Work Text:
Sonny Carisi sat stoically at his desk in the District Attorney’s office, his eyes skimming over what was just about the last of his paperwork for the night. Truthfully, he had no idea how late it had gotten. All of the hours seemed to run together on nights where he was too caught up in his work to notice the clock. He could only judge by how the excited voices outside of the building had slowly died down, indicating that people were turning in for the night. His head turned to peer out the window, as if it was going to let him know how long he had actually been confined to his office, only to be met with the familiar city lights in return.
A light tap on the office door was what finally caught his attention, and he glanced up from his desk to see Carmen prop the door open, poking her head inside with a small smile.
“You’ve got some visitors, Mr. Carisi,” she told him.
Before he could think to ask who it was, a small, familiar little girl slipped into the office, lugging a pillowcase so stuffed to the brim with candy that it dragged across the floor behind her. Her blonde hair hung over her shoulder in a long braid, and she nearly tripped over the baby blue fabric of her dress as she sprinted across the office and over to his desk.
“Trick or treat!” She called out in a sing-song voice.
“Woah!” Carisi feigned shock, standing from his desk to get a better look at her. “Elsa, what are you doing in New York?”
“No it’s me! Jesse! I’m wearin’ a costume!”
He couldn’t help but chuckle at the quite literal explanation, and when he picked her up to give her a playful spin around, her sack of candy hung limply by her side. “Well you had me fooled,” he told her, and she practically glowed in response as he set her down and she followed him over to his desk. Opening up the drawer, he rummaged around for a second or two, glancing over to Jesse who waited patiently for him to collect her treats. "Alright let's see what we've got," he mused. "I've got some post-it notes...a few pens...and a piece of gum. Sorry for not stockin' up on candy beforehand."
When he held the array of seemingly random items out to her, she took them graciously from his hand and dropped them into her pillowcase.
"Mommy said 'you get what you get and you don't get upset'," she told him simply.
“Where is Mommy anyway?”
As if on cue, Amanda crossed the threshold into the office with her youngest daughter sitting in her stroller with drowsy eyes. “Just busy tryna prevent a meltdown is all,” she said with a nod towards Billie. “it’s so far past bedtime that she’s basically a ticking time bomb.”
"You coulda just taken her home,” he assured her with a light-hearted chuckle. "I'm just finishin' up anyway."
“Well Jesse wanted to come see your office. And we figured you could use a little something to get you through the rest of your paperwork.”
As if to punctuate the sentence, she tossed a fun-sized Kit Kat onto his desk, where it landed with the small crinkle of the wrapper surrounding it, and Jesse reached into her pillowcase to grab a handful of her trick-or-treating candy, plopping it onto the desk as well.
“Uncle Sonny, me and Noah went to Uncle Fin’s house and he gave us three big Snickers! And then Noah got a Butterfinger but he doesn’t like Butterfinger so he gave it to me!” she told him, her words flowing a mile a minute, before fishing out another handful of candy to offer him. Before he had a chance to react, she quickly changed topics. “Are you almost done working?”
Carisi glanced back at his desk, the unfinished paperwork now covered in an assortment of Halloween candy, then back to the miniature Elsa in front of him.
“You know what?” He started, squatting down to be closer to her height. “I can always finish the rest tomorrow, right?”
“Right,” Jesse agreed with a beaming smile. When he held his hand up to offer her a high-five, she slapped her hand excitedly against his, giggling when he scooped her up into his arms to stand up straight with her. “We’re gonna watch The Great Pumpkin! Mommy said I can stay up extra late tonight!”
“With all the sugar you’ve had today I’m not sure we’ve got a choice,” Amanda commented with a laugh, glancing at Carisi with an almost apologetic smile.
He wasn’t entirely sure whether she was apologizing for Jesse’s enthusiastic rambling or the fact that the little girl had been able to persuade him out of finishing his work with her infamous baby-doll eyes. Whichever it was, he knew he didn’t need to verbally tell her that it was fine when he flashed her a smile in return, and when his free hand found her lower back to guide her out the door of his office, she leaned comfortably into his side.
After a full viewing of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and a bedtime story from both adults in the house, Jesse had finally fallen asleep. For as questionably irritating as it had been attempting to get her to wind down in the moment, when Amanda looked at her sleeping daughter, she couldn’t help but feel a warmth in her chest. The girls would only be young for so long, and she intended to enjoy it and savor it all while it lasted.
With the lights in the apartment finally turned down low and a mug of hot apple cider in each hand, she finally settled onto the couch and against Carisi’s waiting shoulder with an exhausted sigh. His arm snaked comfortably around her waist before he took one of the mugs from her hand into his, wafting the spiced apple scent up towards him with the other.
“There rum in this by any chance?” He asked with a playful smile.
“Hate to be the bearer of bad news,” she chuckled in response, her free hand settling against his thigh. “Why? Do you want some?”
He considered it for a long moment before finally shaking his head, and Amanda leaned in to press a kiss against the side of his neck.
“Gotta be in the office early tomorrow anyway,” he said, tilting his head just slightly to offer her more access, “Ms. Hadid-”
“You’re really thinkin’ about your boss while I’m kissing your neck?” She pulled away to look at him with an appraising stare. He looked bewildered...stunned almost — as if he hadn’t even realized until she brought it to his attention — and she couldn’t help but laugh. “Alright...I’m putting a gag order on talking about work for the rest of the night.”
“Fine by me,” he said. "As long as you keep doing what you're doing we can talk about anything you want."
“Anything, huh?" Her words were a soft breath against his skin. "Willing to commit to that, counselor?”
“Counselor? Now who’s the one talkin’ about work?”
With only another light laugh in response, she leaned up and pressed her lips against his instead, breaking the kiss only to set her mug down on the coffee table so she could shift herself into his lap. Her arms wrapped around his neck, and after simply looking at him for a few long moments, she finally cracked a smile.
“What?” He asked with a chuckle.
“Nothing,” she assured him. Her eyes studied his for another few seconds, as if in deep contemplation, and she finally grasped his free hand in hers to lace their fingers together. “I’ve just been lookin’ forward to grabbing a minute alone since this morning.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She bit her bottom lip just slightly, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Just the three of us.”
His lips parted as if to respond, but he stopped to study the expression on her face before saying anything, eyebrows knitted together in curiosity. With all intentions of helping him piece things together, she moved their intertwined hands to rest against her stomach.
She had seen him smile before. Hundreds of times, in fact, But she was sure that she had never seen his smile radiate quite like it did when it broke across his face in that moment.
"Yeah?" He asked, and despite her nodding in response, he still followed it up. “You’re pregnant?”
Before she could even complete her nod, he let go of her hand to wrap an arm around her waist, pulling her against his chest in a tight hug that practically knocked the breath from her lungs. They'd been trying for some time, and she knew that every negative pregnancy test was just as disappointing to him as it was to her despite the fact that he would never say it in fear of enhancing the heaviness she'd felt in her chest with each test that had gotten tossed haphazardly into the bathroom waste bin. But that morning, just as she was about to throw the first test into the trash with yet another frustrated huff, she noticed the faintest hint of a second pink line. The same pink line that appeared on each test she'd taken afterwards.
Without warning, tears burned behind her eyes. Not the same tears of sheer panic that she’d cried after finding out that she was pregnant with Jesse, but tears of joy. Of happiness. Because — God — she was so happy.
“Are you happy?” She asked the question she was sure she knew the answer to, her words muffled against the fabric of his shirt.
He pulled away just slightly to look at her, blue eyes shimmering with what could only be described as admiration.
“C'mon, Amanda. Of course I’m happy,” he assured her softly. They shared a smile, and when a tear finally slipped from the corner of her eye, he wiped it away for her with a gentle caress. “I love you.”
Her hand subconsciously drifted to rest against her stomach again, and when she responded, she knew it was not only directed towards the man in front of her, but to whoever they would soon be bringing into the world.
“I love you too." She paused, her fingers running absentmindedly through his hair as she looked at him with a smile she was unable to let subside. "Happy Halloween, Sonny."