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- one -
The door cracks open slightly, a muffled murmur concealed by the frame, a pair of familiar blue eyes peeking in. His name is a relieved breath over her new babies head - “Carisi, hi, come in.” - as she shuffles up against the pillows.
She’s giddy and nervous and exhausted, and when their gaze meets she sees the same suite of emotions flashing back at her. His voice is quiet as they lean closer, Jesse secure on his hip, and her eyes well at the relief flooding his features, the delight pushing his cheeks into a wide grin.
He brushes a warm kiss against her forehead that has Amanda’s heart flipping over in her chest. She wants to blame to hormones, the epidural, the ache of every muscle for how her eyes loosen into something soft and smitten, how her smile creeps that little bit higher. It just feels so natural that he’s here, that he’s the one who picked Jesse up from daycare and carried her into the hospital; like that nurse hadn’t been so wrong earlier.
And when she thinks of that position in their lives, it’s only ever been him. She’s known it forever, prior to the hospital corridor and “How you holding up Papa?”. After all, she hadn’t thought to call Al, not for one moment; Carisi was there, his hand on hers, that was all she’d needed. She had known without doubt then that whatever role Al had been angling to play in their lives, it had already been cast long before.
It was Sonny whose gentle touch and sincere “I’m not goin’ anywhere.” swam through her mind all day, even with Al’s diamond new on her finger. It was Sonny whose voice and jesting words had prompted her to slide that ring off her finger, “I don’t love you, Al.”
She’d spent the impatient hours of waiting thinking about her first, thinking about Jesse tearing her way into the world and Sonny refusing to leave. His eyes so sincere, “There’s nothing you can’t handle” the lore that had seen her through every day since.
Perhaps she should’ve known then that he’d be something much more than just Mammas work-friend to Jesse. He’s the second emergency contact on her paperwork, he’s the male stick figure in every family portrait. Jesse is completely at ease against him, dressed in the special new outfit they’d bought online weeks prior during a slow night in the squad-room. For just a moment she lets herself fall into the fantasy, drinks in the sight of these three people she loves, thinks how it could so easily be reality.
But then Fin’s bumping the door open with a shoulder and Sonny steps ever so slightly back, his cologne withdrawing from her senses.
And she’s reminded that family is a lot more than just the Mom and Dad and kids, it's Fin running a quick assessing gaze over her features before he turns to greet Jess, and Liv arriving with a whole lot of pink, and yes, Sonny as sturdy as ever beside her.
“Just us, just family.” she says with a smile, and for the first time there’s no ghosts that cling to that word.
- two -
It’s only 7am and already they’ve run the gamut of emotions. There was excitement brushing her hair, then nerves picking out an outfit for her first day. Now there’s a rap on the door and Amanda’s feeling a net of anxiety working across her ribs. But it settles when she yanks the door open and he’s there, even though he’s only a few weeks into Hogan place and still determined to win over Hadid. His eyes are bright and eager as he waves a bag of groceries under her nose. Meanwhile she’s still in pyjamas, feeling decided uncute, but he hands her a large coffee cup and flings the bag onto the counter to catch Jesse in a tight hug, and all she can do is watch enrapt.
She forgets sometimes how much easier it is having another adult around; someone to make breakfast while she gets herself ready, someone else to answer Jesse’s endless questions about school when she runs out of steam, someone to hold Billie while she helps Jess tighten the clips of her shoes. The dull buzz of his phone pinging in his breast pocket is unrelenting but there’s no hurry in his affect. His sharp attention drinks in every detail of the morning around them and she thinks perhaps he’s fighting the same bubble of emotion when Jesse slings the school backpack over her small shoulders; they’re both unprepared. Time is slipping by them too fast.
Outside the front of Jesse’s new school they each take a side of the car, unbuckling her babies with practiced ease. Billie climbs happily into his arms, grinning at Jesse as the older girl points to the bricked building and tells her “That’s my new school, Billie. But I’ll see you after.” They pass Billie off easily, as if this is a trade they make throughout every day, a team effort, and Carisi crouches down to unnecessarily straighten Jesse’s headband, “Have fun, kiddo.”.
They wait at the car, leaned against its side waving as Amanda and Jesse walk in together. He’s grateful for the distraction of Billie to fuss over when their backs disappear into the building. Being a part of their little unit has always felt as easy as breathing, but lingering back, trying to not notice the kids walking in flanked by two parents, it makes his breath catch harshly in his lungs.
When Rollins climbs back into the car, he hands her a tissue with a barely restrained smirk, ignoring that his own eyes had pricked at the single glance Jesse had thrown them over her shoulder before walking through that door. She meets his gaze across the console, no effort to conceal the mess of emotions streaked through her expression and murmurs a soft “Thanks for being here.”
They’re still trying to navigate the new playing field, the schedules that no longer align, the extra step they have to take to check-in these days. But even with all that new space between them, she’s sure of his words when he answers, “Wouldn’t have missed it.”
- three -
She comes back from showering an excited Billie’s mash sweet-potato from her hair and finds him passed out on the couch. It’s barely 3pm and his head is drooped at an angle across the back of the pillows, his mouth open in a quiet snore. Billie is drooling onto his checkered shirt, her fingers bunched tight in the fabric, her knees secure against his ribs.
It’s a Tuesday, scarcely the start of the week ahead of them, and though she knows he’s itching to check in on Parker, touch base on the meetings and cases he’d handballed to be there today, his fingers had only drifted to the device in his back pocket for a quick selfie and an Uber ride.
Jesse is with Liv and Noah, her second ever big girl sleepover - Kat left to her own devices her first day in the squad, no-one knowing her well enough to feel bad for the absent welcome - and Amanda bites the inside of her lip at Carisi’s hands so secure on the form of her youngest. She bites it so hard she tastes the iron of blood across her tongue.
Because it’s everything she had wanted. A fondness rocks her, heart pirouetting at Carisi’s long fingers spanning the width of Billie’s form, Billie drooling a small puddle onto his chest. It feels as natural as meeting his eye over a camera, tracing his smile across the baptismal font.
Sometimes Billie watches her with calm slate blue gaze and she can almost imagine there’s a Carisi hyphenated on the end of her surname. Jesse might have latched onto Carisi’s more extravagant mannerisms but it’s Billie that embodies his steady support, his quietly analysing expression, his unwavering loyalty. It’s Billie she could’ve imagined, even back then, almost being his.
So maybe it’s not on his DSLR, but Amanda knows this photo will be something to cherish as she snaps the picture on her phone. It’s hardly the first photo of him on her camera-roll, hell it’s not even the first photo of him asleep on her camera-roll, but something about he and Billie settled so securely into the centre of her couch - his top button popped and sleeves rolled up over his elbows - feels different. It feels like a quiet moment from some parallel universe where Doctor Al stayed as nothing more than the placeholder he was intended to be. Where the teary confession about being again pregnant played out vastly different.
Snapping from her daydream with a wistful grimace and suddenly damp eyes, Amanda pads quietly towards the pair. She resists trailing a hand through his mussed hair, reaching instead for Billie, still dressed in her neat white outfit. The girl doesn’t stir but a crease forms between Dominick's eyes, his hands shifting more resolutely against Billie's back. A grumble sounds from the base of his throat when Amanda tries once more to pry the sleeping babe from her Godfathers grasp, Carisi curling tighter around her in his sleep.
Giving up with a fondly exasperated sigh, Amanda drapes a blanket across them instead, relenting to the urge and drifting her fingers through the ungelled greys at his hairline. The furrow in his brow disappears, the slightest hint of a smile peaking up the corners of his lips. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking, no different from imagining the ‘God' dropped from his title at todays ceremony.
She’d been worried that they’d lose this. Not initially, but as the days flew by between his departing the squad and things unravelled between them. She’d watched him drifting away. The distance between their lives more pronounced, the hours between their texts longer. Figures in his life she didn’t recognise, arguments she couldn’t justify, the threads of some envisioned future slipping one by one out of her grasp.
And yet. Despite all that he’d been at their door this morning, camera heavy over one arm, neatly wrapped gift-box in the other. A personalised white gold anklet for Billie that now rested against his ribs.
The sight of him soothed her, as it always does - the certainty with which his smile flourished into his cheeks when Jesse and Billie rushed towards him, the way he so easily made up for the absence of their fathers. Amanda’s never been used to people showing up; she’d spent her childhood looking out to audiences and not finding her Daddy’s face. But Carisi always comes through, even now, even in this uncertain space they find themselves, and she knows her daughters will never doubt his presence. He loves them, and they’ll grow up so sure of that fact. She drops into the armchair, watching the rise and fall of their breaths beneath soft woollen stripes.
In little more than a year they’ll snuggle under this blanket as the new year rolls in, still every bit the ragtag family, but they don’t know that yet.
- four -
He’s standing in her kitchen, hair still damp, last nights suit crinkled on his form, and the tapestry of her life pulls together. There’s a smile inset to his cheeks, Jesse secure on the counter beside him as he talks her through how to make an omelette. It’s far from the first time they’ve done this, his shape stood at the counter as familiar to her as Frannie Mae asleep on the couch. But there’s a shade of something new when his gaze snags hers; a softening of his grin, an intensity revealed, something exultant and blest and promising. There’s a truth laid bare in the fervour of his eyes, an unchecked honesty when he doesn’t dart them to the side or duck his head - no more denials, no more doubts. The ghost of his touch still lingers on her skin, her blood trilling in her veins as she takes in his mussed shirt, recalls the feel of each button unfastening beneath her fingers, the slide of its material over his sharp shoulders.
Billie kicks her legs in a quiet demand, throwing one arm out towards her two favourite people and Amanda moves them closer, stepping into the kitchen until all four of them are crowded around the mixing bowl. Carisi wipes his hands roughly on the towel flung over his shoulder before reaching for Billie, his fingers brushing sweetly down Amanda's arm before they land on Billie’s waist. She might have thought it an accident if not for the blazing look he throws her way in the process. Depositing her youngest onto the bench beside Jesse, Carisi leans forward to meet the giggling toddlers eyes, “All cleaned up?”
Billie grins wide at his attention, her hands clapping on her thighs, “Yeah.”
“Ready to make breakfast?”
“Yeah.”
“That's my girl.”
He high-fives both small pairs of hands, turning back to the bowl and opening the carton of eggs.
Amanda’s always known she was lucky to have him - as a partner, as a friend, as the worlds best godfather. She’s still pinching herself that now they get this too. They get to make a future of these moments, get to stop denying that family to them has for a long time been just this - three pairs of blue eyes and one pair brown, a hodgepodge of accents between them.
Her own smile is heavy in her cheeks - elated, giddy, wowed - and she steps closer to land one hand on Dominick’s hip, her body flush against his back as she presses a lingering kiss to his jaw. Both little girls watch with eyes sparkling and mouths drawn wide in glee. She can see the delight across Carisi's features when he turns to catch her eye, irises sparkling. “And what's the secret to omelette making, Rollins?”
She rests her head against his shoulder, chin bumping against his collarbone, and shoots a heavy wink at the enrapt children before her. "You gotta crack a few eggs."
- five -
She clicks the door quietly closed behind her, toeing off her shoes and listening for the pad of Frannie Mae down the hallway. It’s late enough that she’s missed the girls going down but early enough that she worries about waking them before they crack into that blissful dreamland that wild horses could scarcely shake them from. She’s come to call it ‘quiet time’, that first hour where they keep their voices low and an ear out for the girls door creaking open.
Before memorial day that hour had typically been spent folding laundry or packing lunches. And yeah, sometimes they still do that. But more often than not, ’quiet time’ these days is filled with tender caresses and soft lips. It’s this little pocket of time she’s come to associate with his voice rumbling in an attempt to modulate volume, fingers carding through hair, her palms rubbing up his back as he just leans heavy against her. It’s like a reset, a breath.
She’s not surprised to find him on the couch. But there’s something in the way he scarcely even looks up at her arrival, in the way his legs are firmly planted on the ground and his elbows are resting staunchly on them that trills a warning up her spine. “Dominick?” She flinches back at the silence before dropping her bag and moving swiftly to his side. Her hands land softly on his thigh and back even as her eyes skate over him for visible injuries, any hints to the storm clouds painted in his features.
Still he barely glances to her. There’s a piece of paper in his hands, the logo of Jesse’s school emblazoned on the letterhead. And she’s trying to not panic, but there’s lines in his face that she cannot read and that knowledge strikes a fear deep into her chest.
His voice is a mix of nerves and something else, something lofty and wistful and raw. “I was jus- Jesse needed her homework signed.” His brow is set in a deep quizzical frown that has her heart thumping hard in her neck, a mental slideshow of all the times she’s seen his features so drawn flicking through her mind.
“Okay…”
“An- and there were some fliers, info slips - a bake sale I put on the calendar. So I was just- I signed it without thinkin’.” There’s a wobble to his voice, the tone pitched higher than normal, his chest hardly shifting from the shallow breaths he’s taking.
Amanda leans closer into him to duck a better look at the paper. For the way Carisi is staring at it, you’d think it was new legislative ruling to roll back victims rights or something equally damning, but it’s just a template permission slip for the grades upcoming excursion.
“The aquarium, cool. Jess will love it.”
“That’s not-“ He shakes his head gruffly before extracting his fingers stiffly from the paper, passing it into her hands.
Her eyes skate over the document - pausing over the date as she racks her brain for significance, skipping across the lunch directives. She admires the neat loop of his signature, his smooth penmanship so much cleaner than the chicken scratch she usually scribbles onto forms. And then she sees it, the little box under his name, the simple tick smooth with a decisive flick of the wrist beside a neatly typed option. Father.
It knocks the air out of her. A rush of dizzying affection and odd serenity settling deep in her bones. But the breathless smile on her cheeks turns as she looks to Carisi, anxiety radiating off him where he’s still staring at the paper, arms slumped over his knees and hands pursed against his lips. The butterflies fluttering lightly in her abdomen instead swarm, bashing against her ribcage, threatening to upend the days food from her stomach.
They’ve only been like this for a few months, but in someways it feels like forever. She’s both amazed and not at all surprised at how finally crossing that line translated to Carisi spending most nights at her house, his items gradually relocating until it seemed ludicrous that he could possibly have more stuff (there’s a velvet box the size of a key hidden that she’s planning to give him next week, but that’s a different story). How the girls settle in to bed most nights to his stories, how they tear havoc around the house with his braids trailing down their back - “Perks of havin’ sisters!”. He’s their father for all intents and purposes. They have more of a father in him than she’d had in her own.
“Sometimes I forget, that they’re not mine. I- I love them so much, Rollins. It feels like- well I imagine it feels like-“ he trails off, shaking his head and ducking his gaze. There’s emotions she hadn’t expected welling inside her chest as her eyes dampen and her cheeks quiver into a smile.
“Sometimes I forget too.” That draws his attention and his eyes - wide and vulnerable - scatter to hers. Emotions that defy categorisation streak through her tone and Carisi moves his hand to hers, entangling their fingers in a quiet solidarity.
There’s more she wants to say, about how they are his in almost every way that matters, how they are such little fragments of his personality that she often stands stunned watching them. She sees him in Jesse’s over-pronunciation of words; in the way her limbs move in constant motions so analogous with his. Somehow Billie looks at her with exactly his eyes, their steady light; the accent of her expanding vocabulary twinged heavy with Staten Island lilts. She wants to tell him all this and more - how she wishes it had been him not Declan, not Doctor Al; how right it had all felt to have his hand around hers in that hospital corridor, to have him beside the maternity bed - but the words stick in her throat. All she manages to push past the lump are two words - “Maybe someday…”
His fingers slack on her own as that hits him and then he’s scrambling to cling tighter to the bones of her hands, insistent and astonished and grounding.
He breaths out “Yeah?”, a blazing luminance filling his eyes, and Amanda finds herself rushing over words, unable to taper the flow in the light of his agape mouth, his brow wide and open in wonder.
“I mean- You’re already basically- You’re it, Dominick. For them. For me. And Jesse’s easy enough; there’s no Dad listed on her birth certificate so we’d just have to sign a few papers. Billie is more complicated - when we get married there’s stepparent adoption but Al has to consent to that otherwise there’s all these other steps - Langan’s looking into it. But Carisi, if that’s what you really want…”
He thinks he's stopped breathing, his mind wrapped around the “when” that had slipped so easily past her lips, his heart pinging in his chest. But there’s a question in her gaze, hands suddenly clammy beneath his, so he securely tucks her “when” safely away in a corner of his head to return to later, to keep him warm on late nights at his desk.
The voice that crawls from him is rough, choked with incredulity, “You asked Langan? To look into-?” and she slips her hand from his to push nervously at her hair.
There's a small shrug on her shoulders, an attempt at nonchalance that doesn’t land, “Yeah. Wanted to know the options.”
He loves her. This isn’t news - to either of them - but in this moment the weight of it knocks into his lungs heftily, the adoration he has for her. Amanda Rollins, who, despite everything, believes in family. Who one day invited him into her life and bit by bit cleared a space for him in her future.
He reaches for the form against their legs, holds it gingerly as he leans tighter into her. She's grateful for the weight of him against her ribs, grounding her. His thumb rubs over the neat tick and word beside it in awe. Reverence in the way his words flow through his dumbstruck smile, a whisper buoyed with amazement. “Father. I could be their father.”
“Dominick, you can be their Dad.”
He smiles at her - giddy and wide and dazed, overjoyed flush creeping over his cheeks and up his ears - and she lets out a breath, lets the last iota of doubt disappear. “Dad.”
She tucks the permission slip away safely in her box of memories, scribbles over a replacement form as she drops Jesse off the next morning, this piece of history too important to part with.
And he returns time and time again to her “when”, drops his Nonna’s ring to a jeweller for re-sizing, makes the effort to get to know the fathers at drop-off and school events.
One day it will be official - two simple wedding bands, some signed and stamped paper-work and a double barrel at the end of Billie and Jesse’s names - but they’ve been a family for a long time. The world continues to change around them, the girls drop “Uncle Sonny” for “Dadda”, and they just face each new day the way they always have; together.