Happy Scandal Day!

The title of this story is named after the song that inspired this piece. (yes another one-shot based on a Taylor Swift song...What does it mean when your OTP make you relate all of TSwifts ouchy breakup songs to them?)

Anyway I really wanted to get this up before the new ep ruined it, and this way it can be cannon even if its only for a few hours. Hope you enjoy.

Olivia sat at her desk, she read over a file with notes relating to a client, aside from doing this she had an unusually quiet day, something she needed every so often. She'd sent Quinn and Marcus out to finish up with one of their clients, and Huck sat where he always did when there was no real work to be done, alone at his computer playing games.

She was brought out of the file by the sound of her door opening. A familiar brunette came to stand in the doorway. "Liv, please tell be you're not working for a client right now," Mellie said, with her hands folded together almost like she was pleading for Olivia to tell her exactly that.

"I'm not working for a client right now?" Olivia answered half confused by the former First Lady's request.

"Then I am your client," Mellie said happily as she came further into the room and took the seat across from Olivia.

"Excuse me?" Liv asked not sure is she had heard her wrong.

"I need your help, the people they have working for me are useless and you're the only person I can really trust," Mellie replied, and Liv stifled a laugh of amusement. Trust was not something she thought Mellie would ever connect to her.

"You need my help? What with?" She wondered what potentially career ending rumour she would have to shut down, or who she would have to bribe to keep quiet.

"There's a donor dinner for the Republican party tonight. Which would be an ideal place to show that I'm a strong Presidential candidate," Mellie started.

"Right," Liv nodded along, wondering when what she needed help with would come up.

"But my staff doesn't seem to understand that, and keep bringing outfits that I would wear as First Lady. I don't want to be First Lady, Liv, I want to be the President. I know to you picking out something to wear might not seem important enough to drop whatever you're doing but it is to me. So will you please help me?" Mellie almost pleaded, if you'd asked her a year ago, she would have never thought she'd be reduced to asking for Olivia's help in a matter that seemed so trivial, or any matter even, but here she was.

…

Fitz stood up from the sofas in his office, to announce that the small meeting they were having was finished. Everybody stood up too and began to leave. "Abby, can you stay back for a moment," he asked just as his press secretary was about to leave.

"Something I can help you with?" Abby asked after she stopped and turned back round.

"What are you doing tonight?" He asked, as he went to sit behind his desk.

"Ah, the same thing I do most nights. Work until midnight, than go home," she answered, her life was tragically free of a resemblance of a personal life. "Why do you ask, sir? Is there something you need?"

"The donor dinner, tonight, you're not going?"

"No, sir," Abby said, and held her tongue about not being a Republican. "But then I thought you weren't either," she added.

"Changed my mind. You should come. If you have no real plans tonight. Everybody else will be there," he said, and by everybody he meant Cyrus, Susan, and Liz, but currently that seemed to be his 'everybody'.

…

"That doesn't say 'President'," Liv said as she watched what Mellie was doing. They had been out looking at things the senator could wear but they had yet to find anything. Mellie was right everything was either wrong or screamed 'First Lady'.

"I know, but maybe it says 'Campaign Manager'," Mellie said as she pulled it off the rack and showed it to Olivia. Liv could see where this was going and what she was asking.

"I don't think that would be a good idea, for either of us," she answered. Liv couldn't see how Mellie could think having your ex-husband's public mistress running her campaign could be anything but a disaster.

"Don't answer yet. But if you think the dress doesn't say 'Campaign Manager' then maybe it could say 'Guest of the Senator of Virginia'?" She asked, inviting Liv to come along to the event tonight.

Liv took the dress in her hands, it was definitely something that matched her current style. "You really want me to come?" She asked skeptically. If this was at any other moment in their relationship she would have expected this to be a ploy to pour pigs blood on her and brand her with a scarlet 'A', but so much time had passed since then, and so much had happened, that that all seemed extremely farfetched.

"Please," Mellie smiled sincerely.

"Alright," Liv said taking the dress from Mellie's hands and examining it closer.

…

Olivia held a glass of champagne, it was obvious that everybody in the room knew who she was, but no one came quite out and said it, well not to her face anyway. She had come alone, but was seated at the same table as Mellie, which wasn't surprising as she was the reason that Olivia was there. Mellie had left to talk privately with another senator, and she had willed for Liv to come, but she was pulled away before Liv could move.

If it was Mellie's plan to show Liv what she was missing when it came to running a campaign, it was certainly working. She had missed this. The political talk. The power that could come from a simple conversation. Not to mention the wine was usually top shelf. There were a lot of things she missed from this world, but there were also a lot of things she didn't.

She was deep in conversation with a senator from another table when she saw something catch her eye. Something she hadn't expected, or really someone. "Will you excuse me," Liv said before leaving the man behind. She followed the path she had just made with her eyes. She put her hand out to catch a shoulder, and waited for them to turn around.

"Liv?" The red head said surprised upon seeing her friend.

"What are you doing here?" Olivia asked. She could guess the only reason why she would be here, but she desperately hoped that wasn't the case. For all she knew, Leo could have been back and was running the campaign for someone else in the room.

"You know me Liv, the only thing I would rather do than spend my night with this many Republicans is slide down a bannister made of razor blades," Abby joked, this was not what she considered a good night out. "But he asked me to come, and I took too long to come up with a reason not to," she finished, and pretty much confirmed Olivia's suspicions.

"He's here?" Liv asked, trying to hide the nervousness in her voice.

"Well not yet, but he will be soon," Abby answered. She studied her friends face, and was surprised with what she found. "You didn't know," she deduced. If Abby knew Liv was going to be here she would have given her a heads up about the President's being there, knowing that would be better than having Olivia ambushed.

"It's fine," Olivia said, she had to act normally. Everything was fine. What did she care if Fitz was going to be there or not, it was only going to be the first time they had seen each other in six months. It wasn't a big deal, she had to keep telling herself.

Abby could see through Olivia's façade, but thought it best not to call her out on it right now. "Why are you here?"

"Mellie invited me," Olivia answered distracted as she looked around the room for the senator, she wondered if this could all have been part of Mellie's great plan for her Presidential run. "I have to go," Liv said before walking back over to her table.

Though Mellie wasn't there, she wasn't difficult to find and Olivia quickly pulled her aside. "Olivia? What is it?" Mellie asked swatting Liv's hand away.

"Is this why you invited me along? Because Fitz is going to be here?" Liv asked and she zeroed in on the former First Lady's face. She'd known Mellie long enough to know when she was lying.

"Fitz is here?" Mellie said looking back to the crowd to see if she could spot her ex-husband.

"You didn't know?" Olivia asked folding her arms across her chest. How could they both be so out of the loop?

"Of course I didn't know. This shouldn't surprise you but even before the divorce I wasn't privy to his comings and goings, unlike you," she said retorted and then instantly regretted the dig at Olivia. "I'm sorry. If I knew he was going to be here, I wouldn't have invited you. I want your help, I'm trying not to do anything to jeopardise that," Mellie said. She didn't know what really went on between Olivia and Fitz, but she knew it had to have been an extreme blow up if they'd given up on the seven year relationship that had invaded her marriage more often than not. "Please don't leave," Mellie almost begged.

"I'm not going to leave," Liv replied. What did that say about her if she left just because her ex was going to show up at the same event? Though this wasn't as simple as a teenage girl who had a fight with her prom date and never wanted to see him again. She'd become used to being talked and whispered about. But she had a feeling that with both their presence in one place it wasn't going to be like anything she had experienced in the last six months.

"Thank you," Mellie said with a smile, and Liv nodded to assure her it wasn't a problem. Olivia was there because of Mellie, but she was staying for herself. It wasn't so she could see him, she would have preferred if she could make it the whole night without laying eyes on him, I was because she needed to be able to tell herself that she stayed, that she didn't run and hide, and could handle being around him without anything happening.

…

The door opened for him and Fitz took a step out of the car and was met by his secret service agents. It was nice to be out of the White House, though a dinner for the Republican Party wasn't his top choice of an escape. He didn't look forward to the small talk he would have to make with senators or big donors, and especially didn't like when they would bring up his personal life, and his unparty like choices. But he was a Republican and the President of the United States and he said he would be there, so he would have to deal with whatever they may say while he shook their sweaty palms. There was nothing that could happen tonight that a glass or two of the scotch he had back at the White House couldn't fix.

Fitz walked, two steps behind his secret service agents, into the hotel. He was greeted to the normal amount of staring eyes, but pretended they weren't there, as he always did. He was escorted around to the back of the ballroom, but before he could take a step into the room he was stopped by his press secretary.

"There's something you need to know, sir," Abby said, and Fitz wondered what it could be. He hoped for it not to be a crisis or something that would send him back to the White House. He urged her to go on, and she did. "Liv is here," she said tactfully. In the past six months she had been careful not to mention her old boss to her current one, and she had been doing an extraordinary job at just that.

"Why?" He asked, he obviously didn't know how her life had changed in the last few months, but he couldn't see it changing so much that she would be at a Republican fundraising event.

"She's with Mellie," Abby answered and she watched the confusion run across his face.

"That's a sentence I never thought I'd hear," Fitz replied, he wanted it to come off as a joke, so Abby would know that he wasn't fazed by the presence of his ex-girlfriend and ex-wife, even though he wasn't entirely. Did he want to see her? He had changed so much over the last half a year, and he never thought that by not having her in his life he would become a better man. Who would have known that the freedom that she so desperately wanted, was something he needed all along too? He liked who he was without Olivia, but that didn't stop him missing who he was with her.

"Are you alright, sir?" Abby asked. The only reason she told him now was so he wasn't caught off guard when their two paths undoubtedly crossed. She thought they both deserved that.

"I'm fine. Thank you for telling me," Fitz said before gesturing to the agents to continue.

…

Olivia caught sight of him first. Though that wasn't hard. The sea of people parted for him. He was far away, there was no way he would have been able to see her. He looked good. He'd had a haircut since December, and he seemed less weighed down by the stress of the world. Olivia tried not to stare too long, but every time she glanced away, within a minute or two her eyes were right back on him. She tried to control her feelings, pretend that everything was as it should, but it wasn't always easy to believe at the best of times, and it was certainly not the best of times right now. She wondered how long it would take him to find her, or even if he knew she was there, or if he cared that she was. She decided she didn't want to know the answer to any of those questions, it was easier not to know.

…

Fitz had been asked give a speech, and of course he'd accepted. He'd had a speech writer draft it that afternoon and then he put the finishing touches on it just before he'd left to come here. He stood at the podium and looked out to the tables that vast the room. He started his speech and tried to make eye contact with as many people as possible, like any good politician or public speaker would. He glanced around the room and his eyes almost zoomed passed her. He wished they did. She looked different. Usually she was easy to find, sitting straight up in full white, but not tonight. She wasn't looking at him, she would have been the only one. He stumbled on some of his words, losing his train of thought. He could see Olivia's head begin to raise, and he begged himself to look away before their eyes could meet.

…

Olivia looked around, she could feel his presence, though she couldn't see him. She could feel all eyes on her, and she could swear she was hearing whispers of 'Olivia Pope and the President'. Trying to ignore it she focus solely on the person she was talking to. She wished she could say they were interesting, or even tell you what they did but her attention was very rarely on them. She laughed and smiled and tried to pretend she was having a much better time than she actually was.

She held a glass to her lips and smoothed her dress down with her free hand. Fitz was there, he was now only a few feet away and was shaking numerous hands. Did she want him to look over to her? Or did she want him to completely ignore her? Would it feel like a slap in the face if he did? She didn't know what she wanted, was it easier to pretend there was never anything there, or actually acknowledge it?

She watched as Mellie and Fitz took photos together, and held small conversation. To onlookers they would have looked almost like they did when they were still married, though Olivia could tell this time they weren't pretending to be civil. Maybe if Fitz and Mellie could become somewhat friends after the whole debacle, there stood hope for them, but she could only guess it would possibly take a much longer time to reach that place.

Fitz continued to walk on, they were only three feet away from each other, but it felt like they were oceans apart. He didn't even look to her, didn't say hello, he just walked straight passed. And then he was gone, on to the next table no doubt. Olivia downed the glass of wine she was holding, and then suddenly the whispers of them were no longer quiet. They sounded like screams echoing around the room. The temperature felt like it was beginning to rise, and Liv felt like she couldn't breathe.

This wasn't who she was. This wasn't who she wanted to be. She needed air, she needed to get out of the room while she still could. She tried to slip out unnoticed, and surprisingly she succeeded.

…

Maybe it was petty not to acknowledge her, and Fitz would be lying if he said he didn't get any joy out of it, but he wasn't sure if he could handle seeing her from such a short distance, especially not in front of all these people. He'd ignored her call for a reason, though sometimes he wasn't sure of that reason, he stuck by the decision he made that night.

He was trying to keep Olivia in his vision, just so he wasn't surprised by accidentally bumping into her. But he turned away for what felt like thirty seconds and she had disappeared. He studied the room almost desperate to find her. He had no intention of making her leave. Maybe she was more sensitive the situation than he thought. It was hard to believe that these things could affect her, she was usually so strong willed. He shouldn't be thinking of her feelings, she hadn't thought of his one occasion after another. But he couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if he did say 'hello'.

…

Olivia had checked her phone almost a hundred times, though there was never anything new when she looked. She'd been out getting 'air' for at least a half an hour, though she couldn't really know, she'd lost track of time within five minutes of being out there. She was walking small circles around the seemingly private room. Only a few people had come out since she had been out there. She didn't really have much of an idea where she was, she'd taken a door to leave the dinner, and then another, and somehow she made it here.

She heard a sound and looked up from her phone, but what she came face to face with she wasn't expecting. She'd wished for anything but this tonight. She couldn't run, he had seen her, maybe he'd just continue passed her, he'd ignored her all night what was another minute.

Fitz looked generally surprised to see Olivia standing there. He'd really thought she'd left. He kind of hoped it. He knew Olivia had seen him, and she would have known he saw her. Fitz nodded for his agents to leave his side, and went off to secure the entry and exit. Olivia and Fitz were all alone. A place neither of them wanted to be.

Six months was a long time, and now they barely knew what to say to each other. Olivia twirled her phone around in her hands, she could hardly look at him. "Is this how it's going to be between us?" Liv said, surprising even herself that the words came out of her mouth. "Not even acknowledging the other?"

"We're talking now," Fitz answered.

"Only because you happened to walk into a room I was already in. It's not the same thing," she replied.

"What am I meant to say to you? 'Nice to see you again, Olivia'? Because it's not. I don't want to see you," he answered truthfully. Before finding out Olivia was going to be at the event, he had actually somewhat been looking forward to it, not a great deal, but more than most.

"Then go. If you don't want to see me, why are you still here?" She asked and a little piece of her already broken heart crumbled into dust.

Fitz wondered if he should just call his agents back, continue on the way they were going and leave. But something in him pulled him to stay, and he knew exactly what was keeping him there. His love for her. It had never gone away, it would never go away. It would hide in the background and he could pretend it wasn't there, but it always came screaming back at the most inopportune times. He waited for her to soften, he knew given time she would, if she didn't walk away first. "How are you?" He finally asked when she did.

"I'm fine. I'm better than fine. I'm good. Great even," maybe it was just his romantic heart but he wished she would tell him that she'd been miserable, that she'd made a huge mistake and hated herself for it every day. But he knew Olivia, those words would never come out of her mouth, not in a million years.

"Same," he answered. And if she truly meant it than so did he. Though he couldn't imagine she did. Cause how could she? How could she be totally fine with everything between them being over? Be good not seeing the person you loved every day, even if they were sometime toxic? Be great and yet totally alone? Because he certainly wasn't.

"That's Great," she said folding her arms in front of her chest. She didn't know why she was being like this, it was as if she wanted him to leave, but deep down she didn't.

"Stop," Fitz said, they'd barely been talking, but he was already sick of the lies. They weren't great, they weren't good, and they weren't fine. He was the only person in the world she didn't have to hide that to.

"Stop what?" Liv asked, slightly confused.

"Stop lying. Stop pretending that this was nothing. Just stop," he instructed her. There was no point, it was just a waste of time if they continued down this path. It was easier to say what they needed to say, and be able to move on, than bottle everything and wait another six months to have this conversation.

"I'm not," she tried but Fitz just gave that all knowing look that made her back down from what she was planning to say. "What do you want me to say, Fitz? That I miss you? Because I don't," Liv said and Fitz was a little shocked, he really did hope for at least that. He did think that was so far out of the realm of possibilities. "Because I can't let myself miss you. If I do, then I wouldn't be able to stay away, I wouldn't be able to think about anything else. I would only think about you, and I don't want that, I need to be free, I need to be something other than the 'lesser' half of the most famous couple in the world. So no I don't miss you," Liv explained and as she did she hated herself for sharing so much. That was meant to be just for her to know, to lock away and never let out. But he had that way on her, he always had. He could make her let down her guard and make her say and do almost anything.

"This is killing me," he said honestly. He wanted to know if it was this much pain for her, or at least was. "I don't know what happened between us, and I try to tell myself I don't care, but why wouldn't I? I replay that night over and over. And it doesn't make any sense to me. I want to forget about it but I can't. And I don't think I ever will."

There were so many thing she wished he knew about that night, but then at the same time she didn't want him to know. He didn't need to know, and knowing wouldn't help him it would only hurt him, so it was better to keep it to herself. "We don't always make sense. Nothing between us was ever simple or clear."

"What is clear is that I love you, and that's never not going to be true, no matter how much we want it to be," Fitz said, and Olivia nodded along. She knew that, and he also knew she would always love him, so she didn't need to say it, not out loud.

She wished he didn't say that though, because how could she resist him while he stood there looking the way he did and saying those words. She wanted him, but knew she couldn't have him, not any more.

"Can we just have a minute?" He asked. He'd never wanted one as much as he did. Olivia nodded and they began to walk over to each other. In the next minute they wouldn't be themselves. They wouldn't be in this situation. They could forget about everything that had ever happened between them. It was something they both needed.

With each step they took closer to other they knew they were nearing trouble, but they couldn't stop themselves. Fitz wanted to hold her, feel her touch against his skin, push her hair from her face, and hold her in his arms.

It was wrong, they both knew it, but at this moment nothing felt more right. Olivia cupped her hand onto his cheek, and gently rubbed his face with her thumb. Their lips were almost at the same level, Fitz would only have to bend an inch, maybe two, for them to reach. They both closed their eyes as their lips crashed into the others. Fitz's arm snaked around Olivia's back and pulled her closely into him.

And then suddenly Olivia remembered who they were, where they were, what they were doing and how they weren't allowed to do this anymore. It wasn't right, not to either of them. She put her hand to his chest and pushed away as their lips broke apart. A look of confusion crossed Fitz's face not understanding what had just happened.

"We can't do this," she breathed out. And Fitz took a moment to gain some composure.

"You're right," he said, and he resisted the urge to say 'like normal', he took a few seconds to calm the rate that his heart was beating. "Let's go," he called out, and his agents were quickly around him. "It was nice to see you again, Olivia," he said before walking away.

Liv watched as he left, confused and shocked at what had just transpired between them. What the hell did that all mean? Would she ever find out? Did she want to find out? Five minutes ago the answer would have been a strict no, but now she wasn't so sure. One thing for sure was that nothing was ever finished between them.

What did you think. Also would love to hear what you thought about last ep, and the one that airs tonight...if you are still watching that is.

Please Review :D