"Oh, sometimes love's intoxicating
Oh, you're coming down, your hands are shaking
When you realize, there's no one waiting"
THE SCRIPT - 'Nothing'
. . .
Tommy put the entirety of the blame on Oliver.
Because only Oliver could piss off a really hot but notorious psychopath to the point that she'd essentially kidnap Tommy from his own club and then trap him in the basement downstairs. She didn't even have to hit him - one hand on his bicep and the other on the back of his neck, and she was pushing him into a chair. As if he was going to resist when she could probably kill him in less than a second.
"Whatever Oliver's done now, I'm not a part of it."
Helena's smile was deceptively pretty. "Oh," she sighed, settling against the table opposite the chair Tommy was sitting in, "I know all about your, uh, falling out. It must be difficult, finding out that someone you trust is lying to you."
And that was just bitchy, mentioning the one thing that Tommy had been trying to avoid thinking about since the awards ceremony so many months ago.
As if he didn't dream about that hospital conversation every night. As if he didn't feel the phantom fingers of Oliver's hands around his throat, even though he knew that Oliver would never lay a hand on him. As if he wasn't losing weight, losing energy, losing his goddamn fucking mind because Oliver was-was-
Tommy rolled his head to the side, lips kicking up into a lazy smile. "You know," he began, "You're really pretty and all, but I'm not really sure why you're making all this fuss over someone like Oliver. He doesn't care what you do. He only actually cares about, like, two people and neither of us are on that list."
Helena's expression shifted slightly, the playful flicker to her eyes freezing into a cold distance. "You know," she mocked viciously, "You're really nice and all, such a loyal best friend, but I'm not really sure why you're surprised that Oliver chose your sister over you."
Cali had nothing to do with this.
Except that she had everything to do with this.
Helena's sneer was ugly, angry. "That's right," she said when Tommy looked away, voice like liquid fire. "I know everything I need to know about your whole little group. About her. I know what happened during the attack on your father. I know about Cali's little tryst with her sleazeball ex. I know...." she trailed off, dropping to a whisper. "I know Oliver is the Hood."
Well....duh.
Actually-
Okay.
It wasn't like Tommy thought she didn't know. Oliver kind of told everybody but Tommy - and besides that, it was well known that Helena had been the Hood's mysterious girl-piece nearly a year ago. That whole situation kind of indicated that she knew who he really was. Trying to make it a big reveal seemed kind of...stupid.
Some of this must have shown on his face, because Helena stopped leaning on the table, fury twisting up her pretty face as she reached her fingers out and settled them in Tommy's hair. Her touch was gentle, and in the absence of his usual gelled style, it was actually kind of nice.
He hit the floor before he'd registered the sharp pain as Helena tightened her grip and yanked him out of the chair.
"You don't want to take me seriously, fine." Helena loomed over him. "I'll make you."
Tommy swept his feet out without warning, catching Helena's ankles and sending her crashing to the ground with a loud cry. His nails cracked on the concrete floor as he scrambled to take advantage of the moment he'd given himself, his breathing wheezing out of him because he could hear Helena behind him and the ground was scraping his arms through his suit jacket and-
Sharpened nails latched onto his ankle and he yelped as Helena ripped him back a few paces. There was nothing on the ground for him to hold onto, but he thrashed his legs until she lost her grip and swore, and then Tommy was pushing himself up off the ground and he was running-
A hand shoved his shoulder and he overbalanced, spinning into the walls, and Helena's forearm against his throat kept him there.
Helena was breathing hard, cheeks red. "You motherfucker!" She spat, pushing him harder into the wall. "I should just kill you right now!"
"Then do it!" Tommy challenged loudly, heaving in shaky breaths of his own. "C'mon Helena! Do it! Kill me!"
And there was a small part of him, deep, deep, deep down, that sighed in relief at the idea, and curled up, and waited.
Helena's eyes scoured his face, looking for something, but Tommy kept his chin up and forced the words to ring true. He might die down here, and it might even be today, but it was better than dying at the hands of everyone he'd ever trusted.
Helena stepped back, dropping her arm away from his throat. "No," she decided. "No, because I want it to hurt."
Tommy scoffed. "It's death. It'll always hurt."
"No you don't get it." She moved back towards the steel table and Tommy followed her without thinking. "I don't want to kill you for you. I want kill you for Oliver, I want to hurt him, I want him to see what it's like to have someone die for you, to have-"
And Tommy was so, so tired of only existing to further some part of Oliver's life. He was so, so tired of being some kind of means to an end because his life wasn't about his own story, oh no. He was so tired of having to exist for Oliver, of being hurt for Oliver, of losing everything to Oliver because Tommy's entire life was dedicated to Oliver's story.
He was significant too - he was supposed to be important too.
"He thinks I'll go after his family," Helena murmured, almost lovingly. "But I won't. He knows that Cali is on my list whether he helps me or not, but you - Tommy Merlyn, man of the hour, his one best friend - he didn't spare a thought about you."
Tommy threw a punch.
And Helena grabbed his wrist, wrenched it behind his back, and slammed him, chest down, onto the table.
"Aww," she crooned over his choked-off whine, dropping her mouth close to his ear so her breath traced his skin. "Did that make you upset?"
Tommy heaved in a shallow breath, writhing against the sharp pressure on his ribs and the burning in his throat. "Go...fuck...yourself."
A shrill cry tore itself from his throat as Helena increased the pressure on his wrist, his bones grinding under her merciless grip. Agony lashed down his arm and curled around his shoulder - his wrist was already starting to tingle with numbness. Surely he'd be suffering a fracture or even a full break-
He bucked against the grip, a movement born of stupid desperation, and he wailed again as Helena gave no ground and instead tightened her grip and used her free hand to grip his short hair and keep him pinned down. Something clicked in his forearm. And he was going to die here, die alone in a basement that was decorated, wall to wall, with every lie that Oliver had told him, every lie that Tommy was naïve enough to believe.
And then-
"Dig?"
-Salvation.
Oliver, beautiful and disgruntled and hateful and becoming oh so still and predatory when his eyes settled on the scene. "Let him go," Oliver forced out quietly and Tommy watched Oliver's eyes trace Helena's face, then the cruel way she was holding Tommy's arm back, then her hand in his hair, and then finally down to Tommy's face. "He has nothing to do with this."
"I told you," Helena said tightly. "Oliver, I warned you."
Tommy couldn't feel anything past his elbow anymore.
"Helena! This isn't you!"
She shifted somewhere above him and he groaned as her grip flexed. "My father is a mobster and a murderer. It is not like you haven't killed men like that before!"
"And I tried to teach you to obtain your objective without killing!"
"By applying leverage." Something in her tone had changed, had gone feral. "By exploiting someone's weakness."
Between one infinity and the next, in the space between seconds, acid spilled through Tommy's nervous system as his wrist twisted and bones creaked. A ragged scream severed his vocal chords and he fell silent, whimpering as his fingers twitched and spasmed uselessly. Helena was still talking, was actually physically shaking now, he could feel it, but Tommy was underwater and the words were just blurry noise because it hurt it hurt it hurt-
"Let him go!"
"TOMMY!"
Two things happened in one moment.
Oliver's voice, low and commanding and gravelly, pierced the ringing in his ears. The raw power of it, the barely-restrained anger... This was the Hood, was the very thing that Oliver had fought to hide from him. And Tommy thought he might've understood it, now, that urge to hide yourself away to protect the people around you.
The second thing that happened was, of course, Cali.
Cali, who had appeared on the stairs, somehow unseen and unheard and unnoticed until she'd cried out his name, face frozen in shock. She already had one hand stretched out to him, would undoubtedly be running to him if Oliver hadn't moved to stand in front of her, blocking her path.
"Get out of my way," she demanded, and there was an icy, unending rage in her voice that made Tommy kind of want to cry.
He'd almost given this up. He'd almost given her up.
"Miss Merlyn!" Helena greeted with a dangerous cheeriness. "Always interrupting things that never concern you!" Her grip in Tommy's hair lifted, and she instead dragged a perfectly-painted nail across the back of his neck. When Tommy shivered, a pain-soaked sob cracked out of him.
Cali started forward, and Oliver took a step back in tandem with her, his hands hovering over the skin of her arms but not touching, not quite.
"I don't know what game you think you're playing, you psychotic bitch, but threatening my brother isn't going to help you win!"
Helena's laugh was crazed. "I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt," she scoffed, "but you really are this stupid, aren't you?"
"Helena," Oliver warned, quietly, over his shoulder.
"Oliver's already agreed to give me what I want," she continued cruelly. "But watching you watch your brother get hurt? That's almost enough for me to keep going!" Her nails, just a second ago gentle against his skin, bit into his neck and drew out another mangled scream, Tommy flailing away from the new pain while still being held by his numbed wrist.
Cali stepped forward, threw her hand out, Oliver already moving to crowd her back-
Honey, warm and smooth and lovely, seeped under his skin and dulled the sharp assault against his senses. Helena's stabbing nails faded to an almost imperceptible sting, his ribs suffering only a mild ache with quiet protest. His wrist, already so painfully numb, went soft and limp. Even the sores on his feet from wearing his new shoes tonight vanished under the melted-syrup experience of Cali's fingers plucking along the strings of his feelings.
And he wanted to be mad at her. He wanted to be so, so angry for doing this to him again, for reducing him to some-some thing, some toy for her to use and manipulate and control. Because he'd warned her about this. Warned her about Malcolm, and what it could turn into if she wasn't careful.
But...it felt so nice to not be in pain.
Even his emotions - so tumultuous and angry and confusing - had calmed and settled and were distant in a way that gave him a moment of clarity and peace.
And he wanted to stay like this, if he could, for a long time. Wanted to revel in the way his heart slowed, wanted to finally understand what it meant to be content within himself. So often lately he'd been tugged around at the beck-and-call of Oliver's constantly fluctuating agenda, and Tommy had been deprived of his chance to process.
Something he could dwell on later, he reasoned with himself as he watched Cali push past Oliver, advancing on Helena menacingly. "Let my brother go," she hissed.
A moment of hesitation, and then-
When Helena released her grip on his wrist, not even Cali's gentle manipulation could prevent the liquid fire agony that tore down Tommy's arm. His scream was mangled and choked, petering off into a messy sob as he cradled his arm close. Pain whited out his thoughts, lights flashed behind his squeezed-close eyelids, his tongue was swollen in his mouth as he bit back whimpers.
Fingers ghosted over his head, nails gliding through his hair, and he jerked away with a startled cry, keeping his arms pressed close to his chest as he desperately tried to fight off the impending dizziness and re-orient himself.
Eyes jumping between the slightly blurry figures in the room with him, the first thing he could clearly see was the heartbreak on Cali's face as she lowered her hand back to her side.
"Get him out of here," Oliver hissed to her, jerking his head in Tommy's direction. "I need to get back upstairs before McKenna comes looking and finds all this." He flicked his attention to Helena, who'd crossed her arms across her chest and was standing with one hip against the table. "You, get out. Come back when the club closes and we'll...talk."
Helena's smile was dripping with honeyed poison as she rolled her head slightly and blatantly ignored Oliver's presence, looking instead at Cali. "One day, you're going to wake up and realise that you hate this man for taking more than you ever had left to give. When that happens, come and find me and I'll show you how much easier it is to exist when you don't let people take from you without paying for it."
Oliver's voice was too edged, too sharp to be safe.
"Helena."
It wasn't a warning anymore - perhaps this time it was a threat - and though Helena hesitated as though she wanted to say something else, there was something dark and chilling on Oliver's face that inspired her to keep her mouth shut, spin on her heel, and stalk out of the basement with nothing more than a glare.
For a few moments after she had disappeared into the shadows, Tommy thought he might seriously be at risk of throwing up.
He waited for someone to say something else, waited for Oliver to pull himself together and bark out some more orders, waited for Cali to reach out to him again and put her hands on his arms and hold him close like she always used to do when they were kids. He waited for life to kick back into gear, waited for that soft and lovely glow to fade away, waited for the weight of what just happened to fall on his shoulders.
Instead, the silence stretched out, chilly and tense and brimming with everything they weren't telling each other.
Finally - finally - Oliver let out a heavy sigh and brushed both palms over his cropped hair. Cali startled at the movement, crowding closer to Tommy, eyes fixed squarely on the way Oliver cradled tension in his shoulders, in his biceps, in his wrists. When Oliver swung around to face them, she ripped her gaze away and focused squarely on Tommy's sore arm.
Oliver's voice was trembling as he croaked out a sad, "Cali."
She was already shaking her head, already talking even as she stepped closer to Tommy so she could peer closely at his wrist. "We'll stay down here," she blurted without raising her eyes. "I can get him fixed up, and you can-can tell Laurel that he and I are having a conversation and he won't be coming back to the club again tonight. We'll be gone before the club closes and then you can-"
"I'm not going to help her kill her father-"
"You don't have a choice!" Cali shouted, whirling around. "Oliver, she knows who you are! Even if she decides not to kill one of us, she could out you to the police! You know Quinten wouldn't hesitate to arrest you!"
"I'll figure out a way to-"
"You choose to kill people, Ollie, why is this one man so different?!"
Oliver's voice softened to a dangerous degree, went velvety smooth as something predatory slipped into his eyes. "This decision has nothing to do with you," he rumbled.
Cali bristled, stepped forward challengingly. "It has everything to do with me when my family is at risk!" She paused her shouting for an uncertain breath, cast her eyes over at Tommy helplessly before looking back at Oliver. When she spoke again, her volume had lowered. "That means you too. And I'm not going to apologise for that."
Oliver's puff of a laugh was bitter and angry and ashamed and everything he usually tried so hard to hide from them. "Why do you keep caring?"
And Cali...hesitated.
Only for a moment, only barely, and then she was closing the distance between them, stretching to place her palm against Oliver's cheek. The touch was so gentle, so tender, so full of affection, and there was something so fond in Oliver's eyes, and the confession fell out of her mouth almost too quietly for Tommy to hear.
"Because I'm in love with you."
The entire world held its breath.
The look Oliver gave her then, pained and longing and so full of something awfully close to pity - as if he pitied her for being in love with him.
His voice was soft as he leaned into her touch, pity melting into misery, and whispered, "This is me asking you not to be."
Tommy should do something now, should speak up or move in between them or draw Cali away into the safety of his arms. But Cali's sweet-syrup pain relief had drenched his bones in summer honey, and something deep inside of him had disconnected, and he just...couldn't move.
And so he was condemned to watch, silently, as Cali drew her hand back to her chest, and Oliver twitched as though he'd been relying on the touch for support and couldn't bear to hold his head up without it. Heartbreak was a mirrored mask on both their faces, tracing the solid lines of Oliver's jaw, the somewhat crooked arch of Cali's nose.
"Yeah," Cali said sadly. "I didn't think you would understand."
Oliver followed her hand with his eyes, something unbearably dark and unforgiving soaking the anger out of his expression. "I don't know what you want from me."
Cali nodded once, briskly, and oh so carefully wiped all of that emotion off her features, schooling her expression into something neutral. "Go back to your club, Oliver," she said flatly. "I'll give you fifteen minutes to get Laurel and Thea away, and then I'll take Tommy out the back. We won't bother you again."
"Cali-" Oliver made to move towards her, but Cali made a wounded noise and shrank into Tommy's space. Oliver looked as though the entire world had just crumbled down around him. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm just-I'm so sorry."
And Cali was merciful enough to say, "I'm sorry too," before she showed Oliver her back and brushed past Tommy to dig for the medical kit that'd been laying haphazardly on a shelf when Tommy had first gotten down here.
The message was clear. Conversation over.
Sticky words thickened in Oliver throat; Tommy could see his friend try and flick them out with his tongue, but ultimately the silence went on too long and all Oliver could do was slink over to the stairs, sparing Cali one last mournful look before disappearing back up to the bustling crowds.
In his absence, Tommy learned how to feel again.
Sensation started at his fingertips, crackling electricity sliding under his skin and zinging through his bloodstream until his heart was thrumming with energy. Pain, prickly and hot, nestled against his muscles, gathering strength until he was clutching his wrist desperately, biting back his groan.
A cool hand brushed across his forehead, and arms maneuvered him over to a chair, and then Cali was helping him slide off his suit jacket with an infinite amount of softness and patience. She catered to every agonised hiss, every huff, every too-sharp breath that Tommy sucked in until he was sitting in front of her with his shirt sleeve rolled up.
His wrist looked less than great. It was as though Helena had gone after him with a paintbrush, or with ink-stained hands, smearing colour on his skin until there was a sloppy bracelet of reds and fading-in blues. In a few days, the injury would be impressive.
Cali squeezed along his wrist carefully, sucking her bottom lip between her teeth in concentration as she carefully catalogued the shifting of his bones.
"It's not broken," she said finally, drawing back just a little. "I don't even think it's a fracture. Just pinched a nerve. Your shoulder might be stiff but I don't think she's done any lasting damage to that either. You've just over-taxed your muscles. Probably need a wrist strap for a few weeks."
That sounded...good. Logical. There was something unfairly relieving about knowing he wasn't seriously injured. Even though Helena's treatment had shaken something loose inside him, had reminded him of the years after Oliver's disappearance when Cali would start showing up with her own bruises. How many times had she cried and wailed and begged, only to suffer alone?
A knuckle on his jaw brought his attention back to the moment he was in, and he stared directly into Cali's soft caramel eyes as she coaxed his head forward. "She dug her nails in," she said in explanation. "I just want to have a look."
Tommy followed her without complaining, tilting his head forward enough that he could rest his forehead on her abdomen, breathing out as steadily as he could. Irrational tears were threatening, encouraged by Cali's feather-light touches and gentle humming, by her fingers moving from his neck to gently twist through the short hairs on the back of his head. She never pulled, never let her fingers catch against any snarls or clumps of gel.
He should be terrified. Memories of Helena's claws in his skin, in his hair, stirred nausea in his stomach. But there was a clear divide between Helena and Cali, and no matter how hard Tommy thought about it, he couldn't rationalise it at all. Maybe he was so conditioned to her touch that he could never be afraid of her hurting him.
"Are you okay?" She asked him in a low voice.
He didn't dare look up at her, not yet. He just kept his eyes closed and concentrated on her comfort. "We're a pretty fucked up pair, huh?"
Cali's laugh was a short contraction of her stomach. "Well, we're definitely our father's children." It was a twisted joke, and she said it unhappily, but Tommy felt a hysterical smile threaten his lips anyway. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Oliver being the Hood."
"I'm not really sure why you're surprised that Oliver chose your sister over you."
He sucked in a breath and pulled back, keeping his eyes downcast as Cali's hands fell away. "Not yet," he pleaded pathetically, splaying his own palms on his knees. "Please, I can't-I don't want to do that with you right now."
Not with Helena's voice living in his ears, her words living in his brain. He could feel her on every part of his skin and it repulsed him. She'd picked him because he made an easy target, because when Oliver thought of family, he didn't think of Thomas Merlyn. Because no matter how much of himself Tommy carved out and handed over on a silver platter, it was never enough and it was never going to be enough.
Helena had known all of that. And Oliver had let her get away with it.
And then Oliver had walked away.
Cali had been the one to save him, to get him away, to make the pain stop. Not Oliver. Cali was always the one gathering him up, cooing over the bruises. He was supposed to be the one protecting her, and instead she'd moulded herself into his support, catching him every time Malcolm pushed him off that edge. And he'd tried so desperately to be that for her when she'd needed him. When she'd tripped into a relationship with Michael and didn't know how to tell when love wasn't love anymore.
He'd tried and it hadn't worked, and now they were here again, him with bruises and Cali holding him up.
"You and Oliver," he managed, needing to break the sombre atmosphere around him, needed to shut up his thoughts. "Talk to me about that. About Janet, too, if you want."
Cali snorted, and if it was meant to sound scathing, it missed the mark by a mile. "There's nothing to talk about," she said tiredly. "Janet and Felicity kept insisting on- and I thought maybe- But you saw what happened." She gestured uselessly at the stairs. "He told me not to be in love with him."
"I think," Tommy said with all the tenderness he could muster, "that Oliver is a master of self-punishment. He saw me getting hurt, saw Helena threatening you, and he shut down. If he makes us unimportant to him, then we're unimportant to his enemies as well."
Cali rubbed a hand over her face. "You deserve so much more than what he's given you."
"We both do, Calico. And one day he'll realise that. But for now, we have each other." Tommy conjured a tiny smile. "We always have, and we always will."
Something shadowy stole over her features for a moment, chased by guilt and shame, and Tommy reached out to grab her hand. "I love you," Cali said shakily, and it almost sounded like she was begging.
Tommy squeezed her hand. "I need you to tell me the truth now."
She took a deep, deep breath before saying in a rush, "I think Malcolm sabotaged the 'Gambit' and subsequently killed Sarah and Robert, and I think Moira knew and covered it up."
If Tommy had been expecting anything, he hadn't been expecting that. "I see," he said after a pause, voice mild, leaning back in his seat. Out of everything he'd been expecting, this hadn't even...this wasn't even on the list of things he thought she might say. "I guess it explains why you threatened to kill him."
"I'm not proud of that, Tommy."
"You shouldn't be."
He didn't say it to be harsh, even as Cali's head twitched back and hurt soured the hope in her eyes. It was just...There were so many secrets. So many terrible, horrible secrets and he thought he'd wanted to know them, thought it might hurt more to be kept in the dark, but hearing this just made him feel sick to his stomach.
Cali pulled her hand out of his grip and instead wrapped her arms around her stomach, curling in on herself. "I'll tell you everything," she promised. "I'll give you everything I know, I'll give you the USB if you want, but if you're going to walk away, tell me now, so it'll hurt less later."
Would he walk away? He'd like to think he was better than that, and he owed it to her to stick this out, to bear this load with her. She'd been carrying all of Oliver's truths for far too long now.
But the things he was about to hear-
"I'll stay," he told her firmly. "I swear, Cali, I swear that we'll do this together, okay? No more hiding."
Cali's bottom lip trembled only slightly. "No more hiding," she agreed. "But-" She hesitated, eyes flickering down to his arm before darting back over to the stairs, "-not here. Not right now. You're injured, Tommy."
Tommy settled a little more firmly in his chair, holding his wrist to his chest as the pain flared again, as though she'd spoken it into existence. Agony, untempered by Cali's honey-sweet interference, clouded his thoughts once more. He bit back a pained hiss, glancing up at Cali helplessly as she reached for him. He hated being reduced to this, hated being a hypocrite more, but there was nothing but a longing for relief in his mind as he held his arm and whispered, "Please?"
Cali was shaking her head, even as the familiar blanket of syrup draped across Tommy's bones and muffled the shrieking of his muscles.
"We need to go home," she said, stretching to brush his hair off his forehead from where it had been wrestled out of place. "There's someone else who needs to be present for this conversation, and our fifteen minutes is almost up."
Tommy nodded. "Let's go."
. . .
It had been twenty minutes since Cali had eased Tommy through the front door and deposited him on the couch, and Felicity still hadn't figured out how to act like a normal human being.
The gawking stopped being cute ten minutes ago.
"You literally work with Oliver Queen," Cali said impatiently as Felicity once again poked Tommy's cheek. He was beaming. "You work two different jobs with Oliver Queen. Why are you freaking out about seeing my brother in person?"
Felicity waved a flippant hand, attention never straying from Tommy's own amused gaze. "Oliver's, like, ruggedly handsome and whatever, but Tommy Merlyn is Pretty Boy handsome and I definitely had the biggest crush on you like two years ago."
Tommy's laugh was teasing. "Only two years ago? Miss Smoak, you don't have to lie to me. You definitely still have a crush."
Felicity's flush had darkened her cheeks to a pink that matched her Hello Kitty pyjama pants. "Okay one, 'Miss Smoak' is my mother, please and thank you. And two, between you and Oliver, I literally don't know how I'm still breathing because you two are doing your best to murder me with your pretty faces."
"Good thing that, you know, between me and Oliver, I'm not the one who actually murders people then, huh?"
"See, when I make jokes like that, Cali just gives me a look. That's not fair."
"What, like the look she's giving me now?" Tommy huffed in amusement. "I've had years to become immune to her scolding, Liz. You'll get there one day, I have faith in you. Someone as brilliant as you can't be tamed for long, which is a shame because I'm tempted."
Cali wrinkled her nose at the flirting, thoroughly disgusted. She knew Tommy meant nothing by it, and neither did Felicity, but it still reminded her of Oliver's party and how easy it was for people to forget they'd sworn their hearts to another.
"You are a charming man, Mr Merlyn, and if I didn't know you were in a committed relationship, I would totally be up for the challenge." Felicity squinted at him. "But also, you're far too adorable to keep being sexy in my eyes."
Cali cracked up as Tommy clutched at his chest with his uninjured hand, gasping dramatically. "Adorable?" He squawked. "You take that back!"
Felicity's grin was entirely too mischievous, so before Tommy could dissolve into the tickle fight he was so clearly preparing for, Cali clapped her hands. "Alright!" She said loudly. "While I'm glad you two are getting along like a house on fire, it's time for me to be the buzzkill. We've got some things to talk about."
Something like guilt gripped desperately at her throat as Felicity and Tommy sobered almost immediately, smiles fading from chapped lips as they shifted their positions and turned expectant faces her way. She hated this, hated that Oliver had put her in this position, that he'd carved her in his image as she weighed her confession on her tongue.
This was everything Cali had wanted to spare her loved ones from. She didn't know how Oliver did it, didn't want to know how to shut down that part of herself. To kill her compassion would be to kill, well, her.
She let out a slow, long breath, pressed her hand to her forehead, and said, "It starts and ends with the 'Queen's Gambit'."
. . .
The next morning, Tommy's ribs cracked and ached as he found Laurel at work, looked in her teary eyes, and lied.
. . .
Across town and days later, after Oliver had lost and then regained Helena by breaking her out of the police precinct, he stood outside a plain brown door, tasting his heart in his throat. His tongue was sour with self-loathing and he hated it, almost as much as he hated the message burning a hole in his phone, the accusing text carrying every ounce of Felicity's disappointment.
He hadn't seen Cali since the club opening. Hadn't seen Tommy either. Diggle and Felicity, both disapproving of his life choices of late, kept their interactions moderately formal, voices clipped and curt.
When McKenna opened the door and smiled gently at him, Oliver grappled with the sudden urge to cry.
"I'm sorry," he said, when he dragged his eyes away from her face and finally noticed the towel and robe, the damp hair, the water droplets still on her cheeks, "I should have called." He should have warned her that he was coming, that she needed to be...less vulnerable around him tonight, with his dangerously jagged emotions.
McKenna's voice was fond and familiar when she motioned for him to come inside and said, "No, no, it's okay." She coaxed the door open wider when he didn't budge. "Come on in."
"Are you sure?"
Her hand on his arm, fingers brushing his radial pulse as he lingered just in the doorway. "Yeah," she breezed. "Yeah. I'm surprised, but I'm... happy."
She coaxed him in, and her apartment smelled nice, clean, fresh, and all at once it was everything he didn't want. The lighting was off, her door too loud as she clicked it closed behind him. She wasn't touching him anymore, had dropped her hand sometime after he'd taken that first step inside. He didn't miss the gentle affection, but his wrist itched without it.
He spun in a slow circle as she closed them into her bedroom, and when she looked up at him with a questioning expression, he opened his mouth and-
And nothing. He could only stare, deadened and exhausted and damned, and wait as McKenna's face dropped into something far more concerned.
"Everything okay?" She asked in a lower tone, with a little bit of that detective-bred hardness buoying the words.
He heard a breath and willed away the taste of lemons. "I had a really rough night," he admitted. "Um, a few-a few rough nights, actually." Cali, Tommy, Helena, Thea, John, Felicity, Moira. "I just wasn't anticipating- with my work and the club-" A harsh inhale as he scrambled to pull himself together. "I feel like I'm letting everybody down."
"Because I'm in love with you."
"This is me asking you not to be."
And McKenna was so beautiful, so fresh and bare and bold and so, so fucking beautiful, and Oliver looked at her, and if felt like phantom chains had latched around his throat and his wrists and he just...couldn't do this with her anymore.
"I'm letting down my family," he managed, "and Cali and Tommy and you." A glance at the painting just over her shoulder as he gathered the words in his chest and breathed them out. "I feel like I'm letting you down."
"You're being too hard on yourself," McKenna told him in a tone that was too loud and brash and strong for his fragility, for his bruised and aching guilt. "We both have demanding jobs."
And how was he supposed to make her understand?
Because it wasn't their jobs. I wasn't that she was a detective and he was a vigilante. It wasn't about missed dinner dates and quick fucks in empty hallways. It wasn't about the lying, or his secrets, or her secrets. It had very little to do with McKenna at all, actually.
"Because I'm in love with you."
"That's no excuse for hurting the people closest to you," he forced out, as softly as he knew how, and it wasn't what he wanted to say at all.
McKenna's smile was reassuring, almost coy. "No," she said, "but when you believe in what you do, you find a way to make it work."
Felicity's text had been short, simple, angry. 'She won't ask for a reason because she doesn't want to know. I want three.' He'd stared at it for hours, had drafted seventeen different responses and never sent any of them. Because he couldn't give them to her. He could list one, could maybe even stretch it to two, but no matter how long he stared at the keypad, he couldn't think of a third reason not to let Cali love him, not to love her back.
He couldn't think of enough reasons to justify holding onto McKenna, either.
He didn't know how to do this.
"How?" He choked out.
McKenna's smile was edged with something bittersweet and sad. "Well," she started, reaching up to brush her fingertips against his jaw. "The first thing you do is you find yourself someone you never have to apologise to."
"Because I'm in love with you."
It would've been so easy to love her properly. Would've been so easy to grow together, to build a life. It would've been a lie of course, so it was never destined for a long life, but it would've been a safe life to live, at least for a while.
But he could feel Cali's palm on his cheek, could smell the vanilla of her hair, could almost taste her lips on his, and it wasn't enough, but it was more than he could ever have here, with McKenna Hall.
The kiss that Oliver pressed against her lips was an apology, dripping with all the things he would never be able to tell her. "I'm sorry," he whispered against her mouth. "McKenna, I am so, so sorry."
She nodded once, squeezing her eyes closed and biting her lip. Tears were already dripping down her cheeks. "It's okay," she whispered back, but she didn't look up at him, didn't dare open her eyes as her throat bobbed. "You don't have to apologise to me either."
He folded her into a hug, burrowing his face in her hair and ignoring the sharpness of her floral shampoo. "Thank you," he said quietly.
McKenna said nothing, and Oliver held her for as long as it took for her to stop shaking.
. . .
Ten minutes later, when he'd left the too-neat apartment behind and Felicity's name lit up his phone screen, Oliver barely waited for the second ring before he hit 'answer'.
. . .
Getting Felicity to sleep had been far more difficult than Cali had expected, and something about that broke her heart, just a little.
The young IT girl had come home already in shock, poorly tended to by Oliver and John both, leaving Cali to nudge her friend into the bathroom, strip her down out of her wrinkled clothes, and ease her down into a warm bath. Cali had washed her down gently, hesitating at the angry, red-raw marks around her wrists, but Felicity had balked when Clali had touched them, so she let them be for the moment.
It had taken her barely more than five minutes to gently towel Felicity off, fetch her some clean clothes from her room, dress her, and bundle her into bed.
Which, of course, was when the problems really started.
"I'm not even hurt," Felicity whispered into the darkness as Cali sat beside her, stroking her unruly hair gently. "How stupid is that? I'm not even hurt and I'm causing such a fuss. No wonder Oliver has no faith in me."
Cali's heart clenched painfully, and her next breath shuddered out of her. "Of course he has faith in you, Flick," she murmured. "He's already put so much trust in you - he sees something in you, and I see it too."
Felicity was silent for a moment, her breathing still uneven and jagged despite the warmth returning to her body. "I'm going to die for him, one day," she realised in a very quiet whisper, and Cali's hand froze in her hair. "It might be tonight, even. Helena will come for me if he doesn't do what she wants, and if it isn't her it'll be somebody else, and I'll die and he'll let me-"
"Hey," Cali rumbled, running a knuckle across Felicity's cheekbone. "Hey, Felicity, listen to me - you are not going to die for Oliver. I swear to you, I will not ever let that happen." She damn well meant it too. Oliver deserved nobody's death, wasn't owed anybody's death. "And he wouldn't let it happen. No matter how much or how little someone means to him, he would never let someone die."
Felicity shuddered, but whatever tears she might've been fighting when she crashed into Cali's arms had vanished without a sound. "Can you stay?" Felicity begged in a breathless whisper. "Tell me a story or something, just please don't leave me alone until I fall asleep."
How could Cali deny her that?
Resuming her careful ministrations, Cali settled against the headboard, reaching inside herself until she brushed up against that cavern inside her chest. There, from among the cobwebs and the dust, she coaxed out a cracked but gentle melody.
"Blackbird singing in the dead of night," she began quietly, sweetly, walking her fingers through Felicity's hair. "Take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arrive."
Felicity settled into an uneasy sleep halfway through the fourth repeat of the song, but Cali kept going until her voice split and the tune halted abruptly on the tip of her tongue. "Blackbird singing," she breathed into the dark, the words stilted and breaking, "in the dead of night."
A knock on the door.
With an almost-silent sigh, Cali disentangled her hand and checked Felicity over carefully before sliding from the bed and escaping into the dimly-lit hallways, closing the bedroom door behind her with barely a click. With luck, Felicity would sleep through until morning, and when she woke, they could have a proper conversation about the truths she'd revealed tonight.
For now, Cali resigned herself to another guest, opening the front door with a scolding already in her mouth, but-
Hands were on her face, hauling her up onto her tiptoes as Oliver crushed his mouth against hers, desperate and crazed and demanding. It wasn't a deep kiss - Cli kept her lips closed in eher surprise - and the pressure was almost bruising. Because Oliver was holding her too tightly, and she couldn't breathe, and it was all wrong and not what she wanted-
He was kissing her.
Everything just kind of...short-circuited in her head.
It had been days since the failed love confession under the club, and Cali had stewed in ehr words and her feelings every hour. But now Oliver was here, and he was kissing her, and it was everything she'd never wanted from him.
Cali yanked her head back as hard as she could, tearing her face away from Oliver's hold. "Fuck." She heaved in heavy breath, licking her lips falteringly as Oliver cocked his head, eyes wide and pleading. "Fuck, Oliver."
"I want you to love me," he blurted out, too loudly. "I need you, Cali, and I was so scared of someone using that against me that I didn't let you-"
"Shh!" Cali hissed wildly, her heart still pounding rapid fire in her chest. None of this made any sense, she'd had no warning. "You're going to wake Felicity up!"
"You're in love with me," Oliver said, voice lower this time, but there was an infuriating confidence to the statement that made Cali bristle. "You actually love me."
"And you just kissed me while you're in a relationship." The walls were starting to press in on her, the overwhelming events of the past few hours catching up to and then overtaking her. "Oliver, what the fuck?"
He reached for her again, but Cali shrank back, away from his bruising touch and his wildly out of control emotions and his always-too-forceful energy. "No you don't understand." His eyes were half-crazed, a dangerous cocktail of grief and determination and self-loathing darkening the green of his iris to a sickly degree. "I ended it. She ended it. I don't- She's in hospital. She's leaving anyway."
This was- It was too much.
Cali kept backing away, waiting until she reached the living room, Oliver following ehr cluelessly, before she dared to reach out and touch him. HIs pulse was rapid under her fingers, skin freezing to touch. The bags under his eyes were especially pronounced, and there was a rattle to his breathing that raised the hair on her arms.
"I think you're in shock," she said slowly, easing him down onto the couch. Oliver followed her hands, pliant and suddenly quiet, complacent. It set her on edge. "You need to lie down, okay? Deep breaths, Ollie, c'mon."
With careful instructions, Cali got him settled on the couch, piling some spare blankets on his steadily-relaxing body. His eyes were fixed firmly on her, but the manic twist to his features was fading rapidly as exhaustion caught up to him. They'd have to talk about this - add it to the list of everything that had gone wrong between them lately - but not tonight. Maybe not even tomorrow.
Her lips were still tingling, and Cali raised her fingers to touch them as she left Oliver on the couch and moved slowly back to her own room, aware of his gaze on her the whole way there.
That was a problem for tomorrow, she decided. For now, she was cold and shaken and tired, and so she shoved everything that had just happened into a little bottle and tucked it away somewhere safe before collapsing into her bed.
If she never woke tomorrow, it would still be far too soon to sort through the mess she suddenly found herself in.