Contractual Obligations

Thursday Blues

John Diggle knew this was going to be a hard job when he signed on to help the local vigilante, but he can safely say he didn't expect this level of strangeness.

It starts on a Thursday. Because it's always Thursdays with John. Everything bad in his life has happened on a Thursday. His ex-wife filed for divorce on a Thursday. His brother died on a Thursday. He started working for Oliver Queen on a Thursday. And, what's more, Oliver Queen chose none other than a wretched Thursday to reveal that he dresses up in green leather and plays vigilante.

It was also on a Thursday that John made the mistake of agreeing to help him.

He thought Oliver was strange before the whole Robin Hood revelation. To be fair, he has every right to be: he was stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere for five years. Before that, he was raised by nannies and tutors, and, cliché as it may be, the boy probably wasn't hugged enough as a child. Beyond that, he uses a bow in the twenty-first century, which makes his judgment questionable enough.

But there are acceptable levels of strange, and then there's Oliver Queen.

When John is sure the boy has taken one risk too many, he walks out unscathed. When he's captured and tied up by some enemy force, he escapes in ways that would make Harry Houdini cry tears of joy. Just last week, some Triad enforcers were trying to dump him in the harbor. By the time the former soldier arrived, Oliver was casually pouring water out of his quiver and staring at John like he was the weird one.

So as John stares at the live security feed from Queen Consolidated, he isn't worried when he sees Oliver take a bullet in the chest. Of course he got shot—it's Thursday. John has seen Oliver get out of so much worse, usually while looking slightly dumbfounded that his partner is trying to save him. He's seen this play out enough to know how it will happen: Oliver will disappear for forty minutes, then show up with a patched wound and something that looks like a smile on his face.

Which is significant. For the first two months working with Oliver, John was certain the boy was allergic to smiling. Never once. Maybe he'd offer a softer expression to Thea, Oliver's sister and polar opposite in every way, but never an actual smile. John is fairly certain that the vigilante wouldn't know fun if it walked up and introduced itself to him. But forty minutes after his post-wounding disappearance, there's a kind-of-a-smile on his face. Like clockwork.

Except, forty minutes later, John is still sitting in their base of operations entirely alone.

"Of course," John mutters to himself, pulling out his cell phone. "It's Thursday." He dials the number and waits for an answer—because Oliver lives in the Dark Ages and doesn't know how to text. It goes to voicemail after five rings, but that's normal for the first call. Touchscreen devices and Oliver mix like oil and water. Time number two meets with no response, too. The third call breaks off in the middle of ring number two and goes directly to voicemail yet again.

"Son of a bitch." John stares down at his phone for a very long moment before he comes to an important conclusion: "I can't believe he learned how to reject calls."

"He totally didn't," a voice assures him. "That was me." After John jumps about a foot in the air, he rounds with his hand on the gun in his shoulder holster. The voice is soft and light, with a low, subtle drawl of gravel that is definitely not Oliver. "I'm not sure there's enough electronic literacy in the world for that."

When he pulls the gun, nothing is there. But a blink and a heartbeat later, she's there, combat boots casually stomping across the stairs. Her hair is jet black—but so is almost everything about her. From her hair, to her eyeshadow, to her lipstick, to her clothes. She's attractive, but he'd probably never describe her as pretty; she's enticing, like a good mystery novel that makes you beg for the conclusion. She unnerves him, and the smirk on her lips says she not only knows that, but likes it.