Thank you all for the sweet reception of this story! I didn't know where I was going to take it beyond that opening scene, so it's taken me a while to flesh it out. I had hoped this chapter would be much longer, but I'd need another day or two to work on it and I just couldn't keep you waiting any longer! So here's a short one to tide you over until this weekend, when i can put up something much longer.

More will be revealed about why Fitz and Liv broke up, but for now just now that they are very definitely still in love. Always have been, always will be. Thanks for reading!

Chapter 2: The song remembers when

1997

Fitzgerald Grant was the funniest, sweetest, kindest, handsomest, sexiest man she had ever met and at 20 years old, Olivia Pope thought he couldn't possibly be real. They met outside the library on campus at UC Berkeley. He was coming out and she was rushing in. They had collided and he helped her pick up the armload of books she dropped.

His blue eyes were striking and his lopsided smile was Olivia's undoing. He carried her books back in to her table and kept perusing the shelves near where she studied until she caught him looking and invited him to sit down. Their conversation, though hushed, had been easy and relaxing. They spent the next two hours together and in the future when they would tell the story of how they met, Fitz still couldn't remember where he had been going that day when he was leaving the library and met the woman who would become his wife.

That night, Olivia called her sister and absolutely gushed in a way that she had never done before. Swearing her to secrecy because Fitzgerald Grant was not only five years older and in graduate school, but he was white, from a rich family, and not the sort of man her father would have picked for his daughter.

If she were being honest, Olivia got a thrill out of hiding her relationship with Fitz at first. He surprised her in the best places, and nights in his apartment off campus were thrilling. They had been so drunk with happiness at having found each other that they didn't pay attention to the fact that they were making love every second of the day they could get their hands on each other, and sometimes they were more careful than others. Then, in one three day weekend, their lives changed forever.

2015

Olivia slammed the door shut to her bedroom and let out a burst of hysterical laughter. Then she immediately put her hand over her mouth in hopes that her daughter hadn't heard her. What in the complete hell had just happened? Her body still buzzing and zinging from what she they had just done, her mind flew to Fitz. She checked her phone to see if he had called, but saw nothing. Sighing, she fell a little further back into reality. What had just transpired between them was nothing short of amazing and crazy and wrong and she was pretty sure it was a distinct anomaly that would never happen again.

She moved to her bed and lay down on the comfortable white duvet cover. She thought back to a time when she never could have had such a bright white comforter—having a baby was just too messy a prospect. She and Fitz had lived on that bed. Their comforter had been stained from spilled ramen noodles, fudge from the sundaes she craved while pregnant, and Teena the birthday kitten he'd named after Olivia's favorite soul singer. Miss Teena now lived in their daughter's bedroom at seemingly all times.

Right now though, Olivia reveled in the feeling of the cool fabric against her heated skin. She thought about all the ways in which her life was different than it used to be when it came to Fitz. He had been her husband, her lover, her co-parent, and her friend. Other than the shared parenting responsibilities of their daughter, she had lost him in every way. Never did she expect this, never did she expect to have him back again like this. Did she have him back?

She shook her head forcefully to clear it of the thoughts of him. She had things to do. She needed to prepare for the conference call she had and make sure that photos from her latest painting for Laney College were uploaded to the shared networking site so the department heads could view them. She also needed to look up YouTube videos on what late 80's styles would best suit her daughter's mixed textured hair. She could barely remember what she used to do with a can of hair spray and bobby pins—she had no idea what to tell her daughter, despite her assurances that she could transform her into Madonna for her friend's party. She had a lot to do besides think of Fitzgerald Grant.

Despite all of this, her thoughts went to him anyway, and she needed to talk to someone about what had just happened. If she kept it to herself it was going to drive her crazy. Olivia reached underneath her bed and pulled out her laptop and opened it to make sure the files had uploaded and connected her computer to the video conference. She muted the microphone on her computer and then dialed her sister on her handset, watching and waiting for others to join the video conference.

"Hey Liv!" Her sister Debbie had an exuberant way of answering the telephone that at times both annoyed and comforted Olivia.

"Hi Deb," Olivia said. "Do you have a minute?"

"Always for you, baby sister. What's going on?"

"I need to talk to you. And I'm sorry to be abrupt and call you during dinner, but I also have a conference call that's going to start any second and when it does, I'm going to have to let you go."

"Oh, well do you want to talk later tonight?" Debbie was whispering to her children, stepping over the dog that lay in the middle of her kitchen, and cooking dinner while talking to Olivia. She was always doing a million things, but always willing to be there for her little sister.

"You're going to want to."

Debbie stopped in her tracks and suddenly Olivia could hear her sister moving out onto the porch and letting the screen door slam shut behind her.

"What have you done?"

"I just fucked Fitz in the kitchen of his house on the day he buried his wife, and I'm probably going to hell for it." All the background noise in her sister's kitchen stopped.

"Olivia Carolyn Pope!"

"I know. Oops, you know what, they're here. I've got to go."

"You cannot call me and tell me that and just hang up!" Debbie gasped.

"I gotta go, babe, it's work. Send me a text when you're done with everything and I'll call you back."

By the time Olivia finished feeding her daughter dinner, doing her nails as promised, and trying out a few different hairstyles for the party she was exhausted. Though the afternoon's memories played in Technicolor in her brain, Olivia had done her best to focus on what was happening in the present. She longed to call Fitz and check on him, longed to know what he felt about what had just happened and what he wanted to come of it.

Instead of looking at her phone Olivia washed her face and tied up her hair and then put away the sketches she had been working on. She slipped into bed and reached for her phone to plug it into the charger. She had several text messages from her sister apologizing for not being able to pick up the phone when Olivia had tried to call her back. Debbie insisted on lunch the next day and told her sister to be ready by noon. The other alert on the phone told her that she had missed a call from Fitz just five minutes ago. Olivia's breath caught and then she impulsively called him back.

"Hello?" his voice sounded incredible at night. She closed her eyes and enjoyed it for a second.

"Hi," she replied.

"Olivia," he sounded relieved. "I'm sorry, did I wake you?"

"No, I was just getting into bed actually."

Comfortable silence hung in the air between them.

"I don't know what to say—we got carried away—I did. I didn't mean to take advantage of you like that, it was wrong of me to push you into that."

"Do you regret it?" Olivia asked with a tinge of sadness.

"I've never regretted any time we made love, Olivia."

"Me either."

"But still, considering the nature of the day," he sighed.

"I know," she finished for him. "Neither one of us were expecting anything like that to happen."

"But now that it has, Olivia, I haven't been able to think about anything else."

"Think about something else," Olivia said suddenly, surprising them both. "We were both emotional, and that can be so overwhelming. You have two sons to take care of, and what happened between us this afternoon was just a fluke. Okay? You don't have to apologize. I know it was just your grief talking."

"I miss my wife, but I knew she was going to die," Fitz said shocking Olivia. "I knew for two years before she went that I would be here someday. It hurts, like hell, but I can separate what I'm feeling about Amy with what I'm feeling for you."

Olivia shook her head and sat up in bed. "I don't know how I feel, Fitz. I don't know what I want."

"Me either. But maybe we could talk about it?"

Olivia was silent for a while.

"Are you there Olivia?"

"Yeah."

"So, can I come over tomorrow? Just to talk?"

"No!" Olivia said quickly. "I'm sorry, I just mean that I don't want to confuse Vanessa. You haven't been to the house in months, she'll know something's up if you do that. No one needs to know anything until we figure out whatever it is that we are or are not doing."

"Deal, just you me, and Debbie, right?"

Olivia gasped and tried for a split second to feign ignorance before she had to laugh.

"I had to tell her," she chuckled.

"I know, she texted me," Fitz said. "She said she would kick my ass if I didn't handle it the right way, and that got me thinking."

"About what?"

"You," he said honestly. "How in some ways your body hasn't changed. How in some ways it's completely different. How much I missed touching you. How glad I am that you let me."

A hot tear fell down Olivia's cheek as she listened to him talk. She couldn't say anything back.

"You don't have to say anything," he replied when he heard her sniffle. "Tomorrow Delmonico's?"

"They know us there, how about we just meet at Crown Beach for a walk? Maybe coffee at South Shore if we feel like it?"

"Alright. Good night, Olivia."