Title: Unguarded Moments

Summary: Normally things like this wouldn't have even bothered her. Her ego was way too far in check for something as trivial as names and titles to affect her. But to think he wanted to actually fire her when he didn't even know her name. And then he had the nerve to just go ahead and look at her like that.

Notes (i.e. shameless pandering): Still can't decide if I should just leave this as a one shot or continue… maybe if I get enough feedback I'll feel inspired. Let me know what you think HINT HINT.

It was late, way late.

Late enough for the other staffers and even Cyrus to have already called it a night, and yet here she sat alone in a darkened alcove of the New Hampshire campaign office completely unable to move.

He didn't know who she was.

He had no idea. Absolutely none; zip, zero, zilch!

Two months on the job, slaving away tirelessly, working day and night in the background and he didn't even know her goddamn name.

Until today.

Normally things like this wouldn't have even bothered her. Her ego was way too far in check for something as trivial as names and titles to affect her. But to think he wanted to actually fire her when he didn't even know her name...

And then he had the nerve to just go ahead and look at her like that.

Shaking her head she tried to get the image of his steel grey eyes on her out of her mind. But every time she closed her eyes there he was again.

Looking at her.

Just who the hell did he think he was anyway? Because she had a good mind to go up to his hotel room right now and tell him just who the hell Olivia Pope was; Cyrus and the entire campaign be damned. After all, there was no excuse for him –Mr. Governor aka a married father of two – to look at her like that … as if he already knew her… as if he explicitly and desperately wanted to know everything about her in great detail.

Absolutely none… zip, zero, zilch!

Not after today.

Staring down at the papers in her lap she reviewed all the information she had been provided on Fitz – the Governor's – personal history. She knew everything from his first day of school to his last girlfriend before he met Mellie. She knew his favorite books, how he took his coffee and even how many sexual partners he'd had, but there was nothing in this file that would help her discern what it was she really wanted to know.

But what that was she had no idea.

Still a nagging voice in the back of her head echoed that she did know what she was looking for, except she was too chicken to admit it. But as soon as she heard that voice, she clamped down on her thoughts, mentally willing everything swirling around in her mind to stop.

Just for one goddamn minute.

She didn't know when she fell asleep. But she knew the second she woke up to the feel of warm finger tips on her bare shoulder and piercing steel grey eyes observing her intently that she had made a critical miscalculation by camping out at the campaign headquarters. Inwardly she cursed, as she awkwardly adjusted her clothing and moved just out of his reach; unable to stop herself before the words fell out of her mouth.

"What are you doing here?"

In her sleep deprived frustration she winced and silently hoped the question didn't sound as ridiculous to him as it did to her, but he just smiled and looked at her with those eyes.

"I couldn't sleep…thought I'd get an early jump on today's events."

He was talking, she knew he was talking, but she couldn't think when he was looking at her like that. Shaking her head and momentarily tearing her eyes away from his, she scrambled to get up off the floor.

"What time is it?"

"Relax… It's barely sunrise. We still have a good forty-five minutes before anyone shows up."

His words hung their between them, slowly suffocating all the air out of the room as they just stood there; staring at one another. And even with all the blood quickly rushing to her head Olivia was only left to contemplate how just one word, two simple letters: 'w' and 'e' had the power to shift the entire world on its axis.

The idea of it was just so…

And suddenly she was giggling. Uncharacteristically, uncontrollably, whole heartedly and hysterically…giggling. As if someone had just let her in on the silliest, most ridiculous inside joke that ever existed, but the joke was on her and it wasn't even funny.

Not even a little bit.

Perhaps when she was younger and less self assured as she was now, she had sometimes wondered what it'd be like to fall head over heels for someone… and perhaps maybe, as a child, she dreamed that possibly, just maybe, there was someone out there who could inspire that feeling which all the classic love stories boil down to. But after all the years of waiting and wondering she had come to the conclusion that that feeling and those stories just didn't happened to people like Olivia Pope. She was way too guarded, too caustic and too complex for that type of story to ever be hers and he… Well, he was just the most absurd part of the whole scenario because men like him…

Men like him, were way too smart and way too jaded to ever look much less fall for someone like her. So the fluttering, somewhat sickening feeling slowly bubbling up from deep inside the pit of her stomach all the way down to the soles of her feet that she got the instant he looked at her – really looked at her – was just a figment of some terrible nightmare that she was going to wake up from.

Any moment now; she just had to wait for it. However long it took.

"Are you okay?"

At the sound of his voice Olivia was dragged back into the present moment, and the fact that it was just the two of them alone here... in his campaign office. Suddenly feeling light headed, she swayed and had to put one hand up on the wall behind her to keep from falling over; still unable to stop laughing.

For all his knowledge and composure, Fitz looked just as startled as she felt, but it wasn't until he reached out to steady her still quaking body that she could pull herself together.

"Don't!"

"Don't. Touch. Me…Okay?"

She knew she sounded shrill and unhinged, but Olivia could see the wheels turning inside his head and she knew better than to let a politician – especially one as skilled as himself – get a word in. So she shook her head and closed her eyes unable to look at him a second longer.

Pushing away from him and the wall, she left her crib notes on the floor where she dropped them and hurried to the closest door, needing to escape.

"Olivia, wait!"

But she was already out the door and not certain that she could bring herself to walk back in today or ever. Especially if he kept looking at her like that.