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His brief stint at the Halloween party had done nothing for Ollie but remind him that he really didn't want to be around people. The other inhabitants of the hotel seem (mostly) harmless enough, from what he's observed, but socializing doesn't have any appeal at all.

Unfortunately, his room doesn't carry much appeal, either. The constant changes -- which are just as strange as the skies outside -- at least have a pattern that he's been able to discern. Four nights of his bedroom at home, two nights of the wreck on the island. The wreck feels more like home than his bedroom does. His room is too neat, too familiar, and it has too many memories covering every square inch of it.

(There, where Ollie first admitted to being with Laurel. There, where they wrestled and he sprained his wrist. There, where they got ready to celebrate graduation. There where they-- and there, when he laughed about-- and there-- he's everywhere, and it cuts.)

It's a bedroom day, which means Ollie's wandering, looking for something to pass the time. Being outside and looking up at the sky still makes his stomach turn, so he usually waits until dusk for his daily run. After that, it's hitting the gym, and from there, it's a few laps in the pool.

Which is where Ollie is now, treading water in the deep end. It's quiet and warm, and if his mind goes wandering, he just sucks in a breath, pushes off the wall, and starts another ten laps.

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After the first few days stuck in the hotel that time forgot, Felicity started to believe that hell might just exist after all. What other way was there to describe a place without a single functioning computer?

With the walls closing in on her, she decided to take her mostly non-functioning and now mostly dumb phone around the hotel and map the place out. She was plotting out the location of the pool when the guy swimming there did a fairly impressive flip turn and she saw his back...a back she knew probably better than she should.

"Oliver?" she called out, then, assuming he wouldn't hear her, she tossed a life preserver at him.

All Ollie hears while swimming is the water rushing past his ears and his own harsh breathing, but he does notice when something suddenly lands right in the middle of his path. He comes to an ungraceful stop in the water and reaches for the life preserver before turn around to see who would have mistaken him swimming laps for him drowning.

"Felicity."

He treads water for a long moment, unsure whether he's happy to see her because she's a familiar face, or disappointed because it means she's stuck in this weird pocket universe along with him. (Not that Ollie can say he's truly stuck if he hasn't even tried to get home yet.)

He swims to the closest edge of the pool and pulls himself out and onto his feet. "When did you get here?"

"A few days ago," Felicity answered, failing abysmally at not staring at his chest and abs until forcibly wrenching her eyes to his face. It wasn't exactly the first time she'd looked. Or the second. Or.

Focus, Felicity.

"I've been stuck in a technological black hole and fighting the urge to just sit in the corner and rock until I wake up. Did you know there isn't single computer here? Not one. No internet, either. I've almost ripped my TV apart a few times, just to get my hands on something hard. Hardware," she corrected immediately. "Get my hands on some hardware. Babble. Nevermind."

A few days, and he hadn't even known she was around? Even being caught up in his own mind didn't excuse that. But it is good to see Felicity, familiar babbling and all.

Ollie walks over to a nearby chair and grabs a towel, quickly drying himself off. "You haven't been able to find a door back home?"

"Not a single one and believe me, Ichabod and I tried a lot of them. Tried looking for a computer first, then tried to find anything looking even remotely like Starling City. Zip. Nada. Nothing." Felicity cocked her head to the side, studying him behind her glasses. "Have you?"

"There's a door that only occasionally works," Ollie responds, conveniently leaving out the fact that he hasn't bothered to try it since his arrival. He's not sure he even wants to go home yet.

"Ichabod?"

"Yeah, Ichabod. Tall, got a sort of grunge Renaissance Faire thing going on? Doesn't matter. Trust me, if you'd seen him, you'd know. Not many guys can pull off long coats and knee boots without looking all kinds of wrong. Anyway, we came though the same door but he's not from Starling. Really weird and, that's saying something considering what my job's turned into."

Somewhere in the ramble the connection was made in her head and made it through to her mouth finally. "Wait. You have a door that goes back home? Tell me it goes somewhere with something electronic?"

Ollie's seen enough weird around the hotel - not to mention what horizon looks like - to accept Felicity's explanation at face value.

He uses putting on his shirt as an excuse not to say anything for a moment. "There is a door, and it goes back to Verdant, with all your electronics intact. It doesn't always work. Most of the time it's just a janitor's closet."

"My computers? All of them?" Her hands immediately shoot out and grab him by the shirt. She pulled at him to pull him closer so she could get the urgency through to him even though, strong as it was, it meant she didn't move him an inch more than she moved herself closer.

"You have to take me, Oliver. And you have to take me now. Right. Now." The beat of silence lasted two, maybe three seconds before she loosened her grip, stepped away, and smoothed the shirt front. "Coming off less trashy in three...two...one."

A small smile's on his lips before he can stop it, and he scoops up his wet towel, giving Felicity a second. Company is the last thing he wants, but he can't deny that it is good to see her. Her energy is infectious and carries over to Ollie no matter what she's doing.

"It's a few doors down from my room," he explains as he slips on his flip flops and takes a look around to make sure he hasn't left anything behind. "We'll have to head upstairs."

"Really? All the way upstairs? I don't know, seems like a long trip," Felicity responded, glad as she always was that he didn't react to her bouts of verbal idiocy. Or gave her the space to try and get some sort of filter back in place. "At least this time it won't require parachutes, land mines, or Tarzan impersonations."

She stopped and looked at him. "It won't, right?"

Ollie usually lets Felicity's babble wash over him; he finds it comforting right now, in a strange sort of way. But sometimes, she says things that don't make sense - even when she babbles, he can at least make out her train of thought.

"Tarzan impersonations?" he asks, cocking his head in amusement. He touches her shoulder as he starts for the door, making sure she's close by and not out of his sight for longer than a second.

"Okay, maybe not Tarzan. I mean you weren't wearing a loincloth or anything, but that whole vine swinging thing? You had to think I'd draw the parallel at some point. Not that I don't appreciate you getting me off the landmine, because I totally do. Would have been a messy way to go...and I should stop talking now, shouldn't I?"

She wasn't thinking about his hand on her shoulder. Not at all. Nope.

Chloe still hasn't learned the whole layout of the hotel and she guesses it would be easier to learn if it didn't go all Harry Potter on her and switch around. Today, she's ended up in what looks like the pool (well, not in the pool but in the room with the pool) and there's a guy swimming laps.

"Uh, good form, I guess? Carry on?" It's awkward but she guesses it's better she announce herself than be a creeper.

Ollie comes to a stop in the shallow end, keeping his shoulders below water as he looks up to see who spoke. He doesn't recognize her, but that doesn't mean much; Ollie doesn't recognize all but a few faces beyond seeing them around the hotel.

"Thank you," he says, sincere. "I try my best."

"I didn't think anyone was in here. I was trying to go back to my room and I took a wrong turn and ended up in this room instead. This hotel has a serious Hogwarts castle thing going on and it throws off the navigation."

Not that Chloe is great at navigating to begin with but she's a lot better with a place that doesn't change all the time. It doesn't matter. She grins sheepishly and shrugs. "What can you do, right? But I'm sure you completely intended to be in here with the swimming thing."

"I've been here long enough to find my way around," Ollie admits. He swims over to the side and pulls himself out of the water, quickly grabbing a towel to dry himself off -- and cover up a bit.

This is a very attractive man. Chloe isn't really shopping but if she was, she would definitely be interested.

"I'm Chloe, by the way. I figured we should exchange names considering the whole closed space weird hotel thing."

"Oliver," he says, giving Chloe a brief smile. They do have the whole weird space hotel thing in common, but as far as Ollie can tell, that's about it -- and that's about all he wants in common with anyone at any given time. "Have you been here long, Chloe?"

"Just a couple months," she says, noting the name. It's not hard to forget, honestly, considering. "I have a...well, complicated friend back home named Oliver. Ollie, usually," she says, grinning a little.

"It will not be hard to remember your name, that's for sure."

Ollie freezes a moment; just long enough to let a chill run down his spine before he collects himself and forces his shoulders to relax again.

"That's actually my nickname as well," he says, curious. It's not rare to have the same nickname as someone else named Oliver, and the more he thinks about it, the easier it is to convince himself he's just overreacting.

"Weird. I mean, I guess Ollie is common enough a nickname for someone named Oliver, it's not really that common of a name among people are age or...whatever," Chloe says, feeling a little uneasy. It's definitely not Ollie, considering they look nothing alike. But why would they use the same name?

"Right? It's like calling someone named Robert Bobby or something. Completely common."

Buffy was still new enough to the hotel that exploration was a thing that she did. She'd been told there was a pool, but she hadn't found it until she walked in on Oliver swimming. Somehow it seemed an interruption into a private moment.

"Oh. Sorry. I didn't---I was looking for the pool. Or...or for anything that--I'm new here. Hi. I'm Buffy."

She stopped rambling abruptly and waved.

Ollie's treading water somewhere in the middle, toes just barely skimming the bottom of the pool. The pool's public enough that he's come to expect to be engaged in some way possible, and it's easy enough to switch to his old self, before the island.

"You found it," he says, waving an arm around. "Hello. I'm Oliver."

She walks to the edge of the pool, crouches and dangles her fingers in the pool. "It's warm. Hi, Oliver. I'm Buffy."

It is warm, the perfect temperature for anyone wanting to relax, or, in Ollie's case, exercise until they drop. "A heated pool is just what to expect from a fiver star hotel like this," he says lightly. "Might as well have everything be nice when people end up trapped here."

"I guess I'm still expecting the five star facade to drop." They were stuck here so she expects it to be ugly and horrible. "Keep the residents from getting restless?"

Ollie makes a sound of agreement and nods. He moves toward the shallow end, until he feels tile beneath his feet and doesn't have water sloshing in his ears from treading water.

"That's an idea," he says. It's one he's had before; though he's taken to treating the hotel as a getaway when he needs it (like right now, when facing the door home is worse than constantly being on his toes here), he does keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. "I wouldn't want to be here when it all goes pear-shaped."

"Yeah, I'm not looking forward to it, but with my luck..." she sighs deeply. "I'll be here. Have you been here long?"

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