I Love You Most When

Oliver doesn't know when he falls in love with Felicity.

If anyone asks him, it's always a matter of furrowed eyebrows and tilted heads that meet their inquisition. He can't ever answer honestly, and sometimes it pains him – keeps him up until the darkest hours of the night because how can I not know when I fell in love with light itself?

But then it hits him, just like it does when she turns suddenly to face him in the park, the setting sun glinting just right through the strands of her hair, or when he runs the tip of his nose down the length of her neck as he pulls her closer to him under the covers and beams of moonlight.

He can't pinpoint when he fell in love. He can't cut out the moment when his heart went from his to hers. He can't do any of that, not when everyday he falls in love a little more.

He loves her. God, he loves her. And every day his mind and heart crave the radiance she lights within them.

He loves her most in the morning, when the sun is streaming past the peak in the curtains and her head is a mess of tangles and curls. It's then, when the day still hasn't set in, that he sees her stripped of everything and anything – then when the walls that she puts up for the rest of the world are battered and shattered and pummeled in the ground.

He always wakes first, and it's a privilege, he thinks, to get to watch her eyelids flicker and her lips pull into a sleepy smile. There's nothing more beautiful than her quiet sighs and warm embrace – nothing more precious than her tired I love you's.

He loves her most at 7 am, when she leans lazily in the shower, her eyes shut and body languid and flushed from the streaming hot water. She's not a morning person – Oliver sometimes likes to think she's rarely even a person on some days – but by God, she is his person. He still strokes the scar on his left thumb from when she threw the alarm clock at him the first and only time he tried waking her up for a run. She'd had a frown on her face the rest of that day, and it was when only Oliver had poked her side and basked in the sound of her giggle did he understand that she was more upset about hurting him than being woken up at some forsaken hour.

He loves her most when she comes home from work, and all she can do is communicate in huffs and sighs. Oliver is normally the one of fewer words, but the thirty minutes at half past six are the minutes that Felicity claims as her own. She's tired, she's hungry, and she knows she should have woken up for that run because now she feels fat, but it's Oliver who is there to slip the heels of her feet and pull her into his arms. It's Oliver whose chest Felicity breathes into when they lay sprawled on the couch with nothing but the slight hum of the air conditioner sounding in the background.

He loves her most during dinner, when she sits propped on the kitchen counter top chattering away as he hovers over the stove. She can't cook for shit – they found that out the hard way – but it's the stolen kisses and brushes against knees and Felicity, quit eating that, there won't be anything left that builds their nightly tradition.

He loves her most when she pulls him out of a panic attack and chases away the nightmares that have been his anchor since childhood. He can feel her warmth pressed against his body, can feel her fingers combing through his hair. He can hear her small whispers, her breathing, even her heartbeat and it's in those moments that he finds his anchor in her.

He loves her most under covers, he loves her most on Christmas morning and New Year's Day. He loves her most at night when quiet whispers of the future, yearnings of little feet and cherub faces, and promises of years to come leave small smiles graced across their lips. He loves her most in the summer, under falling leaves, with glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose and a pen trapped between her teeth. He loves her most on their wedding day, when her heart became his.

He loves her most when he sees her last.

It's the last day he really loves anything. Diggle tells him she's gone and she is, he can see it in her pale face and silent heart, but the minute he touches her cheek it all comes back, all the light, all the warmth, all of the midnight dances in the living room and the giggles in front of the fireplace and the wine spilled on his t-shirt and cold feet pressed against warm calves and the strength of her small arms and kisses on his cheek when he vowed to be hers always, always, always. His heart is twisting and breaking and shattering into a million pieces and even though she's the one with the bullet in her chest, he's the one who's left to feel its damage.

And then he knows – he knows when he fell in love. He knows it down to the very moment.

"Felicity Smoak? Hi, I'm Oliver Queen."