AN: Getting better and fighting back! For those who don't know, I'm in recovery from COVID. As an asthmatic, it nearly took me out. I'm working with a breathing therapist now but I'm okay for now. Thank you for your well wishes and to all the women in the FB group, thanks for all your well wishes and for making sure I know that you're rooting for me. I really appreciate it.
Olivia felt like shit. There was no nice or neat way to frame the sheer exhaustion that slithered through her bones. She had done nothing particularly tiresome or energy exhaustive. Since her mother's wedding and graduation rapidly approaching, she tried her best to stay healthy and energized. She failed. Since daybreak, she was in a foul mood, spurred on by an upset stomach. The grumpy mood only seemed to worsen as nightfall came.
Thankfully Fitz was gone. He'd ran out, tail tucked between his legs to visit his parents. If he had stayed one moment longer, Olivia might've hit him over the head with a lamp. Even his breathing was driving her insane. It was just so heavy and fucking hot. Everything about him she loved was slowly driving her bat shit. At least for the last couple of weeks and she couldn't explain why.
She laid on her side, knees to her chest, mindlessly watching General Hospital episodes she'd missed through the week on Hulu. Nauseous. Again. Nearly every day this week she'd thrown up or at least felt like she was going to at any moment. Nothing stayed in her stomach long and even the smell of certain foods made her life miserable.
The front door unlocked, prompting Olivia to lift her head. Fitz walked inside, bag snug around his right wrist. "I come in peace," he said. He held out the bag, a Target bag, signaling for Olivia to take it.
Her eyes immediately narrowed. His cologne smelled absolutely putrid. And she'd bought it for him. Once upon a week or so ago, it'd driven her wild. It'd made her ravenous for him. Now? She wished he'd drown in it. "What is it?"
"A peace offering." His voice was soft. Almost pleading.
She snatched the bag in a huff, opening it to find a box of tampons, two dark chocolate bars, Midol, and microwave popcorn—skinny pop. Immediately she grew irate. How dare he assume she was on her period. "Are you serious right now?"
"I didn't… Liv, you've been cranky you only get like this when you're…" he trailed off.
Olivia unfurled herself from the ball she was tucked in and was poised to strike, to yell, when the nausea started up again. She bolted from the living room leaving the bag in its place. She almost didn't make it to the toilet as the contents of her stomach wretched forth.
It was then that it hit her. What little she ate splattered in the porcelain bowl. She hadn't had her period in several weeks. Was she… She didn't have time to think before she heard Fitz's footsteps approaching. Without hesitation, she kicked the bathroom shut and rose on her knees, locking the door.
Fuck.
Olivia felt her heart bottom out in her chest. She couldn't think straight. Was she pregnant? It was a possibility. A strong one at that with the way she and Fitz couldn't keep their damn hands off one another. They hadn't used condoms since the first few times they'd slept together. She thought she'd always been on the nose with her birth control. Especially since her mother's warning.
"Olivia, come on, baby. I'm sorry," Fitz spoke. The door muffled his voice. "I didn't…I thought I was helping."
She ignored him as she began to put the pieces together. The tenderness of her breasts, the nausea, and the fatigue now all added up.
"Liv," Fitz yelled again.
Without thinking, she pulled the bathroom door open. She sprinted past Fitz, to the front door, in search of her shoes and purse. She found her sneakers by the front door and fought to get her feet in them.
Fitz was on her heels. "Where are you going?"
Olivia didn't answer, instead, she snagged her coat and purse. She needed to get to the nearest CVS. ASAP. She was halfway out the door when she felt Fitz's hand wrap around her left wrist.
"Hey, you're not walking away from me. Get back here. Don't run out on me because I bought you tampons." He sounded needy, nearly desperate with a hint of confusion.
His tone prompted Olivia to stop. She had a one-track mind right now and didn't have the want, nor will to fill him in. After she knew for certain, she'd fill him in.
"I'm not walking out because you bought me tampons, I'm walking out because I don't need them." She snatched her wrist away, holding up a hand. "Don't follow me." She ran out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her.
/
Clearblue. Viome. First Response. Stix. Clinical Guard. She grabbed them all, letting them fall one by one into her handbasket. The overhead lights of the CVS were far too bright; they egged on her nausea. Her feet moved as fast as they could to the soda aisle in search of ginger ale. On the way there, she passed a shelf full of Plan B. If only she'd thought about that sooner.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. As she saddled up to the cooler, she pulled her phone out to find several missed texts from Fitz and one from her mother.
Her mom.
Shit.
Olivia's eyes passed over the engagement ring sitting snug on her left hand. Were she and Fitz already repeating her parents' mistakes?
/
The bag banged against Olivia's knees as she opened the front door of her and Fitz's apartment. Any clarity she hoped the six-block walk would give her hadn't. Instead of being greeted by an angry Fitz, as she expected (she knew he had more than enough right to be pissed off at her; she'd flown out of the house like a woman possessed), the sounds of Maxwell greeted her. This Woman's Work.
She kicked off her shoes, not bothering to straighten them up and into a neat line as she always did. The song had paused her for a moment, left her to wonder where Fitz had gone, but she couldn't stop for long. She needed to be sure that the gut feeling that inched away at her since Fitz handed her a box of tampons, was correct.
With no signs of Fitz, Olivia made a beeline for the bathroom, the bag of tests jostled against her knees. She was halfway there when she heard footsteps behind her.
"Livvie."
Crap. Olivia stopped in place, pivoting so that the bag was behind her. She wanted to be sure before she told Fitz. One hundred percent sure. She hadn't thought everything through yet, but that was the one thing she had. If she could get it right in her mind pre-Fitz, then she could go to him with a game plan. With a direct path to how they'd handle this. "Not now, Fitz. I—"
"You said the reason you were leaving was because you don't need tampons. It took me several minutes for that to work its way into my head, but it did. You're pregnant, aren't you?" He asked.
His words knocked the wind out of Olivia. Her mouth dropped open. How did he know? Okay, sure her words weren't the subtlest, but Olivia rarely praised Fitz for his insightfulness. The man was an idealist, always thinking about the lofty rather than the concrete and now…
"I know you better than you know yourself," he said.
For the first time since he walked in earlier, Olivia inspected Fitz. Worry lines gathered at the corners of his mouth. He wore a fitted shirt that stretched across his chest in a way Olivia could appreciate. His jeans were snug and his sock feet moved along the wooden floors. Saturday night casual worked for him.
"I'm not —" Olivia started, running over his words in her head.
"The gears in your head are moving at about 1000 miles per minute right now, but I do. I should've realized it sooner. You either haven't been eating or you've been eating very specific things like lemon with salt and chasing it with milk. You usually knock back coffee like it's water and I haven't seen you drink a cup in weeks. The other night when I went down on you, I squeezed your nipples and you almost tried to snap my neck. The symptoms are there, baby…. "
As he ran down the list of things that confirmed both of their suspicions, Olivia felt a small smile trying to creep across her face. She knew that he paid painfully close attention to her. Hearing him repeat back the clues he'd put together than she hadn't until earlier brought tears to her eyes. She'd gone from wanting to suffocate him, to hitting him with a chocolate bar, and finally to wanting to hug him until she couldn't breathe. The sounds of Maxwell floating around them only made it worse. She dropped the plastic bag, leaving it behind her as she flung herself into his arms. She knew she probably smelled awful, with her two-day-old sweats and Princeton t-shirt on, but she wanted to be held.
Fitz obliged, without hesitation. As his arms wrapped around her, she squeezed her arms around his neck.
"I think I'm pregnant," she confirmed. "I wanted to be sure before I said anything, but you just put all the pieces in play for me and I think you're right." Her voice was thick with the promise of tears. "I'm scared. What if I am?"
"Then I guess we're having a baby," he whispered.
"Easy for you to say, you don't have to carry the thing around." There was a hint of humor in her voice.
"If you are, Livvie, we don't have to have it. You know that, right?" His hands ran down her frizzy silk press. She swallowed, face pressed against his neck. "This is your body, baby. I'm following your lead."
Olivia sniffled again. "I just don't understand how it happened…" Yes she did. With the way they couldn't keep their hands off of each other, it was inevitable.
"Well, there was the coat close at your parents' wedding, the backseat of my jeep before I took my bar exam, the movie theater, my parents' house, Natalie's bathroom, the library, the train and—"
"I know how," she cut him off. Listing out the when and where of how she got pregnant made her feel like a nymphomaniac (even if she was when it came to him). "I get it. We gave my birth control plenty of time to fail. I probably even forgot a day or two."
"Do you want to go take the tests so we stop spinning our wheels and know for certain? Then after we can decide what we're doing?"
Olivia nodded as she pulled away from his hold. He wiped at the tears that pelted her cheeks with both of his hands. His palms cupped her chin and kissed the tip of her nose.
"Go take them." He kissed her lips before turning her around, pointing her back to the bathroom.
/
All five pregnancy tests confirmed what Olivia knew. They sat on the bathroom sink, each facing upward. Five tests. Five confirmations. She was on track to have a baby. On the other side of the bathroom door, she could hear Fitz pacing. Every minute or so he'd knock on the door, soft and barely audible to ask if the results were in. Instead of waiting for him to knock again, Olivia opened the door. She nodded as he walked in, tears slipping over her bottom lids.
His cheeks swelled into a big smile but just as quickly as it'd rocketed over his face, it disappeared. Fitz came to stand behind her. His hands resting on her hips and his head resting on her left shoulder. "What do you need from me?"
Olivia swallowed hard. To say she was scared, was an understatement. There was so much to think through and sort. She was three months shy of graduating law school and once she did; they were moving back to New York where she'd already accepted a job. They'd just gotten engaged and hadn't even thought of a wedding date yet, agreeing to hold off until she graduated. Never did she think she'd be a pregnant bride. Sure she wouldn't be a virgin as archaic tradition insisted, but pregnant? The room felt small and Fitz's presence was stifling. She inched out of his hold and bolted from the bathroom, and headed toward the kitchen. She paced in circles.
"I know...how? We…" Each sentence she tried to form broke apart on her tongue. This was so much more than she could handle right now.
"Livvie, you're going to make yourself dizzy. Stop pacing in circles," Fitz said. "You're scared, I'm scared too. Your mother will probably kill me or castrate me, at least. I thought your father was the one to fear, but she —"
"Fuck. My mother!" Olivia repeated as she slammed into Fitz, not realizing he'd made his way into the kitchen, too. "She's going to lose her shit. When you proposed I thought it was going to kill her. She doesn't want me making her mistakes and now here I am, knocked up. Now our wedding will look like a shotgun wedding." Her words flew out like rapid fire.
"Hey, hey…" Fitz's voice cut through the cacophony of what-if's running through Olivia's thoughts. She stopped to look at him. It was one thing to think she was pregnant. It was an entirely different thing to have it confirmed.
"I'm scared," she cried, crumbling into him. "I don't want to make my parents' mistakes."
He kissed the top of her head, hugging her tight, and rocked them in place slightly. "We're not your parents, Liv."
"I know, but its…"
"We don't have to have the baby, Olivia. It's not even a baby, yet. It's just a collection of cells. If you're not ready, we can stop this. We can put it on hold and then when we're ready after we're married, we can try again."
Oh God, she hated how understanding he was being right now. It made her emotional, nearly hysterical. Why was he so good to her? "See, this is the reason why I don't want — why I'd never. I don't know a lot right now," she spoke in between soft sobs and tears, "but I know I'm having your baby and I think that's okay." The slight sway of their bodies came to an abrupt halt. She felt Fitz tense.
"It's okay? Livvie, are you saying you want to do this now?" he asked. "Are you saying you want to have a baby?"
"I'm saying... I'm saying I can do anything with you."