La douleur exquise

A/N: Hello everyone! Please don't get mad at me for not finishing Unexpected Joy yet, I just couldn't get this idea out of my head. So, I decided to start this story. I've always wondered what happened behind the scenes during the trail and Olitz' relationship progression before it led to their first night together in that hotel room. So, here is my version of them during this stage of their love story.

P.S. I cannot believe Scandal is really over, still so hard to accept. Okay, happy reading! XOXO

Chapter 1: The introduction

The click of her heels against the marble floor is equivalent to the sound of thunder and lightning tangling together in the sky. She walks with a purpose, a mission. Everyone stops and looks at her as if she has stopped time, and maybe she has because everything and everyone slows around her. Slow motion. Her hair whips around as if there is a fan blowing directly on her, but this is an auditorium, there are no fans, there is no slow motion, there is just Olivia Pope.

She's small in stature, but big in attitude. She blows the whole campaign team away with her unapologetic rhetoric with Governor Grant. Her dark chocolate eyes bore into him as if he is about to burst into flames. Fitz looks at Cyrus, then back at her, then he finally peeps out, "And you are?"

She looks at him with a smirk, a smirk that makes him hard at the sight of her. "Olivia." She looks at Cyrus, then swings back to look at him. "Pope."

She joins Cyrus and Fitz in a small conference room, away from all of the campaign workers' prying eyes. Cyrus is overjoyed to have his best student with him on a campaign he believes will go all the way. Fitz doesn't seem as excited.

"Listen, I'm not saying you shouldn't join the team, it's just I don't know how well you will fit in here."

"With all due respect, Governor Grant, I am not here to be a team, I am not here to be anyone's friend, and I sure as hell am not here to fit in. I'm here to blow everything up. You're sinking before you're even in the water. You need me. I'm not going to pitch myself or audition for you, because I am here as a favor to my friend, Cyrus. So, either we get the hell to work, or I'm fine going back to breezy D.C. instead of humid Santa Barbara."

"Let's get started." Fitz spits out before she can continue tearing him a new one. He wishes he could hate her. Every fiber of his being is screaming fire her, make her leave. How dare she disrespect you, you're the governor for fuck's sake. But instead he lets his lust and love for the truth take over. Because that is all she is doing, speaking the truth, her mind. He wishes he could be in her mind, understand her, what she's thinking at all times.

Her commanding, heavenly voice jolts him out of his daydream of what if. "Let's" She turns to exit the room and he watches closely as her hips sway gracefully from side to side. He swears she swings them a little extra just because she knows he is watching, but maybe that's hopeful wishing.

The first day on the campaign trail with Olivia as communications director aka fixer

Olivia sits on the front edge of her wooden desk in her small, mostly wooden office. She knew they wouldn't be in CA long, so the size and décor were not a big deal. She is holding onto the cord phone with such grip that her knuckles appear white.

"Abby, it's fine. I will return to building OPA as soon as I finish with this campaign, for now continue recruiting people."

"Liv, nobody wants to work somewhere where the boss is unavailable for the next few months and maybe next few years if all goes well."

"Abby, my name is on the door. What I say, goes."

"Exactly, Liv it is your name. Nobody cares about Abby Whelan offering them a job, they care about Olivia Pope."

"I gave you a list of names. Make. It. Happen. No more excuses, thank you, bye."

She ends the call abruptly and begins palming her face at the frustration of building an empire from the ground up, from across the country. She is pulled out of her anger haze when she hears a deep, chuckled laugh behind her.

Fitz is leaning against her office door frame, chuckling. "So, it isn't just me who you're bossy to"

"No, I'm afraid you're not that special. It's actually my job to be "bossy"" She returns the smile, but it's obvious she is being sarcastic. "Did you need something, Governor Grant?"

"Please, you're on the team, you can call me Fitz."

"Did you need something?"

"Ouch. Okay. Yes, Cyrus sent me here to see what you think about the pancake breakfast coming up in two weeks. Is it too staged or just enough?"

"It will be fine. It shows the voters that although on opposite sides, you and Sally can get along long enough to serve veterans breakfast, even at a church. Another bonus for republican voters." She said this with a hint of disdain.

"I take it you're not republican?" He takes a seat in the chair across from her, with nothing in between them. She turns slightly so they're directly facing each other.

"I'm apolitical. I don't register as republican nor democrat. I vote based on the candidate."

"But, I have your vote, right?"

"You have to earn it, like any other candidate." She smiled sneakily and flirtingly. She remembered who she was speaking to and hopped off the side of her desk and pulled her pencil skirt down a hair.

He stood up to meet her and smiled at her flirting, enjoying it and wanting it to continue. He had never flirted with another woman since college, he had basically been married to Mellie by his father since he graduated. Although it was a marriage of convenience, he never thought about cheating, until his eyes met hers. Until she ripped him a new one in front of everyone that was supposed to fear him. When she uttered the words "Olivia. Pope." He saw his entire future laid ahead of him, marriage, kids, house, sex. Lots of sex with her and her only.

"Right, well let's get to it then, earning you and such."

"My vote, sir."

"Yes, right. Isn't that what I said?"

At first, she was convinced that he really misspoke, but when he began walking through her doorway and turned and smirked at her, she knew he was flirting back.

"Uh-oh. What the hell have I gotten myself into?" She said under her breath, mainly to herself.

A/N: I decided to keep this chapter short to make sure you guys actually like it, so let me know in the comments! Thanks for reading! XOXO