DISCLAIMER: Guiding Light and its characters are the property of Proctor & Gamble. No infringement intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In response to Ralst's "How Found Out."
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
But What Will The Children Say?
By gilligankane
It's not graceful.
It actually ends with Olivia on the floor and Natalia mortified and Emma and Rafe just standing in the doorway with the bottom of their jaws on the floor.
It wasn't supposed to happen this way.
"Well, I was just…"
"Okay, this is…"
"Olivia I just wanted to…"
Natalia throws her hands up in the air and covers her face. "God, Natalia, you're being ridiculous."
She turns and paces across the living room: step, step, step, turn; step, step, step, turn.
If she could just get herself together and talk to Olivia, she wouldn't be here now. She wouldn't have to skip work and avoid the brunette. She wouldn't have to be this scared little girl with a conscience and gold cross burning into her skin.
But she can't. And she is.
She can't get it together when Olivia isn't even in the room. How am I ever going to face her, she asks herself.
She takes a deep breath and reaches for the phone – for the umpteenth time in the last ten minutes – and starts to dial the numbers. She only gets as far as the sixth number before she hangs up again.
"You're an idiot."
"Who's an idiot?" Olivia's voice cuts through the fog in her brain and she spins so fast around that she feels the world tilt under her feet.
"Whoa there," Olivia says with a grin, her hands reaching out to steady Natalia.
And Natalia almost swoons.
"Olivia," she says, a moment too late, and she's rewarded with a slow smirk that melts her entire core.
"Natalia," the other woman responds, amusement shining through her eyes.
God, I look like an idiot, Natalia can't help but chastise herself. "When did you get here?"
"About a minute and a half ago? I wanted to see if you were feeling alright." For a second, Natalia forgets her early morning message that she left Olivia – saying she wasn't feeling well and she needed to take a day off.
"Feeling alright?"
Olivia's perfectly sculpted eyebrow reaches her hairline. "You said you were…sick?"
"Oh." Then she remembers. "Oh. Right. Right, I'm fine. I'm great. How are you?"
She still looks amused. "I'm fine," she says slowly.
Natalia picks stray lint off the couch and tries to ignore that Olivia's hands are only inches away from hers.
"Natalia?" Natalia turns around and the air goes out the room, because Olivia is inches away from her and she can actually breathe in the other woman's perfume and she can see the flecks of gold in her eyes.
"I'm fine," Natalia says softly, waiting for something.
Waiting for anything.
And Olivia only blinks. And Natalia cracks.
She's not sure what really happens, but she ends up pressing Olivia against the side of the couch – or maybe she's the one pressed into the fabric – and one of her hands are somewhere between Olivia's cheek and her neck and the other is already undoing the buttons on Olivia's suit jacket. How she got so good at unbuttoning things one handed, she doesn't know, but it's coming in handy and Olivia is sighing into her mouth.
Sighing.
She feels Olivia's hands moving off of her forearms and sliding around her waist, pulling her closer and closer until Natalia can feel Olivia's heartbeat against her own.
And she wonders – briefly, before all clever thought is gone from her mind – why she never thought of doing this in the first place; why she spent her time kissing Frank when she could have been here, in the farmhouse, pressed against this god-awful couch, kissing Olivia.
"Natalia," Olivia starts to say, but Natalia cuts her off, sliding one hand under Olivia's shirt and pressing her open mouth to the column of the other woman's throat. Olivia stops trying to stop her, just moans instead and then Natalia is the one dropping into the fabric, surrendering to Olivia's mouth.
Which apparently does a hell of lot more than just shoot out snide remarks.
Or so Natalia is quickly finding out.
"Natalia," Olivia tries again. Natalia pulls back and tries to control her breathing and watches the way Olivia's eyes go from light to dark and before she can even try to process why, Olivia closes her mouth and kisses her again, slipping her tongue past the seam of Natalia's lips.
Natalia felt her hands drifting upward and she couldn't help the small giggle that bubbled up in her throat: she was a teenage girl making out with her high school for the first time, all nervous hands and butterflies in her stomach.
"Mommy?" Natalia pulls back quickly, Olivia only half a second behind.
Emma is standing in the doorway with wide eyes – with Olivia's eyes – and her mouth hanging open, her tiny hand wrapped in Rafe's hand.
Rafe, is Natalia's first thought.
Her second is that her hand is still up Olivia's shirt.
"Ma!" Rafe's free hand ends up covering Emma's eyes – Emma, who squeals in shock and giggles a little – and his own eyes shut instantly. Natalia pulls her hand out from under Olivia's shirt violently and slams her own eyes shut.
What she hears is a loud thud and when she opens her eyes, Olivia is lying on the floor staring up at the ceiling.
"Oh my God! Olivia!" She reaches down to help the other woman up, but Olivia only puts a hand up, stopping Natalia.
"Just…I'm going to hang out down here for a minute," she says softly, dropping a hand over her eyes. "Oh God, I'm just going to stay down here."
"Ma, uh, do you want…do you want us to go? Cause we can go if you need us to. I can…we can go to the park and we could feed the ducks and we could…" Rafe rambles on and on and Natalia can't do much but stare at him with her mouth open and Olivia doesn't move off the ground, just continues to lie there with her face covered and her chest heaving up and down.
"No. No, just…just sit down," Natalia finally says with a sigh. Rafe drags Emma by the hand over to the armchair and sits down, the little girl climbing up onto one of his knees.
"Oh God, oh God, oh God…" Olivia mutters over and over again.
"Olivia, stop," Natalia commands, turning to face her son and her daughter – their daughter – trying to ignore the fact that her face is flushed and that her children just caught her making out with her girlfriend.
"Rafe, Emma, I…we have something we need to tell you."
Rafe snorts. "A little late now, huh Ma?"
Emma, little Emma, grins. "Natalia, does this mean I really have two mommies now?"
On the floor, Olivia groans even louder and lets out a faux sob. Rafe actually laughs. And Natalia can only grin at the eight-year-old.
"Because then we could move back in and mommy can stop being grouchy all the time."
Now Olivia sits up. "I am not grouchy. I'm just..."
"You're grouchy." Emma gives Olivia a look and Natalia can't help but wonder if that's what she looks like when she's 'scolding' Olivia too.
"You're grouchy?" Natalia asks, amusement coloring her voice. She smiles at Olivia who just rolls her eyes and throws her hands up in the air.
"Don't get all smug. I just…" her voice drops to a whisper, even if everyone in the room can hear her. "I just miss you."
Natalia's heart melts to a puddle of goo.
She's sitting in her living room, still worked up, with her kids and her girlfriend, and she's a puddle of goo because Olivia misses her.
"We only came in here to ask if we were going to dinner or what?" Natalia almost jumps at the sound of Rafe's voice – because even if he's home for good, it takes some time getting used to his deep timbre. "So…were you going to make something, or were we going to grab something at Company?"
"I could make something," Olivia offers as she gets off the floor, settling down on the couch practically on top of Natalia, lacing their fingers together – and it makes Natalia blush just a little, but she tries not to show it.
Natalia snorts now. "And what? Kill us?"
"Jeez Olivia, if you're going to tell jokes, at least make them funny," Rafe adds, letting Emma slide off his lap before standing and heading into the kitchen.
"Mommy, I think we should let Natalia cook," Emma says seriously. "Rafe, wait for me!"
"Hey, I can cook, alright? You just have…" Natalia leans forward and presses her mouth against Olivia's, shutting her up.
"Baby, we're just going to call Company and order something, alright?" Olivia opens her mouth, but Natalia throws her hand up faster. "No, seriously. We're ordering from Company."
Olivia sighs, but she follows Natalia – and her family – into the kitchen anyway.
The End