#OlicityHiatus Fic-A-Thon

[olicitysmoaky]

“Look at Me” -- Rated G

Part of the Olicity Hiatus Fic-A-Thon by @thebookjumper whom I recently love and adore. This is my first submission. 

Week 2 Prompt: Eye Contact

Fluuuuuuff Alert!  

Summary: Shy version of Felicity is No-Island Oliver's tutor over the summer in this college AU fic set in Boston. 

You may also read this at AO3

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Felicity Smoak may have been a lot of things: a genius, a straight-A student, a surprisingly well-balanced daughter from a broken home and of an overly flirtatious cocktail waitress who wore dresses that some thought might be better suited for a different line of work. Felicity was a good girl, but for all of that goodness came something else, too. It could be spelled out in one simple word really: awkward.

It was the end of junior year at MIT, and Felicity was the ripe old age of eighteen. She‘d mastered the art of pretending she was comfortable in situations she wasn’t, but she had a feeling there was more to it than just having to pretend. She knew that she could learn to feel more at ease with people. And to Felicity what it all boiled down to was eye contact. She’d gotten good at making herself make eye contact in a general sense, but boy did she hate doing it when it came to three types of people: extremely self-assured popular kids, rich people, and really hot guys. Unfortunately for her, Oliver Queen was all three. And this year, Felicity had taken a summer job tutoring the 23-year-old Harvard super senior so she could stay in Boston and take extra classes to graduate early.

It was their fifth lesson, and instead of their usual spot in the library, Oliver suggested they meet at his favorite cafe. She expected a run-of-the-mill coffee shop but was surprised to walk into a space with amazing art work hanging on every wall dotted with warm lights filling the room from the ceiling. Hair pulled back in her typical long blonde ponytail, Felicity found far too gorgeous for his own good Oliver sipping from a big green mug at one of the back tables.

When he spotted her, he waved her over. Felicity, who was wearing the new yellow sundress she’d convinced herself she was buying because she needed new summer clothes, started toward him. She smoothed down the flared skirt. The new purchase had nothing to do with the fact that she’d only decided to go shopping after Oliver had asked her to meet her elsewhere for their tutoring session yesterday.

He wore a navy blue Henley and jeans. She would say it made him look particularly sexy, but pretty much anything he wore did that, so... “I hope you don’t mind meeting here,” Oliver said, standing up and holding her chair out her. The gesture made her breath catch. She realized that no one in her life had ever held out a chair for her before. It took her by surprise and made her blush. “I’m also sorry I ordered coffee before you got here. Long day. Would you like something? It’s on me, of course.” He sat down, hands folded on the table, his closed international economics text book on the surface beside him as if only a fixture.

Felicity blinked, blushing as her blue eyes slid up to his for the first time since she’d arrived. She tried not to overly blink and look away. She hated when she did that, but it was so damn hard not to when he was staring at her with that face of his. The damn smirk, the perfect stubbly jaw. Why was the world so damn cruel?

“Felicity?”

“Oh, um, no…it’s okay. You don’t have to. I mean I know it’s like nothing to you money-wise to pay for something like a simple meal, but…I really need to consider what I am about to say it before I say it sometimes. I didn’t mean to sound like I’d be ungrateful, but…”

“Whatever you’re comfortable with,” he said, smiling softly. He was trying to kill her now. There was no way she could keep looking him in the eye and not melt into the chair as she slowly died of utter humiliation.

“I’ll have a chai tea and a tuna sandwich – wait, I shouldn't get tuna. It’s…” She stopped herself from saying it would be too smelly. But it was her favorite. “I’ll have a bagel and homemade cream cheese instead.”

“You’re in for a treat,” said Oliver. “They make the bagels themselves here, too.”

Felicity looked up at him. “Really? I love when places do homemade things. It’s always so…homey.” She smiled. To her surprise, she held his eyes for more than half a second…and she’d survived. In fact, it sort of felt good. Oliver got up, placed their orders, paid, then set a number on their table: 6.

Felicity smiled. She felt good. Clear. She was hanging out with her client turned possible friend. All was well. “So," she started, "Do you want to eat first then study or…” Then Oliver had to ruin the whole damn she was nearly relaxed thing by suddenly reaching across the table and touching the sides of her glasses with his index fingers. He caressed the edges with them!  Felicity’s eyes went wide, but she didn’t moved. Forget looking away, now her eyes seemed glued to his. What the hell was he doing? Trying to kill her. That was the answer.

“Can you see up close without them?” he wondered quietly.

“Yes, it’s just far away that I can’t… I know they make me look like a geek.”

“I was thinking more like sexy but adorable librarian-in-training.”

“In training?” She cleared her throat; he still had not dropped his hands.

“Yeah, you’re only what? 19?” he asked, his soft voice doing something to her insides she really needed to get a hold of. Control, Felicity. You're a big girl.

“Will be in August.”

“May I…?” He gave her glasses a tug but did not move them further until she nodded her consent. Felicity just went ahead and gave herself a break from his intensity and snapped her eyes shut as he pulled her glasses off. Fraaaaaaack! It did not work because her other senses picked up. God, he smelled almost better than he looked. And his fingers brushed the base of her eyelids when he gripped the hinges to keep her glasses from falling. That sent sizzles from the little patches of skin he'd touched and washed them over the rest of her body. She would not sigh. She would not at all.

“Frack, huh?”

Felicity’s face burned. “Oh no. Really? I said that? Of course, I did.” She looked down at the table, then cleared her throat. “We should study. I mean, I should wear my glasses, but I don’t have to.”

Before the conversation could get any worse, their food arrived. Oliver ordered himself a health muffin because of course he would. But never mind about that. Oh God was this good. Felicity bit into the warm cream-cheese adorned bagel and moaned. She looked up as she heard Oliver’s sharp intake of breath. If she didn’t know better she’d say she’d caught him biting his lower lip for a second. “So, um, I guess we can study after we eat.”

Oliver licked his lips, eyes locked on her mouth. “You look good in cream cheese.”

Awkward as always. She sighed and licked her lips several times, trying to clear away any excess globbiness. “Gone?” He just kept staring at her mouth. Her belly warmed, and her chest tingled.  “Oliver.”

Her voice seemed to snap him out of his haze. “Yeah?”

She looked at him with a short giggle. “I thought I lost you.”

His eyes locked on hers and a full-grin spread across his lips. “There you are.”

“What?”

“I’ve just been wanting to see those eyes since the first night we met.”

Felicity frowned and tried really hard to not look away. “You’ve seen my eyes.”

“I’ve seen them, but this is… you know, contact.”

Felicity pressed her lips together and nodded.

“So, now that we’ve made contact,” he said, and for the first time Felicity noticed that Oliver seemed a bit nervous. “Would you…like to go out to dinner with me?”

Felicity looked around the café and gestured around. “This is kind of like dinner.”

“It’s a study date.”

“But it’s a date?”

“Well, no,” Oliver said, causing Felicity’s heart to drop. What had she been thinking? There was no way Oliver was interested in her. But he’d just asked her out to dinner…then denied being on a date with her.

“I just…It’s our tutoring time, and you’re still on the clock.”

Felicity reached over and pulled his text book to her. “Well, I was trying to get you to start studying. You’re the one with the bagels and the glasses and the lip-staring.” Oh, God. She really wanted to take that last one back, but she wouldn’t. He was clearly flirting. She held his gaze firm, strong.

Oliver sighed and dipped his head. Now he was avoiding eye contact. What was with them? “Oliver, we’re being really stupid.”

He laughed out loud. “You could never be stupid," he stated firmly, then seemed to sober as he mulled over what he wanted to say next. "It’s why…I want to take you out. I want to get to know you outside of just studying, and I was scared…I mean not scared, but you know. Do you want to go with me?”

“Wow. I’m the one who’s supposed to talk in sentence fragments.”

He shrugged a shoulder. “It’s okay if you don’t want to.”

“No. I want to. I do.”

“Great,” Oliver said, standing up to go after placing a tip on the table. “By the way, I got an A on my econ quiz thanks to you. Classes are canceled for the next week. I just wanted to see you today, look you in the eye and ask you in person.”

“Oh, Oliver. That’s…so sweet.”

Oliver scratched the back of his neck bashfully. God, she should have been looking at him more directly before. She might have seen the adorable nervous puppy in the muscle-bound form of Oliver Queen much earlier. She loved it. “Can I pick you up at your place tonight at eight?”

“Yes.”

Oliver grinned from ear to ear. Then before she knew what was happening, he leaned down and kissed her cheek. He stopped, still very close to study her eyes. She’d never noticed the different layers of blue in his. He reached out and cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking once, then twice. “See you tonight, Felicity.”  

Then he was gone. That was the afternoon Oliver Queen cured Felicity Smoak of her eye contact woes. That night, under the stars on a boat ride, he kissed her, and she couldn’t stop staring at him. She hoped he wouldn’t break her heart, but she trusted him – there was just something in his eyes. 

@miriam1779 @hope-for-olicity