One.
She thinks it won't be as difficult the second time around- being left, doing the leaving- it's all the same, Olivia rationalizes, especially when taking into account the fact she never truly had anything to begin with. Her bed shouldn't feel as barren as it does when she rolls over the following morning. It shouldn't feel as if it is empty because it has never been wholly made.
She won't feel as cold, this time around.
She won't feel quite so terrible.
Conditioning is what it is. Getting used to it. Adapting.
She is terribly, terribly wrong.
/
Two.
Not once does she regret giving Edison back the diamond.
Still, his toothbrush still rests in the holder next to her own, blue and regal, and a constant reminder.
Some mornings Olivia looks at it and smiles fondly.
/
Three
Abby never really gets back to normal. It's a shame, and Olivia has partial blame in the way the redhead wraps one night stands around her, and seldom laughs that husky chortle. A fresh, blank slate of life is sorely reminiscent of the first time, before she was a gladiator in a suit. Olivia watches the woman fall apart, and then rebuild again at the foundation.
"I don't hate you," Abby tells her in private one day, blowing air between her lips so that her bangs fly which way. Her tone is counters her words.
"Abby-
Her own heart is as ravaged as the one before her.
"I don't hate you, but I need you to fix me again, Liv. Fix me."
Abby is openly crying, then.
"Make it stop hurting, Olivia."
She studies a piece of carpet for a very long time before she meets her friends gaze, unapologetic.
"Get a hobby, Abby. Get busy. Sex is detrimental. What you need is to focus on yourself. He gave you up, and that is absolutely his loss. Leave him in the dust."
/
Four
It's an accident that is her final unraveling. She's pertained from dealing with anything outside of her realm of politicians and personal fiascos. If anything, it's been a dull few months. The object of it has been to distract, but not to ruminate in miniscule details- the object has been to steer clear of the White House, and with it, him. This case isn't any different. It shouldn't have been.
It was an accident.
"You know," the senator's wife mentions primly, "if Jackson screwed me near as much as President Grant screws his wife, we wouldn't have had any issues in our marriage in the first place."
Olivia allows it to roll off her shoulders, but her stomach still knots sickeningly.
She cocks an eyebrow at the woman. The senator's wife takes the bait.
"We were visiting just the other day and my goodness, the sexual drive there is so palpable. And since Mellie has gotten back to her pre-baby body, she is just stunning. Stunning."
The heat in her veins is resonating and makes her ears warm, too.
She maintains her breathing. She knows what's coming next.
"I mean, if Jackson would be like that with me there would have been no way he would have gotten that whore in his pants. That's all I have to say about home wreckers; they are all sluts."
Olivia keeps herself steady until she can excuse herself to the residence's bathroom.
"I don't know what I was thinking. Screwing your mistress is one thing, but marrying her?"
There, she promptly throws up.
/
Five and Six
She takes her own advice.
She gets a haircut.
She joins a gym.
She rebuilds. She reconstructs. She fixes.
/
Seven
James invites her over for dinner one night. Even schedules it three weeks in advance, because he says he knows she has just as busy a schedule as his husband. Olivia doesn't see much of Cyrus anymore, either. She likes it that way.
She likes to think she's moving on.
The baby has grown exponentially since the last time Olivia saw her, and when she holds her a meaty little fist reaches out to fist a piece of her hair. Olivia isn't a baby person, not really.
"She's precious," she comments mildly. It puts a lump in her throat how easily an alternate universe can root so easily in her mind, spread its branches like love letters in brick walls to be picked up and read at a later date. She imagines, if only for a moment, one minute, that the baby has blue eyes.
She gives the baby back to James.
Cyrus watches her. Whatever he sees there he doesn't like, because the rest of the meal he has a permanent frown etched onto his face. He confronts her just before she leaves.
"He's not in a good place, Olivia."
She simply eyes him, chest beginning to hurt like she has heartburn, but she doesn't.
Searing. The slow death.
"He's drinking like a fish," Cyrus adds, reaching out a hand to press against her arm.
Olivia turns away, and walks onto the porch, heaving within the still night air. Oxygen.
When she is settled into the safety of her vehicle, she cries for a few minutes before she can even stat the car.
/
Eight
She's knuckle deep in a bowl of popcorn when she gets the call, and she has to lick her fingers before she can pick up her phone. The number is unknown.
She doesn't answer.
That night she dreams of wide hands and flag pins. She dreams of blood and screaming and soft kisses on her lips. She dreams of colors and she dreams of whispers in her ear.
She dreams of him, although she doesn't remember it in the morning.
/
Nine
Mellie does look good. There's a smile on her face; one with entirely too many teeth. Like a shark.
A predator, out for blood.
A contradiction is the infant in her lap. Teddy doesn't look anything like his father.
"Thank you for meeting me here," the brunette says sweetly, and Olivia is hesitant to sit on the couch, but she does. Camp David is a place she is familiar with. She knows this couch. They haven't changed the furniture since she and Fitz spent the night here. The irony of the situation humors Olivia more than it should.
"Is something wrong?" she inquires. Teddy coos, and reaches out to touch Olivia's elbow.
Mellie pulls him away, and sighs. "Something is always wrong when it comes to Fitzgerald Thomas Grant. And although I have made my most enthusiastic attempts to satisfy that man, he can't seem to scratch the itch. It's as if I'm putting a band aid on a bruise. It's just not working."
Olivia swallows hard, steel in her mouth. "I don't understand the problem, or rather, what you are asking me to do about it. I actually don't think there's anything I could do."
Mellie snorts, and motions for the nurse to take her son. "I think we both know exactly what needs to happen."
Once the others are out of the room, their conversation continues. "Pray tell."
"Fix it," Mellie states bluntly.
Olivia smirks, but it's twisted and ugly on her delicate features. "I don't think I can, Mellie. You're his wife, remember? You're his partner."
"And you're his mistress."
The words hang there.
Biting the inside of her cheek until it bleeds is unpleasant, but it's enough. "Not anymore."
"He's drinking like a fish. He hates you, he hates me- he hates everyone. He hates what we did to him, although to put it frankly, my husband has never been more of a spoiled brat in his life. He could at least be grateful we got him in-"
That sparks something deep within Olivia. Anger, an ember of unadulterated hatred.
"He has every reason to! We are the bad guys, Mellie. We deserve his hate."
"He's drinking like a fish," she inserts wryly, crossing her legs. Olivia makes a sound in the back of her throat. Eventually, Mellie tires of the games.
She stands, and walks to the doorway. Olivia watches her with a keen eye.
"If he needed some hooker off the street, I'd get one. But he doesn't. He needs you, even if he can't see it right now. To me, this isn't about my husband and his whore. This is about giving him what he needs. Because Olivia," she pauses, if only for the dramatic effect.
"A drunken president isn't what this country needs."
/
Ten
Olivia doesn't breathe when she sees him again. It's fairly similar to when she's doing laps in the pool; pushing, pushing, pushing for release and endorphins and struggling to fill her lungs with air. It's as if every cell within her wants and in that moment all she can do is long for him. Pine for him.
Miss him.
If it was only missing his wit, his whispers, his looks, things might be easier. But she misses with her whole self. She misses his presence. She misses breathing the same air as he does.
She misses him. She misses him so much.
There is a look. (Because there is always, always a look.)
She believes the will leave it half finished, a mangled mess of things, wires and time, not enough to reconcile but enough to get by. She thinks it will be easier to let him go.
She is wonderfully, terribly wrong.
/
The closet is too dark to see the blue of his eyes, but she can feel the heat of his exhalation on her lips.
And then his hands are at the hem of her skirt, and his tongue is in her mouth, delving deep, deep enough that when she opens her mouth to moan it releases garbled and wanton. Deep enough that when his fingers push apart her underwear she's already slick and ready, but it's still been so long.
She gasps, and tosses her head, bucking up against his fingers until they slide deeper.
He's panting, too. He draws away from her mouth a growls, a noise she's rarely heard from him but damn if it doesn't do something to her, unhinge her and rip her at the seams- she's fumbling for his belt but-
Something shifts in the atmosphere, in the energy.
When he pulls his fingers from her and grips her hips to turn her around, she isn't expecting it.
She isn't expecting him to bend her over, but he does, and she gives in to it, feeds the flame by arching her back and pressing into him, already bracing her palms against the wall in preparation.
When he bunches her skirt around her hips and presses into her, he doesn't give her warning. Olivia tenses because it hurts, but it's the kind of pain that makes her want more. It's the kind of pain she needs, craves, and even though he doesn't give her time to adjust, it still makes her dig her heels into the ground and keen, breathy and inexplicably loud.
Fitz just fucks her harder.
He has one hand digging into her hip in a grip that she won't be surprised if tomorrow its left bruises. She wants to sing black and blue. She wants to wake up in the morning and hurt.
He's there before she is. She feels his abdominal muscles tense against her back, cries out when he gives that last pull, hard and unforgiving, that sends her over the precipice too. She quivers in his arms.
He reduces her to this.
They come down from the high sharply, and she knows it's happened because he pulls out of her immediately, leaving her to wince and slide her dress down her thighs again. The harsh metal of his belt clinks loudly in the dark. Feebly, she attempts to smooth her hair.
He won't look at her directly.
She thinks maybe fate was fickle in leaving them like this. She aches with the loss. She aches to hear him say her name again, soft and sweet. She aches for something that was never hers. The harsh light of the hall makes her eyes sting and her head pound.
He steps out first. She follows.
Fitz doesn't utter a syllable, and walks away with his head held high, his posture straight.
The wet fluids on the insides of her thighs have yet to dry completely.
She hates herself a little.