likeahero | [For Derek, June 29]

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derek,
in-game

[For Derek, June 29]

Wrapping up at Semele's the night before hadn't taken long, and Oliver was happy to call it an early night and take Felicity home after Thea left with a quick goodbye. It was nice to have nights like that, where he got to simply be with Felicity and Thea -- to hang out at a friend's bar with those he loves most and do normal things. Those sorts of moments are becoming more common in his life, and the only thing that really stands between Oliver and Thea anymore is the Arrow.

He isn't sure if he's going to tell her yet. Though he saw a possible future in that Seeing Stone where she didn't turn away from him or hate him for it, he isn't sure he can take the chance on telling her. Thankfully, the Arrow doesn't get much press at all, and Thea probably hasn't put two and two together yet.

Not having seen Derek leave the night before, Oliver shoots him a text after his usual workout at Off the Wall. Coffee, breakfast, whatever would work. He knew how to be friends with Porthos, had fallen into a comfortable routine with the musketeer (one that usually involved either punching or drinking), but he was in the midst of figuring out how to be friends with Derek.

It still startles him from time to time to think about the relationships he's forged here, friendships made just by being himself. Maybe it's not a complete version of himself, not the whole that only Felicity ever sees, but it's an improvement from his first two years after returning to Starling.

After a quick shower and a brief call to set up a lunch date with Felicity, Oliver heads out. It's still a little strange to be doing this, to be going through the motions of what normal people do -- have beers, hang out, drink coffee -- but he finds he's missed it a little. Maybe he'll never have the same friendship he ever had with Tommy, and not having Digg around is like missing a limb, but this can be good enough.

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Derek is just leaving Thea's, freshly showered and dressed in the same clothes he wore the night before, with a chapstick smear on his cheek and a full belly, when his phone buzzes in his pocket. He's a little surprised to see that it's Oliver asking him out for coffee, but he's pleased. He shoots back an affirmative and the name of a coffee shop and heads in that direction with a smile on his face.

The previous night with Thea had been eye-opening, in a few ways. For the first time in long time, Derek let go. He had fun, and for a few blissful hours, he was able to forget about all the things weighing him down. He felt light, completely unburdened, and she'll never know how grateful he is to her for that.

He's still in high spirits when he arrives at the coffee shop, lifting a hand in greeting when he sees Oliver out front. Derek nearly laughs at the situation, like he has a normal social life. Like he's normal, period.

"Hey, man." Derek steps up to Oliver with an easy smile on his face, looking relaxed and loose in the same clothes he saw him in last. Soon, everything will come flooding back in and that lightness will be gone. Soon, he'll be back to his normal.

But he's going to do his best to enjoy it while it lasts.

Oliver takes one glance at Derek, from his clothes to his smile and the weirdly relaxed set of his shoulders, and shakes his head, an amused smile on his face. For a brief moment, Oliver can see teenage Derek and this Derek as the same person.

"It looks like there's a reason you completely disappeared from the bar last night."

"Yeah." The tips of Derek's ears turn red and he huffs out a laugh at being caught out so quickly. It's obvious by his reaction that this isn't something he does often, and he shrugs his shoulders as he ducks his head to hide a smile. "A pretty good reason."

He schools his expression into something a bit more neutral, if still more relaxed than usual, and hooks his thumb over his shoulder before turning to pull the door open for Ollie. "Thanks for coming out, by the way."

Derek's reaction is so different to the way Oliver remembered he and Tommy had celebrated taking a girl home -- something to be cheered and celebrated before moving on to the next night, the next girl. If the island did one good thing for him, it was killing that version of Oliver Queen for good.

"Nah, thank you for showing up. Felicity's at work and I felt like some company." He shakes his head and gives Derek's back a light slap before going through the door and into the chill of the coffee shop. The smells assault him right away, and he wonders how it must be like for Derek to step into the place. Oliver hadn't actually thought that through.

"I meant last night, but this is good too," Derek says with a laugh, and he smiles when Ollie claps him on the back. They might have met under Darrow-standard circumstances, as a vigilante and a werewolf in an alley, but he;s glad they're becoming friends like this. He might not know what the hell he's doing, but he's still happy to try.

They enter the coffee shop and Derek takes in the scents, coffee on top of sugar and cologne and perfume, all these people getting ready for their day, and he raises an eyebrow at the look on Oliver's face. "What?"

Oliver lifts his hand, one finger out as he twirls it in a gesture to include the entirety of the shop. "I didn't think about how much it smells in here," he says, making sure his voice is low enough so only Derek can hear. He drops his hand back down and shuffles forward toward the counter to join a line. "Does it bother you?"

Now that he has some semblance of understanding and can think about werewolves and vampires and everything else as existing within this reality, Oliver finds himself curious.

That definitely isn't what Derek is expecting. The question surprises him and he finds himself, for some reason, touched by it. It isn't often that someone tries to understand what it's like to be in his shoes, and he smiles in amusement.

"I like the smell of coffee, so no," Derek starts with a smirk, ducking his head in closer and lowering his voice. "All the scents can be overwhelming, but you get used to it. And I can hear things up to a quarter mile away, if I'm trying. Eventually you just sort of have to let it all become background noise."

Derek looks around, pointing at a man in a business suit drinking surreptitiously from a travel mug. "That guy has whiskey in his coffee." When he turns his head again, he gives Oliver a teasing smirk. "And your hair smells like mangoes. Bold choice."

Oliver's learned to use his own senses to the best he can, but having that sort of ability would make things a touch easier, if a little chaotic to start. Tempting as it sounds, seeing Slade was all the convincing Oliver ever needed to keep himself the way he was.

He looks over at the man Derek nods toward, and resists the urge to elbow Derek like a child when he turns back at the mention his hair. "I ran out of shampoo and used Felicity's. I happen to like the way it smells."

"Whatever makes you feel beautiful," Derek replies easily, laughing a bit and stepping up to order his coffee. "And it's okay, mine smells like apples."

He slides off to the side after he pays and leans against the counter, fiddling with the CDs on display and waiting for Oliver to make his own order. He does smell like apples, and a little like vanilla. It's sort of an assault to his senses, but he likes it for how it reminds him of the previous night.

Oliver snorts and resists the urge to run a hand over his hair. Instead he watches the cashier as she interacts with Derek, finding it amusing to see what that sort of stare looks like when it isn't directed at him. He used to enjoy the attention, but now it makes him feel noticed, uncomfortable.

When he's done with his order, Oliver joins Derek by the counter, arms across his chest and amusement in his face. "Apples?"

"You're not the only one who had to use a beautiful woman's shampoo this morning," Derek tells him with a pleased smile, pushing away from the counter to grab his coffee. The girl behind the counter is staring at them hard enough that Derek can smell the want on her, so when Oliver's cup is set down, Derek tugs him away by the elbow to a table around the corner.

Oliver follows, giving the barista a brief smile before they wander off, glad to be out of sight. He moves one of the chairs around the table before sitting down, putting his back to the wall and giving the place a quick scan before turning his attention back to Derek. "Are you gonna tell me about her, or just sit there grinning the whole time?"

Derek huffs slightly when Oliver takes the spot against the wall, but he supposes that out of two overly cautious fighters, the one without enhanced senses can take the better vantage point. He sits down across from Oliver and shrugs before taking a sip of his coffee. It's too hot and it burns his tongue, but it heals before he even sets the cup back down.

"I'd only met her once before last night. Ran into outside her gym. I think it's the same one you go to, that Off the Wall place?" Derek smiles at the memory of meeting Thea, and how her attitude had interested him even then. "Then last night she showed up and we were talking. She started showing me how to make drinks, and it kind of spiraled from there."

He shrugs again, not really wanting to go into more detail. What happened is between him and Thea. "It was fun. It's been-- well, a long time since I've done anything like that."

He nods, understanding some aspect of that. It had been a good two years after his return to Starling before he could even contemplate something as unguarded as he has with Felicity. With Helena, with McKenna, with Laurel, Oliver had always been cautious, keeping part of himself locked away. Being with Felicity had taken most of that guard down, something Oliver is still occasionally surprised about.

"What did she look like? Maybe I saw her last night."

"She's kind of petite, shortish brown hair, pretty eyes," Derek tells him, smiling a bit as he takes another sip of his coffee. "Her name's Thea."

Derek makes a face down at his cup and then gets up, heading over to grab some sugar packets and sit back down. He's always had a bit of a sweet tooth, and it's not like he has to worry about the calories.

Little things begin to click the moment Derek says Thea's name, connections made as a cold calm falls over Oliver, pausing his movements. Thea's smile when she'd returned with her beer, Derek leaving early, moments Oliver should have picked out and put together to get a whole picture he could fill in. He shouldn't have needed it spelled out like this, but Oliver is so often blind when it comes to his sister, and much, much too over protective.

Calm as Oliver appears on the outside, Derek can probably sense it by now, the cold giving way to a white hot temper flaring through his veins.

Derek, his friend, slept with Thea. His sister. His little sister. Thea had known Derek was his friend. Derek should have known she was his sister -- however it was he figured things out, he should have known.

And he'd been happy for Derek.

"Thea Queen?"

His voice is low, the Queen laced with a fraction of the anger that Oliver is finding very hard to understand or control. Thea is a grown up, she can do what she wants, but there are some lines Oliver still finds very hard to erase when it comes to her.

Derek is ripping open a third sugar packet when he freezes at the intense rage that's suddenly, unarguably, being directed at him. He's bent over, vulnerable nape exposed, and his hackles raise as he slowly lifts his head and ducks his chin on instinct.

He's confused and he has no idea why Oliver is suddenly so angry at him, angry enough that Derek's lip curls back over his teeth in response before he schools his features.

But then Oliver says Thea's name so intensely, so possessively, and everything clicks. Oliver mentioned having a sister in the city, and Derek just slept with her.

"Your sister," Derek says regretfully, closing his eyes for just a moment before they snap back open. He keeps his voice as calm as he can, but it's low and strained. "I didn't know."

Derek's greatest talent has always been destroying things important to him without even trying, and his chest aches just a little to think that his burgeoning friendship with Oliver might now be just another thing to add to that ever-growing list.

"My baby sister," Oliver clarifies. He's abandoned his drink to put his hands in his jacket pockets, fingers working open and closed as though wanting something to clutch and a target to point at.

He has no room at the moment to appreciate that Derek looks upset about the revelation. He only wants to leave before he says something that can't be taken back. As angry as he is, Oliver knows that he's being a touch irrational-- but that doesn't stop him from feeling it all, and for five years his reaction to an overload of emotion had been to shut it down, or lash out if he couldn't.

Neither is an option right now.

"I'm going to leave before I do something I shouldn't," he tells Derek, chair making a scraping sound as he stands.

Derek flinches, because he remembers what it's like to be a big brother. He may not be one anymore, but he still remembers. It doesn't matter that it was Thea who started it, or that it was her choice to make. Oliver won't care.

He wonders idly if part of Oliver's strong reaction is because Derek is a wolf, if maybe he's good enough to be friends with, but not more than that. Derek's good mood is effectively soured, and it's a sad testament to his life that he's thankful he got a whole entire night.

Oliver gets up and Derek just nods, looking down at where his fingertips are pressing into the fake-wood tabletop. He wants to say that that Thea is a grown woman who can make her own choices, but he doubts that it would do any good.

"Fine," Derek says flatly, shoulders slumping dejectedly as he pushes his coffee away. Maybe he was right in his initial assumption that sex brings him nothing but trouble, and he should just accept that it isn't worth bothering. It never seems to end well.

A sliver of regret slips through as Oliver watches Derek, but he leaves without saying another word. It's too easy to do so, to leave something behind to deal with later -- if at all. But Oliver likes Derek too much to let go of his self-restraint.

Instead, he pulls his phone out and calls Thea as soon as he pushes the door open. When her voicemail comes up, Oliver hangs up and texts Thea instead. Just a quick I'm coming over with no explanation and no checking to see if she's actually home.

He'll wait in the hall all day if he has to.

When he makes it to her building, Oliver takes the stairs two at a time until he hits her floor. The anger has dissipated somewhat on the walk over, only to be replaced with a very familiar frustration that only Thea can bring about.

He knocks, hard. "Thea! It's Ollie."

The morning has been a very good one. Thea might be short on sleep after the night she's had, but Derek made her breakfast and now she has the day to do absolutely nothing. It's something she's looking forward to, feeling deep-down content for the first time in weeks.

She hasn't actually looked at her phone, but having Ollie show up at her door isn't that big a surprise. "Hey big brother," she says with a grin, leaning against the door as she swings it open. "I just made coffee if you want some."

The fact that Thea looks so happy should give Oliver pause, but he only has to think of Derek being the reason for that and he grimaces.

"Derek?" he asks Thea, disbelief lacing the anger in his voice as he jumps right into it. "You only met him last night, Speedy."

"Then that's a no for coffee?" She sighs and turns, leaving the door open so he can come in if he chooses. Thea feels like a little girl who's lost her balloon; one moment happy and blissful and the next distraught as she watches something she'd loved even briefly float up toward the clouds.

She stops when she hits the kitchen, going through the motions of making her coffee deliberately. Each movement is a way for her to focus, a meditation and a reminder not to yell at her brother and remind him the myriad of ways this is none of his business. She wonders, not for the first time, what Ollie would do if he knew she'd learned this from Merlyn.

"Actually," she says as she adds the milk, her voice dangerously calm and even. "I have met him before last night, not that it's any of your concern."

Oliver closes the door behind him and follows, not surprised at Thea's reaction. She's always met his (sometimes unwarranted) concern and frustration with a sigh, something he's done his best to get used to over the past couple of years. It's still hard sometimes to remember that she no longer the little girl he'd last seen before Lian Yu.

"My little sister slept with my friend, Thea. It's a little hard to not be concerned."

"Do you really want to do this? Make a lIst of people I can and can't speak to?" She'd done a lot more than talk with Derek, but the principle is sound in her mind.

Thea starts to silently count to ten, only making it to five before she speaks again. "Where does Roy fall on that list? What about my father if he showed up here? Should I run everyone past you?"

"That's not what I want to do," Oliver protests, and he's about to keep going when she speaks again, except the words my father stop him cold.

She'd been angry, so angry about being lied to for so long, and then as she came to with what it meant to be Malcolm Merlyn's daughter. To have lost Tommy without realizing he was her brother, to be related to that man.

"I'd hope you wouldn't want anything to do with Malcolm."

"Does it matter what I want, or does it matter what you want, Ollie?" Thea puts the mug down carefully and deliberately. There's so much time between them and so much she wants to say to him about those months. She wants to tell him that they've had this fight already, and that family was important to her, all of her family. She wants to tell him that Malcolm was the one who showed her how to be safe; to take care of herself. She's always hated Ollie's secrets, but now here she is with secrets of her own.

"He's my family, and I don't have a lot of that left. None of us do."

"I want you safe, Thea. That's all I've ever wanted." It had been necessary to do what he did in the past to keep her safe, though Oliver knows being so secretive only backfired in the end and he though he'd lost a link to his sister that he'd only just gotten back.

He knew Thea was a grown up and had a mind of her own, but he'd never expected this.

"Family?" The man had so much blood on his hands, including that of his own son. "Dad loved us, Thea. He loved both of us. More than you or I ever knew."

"Dad lied to us, and so did mom. But I guess so did you. It must run in the family." There's a part of her that's still hurt by all of that betrayal, something she rarely lets herself feel. She forgave her mother, she tells herself, but forgiving and letting go are two different things.

"Everyone who's said they loved me left me. Roy, you, when things fell apart you were never there." Thea is saying the things she swore she wouldn't, but she was angry now. "It was Malcolm who saved me in Starling. Malcolm who showed me how to not be afraid any more. He may not be perfect, but none of us are."

Queens did have a tendency to lie to each other, something Oliver had never realized until he returned and had to live his own lie. He knows the lies hurt Thea, and he remembers her saying as much right before the crash. They hadn't really had much time to talk after that, other than saying goodbye.

The Arrow gone on to saved the city and they'd stopped Slade and his army, but Oliver hadn't even known his own sister had been in danger. "I thought you'd left," he tells her, the strength in his voice fading with each word. "I didn't know you were still in Starling, Thea. I would have come for you."

"Sure. Right after you finished doing whatever it was that was more important than your family. Again." The words are more cutting than she intends them to be, but he's apologised and promised what seems like a hundred times. He always means it, and Thea always forgives him.

"You're my brother and I love you Ollie, but this is my life, not yours."

As much as it pains him to hear those words, Oliver knows that every single one of them is the truth. He's always set his family aside for the sake of his mission, to do what's right, and he'd practically lost Thea in the process.

Maybe now that there isn't something pulling him away from Thea every moment of every day, he can open up to her.

"You're right." About every little bit of it. "I'm sorry, Thea. You're the only one I have left, and I just...I want you to be safe. And happy."

"I know you do." The thing is, she does know it. She knows that he's here because he cares and that no matter how many times they have this fight it will always end the exact same way. Those years apart hurt them both, and put a distance between them, and the years since haven't treated them that well either. "So can we not do this again? Fight?"

Oliver hesitates to say yes, because he knows himself. He knows that saying so will only end in yet another broken promise to Thea, and he doesn't want to add yet another bit of space between them, nor does he want to have her be hurt and still forgive him in the end.

"I promise to try, Speedy." Needing to make sure they're okay, Oliver pulls her into a hug and kisses the top of her head. "We're both pretty stubborn so I can't say we'll never fight, but I'll do my best."

"Life would be easier if you just agreed with everything I said," she says sweetly, letting him pull her close. That will never happen, and she's not always right. She knows that too. For now, however, it feels like their fight has passed, and she can pretend for a little while things are all okay.

"Keep on dreaming," Oliver responds with a laugh as he lets her go. They probably won't ever be constantly happy, not with their parents gone and with so many secrets still between them, but for now, Oliver is simply glad to have Thea around.

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[For Derek, June 29]

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