Olivia's Outfit

Tag: Beckett Archibald Graves

without you i'd slowly wilt and die

The thunder outside was enough to draw Olivia to the window, and it just so happened that the biggest windows in the house were in the library. That was where she was most at peace right now. Sitting in the window and watching the rain. She was supposed to be working on the paperwork that was spread out across her lap, but she hadn't done any of it since she had sat down. Dinner was finished, and cleaned up, and she could hear Cal chasing Anderson around upstairs, the sound of their footfalls distinct to her ears. She knew each of them by the way that they breathed, by the way that it sounded when they moved across the floor. Olivia knew her family well enough to know who was coming before they even said a word, and she claimed that it was a mother's prerogative. It was something that she had learned to do since she had had Cal and Lyla, but it was more than that. It was just a love for her family. She thought that there was nothing that she wouldn't do for all of them. And she wanted to go back in time... Just far enough that she could push for all of this a little sooner, a little closer together. Or maybe not at all... It wasn't that she didn't want her, Olivia wanted her more than anything, but she hadn't meant to cause this. She hadn't meant to not listen. Or to not hear... It wasn't that she hadn't listened, it was that she hadn't heard him the way she should have, and she knew it. She knew that she had done this, that she had wanted this. Wanted her. It was a girl. She had wanted her. But she wanted Beckett too. And if she had blown this, if she had lost him because of this... She didn't know how to fix it. She didn't know how to not make it worse. That was the last thing that she wanted to do. She didn't want to make it worse. She couldn't. Olivia had to hope that by the time that December rolled around, this would be okay. That they would have figured it out, but she didn't want to lose him. She thought that she didn't know how to recover from that. He loved her, and she knew that. He had told her time and again that he loved her, and she believed him.  He was her one and only in a way that she didn't know how to describe, and he had been since the day she had first realized she was in love with him. He hadn't been hers to have then, and she had loved him anyway. Falling in love with Beckett Graves had been her downfall, and the thing that had made her who she was today. Olivia Drake would have been good all on her own, but Beckett Graves had made her better, and she believed that. She believed that he was everything, and losing him... She couldn't really even fathom it. But it was something that she worried about nonetheless. It was a fear that kept creeping back in on her, that this baby was going to cost her the love of her life, and she didn't know what to do with that. She just had to hope that she was wrong. That she wasn't losing anything, that he wouldn't leave because of this. Olivia wasn't leaving. She wasn't going anywhere, she didn't want to be anywhere else. All she wanted was him, and it should have been enough.  Everything that they had should have been enough. She shouldn't have pushed, she shouldn't have pleaded with him for this. She could have figured out some other way to fill the void in her heart that she hadn't known what to do with. To fill the space that felt empty, that felt like there was something missing. She could have done something else, she could have not accepted his giving in, she could have not been okay with him losing that fight. She could have given in... But she hadn't. She had pushed, and now here they were... There was a baby on the way, and she could never know. None of them could ever know, just how much Olivia had agonized over every single one of them now. For different reasons, there was a different reason every time, but just like her siblings, this little girl could never know just how much she had put them through. How much her mother had put them through, before she arrived... Her bump was just big enough to be noticed in her loose dress, and Olivia put her arm around herself as she stood up and moved to stand in the window. The rain was always going to be there, comforting, and peaceful... If only it could wash all of this away...

If I reached out
and touched the rain

❧

Beckett still wasn’t sure that he fully understood all of this. For the most part, he liked to think that he understood his wife--sometimes, he thought that he knew her better than she knew herself. Sometimes. But this was not one of those times. Not at all. This had been a fight for months, for almost a year, and he still didn’t understand it. It didn’t matter how much she tried to explain it, or how often she tried to talk about it. He didn’t get it. Beckett wasn’t sure that he was ever going to get it, and that was a problem. He knew it was a problem, because it wasn’t an argument anymore. It wasn’t just some fight that they kept having over and over again. He had conceded for two seconds, or what had felt like two seconds, and she had managed to get pregnant and now it was a reality. Now he knew that he had to come terms with the fact that this was happening, whether he liked it or not. He had thought that he would have a bit more time than this, since it felt like it had taken no time at all.

He knew that was his fault. He couldn’t even blame her for that. Liv had been trying to talk him until having another kid since last April, if not before then, so why would she question it if he finally let her have her way? She wasn’t going to second guess it. She was just going to go for it, he had just not realized that it would be that easy. Merlin knew that it had been when they were younger. They hadn’t even been trying, and she had still gotten pregnant with Lyla so soon after having Cal that he knew it had scared her. But he had known that it was going to be all right, and it had been. He loved all of their children. His family was more important to him than absolutely anybody else and that was never going to change. He just thought that everything was good the way that it was. Great, even. Beck didn’t think that anything needed to change, but she had still wanted more. Wanted another kid, because apparently it made a difference to have one intentionally and not accidentally. He just wasn’t sure that he agreed with that.

They might not have been trying with any of their kids, but it had still turned out exactly the way that it was supposed to be. And he just thought that three was plenty. He didn’t think there was a reason to have a fourth, especially not when Anderson was eight years old and the age gap alone was just… a lot. He had thought that he’d changed his last diaper until grandkids were involved, and apparently now that wasn’t going to be the case. And Merlin… Cal could find a girl in the next couple of years, and they could have a kid and a grandkid that were only years apart. Didn’t she realize that? They were too old for a baby. He knew that they weren’t, not technically, but he certainly felt like they were. And now there was no stopping it or changing what was already happening. He just had to come to terms with it. He didn’t want to be an ass, he just… realized that maybe he shouldn’t have conceded. Or at least, he could have conceded but told her that he still wanted to wait a couple of months to actually try while he got used to the idea. He just hadn’t really thought that he needed to do that.

They were nearly a decade older than when they had their last kid. He hadn’t thought that it would be that easy for her to get pregnant, so he thought that he would have time to get used to the idea. If she was even able to get pregnant at all. But she had. She had, and now he had very little time to get used to the idea. He was being an ass, and he knew it, but he didn’t know how to adjust to something that he hadn’t really wanted… but now he needed to be okay with, or he was going to be a horrible husband and father. Beckett knew that. It just didn’t make this any easier. He didn’t know how to fix this--he really, really didn’t. The weather suited his mood. The sound of the rain against the windows was loud enough to draw him from his thoughts and he knew that he should try to find Liv and talk to her--about what, he didn’t know. But something. It didn’t take him too long to make it to the library and once he did, he saw her standing by the window. “What are you doing?” He asked, as he leaned against the doorframe.

@ liv | Outfit

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Without
You

She knew that she was a little lost in how to do this right now. She knew that she had done this to herself. That she was the one that had wanted this. She was the one that had wanted a baby, and now she was worried that she had cost herself the person that she loved most in this world. Olivia had been fine on her own once upon a time. She had been far more concerned with what was going on in the world around them than she was her own personal life, but that wasn’t the truth anymore. She hadn’t been on her own in a long time, and somewhere along the way she had stopped knowing how to be. If she really tried, she thought that she could figure it out. She could figure out how to be that person again. How to be okay on her own. But Beckett Graves had been the best, and the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Because he had become her everything, and she hadn’t thought that that was possible. She hadn’t thought that she could depend so much on another person to just, be there. But she did. She needed him.

And she worried, nearly all the time, that she had lost that. That she wasn’t going to be able to get that back, and she had done it to herself. She had caused this. And it wasn’t just because she wanted a baby. She did, she wanted this baby more than anything, but she didn’t really know how to go about this space. The space that the baby had created between them, when she needed him. And she was trying to listen to what Issa had said. She was trying to not push. And she thought that she was doing, at least halfway decently at that. She wasn’t talking about the baby, she hadn’t asked him for anything. She was just existing. Letting life continue around them like nothing was different at all. She hadn’t talked about a nursery. She hadn’t even decided what room they were going to use. The only evidence that they were having a baby at all was the bump in her abdomen. And she wanted those things, she wanted to worry about a nursery, and whether or not she was going to like flowers enough in six months not to want to redecorate it again. She wanted to worry about whether or not it was too girl to paint the walls light pink. Or to get a little, stuffed, white giraffe or an elephant?

Those were the things that she wanted to be worried about. She wanted to be worried about how big she was, and if she was growing at the right pace. She wanted to be worried about the fact that she wanted a pumpkin latte in June. She wanted to worry about the things that didn’t matter. The things that would never matter in the long run. She didn’t want to worry about whether or not she had ruined everything. And she knew that she hadn’t. Not really. Olivia knew that he still loved her, and she knew, intrinsically, that she wasn’t going to lose him. That he wasn’t going to hate their daughter for existing. She knew that. But everything that she had spent her entire life trying to force down. All of the worry, and anxiety, and everything that she was normally able to sweep under the rug, wasn’t going away right now. And she couldn’t be like this. She couldn’t be this person. Because she had to hold it together. She had to be okay. And she was. She was okay. She was just a little sad.

And it would pass. She wouldn’t be sad in an hour. She wouldn’t be sad tomorrow, or next week. She was having a baby. And Cal had just graduated from Hogwarts, and Lyla was starting to grow. Things were good. Everything was going to be okay. They just had to get the baby here, and then hopefully all of her worry would settle. This wasn’t going to stop. This was happening. She was going to have another baby, and she had to know that she was just as loved as her siblings. That they would always love her just as much. Leaving one arm wrapped around their daughter, Olivia pressed her hand to the cool glass of the window. She heard him. Before she saw him, she heard him. Olivia had long ago learned the sounds of this house, the footsteps of her family. She knew that he was there before he had even spoken, and when he did she didn’t turn around, but she answered him anyway. “Watching the rain…” She dropped her hand from the glass to turn over her shoulder, and she smiled at him softly. “What are you doing?”

@ beckett - 816 - olivia's outfit

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