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There is something about Dinah Lance that Oliver Queen does not understand. That is to say everything. He does not understand everything or anything about her.
He can remember the years, awhile back now, god he feels old, when he would catch glimpses of the news and see Dinah's mother, the original Black Canary. She had been stunning. Blonde bombshell. A knockout. All of the above.
And he's not ashamed to admit that he may have had a thing for her. A teeny, tiny, bitty thing that was probably shared by him and few hundred thousand other people who also watched the news.
He is ashamed to admit that he mistook Dinah for her mother, that first time they met. Hey, even he has shame.
Looking back on it though, he's not sure how he could have ever made the mistake.
Yes Dinah looks- looked- like her mom, took 'chip off the old block' to whole other level. But. But there's differences.
It's in the way she smiles, full lips curling at the ends slightly when he makes his stupid jokes that aren't even remotely humorous. Or the way the corners stretch out into a wide smile, eyes crinkling and her nose scrunching up, just a little, when he does something horribly stupid and the other Leaguers are yelling at him and she's pretending to be mad. Or when her lips go thin, sucked in between teeth because she's embarassed and blushing and the tips of her ears turn this ridiculously adorable shade of rosy pink. Or when she smiles softly, almost sadly, when she visits her mother's grave. Or even when she gives him those rare, full blown grins with all the teeth, and her eyes are sparkling, and he has to resist the urge to trace the smile lines on her face that are, of course, adorable.
Dinah's mother never smiled like that. Like any of that. Not that he noticed anyway.
Dinah looks like her mom as far as the wig and the fishnets. But Dinah looks like Dinah as far as everything else. And Ollie, Ollie can't process that.
Dinah turns his brain to mush.
She's so different from every girl he's ever met because she is among the rare few who have not thrown themselves at him. More than that, she's among the even fewer who have never shown even an inkling of interest in him. There is literally nothing there that he can work with.
He's poured on the charm because that's who he is but it's never worked. And with Dinah, he's off his game anyway. He looks at her and there's no desire to have sex with her or to kiss her or to really touch her in any way.
They've known each other awhile, as well as two people who rarely see each other, and fight when they do, can know each other. And they're still not friends. He's not really sure what they are, if anything at all.
And still, after all this time, he has no desire to do anything but stare. To just stare in awe and soak in all that Dinah is because there's something about her that goes beyond the bombshell looks. There's something about her voice and her smiles and her expressions and her tilts of head and her presence and her very being that Ollie just...
He just wants to be around.
He wants to stare and absorb and sit slack-jawed and amazed, which is what he's doing now as they sit together on a bench in the otherwise empty League gym, just sitting.
He can't remember how they got here, or why they're sitting or what they were talking about, if they had even been talking. He's living in the moment, moment-by-moment, and everything else is slipping by.
But Dinah is saying something and he watches in fascination as the corners of her lips curl again, this time in exasperation and she stares at him.
"Wow, this is boring, Queen. Really, really boring. Are you even listening?"
Ollie makes some strange mewling noise in the back of his throat that he hopes sounds more like a cough, or even better, that Dinah didn't hear it at all, as he straightens and tries to get back on track.
"Um." He answers stupidly and curses himself because Dinah can't possibly think him any more stupid than she's already found him to be but he still treats every moment with her as a cataclysmic first impression.
He chokes back the second 'um' and laughs nervously to himself, sounding like a wheezing pneumatic old man and rubbing the back of his neck.
Dinah raises an eyebrow at him.
"Uh, well, if you're bored, you could, uh, kiss me?"
It comes out as a question and he immediately bites his tongue as a punishment and to quiet any more nervous laughing. God, he's stupid. Why did he say that? She's going to slap him. Or worse, hate him. What if she never talks to him again? Shit. What would he do then?
Ollie waits, his eyes flying around the room to stare at anything but his impending doom and finally settling on the spot where Dinah's neck connects to shoulder. It's been quiet for too long, he is so dead.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees Dinah smile, and it's not a smile he's ever seen before but it doesn't look feral or hungry so he supposes that's good? Maybe? The smile grows wider and Ollie freezes as Dinah's lips touch his.
The kiss is simple. It feels like hours to him and there's sparks in front of his eyes as his lips tingle and a warmth spreads to his toes. Dinah pulls away and he follows, leaning forward a little before snapping back to reality, jerking back and just staring.
"You...Me...Kiss...What?" Ollie stutters out, somehow believing it will sound more eloquent than it does in his head. It does. Surprisngly. That's saying a lot for his current state of mind.
"Well, you're using some of your words so that's good. You're cute when you blush, you know that?" Dinah tilts her head and Ollie swallows thickly feeling his face reddening even more as his ears burn.
"Um."
He watches Dinah stand and his soaring heart falls a little and his hand reaches out, a few inches at best but it's enough that Dinah looks down, seeing.
And she smiles again and it's yet another new smile that he doesn't know what it means and how does he not know what it means?
"Come find me when you learn your words again, okay? We'll talk then." And she pats him on the head before turning away.
Ollie watches her go and though all of him is in some light-headed endorphin-induced haze, part of him is terrified and the other part is nervous and oh my god look at the way she walks, and he cannot screw this up.