A/N: Just a little season 4 spec ficlet about how the last five words of this EBR quote to Access Hollywood threw me for a right loop: "It takes away Felicity sort of walking on eggshells to a certain extent because she would touch him and be like, 'Oh my God,' but now she kind of gets to touch him and still be like, 'Oh my God,' but she's allowed to stay there."
She's Allowed to Stay There
Things are different when they get back, but not in the way Felicity imagined.
It's not as strange as she thought it might be, watching Thea and Laurel suit up as part of their team. If she's totally selfish, it's a little easier, knowing Oliver's got even more eyes watching his back. Digg puts his helmet on almost every other night, and when Lyla has something come up, baby Sara dozes in the tiny (yet totally secure) nursery they rig up inside a broom closet at the new HQ. All these changes, and Felicity doesn't bat an eye.
Even the stormy night that Sara's namesake comes howling at their door, blind with confused rage, but very much alive, she's surprised but not shocked. Once you've seen one little sister back from the dead…
It's not weird or even different, being this much more intrinsically tied up in Oliver's life, personal, professional, and otherwise. Mostly it's the way it's always been. It's their own kind of symbiosis, their perfect partnership, their happy place.
What's different is, now she's allowed to stay there.
When he wraps her in his arms the moment they realize they have to return to "Star City," murmuring hollow reassurances, she's allowed to stay there, banded in his warm scent, for as long as she needs to to get the courage to do what they have to do.
When their first stop back in town is to see Thea at the loft, she hesitates at the door for just a second, but long enough that he feels it, and he squeezes her hand in reassurance. He hugs his sister for a long silent moment, but then he's right back to her, tossing an arm over her shoulder, tugging her to sit up against him on the couch. Thea listens to their giddy roadtrip tales with rapt attention, and Felicity thinks she's humoring them until she breathes "Ollie, you're so…happy." When Felicity has one round too many, she's allowed to stay there. With Oliver. In his bed.
She thought it might feel different, sharing a non-hotel (or Nanda Parbat) mattress, but finds it surprising in its sameness. She reasons it's not the mattress that makes a difference, it's whether you're home or away. And she was home the first night she laid down in his arms. She's allowed to stay there too, now.
Whenever he holds her stare for longer than he should, after a good or a bad day, when he communicates silently with her from across the room or the dinner table, when his eyes tell her fifty different things and only half of them are "I love you." Whenever she gets lost in his gaze, she's allowed to stay there.
When he gets hurt, when he's laid out on the med table, or even in the hospital and she doesn't want to leave him, even for a second, when all she wants to do is sit beside him and hold his hand, whispering platitudes or proclamations (or curses at his carelessness) until he comes back to her, she's allowed to stay there.
When he gets broody and pushes her away, when he tries to convince her she's better off without him, the few times he attempts to get her to leave his side, she reminds him that she doesn't have to listen. She's allowed to stay there.
When she is loved so dramatically, and so differently than she's used to, by not only Oliver but the members of their found family, heroes all, when their dynamic doesn't change from leathers to street clothes to formal wear, when she feels warm and protected and saved in the tightly-knit group they form around her, she's allowed to stay there.
She's allowed to stay there, with Oliver. In his world, in his arms, in that glint in his eye, in that special place in his heart that he tells her time and time again belongs to her alone. For the decades they get together, for the fifty-plus years of his brand-new life, she's allowed to stay there.