Chapter Text
Amanda really shouldn’t have been surprised when March had barely begun and she found her stomach turning at the slight smell of Fin’s sandwich in the break room. Sure, she had stopped taking her pill a few weeks ago, but she knew it usually takes a full cycle for your body to fully adjust. Plus, five years is a long time in fertility years — she hadn’t even told Carisi she’d stopped the pill because she was afraid of getting his hopes up.
But she should have known that her body, the same one that gave her Jesse and Billie when she was actively trying not to get pregnant, would give her another baby the moment she considered actually doing it on purpose. Hell, she might’ve had conceived that night, just 15 hours after she skipped that first pill and greeted him at the door with a whispered confirmation that the girls were sound asleep and it was her turn to give him a Valentine’s gift.
Despite being all too familiar with this form of nausea, Amanda ran to a drugstore on her lunch break to pick up some tests, needing to be absolutely sure before she even thought about telling Carisi.
She takes the first one in the bathroom at work and even though she’s expecting two lines, she can’t help the slight gasp that comes when they appear. She tries to go about the rest of her day as normal, thankful for the first time that she didn’t need to go by the DA’s office today.
She takes the other two tests right after she gets home, telling the girls to say goodbye to Sienna as she strides to the bathroom. When two more positive results appear, she just stares at them for a moment, a flood of emotions coursing through her mind. Excitement, worry, love, panic — she manages to feel it all in the minute she has to herself before Jesse bangs on the door announcing that she’s hungry. She quickly wraps the tests in some toilet paper and buries them at the bottom of the trash can, because the one thing she’s certain of is that she needs to tell him herself.
Somehow, she manages to get through the night like normal, maybe a little quieter than usual but she could chalk that up to being tired. The only time he seems to think something may be a little off is when she crawls into bed next to him.
“Hey, you okay Rollins?” He asks as she scoots close to him beneath the covers.
“Yeah, I’m good, sorry if I was spacey at dinner, just really stuck on a detail of this one case,” she lied, thankful she wasn’t facing him.
“I’m sure you’ll have it all worked out soon,” he reassures her, pressing a kiss into her hair and wrapping an arm loosely around her waist as he begins to drift off to sleep. When he unknowingly brushes his fingers against the place where she’s carrying his baby — their baby — it makes her head spin and she promises herself that she’ll find the perfect way to tell him tomorrow.
OK, it might not be the perfect way, but she did finally settle on a way to tell him, which she had been mentally rehearsing until the moment he walked through the apartment door.
“Hey!” he said cheerfully, making his way over to the kitchen table to kiss her hello, his good mood making Amanda a tiny bit less anxious. “Where are the girls?”
“Oh they both had playdates after school today, so they won’t be home for a couple hours,” she responded, internally thanking the moms who had agreed to her hastily arranged plans today.
“Wow, I get a conviction in the McKelty case and now a surprise night to ourselves? This day just keeps gettin’ better,” he smiles.
“Congrats Carisi, that’s huge!” her genuine smile hiding the inner debate over whether what she’s about to do will make this day better again or bring it to a screeching halt. But it’s time.
“But before you get too excited about this night… I was hoping we could use it to look through some more apartment listings and get down to our top picks.”
“Sounds good to me. Want some wine?”
“Oh n— um sure,” she stammers, thinking that maybe just keeping the glass in front of her is less suspicious than her saying no to wine on a rare child-free evening.
While he pours two glasses and gets settled at the table, she takes out the listings she printed at work today and lays them on the table, subtly scooting her purse, which she'd left sitting on the floor, closer to her chair with her foot.
“So I found these today and I think we should really consider them… Notice anything different about them from the others?”
Sonny shuffled the papers through his hands, using his former law student skills to skim through them all quickly.
“Uh, they’re more expensive?” He guesses, his almost annoyingly responsible side kicking in.
She rolls her eyes. “Technically yeah, but for good reason.” When he still doesn’t get it she prods again. “They’re 4 bedrooms.”
“Oh, I guess that makes sense. But I already told ya Amanda, I don’t need an office — ” before he can continue, she jumps in.
“It’s not for an office, Carisi.”
“So like a playroom for the girls? I don’t know if that’s worth —” her anxiety officially turned to frustration, she cuts him off again, this time by passing him the thin box she’d been hiding in her bag.
“Just open this.”
He looks at her quizzically but takes the box. She watches his face carefully and sees the tiny movement in his eyes as they scan the 3 sticks she had dug out of the trash earlier. The first two showing double pink lines, the third unmistakably displaying the word pregnant on its small screen.
“Manda,” he looks up at her and she nervously covers part of her face with her hand.
“Is this… are you really…?” He seems scared to say the word aloud, so she does what she’s been practicing all day and says it for him.
“Yeah, I’m pregnant.” His mouth gapes open and his hands start to move the way they do when he talks, but no words are coming out. So she keeps going.
“I just realized yesterday, but I stopped taking my pill a few weeks ago. I’m sorry, I should’ve talked to you first, I just wasn’t sure if it’d be easy at this age or how long it would take and I didn’t want…” finally, it’s his turn to cut her off.
“Amanda, I, I can’t believe it,” he stammers. Just as she realizes his eyes had filled with tears while she rushed through her explanation, he makes his way to her in one long stride. For a moment he just looks at her in a way that makes her melt more than she ever has before, his right hand delicately cupping her cheek.
He opens his mouth as if to finally speak a full sentence, but still at loss for words, he just kisses her, pulling her as close to him as he can.
She feels his smile against her lips and before she can stop it feels a few tears fall, her nerves going with them. She pulls away just enough to break their kiss, her forehead resting against his.
“So, you’re happy?” She asks with a shaky laugh.
“Happy? I’m beyond happy, I’m thrilled, I’m... I don’t even know what to say, I just can’t believe this is happening.” She laughs more solidly this time, and waits for him to string another few sentences together.
“I love you so much, you know that right?” She just tearily nods in response. “And Jesse and Billie?” She nods again. “And I already love this baby — our baby — so much.”
This time one of his tears manages to slip out as he lightly places his hand against her still flat stomach. She brings her own hand to join his and waits as he takes it all in. Eventually, he pulls away from her slightly as the words start pouring out.
“And you don’t have to apologize Amanda, ever. This is the greatest surprise I could’ve ever hoped for, I couldn’t be happier. How should we tell girls?” He ran a hand through his carefully styled hair, not seeming to mind one bit. “Do you think they’ll be excited? Wow, now Billie is gonna be a big sister — but a middle child so we gotta make sure she never feels left out — and Jesse a big sister times two! And we’re getting a four bedroom, obviously. Whichever one you want — do you want a five bedroom? For more space? — I’ll look for houses tomorrow and crunch the numbers…”
“Slow down there counselor,” she laughs, his words flowing together through the accent that’s become the most soothing sound in the world. How could she have been so nervous? This was Carisi. Her Dominick. Of course he’s nothing but happy.
“I’m sorry, I just, we’re having a baby 'Manda!”
She pulls him back into her embrace and rubs his back reassuringly, her voice coming out thick and barely above a whisper.
“Yes we are.”