Green Arrow | Oliver Queen (firstgreenarrow) wrote in newalliance, @ 2012-03-28 23:02:00 |
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Entry tags: | black canary, green arrow i |
Who: Oliver Queen (Green Arrow I) and Dinah Lance (Black Canary)
NPCs: Josh, a waiter; a poor woman being brutalized by thugs, thugs.
When: Wednesday, March 28th 2012
Where: Various locations in Manhattan.
What: Oliver calls Dinah to invite her out for coffee to talk about Mia, then that turns into sparring, where the loser buys dinner, which leads to dessert (actual dessert; I know it's Ollie and Dinah, but come on! Get your minds out of the gutter, people!) and after that they go fight crime. It's what they do. And they insist it's not a date. Except it has all the hallmarks of a date, including kissing and agreeing to try the whole relationship thing again. They're just silly. Thorough synopsis is through because this log is really long.
Rating: PG-13
It was nice that they could still consider each other friends—even close friends. It was nice that they could still talk to each other, see each other... not throw things at each other. Yeah, that part was really... well, it was really good. They practically had a family together—kids and all; though Roy was grown with a baby of his own and Mia and Connor were old enough not to suffer from the difficulties associated with a one parent household—but Dinah cared about Ollie's wards (and son) as much as if they were her own, and she tried to keep in contact with them on a regular basis as well, just in case they needed anything.
So it was nice that he could call her and ask her out for coffee and she could say yes and this totally didn't mean they were going to wind up in the sack, no matter what Babs said to the contrary. Just friends, having coffee, like two normal, sane people who weren’t in love. Yep. This was going to be nice.
It was nice. It was good that Oliver could actually dial Dinah's number, all seven digits, without stopping himself out of guilt and that when he did call, that she didn't hang up on him. She was certainly entitled to, after some of the hell he'd put he'd put her through. He was lucky she loved his kids in spite of him; and that wasn't even counting all the times she'd loved him in spite of himself. God, he really didn't deserve her. But he needed her.
He needed to talk to her. He needed to hear her voice, see her… most of all, he needed her to tell him he wasn't going to fuck this up. Her reassurance mattered to him. Her opinion mattered to him in a way no one else's did. She was… the only woman who'd ever really mattered, when he was completely honest with himself. Which was why it was ironic, fucking stupid, really, that he kept flirting with other women. Oliver had every reason in the world to be monogamous, because when he was with Dinah, he was happier than he'd ever been. He loved her. And yet he kept screwing it up, shooting himself in the foot, breaking everyone's hearts in the process.
Stupid, stupid, stupid…
Oliver's emotional beating session was interrupted when he saw Dinah walk through the door. It was forgotten, actually. Seeing her had a way of making him forget things, like why the world sucked or why he'd just been thinking that keeping his distance was a good idea. Dinah made him a better person. Dinah made him smile.He stood to greet her. He even pulled out the chair across from him for her, even though he didn't have to.
"Hey," Ollie said. "You look great." The compliment was sincere. She did look great. She was wearing blue jeans and a leather jacket over a fitted v-neck t-shirt (white) and pair of modest red heels. If it had flirtatious overtones because of their history, that wasn't intentional. This time. And Dinah was definitely able to tell if Ollie was being intentional, because Ollie wasn't exactly one for subtle.
He flashed her a grin. Okay, maybe that was a little flirtatious. He couldn't help himself. It was Dinah.
He sat down again. "Coffee?"
"Thanks." She said with a pleased but slightly incredulous look when he pulled her chair out for her and met his grin with one of her own that was perhaps just a little too friendly, just a little too familiar. “You don’t look half bad yourself.”
She smiled at him the way she used to smile at him on a Sunday afternoon when they'd somehow managed to "forget" to get out of bed. She smiled at him like she used to smile at him when things were good- and there had been plenty of times when things had been good. It wasn't a ploy or an act, Dinah was sincerely glad to see him. 90% of the time, Dinah was glad to see him. The other 10% of the time she would have given her right arm to not see him ever again.
But even during those times there was something that kept her coming back to him; answering his phone calls and e-mails, driving all the way out from Gotham, taking the ferry into the City and driving her motorcycle insanely (or just normally in her mind) through the gridlocked New York traffic just to come when he said he needed her. And the funny thing was, he didn’t even have to say it. After so many years as partners, both in costume and out, there were some things about Ollie that Dinah just knew—like how he preferred his socks folded or the specific curse words that were reserved only for scrubbing out the Queen Family chili pot after a particularly fiery batch, or the tone he took when he needed her to come save him.
“Coffee’d be great. Black? How are you, Oliver?”
Hey, Ollie could be a gentleman. Chivalry wasn't entirely dead.
He placed their orders, a simple black coffee for her and something a bit stronger with a kick of expresso for himself. He needed it, after the meeting he'd had. As much as he loved being able to put his company name (not to mention his own name) towards worthy philanthropic causes, especially one that meant so much to , Ollie still preferred hanging out with the kids at the rec center to business meetings.
"I'm good. Just met with Elle Macphereson for most of the day," he said, gesturing at the suit he was wearing to explain it. Because Ollie didn't wear suits. Not normally. Unless it was business, a funeral… or a really fancy date. In this case, it was business. This was definitely not a date. “Thanks to Bruce’s charity auction," he explained, in case Dinah didn't already know. He shrugged, as if spending the day with a former supermodel was no big deal. "She’s a really into philanthropic causes these days, especially when it comes to HIV and AIDs. And Taoism. She’s nice. I like her. She had some fantastic ideas... and she wants to meet Mia, at some point. I think I might have bragged about her."
There was definite pride in Oliver's voice when he talked about Mia.
"You look good though, she'll definitely enjoy it. Though, I don't know if I would put Mia in front of a celeb. It seems a little too much like a freak-show." Dinah answered honestly. It didn't really matter if she was talking out of jealous (which she didn't think she was, since it was for charity) or not. But Mia wasn't the type to enjoy being strutted out in front of Ollie's ‘date’ and having her story told, even if it garnered more money for the cause. To Dinah, that sounded a lot like yet another form of prostitution.
“I wouldn’t subject her to a freak-show,” Ollie protested, and he did sound mildly put out by the idea. “Mia is more important than all that celebrity crap,” he said, earnestly. Then he paused. "She's why I called you, actually. Mia. I want…" there, Oliver stopped himself, and corrected his phrasing: "I am adopting her. She doesn't know yet. I haven't told her. At first, I didn't want to get her hopes up, and now after everything that's happened, moving us to New York I almost have to start all over again. Every state is different when it comes to adoption."
"I don't even know if it's still a good idea," Ollie sighed, in a tone that meant he wasn't sure it had been good idea in the first place.
That's why he'd called her.