Jealous Blessings
Jun. 24th, 2019 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madimpossibledreamer~Dreamer~
Main Points:
Arrow/Assassin's Creed
Summary: Thea asks her brother about his good mood.
Word Count: 2111
Rating: Teen
This is mostly just talking about offscreen consensual sex. Queen family conversations aren't normal.
“So, who’d you sleep with?” Thea asks conversationally, sitting down next to Oliver, who’s frowning at papers in his hands, deep in conversation.
“Gesù, Claudia,” he exclaims, fists clenching, and she can’t help but grin. He’d been getting better about not using Italian, which means that she’d really managed to startle him. Maybe she’s learning this Assassin stuff after all. And when he’d told her a little more about Claudia, she didn’t mind being occasionally called by the name of a really awesome lady from Renaissance Italy.
“Come on, Ollie, I learned what you look like after you’ve gotten a little action when I was ten. I mean, I’d seen the signs when I was seven, but I didn’t know what any of it meant.” She slips an arm around his shoulders, and he’s definitely tense.
“Thea, seriously, that’s kind of disturbing.” He’s still not as dour or frowny, though, which are really good signs.
“You say that, but maybe, you shouldn’t have slept around enough for me to realize how uptight you got when you weren’t. Given how you were last year, maybe I should’ve paid someone to have sex with you then, as a welcome home present.”
The face he gives to that is seriously distressed. “Thea, please, stop,” he begs, and, well, it’s kind of funny. Here’s her brother who stabs people in the throat and can’t handle a conversation with his sister about sex.
Well, yeah, okay, that might be a little weird, but the Queens have never been a normal family.
“I’m serious, Ollie. Sometimes, you have to relax a little. But maybe I don’t have to tell you that right now.” She winks, and he groans and hides his head in his hands.
“Helena,” she makes out between the rest of his mumbling and the muffling of his hands, and her grin grows. She’s really living up to her duty as a little sister who has to embarrass her elder brother.
“Well, why didn’t you say that?” she asks. “She’s back? Is she an Assassin too?” It’d be cool for there to be another female Assassin.
“I started training her to be, but she cared too much about vengeance and not enough about doing the right thing. That was last year,” he mumbles, only a little more audible, and while it’s still kind of funny, that’s…actually really sad. Can’t her big brother have anything good in his life, or does the world have to try taking everything away, over and over? Or—wait, no, the point is moot, because he definitely has the same relaxed posture, even with her teasing.
“Who, then? Felicity? She’s definitely cute,” Thea points out, and Ollie blushes, just a little.
But then she watches his gaze skitter over to Tommy, sleeping on the couch in the corner, tucked in carefully, and her heart—
Hurts.
Because she’s still in love with sweet, funny, caring Tommy Merlyn, but on the other hand this is her clueless brother. Her brother who needs something nice in his life and by all appearances got it. And she’s been really, really worried about her idiot of an older brother.
“You’re not going to mistreat him or try to drive him off when you freak out that he’s getting too close, right?” she tries to clarify, because it’s important. Two of the most important people in her life can’t be allowed to hurt each other.
The startled look in his eyes is more the classical Ollie that she realizes she hasn’t seen in ages. “I—how did you—”
“Like I said, I’ve had a lot of time to see what you’re like around people you’re interested in.” His greater misbehaving after Laurel had asked him to move in was panicking, drowning even because he wasn’t ready and rather than just tell her that, he agreed to it and tried to dissuade her in the worst way possible, because he was a drama queen like that, for instance.
He swallows, picking up one of his arrows and twirling it between his fingertips. Fidgeting.
“I…I don’t think he’d let me, anymore, but…I’ll try not to.” He still looks troubled, but thoughtful. It’s good to see him actually put his brain to work for once. “Never compromise the Brotherhood,” he repeats, voice tinged with the hint of an Italian accent, and she’d guess it’s one of those things he’ll tell her later, when she’s trained just a little more. “I’m working on being more honest. Having more of a team. I don’t work alone, even when I’m not wearing the hood, and I need to remember that.”
She lets out a long breath out of relief. “Good. I mean, I’ll kick your butt, training or no training, if you hurt him, but. An Ollie who’s trying is pretty good at doing things well.”
He pouts—and it’s real, not just some mask he’s putting on to hide. “What if he hurts me?”
She pats him on the back. “It’s Tommy. I mean, you’re probably going to blow up at something dumb and both of your feelings are going to get hurt, but—it’s Tommy.”
Ollie glances over, this time allowing the fond, happy look to show on his face, allowing himself a glance over all of his best friend—no, lover? Boyfriend?—from his head tucked into that little space between the back of the couch and the armrest to the foot dangling off the side. “It certainly is,” he agrees, and that tone is smug and confident and if she’d had any doubts they’re gone now. “Though I think all of you seem to have realized at the exact same moment that the best way to deal with me is trying to out-stubborn me, and it’s not fair.” That’s also more normal, and her breath nearly catches in her throat because she’s missed this normalcy.
“Look, just because we’re nice and love you doesn’t mean that we’re gonna let you get away with stuff. You just caught us off guard last year. We’re going to stop being so nice to you just because we don’t know what we’re doing, aside from probably Tommy.” Well, between that, and the wanting to pretend that the brother she got back was the one she wanted, and the drugs and the partying, not that she’s going to use that excuse because she really doesn’t want to give him the excuse to lecture her. Again.
“He was so gentle,” Ollie agrees, dreamily, eyes far away, and—
Okay, maybe she didn’t have to worry, because this is pure gold. “Uh-huh. Tell me more,” she suggests quietly, trying not to break the spell.
She fails.
Because he instant he realizes what he said, her big brother turns a deep, deep red and looks more scandalized than she’s ever seen him. He’s usually pretty hard to scandalize (aside from anything ever involving her), probably usually because he’s the one causing the stories tabloids drool over, and from the way his leg has started bouncing it’s entirely possible that Felicity and John weren’t making up stories about his tendency to go climb tall buildings rather than have serious talks about ridiculous things like feelings. “Nope. You do not need me to tell you about anything like that because—you just don’t. So stop asking.”
“You’re not used to that, are you?” she asks, and for an instant she thinks he’s gonna act dense and answer the version of the question that she didn’t ask.
But then he looks at her, eyes knowing and ancient—but at least not judging, because she is absolutely so sick of that. “Last question I’m about to answer about this, and then it is a banned subject we never talk about again.” Technically, she hadn’t asked one he’d answered previously, but she’ll ignore that in favor of actually getting him to talk about something. “No, I’m not. I’m not used to it at all. I’ve never—” He loses the words, before starting again. It’s something he does a lot when he’s being honest, she’s noticed. “When I was Before the Island—” the capitals are a little ridiculous, but she can hear them like he’s actually said them out loud, “—it was just for fun. Not because anyone cared. There was Laurel, but she cared and I couldn’t—wouldn’t let myself. There were people—people who cared—on the island—” and there’s something he hadn’t mentioned, either, but it’s nice to hear that it wasn’t all just pain, “…there was fear. Fear we’d be caught. Other than that, touch was a weapon. Meant to hurt. Helena was passionate, violent, and don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but.” He turns toward her, eyes bewildered and hurt and oh, her brother was beautiful and broken. “He didn’t flinch from the scars. He didn’t think I was ugly, or broken. I did ask him to go slow, but he just—” It sounds like her poor brother was on the receiving end of body worship and doesn’t know what to do with it. “He was gentle and I don’t—I don’t understand.” His voice breaks a little at the end, and she can’t help but pull him into a hug.
“You survived, Ollie, and that is your proof. Several people in your life greatly appreciate you having survived.” She can’t help but laugh. “Also, Tommy is quite possibly a saint and I have no idea how the hell he’s related to a Templar.”
“Yeah.” The fond look is back, and he doesn’t look like he’s embarrassed anymore, which honestly was the point. Beyond wanting to experience Tommy secondhand, and—
Okay, yeah, no, he had a point, that was kinda creepy.
“I could tell you about Roy,” she offers, and he makes a face.
“First of all, I didn’t know this ‘Roy’ existed. Second of all, he’s not involved in drug things, or—” he begins, and yeah, okay, she’s somehow triggered the lecture. Again.
“Nah. Honestly, I’d think he’d be a great Assassin recruit—” she waves off the shocked words he’s going to say before he even says them, “—not that we’ll recruit him until we’re sure of him, I know, I know.” He might be stubborn, but she’s still good at distracting him from his lectures. Practice, after all. “You don’t have to worry about him, because he’s behaving himself. Besides, if you train me properly, I’ll be able to beat him up if I need to.”
His eyes turn darker, dangerous. In a second he’d gone from the Oliver she’d known to the new Oliver, only now it doesn’t scare her. She’s used to it. She understands now. “Okay.” He gets up out of his chair, stretches, and begins running toward the wall.
She knows him well enough to know when he’s showing off. He’s showing off.
He runs up the wall a few steps, redirects the momentum sideways to grab one of the pipes. It seems almost effortless, the way he pulls himself up to perch for a moment like a great bird of prey. Then he propels himself skyward, leg muscles straining, and he grabs one of the steel beams overhead, pulls himself up and runs along it, arms stretched out like an eagle’s wings, and then launches himself.
A fall from that height could break his legs, but he has no fear. Then again, he’s climbed much higher buildings, with bigger consequences if he falls. Maybe he’s just confident because it’s clear he knows what he’s doing.
He catches something on the wall—a groove in the metal, or something, and inches sideways with only his fingertips before launching himself into the maze of pipes. Handholds, footholds, in and around and finally out, toward her. Into a roll, and he comes up onto his feet.
And he bows. Smiling.
“I see you secretly bought yourself a jungle gym,” she says, just to watch his expression turn into a pout.
“Well, you’re not going out in the field until you can navigate the ‘jungle gym’ just as well as I can.” She looks at it and feels a pout coming on to match her brother’s, and he shakes his head. “Look, I’m not letting you fall off a building. We have to work on your strength and stamina. Pull-ups are a good start.”
She gets the feeling she’s signed herself up for a lot of pain and hardship, but as she starts trying and after probably twenty minutes gets a smile and praise, she hasn’t felt so close to her brother since he disappeared with the sinking of a boat, and she loves the feeling.
