Chapter Text
“Oliver?”
It’s the stark terror in the voice that draws him out of the stupor he’s been in since he watched his father put a gun to his own head and pull the trigger. Blinking, the fog clears from his eyes and he turns to look at the blonde next to him and can’t help but feel a pang of regret low in his stomach from looking at her sunburnt features. She shouldn’t have even been here and it is only due to his selfishness that she is.
Petite hands are white knuckling the scraps of the shirt she had been wearing when the yacht went down, leaving her long trim legs (even the guilt isn’t enough to make him stop admiring the trim form of the girl beside him for long) bare to the bright sun.
He can’t see her eyes behind the flashing lenses of the surprisingly still in tact glasses. He swallows. “Yeah?”
“Wh-What’re we going to do?” Felicity asks, nervously twisting the fabric of the shirt between her fingers. He hears tears behind the deceptively steady voice. Oliver is well aware that as much as he is not suited for being on a raft in the middle of the ocean with no way to get home, she is even less so. She had told him only minutes after they had met that she was the ‘hide behind the computer screens’ kind of girl, not the kind to go off for a month on a yacht with someone she didn’t even know.
And yet she had, and now they were both going to die out here next to the body of his dead father.
Scooting over as much as he could in the bobbing life raft, closer to Felicity and further away from the body, he pulls off his noticeably more intact shirt and hands it to her. “I don’t know,” he tells her, figuring it’s better to be honest than a coward for once in his life, however short it winds up being. It will be his fault if Felicity dies, and he deserves this. “Maybe we’ll find an island or a plane will see us or something.
He looks at the too-small stash of food and water that had been grabbed before the boat sunk, considering. They have enough supplies for a day or two. It would be longer if there was only one person in the boat, and he briefly considers mimicking his father’s actions from just a little while ago (minutes? hours? he can’t tell how much time has passed since his father put a bullet in his brain) but almost immediately dismisses the thought. He is much too selfish to do such a selfless act.
Looking over at Felicity again, he notices that she seems to have grown smaller in the blistering sun, curling in on herself as if the sun was sapping out everything that had made her seem larger than life to him when they first met. He knows that he could never consider making himself the lone survivor of the Gambit. While it may be a mercy to offer her the gun, he knows that he cannot be alone. Felicity Smoak, he has already discovered, is stronger than her diminutive frame would suggest and she is stronger than he is.
He is falling apart at the seams already, and this almost stranger looks far more collected than he feels, despite the tears he can see clumped in her lashes. He knows instinctively that he will not survive this without Felicity Smoak. As much as it is his fault she is here with him (because he is a stubborn ass who doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘no’ and is terrified by the idea of moving into an apartment with a woman he’s only partially sure he loves), it is now his responsibility to get her home safe and sound. He will bring this IT intern home if it kills him.
He lifts an arm and slides it over her shoulders to bring her closer and tuck her against his side, the for once platonic movement helping to shield Felicity from the sun, if only slightly. She is rigid against him for all of two seconds before sniffling indiscreetly and tucking her face against his side.
He tightens his grip on her shoulder and presses a kiss to her hair. Yes. He will bring Felicity Smoak home.