Even Lovers Drown CH 23

Fitz hung up the phone with Olivia's words lingering inside of him. At least this time he'd been able to listen.

He was in the Oval Office, sitting in the dark, glass in hand. Feeling the darkness in his soul overwhelming him as it did almost every day. The liquor helped.

Sometimes.

He wasn't drunk, he thought to himself. He knew that Cyrus and Mellie thought that he was, but he never ended up truly drunk, although he tried for it many, many times.

But the pain never allowed him that escape.

Fitz didn't know why he had started dialing her number again. He didn't know why he had nothing to say when he did. Why before this, he'd hung up every time she'd begun to speak.

She'd learned the rules quickly though - that was Olivia Pope through and through. Always fast on the pick-up, almost always the first one to solve a problem.

He wondered briefly if she'd been the first to come up with Defiance as a solution? Mellie said it was Cyrus, but he knew better than to believe anything that came out of that lovely, lying mouth.

Dismissing Mellie from his thoughts, he replaced them with thoughts of Olivia instead.

His body had tensed when she'd started speaking. There was a part of him that didn't want to hear it - there was also a part of him that needed to.

He tried to find the peace that the sound of her voice used to give him - but he couldn't.

The fact that he couldn't filled him with an indescribable agony.

He gulped at the last of his drink; his body tensed as he heard her again and again and again.

With angry determination, he thrust them out of his mind and poured another one. After returning to his chair, he glared up into the darkness of the Oval Office. There was a war inside of him; Fitz had lost his heart. It was buried deep beneath his anger, deep beneath the many betrayals that had broken him.

And he was. Broken. Unworthy.

Fitz needed no more proof of it than the way he'd treated Olivia the way he had a few days ago. He'd used her to satisfy a momentary lapse in judgement.

Why? Because he was weak, a loser - he was everything his father had said. Hadn't they all proven that? The people who he'd thought were loyal to him, thought that they'd believed in him proved that they'd believed Big Jerry instead? Why else had Defiance had even happened?

The pain that rose up to engulf him drowned his thoughts. Fitz could do nothing to fight his emotions. All the lessons that had been pounded into him for as as he could remember rose up to overwhelm him, making him more helpless than ever.

Fitz rose up from his chair and stumbled from the room. He didn't deserve the right to sit in that chair, that room, this place.

He stumbled his way from the Oval Office to the residence, one last drink clutched in his hand. In his head, the accusations continued - inner voices pounding into him.

Liar! they cried.

Fraud!

Loser!

All the words his father had ever called him came back to him now, and every voice was the voice of his father. Never loving, never satisfied; always accusing, mocking, condemning... His life was a lie, his love was a lie. Every moment of every day - everything he was was a lie, a fraud visited upon the American public...

... And that meant he was everything his father had said he was. Even to the core of him; his heart; where his heart had been - Olivia had ripped it out and turned it into stone.

Fitz made him way into the bathroom and turned on the shower. He left everything on the floor. The glass, he took with him.

He turned the water up to as hot as he could stand it, welcoming the steam that rose up to fog his sight. The last thing he wanted right now was to see himself.

He was a hollow man and there was nothing to see.

The water poured down, the steam billowed up, and Fitz closed his eyes and drank.

He couldn't fine the release he'd been seeking in the scotch. He couldn't find forgetfulness either. Earlier on the phone with Olivia, he'd thought he'd found a moment of peace, but it had passed not five minutes after he'd hung up the phone.

Why had she been one of the cabal that had betrayed him. He could almost understand the others; if he looked at it objectively, he could even accept it. He knew who they were and their ambitions.

But not Olivia. He'd met many people in his life - many women in his life - but no one who had exploded into his life - into his heart the way she had.

In between one glance and the next, everything in him had reacted to her with a force that he'd never experienced in his entire life.

Despite his anger, her face floated up before him in the steam. Her eyes gazed up at his, fearless.

"I would be lucky to have you."

Those words had slipped out of his mouth without him knowing that they had lived within him. In the face of the exquisite loveliness of her how could he have ever known how true those words would come to be?

Up until the day he'd met her, his life had never prepared him to meet a woman who would want him simply for who he was.

I know you because you let me know you...

But he hadn't known her at all - had he? A sly treacherous voice inside him reminded. You didn't know her, never knew her.

He would not be tricked again, he told himself.

A cool draft played against his back and thoughts interrupted, he turned to see the source. Stunned, Fitz could barely speak.

"Mel-Mellie?"

His wife smiled at him. Fitz was sure that she meant it to be genuine, but even through the drifts of steam, he could see the brittleness and calculation in her face.

"I know you haven't been sleeping well lately - I just thought I could help with a different kind of nightcap." She moved closer and brought her hands up to run her hands across his shoulders.

"Mellie - no." He couldn't explain it, not really - but the idea of her touching him - Fitz shuddered at the thought.

She mistook it for a sign of arousal. Her smile widened. "You don't have to do anything - I'll do all the work."

"Mellie - don't."

She ignored him; instead she pressed her body against his just before she began to slide downward.

Fitz closed his eyes. A part of him wanted to let her give him release - maybe it would ease his pain. But he couldn't let go of the hidden calculation in her eyes.

In its wake, a surge of revulsion rose up in him. He couldn't use her - and neither could he allow her to use him, manipulate him any more than she already had.

Fitz reached down and closed his free hand around her wrist, dragging her to her feet; he was unaware that his eyes had gone a cold almost icy gray-blue - the hue of arctic ice.

"I said - don't!" he didn't mean to, but his voice almost raised to a shout.

He'd scared her, he saw. Fitz snatched his hand back from her as though it burned. That wasn't what he'd meant to do. No matter what else he might be now, he was never one to hurt a woman.

But what has he done to Olivia? Fitz pushed the unwanted thought away. She was reaping what she sowed, he told himself. The both of them had.

He focused instead, on the woman standing before him.

"I said no Mellie - and I meant it."

The shock in her eyes faded. "I was only trying to help you. You need help, Fitz."

You need me to need you to keep your place as First Lady. That was the thought foremost in his mind as he looked at her. His expression went cold and still.

"I didn't intend to scare you, Mellie - but I meant what I said. No. Next time - have the decency to respect my wants, my needs and my choices." He wanted to smile at the bitter irony in his words. If she had ever done that, his life would be a whole lot different than it was.

But he wouldn't say it out loud - he wouldn't give her the ammunition. If he had his way, he would never allow her to see him in his weakness ever again.

Inside he felt a pang of bitter satisfaction as his words struck home and her eyes filled with guilt.

Fitz turned, gulping down the last of his drink. He held out the glass to her.

"If you want to give me something I really want, bring me a refill."

Her face paled as though he'd slapped her, but she took it and left the shower without another word.

Fitz stepped under the shower, letting the water stream over him. He closed his eyes and this time, when her voice came back to him, he held on to the memory as though he would never let it go.

It followed him, even into his dreams. And for one night at least, Fitz found rest.