Green Arrow | Oliver Queen (firstgreenarrow) wrote in newalliance, @ 2012-03-21 16:12:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | black canary, green arrow i |
Who: Oliver Queen (Green Arrow I) & Dinah Lance (Black Canary)
Where: Rec Center, NYC (Oliver) & The Clocktower, Gotham NJ (Dinah)
When: March 21
What: Ollie follows up his e-mails with a phone call. In typical Ollie and Dinah fashion, the conversation is a bit like going on an roller coaster ride. And this is a good phone call. Please, universe, let them get back together again soon. This in-between phase is hell on their writers.
Rating: PG-13
After he received a somewhat positive reply from Dinah regarding both the e-mails he’d sent her, particularly the one where he’d apologized to her, Ollie picked up his phone and dialled her number. And waited, in part to see if she would actually pick up. when she saw his name.
Oh, she saw his name. She was kind of in the middle of something and she thought about just ignoring his call. He could leave a message like everyone else; no special treatment here. But then the phone just kept ringing and ringing and.... fine. Dinah picked up the phone, just a little out of breath, "Hello?"
“Hey,” he said. Ollie noticed that she sounded out of breath, and said, “If you’re busy, you can always hang up and I’ll apologize to your voice-mail. It’s not like I haven’t done that before,” he tried to inject some humor into the situation. It came across half-hearted.
"Sorry. I was just..." She glanced at the worn in punching bag hanging in one of the spare rooms of the Clocktower. Dinah frowned and half heartedly swung around to give it one more good side kick to the shoulder area, though her attention wasn't on it, and it showed. "...working out. Hi,” she said, leaning her shoulder into the punching bag to stop its swinging.
“So. I’m an ass,” Ollie stated, plain and simple, no excuses. By now, he’d spent five days evading this phone call, and had already dealt with it in the coward’s way by e-mailing her first. “And a coward,” he admitted. “And I’m sorry.”
"It's okay." She answered after only a slight pause, her breathing evening out now that she'd stopped hitting the bag. "Apology accepted. So what's up?" She said by way of quickly changing the subject. She didn't want to talk about what happened. He'd apologized, she'd accepted it—that's all there was to it. Anything else just seemed like flogging a dead horse— why couldn't they just move on?
“Should I skip the chocolate this time? On account of your kung fu diet?” he did manage to joke, ever so slightly, then said, “Can you do coffee later this week? I need to talk. In person.”
"If you brought me chocolate I would be obligated to eat it since it's a gift- right? That's not cheating, is it?" She paused for a moment, then nodded, more to herself than to him, one hand resting on her forehead as if she was afraid of the answer she was about to give, "Okay. Yeah. When?"
“Well, I could get you flowers, but I gotta tell you, it’s awfully hard getting flowers for a florist—hang on, I’m getting another call. It’s Mia’s school. One sec,” with that Ollie put Dinah on hold for the duration of his brief call with the Vice Principal of Mia’s school. That gave her time to read the text Mia had sent her about being a political prisoner, and form her own opinions, depending on what she could get out of Mia during that time, if anything. When Ollie returned on the line, he sounded exasperated, a little overwhelmed and like he was this close to banging head against a walll: “Jesus, Dinah, I don’t know what I’m going to do with her. She...” he paused, and for a moment it sounded like he was wrestling with something other than anger. Like pride. “She went on what her Vice Principal described as a very public, very inappropriate political rant about sex. She called him Rick Santorum.”
Dinah tried not to grin, or laugh at the sheer lunacy of all of it, though she did shake her head a bit and managed to only chuckle a little bit, "About sex? Like, what? Sexism? Sexuality? Non-consentual sex? Sexually transmitted diseases? Safe sex? Kinky sex? 'Sex' as a topic doesn't really narrow things down. But I don't guess that Santorum comment went down too well.”
“He was shutting down the Gay-Straight Alliance club. Took forever to get that out of him. I thought New York was supposed to be progressive,” Oliver said, sounding like Mia had when she’d sassed off to her Vice Principal. She’d picked the right person to take up on an offer to live with, in that regard.
“All she did was tell him that abstinence only programs are complete bullshit. The truth, basically. She mentioned STDs, but he’s completely overreacting. It’s not like she busted out any statistics. And it’s not Rick Santorum is that much of an insult any more, since he’s just behind Luthor in the Republicans’ dog and pony show excuse for a GOP. It’s pathetic,” at this point Dinah was probably shaking her head, because Ollie, like Mia, had launched into a rant and just... gone with it. “I miss California,” he said at last.
Dinah let Ollie go off on his rant and listened, with the phone held between her cheek and her shoulder as she unwrapped her knuckles and proceeded to unwrap her feet as well, leaning against one of the walls. Dinah paused when he said he missed California and she couldn't stop the sympathetic smile that crossed her face. She was born and raised on the east coast, but Dinah had spent many very good years on the west coast. "It'll get better. Part of it is just getting used to a new place. And it's not home yet, you know? You and the kids haven't really made a mark on it yet; but that comes with time. Just be patient."
“Yeah, I know,” Ollie said. He was quieter now. And it wasn’t like patience was a foreign concept to him. Hunting was all about patience, and he’d always characterized himself as a hunter rather than an archer. He could have used the moment to make a ‘home is where the heart is’ reference, but he refrained. Now wasn’t the time for humor.
“Dinah?” he said, “I didn’t mean it. I was jealous.”
Dinah was quiet for a long time, so long that Ollie may have started to wonder if she had hung up, except for the lack of a dial tone. She didn't want to rehash this. He wasn't telling her anything that she didn't already know. "I know..." She finally said, her forehead leaned in against the wall, one hand braced up over her head. "I don't really want to talk about this, Oliver." She just wanted to forget about it, even though she knew by now that ignoring it wouldn't make it go away—but it didn't seem worthwhile to argue about it either. "It's okay. We both said some stuff we didn't mean. Let's just.... leave it."
Oliver hated this. He hated the silence, and he hated not being able to talk to Dinah. He hated not knowing where they stood, and not knowing what to do. He tried—he tried—to make up for his past mistakes by actually owning up to his feelings, because that had been one of the big problems last time... his complete and utter failure to communicate when things got messy. She’d asked him time and time again to just talk to her, please, and he hadn’t been able to. Now he was trying to talk and getting shut down.
Oh, Ollie understood why. He understood that they weren’t in a relationship right now, and why Dinah wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with him right now. He understood that what he was doing by apologizing that way, trying to show he’d changed, that he was trying... was probably doing a real number on her head and her heart, just like it was his. But it was hard to just leave it, because when they were good together, they were really damn good. As close as he’d ever get to perfect.
Some phone call this was turning out to be.
“Wanna meet Betty White?” he asked. It was a total subject change, and a bit of a non-sequitur after everything else.
"Excuse me?" Well- he was certainly getting new pick up lines. "Betty White? What? Are you feeling okay, Ollie?"
“She was one of the celebrities up for auction for charity at Bruce’s gala. Cage and I got the idea to bid on her and have her come to the rec center. For the kids—the whole neighborhood, really. Betty White is more American than Captain America these days. She’s coming in on Saturday,” Oliver explained, nonplussed by Dinah’s sudden concern over his sanity. “Mia’s really excited. It’s the coolest idea I’ve had since Speedy.”
That made Dinah laugh outright, and for a while too. She turned away from the wall she had been leaning on and pressed her back against it instead, dropping her head against it. "Saturday? Okay... let me see what I'm doing and I'll try to make it." That was a lie, and a bad one at that. The only "plans" she had for Saturday (if you could call them plans at all) were to get up, have a bowl of cereal, watch cartoons all morning and then call Babs (at a somewhat decent hour) to find out how her mysterious mystery date wtih the international man of mystery had gone. All of which she could still do while hanging out with Ollie and Betty White. She paused for a minute, then shook her head at herself and recanted her little fib, "Yeah, I'll be there. I wouldn't miss it."
“Great. See you then,” he said, sounding more enthusiastic. “Listen, Di, I’ve gotta go. I’ve got a lot of work to do, and I promised a little lady a date with the with big play structure at the park.”
"Take pictures for me. I'll see you Saturday."
“Will do. See you, Pretty Bird,” … As an aside to Lian, in the future, if you’re reading this: I’m sorry. It must suck and be a terrible burden to be loved so damn much by your family. It’s embarrassing, I know, especially with all the photographic evidence. Tough luck, kid. You’re stuck with ‘em.
The line clicked before Dinah could protest Ollie’s use of his nickname for her. He was gone. She couldn’t get the last word in... this time.`