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Another successful team-up with the Flash and Team Arrow was underway, but through most of it was just Barry and Oliver after the abandoned building they were inspecting split in half and separating them from the rest of Team Arrow. Luckily, Cisco’s voice in Barry’s ear led them out in time to contain their problem, with Barry trapping them in a spiral of fast light by spinning around them and Oliver shooting them with tranquilizers.

“Did you see that?” Barry asked Oliver over com as he zipped over to Oliver. “I haven’t used that technique in ages, mostly because every other time I tried it I ended up slipping out of the circle and going the wrong way. But I did it.”

Smiling at him wryly, Oliver got on his bike. “Good job, Barry.”

“Thanks! It’s not as easy as it seems, running in circles, but —” Barry paused. “You’re making fun of me.”

Oliver’s humorless smile stayed put.

Barry set his hands on his hips. “What did I do now?”

“You went ahead without me, you didn’t follow my orders.”

Aghast, and a bit offended, Barry scoffed, “Orders? I don’t follow your orders.”

“Well, you should.”

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A Soul Mark was a part of life that most people just accepted but most people never got. It was the subject of movies, books, ballads, tragedies and comedies and even crimes and scandals, but the latter part Oliver wasn’t totally aware of until he came back to Starling.

See, growing up with a mother like Moira and a father like Robert didn’t leave much room for rosy thoughts and warm, fuzzy feelings. Even when Oliver didn’t know about the extent of their criminal activity, their betrayals and their involvement in so many strange and shifty things, he still knew that they weren’t like most other parents. Primarily was the fact that they couldn’t stand at each other sometimes. He wondered if it was the stress of running Queen Consolidated, being in the public eye and high society, but he later realized that those three things were they got married in the first place.

The first part of him understanding the many uncomfortable rich marriages around him, with all their affairs and divorces, was that most of them had the wrong name on the insides of their wrists. Moira had Jonas and Robert had Pearl. Oliver had never dared to ask what happened to their Soul Mates or if they had ever met them, so he kept the idea at the back of his mind until he turned twelve and a name appeared on his arm.

BARTHOLOMEW

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Oliver wanted to fight hard for the Being Friends part with an ex and actually succeed with Laurel, but he didn’t think that would include her setting him up on a random blind date with one of her friends in Central City.

Sure, friends set each other up all the time, but he didn’t need help getting a date, which was exactly what he told her. Laurel then specified that he didn’t need help ‘getting a good fuckbuddy’ and that he needed some kind of balance in his life, someone who could make him happy and whatnot. Oliver didn’t have time to be happy, he was a man with a company to deal with and a family to fix his relationship with, Thea still couldn’t look him in the eye entirely.

In the end, he caved before Laurel started twisting his arm, figuratively or literally. Diggle seemed to think he should at least try going on a decent date with someone he didn’t know and had no plans for or agenda against. Knowing Diggle, he figured it would end in some kind of disaster but at least he could get a good chuckle out of it.

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It was the end of another team-up between Team Arrow and Team Flash, or, as Thea liked to them Actual Speedy and the Nerds. Team Flash hadn’t gone home yet so they crashed with Oliver,  and so did Thea and Laurel, who were too tired to make it back to their home. Cisco had passed out on the couch from exhaustion during their little ‘we survived’ celebration and Caitlin got so drunk she forgot how to get up. Barry carried them to a spare room and didn’t come back, so Oliver assumed that he too had finally crashed.

Barry was the human equivalent of a gas-guzzler sports car, sleek, slim, goes out of control quite easily and if he didn’t get his ridiculous fill of food he would pass out right then there, sometimes go from outrunning sounds to hitting the floor with a slam, already snoring. As someone who survived being shipwrecked and had disciplined his body to withstand pain and hunger, Oliver could lived through a few days without food so he endlessly pitied Barry for tiring out so easily, but he envied him for being able to crash into instant sleep.

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In the midst of handling metas, his dad leaving, Harry appearing and Zoom beating him up, it was pretty easy for Barry to get caught up in himself and let the changes in his friends pass him by. Namely, it took him two weeks to notice that Caitlin had changed her hair and even longer to pick up on Cisco’s change in personality.

It’s not like Cisco changed that drastically, but the differences were there and they were unpleasant. His temper got more and more short-fused as Team Flash started to get used to the meta-weirdness and it no-longer became fresh and fun and he almost stopped bringing candy to work. The most worrying was how he now tended to hold off on the humor and take more time to be suspicious, aiming glares at anything or anyone that could be remotely harmful before giving them a cheesy nickname.

@nanananananananabatfam

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Central City had a completely different feel to it from the last time Oliver had visited. To start with, there was an air of depression hanging around every part of the city that seemed to stem from the most damaged parts of it.

Oliver passed by Jitters, the last time he was there was five or so months ago with Felicity, but where it was once full of chatter, the scent of coffee and a soothing ambience of cozy closeness and soft light it was now run down and abandoned. He wondered where Barry and his friends now hung out if Jitters was gone and STAR Labs seemed to be practically empty. Felicity still kept in touch with Caitlin, so Oliver knew she had gone to work for Mercury Labs but knew nothing more about Iris, Cisco or even Barry himself.

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Oliver ran across the ledge, arrow set in his bow, eyes straight ahead and ears with the meta chasing him, a Tasmanian Devil knock-off that spun like a top and flung bombs at incredible speeds.

Oliver shot his arrow at the building ahead of him and caught hold of hits rope just as Barry ran into view.

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Teaming up with Barry had become an almost regular part of the Arrow’s missions, but he didn’t always come as the Flash, sometimes he came to help un-pin a murder case from the Arrow’s good name or to dress up in Oliver’s uniform whenever Dig wasn’t feeling up to it or had to be seen in the same place as Oliver Queen. The times where he needed to get people off his trail and have both the Arrow and Oliver Queen seen at the same time, it also helped that Barry gave the Arrow his inhuman quality of disappearing into thin air. 

The difference this time was that this mission wasn’t about Oliver keeping up appearances but about cornering his old adversary, Cyrus Gold, the Acolyte. The plan was for Barry to distract him, play a game of Shoot Me, If You Can with him while Oliver snuck up and delivered the fatal blow to his back.

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It was already after-hours - or at least after whatever hours the only residents of S.T.A.R Labs usually kept - and Caitlin had hurriedly clocked out and Wells had wheeled himself out and away leaving Cisco to clean up and lock up as usual. The only difference was that instead of jetting out Barry had stuck around to keep him company.

It wasn’t that Cisco minded the company, he really, really didn’t, he actually spent ages rehearsing excuses to get some alone time with Barry but he didn’t want to sound too clingy or like he didn’t have other friends so he never really bothered. No, it certainly wasn’t that, it was the question of why Barry stuck around long enough to watch Cisco meticulously clean his suit - okay, their suit - tidy up their monitor station and gather up the pile of junk food remains Barry left in his wake. Barry didn’t even have anything to do, (Cisco didn’t trust his impatient and clumsy self to touch any of his things) he just hung around, talking about everything and nothing.