Chapter Text
Laurel meets Oliver Queen on the first day of sixth grade.
Or not really, because she spends the entire seven hours with her eyes fixed firmly on their teachers pretending that her uniform is not second hand or that she’d rather be at the public middle school all her friends are attending. But six months ago when her parents had sat her down and explained that they wanted her to go to private school – the expulsion rate at the other school for starters – she’d nodded along in understanding.
Sara’d made faces and teased Laurel about wearing a tie while refusing to acknowledge that she’d be attending herself in two years. But this is for the best Laurel knows – even if it wasn’t what she wanted.
In her class there are eighteen students; a little more than half what her fifth grade class had been. The floor is carpeted in an attractive blue with matching curtains, while the furniture is new and unbattered (Tommy and Oliver will do their best to remedy this over the next three years). Ms Kerr smiles more in the first hour than Mr. Bakker did in the entirety of the previous year.
For homeroom they’re seated in alphabetical order of surname so Laurel, sitting by the window in the second row, has Tommy to her right and Oliver beyond him. A seating plan that’ll last until the second week when their teachers realise that the two boys need at least a six person radius between them in order for anyone to learn anything effectively. But all Laurel is really aware of at this point is that the two boys spend most of the morning giggling and not writing the school’s code of honour into their brand new notebooks.
Anyone can see that they’re friends and have known each other for a long time. For a while it seems to be that everyone in the class is friends and have known each other a long time which makes Laurel lonely, wanting to go to school with her old friends (even if the English teacher was arrested for selling drugs), until she figures out which of the other students are just as strange and alien to the new situation as she. By the end of the year she will be as intrinsically linked to the rest of school as anyone, but for now jealousy settles in her chest causing a hard knot of anxiety.
Laurel speaks to Oliver for the first time when they’re assigned a project on dolphins for science. By then it’s November, their teachers are smiling a little less and between them Oliver and Tommy have made three trips to the principal’s office. Laurel feels smugly secure that she’s the most praised in the class and she’s part of a tight knit group of girls who call each other every evening to discuss their day and every morning to discuss what they’re wearing.
She’s irritated when their teacher announces the partnership but nearly so much as he seems to be. He’d expected to be partnered with Tommy or one of his other friends; she had as well, but whatever, it’s one dumb project. He slumps over to her desk and thumps his bag down beside her when none of his bargaining works on Dr. Huff. Laurel is a little hurt by this reaction but she calmly works out a practical way to share the workload and a schedule for them to meet at the library.
Oliver rolls his eyes at her. Laurel worries that’s she’s going to be doing this project on her own. When he’s half an hour late to meeting her at the library after school she feels her worries are justified.
But he appears, arms crossed, wearing a deep frown – neither his bag nor any books in sight. “This place is creepy.”
Laurel blinks. “It’s a library.”
“Whatever. We can do this dumb project at my house.” He starts to head away expecting her to follow.
“But the books are here.” Laurel stays sitting down.
“There are books at my house.”
“On dolphins?”
She makes him wait while she photocopies pages from the encyclopaedia, for which he grudgingly agrees to pay, and while she takes out several more books.
His home is a long way out of town and she hopes she’s allowed to call her mom from there because this going to take longer than a trip to the library should. Her dad has a late shift, Sara’s with friends so no one will miss her for a while, but by the time she and Oliver do the work and she’s gets home her mom will be waiting. She doesn’t want anyone to worry about her.
Oliver’s driveway seems to take almost half the journey and she stares out the window at the grounds wondering what kind of house his family could possibly have that could go with the expanse of land. By now she is used to the wealth many of her classmates, used to their expensive clothes and massive houses, used to living one foot in a world that is alien to her. Yet none this prepares her for the size of the Queens’ mansion.
She stares with wide eyes as he calmly leads her inside, either unaware of her surprise or too used to seeing it on people’s faces to care. Instead he takes her on a tour through the wide and winding corridors putting his favourite rooms on display. The trip ends with the nursery where he introduces her to his one year old sister. Thea, dressed in a fluffy pink jumpsuit, burbles ‘Ohee’ at him when he picks her up and shows her off for Laurel’s approval.
“I wish my sister were this cute.” Thea grips her finger and Laurel gently pumps their hands up and down in greeting causing a roll of baby giggles. “It’s not as nice when they can walk and talk and steal your clothes.”
“I don’t think Thea’s going to want to steal my clothes.” He carefully gives his sister back to the nanny’s care before leading Laurel downstairs to what she supposes is the living room (it has a television, anyway). The room is probably a good half the size of her family’s entire apartment with a cavernous ceiling and impossibly neat in a way that her home could never be with her parents working full time.
“What do you want to watch?” Oliver kneels by a cabinet which he opens to reveal a large collection of movies arranged in a neat and practical order.
Laurel shakes her head, overwhelmed. “Something good.”
They don’t get any work done that afternoon because watching movies is a much more fun way to spend the time. In fact Laurel forgets about the project; instead she is enjoying sitting on the massive couch munching from the large bowl of popcorn while Oliver sits in an arm chair with his own bowl. They talk through the boring parts of the movie – some type of slapstick comedy – mostly about school and what they think of their teachers but also a little gossip.
The credits are rolling a couple of hours later when a woman sticks her around the door frame. “Oliver is Tommy...” she trails off in confusion when she realises that it is Laurel who is sitting on the couch – not Tommy Merlyn.
“Hi Mom,” says Oliver. “Tommy’s not here.”
Laurel slides of the leather couch and brushes off her skirt feeling a twinge of nerves. “Hi Mrs. Queen. I’m Laurel Lance. Oliver and I have a school project on dolphins.” She straightens her shoulders, lifting her chin up.
Mrs. Queen smiles and asks Laurel to stay for dinner and tells her that’s no problem for her to use the phone to call her family.
An hour or so later when she enters the dining room Laurel is once again hit with a wave of intimidation at the vast room and long table but both Mr. And Mrs. Queen are friendly, engaging her in conversation without a second thought. Plus it’s hard to feel to out of place when Thea is there throwing peas at everyone from her high chair (‘Ohee’ she shrieks when she gets fistful in Oliver face; much to his chagrin and everyone else’s amusement).
Much to her Father’s annoyance, given it’s past her bedtime and the next day is a school day, Laurel isn’t dropped off by a driver until twenty past nine. Her mother asks if she had good time – she did, but she’s disappointed they didn’t do any work on the project. Still there is plenty of time to work on it – nearly two whole weeks.
Only every time she tries to corner Oliver so they can actually make a start he manages to distract her with something else inviting her to spend time at his house or visiting hers out of curiosity. Once he disappears to do something with Tommy and once he forgets altogether.
“We have to do this now!” she snaps at him the day before the project is due.
In what she will come to realise is true Oliver Queen fashion he shrugs with grin playing across his lips. “Sorry.”
Furious she storms off, anger carrying her all the way home and into the room she shares with Sara. At her little battered desk she copies a few facts in large wobbly writing – simulating water – on to a piece of poster paper then traces a dolphin from one of the books. It’s all she really has time to do and it’s certainly not her best work. She considers leaving Oliver’s name off the project in revenge because if she’s going to get a bad mark he can have none – but in the end she credits him anyway.
The assignment will mark the first time she gets a ‘C’ because of Oliver – but it won’t be the last. Oliver has an uncanny way of distracting her from her work.
Laurel is early the day after they present it to the class and she sits outside the classroom reading as she waits for the day to begin.
“Hey Laurel.”
She looks up to find Tommy Merlyn standing in front of her. It’s not surprising he’s at school this early (he’s usually either very late or very early), but it is surprising that he’s talking to her at all. Laurel’s not sure he’s ever even spoken directly to her before. For the brief time they’ve been sharing a common acquaintance they haven’t spent all that much time together.
Right now, considering how angry she is at Oliver she nearly ignores Tommy by extension but decides not to bother.
“Hey,” she says and goes back to her book.
Tommy sinks down beside her but doesn’t try to engage her in further conversation. In fact they sit there in silence until two of Laurel friends arrive – nearly at the same time as Oliver. Deliberately she turns her back on the boys so she doesn’t have to look at either of them (but especially not Oliver).
Years later she’ll look back and think her eleven year old self had the right of it. She should have continued to ignore the pair – because between the two of them they are going to completely fuck up her life.
-x-x-x-
Their school has three dances a year. Given the number of students enrolled all three grades attend the same three dances: one at Christmas, one in spring and one for the eighth graders’ graduation. In sixth grade, Laurel – like the rest of her classmates – attends with a group of friends who mostly stand around the edges of the school events room and pretend to be having fun. They do dance awkwardly to a few songs, but it’s not really a thing they get into more than once or twice.
The following year Laurel is the first girl in seventh grade to be asked to the Christmas dance. She says yes more out of surprise and a desire not to hurt Alex’s feelings than because she likes him at all. He is, peripherally, a friend of Oliver’s (not that that has any real bearing on anything). Her friends giggle and poke each other when they realise what has happened then sigh wondering if anyone is going to ask them. Laurel gets her first taste of what it’s like to be the centre of gossip; it’s an enlightening experience making her feel both powerful and self-conscious.
Thankfully it is only two days later when someone else is asked so she only has to bear the brunt of the whispers and scrutiny a short while.
For each succeeding dance she will attend with a different boy and her dad doesn’t seem to know whether to be glad or furious. Her mother finds designer dresses at second hand stores and alters them to fit Laurel (no one seems to notice, but then no one has commented on her family’s financial status in the year and half she’s known them). Sara teases her for having a boyfriend – which isn’t what it is at all.
In seventh grade the dances are a little more fun. And a bloated sense of superiority leads them to sneer at the younger kids hovering around the walls, dance to most of the songs and try to stay out of the eighth graders’ way. Laurel drinks too much soda, gets the giggles, and stays awake until nearly two in morning after she gets home, much to her family’s irritation.
For the spring dance she attends with Isaac Clarke who promptly ditches her to dance with a couple of eighth graders. She’s irritated but her friends are furious, promising dire retribution coming up with some hilarious way to humiliate him in front of the entire school. Laurel shrugs her own anger off but sort of enjoys playing the injured party – it certainly garners her a lot of attention.
As her life seems to exist as an excuse to make itself awkward, she goes to the final dance of the year as Tommy’s date. For most people that would probably just as exist as a cute anecdote – if they bothered to remember it all – but given how messed up the three of them get (her, Oliver, Tommy) it’s just...well, awkward. Still she has more fun than she can remember having in a very long while – and the memory that endures is the way he smiles the entire evening.
In the end it’s always easier to remember Tommy happy; anything else hurts too much.
-x-x-x-
As the weather warms up she finds herself often at the library, despite invitations to friends houses to spend time lounging by their pools in the sun. Right now she’s studying for finals when a stack of books lands on her table followed by Oliver throwing himself into the seat beside her.
“I need your help.”
Laurel raises her eyebrows. “This is a library.”
“That’s how badly I need your help. I wouldn’t come in here if it wasn’t a dire emergency.” He sighs dramatically heaving half the books to the ground. “I’m flunking math.” According to the dramatic edge of his tone this seems to be roughly on par with the end of the world.
Laurel is uninterested in theatrics as she’s not sure she’ll ever know enough to do well in geography. “So go ask Carter – he’s the got the top in math.”
“Nope. I hate Carter. You’re... kind of okay.” There’s a smirk hovering around his lips while his eyebrows flick upwards in amusement.
Laurel rolls her eyes. Nearly two years of Oliver Queen and she’s become used to him and his sarcasm. But she understands what he’s saying. She hates Carter, too.
“Please Laurel?” he begs, eyes wide, fingers interlaced under his chin.
She nods. “Okay. One hour today.” Melissa’s pool is heated which is nice as the evening air begins to cool and Laurel has promised to be there by five. “And we can study together tomorrow.”
“Thank you.” He grabs his maths text and opens it to the right page. She surprised when he seems genuinely relieved turning to her with a serious expression which he mostly seems to maintain through the session.
-x-x-x-