"Do you ever worry we'll… evaporate?" She isn't sure if he's still awake. Maybe, maybe that's why she dares ask. The room is dark. They are in bed, limbs intertwined, her head is resting on his chest.

"What do you mean?" He wraps his arm tighter around her, letting his hand rest on her midsection.

She loops her fingers through his, "The intensity, I mean, what if we were so in love, because we couldn't be together?" She runs her free hand up and down his chest. She stares at the pattern her fingers are making on his chest. She can see goosebumps forming on his skin, under the remnants of moonlight.

"No." She waits for a moment, but he is quiet. His arm around her suddenly feels heavy.

"No?" She looks up at him, her hand on his chest stilling.

"What more would you like me to say?" He pulls his arm from under her and starts to get up. He turns on the lamp on the bedside table. A soft gold light bathes the room. She blinks a few times, giving her tired eyes a chance to adjust.

"Something more than no." She sounds angry. She doesn't mean to. "I'm sharing my thoughts and fears here and you're shutting me down."

"Oh, come on Olivia." His voice is rising as he get up and pulls a white t-shirt over his head. "You're not sharing anything. This is the emotional equivalent of you informing me that you've decided we're done."

"What?" She is getting up now, as well. "That's not-"

"I have told you, time and time again that I love you, and want to be with you, want to marry you and have babies with you. I have told you over and over that this is more than sex and more than stolen moments. But you never believed me. And every time I've tried to give it all up and make this," he motions between them, "work, us work, you've ran. Every. Single. Time."

"I haven't." She says weakly.

"You have. You've always found a way for us not to be together. Either the election, or the presidency, or the island expedition with Jake, but every single time, you've found a way to leave me. So, I guess, this is right on queue and you've decided this is a reason we won't work this time." He finishes buttoning his shirt up. "I'll be in the Oval. Forgive me for not wanting to watch you leave… again."

He turns around on his heel and heads to the door.

"Stop!" The tone of her voice, the sharpness, the force, surprises her as much as it surprises him. "Stop walking right now!" He does, but he doesn't turn around.

"I'm sorry." She inhales sharply, and he turns around. He is standing in the shadow, behind the lamp, but she can still see the storm raging in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I've never said it, I'm not… I'm not very good at apologies. I am sorry for leaving you, I am sorry about bailing, I am sorry. It… It had a lot to do with my father, my inability to… it had a lot to with him. And Mellie and you, you were married and I just… I'm sorry. Jake… he was there, he was available, he could be with me, he was just… there, and that, I needed that. It wasn't love, or at least not the kind of love we have, but I did, I did care about him. I still do Fitz. And that will probably never change. But when I came here tonight and said whatever we want happens, I meant it. I want us," she motions her hand between them, "this, to work. I want this – long term. Vermont and all."

"You hurt me." He says in a whisper so low anyone else would have mistaken it for a ruffle of the curtains.

"I know." She walks over to him. "I never meant to." She places her hands on his chest slowly. She props herself on her toes and kisses his chin with a small smile. She unbuttons the top button of his shirt. She waits for a moment, and then unbuttons another. He does not stop her. He places his hands low on her back and leans his forehead against hers.

"I don't think we'll evaporate." She stills.

"You don't?" Her voice sounds shaky. She wishes it didn't. She wishes she could be as certain as he is, that she could have been as certain as he has always been. But no, that is not her, she doesn't deal in certainty – she deals in chances, and contingencies, she plans for failure and anticipates it. That is just who she is.

"No." He kisses her temple. "We," he pauses, as if trying to find the right words, trying to find the right tone to say it, because sometimes with them, things get lost, meanings get twisted and turned around and become something unfamiliar; with them, words are sometimes the enemy, "We are not easy. We have never been easy. We've been wonderful, and I've loved every second of it, but we've also been exhausting, and impossible and maddening. We are not easy. And that isn't because of your father, or Cy, or Mellie, it's because you're stubborn and practical, and I'm stubborn and romantic, and you have these impossible standards and expectations and I have a fear of failure and we just… we push each other, and that is what makes us great, but that is also what drives us apart and makes us insane. I love you Olivia, I love you in ways I never fathomed possible, but sometimes, god sometimes you also drive me mad. I love you so much, but sometimes you just make it so damn hard." She is perfectly still, for a moment she is unsure if she has forgotten how to breathe. "There is too much of us Liv, too much of us, we, our love is too thick to evaporate."

"OK." She leans into his chest, her arms wrapping around his muscular back.

"OK?"

"What more would you like me to say?" She replies with a small smile, as she steps back. He grabs her arm and pulls her forward, lifting her up.

"See… this is what I'm talking about… Impossible." And he kisses her in that way that makes her forget that there are still lives going on outside – people loving and dying and saving and losing; he kisses her in a way that makes her forget everything but them.

The woman clears her throat.

"You said you ran." She plays with the tip of her silver pen. "The last time, before the end of our session, you said you ran. And then you had to rush off."

"You don't take notes."

"I'm sorry?" He looks at her, half-amused, half-intrigued.

"You don't take any notes. When we-I am speaking, you don't write anything down. And you have, well I assume you have quite a few clients every week, so I'm just wondering, how do you keep it all in your head? All the details."

"You know they're not on my computer." She says with a smile that widens at Olivia's apparent discomfort. "I mean I'm assuming. If I were you, and from all I've heard about you. You tried to hack into my computer and see if you could find files on my clients. It was all a part of the vetting process, right? Olivia Pope would not just come talk to someone unless she was absolutely certain that there could be no leaks."

'There was nothing on your computer, emails, or the cloud. And you don't actually write anything in that notebook on your lap, so I'm just wondering how…"

"Olivia, in this office, you are just like any other client. What you tell me is confidential. And a part of that is not letting you know how I keep your information safe."

"OK." She leans back in her chair. She is starting to like this woman, against her better judgment. She is, maybe, even starting to admire her. Maybe.

"So, are we talking about why you ran, or is today going to be another one of your quite sessions, as you ponder the beauty of sunsets in DC?"

And that's it, she's done liking her. Respect though, somewhere deep within her, respect swells.

"My mother died when I was 12. We were close. She was a motherly type – all cookies and baking and popcorn puffs. Packed lunches with kiddie napkins and all of that. She knew, she paid attention to me is what I'm saying. I felt… seen. And she died. It was sudden and, just gone." She respects her, admires her, but she does not completely trust her, not yet anyway. So she gets a PG13 version of her family history. "My dad, he was never really the emotional type, at least not in the warm specter of emotions, he was never the one to pay attention to the little things, he found it all… frivolous. I was always provided for, schools and trips and financial security, intellectual challenges. I was always provided for, and then I provided for myself. But I was never cared for, I was never… taken care of. Not since I was 12. He never took care of me, and somehow I convinced myself that that was OK, that that was the way the world was supposed to be, that emotional strength was evidenced by numbness. And it was never really an issue. I was fine, I was always fine, I just was, until he… showed up. And suddenly, there was more to life than being fine." She pauses, lets her own words sink into her skin, seep back into her blood stream. She lets herself process what she said. It was unexpected, she, she planned to tell the woman she wasn't going to be coming anymore, that there was no point. "He changed me. He made me need more. He made me needy. He made me weak."

She looks at the woman seated across from her, hyper-aware of the unsettling silence, the ticking of the clock on the desk the only source of movement in the room.

"What do you want?" Olivia chuckles, burying her head in her hands. "What's so funny about that?" The woman asks as she stands up. She pulls her white shirt down, straightening the front.

"Nothing… just, the irony of it, I guess. It's what I always ask my clients."

'Then you know that that is where we start." The woman replies, as she leans against her desk, her arms crossed over her chest.

"I don't know what I want."

"Then we're done." She says as she turns around, and starts arranging the clutter on the windowsill.

"Excuse me?" She is rising now, too. Her shoes feel too tight on her feet, her body suddenly too heavy.

"There is no point in you coming here unless you know why you're doing it." The woman turns around slowly. "I am good at what I do Olivia. I am excellent. But you know that already, it's why you picked me. You know that I can help you, you know I can give you answers, but you've also helped enough people to know that I can't give you answers if you don't have questions; I can't help you unless you have a goal; I can't fix you, unless you know what's broken, what part of you you'd like to change. So unless you're willing to do that, to look long and hard inside yourself and give me some answers, there's no point in you coming here."

She grabs her jacket from the armchair and puts it on quickly. She takes her purse, and reaches for her gloves. Her ring catches on the zipper. She tugs, tugs, then lets out an exasperated sigh. The woman crosses the room to where she's standing and stills her hands.

"Maybe you should slip that ring off your finger." She says quietly, looking into her eyes. Of course. She pulls the ring off, shaking her hand in frustration. The woman twists it and unhooks it from the zipper. She hands it back to her with a small smile. "You know, sometimes, you need to let go for a moment, in order to get something back."

She slips the ring back on her finger. She plays with it for a moment, turning it a few times around her finger. Sweet baby. "He asked me to marry him." She says, looking at the ring. "I want to be able to say yes and mean it."

The woman looks up at her and nods her head. "OK." She smiles. "That's a start."

She walks over to her chair, and sits down. Olivia follows, slipping her off-white jacket off. "Tell me how you met."

And she does. She begins to trust.