "I-I'm not saying this because I think Oliver is a saint. Because he's not. He has flaws and he makes mistakes and sometimes he gets so beaten down that he drinks himself into oblivion. And sometimes he drunkenly confesses that his parents are disappointed in him and he'll never amount to anything. And other time he's sober when he breaks down over being rejected by his father over something he's put his entire heart into."
She swallowed thickly. "Mr. Queen, I can't tell you what to do. I can't ask you to reconsider with Oliver, and I'm not sure if that's even the right thing to do. Maybe he does need to find investors elsewhere and maybe not having you invest in him is best for him. But what I do know is that you might think you're doing right by your son, you might still see him as who he was. Or maybe you never really saw him at all, because that's what he thinks. He thinks he's been trying so hard since he was just a little boy to get any scrap of your respect and he's never once earned it. And maybe this will change that. Maybe him getting this club going without you will make you respect him, I don't know. I know that Oliver is never going to respect himself until he stops trying to live up to your standards and I know he's trying really, really hard to do that now. And I know that he will… He'll open Sapphire and he'll make a life for himself, with or without you."
She smiled faintly. "The reason I'm here isn't to make you feel bad or to tell you that you were a terrible parent. It's to ask that you just look at your son, just a little longer than maybe you usually do, and just try and see him. Not the little boy who idolized you or the teenager who rebelled or the adult who didn't want to have anything to do with responsibility. Just look at him now, look at Oliver as he is right now. And maybe then you'll realize that he is trying really hard and he is terrified of failing and you don't have to support him financially, you don't have to give him one dime, but if you could just tell him that you notice how hard he's working, I think that would go a long way."
With a nod, she said, "So that's it. That's all I wanted you to know."
Robert stared at her a long moment, the silence in the room thick with tension. "Thank you, Miss Smoak."
Folding her lips, she nodded quickly. "Thank you for speaking with me." She turned on her heel then and walked toward the door.
"Miss Smoak?"
She paused, turning back to him curiously.
"Thank you… for being there for my son. I may not say it, but I have noticed how far he's come."
"I didn't do anything." She pulled the door open then. "He's a lot stronger than you think he is. A better man than anybody gives him credit for." With that, she left, letting the door close behind her as she walked away.
Robert stared at the empty doorway, her words still ringing in his ears.
He half-smiled to himself as he sat back. Oh, much of what she'd said stung. There were a few jabs at him in there, though he wasn't sure that it was completely on purpose. Oliver had the keen ability to look like nothing ever hurt him, but it was that ability that kept anyone else from knowing just how much the neglect of his parents had truly shaped him. Robert had known all along that he hadn't given his son his due. He'd avoided the responsibilities of a father in favor of those of a CEO. And because of that, his son was not as well-rounded as he could be. But it looked like that was changing. He was growing, learning how to move in the world. It wouldn't be easy, as Robert well knew, but Miss Smoak was right. Oliver was strong, he was stubborn, and when he set his mind to something, he didn't give up. He hoped this was one of those times. He hoped Oliver kept trying, kept working at getting his club off the ground.
For now, Robert would see what would happen, and he would mull over what Felicity had brought to his attention. There was some truths there that he'd spent too long ignoring. Perhaps now it was time to take a good hard look at himself, and just how much he'd shaped his son's past behaviors. It wouldn't be a pretty slog through his memory, but it would be necessary. And maybe, if life was so willing, he might just get a chance to make it up to his boy. Was it really so late to make amends? He'd have to find out.
[Next: Chapter VI.]
Author's Note: Hey all! I hope you enjoyed this! We got some sweet mother/son bonding in there, sick/comfort Olicity, and a peek into Robert's head alongside some Robert/Felicity talk. I was eager to write that last bit, actually. We'll see more of Robert in the near future, not so much his pov, just him as a character, so I hope you're looking forward to that.
Sorry for how long this update took. I'm playing catch up with homework and I've been really tired lately, but I know how eager everyone was for the next chapter, so... I hope it lived up to expectation.
Thanks so much for reading!
Please review; they're my lifeblood! :)
- Lee | Fina