#best decision putting renee in a ponytail!

[aurorangen]

By now, all the people close to Vincent know that Isaac is his brother. Everyone except Renee. Today they decided to tell her...

Renee was hurt but given the circumstances, she understood their reasons for keeping it from her and the detectives. Surely it would gather a lot of unwanted attention from the media when ideally the brothers wanted to investigate independently. Like how Vincent never knew the existence of Isaac. Or how Isaac lived a secret identity all his life, escaping from his past and eventually finding out about Vincent. Once they were confident in their direction then they will expand the investigation. And deal with all the consequences then.

[starlingsrps]

sophie harcourt development

ORIGINS & FAMILY:

Name: sophia renee harcourt

Nickname: sophie, soph

Birthday: november 29

Age: thirty

Gender: female

Place of birth: monterey, ca

Places lived since: [blep] for college, chicago

Parents’ names, backgrounds, occupations: perry harcourt, 65, pediatrician; claire kinney-harcourt, 65, dog breeder. 

Number of siblings: john, 33, surgical resident 

Relationship with family: reasonably close, even though her family is spread out all over. her parents live in monterey still but john is off in boston for his residency. she talks to her mother at least twice a week and always about the following things: the weather, what's on sale at gelson's, and when she and nolan are going have a baby. 

Children of her own?: eventually, mom.

PHYSICAL

Height: 5'7

Build: average

Disabilities: —

Complexion: fair and freckled

Face shape: kind of pointy - elfin if she's feeling poetic.

Distinguishing facial features: freckles, freckles everywhere.

Hair color: red

Usual hair style: long and usually in a ponytail for writing. she can't be arsed to do anything fancy with it most of the time.

Eye color: blue

Glasses? Contacts?: contacts

Style of dress/typical outfit(s): jeans and a nice blouse for the most part but she's prone to dressing nicely if she feels like it's been too long. 

Typical style of shoes: little bit of everything and anything - sophie looooooves a good pair of shoes.

Grooming: neat and tidy - she's more natural than glamorous so she's not a heavy makeup wearer but she does like to be pretty sometimes. when she's in hardcore writing mode, she occasionally skip taking care of herself to write a little but then spends like six hours in recovery mode where everything must be showered and exfoliated and shaved so she can feel like a person again.

Jewelry? Tattoos? Piercings?: two holes in each ear, an ill advised tattoo of some kind on her shoulder, and her wedding ring always. 

Accent?: nah

Athletic?: ehhhh she walks a lot but she wouldn't call herself athletic by any means.

INTELLECT

Level of education: bachelor's degree in creative writing from [blep]

Level of self esteem: pretty high to pretty low. she can get cocky pretty easily but she can also get down on herself and lay on the floor in front of her computer swearing that she's a hack and she'll never write again pretty quick.

Gifts/talents: writing, baking, karaoke, and cuddling. sophie is a champion cuddler. 

Shortcomings: sophie is a nosy pain in the neck sometimes and she tends to assume that she knows best always. 

Style of speech: little loud

Artistic?: if you count writing, oui.

Mathematical?: somewhat

Makes decisions based mostly on emotions, or on logic?: emotions - sophie is all emotion

Neuroses: she's constantly comparing herself to others. she's getting better but she's also still learning.

Life philosophy: do something new every day.

Religious stance: ehh

Cautious or daring?: somewhere in the middle

Most sensitive about/vulnerable to: her own work. she took f o r e v e r to let nolan read her work and even longer to finally send it to an agent. 

Optimist or pessimist?: optimist

Extrovert or introvert?: bit of both?

Level of comfort with technology: comfortable

RELATIONSHIPS

Current marital/relationship status: hella married to nolan fry

Sexual orientation: bisexual

Past relationships: there was a string of broken hearts in college until she met nolan.

Primary reason for being broken up with: sophie did the breaking up always. if she smelled a breakup on the wind, she cut that shit off immediately. 

Primary reasons for breaking up with people: boredom

A social person?: heck yeah but she likes her friends. she can be a little slow to let new people in because she has friends already.

Most comfortable around: nolan. they’ve been together a long time and there’s no one she loves more or who she values more than him. he’s her person.

Oldest friend: someone from the group i'll put it in the request

How does she think others perceive her?: creative and kind 

How do others actually perceive her?: creative and kind if a bit too energetic sometimes.

VOCATION

Profession: starbucks manager/writer

Past occupations: honestly, she took a job at starbucks in high school and she's been working for them ever since.

Attitude towards current job: she loves being a boss but she's also looking forward to leaving to write full time which will be the second her advance clears.

Attitude towards current coworkers, bosses, employees: she tries to make it a little family. 

Salary: enough

SECRETS

Dreams: being published which grows more and more achievable by the day. she just signed her first contract and her first book comes out next spring and she's so excited but also so terrified!

Greatest fears: anything happening to nolan or her friends, people not liking her work. she's also just a jumpy, jumpy person so she has a lot of random little fears. 

Most ashamed of: nah.

Hobbies: writing is more of a vocation than hobby but let's say writing and baking. she got hooked on great british bake off and now she can't stop.

Secret skills: nah - she's pretty out in the open. 

Past sexual transgressions: lil heartbreaker over here.

Crimes committed: some minor league jaywalking and shoplifting as a badass teenager trying to hang with the badass crowd but nothing life threatening. 

What she most wants to change about her current life: she'd like to be published already and for her mother to stop nagging about the baby question. /eventually./

What she most wants to change about her physical appearance: nah.

DETAILS/QUIRKS

Daily routine: up at the crack of dawn to open the store, work till eleven or so, home to hang out with nolan and then write write write. 

Night owl or early bird?: early bird

Light or heavy sleeper?: light. she can hear a siren six blocks away.

Favorite food: sophie is a monster for tacos of any kind. she'll go to some wicked sketchy places for a good taco.

Favorite book: the haunting of hill house by shirley jackson. it's the exact type of book she wants to write.

Favorite movie: the others or poltergeist. sophie love haunted house movies, even if it means that she's scared shitless when the building creaks for days afterwards.

Favorite song: "africa" by toto. she can straight kill it at karaoke. 

Coffee or tea?: coffee

Type of car she drives: devoted public transit user and walker but she keeps a prius in a garage just in case. 

Lefty or righty?: lefty

Favorite color: green

Cusser?: yes

Smoker? Drinker? Drug user?: no/yes/no

Pets?: a dog! tbd i'll let lindsay decide there.

[apinknightmare]

Tides

Rating: T

Summary: Oliver and Felicity get stuck on an elevator. They work through some things.

WARNING: *Very vague spoilers for episode 5x20 - I don't think reading this will ruin anything, but I’m putting it all below the cut...just in case.*

THE CHOICE IS YOURS.

“Of course this would happen when the rest of the team is chasing down a lead in a different city,” Felicity says with a sigh. “When we get out of here, I’m designating a corner for an entertainment center.” She sits on the opposite side of the elevator, propped up against the wall. They’ve only been stuck an hour, but she’s restless.

Oliver—surprisingly—enjoys the break.

Felicity’s hair is down, out of her normal ponytail. The ends curl up the way they do when she’s been twisting them around her finger, working herself out of a problem.

“Water, some snacks…” she continues. “Maybe a game or two.”

Oliver imagines the recruits stuck in here with nothing but time and a board game. “Some people might not play so well together if they got stuck in here.”

“Like us?” Felicity’s words are tinged with a hint of resigned sadness.

It’s a night they don’t talk about, the last time the two of them were stuck in the lair. An angry summer storm knocked out power for half of Star City. The generator failed, leaving Oliver and Felicity locked in for hours, until Curtis finally got them out.

They took comfort in each other then, had sex on the cot in Oliver’s tiny room in the sub basement. He apologized for all the mistakes he’d made as he held Felicity in his arms. He’d expected things to go back to the way they were before his lies and secrets caught up with him. He’d wanted to reap the reward without putting in the effort to fix their shattered foundation.

Then came Billy, and Susan, and an emotional rift that seemed too wide to cross.

She’d left him—rightly so—because he hadn’t treated her like a partner, because he’d hidden things from her that he should’ve shared.

Felicity’s doing that now. He sees it in the way she keeps to herself, rushes off for hours at a time with little explanation. He doesn’t blame her for keeping things from him, but now he knows how she felt when he did the same. It bristles, weighs heavily on him. He wants to share her burdens, wants to help her out of the mess she’s in, but she’s shouldering it all on her own and it shows.

He understands all too well now how he’d made her feel with William. With the League of Assassins. With so many other things he’d kept to himself these past five years while Felicity was right beside him, wanting to be his port in the storm.

He always learns his lessons the hard way.

“We probably shouldn’t make it too fun in here,” he says, trying to change the subject with a lightness he doesn’t feel.

Felicity nods. “We don’t want to start having unexplained elevator breakdowns so people can sneak in a game of Connect Four.”

The image of Rene and Dinah huddled over a pile of checkers pulls a laugh out of him.

Felicity stares.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve heard you laugh.” Felicity looks down at her hands, which are twisted in her lap. “Not,” she continues quickly, “that you’ve had any reason to. With the kidnapping, and-”

She cringes at the slip, and Oliver does his best not to fall back into that dark place he lived for some of the longest days of his life, his sins plastered all over the walls of his cell. Innocent faces looking back at him every time he opened his eyes. Every time he closed them.

“I’m sorry,” Felicity says quietly. “I didn’t mean to bring it up, I-”

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.” Oliver takes a deep breath, runs his fingers through his too-long hair. “Maybe…maybe the best way of dealing with it isn’t pretending it didn’t happen.”

His answer shocks her. It registers in her wide blue eyes for a second before she looks down, playing with a hangnail on her thumb. Oliver stares at her chipped polish. Her fingers are usually perfectly manicured, this is just another area where her stress shows.

He wants to ask, but doesn’t want to push her. Doesn’t want her to shut him out. He knows she’ll open up when and if she’s ready, but that doesn’t make the wait any easier.

“You doing all right?” she asks tentatively. “You don’t look like you’ve been sleeping.”

Oliver laughs, a short, bitter thing. He can’t help himself. “I haven’t.”

Felicity’s haunted eyes meet his, full of concern. “Do you think about it?” she asks, then studiously returns to that damned hangnail. “When you close your eyes?”

Her voice is very small, and he knows she’s not just asking about Prometheus. He’s not the only one in this elevator who’s dealing with ghosts.

“Yes.”

“Not sleeping catches up with you,” she admits. “A few days, and you feel like-”

“Months,” he whispers. “A year.”

Her gasp echoes through the small box they’re trapped in. She knows what he means without him having to say it. That’s their way.

“February twenty-third,” he tells her. “That was my last good night.”

Felicity presses her lips together, tears welling in her eyes. She remembers. She’d been too excited to sleep, counting down the hours till her physical therapy the following afternoon. They’d stayed up together into the tiny hours of the morning. Oliver massaged her legs, desperate for her to feel something, while Felicity confided in him about all the things she wanted to do when she got back the use of her legs. (“Climb a mountain. Okay…maybe a really big hill.” Dig her toes into the sand on their favorite beach in Bali. “Walk down the aisle to you on our wedding day.”)

“Me too,” she admits, and the sadness in her voice makes his heart ache.

Surprised at her admission, he watches her from his side of the elevator.

Felicity shrugs. “Maybe the best way of dealing with it isn’t pretending it didn’t happen.”

Oliver swallows, hard. And when he looks at her, he sees what he’s been avoiding looking at for a really long time, since he lost hope that they could ever be more than just partners in their mission again. Since she told him the door to a future between them was firmly closed.

Oliver is uniquely suited to help Felicity navigate this life of difficult decisions, of the never-ending guilt that comes along with making them. A life full of living with the dark side of doing things for the greater good. He’d taken for granted how nice it was to come home at night and wrap his arms around someone who understood what the day had taken from him. How nice it was to have someone who wanted to help him get some of that back.

But he didn’t just lose her. She’d lost him, too.

He’d apologized before—on that night they’ve been pretending didn’t happen—but he never fully grasped just what his secrets and lies had cost her.

“When we broke up,” he says, his voice scratchy as he looks into her eyes. “I lost everything because of my own bad decisions. What I lost I gave away when I chose to hide things from you. But those things��I took them from you. I’m sorry for leaving you alone when you needed me. For not being the…the partner that you’ve always been to me.” The stricken look on her face is too much, but he holds her gaze. “You can talk to me, you know? If you want to. You can still tell me about your day. I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t, or…shouldn’t.”

Silence stretches out between them as tears roll down her cheeks. There’s a hint of a smile behind them though, and for the first time since she took her ring off her finger, that rift doesn’t feel so insurmountable.

Felicity picks up his discarded jacket from where it lay next to her thigh, and folds it gently in her lap. “C’mere,” she says.

His chest is full to bursting with hope he hasn’t felt in ages. “Felicity-”

“Come here.” she says firmly. “It doesn’t look like we’re getting out of here anytime soon. I’ll sleep if you sleep. I kinda know this method that puts you out like a light.”

He smiles, his heart pounding against his ribcage. “You should lie down. You need it more than I do, and-”

“Oliver.” A soft smile lights up her gorgeous face. This isn’t up for debate.

He lowers himself to the floor and curls up on his side, his shoulder against her thigh, his head on her lap. Felicity slides her fingers through his hair, nails scraping his scalp the way he likes. It takes him back to the early days of their summer road trip. The first few nights of quiet had been rough on him. He wasn’t suited for peaceful rest, didn’t know how to function without the burden of a city weighing him down. He’d needed help, something to ease him into sleep.

Felicity pulled him into her arms, rested his head on her breast, ran her fingers through his hair. She relaxed him into closing his eyes.

“Remember that bungalow in Big Sur?” she says soothingly. “With the outdoor shower that had the cracked tile, and the kitchen cabinets that creaked so loudly they woke me up when you made coffee in the morning?” He nods. He could never forget. “When I can’t sleep, I think about that place, about that summer.”

“You still…you think about that?” he asks.

“Of course,” she says softly with a nervous little laugh. “Those are some of the best times of my life.”

Still.

After everything.

“That bungalow had that hammock on the porch we fell asleep on while listening to the tide. I felt safe there in your arms, like…like no matter what happened, everything would be okay because we were together.”

Her voice is wistful, and he hates himself for attaching any kind of sadness to those memories. Those were his best days.

“Felicity,” he says, not exactly sure what will follow. He doesn’t have the words to express just how sorry he is for everything. But words won’t make it right, and he’s going to make it right if it’s the last thing he does.

“So, sometimes when I can’t sleep, I think about that,” she continues, completely ignoring him. “I remember how good life can be. I close my eyes, and I drift.”

Oliver almost feels the breeze against his face if he thinks hard enough about it.

“You ruined the griddle learning how to make french toast,” she says with a laugh, even though her voice is growing sleepy. “Remember our walk on the beach, when that rambunctious golden retriever knocked you over as he ran for his ball?”

He nods. He remembers everything.

She rocks him back and forth—just a little—as she reminisces. And Oliver feels safe, like everything’s going to be okay because they’re together.

He closes his eyes, and drifts.

 http://archiveofourown.org/works/10341342