8A\N: This will be a collection of short drabbles. I'll pretty much post whenever I decide to write seven hundred words on a whim again. Feel free to prompt me. :)
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Arrow.
Oliver didn't always shoot straight.
He'd have loved to blame her, but to do so he'd have had to admit the something they shared had somehow turned into The Something They Shared. And that it might have enough pull on his life to affect his archery.
He couldn't do that. He'd spent years constructing his Fortress of Brooditude. He wasn't about to tear it all apart because he couldn't keep it in his pants.
Because he could. He so could. Just watch him… coulding.
(He'd never claimed to have a way with words, still didn't, but he fancied himself a word-maker anyway. Because he'd invented the word 'word-maker', just like he'd invented 'Broditude' and 'coulding', and he was claiming the position for himself first, damn it.)
The arrow zoomed a good three inches to the left of the crack on the wall he was aiming for and ended up embedding itself right above his jacket – it might have skinned a couple of loose threads.
Diggle whistled because he could still impress him sometimes (especially, it seemed, when he was so impressive that other people couldn't tell when he missed), but Felicity seemed too preoccupied to spare him or the arrow more than a fleeting glare.
Frankly, so was he.
That stupid red pen had resurfaced. He'd never forget that pen, and not because the lie he'd been rolling off his tongue when he'd first laid eyes on it (on her) was particularly memorable, but because it was a really, really shiny pen. Almost polished, it really was.
Shiny stuff was bright. (He still had that way with words he was thinking about.) Bright stuff caught his attention. Got in his eyes. Of course he couldn't focus. It was obvious.
If Felicity would just put it away, he'd be able to ignore that her lipstick matched the color of the thing.
Then again, if Felicity would just put it away, he might have half a mind to tell her to bring it back out and he would show her in detail in how many ways she (he) could-
Roy and Digg were staring at him, because he was staring at her and she was staring at her computer, which seemed to be giving her a particularly hard time.
If the pen only came out when she was stuck, he was going to have to put to work what little knowledge about computers he pretended he didn't have, to facilitate that- he meant facilitate her task. Her task, not the bringing out of the pen. Because he didn't want it out. Of course not. He didn't have any sort of mixed feelings about it. It was just too shiny, got in his eyes. That was all.
He aimed again, but knew way better than to try to hit anything smaller than the wall in front of him.
Felicity made a little frustrated noise that sounded too much like a groan for anyone's comfort, bit the cap of the pen particularly hard, and, well, the arrow hit something. Oliver just wasn't very sure what. Or in what direction. Or if he'd accidentally aimed for the ceiling or something. For all he knew, he might have hit his own foot.
It was early. He had no discernable reason to escape. Digg called for a sparring session. Roy flat-out refused to be used as a practice dummy again. Felicity finally pulled the pen out of her mouth to write with it and it came out glistening and full of tiny indention marks.
Oliver knew he'd tripped on thin air on his way to the training area, but Roy wasn't about to get him to confirm it.
For the first time since never, Diggle beat him in the first three seconds of fighting. Oliver was man enough to admit he'd stayed down, eyes closed, for longer than strictly necessary to regain his bearings and to promise himself he was not glancing toward Felicity again.
When he finally got up, the first thing his eyes did was swerve to her side of the room, and she had put the pen back between her lips. Worse, her hair was twisted, because of course she'd decided now was a great time to start toying with her hair too.
It was going to be a long night.
