Play It Again

Chapter 1

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

Oliver would like to say it’s a quiet night, but he rarely has quiet nights anymore. The bar is crowded, packed full, and the noise the crowd makes fills the space with a dull roar.

He likes being on the second floor, looking down at the crowd, especially this late, with the lights dimmed and the music blaring. People look different when you look at them from a different angle. A flash of neon green hair, an outstretched arm, a bright laugh that lifts itself over the rest of the din.

He leans against the railing, feeling the cool, sturdy metal underneath his elbows. He should go down there, make a few rounds, make sure everything is running smoothly. It’s a Thursday night, so there’s not as much to do, but Oliver would much rather be careful than sorry.

It would be easy to say that he bought Oliphaunt on a whim -- that’s the story Oliver tells his parents, anyway -- but it was a calculated move, deliberate and careful. Oliver had wanted to go legit, and it seemed like a good way to settle down, try something new. He’d heard about this place going under, from friend of a friend on the grapevine, and Seattle was as good a city as any. He closed up his old shop in Mountain View and moved up north, determined to do something else with his life, something that didn’t revolve around computers. It hadn’t been easy, at first, but he’d had the money to spare, and he was willing to put in the hours, and now it’s paying off.

He climbs his way down the stairs, dodging a few shoulders and elbows as people head upstairs. Oliver doesn’t mind. It’s better to have too many people show up rather than the alternative.

One of the bartenders calls him over. It’s Gavin, who’s a little too friendly and a little too flirty and flamboyantly gay in a way that Oliver never quite managed to pull off himself.

“Hey, boss,” he says, when Oliver is finally in earshot. He grins, bright in a way that would make Oliver think he’s interested, but that’s just the way he is with everyone.

Oliver smiles back. That smile is infectious, even if it doesn’t mean anything. “Yeah, Gavin? What’s up?”

Gavin leans in close, clearly excited by some new gossip. “There’s this guy who’s been asking for you.” He smirks and nods towards the end of the bar.

From here, Oliver can’t get a good look at who Gavin is referring to. The man is looking away from him, and in this lighting, all Oliver can get a sense of is his dark hair and neat haircut and an expensive suit. “Thanks,” Oliver says.

For a moment, he wonders if the law has decided to catch up to him, if he left one too many digital fingerprints behind in the dark web. His hacking days are years gone now, but every once in a while, a glimmer will pop up in the oddest places. He’s been working on keeping his paranoia in check for a while. It destroyed his relationship with his last boyfriend, Dan, before it ever got anywhere serious, what with Dan being a cop and all, but at least they managed to come out of that trainwreck still good friends. Dan still has that one table he always sits at when visiting Oliphaunt. Oliver makes sure that they always have a case of his favorite microbrew behind the counter.

But most likely this guy just wants something mundane: a bachelor party that wants to rent out the whole place for the night, a local event that wants to put posters up on the walls, a new brewery that wants to get him to stock their product. Oliver’s life is hardly boring, but it’s a completely new kind of interesting that he trafficks in these days.

He slides his way past the crowd of people trying to wave Gavin down. On his way, Oliver accidentally bumps into a smiling woman with a nose ring. She takes it well, waving off his apologies, but when Oliver turns around again, the man in the suit has disappeared from his spot.

Oliver frowns, scanning the crowd to see if he can pick the man out again.

But it turns out he doesn’t have to.

“Hey, Oliver,” a voice says from behind Oliver’s shoulder. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Oliver spins. There’s the man, all right. Well-dressed, beautiful, with one eyebrow raised. Exactly the way Oliver remembers him, right down to the cut of his beard. “Connor Walsh,” Oliver says. He feels something seize in his chest, a tight, hard knot in the center.

“It’s been a while,” Connor says. He’s smiling as he says it, like they’re friends, like they parted on good terms five years ago.

“Not long enough,” Oliver says. He doesn’t want Connor here. It’s too easy to see him and think of the good days, Connor loose-limbed and sex-sated and sprawled all over Oliver’s bedsheets, and too easy to forget about the bad days, when Connor would shut down and refuse to talk to Oliver about anything at all.

Connor turns, his eyes sliding away from Oliver’s face and towards some of the wall decorations so that Oliver can only see about half his expression. But Oliver doesn’t miss the way the smile slips off his face. “You know,” Connor says, “it’s customary to say, ‘it’s nice to see you again.’”

“I’d say it if it were true,” Oliver says, keeping his voice steady and cold, even as he has to shout to be heard over the surrounding noise. He hadn’t prepared himself for this, hadn’t had time to build his defenses, and it leaves him reeling. Connor is from a lifetime ago, two lifetimes ago even, all the things that Oliver left behind when he left Philadelphia. “What are you doing here, Connor?”

“He’s here on my behalf,” another voice chimes in. Oliver blinks, only to notice Annalise Keating standing just past Connor’s shoulder, watching the two of them with a cool, appraising stare. “I’m glad to have the chance to finally meet you, Mr. Hampton.”

“I’m not sure I can say the same just yet,” Oliver says. She’s shorter than Oliver expected her to be. Oliver watched her on TV during the long never-ending hoopla of the Sam Keating trial, and he’s obviously heard plenty of stories from Connor. Her presence has always loomed large in Oliver’s mind. It’s so odd to finally see her in person. “Why don’t we all go back to my office? I get the feeling that this isn’t a social call.”

---

Oliver’s office is small, barely big enough for one other person. All he has in it is an IKEA desk, a laptop docking station, a couple of chairs, and a pale overhead light. It’s not like he has a lot of business dealings that he can’t take care of at his lawyer’s offices.

Still, the three of them manage to squeeze in just fine. Oliver settles on sitting behind his desk, mostly because it makes him feel more in control of the situation. Professor Keating sits in the only other chair, facing him. Connor stays standing, fading into a corner of the room like he’s had some practice with it. It’s quieter up here, but the walls are thin enough that the music can still be heard, faintly, through the walls.

“Professor Keating,” Oliver starts. “I can’t say any of this was expected.”

“I know this is rather unorthodox, Mr. Hampton,” she says, jumping straight into business, “but I have a special request I’d like to make of you.” The intensity of her gaze makes Oliver want to hide in a small hole somewhere. No wonder Connor was always so eager to bend over backwards to please her.

“Okay,” he says, keeping his voice steady. “I’m listening.”

She continues, “I need the services of a hacker who can break into a Strasser-protected system. From what I understand, that used to be your specialty.”

Oliver tries to keep a neutral expression on his face, but he was never cut out for lying or lawyering. He can handle high stakes behind a keyboard, but he doesn’t know how to do any of this while in person. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Keating doesn’t react at all to Oliver’s statement. “Just be aware that my client is willing to pay generously for your services. I remember your work from the days you used to freelance in Philadelphia, and it was always exemplary.”

Oliver swallows, hard. “I don’t think I remember ever working for you. I’m sorry, but you must have mistaken me for someone else.”

She just smiles, nodding at him. “If you change your mind, please let me know.” She stands up, straightening out her jacket before she turns to face Connor. “Mr. Walsh, I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

And with that, she leaves the room, closing the door behind her with a gentle click.

Now that she’s gone, Connor takes a moment to emerge from the shadows. Oliver half-expects him to look triumphant, every bit the slick, confident lawyer that he must be by now. But Connor just looks blank, his expression tightly controlled. His tongue darts out to lick his lips. Oliver wishes he didn’t find it so distracting. It’s been five years. He should be over this by now. Connor should be nothing more than a distant memory.

Oliver takes a moment to collect himself before he can face Connor head on. When he finally gets feeling back in his fingers, he turns on Connor. “Was this your idea?” Oliver hisses. “How convenient that the two of you show up in my town and just so happen to need my help.” Maybe it’s not fair, but life isn’t fair for dropping ancient history on Oliver’s head and expecting to deal with any of it rationally.

Connor takes a deep breath. “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important. You’re really-- we need the best for this. Just-- hear us out. Please.” It’s familiar, deja vu; Connor pulled the same line when he needed traffic records a few days after his drug-induced freakout at Oliver’s doorstep. Oliver had been feeling a little sympathetic then. Oliver is not feeling any sort of sympathy now.

“No,” Oliver says, summoning up his old anger. “I told you last time that I never wanted to see you again, and I meant it.” He points towards the door. “Get out.”

Connor holds up his hands, surrendering, his expression turning dark, steely. “Okay,” he says, but he still takes out a business card and tosses it onto Oliver’s desk. “Call me if you change your mind.”

“You’re not going to have to worry about that,” Oliver says. He stands up so he can slam the door shut behind Connor’s retreating back. It feels good, probably better than it should.

---

“Man,” Dan says, as Oliver slides into the booth to sit across from him. “You wouldn’t believe how much of the station is freaking out right now.”

Lunch is always a mellow affair, relative to the hustle and bustle of the nights. It’s never really empty, though. There’s a steady stream of people who come through: startup kids in their t-shirts and jeans, business marketing types with their slick black suits with their cell phones attached to their ears, police officers from the precinct down the street, in varying degrees of uniform -- the gay ones anyway.

That’s how Oliver met Dan in the first place, when he’d come in with his cop buddies during the evening rush and then stick around after everyone left, flirting with Oliver at every chance he could get. It had been the first time Oliver had ever dated another Asian guy, but it turned out that they were far more different than alike. Dan’s the kind of guy who speaks Mandarin fluently and throws a huge Lunar New Year party every year for all of his closest Asian friends, and Oliver can barely say five words in Tagalog when trying to talk to his cousins and can’t even remember the names of the other Asian kids who were in his high school classes. Their kind of-maybe relationship that lasted a few months before thoroughly falling apart. It was fine. They turned out to work much better as friends anyway.

“What’s there to freak out about?” Oliver asks. He takes a bite out of his sandwich.

Dan just leans over and grins. “You know I can’t talk to you about active cases, but one of our suspects apparently decided to get Annalise Keating to represent her -- you know, that hotshot defense lawyer from Philadelphia who was accused of axing her murderer husband a few years back?”

“Yeah, I was still living in Philadelphia at the time,” Oliver says. “It was all the local news would talk about.” He keeps his own tangential involvement in the case quiet. Dan a sharp detective. He never did like how vague Oliver was about his past.

“Oh, right,” Dan says. “I forgot those were your old stomping grounds.” He shoots Oliver a studying look.

Oliver shrugs. “That sounds like a pretty big deal,” he says. “Someone must be pretty desperate.”

Dan takes a drink of his Coke Zero. “They almost always are,” he says, “but this one in particular, she’s even more of a nervous wreck than usual. I’m not surprised she’s calling in the big guns.”

It shouldn’t pique Oliver’s interest, but it does. “Can you at least tell me what she’s being accused of? It’s got to be big if you’re pulling lawyers in from the other side of the country. Not exactly low profile stuff.”

There’s a moment’s pause before Dan answers, and Oliver wonders if he’s showed his hand. But Dan just rolls his eyes, shaking his head. “Aw, what the hell,” he says. “We’re going to be doing a press conference about it this afternoon.” He scans the room before leaning over and lowering his voice. “The governor’s son got knifed a few nights ago. He’s in critical condition in the hospital. We picked up his girlfriend from the scene, says he raped her last week, and he was going to try it again.”

Oliver lets out a low whistle. “That sounds ugly.”

“No shit, right?” Dan says. “I’m glad it’s not my case, because the press is already starting to have a field day with it, and there’s not much we can do. We’ve got the weapon, the girl, and the vic all in the same place at the same time. She’s not even denying she did it. The DA’s gotta be getting some real pressure from above to make this a clean open-and-shut case.”

“Except,” Oliver says, “for a certain defense lawyer.”

Dan shakes his head. “Yeah. Not that I blame her or anything. If it’d been one of my sisters, I’d have cut off his balls myself.” Dan grew up in a large, tight-knit family, and Oliver grew up with as the second child of two workaholic parents. It was yet another gap that they never quite managed to bridge between the two of them.

“I guess I can look forward to seeing this case blasted all over the local news, huh?” Oliver asks. There’s a pathetic part of him that will probably comb over the footage for glimpses of Connor, where there’s the safe distance of a television screen between the two of them. Despite the bad blood of their second and final break up, Oliver is curious about what’s happened to him. How have the last five years treated him? Is he happy? Has he found someone else? He’s not desperate enough to stalk Connor’s Facebook, but it is something that he finds himself thinking about from time to time.

Dan finishes off his salad and tosses his used napkin onto the table. He must still be on that diet he started while they were still dating. “I’d count on it,” he says.

---

There is a big press conference to announce the case. Oliver watches it on the evening news while he’s signing some checks for Tabitha, the general manager of Oliphaunt. She’s a sharp woman who never quite grew out of her ‘punk’ phase, and she tends to stomp around the bar in her thick-soled combat boots with her hair dyed fire-red. Oliver hired her because she knows how to get people to do what she wants without having to be an asshole about it. He’s convinced that she only accepted the job because she took pity on him.

“That’s some fucked up shit,” Tabitha says as the DA gives his statement to the press. They’re both rubbernecking so they can get a good look at the TV. On screen, they’re listing out the charge: aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of that out there,” Oliver says. It’s easy for his mind to slip back to some of the cases that he’d helped Connor out with, the murders and the assaults and the fraud. That was the part that Oliver never really liked, knowing that the reason he was working on the cases was there were real people who were hurting. The beauty of a good exploit is that it’s just computers, just some ones and zeroes floating through wires. Of course, that didn’t mean there weren’t real humans on the other side of things. It just meant that Oliver didn’t have to think about them.

Tabitha shakes her head as the new broadcast switches over to Keating’s statement. She faces the cameras with the same cool, steely disregard that she used to ask Oliver for his help. It makes Oliver wonder if there’s anything that fazes her, but then again, he’d probably have said the same about Connor until Connor showed up on his doorstep drugged out of his mind.

“Thank you for coming out today,” Keating says. “My client, Naomi Sanders, has been repeatedly victimized. First, by the man she loved and trusted, and then by the criminal justice system that she believed would be able to protect her. The actions she took on the night of October 23 reflect the ways in which the system has failed her and the ways in which the system continues to fail her now.”

When she steps back away from the microphone, Oliver catches a glimpse of Connor behind her. She turns to him and says something, too far away for the microphones to pick up, and Connor nods. There are dark circles underneath Connor’s eyes, like he’s been pulling an all-nighter. Another woman steps up to the two of them, says something else, and the three of them leave together.

The news feed cuts out after that, returning back to the anchors in the studio, ready to dispense some analysis, but Oliver doesn’t want to hear it. He presses the power button on the remote, and the screen goes black.

“Well,” Tabitha says, “now that we’ve had our daily dose of depressing, I still have these work order forms that won’t sign themselves.”

“Yeah,” Oliver says, turning back to the papers in front of him, and he puts the case out of his mind.

Chapter 2

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

Five Years Ago

“Hey,” Connor said. “How’s it going?” He was standing in the doorway to Oliver’s apartment carrying a bouquet of flowers, still dressed in his suit for the day. It was still early in the evening, just after classes had ended. Oliver wondered whether or not he was trying to butter up one of his professors after finals but before the semester’s grades were turned in. It wouldn’t be the first time Connor had dropped by for a few minutes to pick up information before running off to do something else.

Oliver rolled his eyes. “I’m still working on getting those tax records. It’s not like I’m magic or anything.” He stepped back, letting Connor in. He had told Connor a few days ago that he’d call him when he had all the documents in order. He wasn’t expecting to see Connor again until tomorrow.

Connor said, “That’s not why I’m here. These are for you, actually.” His smile was strained, lopsided, as he held out the flowers for Oliver. “Oh, and I ordered pizza if that’s okay.”

Oliver took the flowers, but he still felt like he was missing something here. He’d agreed to help Connor out with his work problems and to be moral support when Connor finally got the help he needed. Not that the second thing came into play much. Connor only showed up if he needed Oliver to break into something. Oliver said, “Yeah, that’s fine.”

“And I remembered not to get anything with mushrooms this time,” Connor said. He looked nervous, not that Oliver understood why. Connor could sail through life doing whatever the hell he wanted, and Oliver would always be the awkward, nerdy guy Connor ditched when he had bigger and better things to do.

“Good,” Oliver said. “They’re disgusting.” He rummaged through his cabinets until he found an old vase his mother left for him a few years back. He wasn’t sure he wanted to keep the flowers around, but it seemed ruder for him to just leave them lying somewhere. “So what is this about?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” Connor said. His voice went quiet, like he was gearing up for another big confession.

Oliver finished setting the flowers up. They looked odd on his kitchen table, but he couldn’t think of where else to put them, and turned to face him. He didn’t like Connor’s big confessions all that much, but he was starting to get used to them. “Yeah?” he asked. He wasn’t sure what to expect next. Maybe an admission that Connor was a part of the Illuminati or that he had gotten gonorrhea from one of his more recent conquests.

Connor took a deep breath. “I know that things didn’t work out the last time, but I wanted to see-- if-- if you’d be willing to give me another chance.”

Oliver froze in his tracks. He wasn’t sure he heard that correctly. “Wait,” Oliver said. “What?”

“Oliver, I--” Connor looked hesitant, a complete 180 from the cocky asshole who knew exactly what he was doing when Oliver met him. “I know I’m not exactly good relationship material, but…”

“It took you this long to figure that out?” Oliver asked before he could stop himself. It was something he tried not to touch, all the frayed, tender parts of himself left over from their breakup, the parts of him that still ached every time he saw Connor’s face again.

Connor tried to hide his flinch, but it was still written across his face, plain as day. “Just-- give me one date? I’ve been getting help, and it’s made me realize that I need to-- that you’re the only person I really trust, okay? I can-- I can make it up to you, pay for dinner, be the perfect boyfriend, whatever.”

Oliver unclenched his teeth, willing himself to relax. “I never needed you to be the perfect boyfriend, you know,” he said. His head was still spinning from Connor’s request.

“Yeah, and I still fucked that up,” Connor said. He swallowed roughly. “One date. So I can show you I mean it.”

It wasn’t all that much. Oliver had already given him so much more. And this time around, Oliver even got free dinner at a real restaurant out of it. “Fine,” Oliver said. “One date.”

“Good,” Connor said. A slow, pleased smile spread across his face.

“The pizza doesn’t count,” Oliver reminded him.

Connor didn’t even seem to mind. “Oh, I can do a lot better than pizza,” he said, like he meant it.

---

“So,” Connor said. “Have I proved myself worthy of a second date?”

It was probably unfair for him to have asked the question right then, when Oliver was stuffed full of good food and his sides were still hurting from laughing at one of Connor’s anecdotes about some asshole in his building who didn’t know how central heating worked. It was a cool winter night in Philadelphia, and they were lingering outside Oliver’s building, not quite willing to part just yet. Oliver could see the wispy traces of Connor’s breath in the air. “Okay,” Oliver said. “One more.”

Connor grinned with an edge of smugness there that Oliver hadn’t seen in a while. It vaguely reminded Oliver of the smile Connor wore the time he made Oliver come just by fingering him. “How about lunch in a few days? You can explain all the boring stuff to me about how you got the tax returns.”

“Wow,” Oliver said. “Try to at least sound like you’re looking forward to it.” He should say no. He should give Connor the ‘just friends’ speech. He shouldn’t let Connor stand so close or smell so good or smile so beautifully. But Oliver was feeling good, genuinely happy in a way he hadn’t felt in months. One more date wasn’t going to kill him.

That got a laugh out of Connor. “I am,” he said, lifting his eyebrows in a clear suggestion.

“I’m not inviting you up tonight,” Oliver said. “And I’m not going to let you drag me into the bathroom for a quickie during lunch, either.” Maybe, there was a time when he would have, would have let Connor talk him into pretty much anything, but if Connor really was determined to earn his forgiveness, Oliver was going to make him work for it.

Connor’s face fell, just a little bit. “Oh,” he said. Oliver tried not to be charmed by it.

“But I’ll let you kiss me good night,” Oliver said.

Connor surged forward at that, pressing their lips together. Most of the night had felt new, different from what they’d been before. Connor was on his best behavior, attentive and thoughtful and careful, when he used to coast by on a smile and an offer of takeout. But this, the way Connor kissed, didn’t feel new at all. The hands cupping his jaw and neck were familiar. The intensity of his focus, the way Oliver had to bend his neck to match it. For most of the night, it had been easy to pretend that this was a real first date, that Connor hadn’t already broken Oliver’s heart already once before, that they were just two guys, trying to get to know each other for the first time.

There was no pretending with this kiss, and Oliver could feel his chest caving in a little at the reminder of what they used to have. But there was a sweetness to it, too. The promise of a new beginning, a second chance.

When he pulled back, Connor was smiling so wide it transformed his face into something sweet, a little goofy, and it felt even rawer than even the drugged-up crazy version of Connor that had ended up on Oliver’s doorstep.

“Thursday,” Connor said, his voice a little breathless. “I’ll swing by, pick you up from work.”

“Okay,” Oliver said. His own smile was so wide his face hurt a little bit.

---

“Exclusivity,” Oliver said. He looked over at Connor to gauge his reaction.

“Yeah?” Connor asked. His eyes were focused on the television screen, and he was reaching for the bowl of popcorn. Oliver had lost the exact count of the number of dates they’d had at this point, but they had been together for over a month. They needed to talk about this.

“If we’re going to be doing this,” Oliver said, “I want this -- us -- to be exclusive.”

“Okay,” Connor said, glancing over at Oliver. On screen, Barbara Hershey was telling Bette Midler that she was pregnant.

Oliver raised his eyebrows. “That’s it?”

Connor fully turned to face him. “What do you want me to say? ‘No, I want to sleep with other people and make you hate me again?’” His expression was quiet, thoughtful, serious.

Oliver sighed. “I just want to make sure we’re on the same page about this. You didn’t want it before. What changed your mind?” Even with all the progress they had made up until now, there were still things they talked around, not through. Connor always deflected or shut down when Oliver mentioned Connor’s working hours or his drug addiction. It made Oliver nervous, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“It’s actually pretty simple,” Connor said. “I want you -- I want this -- more than I want to sleep with other people.” He looked Oliver straight in the eye, and Oliver vaguely wondered if this was how Connor lied to people, with every fiber of his being.

Oliver swallowed, “It’s just that, you say that, and I don’t know if I believe you, and I don’t know if it’s going to be enough or if it’s going to be one of those things that--”

“Oliver,” Connor said, cutting him off. “Let me prove it to you.” He pulled Oliver closer. If there was one thing that Oliver didn’t doubt, it was this, the way their bodies worked together.

“Yeah,” Oliver said, “okay,” and he let Connor kiss him quiet.

---

Now

Connor shows up at the bar again that night. Oliver would say that he wasn’t expecting it, but one of the things that always drew Oliver to him was his persistence. Connor was always relentlessly focused on anything he put his mind to, whether it be sex or his cases or, at one point, Oliver himself. It hadn’t been healthy then, and Oliver suspects that it isn’t healthy now.

This time it’s one of the waitresses, the new mousy-looking one whose name never quite manages to stick in Oliver’s brain, who tells him that Connor is looking for him.

Oliver considers just ignoring the request, going about his business as normal, and letting Connor stew alone by himself. But Oliver is apparently a glutton for punishment when it comes to Connor. No matter how much he knows better, he keeps coming back for more. He heads towards the corner where he knows Connor is sitting, a nervous, fluttery feeling taking up space in the pit of his stomach.

“Oliver,” Connor says when Oliver shows up at his table. He’s commandeered a whole booth just for himself, nursing a Maker’s Manhattan and fiddling with his phone. Keating is nowhere in sight.

Despite his reluctance, Oliver takes the seat opposite Connor. “For a guy recovering from a substance abuse problem, you seem awfully willing to hang out in bars,” he says.

Connor doesn’t take the bait. His smile is thin, and despite the drink, he doesn’t even seem to be the slightest bit buzzed. “I wanted to stop by to clear the air between us,” he says. “I know things ended badly, but I don’t want that to impact our case. We need your help on this.”

It’s hilarious. Oliver would laugh about it if he wasn’t already pissed at Connor for showing up again, out of the blue. “You think I’m saying ’no’ because we had a shitty breakup five years ago?” he says. “News flash, not everything is about you. I’m saying ’no’ because I don’t break into other people’s computers for kicks anymore.” Half the fun of dating Connor was that every new case brought its own set of new challenges. A new system to break into, a new set of files to analyze. How could he go back to being a mid-level IT guy at a marketing company after that? It just made sense to go freelance for real, contracting out his services to people who were willing to pay through the nose for what Oliver could do: corporations sussing out the competition, private investigators wanting to dig up hidden paper trails, security firms who needed an expert in penetration testing. His specialty had been Strasser-secured systems, and he had been good at it. Good enough that he could retire comfortably on his savings for the rest of his life if he wanted to.

Connor drops his eyes to stare at the table, avoiding Oliver’s gaze. “I get it,” Connor says, “you’re not in it for money anymore. But this is different.”

“Connor--” Oliver says.

Connor looks back up, and there’s a ferocity in his expression that makes Oliver’s traitorous heart flip over in his chest. “I would have sent Laurel over here to give you the whole sob story about the conviction rates of rape cases and the prevalence of rape that occurs in heterosexual relationships, but I know you don’t need any of that. You know that Naomi was only defending herself, and I know that she was only defending herself. What we need right now is the security footage to prove it.”

There’s a moment -- just a moment -- when a ‘yes’ lingers on the tip of Oliver’s tongue, but he catches himself, shaking his head before he can get pulled into whatever’s Connor’s terrible plan is. Oliver doesn’t do this anymore. He left it behind, the same way he left Connor’s crazy behind. “You’ll have to ask someone else,” Oliver says. “I can’t help you.”

He gets up to leave, but Connor catches his hand, and Oliver freezes. He’s not sure he can hide his reaction to it, the first time they’ve touched each other in years. Connor says, “I know you don’t want anything to do with this, but you should meet her, hear her story, and then decide whether or not you want to help her.”

Oliver yanks his hand back. “Good night, Connor,” he says, turning back towards the bar. He has better things to do than this, and if he let Connor keep staring at him like that, he might have-- It’s not worth dwelling on it.

“You have my number,” Connor yells after him. “Give me a call.”

Oliver makes his way towards the stairs as fast as he can. He runs into Gavin on his way, while Gavin is headed outside for his smoke break. Gavin winks at him. “He’s cute, boss,” he says, tilting his head towards Connor’s booth. “I definitely recommend hitting that.”

“It’s really none of your business,” Oliver says shortly, “and he’s an ex.”

“Ooooh,” Gavin says, waggling his perfectly-maintained eyebrows, “part of your mysterious past.”

Tabitha thankfully chooses that moment to walk by. “Don’t you have better things to do?” she asks Gavin, raising an eyebrow.

He mimes zipping his lips. “I am going to make like a tree and leaf.” He disappears out the back door to the alleyway.

Tabitha rolls her eyes at his retreating back, but her smile is still fond. She turns to face Oliver. “You looked like you were going to throw up for a moment there, boss, so I figured I’d get him out of your hair.”

“Thanks,” Oliver says. He knows his smile is weaker than it should be. “I appreciate it.”

---

Oliver lives a few blocks away from Oliphaunt, so at the end of a long night, he usually walks home. Tonight, it’s not-quite-raining, drizzling wet enough that the ground is slick and shining orange underneath the streetlights.

He pulls his rain jacket tighter around his shoulders and flips the hood up over his head. He blinks his eyes a few times, keeping himself awake. This day was far more exhausting than he would have expected.

The roads are pretty quiet. Just a few cars who roll past. A few other pedestrians clearing out from the other bars in the neighborhood. It’s easy for Oliver to get stuck, lost inside his own head.

Of course, Connor had to show up out of the blue and act like a wrecking ball on Oliver’s carefully-constructed life. Oliver shouldn’t have expected anything else from him. He did that the first time around, too. It’s not that Oliver’s insecure (though he is), but guys like Connor just didn’t talk to guys like Oliver. It wasn’t the looks or the clothes or the amount of money anyone had. It was that they could smell the boring monogamy all over Oliver, the Sunday mornings doing crossword puzzles and the Saturday nights spent inside watching sappy movies and the routine sex three times a week. That first night, Connor talking to him had been a violation of all the rules of the known universe, and it hadn’t made any sense until Connor had asked about those e-mails. But by then, Oliver had been hooked, like he’d been waiting his whole life for an excuse to be bad. Connor had given him that, and Connor was-- more, different than Oliver had thought of him at first, full of secrets and hidden layers, a puzzle that refused to be solved.

It’s easy to pretend when you move away from an old life that you can leave it behind, that you can make yourself into someone new. Oliver’s been comfortable for the last couple of years. He’s let himself become complacent.

And now, he’s becoming more and more aware of just how little he’s actually dealt with his feelings for Connor. It had seemed easier, like a teenager cleaning his room, to shove them into a dark corner of himself and let them sit, festering up until now. If he had the time or the energy, he could sit down and try to untangle them all, but he’s not sure it would solve anything. Connor’s not part of Oliver’s life anymore. Oliver just needs to keep it that way.

Oliver’s apartment is blissfully silent, blissfully empty, when he gets home. He changes into his pajamas on autopilot. He brushes his teeth, takes off his glasses, washes his face.

He crawls into bed and closes his eyes. Despite his exhaustion, sleep doesn’t come easily.

Chapter 3

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

I swear that the similarities between last night’s ep and this chapter are completely coincidental.

Five Years Ago

Oliver was absently reading news articles on the internet when his cell phone started ringing. It wasn’t a number he recognized, but it didn’t seem like it was a telemarketer either.

“Hello?” he said, answering it. Hopefully it wasn’t someone who had caught on to the very illegal work Oliver had been doing doing on the side. He hadn’t even had time to set up his escape plan to hide out in Cambodia for the rest of his life.

“Hey, is this Oliver?” a voice on the other end asked. The man sounded a little muffled, because of the roar of background noise, too many voices and an undercurrent of music.

Oliver froze. “Yes, it is,” he said. Would the FBI cybersecurity team really be calling him at 10 pm from a crowded bar?

“This is Wes Gibbins. I work with Connor for Professor Keating,”

“Oh,” Oliver said, starting to breathe normally again. “What’s going on?” There were plenty of reason why Wes would be calling this late, and almost none of them were good.

“I think Connor’s had a bit too much to drink. Could I bring him back to your place?”

A terrible sinking feeling started taking up space in Oliver’s stomach. And Connor had been doing so well, too. “Yeah,” he said. “I think that’s a good idea. Do you have my address, too?”

After hanging up with Wes, he spent the next half an hour pacing, running his fingers through his hair, tapping his feet. He’d known that Connor was under a lot of stress lately. Second semester finals and the ongoing work of Professor Keating’s trial.

Thankfully, the jury had turned in a not-guilty verdict just today. Oliver was expecting Connor to want a day to himself before talking to Oliver about it. Their relationship had been functioning, for the most part, but there were still parts of it that were rocky. Oliver knew that Connor wasn’t telling him a lot of things, and it made some of their conversations, tense, uncomfortable, strange. They didn’t talk about how Connor was handling sobriety, and they didn’t talk about the Keating trial, and about where they were going to be next year, the year after that. It made Oliver nervous, to be honest, because he did want it, the next year, the year after that, and all the years after that, but he didn’t know what Connor wanted at all.

When there was finally an unfamiliar knock on Oliver’s door, he rushed over, he yanked it open.

There were three men standing there, two unfamiliar faces bracketing Connor’s familiar one. Connor was slouching against the one on the left, clearly too drunk to stand upright.

“I’m Wes,” the one on the left said. “I would offer to shake your hand, but…” He shrugged a little. Based on Connor’s complaints about them (mostly Michaela), Oliver had expected most of Connor’s coworkers to be like him, sharp, cutthroat, and a little cruel, but Wes had an open sweetness to his face that was hard to fake .

“Dude doesn’t know how to handle his liquor.” That was the white guy on Connor’s right. His voice was slurring, not exactly sober himself. He looked like your typical frat bro at Middleton, dressed a little nicer than the shorts and polo shirts that the undergrads liked to sport, but he had the kind of douche face that nerds learned to spot from a mile off.

Wes snorted under his breath and tilted Connor in Oliver’s direction. “Can you take him? He’s kind of heavy.”

“Yeah,” Oliver said. “Let me--” He stepped forward and took Connor’s arm, letting Connor slump against him.

“Oh, hey.” Connor was grinning, a little dopily. “Hi, Oliver.”

Wes pulled back. “You’ve got this, right? I still need to make sure Asher gets home without puking up in a gutter somewhere.”

“Hey! I’m totally fine!” Asher said, before letting out a huge burp and swaying unsteadily on his feet.

Wes nodded. “Uh, huh.”

“I think I can take it from here,” Oliver said. Connor nuzzled his neck, his beard brushing rough against Oliver’s collarbone.

“Great!” Wes said, smiling for the first time since he’d shown up. “Tell Connor I’ll see him on Monday, okay?”

“Yeah. I can do that,” Oliver said. He watched as Wes navigated a mildly discombobulated Asher towards the stairs before turning his focus back on Connor.

“Like the way you smell,” Connor mumbled.

Oliver closed his eyes. He never knew what to do in situations like this. He’d fished a few friends off the floor during college, but those days were long gone for him. “Uh, thanks,” he said. “Let’s just get you to bed.” They would have to talk about this in the morning, but right now Connor barely seemed able to recite the alphabet much less hold it together for a serious conversation about his life choices.

Connor was heavy. He smelled like a mixture of alcohol, sweat, and -- oddly enough -- buffalo wings. “Don’t wanna sleep,” he said, but he didn’t resist as Oliver dragged the two of them into the bedroom. “Just wanna be here with you.”

Oliver said, “You might say that now, but you’re going to want some sleep later.”

“No, you don’t get it. I want to be here.” Connor slurred. “I love you.” His eyes were glassy and bright, and his smile had a tinge of madness to it.

Oliver closed his eyes and clenched his teeth together, trying to get his breathing back under control. He couldn’t handle this sort of thing, Connor’s penchant for honesty at inopportune times. “We can talk about this in the morning,” Oliver said.

---

Oliver woke before Connor did. He hadn’t been sleeping well, anyway, plagued by anxieties that he didn’t want to name. It was better to be awake, upright, and mostly functional. It was May, so the sun was already disgustingly bright as Oliver made his morning coffee, the yellow of it spilling in through the living room windows, crawling across Oliver’s floors. He listened to the coffee machine as it burbled, stifling a yawn as he waited.

He wasn’t sure what to make of any of this, whether or not he should be making anything of it. The confession was unexpected, of course, and it had Oliver feeling both nauseous and fluttery all at once. It was an odd and unpleasant experience all at once. In some ways, it should be a victory, proof that Connor was all-in on this relationship, but--

And then there was Connor falling off the wagon. It didn’t seem like anything harder than alcohol on the surface, which was a huge relief. Maybe the presence of his coworkers had kept him in check. But something that happened, something big, to have Connor going off and doing something as stupid as getting smashed in a bar. Oliver wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was, but it was something he needed to understand. They couldn’t keep working like this. It wasn’t sustainable.

He pulled open the blinds in the bedroom, letting the sunlight flood in. Connor shifted, turning over onto his other side, but didn’t wake. Oliver usually loved watching Connor sleep. His mouth would hang open, and his features would soften. Stripped of all his usual bravado, he was just… a guy. A guy who liked Oliver, and a guy who Oliver liked back. Why wasn’t it ever that simple?

Oliver was tempted to go back into the living room to wait, but then there was a thud from upstairs. Nothing out of the ordinary; the upstairs neighbors sometimes moved their furniture around for kicks. But it did startle Connor awake.

He sat up, wincing in the sunlight and rubbing at his forehead. “Fuck, ow,” he said.

Oliver handed over the glass of water he’d left by Connor’s bedside. “Here,” he said.

Connor’s smile was grateful as he took it from Oliver’s hands, and he gulped it all down in one go. Oliver waited for him to finish. It was easier to watch Connor, the curve of his throat, the slope of his shoulders, than to start a conversation that neither of them wanted to have.

“We’re going to have to talk about last night,” Oliver said.

Connor groaned. “I told Wes not to call you.” He put the empty glass down and rubbed his face with his hands.

Oliver flinched. He didn’t want to, but he did. “So you did know what you were doing then.”

“Oliver--”

“You’ve been sober for months! Why are you throwing it all away now?” Oliver could hear his voice climbing higher and louder at the end. It was cringeworthy and embarrassing, and he couldn’t stop himself.

“It was just alcohol.” Connor said, and he had the nerve to sound reasonable about it, like Oliver was overreacting to his former drug addict boyfriend showing up drunk on his doorstep, like Oliver was idiot for even caring.

“That’s-- that’s total bullshit, and it’s not even the point,” Oliver said. “What’s going on here?”

When Oliver got confrontational, Connor usually withdrew, turned away, mumbled under his breath, but today, he put down his hands and glared straight at Oliver. “Lay off, will you? It’s none of your fucking business,” he snarled.

“None of my fucking business?” Oliver asked. “I’m your boyfriend. Of course it’s my fucking business.” It hurt, of course it hurt, but the anger made it hurt less. Oliver had been waiting for this exact moment since he had agreed to go out on that very first date, the moment when everything started to come crumbling down. He just hadn’t realized that he was waiting for it until it finally happened.

Connor’s nostrils flared. “I work at a law firm, okay? You’re just going to have to accept that there are some things I can’t tell you.” Oliver had always known that Connor had this in him, this viciousness, but he’d never seen it turned on him, not like this.

“Yeah, a law firm I’ve been breaking the law to help for eight months now. I think we’re way beyond lawyer-client confidentiality at this point,” Oliver said.

Connor shot him one last look before getting up and storming out of the room. “I can’t do any of this while I still have a hangover,” he said. “We can talk about this later.” He grabbed his jacket out of the coat closet and put it on, sliding it onto his shoulders. His hair was still a wild mess.

And just like Oliver had been waiting for this moment, he realized that he had also been preparing what he was going to do next. This -- all of this -- was basically an airplane heading for a crash landing. The only reasonable thing to do was eject. “No,” he said. “We’re not going to talk about this later.”

Connor said, “Well, I’m not sticking around so you can yell at me some more.” He patted down his pockets for his keys, his cell phone, his wallet, making sure he had the essentials. Oliver had seen him go through this routine more than enough times.

“We’re not going to be talking about this ever,” Oliver said, “because this is it for me.”

That managed to stop Connor in his tracks. “Wait. You’re breaking up with me?” he asked, spinning around to face Oliver, and then wincing at the sudden movement.

“Yes,” Oliver said. There was something small, cold, and hard right at the center of him. It was important to do this. It was a necessary step. Who had he been trying to fool here, exactly? They had been pretending this whole time that they could make it work. It turned out, sometimes second chances weren’t worth it if you managed to royally fuck everything up the first time around.

Connor ducked his head, and his breath started going ragged. When he looked back up, his expression had shifted into something softer, something pleading. “It’s just one fight. We can still--”

“You told me you loved me last night,” Oliver said, cutting him off. “I don’t suppose you remember it.” All the feeling had drained out of him, and he was just numb now, empty of everything. It was nice, being in a place where Connor couldn’t hurt him anymore.

Connor’s eyes went wide and round. “I did what?”

“I didn’t believe you,” Oliver continued. “I’ll believe that you thought you were telling the truth, and I’ll believe that you do care about me on some level. But what I don’t believe is that you know how to give a shit about anyone but yourself and what you want.”

“Oliver--” Connor started.

“Take your things and get out,” Oliver said. “I don’t ever want to see you again.” He turned around, closed his eyes, and listened as the door to his apartment slammed shut.

---

On Monday, Oliver turned in his two week’s notice at his IT job.

By June, he had moved out to the West Coast and into a bedroom in Mountain View without any windows and had acquired a roommate who thought the moon landing was fake but also had access to enough computing power to break into the Pentagon.

Three years later, he heard that friend of a friend had a bar that they were willing to sell in Seattle. A bit of a fixer upper, but in the rapidly gentrifying Capitol Hill neighborhood. A good opportunity if you had the cash to make it happen.

Two years after that, he was almost something of a respectable businessman.

And then Connor Walsh decided to walk in the front door. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world.

---

Now

“So you won’t believe what just happened,” Dan says, materializing at Oliver’s side while Oliver is wiping down the bar.

“You’re right,” Oliver says. “I probably won’t, but you should tell me anyway.” Dan likes to get excited about things that Oliver finds completely baffling, things like how the Seahawks are doing in the post-season or when there are pictures of cats in funny poses on the internet.

“So this lawyer working the Sanders case tried to flirt with me for information,” Dan says. He’s grinning, clearly excited to relay his story. Oliver has the sinking feeling that he already knows how it’s going to end.

“Yeah?” Oliver says, trying to keep his voice from doing that strangled thing it does when he’s lying. “Does she know you’re gay?”

Dan laughs. “No, it was the white guy. They must be hard up on leads if they’re getting that desperate.” Oliver can just imagine it. Connor leaning on the nearest available surface, wearing the most flirtatious smirk on his face, acting like he knows he can get any guy in the room he wants. It makes Oliver a little nauseous just thinking about it, the idea that Connor hasn’t changed at all.

He keeps his expression as neutral as possible. “Really.” He focuses on trying to get one particular wine stain cleaned up, but it’s probably a lost cause. He might need to get out the bleach.

“I told him where he could go shove it,” Dan continues, “but at least he wasn’t being too creepy about it or giving off rice chaser vibes. It’s like you can’t go into a gay club without running into one of them these days.” He smirks at Oliver. “Not that you’ve seen the inside of a gay club in the last decade.”

Oliver shrugs. He’s accepted that he’s always going to be a homebody. “Are you sure he wasn’t actually interested in you?” It bothers him, the thought that Connor might be interested in Dan, but it also bothers him that Dan might be interested in Connor, too.

“He dropped me like a hot potato as soon as I refused to tell him everything I knew about the case,” Dan says. “I’m pretty sure he would have stuck it out after that point if he really wanted to suck my dick.”

Oliver lets out a breath that is definitely not a sigh of relief. “Yeah, I guess not,” he says.

“Not that I would have gone for him even he was really interested. You’re a hard act to follow, Hampton,” Dan says. He grabs hold of Oliver’s head and presses a quick kiss to Oliver’s cheek.

“Don’t even start,” Oliver says, but he still ends up smiling anyway, because it’s silly and it’s fun, and he doesn’t have a lot of that in his life right now. Connor is going to do what Connor always does, and all Oliver has to do is put all of that, all of Philadelphia and Annalise Keating and Connor, behind him.

---

But of course it’s not always that easy.

Oliver’s cleaning out the pockets of his pants when he finds it, the half-crumpled business card Connor gave to him. It feels expensive, heavy cardstock, nice lettering. The front announces that he’s Connor Walsh, Junior Associate at Keating & Associates. There’s a phone number there, neatly printed, Philadelphia area code.

Connor’s number was deleted from Oliver’s contacts years ago, and Oliver doesn’t even remember what it was. It would be tempting, to put the number back into his phone. Not to call him, of course. Just to have it around.

He sits down on his bed, pants in one hand and the business card in the other, staring at it, considering his options.

The case has been on the news non-stop. The governor had come out with a few statements, mostly about his son, Victor, and his continued road to recovery, and how he believed that the courts would come to a fair verdict. Keating had released a few of her own statements about how Victor was a rapist scumbag who deserved everything he had gotten. Not in so many words, of course, but Oliver can read between the lines. They’ve shown pictures of Naomi, as well. The networks love to compare and contrast pictures of her mug shot, messy haired and wearing a dark scowl, with her old Facebook photos, happy and made up and smiling. It’s always impossible to get a feel for the tilt and turns of a case from the outside, but Oliver can’t watch any of the coverage without feeling keenly aware of the fact that he could help, but that he isn’t, that he’s turned it down.

Connor was scarce, probably still doing a ton of background and research work. He would set up shop in Oliver’s apartment, sometimes, tapping away at his laptop or surrounded by paperwork. More often, it meant late nights at the office, Connor trying to call and apologize discreetly while his coworkers chattered away in the background. Their first try at a not-relationship had been something of a simpler, happier time in Oliver’s life, and he finds himself thinking back on it almost fondly, the ache dulled of its sharp edges. He could--

He puts the business card into his wallet. Just in case he changes his mind.

Chapter 4

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

This one gets into a little more detail about the case. Just as a heads up in case that might be triggering.

A woman shows up next, dark haired, dark eyed, pale. Oliver recognizes her from that first press conference, the one that Connor had been talking to afterwards.

“Laurel,” he says. It’s 3pm, that fuzzy in-between time that’s not quite lunch and not quite dinner, and Oliphaunt only has maybe one or two customers, eating by themselves in their corner booths. Oliver is haunting the area behind the bar, making sure everything is in order back there.

“Mr. Hampton,” she says. “I see you already know who I am.” She’s dressed far less formally than either Connor or Keating or the outfit she wore during the press conference. A soft sweater, leggings. It must mean something to her if she’s showing up on a day that she has off from work.

“Connor mentioned you might show up.” Oliver also vaguely remembers her from Connor’s ramblings about his job. She’s the earnest one, bleeding heart, feminist. From what Oliver can recall, Connor never liked her very much, but attitudes and impressions can change. “Do you guys have a pre-arranged order for harassing people?”

“No,” Laurel says, “we don’t. Connor doesn’t even know that I was planning on coming by.”

Oliver runs a hand through his hair. “I assume I already know why you’re here.”

“You’re probably right,” Laurel says, “but I also know that Connor isn’t very subtle on his best days, and he’s definitely not good at it when you’re in the picture.”

Oliver turns away, fiddling with some glasses behind the bar so that he has something to do with his hands. “But you’re not here to talk about Connor.”

“Nope,” she says, settling down at one of the bar stools. “I know that you’re familiar with our case.” Oliver wouldn’t have said it at first, but there’s something about her, maybe learned, maybe instinctual, that reminds him of Keating. She’s careful and watching, analyzing every move Oliver makes. Lawyers. They’ve always made Oliver nervous.

“Sure,” Oliver asks. “I’ve been following it the same way everyone in Seattle is following it.”

She nods. “There’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t make it in front of the cameras. I think that must be pretty obvious right now.”

Oliver glances back at her. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that I need to go digging through everyone’s dirty laundry.”

She shakes her head at that. “Governor Norton obviously wants to make sure that his kid stays the victim in the eyes of the public. He knows how to play this game with the press. We need a trump card. A good one.”

“I’m sorry,” Oliver says, “but you’re trying to convince the wrong guy. I’m just a simple businessman. I can’t help you.”

Laurel tilts her head to the side, her eyes going razor sharp. “Why’d you stop?” she asks.

Oliver clears his throat. “Stop what?”

“Come on. I know what you used to do, Oliver. There’s no reason to play coy with me.” Her smile is thin and hard and knowing.

“I didn’t realize that meant we needed to have awkward heart-to-hearts,” Oliver says. “Not that I should be telling you any of this, but I stopped because I hated the way it made me feel.”

“Like you were doing things for the wrong reasons?” she asks.

“Something like that,” Oliver admits. It does something to you, becoming a mercenary. It can turn you into someone you don’t like very much, someone who looks at the bottom line before looking at the cost it has on other people. After the initial shine of it wore off, the power rush, the thrill of breaking the rules and getting away with it, Oliver had realized that it could leave him hollowed out for days afterwards, staring at the social security numbers and phone records and financial data of people who probably didn’t deserve what he was doing to them. He tried to keep things as clean as he could, but almost none of the work he did was above board. If it was, his clients wouldn’t have be paying him what they were.

“This case wouldn’t be like that,” she says. “You’d be doing something important.” There’s a glimmer in her eye, one that has Oliver curious.

“Is that why you do it?” he asks. “Is that why you’re still working for her?” He remembers the little sneer Connor would wear when he would mention her, bleeding heart Brown-grad who always ends up fucking the wrong people, and Oliver has this image in his head of someone with purpose, with genuine convictions.

She blinks, surprised at the question, but Oliver figures that if they’re going to be oversharing right now, he’s not going to be the only one. She says, “I did have the option of doing something else after graduating, but I decided that this work, the work that I was already doing, was more important to me.”

Oliver shakes his head. “Sometimes it’s better to leave the past where it is.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” she says. “The past doesn’t like to stay put.”

Her presence here is more than enough proof of that. “I’ll think about it,” Oliver says. He wants the statement to be a polite deflection, something he can say to get her out of his hair. He’s not sure if it is.

She gives him one last nod before she leaves.

---

“You’ve been distracted lately, boss,” Tabitha says.

Oliver blinks a few times at the resume he’s supposed to be reading. He must have zoned out while going over the candidates for a bartending gig on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Gavin can’t cover those nights because he’s just started taking kickboxing classes. “Yeah, sorry,” he says. “It’s just-- not been a good few weeks.”

“Does this have anything to do with the ex that showed up the other night?” Tabitha asks. She twirls her pen around her thumb, an absent-minded motion that lingers in the corner of Oliver’s vision. It’s almost as distracting as his thoughts.

Oliver nods. “It’s just-- there’s all this baggage he brings with him.” He shuts his mouth before he can say anything else. There’s being upfront and then there’s dumping all his problems on someone else. The worst thing he could do is force his employees to act as his therapist.

“Look, I’m not trying to pry or anything, but if it’s messing with your head, I suggest you take a few days off, get your shit together,” she says. “I can run things here just fine.”

“I knew this was really a grab for power,” Oliver says. He laughs before letting himself think about her suggestion seriously. It has been pretty difficult trying to keep everything running smoothly, with his head in two different places at once. “You’re right. I should take care of this first.”

“Good, then that’s settled,” Tabitha says. “And no offense, boss, but you’re not the only person who’s had a bad breakup. Relationships are messy. Shit happens. You don’t have to bottle all that stuff up.”

“I wish it was only about the bad breakup,” Oliver sighs, “but it’s more complicated than that.”

She holds up her hands, stopping him from going any further. “You don’t need to tell me anything. Just figure it out and come back when you do.”

Oliver closes his eyes and tries not to think about how a therapist would have a field day with the inside of his head. “Thanks, Tabitha,” he says.

“No problem, boss.”

---

Oliver punches in the numbers into his phone before he can psych himself out of it. He holds it up to his ear and listens to it as it rings. It’s not that-- it’s not that he’s giving in to pressure here, when it comes to their case.

But he’s had a few days to think about it, to wander down to Pike’s Place on a warm, sunny day, and to appreciate how much things have changed, and to appreciate how nothing’s changed at all. This isn’t Connor trying to bribe him with food and blowjobs while batting his eyelashes. This is Annalise Keating herself showing up on his doorstep to ask him for his help. Oliver is not who he was five years ago, and he’s not who he was two years ago, either. Maybe there was a time when he would have gone ahead and done the job without thinking twice about it, but Oliver wants to sit down and consider all the consequences of his actions.

The press has been digging into the events with a starry-eyed fascination that makes Oliver a little sick. Victor had a few accusations of sexual assault thrown at him while he was attending the University of Washington. Naomi had a reputation for being a little bit of a slut amongst her friends. There are talking heads who are analyzing this case from every possible angle, and even the old, ugly history of the Sam Keating trial is getting retrospectives because of Annalise Keating’s involvement.

If Oliver gets this information, it will be proof, real proof that Naomi is not lying about her motives. He has the chance to change things. Maybe that’s enough of a reason to get involved.

“Hello?” the voice on the other end of the line answers.

“Connor, hi, this is Oliver.” Oliver winces at the way he sounds, chipper, overly bright.

“Oh,” Connor says, clearing his throat. “So I guess you had a change of heart?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Oliver says. They haven’t talked in at least a week, and something in Oliver’s chest leaps at the sound of Connor’s voice, something almost like terror but not quite. “When’s a good time for me to stop by? I don’t think it makes sense for us to talk out all the details on the phone.”

“We’ve been mostly working out of our hotel, the Grand Hyatt? I’m guessing you have more time in the mornings, so--”

“I can do the evenings, too,” Oliver says, too fast, interrupting. “I cleared-- I’ve got a few days where i’m not working.”

“Sure,” Connor says, “how about tomorrow at six?” There’s something odd in his voice that Oliver can’t read. Does it sound like Oliver is trying to set up a date?

“Okay,” Oliver says. “See you then.”

He hangs up before he can say anything else unforgivably awkward. Maybe he should have sent an e-mail instead. He never did learn how to have a conversation with Connor without feeling like the weirdo loser in high school who gets tongue-tied while talking to the head cheerleader. But it shouldn’t matter after this. One last favor, and Oliver won’t have to see him ever again.

---

Oliver shows up in the lobby of the Hyatt at exactly six. He’s apprehensive, but he’s not nervous. It’s easy to think of this as a job interview of sorts, a chance for both sides to size each other up and see if this relationship has a chance of working out. Okay, maybe that’s a bad metaphor, but Oliver just has to focus on the job at hand.

Connor’s already waiting for him, dressed down in just a long-sleeved t-shirt and simple black pants. “Hey,” he says, smiling. It’s the brightest smile Oliver’s seen on Connor’s face in a while.

“Hi,” Oliver says. They shake hands, stiff, overly formal, not standing too close together, not standing too far apart, and even with his own commitment to keeping this professional, Oliver feels keenly aware of the fact that he knows what Connor’s come tastes like.

“Come on,” Connor says. “We can talk when we get to the suite.”

They get an elevator to themselves, which is quiet and a little unnerving when it’s just the two of them surrounded by mirrors and stainless steel. They stand against the back, a shoulder width apart, but Oliver can’t help but notice that how all he’d have to do is reach out, and then he’d be able to touch Connor again.

“Thanks for doing this,” Connor says. “I’m sure you hate me at this point, and I know you were pretty close to just telling me to fuck off at the beginning there.” His expression remains controlled, impassive as he says it.

“I don’t hate you,” Oliver says. “I left because I just needed to get away from you.”

Connor snorts, eyebrows going up, and the hint of a sneer curls his lips. “Yeah, that’s so much better.”

“It’s-- it’s not like that,” Oliver says, trying to put it all into the right words. “You show up, and it messes with my head, because then I want things--”

“Like what?” Connor inches closer. It’s not uncomfortable yet, but it’s on the line.

“-- things that I know won’t ever happen.” Oliver shakes his head. He should have said this years ago, and now he gets to put it all out on the table. “You’re not the relationship kind of guy. I get it. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I am.”

Connor watches Oliver with dark eyes, leaning towards Oliver in a way that’s so familiar, Oliver feels the old ache all over again. “I was willing to be that kind of guy,” Connor says, “when it came to you.”

It’s hard to speak around the lump in his throat, but Oliver powers through it. “Even when you stopped sleeping with other guys, it was still always like I was on the outside, looking in. You said you trusted me, but you never trusted me that much. That’s not a relationship, Connor.”

“Oliver--” Connor starts, but that’s when the elevator gets to the thirtieth floor, the doors sliding open and cutting their conversation short.

---

“Mr. Hampton,” Keating says when Oliver walks through the door to the lawyers’ suite. “I’m glad to see that you’ve reconsidered.”

They’re all set up and waiting for him in the main room of the suite. Laurel is sitting cross-legged on the couch with her laptop in her sweatpants and oversized Middleton hoodie. Keating is standing in the middle of the room, in heels and full makeup, her eyes still calculating. And between them is a woman sitting in her own chair, dirty blonde hair, biting her bottom lip, picking at a hangnail. Oliver recognizes her from the news photos. Naomi Sanders, in the flesh.

Oliver says, “Well, your emissaries were awfully convincing, I have to say. But I want to know the details before I commit to helping you.”

Keating nods. “I’ll have Ms. Sanders fill you in on the background first,” she says, stepping back.

“Hi,” Naomi says. “You’re the hacker, right?” Up close, she seems younger than her twenty-three years, all of her emotions on the surface for anyone to watch and study and observe. Even though Oliver is not the best at reading people’s moods, he can tell that she’s nervous, cautious, and angry, and there’s a coldness to her anger that Oliver wouldn’t have anticipated.

“Yeah,” Oliver says. “That’s me.”

She tilts her head as she looks at him. “You’re going to help get the footage, right?”

“Probably,” Oliver says. He’s already here. Might as well admit that he is invested in this.

She chews her bottom lip and switches to picking at a loose thread of her t-shirt. “The first time he raped me, we were at his place. We’d just gotten back from the clubs. I was drunk, and I was tired, and I told him that I just wanted to go to sleep, that I didn’t want to have sex that night. I know he heard me. I know it’ll be on the footage.” She turns her head to the side, voice trailing off.

“But?” Oliver asks.

“The next day he had the nerve to pretend like nothing had happened, like he hadn’t done anything wrong. I went along with it at first. I didn’t want to believe it actually happened either.” She wipes at the corner of her eyes, grimacing her way through it. “It was easier to pretend, you know?”

Oliver doesn’t say anything. He nods.

“And then he tried it again. Maybe he thought that since I let him get away with it the first time, I’d let him get away with it again. But,” she laughs, a hollow, hard sound, “we were in the kitchen, and the knife block was right there, and you know what? Fuck him. I let him know exactly where he could put his bullshit.”

Keating decides to step in at that point. “The Nortons had home security installed in Victor’s building a few years ago. The footage from the first night is being stored on a Strasser-secured server run by the security company. We’ve been trying to subpoena it, but the DA has been giving us the run around saying it’s not relevant to the current case.”

“And how’s having that footage supposed to help you if they’re not willing to admit it as evidence?” Oliver asks.

Keating just gives him a level look. “I’m the lawyer here, Mr. Hampton. It’s my job to figure that out. It’s your job to get that footage to me, understood?”

Laurel pulls out a folded sheet of paper and hands it over to him. “This is everything we know about the server with the footage.” Her eyes are slightly narrowed as she studies him. “We managed to weasel out this much information about it, but the company won’t let us dig any deeper without the Nortons’ permission.”

“Thanks,” Oliver says, taking the paper from her. He slides it into his jacket pocket. He’ll take a look at it later when he has a computer in front of him.

Keating says, “We’ll keep in touch. Let us know when you have something we can use.” She turns away, which is probably supposed to indicate that Oliver is dismissed from this meeting.

“Come on,” Connor says, materializing at Oliver’s shoulder. “I’ll walk you out.”

---

Connor doesn’t say anything during their ride back down to the lobby, but there’s something in the way he looks at Oliver that makes Oliver’s skin prickle, and the memory of that feeling lasts long into the night.

Chapter 5

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

Oliver calls into Oliphaunt and tells Tabitha that he’s going to need at least another week. She’s fine with it, much as he expects her to be, but there’s a note of concern in her voice when she asks him if he’s doing okay. It’s easy enough to assure her that he’s fine.

He is fine. He just needs a little more time to himself, in his own head, that’s all.

He spends a day walking through the city. It’s a balmy day, fifty degrees and cloudy. That’s the thing that always surprised him about the West Coast when he first moved out here, the way the weather never went through the same sort of seasonal mood swings that he’d grown up with in Philadelphia. Maybe he’d gotten too complacent, too used to even-keeled weather, to recognize how to handle things when a real storm blows through.

Oliver still has to decide whether or not he’s going to lend his hacking skills to this case, and he circles through the pros and cons of the situation.

Cons: It’s illegal. It’s putting him in Connor’s orbit again. It’s something that he told himself that he wouldn’t do anymore. It’s going to leave him open for more legal scrutiny.

Pros: Naomi doesn’t deserve to go to jail for defending herself.

In the end, there’s only one real answer that Oliver can live with.

---

Oliver settles down in front of his computer and logs in. He destroyed most of his tools when he left the business, but he does have one last machine in a black-market Russian server farm that he never quite managed to get rid of for sentimental reasons. It was just -- a reminder -- a chance for Oliver to look back on his time and know that it had been real, that it had actually happened.

His private key still works for it, so he SSH’s into it and pokes around. All of his scripts are still there, just as he remembers them. He flips through all the directories, making sure to update all the configurations for this new job. It’s been a while, so he’s a little rusty, but he knows how to do this. Like riding a bike.

The information Laurel gave him is more than enough to get started, but it’ll take a few days to actually break the encryption that the system uses and allow him to extract the data they’re looking for. It’ll be a bit of time before he has anything to show for his work.

He’s just kicked off the job on his remote server when his doorbell rings. He jerks back from the computer, shutting down the connection as soon as possible. The job will keep running, but at least he won’t be logged into the machine anymore if someone asks. No one will ask, but it’s better to be safe about this sort of thing.

When he opens the door, he finds himself squinting through his glasses, not quite sure if he should believe his eyes. “Connor? What are you doing here?” he asks.

“Hi, Oliver,” Connor says. He half-smiles, rueful, and shifts, restless on his feet in the hallway. The similarities to past situations between them is not lost on Oliver right now. “I’m sorry for showing up out of the blue like this. Is this a bad time?” He seems nervous but not crazy, and Oliver doesn’t have anything else to do right now.

“Uh, yeah,” Oliver says, “it’s fine. Come on in.”

Connor follows him inside, pulling the door closed behind him. They know how to do this. They’ve done it so many times before. Connor says, “I just-- I’ve been thinking about what you said, on the elevator. About the things I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Yeah?” Oliver asks.

Connor takes a deep breath, staring straight into Oliver’s eyes. “I thought that I-- I need to tell you something. The truth about the night of the bonfire.”

Oliver feels his blood run cold at the words. He tries to line up the dates in his head. “Wait, are you talking about the night you showed up drugged out of your mind and then freaked out at me?”

Connor shakes his head. “Yeah, but the truth --” another breath “-- the truth is that I wasn’t freaking out because I was on drugs.”

If he’d heard this when they were still dating, Oliver would have thought that Connor was trying to dodge a question, but there’s no reason for Connor to lie about it now. “Uh huh,” Oliver says. “So what was all that really about then? Was it just a ploy to get me to feel sorry for you? So that I would give you another chance? Why the hell would you fake a bad trip?”

Connor looks up and meets Oliver’s eyes. “I was freaking out because I saw Annalise’s husband get murdered.”

Oliver’s first instinct is to laugh. It sounds so ridiculous coming out of Connor’s mouth. Connor may be a scumbag at times, but he’s not a murderer. The idea that he’d been involved in one of the ugliest legal battles in Philadelphia’s history long before it ended up in court seems completely outside of Oliver’s comprehension.

But the more Oliver thinks about it, the more the timeline makes sense. They talked a lot about it during the news, about the suspicious nature of the disappearance on the same night as Middleton’s biggest party of the year because the cops were busy rounding up drunk, underaged college students, spread too thin to notice a body getting burned in the woods. “What were you doing there? Cleaning up after her like you always do?” It comes out nastier than Oliver means it to, but he’s trying to fight off the slow, creeping feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach.

Connor does start laughing, and it’s almost like that night all over again, something a little unstable, a little crazy. “Not exactly. We were just-- it was a bad sequence of events at a bad place at a bad time. And no, she didn’t actually do it.”

“Wait,” Oliver says. He hasn’t thought about any of this for years, but the details are starting to trickle back. “I remember that that there was speculation that more than one person was involved because of how much effort was put in to cover up the evidence.”

“Yeah,” Connor says, “apparently spending an entire night covering up a murder fucks with your head. Who would have thought?”

It takes a moment, but then all of it hits him at once, calling up a sense memory that makes Oliver more than a little nauseous. The terrible burnt smell of Connor’s clothes, and the horror in his eyes, and Oliver’s own nerves and confusion and fear. “Jesus,” Oliver says, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “Why are even you telling me this?” He blinks away the tears, swallows around the bile rising up in his mouth.

“Because you’re right,” Connor says, curling into himself a little bit, arms crossed tightly across his chest, his hands shoved into his armpits. “You deserved to know the truth, the whole truth. I made up the drug thing because I didn’t want to-- I didn’t want to see the way you’d look at me, and I didn’t want you to get caught up in all of it, and I--”

“So you lied to me,” Oliver says. It’s so much. He doesn’t know if he’s managed to process any of it yet.

“Oliver--” Connor says, his voice scraped raw and tender. His expression is a little like that, too, open and exposed, but also calm. He’s had the time to come to terms with all of this already.

Maybe the old Oliver would have freaked out. Maybe the idea of getting of caught up in a murder investigation would have sent their relationship off the deep end even sooner. But Oliver’s not the same guy he was when Connor first met him, the one who could barely even handle talking to a hot guy in a bar. Oliver tries to smile. “This would explain a whole lot about everything, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Connor says, trying to smile back.

They stand there for a moment, staring at each other, and Oliver feels ready to actually look at Connor for the first time in a long while. It binds them together now, this secret. It forces all of their walls down. Maybe in a few hours, it will hit Oliver all over again. Connor helped cover up a murder, and he got away with it, too. But for now, it’s like seeing Connor for the first time. Not like the actual first time in the dim lighting of the bar or through a hazy mix of alcohol and arousal, but more like the clear sunlight of the morning afterward, all the clouds cleared away. “Thank you for telling me,” Oliver says.

“The night we broke up, or, I guess, the second night we broke, it was the night the jury turned in the not guilty verdict, and we-- I just needed to let off some steam. To finally get all of it out of my system.” He ducks his head again, and Oliver notices the clench of his jaw, the sweep of his eyelashes. Connor is still beautiful. He’s always been beautiful. This is the first time Oliver has really let himself notice it since Connor showed up Seattle.

“And get hammered in the process,” Oliver says.

“Law students really know how to party,” Connor says. He shakes his head again and closes his eyes, his breathing taking on a forced steadiness that’s hiding something deeper.

It’s a split-second decision -- he doesn’t even realize that he’s going to do it before he does -- but Oliver pulls Connor into a hug, wrapping his arms around Connor’s shoulders. Connor melts into it, tucking his face into the curve of Oliver’s neck. He lets out a shaky breath. Oliver can feel it through his t-shirt.

This isn’t something they’ve done much of before, just holding each other. Even at his most open, Connor has always seemed like an island unto himself, unable or unwilling to indulge in simple, platonic, physical affection. Maybe Oliver had been wrong about that. Connor clings to him, heavy and warm in Oliver’s arms.

“I don’t think you get it,” Connor mumbles into Oliver’s shoulder. “I’ve never wanted anything the way I wanted you.”

Oliver pulls him in tighter. Tonight is apparently all about brutal honesty, no more lies between them. “I was always terrified of what you could do to me. It was always safer to end things before I could get pulled too far in.” It had been easier to cut ties, to get away from the pain of it, the constant worry that Connor would get bored, would find someone shinier and newer. When Connor would deflect, would shut down lines of questioning, Oliver’s brain could fill in the gaps, could imagine why exactly he wasn’t willing to open up. And if Oliver had let things go too far, let things get too deep, then where would he be when Connor decided he was through? As hard as it is to admit, Connor isn’t the only one to blame in the collapse of their relationship, not when Oliver’s own paranoia had played its part.

Connor turns his head, pressing a soft, wet kiss against Oliver’s neck, and it reminds Oliver of the first night Connor went down on him, how he had taken his time kissing his way across Oliver’s skin.

Oliver sucks in a rough breath and pulls away. “Connor,” he says. “I don’t think--”

Connor’s eyes are still closed as he shakes his head. “I get it,” he says. “Third time isn’t going to be the charm.”

“This isn’t a no,” Oliver says, finding a nearby wall to lean against. “It’s just-- it’s a ‘just not tonight.’ It’s a lot to take in. I don’t want to-- to do anything until we have time to sleep on it.” Connor always has this effect on him, turning everything upside down until Oliver can’t think straight anymore, until he’s ready to give in and do whatever Connor asks of him.

Connor opens his eyes. “You can say no,” he says. “Just don’t string me along, okay?” He straightens his jacket, smooths out his expression, wipes some of the snot off his face, settles back into something almost like the confident, slick lawyer that Oliver met in the bar across the street from his old office in Philadelphia.

“I won’t,” Oliver promises. He reaches out, grabs hold of Connor’s hands, gives them a little squeeze. “When I can-- when I’m ready, I’ll call.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Connor says.

---

The thing about hacking is that there isn’t a lot of hands-on work that Oliver needs to do. There’s a lot of downtime between fixing scripts and waiting for another set of commands to finish running. It’s more than enough time to get lost in his own head.

Does it matter, then, that Connor helped cover up a murder? Does it matter that Connor does that for a living? Does it matter that Connor lied to him repeatedly about it?

Oliver wishes he knew. It’s easy to see why Connor did all the things he did, now that he has all the pieces he needs to decode Connor’s erratic behavior after the bonfire. His desperate, panicked morning in Oliver’s hallway and the odd hours with people he could barely seem to stand and his unwavering loyalty to Annalise Keating when everyone was convinced she was the killer. He can see the shape of Connor’s crime in the lumpy awkwardness of his fake drug addiction, the bald-faced lies that Connor used to haphazardly hide the truth.

Connor wasn’t the one responsible for the murder, but he was there. He was involved. He’s an accomplice to a crime. But Oliver hasn’t exactly been innocent himself. He’s done things that he’s not proud of, and he’s hurt people, real people, in the process. He knows what it’s like to wake up every morning with that sort of weight on your shoulders. Sometimes it feels a lot lighter than it should be.

Maybe it’s time dulling the wounds or maybe it’s the empathy Oliver feels for a younger, more confused Connor, but Oliver is willing to forgive him for not letting him in on the secret five years ago, for being too afraid to tell Oliver the whole story. Oliver can’t say he would have done any better himself if he had been put into Connor’s position. He knows what it’s like to hide parts of yourself, parts of what you do from the people you love, because it’s safer, easier, simpler that way.

And-- and then there’s the real question. What does Oliver want? Now that he knows the truth -- now that Connor has told him the truth -- does this mean he can trust Connor again? Could they make the relationship work the third time around?

Oliver doesn’t have all the answers yet, but he does have a job to do. He needs to focus on that first. The rest of it can wait until later.

Chapter 6

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

“You’re looking chipper and well-rested tonight, boss,” Tabitha says. “To be honest, I mostly gave you that advice so you’d finally take a goddamn vacation like a normal person, but I’m glad to see that it worked.”

Oliver looks up from where he’s helping tighten some of the screws underneath one of the tables. One of the customers had been complaining that it was shaky, and Oliver had some time free to help. “You’re right. I did need some time to figure things out for myself,” he says.

“Well, I’m glad to hear that you’ve got your head back on straight,” she says, grinning a little, “especially because…”

Oliver frowns. “Because what?”

“Because Mr. Ex-Boyfriend just decided to make another appearance.” She spins on the ball of her feet in a way that betrays some kind of formal dance training. “I’ll get out of your hair. Let you guys talk it out.”

Oliver stands up (a little too quickly; he almost bumps his head against the underside of the table), and sure enough, Connor has walked in the front door, still dressed for work. He looks tired; his shoulders are hunched.

“Hi,” Oliver says, coming up to him. They’ve barely spoken (or texted or e-mailed) in the week since Connor’s confession, and maybe it’s not fair to Connor, but Oliver hasn’t wanted the distraction. The space has been good for him, though. He thinks he might actually have some answers.

“Hey,” Connor says. “You said you needed to talk to me?” Oliver knows that the message he’d sent had been brief and vague, and he knows from the news reports that things have started to heat up with Naomi’s case. Connor’s hair is not quite as immaculate as usual, and the left corner of his mouth is pulled down into a frown.

Oliver nods, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s about that job you wanted me to do.”

“Oh,” Connor says. “What about it?” His hands are still shoved into his jacket pockets.

Oliver pulls his right hand out of his pocket and holds out a thumb drive. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help you guys with it.”

Connor’s brow furrows. He looks down at Oliver’s outstretched hand, and then he looks back up again. “Seriously? You came by a week ago, and you’re still--” He pauses. His eyes narrow.

Oliver raises his eyebrows.

Connor continues. “We didn’t give you a--”

“Just take it,” Oliver says, interrupting him. “You’re ruining the whole James Bond effect.”

A slow smile spreads across Connor’s face. He takes the thumb drive and tucks it into his jacket pocket. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out, then.” He shakes Oliver’s hand, distant, professional. “And about that other thing--” His expression has softened a little, his smile turning uncertain, showing the slightest hint of nerves.

“Tomorrow,” Oliver says. “Come by my place tomorrow night. We can talk then.” He shoves his own hands into his pockets before they betray the anticipation he feels.

Connor asks, “Dinner?” His smile spreads wider, the widest Oliver has seen it in years.

“Only if you bring takeout,” Oliver says.

----

“Some interesting evidence showed up in the Sanders case,” Dan says the next day. “I guess Keating did have an ace up her sleeve this whole time.”

Another lunch tucked into their usual booth. Dan is eating the salad he always gets. He insists that he doesn’t ever get sick of eating the same food over and over again, and Oliver has yet to see that disproven. Oliver is only allowing himself a short break because he’s leaving early tonight, so he’s not eating anything. “Yeah?” Oliver asks.

“I can’t talk specifics, but I think the DA is flipping his shit,” Dan continues. “And I heard--”

“Can we talk about something besides your job?” Oliver says. He starts tearing his paper napkin into perfect squares because he doesn’t have anything better to do with his hands. “I’m sure there are other conversational topics out there.” He’s not sure he could keep a straight face and continue to feign ignorance if Dan keeps going on and on about the case.

Dan doesn’t even miss a beat. “Oh, there definitely are. For example, there’s a rumor going around that the reason you’ve been gone for a couple weeks is because you were busy hooking up with one of your ex-boyfriends from the East Coast.”

Oliver buries his face in his hands and imagines a hole opening up underneath him, swallowing him whole. “On second thought,” he says. “Let’s go back to talking about work.”

“No, no, no,” Dan says, and Oliver can hear the smirk in his voice. “This is way more interesting. Is this the guy who taught you how to do that thing with your fingers? Because I should probably send him a fruit basket as a thank you.”

“Oh my god,” Oliver hisses. His cheeks feel like they’re burning. It’s awful, but it’s kind of nice, too. He’s having a conversation about Connor, and it doesn’t hurt. “We’re in public. Please stop talking.”

Dan just laughs and laughs and doesn’t stop laughing for the rest of his meal.

---

That night, Oliver can’t seem to stop pacing around the living room. He’s had all the space and time he’s needed to think things through, and he wants -- he needs -- a chance to sit down with Connor and talk things out.

The first time through, Connor had been a whirlwind, overwhelming and unstoppable. And the second time through, he’d run hot and cold, sometimes desperate for Oliver’s company and sometimes so distant it felt like they were strangers. Now that they’re older and hopefully wiser, maybe they can figure out how to make it work. Oliver knows it’s dangerous, but there’s a small, tender, hopeful feeling in the center of his chest that could turn into more if he lets it grow, if he lets it bloom.

Would he be willing to leave Seattle, the bar, his friends goodbye, though? That’s something he have to consider if he wants to make this real. He grew up in the outskirts of Philly. His parents would be thrilled if he were to come back. It’s not like there aren’t bars in Pennsylvania. He wouldn’t have to go back to doing IT. He made a life for himself out here, and he could probably do it again. But would he even want to? All of that, just for a guy? Even if that guy is Connor?

He’s tapping out a rhythm on his kitchen counter when his phone rings, breaking through the silence. He answers before looking at the name. Tabitha had mentioned that the plumbing might need to be checked out because there was something wonky in the way the toilets were flushing. He wants to make sure that he can help out if anything goes wrong.

“Oliver here,” he says.

“It’s Connor,” Connor says on the other end of the line. “Something came up with one of our cases in Philadelphia, and so I’m going to be busy all night, and I’m going to need to fly back tomorrow morning.” He sounds exhausted, the way he’d always sound when he needed to beg off dinner to pull an all nighter for school or for work. Some things don’t change.

Oliver closes his eyes. “When’s your flight?” he asks. It feels like something is slipping away from him, and he has no idea how to get it back.

“Nine, so of course I’m going to have to be at the airport at seven,” Connor says. Oliver can hear the frustration in his voice.

“Early morning, then,” Oliver says. His words feel empty, hollowed out, going through the motions.

“Yeah. I won’t have time to stop by.” There’s something else in his voice that Oliver can’t read. Maybe something wistful. Or maybe that’s Oliver projecting onto him.

“Oh.” The disappointment isn’t crushing, but it does ache, a new wound that’s only had time to half-heal over.

“Just--” Connor says, “-- thanks for helping us. You had every reason not to, and you did anyway.” He says it like a ‘goodbye.’

Oliver turns his head so that he can stare at a blank spot on the wall. “You don’t need to thank me for that.” He bites at his bottom lip and thinks of all the words that are on the tip of his tongue, but it seems wrong to try to do this over the phone. “Tell Naomi that I’m rooting for her.”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “I will,” Connor says before hanging up.

---

And maybe this is how it’s supposed to be. Maybe they were always going to be ships passing in the night, never quite able to connect. Maybe this was the universe’s way of saying, “Nice try, but no dice.” Maybe Connor’s actually happier away from Oliver, and the other night was just the nostalgia talking. Maybe Oliver could just leave it this way and go back to his safe, comfortable life that doesn’t have anyone like Connor in it.

Maybe--

---

Oliver, as a rule, a terrible romantic. He loves watching old, swoony movies and cheesy heartfelt wedding proposals that make their way onto Youtube, but he’s not the kind of guy who will show up at a boyfriend’s workplace with flowers or text cutesy love notes over the course of a day.

So he’s not really quite sure what’s the best way to do a grand, sweeping romantic gesture, but he figures the first step is to show up at Sea-Tac at 6:45am, still coming down from the caffeine rush of his third cup of coffee of the morning. He haunts the main terminal, trying to pick Connor out of the crush of people. It’s cloudy outside, oppressive and gray and a little windy. It’s easier to watch the doors from inside, even if it’s loud and echoing, a hub of too much activity.

At 7:10, he’s about to freak out about missing Connor and about losing his chance to talk to him face-to-face, but then, out of the corner of his eye, the middle set of automatic doors slide open. Connor walks in, a briefcase over one of his shoulders and dragging a suitcase behind him. His eyes are half-lidded and sleepy, and he looks like he’s trying to stifle a yawn.

Oliver does his best not to sprint over to talk to him, and he only manages to get his heart rate back under control once they’re finally face-to-face. “Hi,” he says.

Connor blinks a few times. “Oliver?” he asks. “What are you doing here?” His expression is scrunched up in confusion.

“I just--” Oliver says. He feels out of breath all of a sudden. “I wanted to talk to you before you left.”

Connor considers it for a moment. “So let’s talk,” he says. He nods towards a nearby Starbucks. “I need more coffee.”

When they settle down with their drinks (Oliver decides he might be safer off going with something decaf), Connor watches him with curious eyes. The Starbucks is busy but not overly loud, filled with other sleep-eyed passengers and bored-looking baristas. Oliver tries not to fidget. Connor says, “This isn’t some kind of grand sweeping gesture where we both ditch our jobs and ride into the sunset together, is it?”

“No,” Oliver confesses. “Not really.”

Connor laughs, a thin, half-hearted sound. “A boy can dream, I guess.” He turns his head away so that Oliver can’t read his eyes. “What’s this about, then?”

Oliver takes a deep breath before starting his speech. “Okay, so first off, I’m willing to give this, us, another shot,” Oliver says. He reaches out and grabs one of Connor’s hands. He knows this much, that he needs to say this out loud, that he can’t let this go without telling Connor.

Connor leans back in his chair, his expression closing off. “But?” Connor asks. “Are you planning on moving back to Philly?”

Oliver shakes his head. “No, I’m not. I’ve got-- I’ve a whole life here. Friends that I care about. A bar that I want to keep running. But that doesn’t mean-- that doesn’t mean we can’t work this out.” Maybe it’s not going to be enough, this offer, but it’s all he’s got. Maybe he wasn’t sure about it before, but now he is. Seattle is his home. He wants to stay.

Connor takes a sip of his coffee. “So I’m going to have to be the one who uproots his whole life?” There’s a cool challenge in his voice, but Oliver isn’t intimidated. He’s seen Connor at his worst. This is nothing.

“Are you really going to keep working for her forever?” Oliver asks. “I know you, Connor. I know you’ll never be happy about being second string for the rest of your life. There’s a lot you could leave behind in Philadelphia.” He hopes Connor can hear the things he’s not saying. It’s possible that they’ll manage to fuck it up again. It’s possible that Connor will do something stupid or Oliver will freak out about some minor thing, and it’s possible that their next breakup will be as nasty as the first two. But Oliver doesn’t quite believe that. Oliver is willing to take those odds.

Connor nods to himself before squeezing Oliver’s hand. “And until then…” Connor says. In the distance, there’s an announcement for an eight o’clock flight.

“I’ll be here,” Oliver says. “You know where to find me. I’m not going to be-- this isn’t going to be me waiting by the window and pining away for you, and I’m not expecting you to do that for me either. I just wanted you to know that the offer’s there if you want it.”

“We’ll always have Seattle,” Connor says. He smiles, but it’s all lopsided, half happy, half sad.

“Something like that,” Oliver says. “I’ve only broken a couple laws while I’ve been living here. I can probably stick around.”

“Yeah,” Connor says, and his expression is thoughtful, considering. “It’s not the worst city in the world.” He doesn’t make any promises that he won’t be able to keep, and Oliver is grateful for that.

Connor finishes his drink, and he starts to gather his things. This has been stolen time, and they both know it.

They walk side-by-side towards the security stations. Oliver listens to the ambient hum of the terminal and watches Connor’s expression out of the corner of his eye. At times, he looks achingly familiar, and at other times, Oliver notices an odd detail, a new wrinkle at the corner of his eye, a new scar near on the back of his hand. There’s so much they can still learn about each other.

“Well, I guess this is it,” Connor says as they reach the annoyed-looking TSA officer who’s responsible for checking boarding passes. His expression is wry and knowing. He’s ready to go.

Oliver doesn’t want to leave it at that. Neither of them know when Connor might be back again, temporarily or otherwise. Their lives are so difficult, so messy, and so complicated. It’s impossible to know what the future might bring. Oliver is not going to let it end like this.

He closes the distance between them, cupping Connor’s neck in his hands as he kisses him. He draws it out, as slow and as deep as he can make it. He wants it to last. Connor parts his lips and kisses back, meeting Oliver’s eagerness with his own. Oliver feels the scratch of Connor’s beard against his palms, the softness of Connor’s lips against his. It feels like this kiss should cut him open. It should make him think of all the bad times they had, of all the things they had and lost. But it feels like the promise that Connor couldn’t give him earlier, a reminder that, for as terrible as things could get, they were good together, too.

When Oliver pulls back again, he feels as dazed as Connor looks. His lips are still tingling. He steps away, putting some distance between them before he can do something stupid like declare his undying love and take Connor up on his offer to ride off into the sunset. “Like I said,” Oliver says. “You know where to find me.”

Connor nods, the faintest impression of a smile creasing his face. “I’ll see you around, then.”

Oliver turns and walks away. He doesn’t look back. The world comes rushing back in again, the sound of other voices, the chiming of the loudspeakers, the squeak of feet and wheels on the floor.

When he steps outside, some of the clouds have cleared away, and the sky is the bluest of blues. He looks up, squinting a little in the sunlight. He thinks about that feeling, that small, hopeful one. It’s still there. It still has the potential to grow into something bigger, something real. Not today, but maybe someday in the future.

He’s looking forward to it.

FIN.