She was the one that had made him wait, and she knew that. She knew that he would have married her the day that he asked her if he would have known that she wasn't going to want the fuss of a wedding. That just wasn't her. She didn't need all of that. She didn't need a gown, and a party, and a cake. Though a cake would have been nice. Olivia just thought that they needed to do this though. She thought that it was time. That it was time that they made this decision for themselves. It was time that they went through with what it was that they had promised one another all along. She thought that in some ways there was a lot to be said for the fact that they had been together this long without getting married. That they didn't need that piece of paper, that they didn't need someone else to formally say, 'Okay, you belong to one another.' That was validation that didn't matter. Olivia thought that that was something that people didn't really seem to realize. That they didn't care what other people thought. She was his, he was hers, and whatever everyone else thought was just beside the point.

Making everyone else happy was not one of Olivia's goals in life. She thought that there were plenty of other things that she could do with her time that were probably more attainable and sustaining. She had loftier ambitions than making sure that everyone was okay with what was going on around them. You didn't get to be who she was, in the position that she was in, and coddle people. Olivia didn't coddle people. There were only a select number of people on this planet that Olivia treated more gently. Her children, and her nieces and nephews. There were going to be nine of them now, when Orion was born. And she knew that Beckett was upset with Aurora. She thought that he had every right to be. She had said things that weren't even close to true. She had said things that Olivia hadn't hidden from him. Because she wasn't going to hide something like that from him. He deserved to know, and more than that, Olivia had just wanted to talk about it. She had wanted to talk about the fact that it had upset her. Whatever what the matter with her friend, she wasn't sure that she liked it.

Beckett was not Dominick. He wasn't like that. Anything possessive that he did, Olivia didn't feel like a possession. She didn't feel like he had complete control over her, and she didn't think that there was anything wrong with feeling like she belonged to him. She was his fiancée. And even more than that, she was the mother of his children. She was supposed to be here. This was the place that Olivia thought that she needed to be, more than she needed to be anywhere else. It wasn't a question to her, there wasn't a doubt, and she didn't like the way that Aurora had made her feel. She didn't like that that was a problem. That her wanting to be in this relationship, the way that it was, with everything that it was ever meant to be… This was what she wanted, and she was ready. She thought that they needed this. That now, more than ever, she wanted to be able to say that he was hers. She wanted that ring on his hand. She wanted there to be no question of what she already knew. Because she should have married him years ago.

He had asked her years ago, and she had said yes. And then life had gotten busy. That was all that there really was to it. They had gotten busy, and they had never gotten around to the actual wedding part. And she knew that this wasn't much of a wedding. She knew that he probably deserved more than a piece of paper after Anderson was in bed for the night. But she also knew that anything else wouldn't have been her. It wouldn't have looked like what she would have pictured for herself. But that was indeed the problem. Olivia had never actually pictured a wedding for herself. And a marriage? She already had that. They already had that. They had everything except the piece of paper that legally said that they were husband and wife, and she wanted that. She had everything that they needed for it. "I'm not…" She smiled, "Well, I am. But that's not the only reason. I want to marry you, because I've wanted to marry you since I opened that door in 1997, and you were standing there." Stepping forward she laid her hands flat on his chest and looked up at him, "I want this, because we already have it. We have everything, we have a marriage, and a family, and a wonderful life. I want this, because I'm never going to stop wanting you. Marry me, Beckett..."

He had thought that they were going to actually get married. He hadn’t proposed to her thinking that they were going to be engaged for the rest of their lives. Beckett had thought that they would get married--he had been ready to wait as long as Liv wanted to. If she had wanted to get married in a month, in a year, in five years… he would have waited. But there was no denying that he had thought that they would get married eventually. And it just hadn’t happened. Life had gotten in the way, and that had been fine with him. As much as he would have liked to be able to call her his wife, he also knew that she was everything to him regardless of whether or not they were officially married. They didn’t need a piece of paper to prove anything and so he had gotten used to the idea of them just being engaged. It wasn’t something that he had seen the need to change. He loved her, she loved him. They had a damn good life. Being officially married didn’t validate their relationship. It didn’t need to be validated. That was his take on it, anyway.

Recently that had been called into question. Recently, a lot had been called into question, really. It wasn’t something that he liked to do. He wasn’t a person that second guessed himself all that often, and he knew that he shouldn’t take to heart what his fiancée’s best friend had said. But it had gotten to him anyhow. He didn’t like thinking that he was doing anything wrong by Liv. He had done that plenty in the past. He had put her in a situation that wasn’t fair to her in the slightest. Yes, when the affair had started out, it had just been about the physical side of things really. It hadn’t been more than that at first, so he hadn’t felt like what he was doing was unfair to her. To Eliza, yes, but to Liv… it was just shagging, and they were both aware that he was married and that it wasn’t going to be more than that. But steadily it had become more. Pretty quickly, actually. It had turned into dinner, and spending time together when they could--a Christmas together in Belgium. It was more than just shagging, and still he had been married.

He had subjected her to that for too long. He had made her the other woman for too long. She’d had to watch him leave and go home to his wife. She’d had to know that he was getting home and kissing her hello and sleeping next to her in bed night after night. She had to know that he was still shagging her too--because he was. He didn’t initiate it all that often, but it still happened. That was what he had subjected her to, for years, and he already felt like he would need to make up for that forever. He would gladly do it. He wanted her to know that he loved her, that he never regretted choosing her and that he would spend the rest of his life making it up to her. The years she’d spent as the other woman, and the months they’d spent apart while he had been finalizing the divorce. He would spend the rest of his life making sure that she was happy, because that was what she deserved. But that had all been called into question when Aurora had come around telling his fiancée that he was controlling, and Merlin knew what else…

It had been a surprise to him because he and Aurora had always gotten along all right. She wasn’t his favorite person in the world--he wouldn’t hang out with her alone, but she was okay to be around with Liv or other people. He’d much rather be around Odelia or any one of Liv’s other friends, but she had been all right. Hearing that she had said that sort of thing about him had been shocking, and he knew there was a good chance that it was why Liv wanted to get married now. And he didn’t want her to feel like she had to marry him because of other people opinions. “All right, you don’t have to ask me twice…” He said, with a grin. If she was sure, then so was he. He had wanted to marry her since he’d put the ring on her finger, but she had wanted to wait… and they had kept waiting. Even throughout those years, he would have married her any time she wanted to, but it just hadn’t happened. Now that she wanted to, he was more than ready to actually make her his wife.