MacArthur Park: A Season 4 Miniseries

Part Two: Olivia

Washington is cold. Much more than you remember. Things change, people change. Relationships, they change, too. You are trying to accept your own decisions, along with the ones you made for others. But it is all cold and brittle-feeling, and that makes it harder to settle. Hot coffee in your hands, bundled up in bouclé against the lion-like winter of March in the City, you knock on the door of the only person who does not know how to change.

He is surprised you are here. Something you agree on.

"You come back; you re-enter to find that the world kept spinning without you. You go to the places you used to go. You see the people you used to see, and it feels like something is missing, but really everything is missing…"

Your father is speaking, but you are thinking. Feeling. You are not missing, but you are missing something. Or everyone has gone missing from the place where you once held them close.

"Somehow, everything is different," he continues, reading you like a book. "Everything is…"

"Colder," you say. "Everything is colder."

"Except for me," he voices. "Because I was already cold." At least your father is self-aware, you think. You hate how literate he is studying the surface of your pages. Perhaps, it is because at least 50 percent of you is him. Daddy made a soldier out of you, but only one of you takes pride in this.

"I'm adjusting. It's an adjustment," you offer. It is true, but you leave out how poorly the adjustment is progressing. You are too prideful to broach failure. Like father, like daughter.

"You have Jake. He knows what this is like."

Father knows best, or so he wants you to think. Jake, the toy soldier he molded and gifted to you for times when you are sad, lonely, or horny, is your constant companion, when necessary. Yes, you have him. But petulant child and highly discerning woman that you are, you don't want him. That is the true adjustment to which you cannot acclimatize. You have tasted manna, and you cannot fall back to earth.

When you were Julia and Jake was…Jake on that island, and pretending was real, everything was as fine as a summer breeze. But it is winter in Washington, and the wind is cold. You are cold. And yet it is not cold enough for your stubborn heart to freeze and make your life easier. Underneath these layers, it beats for Him. But He…He is an unthawed icicle you want to melt into you. Admitting that to Him, you cannot. For you suspect that His usually open heart has been sealed shut by your wordless, traceless departure.

Your father is inviting you and the boy to dinner for a family performance. You look out at the day as his words fill your ears. You look over the treetops and try to picture a time when He will look at you and understand why you had to leave. At least why you thought you did. Picturing such a time feels like a pipe dream. Maybe dinner is the best you have right now. You do need to move on.

And yet…

###

Here you are, in your childhood home, at the dinner table, trying to be your father's daughter. Taking that jagged pill to transform into Olivia Pope ™, again, is your surest bet at a semblance of thawing you back to life. You feel out of your body. Although, on the outside, you, daddy and the boyfriend are pretending everything is normal, when it is anything but. Besides, you hate normal.

Warm is the feeling of your father's wine as it coats your insides, washing down his roasted pork. You sit at this dinner table with him, and with Jake. You are not on the island anymore, but you are still pretending. Pretending that Jake is your boyfriend; and that your father is simply a doddering old curator at the Smithsonian.

"It's so good. Really good," you tell dearest dad when he fishes for a compliment on his kitchen adventures. Pork with a dry rub made with coffee grounds. You feign amazement. If he were a normal father, you may actually be amazed. He is so good at cosplaying patriarch. He fools you often, but not now.

###

The death of your Love's first born drove you to leave him behind; protecting the life of his second born drove you back into his office. The day feels so long. Karen woke you up at 3AM, and this is now your second time in her father's office. You want to do right by Karen, who trusts you. You want justice for a teenage girl who could have easily been you. Acting out, adventurous, vengeful. Those boys will not get away with this, so long as you can convince Karen's father, the President, to set aside his own pride and disappointments to do the right thing by his child.

"Angry, grieving teenage girl with daddy issues, I relate." You were only slightly younger than Karen then. You remind him that every girl is someone's daughter. "Burying yourself in work isn't always the best thing when you lose someone." You want him to protect her and love her better than you were at her age.

"Running away isn't always the best thing either," he responds, and there is no mistaking the target of those words. He has some nerve.

You look up at him, pulling an arrow from your quiver, getting ready to aim it at him.

But then.

You see it for the first time: pain. His pain. And it clicks that you were running from that, too. Running from a wound that your mother inflicted. You are her child in more ways than one, you believe, and she killed his first born.

"Liv, where did you go?"

His voice is a study in anguish. You know that he is not asking for the longitude and latitude of where you were. But where did you go?

"Fitz…"

Where did she go? That woman you were before you left. Because, since your return, you have been holding someone else up as a shield. That is who everyone sees. But you know this man in front of you. He is asking about that woman. The one from before. Where did she go?

"Where did you go?" he asks, again, validating your PhD in him.

"You just took off for two months all alone?" You wonder if, somehow, he knows where you were, who you were with. That maybe this is all some game of confession for him.

"I…Yes." He is already so strained; you cannot bring yourself to expand his pain. You left because witnessing his agony was too much to bear. Because you love him. In that way, love is pain. Is that not what you once wanted, you think.

You.

You.

You are many things, but not intentionally cruel. You cannot further injure this man by telling him the truth. He cannot know because it would hurt you, too. You are riding the line between honesty and protection.

"I needed some time alone. I just needed to be alone." You settle on that. It is partially true.

"You were having a difficult time." It is not a question when he says it. It is a generous assessment, and the grace of it puts a crack in your heart.

"We were all having a difficult time." You deflect, though it is the absolute understated truth.

"I'm sorry, "he says in his earnest way. "About your mother."

Why is he doing this? Being decent about the murderer of his son. Punishing your mother. You want to believe this is a trick. Instead, you take the time to distance who you are from who she is.

"No, she did a terrible thing. Don't apologize. She ruined your family. She ruined my family…" Don't say it, don't say, don't say it, you repeat in your head, but the thought that kept you company on that island; the one thing propelling you to fly halfway across the world, you say that thing out loud, hoping it makes you breathe a little better. "She ruined…us."

Then you leave because worse than saying it aloud would be seeing its confirmation in his face. That, you are not prepared to entertain.

###

Back in the Oval, yet again. Third time's the charm, you hope. The two of you talk about Karen's unfortunate sex tape, and about the parents of the boy trying to blackmail the President and his daughter. You think that he—the President, the father, the man—needs to just pay it. It is his daughter, and her future is at stake. A thing he will never understand because shame doesn't follow men like him.

Deep down you know he has every right to feel affronted. Your father would never have been extorted this way over you. You are thankful that, in your acting out, no recordings exist. The circumstances are rare for you to feel thankful to be born in the late '70s. The technology did not exist to capture your teen existential crises and the sexual salves you tried to put on it in between your earnest pursuit of being the most brilliant, good girl everyone had ever seen. Because you knew your blackness, your femaleness, carried with it for those other kids, expectations covered in toilet water.

"I'm failing." His liquid courage is allowing him to speak aloud his frailties.

"Fitz…"

"I'm a failure as a father, and clearly we can all agree I'm a failure as a husband."

Every word has brought him closer to you. He is in your personal space now. The closest he has been since you have been back. You should take a respectable step back if you know what's good for you. But curiosity has got your cat. You fold your arms instead, in the foolish belief that it will keep you both safe.

He is wallowing, and you know what it will bring out in you. And so you try to stop it. "Fitz…" you repeat.

It is too late.

His arm reaches around to bring your body flush against his. A feeling you enjoy but one that is too dangerous. You cannot let him think it is okay. He looks at you, and you know what he doesn't want to see: another area of failure. He does not want to see that he is a failure with you, too. In his eyes is your statement from earlier today flipped into question: did your mother ruin us after all? What happened to our love? Does it still live in the barely-there space between us?

You do not answer, but you drop your arms because his tide is sucking you in. To survive, you grab the buoy of his strong arm. For as long as you can, you resist looking anywhere near those oceanic orbs of his. Surely, you would drown. This is a mistake, you think, and you are not wrong because a tsunami of emotion wraps around you. His arms.

"What? Am I failing as a man, too?" There. He has said it aloud now, and there is no avoiding it. No escaping him. You cannot resist and so you look up at him, hoping that in the utterance of his name is the answer he seeks.

"Fitz…"

It is the third time you are calling his name. Pitiable at first. Then as protest. Now, you say his name as a plea. A prayer for the weak. For that is you— flush against him, enclosed in his aura.

"Don't every leave me again."

Weak in the knees, you are barely able to speak. His breath is full of smokey peat and longing, and you miss his whisper baritone warming your face like this. The way it shivers your timbers.

Leaving. You should leave. It is what you know how to do best. Leave his embrace, his voice.

"I almost didn't survive. I almost died without you."

For a split second, you think to clasp his head next to your bosom—to comfort him. But it is overwhelmed by the heat rising inside you. He cannot be this close to you, making you feel things you have not felt in many months. Melting away all your legitimate concerns for yourself, and for him. But you do not have the stamina to develop that thought, or to fight. You are all heavy breathing now. Your body is a caramel under the heat of his stare, his touch, the sound of his voice. You are melting and gooey as the temperature rises between you. You should be embarrassed, but half the blood in your brain has gone south. The hardest thing about you are your nipples. They yielded whore-ishly from the mere graze of his thumb, despite the two layers of clothing shielding them. Their sense memory of him is stronger than your backbone. You know better for this is not your first time at the Fitzgerald Grant rodeo.

And yet.

Here you are, under his spell. Yeee haaaww.

The blood, rushing and pumping through parts of you. Making you swell, making you slick, making you soften to the need to be horizontal with him instead of vertical.

"Didn't you miss me, Liv?"

Fuck.

Your mouth opens and then quickly retracts. You will not say no because you already lied once today. Your body, mind and soul are united in wanting to scream yessssss.

Instead, you breathe heavier than before. Your mouth inches closer and closer, like a magnet to its source. You are breathing life into each other's mouths. His mouth grazes yours, but he will not go all the way. His expert seduction dangles what is on offer and, avoiding combustion, you take that offering. You must. After two months without a word from you, how else will he know that you still want him. Still love him. Still ne-

"Didn't you miss me?" He repeats. "Even a little?" And it comes with his touch. Its impact is big as he rubs the inside of your thighs, dangerously close to your center. And even though you are wearing pants, it is no use, his touch is a laser, disintegrating anything he touches. No other man…

You're folding. You fold.

"Oh, I did…miss you."

The words are breathy shapes as they leave your mouth. Reluctant and indefatigable all at once. This admission earns you, finally, his mouth on yours. Merging with him, You close in on those luscious little lips of his, covering them with your own. The rhythms of your kissing are sense memory, too. His tongue plunges inside your mouth, its velvet welcomed against your own. You covet the taste of each other. You are desperate for him, and him for you. Your tongues lap up, swallow all those months apart. Erasing that time and distance.

Until your conscience throws cold water on the both of you, suspending the moment. You're a liar, it reminds.

"Stop…" you say because the thought is distracting.

"No…" he cannot see why. No one has interrupted you two. What reason could you have, is the conclusion you assume he reaches in his eagerness to maintain this connection with you. You are back in his arms, but at what cost? This lie of yours cannot stand.

"I can't…stop!" You pull away so that he knows you are serious.

"Why not? Why can't you?" He does not understand, and you do not expect him to. Not yet. His mouth is still swollen from kissing you. You still see the glistening evidence of your consumption of him on the side of his mouth. There is a web of moisture leading from his mouth to yours. You have stopped but are still connected.

"What's the point?" He says aloud. You think for a moment from his perspective. You get it. Why do we keep doing this? But you hold strong in your decision because he should know. He needs to know. You answer his question without answering his question.

The warmth you previously felt is gone, and you are cold and clammy now. Sick to your stomach. These are your confessions, bubbling up like bile, rancid and awful tasting. You know it must come up and out. Because when it does you will feel better. Eventually.

"I didn't go alone."

To be continued from Fitz's POV

A/N: I love this update, personally. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If so, take a minute to leave a comment. Thanks for the new followers of this story.

-IP.