#obscure-sentimentalist writes sometimes

[obscure-sentimentalist]

🌤️Share your favorite piece of dialogue from your WIP. !

WIP ask game

Thanks so much!! And ooh, dialogue is definitely my favorite thing, so this is great.

It's... really been a tough going of writing this year, so the pickings were a bit slim. I did remember I dropped this exchange into one piece before I could forget about it, though I still need to do plenty more work to catch up to this point, so it might end up getting cut (but I hope not).

“You used to look at me like I was too good to be true.” “Is that a bad thing?” “I think it makes you scared to blink, like that’s the only thing standing between you and losing it all.”

Just an amicable, if hesitant, discussion between two exes, with one having moved on and the other assuring that there are no hard feelings.

[veiilathiinks]

futility

futility

originally published on patreon, nov 30, 2024

what if there's void beyond the veil nothingness and emptiness of the past and those are right who fail for only futility was meant to last

i wanted to write about futility. but what’s the point?

whenever i meet new people (and when i say people, i don’t mean merely breathing upright monkeys who hop around and jabber, i mean beings with the twinkle, however faint and obscure, of something resembling intelligence in their faces) i am eager to know what makes them move. i want to know their angle, i want to know what gives. probably i am a hopeless sentimentalist, a broken romantic who still believes in magic and unicorns. so what? i want to believe in magic and unicorns. i want to find that tiny straw to which i would cling with utmost passion and which would carry me through the ruthless rapids of the river of pain to the vanilla shores of the blissful utopian happiness where instead of gasping for air in horror i would look upon the gloriously violet sky, the blindingly green forests, breathe in the fragrant smells of flowers and smile a beatific smile of unchallenged rapture. there is but one little implication: i want to believe in the impossible. and i know it. thankfully the fuel for the engine of our civilization is absurdity and absurdity never stops providing. hence my genuine interest in knowing what gives, when it comes to other people. but that is just it: the chaos is omnipresent and the absurd is endless. whenever i strike a conversation with a new acquaintance (which happens ever less often with the progress of time) i know without doubt that in spite of my wild hopes i will only find the unavoidable emptiness behind the shaky fence of poorly assembled bits of common wisdom and pathetic cheerful assumptions made of unicorn droppings and context-less excerpts from pseudo-utopian leaflets. i know and i do not doubt it, for i walked that path many a time before and everywhere i found the same stale defense of the arbitrary rootless meaning of life that can’t hold even a third-rate attack of semi-reasoned and semi-mocking questioning. why is that so? for, sometimes, i truly want to believe, i am eager to grasp whatever shred of logic there is to be offered. why nothing holds? is it me? am i too demanding? or is it because the very effort is as futile as anything that the poor mutant-ape has been doing for the last two hundred thousand years. according to my imaginary friends, to whom i talk more often than i would care to admit (you might recognize a few of them, as they may be your imaginary friends too) i am not alone in my outlook. schopenhauer, camus, sartre, benatar, zapffe are all in perfect agreement with me. futility is, futility was and futility is to be. then why am i still hoping? why do i still try to find that ray of light that will illuminate some unnoticed logical connection that would lead not to extinction of hope but to something that resembles happiness? and every time i come to this question, i am doomed to fall for the most pathetic cliché in the world, which i swore to never turn to and which i am hopelessly presenting now: i am only human after all. this is it, the moment of shameful defeat. i am an ape. i am absurd. i am a paradox. my will to live blinds and confuses me. no matter how i try i can’t fully face the inevitable horrifying truth that there is no truth, no meaning and ultimately no happiness. i can say it, but i can’t feel it. or rather i can feel it, but only to the extent when it triggers my self-preservation instinct, clouds my mind with nonsensical beastly jabbering and turns me into a brutish stupid caveman, hugging my knees in the light of a faint fire, scared of thunder and the wrath of the sky. please, miracle, come and save me!

it is a conflict of reason and instinct. i can’t win this battle, for i am a mere observer in it. it is as old as consciousness itself. it is that very inherent conflict that makes human history a history of pain, suffering, murder, insanity and death. it is the vanity and futility of our own existence that we can not accept. it is the understanding that we are not wanted, not needed and not meant to be that we fight. yet, how is it even possible to fight it? it is simply absurd. the absurd that surrounds us, the absurd that makes us, that absurd that becomes us, the absurd that replaces us.

the only remaining question is why do i even care to find someone who would understand me? if i know that everything is futile, if i can recognize the inherent idiocy in my own personal hope, if i don’t even hope anymore to find a glimpse of meaning in anything, why do i still try to talk and listen? isn’t it just as futile to talk about futility of life, as vain to try and explain vanity of existence, as trying to turn a turd into a birthday cake by sticking candles into it? why in the end, no matter what, i still can not accept the absurd by finally succumbing to it and resigning to the fact that absurd is me as much as i am absurd, and therefore there is no point in confronting it, as it is essentially fighting with yourself? i can say it, but can i fully feel it? i think it is obvious that the answer is “no”, for if i could feel it, if i could truly absorb this fact into my cells, my dna, my consciousness there wouldn’t be this torrent of jibber-jabber. i would simply cease to be and that would be the end of the story. or rather not a story, and not the end, for if i truly accept the absurd, then i must accept that there is no such thing as “me”, there is simply a swirl of elements in the cosmic storm of chaos and in the endlessness and omnipresence of chaos “me” is as negligible as one solitary subatomic particle in relation to the vastness of the galaxy. that is simultaneously bad and good news. bad because after all my mental exercise i am as close to the answer as was that daring spermatozoon that started it all for me. but it is also good news too, for as long as i am perplexed, anguished, tortured and consumed by despair i will continue my futile journey from nothing to nowhere and keep shaking the air with my meaningless proclamations and pointless efforts to reconcile the primal and irreconcilable fact that my overgrown brain is just too little too big for me to make happiness and acceptance even remotely possible. silver lining, huh?

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[obscure-sentimentalist]

[Challenged myself to write more Flommy kissing; underestimated how much these two prefer to talk and banter.]

Silly, unplanned semi-sequel to this Prompt taken from this list: "A breathy demand: 'Kiss me' - and what the other person does to respond"

“Kiss me,” Tommy blurts barely a moment after the alarm breaks out in a rapid series of beeps, and right as Felicity grips his lapels to urgently hiss the same thing. 

Funny thing, that.

Though his eyebrows shoot high in surprise and amusement, Tommy doesn’t miss a beat in slipping an arm around Felicity’s waist to urge her closer. “I know that this is all still pretty new—mostly the ‘no more mission kissing’ rule, but also still kind of… this.” One hand gestures between the two of them, while the other trails up Felicity’s back until the silky blue fabric cedes to bare skin, just below her shoulder blades. “But I’ll own up to the fact that I wasn’t expecting myself to stick to that arrangement. I figured that was only going to be a me problem, though.”

“Don’t start,” Felicity warns, voice still in that firm, hushed tone that makes Tommy’s spine tingle in such a pleasant way. One determined step forward, and she both presses herself to Tommy’s chest and drives him back against the wall. “Security response will be too quick for us to work out another plan, much less run. The ‘Oopsie, didn’t realize our secret makeout spot was a restricted area and that we set off a sensor, don’t mind us’ is our best maneuver here.” She presses her lips together in deep consideration, before releasing her grip on one lapel to instead go for Tommy’s tie.  

“Mission kissing is just a maneuver to you?” He gasps in mock affront and presses his free hand over his collarbone, unable to clutch at his heart with Felicity all but welded to him and loosening the carefully-tied knot to an acceptable degree of disheveled.. “I’ve been demoted from, uh, special someone to mere component of a convenient distraction technique. Hurtful.” 

Selecting a term for his role in Felicity’s life—when the newness of it can still best be described as “fresh enough that mission kissing is now off the table, because we might find any excuse to kiss (seeing as we already have, a couple times)”—is a gamble, but Tommy’s choice is a safe enough one, it seems. Felicity doesn’t move to correct him, only pursing her lips in an exaggerated “aww, poor sad puppy” way to show that she is neither sorry for the downgrade, nor going to spend the time tending to the wound it delivered.

“Yes, right now, you are just my pretty, pretty smokescreen,” she declares, releasing the tie and instead bringing that hand to pat his cheek. “You’ll get promoted back to ‘special someone’ once we no longer have guards breathing down our necks, and this dress is on the bedroom floor.”

Tommy isn’t sure if the alarm actually does stop bleating for a split-second after that sentence, or if the staticky buzz of sudden silence is just his brain disconnecting at that concluding (maybe even more promising than mission kissing) implication. 

“Because… I am going to step out of it and into something more comfortable once this is all over and I’m back home,” Felicity continues oh-so-slowly, eyes falling closed as her thoughts catch up to her mouth. Her hand flops gracelessly from Tommy’s face and down to his shoulder, likely unintentionally. “And will be hanging it back up in my closet, where it belongs. So it doesn’t get ruined by being left on the floor.” 

Thankfully, Tommy’s brain chooses that moment to come back online—dial-up tones almost drowning out the cacophony in the background—and he manages to get his voice working before Felicity can thump her forehead to his chest in mortification.

“Uh…” he rasps, the epitome of eloquence, before clearing his throat with a short cough. “Any way we can negotiate that promotion to happen before the getting-changed? I’ll also accept after putting the dress away, if you’re open to moving that step up.”

Felicity cracks one eye back open at his wishful thinking. “See, this is the other reason why we needed to put a moratorium on being affectionate on ops, both as legitimate plans and just-because. You know my mouth says…” She makes a sour face, trying to determine the best way to put it. “...things—that’s never changed, even once we became an us. Except now those things just sound like ideas for later, which makes it even more distracting.”

“Great ideas for later,” Tommy’s mouth (and more than a little bit his brain) automatically feels the need to specify, sending the words tumbling off his tongue and rolling over the end of Felicity’s sentence.

She hears them nonetheless. “Not helping.”

“Never said I was trying to. I’ve been on Team Mission Kissing this whole time, remember?” Tommy grins cheekily as Felicity locks her narrowed eyes on his, and slowly arches one brow. “And I’m sure I’m not the only member. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that we haven’t been hauled away yet, and the alarms, they are still a-ringin’.”

Felicity, to her credit, doesn’t break their little staredown. Instead, her lids lift just enough for the spark of challenge to flare up from behind them.

“So maybe I did figure we had enough time to run,” she admits casually, the hand that had unceremoniously dropped onto Tommy’s shoulder sliding around his neck as she speaks. Her lips tug into a shrug-like expression for a moment. “And maybe I just thought that wasn’t quite as appealing a plan. There’s a little rush that comes from breaking the rules, sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” Tommy agrees, and leans in to bump their noses together. Voice dropping low and curious, he presses, “Does that make this instance an exception, or…”

His eyes droop closed and the words fade into a blissful sigh as lithe fingers skim over the back of his neck, drawing up a stream of goosebumps on their way to finding home in his hair.

“I think some rules are just meant to be broken. Repeatedly.” Felicitys’ breath ghosts over his lips on that murmured reply, before she all but closes that minuscule gap remaining between them. “That enough of an answer for you?”

The only affirmative Tommy finds himself able to make is a contented hum, already tipsy from the gliding and grasping of her fingers through his short hair.

From her responding laugh, that evidently works for Felicity. “Glad we’re on the same page. Now, no more talking—kiss me.”

Oh, Tommy would be more than happy to comply—has been all but dying to ever since the command was first given. There’s just one little thing he can’t let slide:

“Shouldn’t that be my line? It was close, but I’m pretty sure I asked fir-”

The frustrated growl Felicity lets out at the nitpicking is thankfully not a denial, but the prelude to a searing kiss.

(The burn of which they get to relish in for about five seconds, before security finally descends upon them.)

[obscure-sentimentalist]

prompt for flommy if you want: home

[I meant to fill this prompt a few months back, the last time I wrote something for this particular universe, but these two wanted to go their own way then and yanked me off-course. But I was suddenly hit by the right inspiration to give it another go and ran with it!]

Part of the Secret Relationship Flommy 'verse (1 | 2 | 3)

It starts with the t-shirt.

Well, maybe it doesn’t necessarily start there, but that’s at least when Felicity notices, starts to pay attention. The first recorded incident on a list that’s growing longer by the day—long enough that, had she somehow overlooked it like the unknown number of its possible predecessors, something else certainly would have pinged by now.

Luckily, obliviousness was not quite that persistent, which means the t-shirt is the starting line. The first domino. Point A.

Day 0 of realizing that—whether he consciously acknowledges it or not—Felicity’s townhouse is gradually becoming Tommy’s home.

The reason why that particular event is significant enough to register in Felicity’s mind isn’t the simplest to parse out, not at first. It’s not like Tommy hadn’t left things at her place before: his laptop, his preferred brand of toothpaste (travel-sized to start, until its recent graduation to a full tube), a pair of pajama bottoms, a singular golf club. All completely normal, understandable items to be absently forgotten or purposely kept at a partner’s residence.

(Except the golf club. Felicity still has no idea when that one snuck in, much less why—Tommy doesn’t even golf, and a putter would hardly be an ideal weapon in the face of home invasion.)

While even more intimate than leaving personal items behind, combining their laundry isn’t new or notable enough to solidify the moment either. On more than one prior occasion, Felicity’s wash schedule coincided with Tommy spending the night and wearing just the right color to top off a full load; it wasn’t difficult to see the mutually-beneficial arrangement that could come of that convenience, and neither of them had any concerns or discomforts to air. The only delicate thing about the mingling of hers and his is the washer cycle setting.

Tommy grabbing the wrong t-shirt, though, was both enough to make its own mark in Felicity’s memory—representative of a crossroads between exposing or maintaining secrecy of their relationship, and the path she and Tommy decisively took together—and the last bit of weight needed to tip the scales.

It’s one thing for Tommy to collect his own t-shirt from Felicity’s place because that’s where he’d last left it—simple enough. It’s another to recall that said shirt was in the shared load of laundry recently tossed in the wash, and to pluck it from the drying rack. 

But to make the retrieval by reflex, without double-checking his selection, and not noticing the mistake until well after tugging the shirt on and dashing out the door? That speaks to a certain comfort and confidence—knowledge that what Tommy needs is right there for him—and turns up the volume on the domesticity that’s been quietly forming between them both.

So, yes, it starts with the t-shirt. And now that Felicity has made a point to pay closer attention and take note, the incidents have only piled up from there.

The dishes were next. Ever since the apology-celebration dinner, Tommy has required fewer and fewer directions to the proper places of each glass and baking pan, plate and casserole dish. A non-zero number of times since then, Felicity has amassed a stack of dirty dishware in the sink—too entangled in a project to spare the time or thought to the height of the mountain—only to be greeted some time later by a soft peck to her crown, the lingering scent of dish soap on Tommy’s skin, and nearly every piece of crockery in their correct cabinets.

Then came the unspoken establishment of Tommy’s preferred spot on the couch—tucked up against the left arm, with room to swing his legs up and stretch out (or to allow Felicity to do so while curled into his side). The accommodation of his morning and nighttime routines to a space that isn’t his own, and knitting them seamlessly into her habits. His new tendency of using “we” and “heading home” in conjunction with each other to tell their friends that they were departing after a long night.

(The first few times he’d said it, the “heading home” part, Felicity figured that he’d changed his mind about staying over—that they’d leave together, he’d drop her off, and then return to his place. Except Tommy had given that exact goodbye to Oliver last night, but not a parting word to Felicity on her doorstep, nor in the bathroom between brushing their teeth, nor in the bedroom before she’d switched off the nightstand lamp—nothing but a soft good night murmured against her neck as they settled, her tank top-covered back pressed to his bare chest.)

And in the still of early morning—not unreasonably so, but a less-than-preferable hour for night-owl club managers and vigilante associates—Felicity finds her latest scrap of evidence in watching the rise and fall of Tommy’s chest.

He’s dead to the world, curled on his left side with his hand sandwiched between the pillow and his ear. The right lies loosely atop the mattress, palm half-turned upwards as if waiting for Felicity’s to slip into it, the perfect fit. It’s a temptation to be resisted, though—at least until her eyes have completed their careful assessment.

A breath just shy of a snore escapes Tommy’s lips, parted in a sliver. The rest of his face is slack and smooth as he draws in a deep, long inhale in return, with nary a frown line nor pillow-faceplant crease furrowed into his skin. Only the faint fluttering behind his eyelids accompanies the movement of his chest, assuring that he’s far from consciousness and not in any distress over it.

That’s not something Felicity has been able to confidently conclude before.

When the longtime empty echo of a complicated, isolated childhood turns into a call-and-response, it strengthens the tongue enough to bear the weight of telling the painful things. It’s an excavation that Tommy and Felicity have each performed a few times over the months of their relationship thus far, and their hearts have been contented by the listening ears of a like soul. 

Tommy’s sleep habits were not the first of such confessions, nor his second, but Felicity had gotten an inkling of the truth within their first few nights together. From the way he’d be quick to rouse (even sleepily so) if she made the slightest shift to get up in the morning, to the quiet heartbreak on his face in deeper sleep, to the desperate cling of his arms around her and frantic thrum of his heart against her back some nights, it was clear that a part of lonely, abandoned eight-year-old Tommy persisted in unconsciousness.

By the time he mustered the courage and words enough to explain—to paint the picture of an empty mansion (a home no longer a home) and dark, cold, silent nights without family to run to and assure that he’s not alone—Tommy had had about five noticeable bouts of disrupted, tense sleep on nights Felicity spent at his, and two or three when he’d stayed at hers. While she’d tagged the disparity, it had been easy enough to rationalize away: they’d headed back to his apartment after a couple high-stress cases, and her place when they’d been run ragged but could rest easy. If he was prone to nightmares in his own home, surely he’d have to be wiped in order to sleep so soundly in a still-fairly-new location.

It had taken a while longer to consider that the fitful nights of sleep were prevalent because Tommy was in his own apartment—a place with one signature on the paperwork, which could be just as lonely as the old Merlyn Manor on nights spent apart. By contrast, Felicity’s was a comfort due both to the relative unfamiliarity and the fact that it belonged to someone else. 

Tommy feeling safe and accompanied enough to rest as peacefully as he is now is possibly the strongest proof of at-home-ness that Felicity could have expected, and she can’t help but smile at the warmth swelling in her chest.

“Quarter for your thoughts?” Tommy murmurs, somehow sensing her triumph while his eyes remain blissfully closed. Even in his slow rise to consciousness, his lips tug into the beginnings of a smile and he shuffles his body towards the center of the mattress—towards Felicity.

With the shrinking of the gap between them, it’s simple enough to reach her left hand up and brush aside a lock of dark hair that’s flopped into Tommy’s face. Felicity’s thumb skims his forehead as she follows through with the motion, the path dipping only slightly on the shallow crease that forms in his brow as he yawns. “Twenty-five whole pennies, huh?” she gets out, before involuntarily breaking into her own yawn. “Is that an adjustment for inflation?”

Task completed, her hand lifts away to tuck back into her chest, only to be intercepted by a warm palm curling lovingly secure around it.

“Mm.” Still unseeing, Tommy draws their clasped hands in and grazes the tips of Felicity’s fingers with a feather-light kiss. “One cent is an insultingly low price for a piece of your mind. Just giving you your true appraisal value.” He punctuates the statement with a longer, firmer press of his lips, this time to her knuckles.

“So my thoughts are worth about ten minutes on a parking meter in downtown Starling,” Felicity muses, the words flowing slow and smooth as she melts under Tommy’s tender ministrations. “I’ll take that.”

A gentle tug and turn of her hand allows Tommy to mark Felicity’s inner wrist as the next stop on his trail of kisses. Lips meet skin right above her pulse, which flutters quick yet strong against them. “Got plans already for those ten minutes?”

While Felicity has nothing currently in mind, she would not be hard-pressed to find a reason to put that hard-earned quarter to use. That said, she’s not exactly in a rush, and can think of better, more important ways to spend the day.

“Not today, no,” she admits with a little sigh as Tommy’s lips continue the path down her forearm. “Not planning to go anywhere, actually.”

“No?” The vibration of the word against her inner elbow draws a light laugh out of Felicity, and another set when Tommy grins and his faint morning stubble tickles the skin. 

“Nope,” Felicity confirms, and scoots in to close the last couple of inches between them before Tommy can go for her bicep. To make up for the disruption (and calm the tiny noise of protest that rumbles in his throat), she presses her forehead gently to his. “Let’s just stay home today. You and me.”

Just as she hoped, the statement coaxes those breathtakingly blue eyes out from behind their lids, which bob slowly at half-mast for a moment before opening fully. Tommy’s gaze is searching, hopeful, once the sleep-fog clears and he can focus on Felicity’s face. 

Warmly, she matches his stare, and wills him to read the unspoken.

“Home” is where you feel comfortable, feel safe. This is your home if you want it to be.

Tommy’s breath catches almost inaudibly, and Felicity knows he’s seen it.

“Staying home,” he repeats slowly, voice suddenly rough as if they haven’t already been carrying on a whole conversation. His throat bobs like he’s swallowed something thick and heavy, but his eyes gleam with nothing but light and love. 

Not wanting to lead Tommy with words, Felicity just nods, her forehead rocking against his and rubbing their noses together. 

Nearly too quick to process, her hand is left gripping nothing but air, and Tommy’s arm bands around her in a snuggling embrace.

“Staying home.” A brilliant smile flashes across his face, prelude to the loving peck he delivers to Felicity’s lips. “You and me, right here, all day. I like the sound of that.”

Tommy probably can’t see it while they’re still forehead-to-forehead, but he can surely feel the arch of Felicity’s eyebrow in reaction. “Maybe not right here, all day,” she amends. “We’ll have to get out of bed at some point, you know.”

“Says who?” There’s that cheeky grin again. “I thought we didn’t have any plans, and I can think of plenty that don’t require a change in venue.”

“I’m sure you can,” Felicity retorts, paying no mind to the light flush she can feel rising to her skin. “But if you don’t brush your teeth, I might change my mind and make some other arrangements, party of one.” To emphasize the ultimatum, she takes a pointed sniff and wrinkles her nose in offense.

That earns her a fond eye-roll, but Tommy’s expression contorts into one of concession. “Well, you’re not minty-fresh this morning either, but point taken.” Heaving a dramatic sigh, he secures his arm around Felicity and rolls onto his back, dragging her along while pressed to his chest. “I guess ‘staying home’ will just have to mean wherever you are, then.”

Said in jest as they may be, Felicity hears nothing but the truth in those words.

[obscure-sentimentalist]

old enough boys. "i need a hug. a six hour one."

[Regrettably, while this does address the dialogue prompt at some point, it's probably best described as hurt/no comfort. Oh, Tommy does desperately need a hug, but he instead gets an anxious string-of-consciousness POV because he is sleep-deprived and refusing to deal with very recent trauma.]

Old enough 'verse (post-epilogue, pre-"The 2020 Merlyn Boys Holiday Calendar); prompt from the "Comforting Cuddles Starters" list

January 2020

Tommy doesn’t like to think too much about how he and sleep aren’t on the best of terms these days.

It’s difficult not to, though, sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the night as he has been for the last… two hours, if the clock on the opposite wall is to be believed. And it can be, unless the unchanging, monotone tick-tick-tick-tick-tick serves no other purpose than to grate on his nerves—a stretch, but plausible, because really, Connie, who even has analog wall clocks anymore, if not to irritate one’s brother? Everything is digital these days.

(To that point, it’s fascinating to see how technology has evolved over the past nearly-seven years. And more than a little disconcerting, for a few reasons.)

The sound makes Tommy cringe and clench his hand tighter, tighter around his half-emptied water glass, only easing the pressure enough to keep it from cracking under the strain. The shards would be a hassle to clean up, and any resulting injury would surely get his brother’s Connie-senses tingling enough for him to wake and fumble into the kitchen, the good doctor always at the ready.

Frankly, that’s the last thing Tommy needs right now. As much as he loves Connor—his determination to help others any way he can, how deeply he cares, the fact that he’s Tommy’s brother and they’ve been reunited, once, twice—the mother-henning is too much, sometimes. It’s one of those things Tommy can appreciate in small doses, like after a bad day or a bout of food poisoning (ugh, he’s never ordering seafood at a Gotham restaurant again, not after the Salmon(ella) Incident of 2010), but formative years spent alternately under his father’s cold glare or the palpable weight of both parents’ absence have made such attention and care… restrictive, in a way. Smothering. Crushing.

(Like the pressure on his torso, the concrete slab bearing down as his chest heaves against it, the attempts to shift the burden growing weaker as the hot-poker pain in his heart burns brighter as his lungs feel heavier as his breath—)

The door at the end of the hall thankfully doesn’t open any wider than the few inches Connor left cracked when he’d gone to bed, and if Tommy strains his ears, he can hear a sleep-slurred mumble from within the room—something about a horse and being owed money, sounds like. It’s unclear whether the money is owed in regards to the horse or by the horse itself, and knowing Connor’s sleep-talking habits, the two options are equally likely.

A manic laugh forms in Tommy’s throat at the mental image of his twin in an old Western-style staredown with a Clydesdale, but he doesn’t let more than a puff of air escape past the firm seal of his lips. The amusement is left to detonate in his chest like a controlled explosion, wracking his body with little spasms while he slumps bonelessly in his seat. Tilting his head back, he claps his free hand over his aching eyes to block out the kitchen light’s glare as the hysteria runs its course.

If he’s finding such a ridiculous idea so riotously funny, he must be so tired.

He doesn’t even give voice to that thought, but the world (well, just the kitchen—just Tommy himself—but it sure feels like it stretches beyond that) goes silent as if he’d screamed it. The bursts of giggles immediately sputter and die without fanfare, and his hand slips from his eyes to scrub over his nose and mouth.

He’s so tired. Maybe in more ways than a good night’s sleep can resolve—and he’s not even getting that because, again, not simpatico right now—and that makes for an even more terrifying, desperately-to-be-avoided topic.

(Emphasis on the avoidance part.)

If only he was exhausted—that one Tommy can manage without issue, he’s learned. It was probably the best term to pair with the ping-ponging between Starling (Star City, whatever. Apparently renaming entire cities is a thing now) and Chicago over the previous two months, after all. From hightailing it to Connor after… waking up, to the more leisurely trip back for an emotional reunion with friends old and new, and finally to the decision to stick with his twin for a while longer—free of the old concern of concealing their brotherhood, as well as any other obligations—the days were packed.

Exhausted is simple enough to understand and cope with, as that handful of weeks had proved to him. If Tommy was exhausted, it was because of the love and joy and sorrow and worry and frustration and unspeakable yearning for the important people in his life; every one of those feelings igniting in his chest with just the smallest ember. If he was exhausted, it was because he was pouring all of that into his social energy and setting himself into constant motion, in order to see and say and do and be everything he wanted and needed. 

If he was exhausted, it meant he was alive needed sleep. And so sleep would come to him, without even having to call—the inevitable crash into blissful blackness at the end of a nonstop day.

So yeah, Tommy can do exhausted. He can do the high-proof cocktail of mixed emotions, and the outpouring of the same from the people around him—up to and including the reunion with Oliver, which delivered a much stronger kick than Tommy had braced for (but really should have expected, considering… well. Considering). He can do the rush of activity and the eagerness to make up for six years and change in a fraction of the time, and he can do it just fine.

It’s the slowing down of everything—the goodbye hugs and promises to pop back to Starling soon, the end of Connor’s graciously-granted extended time off and his return to work, the days spent alone either getting familiarized with his brother’s apartment or the L system (the latter frequently resulting in him getting lost)—that makes Tommy lose exhausted and slip down to tired. It’s the slowing down that makes it so much easier to think, when there was hardly any need or time to do so, before. 

But the thing about being able to think easier is that it’s also easier to think about things Tommy would much rather not. Like the not-sleeping. And why.

Sleep when you’re dead, the old adage chimes in his mind, unbidden, as if taunting him for tiptoeing around those very landmines.

I did, a bitter whisper darts out from the growing shadows of his thoughts to reply, too slippery to grasp and shove back. I was.

For the second time in over three times as many years, Tommy stops breathing.

He supposes he should count himself lucky that he managed not to say that out loud—putting the words out into the world would make them so much more real and unignorable, even if he’s the only one to hear them. At least keeping them trapped in his head means that he can pass them off as unrestrained musings of an insomniatic mind; even if they’re true, the only way they can have power over him is if he allows them to wield it. If he chooses to deal with their implications, or not.

The reminder dislodges a sigh from deep within Tommy’s chest, and his tense grip on the water glass finally loosens as the relief of breathing again floods through him. Now this, this he can do, too.

Yes, maybe he did die, and it wasn’t a fun time at all. Maybe he did leave ConnorOliverLaurelTheaeveryone behind, six feet above him for about as many years. (Maybe there is something, some impossible memory or two, trailing him from the grave like a presence he just can’t quite see out of the corner of his eyes…)  

Maybe he’s done all that, and now he’s come back. These are just statements of fact—unchangeable events that have passed, that are set in gravestone. Even if they happened directly to him, they don’t need to have any more bearing on his present and future if he doesn’t think they should. 

They definitely shouldn’t have any on anyone else’s, Tommy determines, chancing another glance at the cracked bedroom door and listening for more shuffling and nonsensical muttering. (Wondering if this will be another morning where Connor will greet him with such a heartbreakingly stunned stare, lingering on Tommy’s face for far too long before memory catches up…)

That’s the thought that solidifies his decision, and steels Tommy’s resolve. This isn’t something he’s going to let weigh on him any longer.

Crossing his arms comfortingly over his chest, he lets his eyes fall closed and wills the ticking of the wall clock to lull all thoughts of tired and death and resurrection well—and permanently—out of mind. 

(Connor will find him some hours—minutes? What is time anymore to someone who’s lost so much of it?—later, still slouched in the kitchen chair, and pointedly refrain from commenting on the state of him after exchanging a half-coherent greeting.

“I don’t have any scheduled surgeries today, so I…” Connor will start, breaking off mid-sentence as his mouth widens in a deep yawn. He’ll use the opportunity to drop into the chair on the opposite end of the table—the landing a heavy thud that threatens to rattle Tommy’s aching skull—to wait for his tiredness to subside. “I think I could swing a breakfast run between showering and heading in for my shift. Any special requests?”

I need a hug. A six hour one, Tommy won’t say. It’d already be a tall order to fill under normal circumstances—even with Connor’s octopus-like tendencies factored into the equation—and he’s made his choices with the current ones. Despite his best efforts, there’s no guarantee that minutes or even seconds in his brother’s hold wouldn’t make Tommy fall apart, crumble, come crashing down like CNRI around him—

“Get me a coffee, wouldja?” he’ll slur around his own yawn instead, too infectious for even the MD in the room to prevent. The chair will make a grating screech as he kicks it back, standing to flap a hand in the general direction of the living room and the couch—not the well-loved one he’d spent a handful of nights crashing on a literal lifetime ago, but still a more comfortable option. “Jus’ wake me when you get back.”

Connor will hum in distracted acknowledgement as he scrubs the sleep out of his eyes, and Tommy will make a break for it before his twin can see clearly (what he’s hidden, how it had eaten away at him, how it could trap him again). The couch cushions will groan faintly as he sinks down, the fluffy fleece blanket will whisper over cotton and skin as he pulls it around him, and finally, finally, his eyelids will drag his consciousness behind them in their descent.

(Connor won’t keep that half-hearted promise, but it won’t matter anyways. The coffee won’t even be lukewarm when Tommy gasps back to the surface again).)

[obscure-sentimentalist]

[Been hacking away at this one for quite a while--just a bit of sheer silliness, which I guess falls right in line with the prompt.]

Prompt from StephK on AO3: "How about Felicity taking care of Tommy while he's sick or loopy from anesthesia and him saying crazy things"

“You were right,” Tommy declares, his voice filled with the kind of airy cheer that only high-strength pain medication can inspire.

“Yeah?” Felicity prompts with a sort of breathless grunt, bouncing on the balls of her feet to hitch his arm into a more secure position over her shoulders. Though compacted by the weight of the situation (and Tommy himself), the corners of her mouth nonetheless turn up in a fond smile. “About what?”

The last word dovetails into a startled squawk when Tommy abruptly leans into Felicity’s side, upsetting the careful balance she’d barely managed to establish and threatening to topple them both over. Reflexes kicking into overdrive, she firmly plants her feet and steels herself to halt their descent.

“Who says it’s ‘bout something specific?” Tommy counters cheekily, completely oblivious to his sudden shift in weight and just how close he came to eating carpet. A mischievous glint crystallizes in the clear blue of his eyes as his head lolls to face Felicity. “Maybe I just know that those are some of your very favorite words.”

Felicity uses the exhale from her little huff of laughter to heave Tommy—in all his fit, noodly-limbed glory—back upright. “That is one of the two three-word combinations I most enjoy hearing you say,” she admits, following through with a playful hip-check as she straightens.

“See?” Tommy drawls with a delighted giggle, eyebrows shot high in triumph. “I know you so well.” To punctuate, he lifts his index finger and drifts it towards Felicity’s face, likely to deliver a loving nose-boop.

Preferring to avoid an accidental poke in the eye, Felicity is quick to release the wrist flopped over her shoulder in favor of intercepting the other as gently as she can.

“You do,” she agrees, voice oozing with excessive sweetness to draw Tommy’s startlingly-bright eyes to hers and distract him from their lowering hands. “And do you know what I’d love even more, right now?”

Tommy just lets out a little hum of curiosity, head lolling atop his neck like a dashboard bobblehead dog. The accompanying dopey grin only ratchets up the adorability, making it even harder for Felicity to keep her mind on her mission and not be swayed.

“What I’d love,” she repeats, “is to get you off your feet—and off my back, literally—and onto that couch.” She jerks her head to the right for emphasis, and heaves their combined weight after it.

Not that the effort gets them far at all, when stubbornness is a game two can play.

“Tempting, tempting,” Tommy muses, slipping his hand free of Felicity’s grip to rub his chin in exaggerated thought. “There’s the comfy couch, and then there’s hanging around with my giiiiirl.” He pouts. “Do I have to choose?”

“Oh, you do.” This time Felicity accompanies the sugary tone with a sunny smile. “And your choices are either a) you cooperate, and we hobble the last few steps over and get you settled in as delicately as possible.” She bobs her head to mark that option, before continuing, “Or b) ‘your girl’ tosses you where you stand—broken foot or not—and you figure out your own landing.”

This time, Tommy’s free hand drops to his heart in overwhelming offense. “You wouldn’t.”

Felicity counters with an arched eyebrow and a tip of her chin. “But I thought you knew me so well?” she echoes, a sharp bite of challenge under the sweet coating.

“Onward to comfort!” Tommy immediately blurts, lurching forward as if to physically outrun the looming threat of catapulting via tiny blonde.

Now that they’re back on the same wavelength, the last leg of their trip across the living room carpet is much less arduous than it could have been. Still, they take it slow, with Felicity’s left arm wrapped securely around Tommy’s back to guide his single-footed hopping.

She stops him with a gentle squeeze before he rams his uninjured toes into the base of the couch, and immediately those devastatingly blue eyes find hers again. “Let’s get that ‘delicately settled in’ part down, yeah?” she suggests softly, tilting her head to the open cushion.

Sobering (in a sense of the term) suddenly after his heavily-medicated roguish streak, Tommy gives a little nod of acknowledgement. With that go-ahead, the two of them work in tandem to pivot and ease him down to sit.

They miraculously make it through both of those steps without issue before Tommy—still subdued—cuts back in. “I have a confession to make.”

Felicity’s breath catches warily at his words and demeanor, unsure if she wants to hear it. If the admission is capable of tanking such a giggly high in mere moments, it’s probably one that should be discussed when they’re both in full possession of their faculties.

Tommy, it seems, has no such qualms, and it comes tumbling out nonetheless.

“I didn’t just say ‘you were right’ because I know you like it,” he reveals, hunching his shoulders as he sinks back against the couch arm. He meets Felicity with a deeply apologetic stare. “I meant that you were right about these being the good aspirins.”

There’s a fleeting urge to beat him over the head with something in retaliation for that scare, but it only lingers long enough for a deep sigh to gust out of Felicity’s nose. The disproportionate guilt is clearly just another side effect, and further evidence that Tommy is lightyears out of his right mind—she’ll give him this pass.

(Plus, given the super-charged strength of the painkillers, she’s not even sure he’d feel the collision of a baking pan to the back of the head, so it’d be moot.)

“You and I both know it wasn’t aspirin that the hospital gave you,” she opts for instead, leaning in to unearth and adjust the throw pillow squashed behind Tommy’s back. “And I originally said that about also not-aspirin, because I was suffering from blood loss and Digg has incredible patience.”

“For you,” Tommy automatically tacks on to the end of the statement, well aware of how much he tests that same tolerance.

“Digg has incredible patience for me,” Felicity amends, eyes cast upwards and bobbing her head in concession.

That gets a pleased grin out of Tommy, and he shimmies into place against the fixed pillow to set his thoughts back on track. “Aspirin, not-aspirin, also not-aspirin, doesn’t matter. That’s just summ-.. sam-...” Scrunching his nose in adorable frustration, he sticks out his tongue with an audible bleh, as if the correct word will finally fall off it.

“Semantics,” Felicity supplies helpfully as she tips over the throw pillow on the opposite end of the couch to lie flat against the cushion. A split-second of consideration, and she scoots it in just a little bit closer before tapping Tommy’s left leg.

He snaps his fingers in acknowledgement of the correct word, then complies with the prompt and carefully swings his leg up onto the seat. His eyes fix on his cast-covered foot with intense focus as he lowers it to the pillow, ensuring that it’s properly elevated and can rest comfortably.

“Well, ‘semantics’ can take a hike, because I sure won’t be able to for a while,” Tommy quips, giving a little fist-pump once his foot is settled just so. “Breaking my foot taking inventory—inventory! At my own club!—should entitle me to call the good painkillers whatever I want.” His gaze flits to Felicity, catching her mid-reach for the fuzzy blue blanket slung over the back of the couch, and he pointedly adds, “And be immensely grateful for my wonderful girlfriend and her aid in my convalescence.”

“Flatterer,” Felicity deadpans with a fond eye-roll, unfurling the blanket with a muffled snap and draping it over his extended leg. With that settled, she folds her arms across her chest and arches a brow at Tommy. “That’s only going to get you so far, you know. If you purposely start being difficult, I walk.”

“Oh, I am aware.” Tommy tucks his good leg under the blanket as he draws it up his lap. “That’s why I intend to be a team player from this moment forward. Promise.” He holds up two fingers, spread in the V of a peace sign.

(Felicity doesn’t have the heart to correct him, nor point out that “scout’s honor” doesn’t carry a lot of weight if the proclaimer was never a scout.)

“So consider me fully committed to Team Smerlyn for the extent of my recovery,” Tommy continues, hand still raised. A beat, and the peace sign droops as he pulls a face. “Smerlyn. Smerrrrrrlyn. Huh, not really liking the sound of that, actually.”

Felicity’s pretty sure her expression mirrors Tommy’s, but just a few shades off from the pain med loopiness. “Yeah, not a fan,” she agrees, taking a seat on the floor and propping one elbow up on the couch cushion.

Tommy gives a little shake of his head, but keeps at it. “Smerlyn. Smer-Smo. Smoarlyn? Oooh!” His eyes light up as he nearly jolts off the couch. “Do we have marshmallows?”

Felicity immediately pops up to her knees to press Tommy back down before he aggravates his injured foot, brow furrowed as she turns over that last question. Marshmallows…?

Oh. So this is what it’s like to be on the receiving end of verbal whiplash.

“S’mores. Smoarlyn.” Tommy repeats the two words until they slur together into nonsense, and he trips over them with a chortle. It turns into an inspired gasp a moment later, and he snaps his head towards Felicity. “It’s the perfect fit!”

“It fits because we’re like s’mores?” Felicity guesses, sitting back on her heels as her hand trails over the front of Tommy’s t-shirt. Fueled as it is by painkillers, she’s certain that his train of thought runs on some sort of logical track, just maybe not one she can immediately perceive.

Tommy nods enthusiastically, bright eyes locked onto Felicity’s as his hand wraps around the back of hers. “Yep! Because you make me feel all soft and gooey and melty.” He lifts her hand up from his chest just enough to graze his lips over her fingers when he rolls his head forward. “And you’re sweet, of course.”

“Of course,” Felicity echoes back with a wink, the pieces all snapping together with that explanation. She turns her palm in Tommy’s grip so their palms are pressed together, and slips her fingers into the spaces between his. “Though let me guess: it’s especially nice when you’re feeling… crumby?”

Sure enough, the joke draws out another delighted gasp and dopey grin. “You know me so well!”

“I should hope so, being part of Team Smoarlyn,” Felicity points out, leaning in to press a smiling kiss to Tommy’s forehead.

[obscure-sentimentalist]

“He creeped me out. I’m not gonna lie.”, college au

[Flinging this into the void two years later...]

Prompt from the drabble challenge list

Part II of the Merlyn Boys College AU; sequel to this

Harvard, October 2003

“So that’s spinach, chicken, peppers, and… ham,” Tommy lists off slowly, gaze fixed on the slice of pizza in transit to Connor’s mouth. 

“That it is,” Connor returns levelly. Without lowering his hands or meal, he arches an eyebrow appraisingly at Tommy’s own selection of pepperoni, olives, and mushroom.

Said slice flops back onto the plate with a doughy splat as Tommy lifts greasy fingers in a show of surrender. “Hey, not judging,” he swears, before snatching a napkin from the pile in the center of the table. “Just an observation. Now, if it was something like pineapple and anchovies, we’d be having words.”

“Oh, no, that I only save for special occasions,” Connor deadpans, almost without thinking. He punctuates the declaration with an exaggerated bite of his (perfectly acceptable, thank you very much) choice of toppings.

Tommy just tilts his head backwards and drifts it back down in a slow nod. “I see.” The now crumpled and grease-stained napkin gets discarded onto the Formica tabletop so he can freely flip a finger between the two of them. “So, uh, does ‘finally figuring out why everyone thinks you’re someone you’re not and meeting your lookalike’ not count, or are we talking about special occasions, like if Ollie had stuck around?”

Any effort Connor had hoped to make to conceal his opinion on Serial Killer Haircut (fine, Oliver Queen, whatever) from Tommy goes right out the window as a particularly cheesy nibble of pizza immediately slips down his throat the wrong way at that question. The rest of the slice hits his plate mid-cough as Connor dives for the pile of napkins, nearly knocking over the dangerously full pitcher of water beside it in the process.

“I’m gonna take it that you meant the second one,” Tommy determines, seemingly unfazed by Connor’s chest-pounding attempt to dislodge the choking hazard without resorting to the full-on Heimlich. Calmly propping his left elbow up on the table, he drops his chin into his palm as Connor at last clears his throat and promptly snatches his water glass to guzzle its contents. “I somehow don’t think the first one would warrant such an explosive reaction. Ollie, on the other hand, has been known to have that kind of effect on people.”

“Wasn’t…” Connor starts, voice tight, only to collapse into another series of wheezes, this time set off by chugging his drink. “Didn’t mean that.”

It’s a little hard to see with his eyes still watering, but from what he can make out, Tommy is meeting the claim with an incredibly dubious expression. 

“Right. So you actually were feeling aggressively constipated on the way over here, and it just happened to be showing on your face every time you looked at Ollie? Because if so, I think that garbage,” his eyes twitch pointedly down to Connor’s abandoned pizza, “is going to solve the root problem in no time. I mean, it’ll probably cause a bunch of other problems for your dorm’s plumbing, but…” The sentence trails off as his mouth contorts into the facial equivalent of a shrug.

Connor levels a scathing glare back, but with puffy eyes and a final, hiccuping cough, he probably comes off about as intimidating as an inflatable pool floatie. 

Tommy doesn’t comment on it either way, and instead just sighs. “Look, you get mistaken for a guy enough times over a span of a few weeks, you start to get the idea of what kind of person he is,” he starts, dropping his now-empty palm to the table. He thinks better of the action a moment later, once he glances down and recalls that they’re in a late-night, hole-in-the-wall pizza joint frequented by college students of varying sobriety. Face screwed up in dawning disgust, he tries to rip his hand away, only for his skin to mysteriously stick to the laminate for a fraction of a second longer than it should.

(It’s long enough that Connor hastily glances down at his own haphazardly-dropped pizza slice to ensure that every inch of it is sitting firmly on the plate.)

Allowing himself a single full-body shudder for that unpleasant encounter, Tommy drops his freed hand into his lap and continues as if he hadn’t missed a beat. “And the impression I was getting from everyone who wanted to talk about biology classwork and then laughed me off when I tried to tell them they had the wrong guy was that: one, you’re really, really bad at being funny…”

A noise akin to an offended squawk escapes Connor’s throat at that. He’s not certain if he’s more put out by the slight—he does too have a sense of humor!—or by the utter disparity in their mistaken identity experiences. Although, maybe he should be grateful that his peers are more likely to humor what they think is a weak prank than they are to start swinging.

“...and two,” Tommy steamrolls over the complaint, “being a dick isn’t your default state. Though I’m sure you can be a colossal one when you feel you need to be.”

This time, not even the faintest exhale manages to eke its way past Connor’s lips before they press together in concession. He can’t exactly deny the truth of the assumption, and if Tommy’s carefree tone is anything to go by, that might have been a compliment rather than a criticism. 

(But it’s not like Connor’s going to ask to confirm it.)

“Is there a point to this observation?” he blurts instead, attempting to swerve the conversation back on track before Tommy finds other ways to playfully needle him. Hoping to conceal the discomfort brought on by being read so plainly, he folds his arms across his chest and slumps against the overstuffed red vinyl booth-back.

Much like a magnet of identical polarity is naturally repelled, Tommy immediately thumps back in his own seat, though his body language remains loose and open. “I just figure that you and Ollie, you guys didn’t get off on the right foot—that he earned the stink-eye in some way,” he explains, waving his hand dismissively. “Plus, the fact that you tried to hide that you aren’t exactly missing him, for my sake, is pretty much the opposite of a dick move.”

He offers that closing reassurance with a genuine smile, though it’s tentative, falling just short of reaching his eyes. It’s as if Tommy wants to give Connor, a stranger with the same face, the benefit of the doubt and validate his feelings—negatively focused around Tommy’s lifelong best friend as they might be—but isn’t sure how that kindness will be met.

Which is… strange, Connor supposes, or at the very least unexpected. The pizza topping commentary and unfiltered reading of his personality had seemingly inked in the lines of Tommy that a series of mistakenly-delivered slaps (and implied extensive history of cahooting with Queen) had sketched out; a portrait of personal amusement, careless of others’ feelings, coming into definition. Tommy’s sincerity and (dare he say it) shyness are startling shadows and highlights to an image Connor had already accepted as two-dimensional, and he’s not yet sure what to make of that. 

“He creeped me out, I’m not gonna lie,” Connor allows, owning up to his distaste for Queen without speaking too critically. He scoots the ceramic plate of cooling pizza a bit closer to distract himself from having to meet (trust) Tommy’s earnest gaze just yet. “With the whole… skulking around the library thing, and the way he was smiling and making little digs, and the…” Snatching the crust with one hand, he flaps the other at the side of his head in a vague gesture and finally chances a glance up.

Further proof that his doppelgänger/not-so-evil maybe-twin is scarily on the same wavelength, Tommy immediately understands the motion and cringes sympathetically. “Yeah, I’ve made enough of my own bad hair decisions to know that saying anything will only find a way to bite me in the ass, but, uh…” He brings a fist to his lips and clears his throat loudly. “I know what you mean. And I can’t imagine that it made for a good first impression either.”

Connor acknowledges the truth of that statement with only a little hum, using his second attempt at eating his pizza as cover for forgoing a verbal response. If he keeps getting openings to speak freely about his instantly-sour opinion of Queen, he’s going to risk shifting into the foretold Colossal Dick Mode at some point or another; there’s surely a limit to Tommy’s friendly understanding, and Connor is not in any rush to discover it.

Swallowing just as carefully as he’s selected his next words, Connor lowers the remains of his pizza back to the plate. “It… could have been better,” is all he admits, before discreetly gritting his teeth and grudgingly yanking the conversation into a hard swerve. “But if he hadn’t shown up, I’d still be at the library and tearing my hair out over everyone calling me by the wrong name. Qu- Oliver knew we needed to meet, and wouldn’t let the books keep me a second longer.” He punches out a breath of laughter at the last statement, silently hoping that it doesn’t sound as forced as it is. 

“Huh,” is Tommy’s oh-so-helpful response to the entire spiel. It’s a neutral noise—completely unclear to Connor’s ears whether it’s surprise over that turn of events or disbelief in his thin veneer of gratefulness or something else—and Tommy fails to offer any context. Instead, he merely picks at a stringy glob of cheese to drape it over the center of his pizza slice, all the while keeping an expectant eye on Connor.

Strangling a sigh before it can form in his lungs, Connor scrounges up whatever other neutral things he can say about Queen in order to comply with the wordless prompt. “He mentioned you two had already talked about making a pizza run, which was his rationale for bringing me along—it wasn’t like I was trying to barge in on your plans. And I…”

Trailing off, Connor squeezes his eyes closed and sucks in a sharp breath through his nose. If Tommy can recognize and appreciate the accommodation Connor was making for him, then it’s only fair that Connor reciprocates that kindness.

“...I didn’t mean to make you choose between your best friend and your stranger doppelgänger,” he finally gets out, tying off the words with a deep exhale. His eyelids are slower to lift, and even once they have, Connor’s gaze is content to meander over the tabletop in avoidance of Tommy’s. “You and I could have just rescheduled and met up another time, or any hard feelings could have been checked at the door so all three of us could cram in here. You didn’t need to kick him out just because of me.”

There. Said and done.

And now that it is, it slowly dawns on Connor that said kicking-out should have been his first clue—his first glimpse of something more to Tommy than those secondhand reactions suggested. 

Once the shock dissipated from mirrored faces following Queen’s big reveal maneuver, Connor had anticipated Tommy’s official request that he come along in search of pizza. To an extent, he’d also anticipated the teasing and easy banter of two lifelong friends that scored the trip across campus, with Tommy’s scattered questions to Connor treated as disruptions that Queen was quick to rectify.

Tommy stopping short on the sidewalk across from their destination was less foreseen. The heavy clap of his hand on Queen’s shoulder and ever-so-gentle reminder that his friend owed a phone call to someone named Thea was a jolt off the tracks. Then with a quick glance spared for Connor and a hesitant laugh over limiting the pizza party to a VIP list of those with identical faces, Tommy had diverted the evening onto a completely new rail—all to ensure Connor would be comfortable, even if it came at his own expense.

“Ah. There’s the start of that doctor’s ego.”

The comment cuts through Connor’s thoughts like a diver into the water, jerking him back to the present and sending him scrambling to refocus. When he finally shakes his eyes out of screensaver mode and glances across the table, it’s to find Tommy staring back at him with an amusedly pensive expression. 

“I’ve always wondered how that happens—like, is it something that doesn’t kick in until you’re practicing, or does that attitude crop up earlier?” he muses, reaching casually for his water glass. “It’s hard to get a clear answer, because the only other wannabe doctor I know is Carter Bowen—patron saint of douchebaggery—and I figure that he’s an exception and shouldn’t be counted. But you, though…” Tommy lets out a low whistle. “You got a bad, early-onset case, bud.”

Connor is too flummoxed by the whiplash-inducing return of the frank, pointed jabs that he can’t help the fishlike drop of his lower lip. “Excuse…”

“I mean, hey, it’s not like I know Ollie and how he can be sometimes,” Tommy goes on lightly, drumming his fingers on the side of his glass. “Or realized that this little Q&A would be pretty hard to do if I kept getting tugged over to a different conversation every third sentence. Nope, this one-on-one was set up special for you, no other reason at all.” He lifts the rim of the glass to his lips and takes a long sip, eyebrows shot high in expectation.

He doesn’t have too long of a wait for the desired result, as Connor deflates like an untied, sputtering balloon once he finally hears what Tommy’s saying—something he’s failed to do this whole time.

Connor has only been seeing Tommy as he’s defined by the people around him: first by forming an expectation based solely on the unflattering picture painted by mistaken identity mishaps and a questionable friendship, and then assuming Queen’s exclusion was a selfless sacrifice made for Connor rather than a deliberate choice from which Tommy would benefit. Believing so strongly in those assumptions makes Connor no better than their peers—quick to laugh or deliver a smack, but outright refusing to hear what’s actually being said.

It’s far past time for Tommy to speak for himself, and for Connor to listen.

“You know, we’re talking a lot about a guy who’s specifically been removed from this conversation,” he points out, leaning forward to drop both elbows onto the table. One hand pops up in a placating gesture as he adds, “And, uh, we’ ve made this more than enough about me, too. What I really want to know is what exactly you’ve been doing that would warrant me getting slapped for correcting people.”

Connor processes that he’s contradicted himself in the span of two sentences quickly enough to grimace his way through the last few words, but not soon enough to cut Tommy’s fond, tired smirk off at the pass.

“Like I said: really bad case,” Tommy laughs, shaking his head as he reaches for the water pitcher to refill his glass.

“Last thing and I’m done!” Connor promises, hoping that the sincerity bleeds into his voice. He twirls the pitcher so the handle faces away from him and nudges it closer to Tommy’s waiting hand. “I have been suffering for months from people inexplicably introducing their palms to my face, and the mark isn’t fading.” Turning his head to give a better view, Connor jabs his index finger at his left cheek to emphasize the outline of fingers that surely still lingers.

“See, I thought your face was just like that.” It’s said with such innocence over the clatter of ice cubes into an empty glass.

Connor’s glare is more menacing than a pool floatie’s this time. “Is that supposed to be a comeback? We have the same face, asshole.”

It shouldn’t make his breath catch in awe to say that, not when said identical face is in clear view on the other side of the booth. Maybe it’s just the fact that Connor can say it—confidently, definitively, knowing he was right and not the only one—that gets to him.

(And maybe it’s a little bit because of the critical question that neither of them have dared to touch on just yet; the why and how of the matter that could trigger a seismic shift in both of their lives.) 

While Tommy doesn’t react so overtly, his smile—small, soft, but by no means weak—makes it clear that he feels much the same. “Yeah. Yeah, we do.”

“Good, great, glad we got that settled,” Connor returns, clapping his palms together. “Now how about that explanation?”

(They’ll have to address that unspoken unknown in due time, of course. But for now, finally looking beyond the mirror image and shoddily-formed first impressions to see Tommy is Connor’s highest priority.) 

[obscure-sentimentalist]

🎉 & ✨

Fanfic writer emoji ask game

🎉 What leads you to consider a fic a success?

I mean, I write very niche things, so a fic that might be considered "successful" would probably be one that just... meets someone's interest and they engage with it.

But if we want to get specific: I revel in victory whenever someone comments about how I've made them cry over a scene that was designed to be an emotional wallop (there is one particular sequence that has been the runaway winner thus far, but this really applies to any of them). And save screenshots of those reactions to go back to for a little mood boost/bit of pride sometimes.

✨ Give you and your writing a compliment. Go on now. You know you deserve it. 😉

Oof, always the tough one, eh?

The thing that always comes to mind is the fact that I'm just really good with dialogue (of the funny sort, at the very least), and pretty much always have been. It comes fairly easily to me, enough that I often lay it down where I can and fill in the rest of the connective tissue from there.

[obscure-sentimentalist]

[This... is not what I intended to write when I opened my doc yesterday, and starts to drift a bit outside my usual fare. But these two were feeling particularly flirty and decided to steer me where they wanted to go, so have a quick little teasing Flommy moment to wind down 2021.]

(vaguely) part of the Secret Relationship Flommy 'verse; follow-up to this and this

“The next time I get the idea to host something like a ‘sorry-we-didn’t-tell-anyone-we’re-dating’ dinner with our friends, please remind me that it’s a bad one?” Felicity groans. She flicks excess water from her fingers into the sink, before pressing her hands to the small of her back to support her aching spine.

“See, the expectation of there being a next time makes me a little hesitant to sign off on that arrangement,” Tommy points out, giving Felicity a lightly teasing look as he wipes down a floral-printed ceramic dessert platter. “Being the other half of said formerly-classified relationship, I’m not exactly thrilled to entertain the thought of being traded in.”

The small pop from Felicity’s lower back makes her sigh in relief, but she doesn’t linger in the satisfaction. “I’m not saying that specific theming would be reused,” she says, removing one hand from her back to swat Tommy’s elbow just below the cuff of his rolled-up sleeve. “I mean any rationale I use to convince myself that pulling together a big meal in my own home is the best way to bring people together. Tell me that bar trivia would be much more fulfilling. Or axe-throwing.”

“Axe-throwing,” Tommy repeats, slowly rocking his head up and down in an exaggerated nod. “We’re talking about taking our friends—a group of vigilantes who by-and-large already prefer ranged weaponry—to go axe-throwing.” He frowns, eyes cast up in thought. “I can’t tell if that’d be perfect, or completely chaotic.”

“We’ll find out if it ever comes down to that.” Felicity’s tone goes grim at the mere thought of said finding-out, but she remains firm in her decision. “For now, it’s staying on the ‘better choices’ list.”

Dried platter gripped in one hand and dish towel in the other, Tommy makes a gesture of surrender. “Noted. And assuming that we’re nixing future dinner parties because of the mountain of dishes generated, I now have much more incentive to remember.” Tossing the towel over his shoulder, he flips the patterned side of the platter around to face Felicity and raises his eyebrows in silent question.

“Second cabinet on the right, top shelf.” Once it’s clear Tommy is following the direction, Felicity’s hands disappear into the soapy basin to fish out more dishware. The handful of forks that emerge are simple enough to rinse and drop in the little cup hooked over the end of the drying rack, so she doesn’t wait for Tommy to return to the sink.

A wise choice, because when he does, getting back to work is not at the top of his list.

“Given your silence regarding the reason for this change of plans, I’m going to take it that my guess was correct,” Tommy murmurs, sidling up behind Felicity and snaking his arms around her waist. She can all but feel his grin once his chin settles on her shoulder, and that’s more than enough to make it contagious. “What’s my prize?”

“That wasn’t a guessing game, and even—” Felicity trips on a rising giggle as Tommy nuzzles into the exposed space between her neck and shoulder, “even if it was, that was a gimme. No prizes offered when you already know how I moan about cleaning all the bowls and pans from just a batch of cupcakes.”

“A compelling argument for denying me my victory.” Tommy’s lips replace his nose against Felicity’s pulse point, and he presses them in a gentle kiss to her skin. “I do know, and I also know it’s not the kind of thing you like to mo-…”

“Hey,” Felicity cuts in, forcibly jolting herself out of the melty state into which Tommy’s embrace-lips-presence have put her. She plunges her hands back into the sink in the hopes that the lukewarm water will combat the heat in her cheeks, ignited by Tommy’s unabashed attempt to latch onto her thoughtless word choice. “Still have plenty of dirty dishes to get through here. The sooner they’re washed, dried, and put away, the sooner I stop complaining about them.”

It’s Tommy’s turn to be vocal about his displeasure, if the small whine vibrating along Felicity’s shoulder says anything, but he obliges and releases her from his snuggling grip.

“That’s a tall order,” he sighs, sliding back over to his station and tugging the towel down from its perch over his shoulder. “And maybe I find your complaining enjoyable. It was, after all, the lightbulb moment for the hypothetical Team Arrow axe-throwing outing.”

Surfacing a dinner plate from the foamy depths of the sink and rinsing it under the faucet, Felicity slowly turns her head to shoot Tommy a narrow-eyed glance and a wry smile. “Is this your not-so-subtle way of reopening the prize conversation?”

The expression reflected back at her is much cheekier.

“Incentive is always helpful,” Tommy acknowledges, “and I’m sure we can think of some way to earn it between now and the very.” He leans in ever-so-slowly. “Last.” Closer. “Dish.”

Felicity can only match that with a growing grin, and knows she can come up with something.

“Win-win scenario,” she proposes, pivoting just enough to calmly lean in until their noses touch. “We reach that last dish in the next thirty minutes, we’ll talk prizes.”

“Call it twenty, and not so heavy on the talk part,” Tommy counters, a spark of challenge gleaming in his eyes.

It’s one Felicity will take, as she returns with an assenting tilt of her chin. Maybe she isn’t as sworn-off of hosting large dinners as she thought, if these are the stakes they’re looking at in the clean-up.

(They’re certainly better than axe-throwing.)

[obscure-sentimentalist]

Merlyn Boys: The Old enough ‘verse Chronology

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to pull together for a while: to mark the two-year anniversary of completing Old enough to know (we’re never letting go) (or Oetk for short) and kicking off the Merlyn Boys multiverse, below is a chronology of the various entries in the flagship series. This is NOT meant as a recommended reading order, particularly for new readers (I would still advise reading Oetk in its entirety first); rather, it’s more of a reference or something fun to try for a reread, if you don’t mind toggling back-and-forth between fics and chapters to read the selections in timeline order.

Selections from Oetk are listed by chapter number and section subtitle, though each chapter is only linked the first time it’s listed--there may be separate ficlets set between scenes in the same chapter, so I’d recommend keeping the Oetk chapter open for ease of access to switch back. Entries posted in the sequel collection (We can) turn this world inside out are listed by ficlet title. All titles link directly to the AO3 versions, but Tumblr links are included where available.

2008

Late May: 

Oetk Ch. 1--”May 2008″

“Foundation” [Tumblr]

2009

February 1: Oetk Ch.1--”February 2009″

June: “In a Name” [Tumblr]

July: “The More You Learn” [Tumblr]

October: Oetk Ch. 1--”October 2009″

2010

April: “Talk all day (but it’s what you show)” [Tumblr]

[Unspecified]: Oetk Ch. 1--”2010″

2011

July: “Unamusement Park” [Tumblr]

September: Oetk Ch. 1--”September 2011″

2012

August: “Fort Kickass” [Tumblr]

September/October 2012-early May 2013: Oetk Ch.1--”2012-2013″

2013

Late January:

“A night of the bad dreams (sad things)” [Tumblr]

“(Making me feel) I’m not alone” [Tumblr]

May 15: Oetk Ch. 1--”May 2013″

2014

May 15: Oetk Ch. 1--”May 2014″

2015

November: Oetk Ch. 2--”November 2015″

2016

May: Oetk Ch. 2--”May 2016″

Late May: Oetk Ch. 2--”May 2016″

2017

February 1: Oetk Ch. 3--”February 2017″

2018

May 15: Oetk Ch. 3--”May 2018″

2019

February 1: Oetk Ch. 3--”February 2019″

November: Oetk Ch. 4, Epilogue V--”Reemergence”

2020

January: “drowning in water so deep (far from the shore and the safety)” [Tumblr]

January-December: “The 2020 Merlyn Boys Holiday Calendar”

June: “Slipping” [Tumblr]

[obscure-sentimentalist]

So it’s been... a rough year for me in a few ways, but definitely writing-wise. I’m hoping that I can get back to it and get at least something down before the year’s out, so just going to put a prompt call out.

Still sticking with the mainstays of Flommy or Merlyn Boys for now, but prompts can come either from one of the lists I’ve reblogged, or just a word/sentence/trope/AU/etc. of your choice. I’ll see what I can do!

[obscure-sentimentalist]

flommy, “I have pillows, blankets, supreme comfort, and all that’s missing is you.”

[So this one’s been nagging at me for probably about a year now? It had been sitting half-started for ages, as I never really knew how to carry out the idea I had, but I did my best in coming back to it now. Bit lighter on the Flommy interactions this time, but in exchange we get Tommy and Thea siblingness and some Tommy thoughts.]

From the Comforting Cuddles starters list

“What do you think about ‘I have pillows, blankets, supreme comfort, and all that’s missing is you’?”

“Do you need me to take you to the ER?” Thea deadpans from her perch on the cushioned window seat in Tommy’s room of the hotel suite without looking up from her phone. “Because it sounds like you got one of those Hallmark cards from the airport gift shop lodged in your throat.”

Tommy slowly lowers his own phone and rolls his head towards his sister, expression settling into one of loving annoyance. “What I’m getting out of that is that I have a future in the greeting card industry.”

“The future you should be more concerned about is the one where I spin-kick you in the head before the emotional trauma of hearing my brother workshopping romantic texts to his girlfriend sets in.”

“Hey, I’m keeping it perfectly PG,” Tommy defends, pointing at Thea with his free hand for emphasis.

That finally gets her to set her phone aside and swivel in her seat to face Tommy, giving him a striking, raised-eyebrow look. “I think the subject matter automatically makes it PG-13.”

“It’s a hotel bed!” Any exasperation behind the words trips right out of the gate, stumbling into nervous laughter.

Thea just continues to stare, swinging her legs back-and-forth unevenly as her feet dangle above the floor.

“That’s… achieved the perfect ratio of softness to firmness for an excellent night’s sleep?” Tommy can feel his ears reddening as they disappear into his shoulders. “Also, those pillows. Heavenly. Remind me to check with management to find out who the supplier is, I’m going to place a personal bulk order once we get back to Starling.”

“Right,” Thea says slowly, legs finally stilling. “So the high-quality comfiness is the thing worth writing home about. No other reason why you’d express missing having a plus-one to enjoy it.”

Had his mouth not dropped open with a scandalized pop instead, Tommy might have swallowed his tongue. “Thea Dearden Queen, you’re going to stop right there before I also ask about the hotel’s highest-strength cleaning supplies and if they can be applied directly to my brain.”

“You asked for critique,” Thea reminds him, but backs off by raising her hands sarcastically in surrender. “Just pointing out insinuations you may or may not have intended. You’re welcome.”

Chagrined by both the acknowledgement that he’d asked for help and his sister’s frankness in delivering said feedback, Tommy turns his attention back to the blinking cursor in the half-filled message box. The wittiness of the greeting has dulled significantly since the lightbulb first flicked on, even without the suggestive commentary. It’s a grim admission that spurs Tommy’s thumb to find the delete key and hold, consuming the carefully-crafted words before his eyes until he’s greeted once again by blank space.

The fact that Thea’s sigh is louder than his own is what pries Tommy away from his seemingly insurmountable task with his eyebrows raised in curiosity.

“You really haven’t done this sort of thing before, have you?” Thea asks, waving a hand vaguely at the room as she sinks back against the window. “The out-of-town business trip.”

Admitting defeat (at least for the moment), Tommy tosses the phone onto the bed and crosses his arms, the corners of his mouth twitching. “I mean, if my business was pleasure...”

“So no, then,” Thea cuts in with a fond eye-roll. Her face goes soft a moment later, though, and she glances back at Tommy with a strange sort of knowingness. “Which means you especially haven’t done it when you’ve been in an actual relationship.”

Tommy offers up an entirely sheepish look. “I think that’s a given.”

Thea makes a little shrug-like expression with her lips, conceding that point. She pulls one foot up to rest on the cushion and hugs her knee to her chest, before giving Tommy another gently pointed stare. “It’s okay, you know.”

“Hmm?” Tommy rocks back on his heels as he lets the questioning hum slip, and rolls his lips under for a façade of innocence. These last few exchanges have been drawing them dangerously close to vulnerable topics—it’s still Tommy’s carefully-wired reflex to either clown about it or just play dumb.

Too bad Thea knows those moves when she sees them, and her narrowed eyes suggest that she’s still considering the earlier threat of a spin-kick in the head.

“It’s okay to miss her,” she says, stripping Tommy’s anxieties bare with a single statement.

For a split second, he thinks he might have preferred stewing in the awkward surrounding the Bed Text for just a bit longer. Incidental innuendoes are familiar territory, even if being called out for them by his younger sister adds a new layer of humiliation.

The notion doesn’t linger, though, but it’s due less to the embarrassment than it is to his brain bouncing from point to point like a pinball machine from hell. The mortification just ricochets back to the almost-slip in question, and—true to pattern as of late—propels his thoughts to a flare of fondness and Felicity. The thing that makes Tommy want to bury his face in one of the pillows that started it all, though, is the fact that the ball rebounds again to the current conversation, seemingly inescapable.

“It’s not weird?” The question comes hesitantly as he uncrosses his arms, immediately bringing one hand to rub the back of his neck. “I mean, it’s only two nights, and one already down—we’re back by tomorrow afternoon, no time at all. I feel like it’s too much, just me being unreasonably clingy.”

Experience seems to back up that impression, after all. Two years, five, more have created gulfs between Tommy and his loved ones, and even then, his longing and loneliness came off as exaggerated and one-sided.

But maybe that’s not entirely fair, he immediately scrambles to note. Oliver was working through his own problems at the time (in questionably-at-best healthy ways), caught up in a different storm of emotion and trauma that instinctively repelled Tommy—familiar magnets flipped to the same pole for the very first time. Perhaps it took more time and effort than either of them could have expected, and still never returned them to where they left off, but they did manage to establish a balance better suited to who they are now.

(Even Tommy’s being in this hotel room—as one of three co-owners of Verdant, joining Thea in exploring options for expanding the club outside of Starling—is evidence enough of that reconciliation and understanding.)

As for his father’s absence and return…

Well, any expression of emotion comes off as an overreaction when compared to Malcolm, and should not be counted.

Almost as if she senses Tommy’s once-solid evidence crumbling to dust, Thea pushes off the window seat, landing gracefully on her feet. “You’re overthinking this, especially with the texts. Just call her, all right? We don’t need to head out for at least another hour, so there’s plenty of time.”

Still lagging a little bit from trying to detangle his anxieties, Tommy nods absently in agreement as his eyes follow Thea’s movements towards the door. When she crosses the threshold to head back into the suite’s living area, though, his brain finally catches up. “Hey! How is it that you’re the one giving me relationship advice?”

Thea grips the doorframe and leans her full body back into the room, one eyebrow arched as she tilts her head to look at him.

“I mean, isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? You know, older brother’s prerogative and all?” Tommy defends weakly, wilting under the sharp stare.

“Seeing as I ended up with emotionally-constipated brothers on both sides, I think that privilege has been revoked,” Thea declares, smoothly propelling herself back upright and reaching for the doorknob. She pulls it behind her as she finally departs, but not before shooting Tommy a cheeky, “I’ll give you some privacy to relay the magical properties of a hotel bed.”

Tommy imagines his immediate response is the sound an ostrich would make if strangled. “Okay, look…”

The door closes firmly before he can get any more words out, but not fast enough that he doesn’t catch Thea’s laughter.

“Brat,” Tommy mutters affectionately under his breath, before teetering backwards to flop down on said bed. The impact bounces his phone an inch or two above the comforter, only to land face-down right next to his hip.

Tommy’s breath catches in his chest as his attention is drawn again to the device, a mere hand-twitch within reach. Hardly any effort at all to pick up, and selecting Felicity’s name from his recent call log to re-dial is no more complex a step. But his hand seems to be declining all calls from his brain, remaining unmoving at his side without even an itch in the fingertips.

He’s overreacting—he has to be, and for real this time. It’s been barely a day since his standard morning protest of Felicity’s alarm (involving an exaggerated yawn and an arm stretched across her stomach to secure her in place for just a bit longer) was met with a laugh and a set of ice-cold toes pressed to his shins in retaliation. Barely a day since Tommy lumbered past the bathroom door on his way to the kitchen and couldn’t (wouldn’t) fight the grin that bloomed upon overhearing Felicity’s murmur-singing of some earworm while getting ready. Barely a day since she’d swept into the kitchen, all color and curls, to accept the travel mug of coffee from Tommy’s hands in exchange for a soft, lingering kiss and wishes for a safe flight.

A one-day break from routine—one that’s still a few months fresh, at that—and certain comfort shouldn’t be this jarring, should it?

After all, it’s not like they’ve been completely out of contact for the last 24 hours. Tommy had passed along travel updates (and a couple pictures taken mid-flight of Thea, tuned out with her neck pillow, eye mask, and earbuds); in turn, Felicity had relayed the shift between her day and night jobs, and confirmed her safe return home following the latter. There may temporarily be a few hundred miles of physical distance between them, but Felicity is still firmly here in Tommy’s life.

And yet, he can’t help but linger on the memory of waking this morning: rolling onto his stomach and reaching across the bed, only for his arm to land flat atop a mattress completely devoid of another body’s warmth. How the confusion and pinprick of hurt struck faster than the recognition that said bed wasn’t his own and why, and the clarity only served to transform it into a yearning ache. Even brushing his teeth was a more solemn affair, with Tommy still half-listening for Felicity puttering around and starting her day.

Maybe Thea… has a point.

Before Tommy can tend to the gentle bruise to his ego from admitting his younger sister has relationship wisdom where he does not, his phone buzzes with an incoming call. Synapses finally firing as they should, his hand wraps around the device and lifts it to his face to glance at the screen.

His fingers nearly fumble and drop the phone directly onto his face when he sees Felicity’s contact photo (one he’d surreptitiously taken shortly after they’d moved in together, when he’d caught her pleasantly lost in thought at the kitchen table) and the banner requesting a video call.

Thankfully, Tommy manages to spare himself that painful landing by adjusting his grip and scooting back into a seated position against the headboard. He takes and releases a deep breath to compose himself, before his thumb finds the Accept button.

Within an instant of Felicity coming into focus, Tommy feels his lips tug into a broad smile to compliment her still-sleepy one.

“Morning,” she greets with a little finger-wiggling wave, before she pulls a steaming mug of coffee into view with her other hand. After a second, she curls her fingers into her palm and wrinkles her nose in thought. “Wow, that was weird.”

“What, saying ‘good morning’?” Tommy asks, raising an eyebrow teasingly.

Felicity mirrors the expression and throws in a shrug. “I rarely get to open with it, at least. It’s usually beat out by someone requesting that I ‘please keep hands and feet and body inside the bed at all times’.”

“Always best to take those safety messages seriously, you know,” Tommy notes sagely. He can feel the corners of his mouth twitching, threatening an even bigger smile, but the impulse immediately extinguishes once he sees Felicity worrying her lower lip between her teeth and averting her gaze in uncertainty.

“I missed it today,” she blurts, catching them both off-guard after a (seemingly agonizingly long) beat. A light flush comes to her cheeks at that, but she confidently lifts her eyes back to meet Tommy’s and amends, “I missed you. Waking up with only a tangle of blankets trying to keep me in bed, and then getting ready on my own… I mean, it’s not unusual or unfamiliar, I did get by for many years this way. But I guess going back now, after getting into new and shared habits, is stranger than I expected.”

Felicity takes a breath to duck her head a little and push a stray curl behind her ear with her free hand, before picking up steam. “It must be something about the distance that’s getting to me—for no real reason, because it’s only been the one day and you’re back tomorrow—but I wanted to call and say…”

“I have pillows, blankets, supreme comfort, and all that’s missing is you.”

Only once Felicity pauses, lips frozen in a little “O” and only a single surprised blink to prove that the connection isn’t buffering, does Tommy realize he’s landed himself right back where he started. This time, though, he’s backed by Felicity’s own testimony, and that changes the game.

The lights on the pinball machine of his thoughts are going wild, that’s for sure.

“What I mean by that,” he starts, punctuating mid-sentence by awkwardly clearing his throat, “is that I miss you too. That I was actually looking forward to cold feet on my legs this morning, and hoping to hear you singing in the bathroom, and…”

Tommy trails off, disguising a small wince. Thea’s going to be smug about this for the rest of the weekend, and almost certainly for a while after they return to Starling.

“And I think that, if we’re both feeling this way, maybe we’re not overreacting so much as we’re… on to something.”

It’s difficult to determine what that “something” is, beyond the sense that it feels right. That they—Felicity and Tommy, together—feel right, and even a temporary deviation from pattern (no matter how small or odd) is a shock to the system.

It’s okay to miss her.

Felicity remains silent on the other end—the stunned expression having melted off her face and into something more thoughtful, but much less readable. Even though their conversation up to this point made their alignment apparently clear and she’s likely just turning the implications over in her mind, Tommy can’t help but subtly squirm from the suspense.

“Yeah,” Felicity finally speaks up, lips spreading in a small, soft smile as she nods in agreement. “Maybe we are.”

Despite that being the very answer Tommy was hoping to hear, he has no immediate idea how to respond.

“Oh. Uh, good,” he fumbles. “Because I’m hoping you’ll feel the same way about these pillows if I manage to find out where they’re from and get my hands on a few.”

Something in Tommy’s chest swoops as Felicity cracks out a startled yet amused laugh. “You’re really stuck on those, huh?”

Tommy meets that with a casual shrug and pats the one next to him for emphasis. “I’m a connoisseur. These meet all the necessary criteria, and then some.”

“And I’m a tough sell,” Felicity retorts, settling back in her seat and bringing her mug to her lips. “I know what I like, and I’m seeing only one pillow here that I want for sure by the end of the weekend.” To drive the point home, she bobs her head sharply to give Tommy a once-over.

“Well, now that I will gladly arrange,” Tommy agrees, and lets the grin spread unrestrained across his face.

[obscure-sentimentalist]

Colors appear (and bleed into one): Flommy Fic Masterpost

Felt it was about time that I compiled my Flommy fics on Tumblr into one post for organization purposes. Thus far, all can be found on AO3 under the above title (and linked here).  

Connected ficlets are compiled under the same heading; they may or may not be posted consecutively on AO3, so please refer to the chapter index. Prompts are also open, and are filled over time. 

The Blanket ‘Verse

Casting On

Cute and Cuddly

Handle with Care

A mystery to solve [AO3 only]

That every doubt will disappear (we believe) [AO3 only]

Secret Relationship Flommy

Shirt and Sweet

Roped Into

Prizewinning

Home(be)coming

Mission Kissin’

Mission Kissin’

Meant to Be Broken

Assorted Standalone Flommy

Lessons in Soundtrack Selection

Constants

And let the words fall out

So hurry and happen to me

No Prescription Required

Punchline [AO3 only]

Oh I miss you (oh I miss you right away)

Team Smoarlyn

Slow Burn [AO3 only]

A Real Tearjerker [AO3 only]--NEW as of 12/24/24

[obscure-sentimentalist]

[This one was an exercise in getting back to writing some Merlyn Boys goofiness that got a little out-of-hand--a character detail I came up with as a joke decided to result in excess world-building and feelings.]

Old enough 'verse

June 2009

“You sure took your time.”

Connor rolls his eyes at his brother as he strides into the kitchen and drops the carrying tray of soft drinks on the counter. “You do recall that my first stop was the DMV, right? And that this is Gotham?”

Kicking back the kitchen chair with a screech that makes Connor wince, Tommy moseys over to the grease-stained take-out bag and begins rustling around inside. “That I did, and I’m willing to bet you’ve come out of it with a couple new gray hairs.” The hand not buried in the paper bag drifts closer and closer to Connor’s head, thumb and index finger poised like tweezers. “Look, there’s one right… ow!”

Tommy reels back, fixing Connor with an affronted stare as he shakes out his hand, the back of it rapidly pinkening from the deterring smack. The other is still inside the bag of food, which had been dragged along on the recoil, but Tommy finally extricates it along with one of the packages of curly fries.

“It was not that long,” Connor insists, lowering his hand to pop the drinks out of their tray. “Honestly, given the combination of ‘Gotham City’ and ‘DMV’, I’m surprised it went as smoothly as it did.”

Surprised and extremely grateful, for that matter. The trip was already behind schedule—a consequence of juggling all the other demands of moving to a new city for a new job (and maybe further delayed by not wanting to face the agonizingly long wait times)—and the most opportune time to cross it off the to-do list happened to overlap with Tommy dropping in for a long weekend.

It was in everyone’s—Connor, Tommy, the Gotham City DMV itself—best interest to see it through as quickly and as early into Tommy’s visit as possible. Of the two options, Connor indubitably knows to which he’d gladly focus more of his time and energy.

Still, he’s not above having a little fun at his brother’s expense, and snaps his index finger back up. “And not saying that I am, but if I ever do go gray early, I suspect you’re going to hold a sizable chunk of the blame.”

“A little souvenir to remember me by when I’m not around, little brother,” Tommy teases back around a fry or three. He doesn’t allow Connor to get in a disgusted groan at his lack of manners (much less an objection to being—falsely, surely—labeled as the younger brother yet again) before he finishes chewing and makes a grabby motion with his seasoning-coated fingers. “Now come on, big reveal time.”

Heaving a sigh, Connor pointedly scoots the stack of napkins over to his brother before reaching for his wallet. “It’s only the temporary one,” he reminds Tommy, slipping the piece of paper out of its slot. “Not the best quality printing, plus it’s in black-and-white.”

“Sure, Connie.” Tommy pats him on the back with playful condescension. “It’s adorable that you’re still keeping such high hopes for a driver’s license photo to turn out well.” At that, his hand flits off of Connor’s back to swipe the offered paper with a flourish.

Connor just grumbles at the comment, before turning his attention to emptying the rest of the take-out bag. Best to leave his brother to the fun-poking and focus instead on the burger and fries awaiting him; while the DMV trip was speedier than expected, it still left Connor more than a little famished.

The contents of their order now all laid out across the kitchen counter, Connor crumples the bag and deposits it in the trash can behind him. He gives his twin a fleeting glance as he gathers his own food, only to do a double-take at the oddly contemplative look on Tommy’s face as he examines the slip of paper.

“Oh, what, you think you’re better-looking on your license?” Connor scoffs, leaning back against the kitchen island.

While that successfully draws Tommy’s attention, Connor’s brow deepens into a frown at how his brother almost seems startled by the question.

“If I think so, then I am,” Tommy returns cheerily, carefully masking any hint of confusion or pensiveness as he raises his head. He pauses a moment after that nugget of wisdom, before flapping a hand aimlessly. “Or whatever it was À La Carte said.”

“Descartes,” Connor corrects reflexively, though he’s certain the flub was made entirely on purpose.

“See, if you were to have both the brains and the looks of this twinhood, then that would hardly be fair,” Tommy points out, making a jabbing motion with the license for punctuation. The gesture only serves to remind him of the object in question, though, and Tommy flips the printed side back towards himself. “I guess it just hit me that I didn’t know your middle name before I saw this.”

Connor is the startled one this time, taken aback by both the real reason for Tommy’s scrutiny and the realization that he indeed hadn’t shared that tidbit over the last year.

“Oh,” he stumbles, shoulders hunching as guilt begins to creep into his chest. “I mean, I really only use it for official documentation…”

“Hey, not calling you out,” Tommy interrupts, splaying his hands reassuringly. “I get it—it’s not something you normally think of sharing with people in casual conversation, long-lost family or not.”

While Connor appreciates the effort to absolve him, he still squirms a bit as he crosses his arms over his chest. “You told me yours months ago.”

Tommy’s mouth pops open soundlessly for a moment, before he makes a face to half-concede that point. “Context. It was relevant to whatever story I was telling about Dad or one of my court appearances. You know, people with power full-naming me while throwing my bad life choices back at me.”

“I do know,” Connor reminds him, meeting Tommy’s eyes with a pointed stare. One thing he’s learned about his brother over the past year is that Tommy almost compulsively plays up his flaws and past mistakes, crafting an image of himself as simply a feckless fool with too much money and not enough sense. It’s a deterrent for people who might expect more of him—a façade believable enough to be perceived as truth, and off-putting enough to discourage taking a closer look.

Tommy’s persistence in the habit around Connor, though, comes off more as a diminishing of himself to elevate and exaggerate his newfound twin’s successes. Well-meaning a gesture as it might be, Connor isn’t inclined to let certain comments slide without correction—Tommy seems to forget that, before forging his own path in medicine, Connor had his own runs afoul of the law, as well as a so-called father with plenty of grievances over his behavior.

To his dismay, Tommy just smiles brightly and deftly veers around Connor’s pushback to return to his original train of thought. “Point is, it didn’t come up before now, and that’s fine. Just means that we get to drag out the getting-to-know-you topics for a bit longer.”

Despite the cheeriness of that comment, the fact that, in a different world, the two of them would have long known such details about each other weighs heavy and unvoiced in the space between.

“I think it’s more fun that way, actually. Keeps up the element of surprise,” Tommy muses, glancing at the paper as he lifts it once more. “I mean, I sure can’t say I was expecting Prescott.”

The tone is merely curious, but Connor finds that his knee-jerk reaction to the emphasis on the name is still defensiveness. “It was my mom’s…” he starts firmly, only to snap his jaw shut as he slows down enough to think clearly.

This is his brother expressing interest, not his peers from back in Chicago—well aware of the connotations of the Rhodes name—finding another source for judgement. Likewise, mentioning his mother isn’t going to be the hard shutdown to the conversation, the way he’s always wielded it; with Tommy, it might instead be a wedge driven between them.

When Connor looks over at his brother, though, Tommy’s expression is just quietly thoughtful, not at all hurt by the response.

“Your mom’s choice?” he asks gently, taking a guess at how the sentence was meant to continue without rephrasing or otherwise reacting negatively to how Connor refers to the woman who raised him.

He’d set a precedent of referring to the Rhodeses by name with Cornelius, which was driven largely by his resentment for the man—something Connor does not harbor for Elizabeth Rhodes. Even after fully comprehending the truth of his familial relations several years after her passing, it’s always felt strange to refer to her as anything but his mother; she was the only one he’d known in those formative years, and had still held the role as best she could until the end.

In the time they’ve known each other, Tommy has never forced Connor to claim their blood family as his own—in the case of Malcolm, it’s been actively discouraged—and any shedding of ties to the Rhodes name had been in progress long before the twins met, entirely by Connor’s decision. Still, he can’t hold back the fear that clinging to something from his life before—something that makes him decidedly different from his brother (the family he claims)—will only widen the gap they’ve been working to bridge since Guadalajara.

The fact that Connor has gone and blurted it out, only for Tommy to take it in stride, shows him how irrational his worries are, and how understanding his twin truly is.

“I guess it was her choice,” Connor starts slowly, unraveling one arm from around his chest to scrub a hand over the lower half of his face. “But I meant to say that it was her maiden name. Elizabeth Prescott.”

“Yeah?” The earnest interest in Tommy’s voice continues to smack Connor with the proof that there was never any cause for concern.

Connor doesn’t immediately respond to the prompt, instead gathering his meal and motioning to the kitchen table. Tommy follows without hesitation, somehow carting his entire order back to his seat without spilling anything on Connor’s temporary license, still pinched between his fingers.

“She didn’t really have much in the way of family,” Connor continues once they’ve both settled in. “Only child, parents died fairly young, and we never heard anything from other relatives. I guess she just wanted to carry on the name in some way.”

Unlike his previous transgression, Tommy respectfully waits to echo back his question until after he finishes off the current bite of his fistful of fries. “You guess?”

“Look, I was probably eight when I asked,” Connor sighs, popping open the cardboard burger box. “I was more concerned to learn why I didn’t have a more average middle name, because kids at school were making a big deal of it.” He makes a face after a moment’s consideration. “Actually, a third of the ones in my grade had no room to talk about having a semi-snobbish middle name when their first names were no better.”

Tommy makes a painful-sounding snort at that, finally placing the license back on the table so he can clap his hand over his nose to keep his drink from shooting out. “Take it you…” he starts, coughing around his amusement as he sets his cup back down and off to the side, “...you had a Barnaby too?”

Connor cringes, but still casts his mind back. “I don’t think so. There was a Willoughby, though, all the way through high school. We all called him ‘Billy,’ obviously.”

“Obviously.”

They both take a moment to have a laugh over their parallel (if not exactly shared) experiences at private schools, as well as count themselves very lucky that only their last names overtly speak to wealth. When it dies down, though, Connor feels his grin slip into something softer and solemn.

“In hindsight, it doesn’t completely feel right to have that name,” he admits as he stares down at the tabletop, barely processing the meal in front of him. “She’d have wanted it passed along within the family, and… that’s not really me, is it? I’m just the one who ended up with it, some way or another.”

It’s one thing to claim Elizabeth Prescott Rhodes as his mother, when he hadn’t known her as anything but until well after her passing; it’s another entirely to continue to position himself as her son when an old, folded-up paper reporting DNA test results proves that she died knowing otherwise. Connor can never know for sure if he still has that right.

“Maybe so,” Tommy allows, plucking another fry out of his container and catching Connor with a pointed stare. “But you’re the only one who’s determined who Connor Prescott Rhodes is and can be. And in this case…”

True to his status as the more dramatic twin, Tommy uses the pause for effect to its fullest to scoot the temporary license back across the table and line it up directly under Connor’s nose.

“...It’s the guy who realized he has the initials ‘CPR’ and decided to become a doctor.”

Despite himself, Connor glances down at the paper and bursts into startled laughter. “That isn’t the reason why!”

“Oh, just a coincidence, huh?” Tommy swipes back, one eyebrow arched sharply. “A likely story.”

“It’s true!”

Tommy just tilts his chin up and hums in disbelief. “Well, on purpose or not—blood relation or not—I think your mom would be proud that someone with her name is carrying it on to save lives. Right?” His eyes flit back to Connor at that—still filled with a teasing glimmer, but clearly bearing the weight of his intent.

Again, Connor feels a pang in his chest at how easily Tommy jumps to lift up those around him while he fluidly dodges attempts to return the same. That’s something Connor will have to carefully tuck in the back of his mind and work to address as he spends more and more time with his brother.

For now, though, it’s best not to leave Tommy hanging.

“I want a look at your license photo now,” Connor says, pettily stealing one of Tommy’s dwindling fries even as his own remain untouched. “Because that’s some good insight from the twin who allegedly got all the looks.”

The comeback is worth the barrage of ketchup packets that follow.

[obscure-sentimentalist]

“I can’t tell if I’m in love with you or if all that cold medicine I took is finally starting to kick in.” - Flommy 🙃 (since you're in a flommy mood)

[Very sorry it took nearly a year for this one, Anon! I went back-and-forth a few times on the idea and how I wanted it to go--a good challenge!--and in the end wound up with this sweet little piece, just in time for Valentine’s Day.]

Prompt from this list

“I can’t tell if I’m in love with you, or if all that cold medicine I took is finally starting to kick in,” Felicity murmurs, soft and sleepy, as she wiggles into a comfier position under the blanket. 

“Ouch.” The light teasing in Tommy’s voice carries over the hush of his fingers skimming through Felicity’s loose curls. “Maybe it’s my ego talking, but I was kind of under the impression that the first part was a given before you even took a dose. We got a certificate of authenticity that says so and everything.”

Felicity responds with a fond eye-roll under drooping lids and blindly swats at Tommy’s shin. “Hilarious,” she deadpans back, though it comes out a bit muffled as she burrows her cheek deeper into the throw pillow on his lap. “You know what I mean.”

Tommy’s hand slips out of her hair, but before Felicity can let out a noise of complaint—inadvertently or otherwise (and not like she’d say which)—he reaches for her glasses and carefully slides them off her face before they’re knocked any more askew. 

“I don’t think I do,” he admits, bending forward just enough to deposit Felicity’s glasses on the coffee table in front of the couch. “Equating being in love with being heavily medicated can be interpreted in multiple ways. Are you saying, for example, that love is potent like maximum strength sinus pressure reliever?” At that, Tommy cranes his head down to press his lips to Felicity’s temple, before slowly leaning back against the couch once more. “Or that it goes head-to-head with antihistamines in the snooze department?”

“Mm.” Felicity dares surface a hand from the coveted warmth of her blanket to intertwine her fingers with Tommy’s and tug their arms back under. “Yes. All. But also not really.”

Tommy breathes out a laugh at the jumble of responses. “I see.”

Felicity harrumphs a little at that—both out of annoyance at her inability to make her meaning clear, and to try to clear the gross feeling in her throat. “First part’s fair. Second, I can tell you asked that in a ‘you’re-boring-so-I’m-gonna-conk-out’ way, and while that’s the wrong idea, you do help me sleep. Which is why I’m all turned-around.”

Tommy just lets out a soft, curious hum in response, settling into a calm stillness save for the repetitive brush of his thumb over the side of Felicity’s.

“I’m not sure if the meds are why I’m already feeling better, or if it’s because you’re here with me,” she finally gets out, cracking one eye open and rolling her head on the pillow just enough to peer back at Tommy. She purses her lips in consideration after a moment. “Same thing with the sleepiness. My sinuses are either super-charged to dry out, or your lap is the coziest place in the world right now.”

It’s a little hard to make out his features with vision fuzzy from both over-the-counter medicine and the lack of prescription lenses, but Felicity knows Tommy’s face well enough to recognize a smile in the blur.

“I’m caught between feeling humbled or a little miffed by the fact that that title is expressly for ‘right now’,” he confesses, “but I’m all for the continued testing of the healing powers of both my lap and presence.”

Felicity snorts—probably not the best idea with all the head pressure—and rolls back into position on the pillow. “Good, because there isn’t an opt-out button. You’re staying put.” 

Tommy doesn’t resist at all as Felicity draws their still-linked hands to her chest and curls up tighter on the couch. “Wouldn’t dream of doing anything else.”

[obscure-sentimentalist]

merlyn boys (any flavor). “This is an intricately constructed blanket fort. It’d be a shame if it went to waste.”

[...This somehow turned into nearly 1.4K of brotherly banter, and never managed to gain an actual plot.]

From the Comforting Cuddles Starters list

Old enough ‘verse

August 2012

“Tommy.”

“Mmhmm?”

“When you said you wanted to stay for the week, I was more than happy to have you, but I did stipulate that you’d need to help out a bit while I’m at work.”

There’s a faint clank of metal on teeth, then a popping noise as Tommy frees the spoon from his mouth. “And I was more than happy to comply,” he points out, waving both the spoon and the now-empty yogurt container. “See? Did a grocery run, per your request.”

“And I appreciate that,” Connor says, keeping his voice level. His gaze lifts from his brother sitting cross-legged on the living room carpet and scans over the cloth monstrosity that’s consumed his furniture. “But ‘take every sheet and blanket I own and toss them all over the place’ was definitely not one of the suggestions I had.”

Tommy points the spoon again in acknowledgement, before setting it and the yogurt on top of the paper towel on the coffee table. “No, no it was not. This was something I decided to throw in free of charge, because I am such a considerate brother. I can assure you, it’s the most beneficial thing I could possibly do for you.”

“Do enlighten me.” 

“Oh, I will. Because this?” Tommy sweeps his arms dramatically over his head, grazing the heather gray flannel sheet canopied above him. “This is an intricately constructed blanket fort. It’d be a shame if it went to waste.”

“A blanket fort,” Connor repeats slowly, crossing his arms. The corners of his eyes twitch after a moment’s consideration. “Well, you’ve had stupider ideas.”

“I… am not going to deny that,” Tommy jabs his finger at Connor to punctuate, “but I do resent the implication that this counts among them. After all my hard work…” He sighs, more for dramatic effect than out of actual hurt, but otherwise doesn’t budge from his spot. 

Alright, Connor’ll bite.

“So, what’s your pitch?” He steps closer, slow and careful, and stops just shy of the fort’s opening. “How is this supposed to be helpful for me? From where I’m standing, it only looks like a hassle to clean up.” Connor pauses a moment, craning his head to peer under the canopy and into the depths of the fort itself. “You better not have dismantled anything in making this, by the way.”

Tommy holds up his hand in solemn promise. “As much as assembling furniture has a way of bringing people together…”

“Tearing them apart, more like it.”

The raised hand turns into another sharp finger-point. “That only happens if you let the incoherent instructions win.” Tommy calmly lowers his hand to his side and gets them back on track. “But we don’t need to worry about that, because no bookshelves were harmed in the making of this fort. Moved some chairs and appropriated the couch cushions for other purposes, and that’s it—simple enough to put back in order.”

Connor just responds with a flat hum: accepting the conditions, but still not sold. “Again, the point of this?”

Something goes soft in Tommy’s expression, and he leans back against one of the repurposed couch cushions. “Did you ever have one of these, growing up?”

Connor has to actually take a moment and think back, brushing through the thick cluster of cobwebs that’s obscured a number of childhood memories (and which he hadn’t exactly taken measures to prevent). “We would have still been really young, both under ten,” he starts slowly, brow furrowing as the sun-faded recollections surface, “but I think Claire and I made a couple small ones in our rooms, on rainy summer days. D- Cornelius felt strongly about keeping the living room as pristine as one would look in a showroom, so our options were kind of limited.” 

He can’t help the bitterness that slips into his tone at that detail, a telling depiction of the man who (in a very loose sense of the term) raised him and his preoccupation with the Rhodes family’s image.

Tommy closes his eyes and nods sagely at that. “So, about what I expected—it’s been a long time, and you never really got to enjoy the full experience.” Eyes opening once more, he spreads his arms like a showman, complete with a matching grin. “That changes now.”

While that does get Connor to crack a smile of his own and crouch down—not quite ready to duck under the blanket tent, but more receptive—Tommy still hasn’t answered his question in full. “Why now?”

The cheery entertainer’s mask falters like a buffering video, before Tommy lets it slip for good to reveal the quiet, earnest face underneath. “I know I didn’t time this trip well,” he starts, settling against the cushion to look back at Connor. 

Sensing where his brother might be going with this, Connor cuts in with a hasty shake of his head. “We planned this all out well ahead of time. I took a few extra shifts last week in exchange for some of mine being covered while you’re in town.” He shrugs. “I just wasn’t able to take the full week off, and that was beyond our control.”

“Still,” Tommy is quick to fire back, “you had a week with a heavier workload, and no downtime between that and my blowing into town.” He makes a V with his fingers and flicks them between his eyes and Connor’s. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that you’re not burnt out and need a quiet evening.”

That’s a challenge if Connor’s ever heard one—especially given the truth of the accusation—and for as natural as it is for him to rise to it… maybe he’ll let his twin have this win.

(Just this once.)

“Alright, move over,” he sighs, exaggeratedly grudging, as he drops to the carpet and scoots back to join Tommy. “Like you said, could at least get some use out of it before taking it down.”

Tommy’s grin is all too smug as Connor settles in the fort, but he holds his tongue and instead reaches for a small bucket of beer bottles tucked to his right. 

Connor’s eyebrows shoot to his hairline as Tommy rolls back to center and offers up one of the two beers in his hand. “Pretty sure this isn’t part of the usual blanket fort experience.” 

“It’s an adaptation,” Tommy amends, passing the bottle and opener. “If this were truer to form, we’d have a much more expansive—and probably structurally unsound—fort on our hands.” He purses his lips in the facial equivalent of a shrug, accepting the bottle opener from Connor and popping the cap on his own beer. “I decided to go for something more sophisticated, better suited to us in our advanced age.”

Connor comes uncomfortably close to discovering how it feels to shoot beer out of his nose, but manages to avoid it with a hasty swallow. “You. Sophisticated. Right,” he ekes out, voice strained as he clears his throat of rogue alcohol. 

Tommy meets that comment with a friendly shove. “And here I was going to leave you the honor of naming our beautiful fort.”

“It gets a name, now?” Another deep cough, and Connor turns towards his brother with an eyebrow arched in suspicion. “What, are we going to spend the night hanging out in Fort Kickass, or something equally refined?”

Tommy’s face goes disconcertingly contemplative at that. “I think I just changed my mind.”

“Wait, no…”

“I mean, I had ideas, but look at you, Connie, coming up with a real winner right away!”

“That was a— !”

Tommy definitively cuts off Connor’s rebuttals by hoisting his beer and shooting Connor a pointed glance. “To Fort Kickass, and an evening of just chilling.”

As chagrined as he is that the name sarcastically thrown out is going to stick, it just doesn’t feel right for Connor to leave his brother hanging.

“To Fort Kickass,” he finally agrees as he lifts his own bottle, “and to looking out for each other when we need it most.”

Connor can’t fight the smile that comes to his face at the approving clink of their glasses, especially when he sees it mirrored back at him on Tommy’s.