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i. Fin, April 2016
Here’s the thing—Sonny Carisi knows that cooking dinner for someone and rocking their baby to sleep skirts a line between friendship and something more. If he’s being brutally honest with himself, he knows that the way his heart’s starting to flutter every time he sees Amanda is starting to blur that line a little further, but he locks that somewhere deep inside himself, because Amanda’s going through enough without worrying about his stupid little schoolboy crush.
Still, he knows he’s going to keep doing it just to see the relief in her eyes when he can get Jesse down for her, even despite the raised eyebrows from Fin and Liv that dart between them in the squad room that suggests it means more than it does.
It’s Fin who reminds him of the line he’s skirting a few days later, arms folded across his chest as he leans against the doorframe of the break room. “So, you make dinner for Rollins a lot?”
Sonny feels his cheeks flush, palms outstretched in defense. “I’m just helpin’ her with the baby, Fin. It’s not like that.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” Fin says, lips pursed. “How many nights a week you over there?”
Between the weight threading through Fin’s voice and the way his head’s tilting as he says it, it’s impossible for Sonny to miss the implication behind the words, and his breath catches slightly. “It’s just been a handful of times. There’s seriously nothin’ else—”
“Listen to me,” Fin cuts in, stepping closer, his breath warm against Sonny’s cheek. “If you hurt her, I will break your face.”
Sonny steps slightly backward, shrugging his shoulders defensively. “How would I hurt her, Fin? We’re just friends.”
Fin raises his eyebrows, a doubtful expression on his face as he eyes Sonny up and down. “Sure you are.”
ii. Gina, May 2018
“Gina, you can tell Teresa to keep her big mouth—” Sonny swallows hard, catching himself just before saying something that will have his mother lecturing him at Sunday dinner. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice softening, “but like I told her, my social life is fine.”
“Then why are you answerin’ my call on a Friday night, Sonny?” his middle sister quips back.
“Cause I’m workin’ overtime so I can pay for my share of that damn cruise you want to give Mom and Dad for Christmas,” Sonny sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose as he leans against his desk.
“Yeah, but how are you the only detective there two Fridays in a row? I thought you said you alternated weekend shifts.”
Him and his big mouth. “I mean,” he starts, biting his lip, “It was supposed to be Rollins’ shift, but I took it from her so she could go be with Jesse.”
“Rollins, huh?” He can practically hear her smirk on the other end of the line.
“Yeah, what about her?” He asks, a bit harsher than he intends, like he doesn’t know where this line of questioning is going.
“You ever gonna ask her out, Sonny?” There it is.
“Gina, I’ve told you before, we’re just friends—”
“Really, Sonny? Because I don’t blow up the group chat with pictures of my friend’s kids like you do, and I definitely don’t spend all of my Fridays at work so my friends can have a night off.”
“”She’s my goddaughter, Gina—”
“All I’m sayin’ is that I wanna see you happy. Just ask her out.”
His stomach flips slightly, a motel in West Virginia flashing before his eyes, and he takes a steadying breath. “Gina, I’m not gonna do that—”
“Why not? Is it because you work together? Cops date each other all the time, Sonny, Mike says—”
“I know she doesn’t want it like that, okay?” It comes out harsher than he intends, and he takes a shaky breath, eyes darting around the empty squad room, before saying the next words. “I tried, all right? I—it wasn’t the best time and everything, but she made it clear we’re just friends, and I’m not forcin’ her into anything else.”
“Oh,” Gina whispers, “I’m sorry, Sonny.”
“Yeah, so I’d appreciate it if you’d just drop it.”
She does—they make casual conversation for a few minutes, and Sonny’s finger is hovering over the end call button when his sister’s voice floats through again. “Hey, Sonny?”
“Yeah?”
“I mean what I said about you being happy. Remember when I told you about Christie, my friend’s cousin? She’d be perfect for you.”
“Gina, I’m not interest—”
“C’mon, Sonny, you’re never gonna get over your friend if you don’t get out there.”
“If it’ll get you to leave me alone, fine,” Sonny sighs, swallowing the bile that starts to rise at the thought of a date with someone else.
Gina texts him Christie's number five minutes later. Sonny never calls it.
iii. Maternity Nurse, January 2019
It’s just a minute after her room empties, heart still pinching at the soft “bye-bye, Mama,” Jesse whispered before she left with Sonny, that there’s a knock on Amanda’s door, a smiling nurse in pink scrubs pausing in her entryway.
“Hey, Mama,” she says, “Just coming to check on you and baby.”
“We’re good,” Amanda says, thumbing away the tear that’s started to fall from her eyes. “Just hate to see big sister go.”
“That’s always tough,” the nurse nods sympathetically, “but looks like Daddy is gonna take good care of her.”
Amanda’s stomach plummets slightly, the thought of Al, the man she’d begrudgingly allowed hospital staff to call “Daddy” for the last eighteen hours, anywhere near Jesse after the indifferent way he’d barely even looked at Billie before saying “just tell me where I need to send the checks,” making her heart catch in her throat.
“He was promising her they’d go home and make spaghetti,” the nurse continues, blissfully ignorant as she starts to unroll the blood pressure cuff at the side of Amanda’s bed. “She’s got him wrapped around her finger, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah,” Amanda sighs, recognition making relief—and an undercurrent of something else that pricks at her—flood through her body. “But he’s uh—he’s not her father. Not this one’s either, so—”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” the nurse mumbles, cheeks reddening. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s okay,” Amanda says, biting her lip, “just uh—just don’t mention it to him when he comes back. He’s a good friend, that’s all.”
“When he comes back?” The nurse asks, eyebrows raising. “I’ve seen some fathers only come up here once. He must be a really good friend.”
“Yeah,” Amanda murmurs, giving the nurse a watery smile before she looks back down at Billie, lightly running her thumb against her daughter’s cheek and swallowing down the wish she has, not for the first time, that she never had to correct the nurse in the first place. “Yeah, he is.”
iv. Liv, August 2019
“Sorry to ask you,” Liv’s saying, hands folded over her desk, “you’re just the only one who can get him there without making him suspicious.”
“It’s no problem, Liv,” Amanda says, waving the apology away, “he’ll just think we’re going for drinks.”
“Hey, Amanda,” Liv cuts in, making Amanda’s still on her way to the door, “there’s uh, one more thing. You wanna have a seat?”
The concern in her Captain’s voice makes Amanda’s stomach flip, and she lets out a cautious “everything good?” as she sits.
“Yeah, of course. I—I just want to make sure that you’re going to be okay with all this.”
There’s a softness in her voice that pricks at Amanda, making her swallow hard. “Yeah, of course I am, Liv. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I know you and Carisi are close,” Liv starts, a sympathetic smile on her face. “So I know this is going to be a hard transition for you.”
“No, it’s not.” The words, the ones she’s been saying to herself all day, rush out of Amanda with a half-shake of her head. ”Why would it—”
“Amanda, there’s obviously a reason why we’re having you sneak him to the party instead of Fin.”
“Because he and Fin are barely even work colleagues most days?” Amanda quips, folding her arms across her chest—out of protection rather than defiance, as if her physical movements can maybe keep the panic that’s been brewing there inside, rather than having it spill out here, of all places.
“Really, Amanda?” There’s a slight edge to her Captain’s voice that makes Amanda’s stomach lurch even more.
“I’m just kidding, Liv. But seriously, it’s fine. You’re acting like he’s going to another borough or something. I’m—we’re still going to see him all the time.” She says the last words almost too quickly, like she can make them come true if she just says them forcefully enough.
Liv raises an eyebrow at that, a glint in her eye that tells Amanda she might’ve caught on to more than Amanda meant her to. “Okay,” she says slowly, “but remember that I’m here if there’s anything you need to talk about.”
“I’ll be fine, Liv, seriously,” Amanda says, rising from her chair and threading a hand through her hair. “Now will you let me go change so I can get him to the bar on time?”
It’s not until a few weeks later, after over twenty-four exhausting hours in the precinct, when the words Amanda tried to keep buried are falling out, that she realizes Olivia may have been more right than she knew.
v. Kat, December 2020
Amanda’s relishing in the warmth of the bar lights, buzzing slightly from the drinks she’s had and the promise of another in the imminent future, when Kat’s voice cuts into her thoughts, an unwelcome whisper in Amanda’s ear that makes Amanda break contact with Sonny’s back as he makes his way to the bar.
“When are you two gonna tell Liv?”
Amanda’s eyebrows knit together, confusion threading through her voice. “Tell Liv what?”
“C’mon,” Kat says, taking a sip of her drink with a raised eyebrow, “don’t make me force it out of you.”
Amanda knows what the lilt behind it means, has heard it from more people than she cares to count, but she’s not about to give Kat any more leverage. “Force what out of me?”
“Your relationship with Carisi,” Kat smirks, nodding toward the ADA’s frame lingering over the bar.
Amanda’s breath hitches and she takes a shaky breath so the next words come out carefully. “You mean my friendship with Carisi?”
“Please, I’m not going to tell her before you do, I just want to know the details,” Kat says, tapping the table between them.
“There’s no details, Kat, we’re friends. That’s it.” Amanda’s stomach lurches a little as she says it, knowing that there’s no details because the courage that had rushed through her earlier in the week, the words that she’d spent New Year’s Eve nervously turning over in her mind, had dissolved the moment the Amber Alert had woken her up—that they’d failed to come back when she made it home to him collapsed on her couch, instead replaced by a soft smile and a loaded “thank you.”
“You look at all your friends like that? Cause I don’t. And I don’t spend New Year’s during a pandemic with them, either,” Kat says, eyebrows raised.
She’s right, of course—if the way Amanda is looking at Sonny is anything compared to the warmth that flushes through her every time she sees his face, she can’t be looking at him with the neutral expression she thinks she is—but she’s not going to give Kat that satisfaction.
“Shut up,” she mutters, but it comes out softer than she intends, the corners of her mouth turning upward as she catches the sight of Sonny making his way back to them.
Kat catches it, a smirk lighting her own face as her eyes dance between them. “Yeah, whatever you say, Rollins.”
& vi. Fin (Again), May 2021
Here’s the thing—Sonny Carisi knows for sure he and Amanda Rollins are no longer “just friends,” because you don’t stay up all night writing a speech about love with the eyes of someone you’re “just friends” with in mind, and you definitely don’t press them into a pillar in a New York City courthouse, a tangle of crushing lips and exploring hands finally set free.
But he can’t quite say what they are yet either, because the conversation they need to have about that, the one they’d promised each other still on the banks of the Hudson, has been delayed twice now—first by the way they’d wrapped themselves in each other in the courthouse hallway and then by the call about Liv’s accident.
So they find themselves in a hospital waiting room, tantalizingly close in chairs next to each other, but not touching—it’s hard to disclose when they haven’t even defined what they are for themselves, and waiting for news about your boss’ accident isn’t exactly the best time to have that conversation.
Still, once the fear is dissipated by the doctor’s report that Liv will be fine, Sonny’s back to nervous anticipation dancing through him, amplified by the way Amanda’s arm lightly brushes against him when she shifts in her seat.
“Walk me to the vending machine?” she whispers, just a faint hint of something else underneath it that sets his heart racing again—not that it’s really slowed since she first pressed her lips to his.
Once they’re tucked in the alcove it sits in, he spares a hasty glance over his shoulder to make sure they’re alone before he wraps his arms around her. “Hey, you okay? I know this is tough.”
She nods, stretching on her toes until there’s barely any space between them again, a light smirk on her lips. “I am now.”
“Amanda—” he starts, tilting his head slightly toward the door, but it’s a half-assed objection, because the second her lips are on his again, every other thought is gone from his mind. It starts softly enough, but then her hand is on his neck again, pressing him even closer, and his arm around her back responds in kind, time completely stilling as they mold together.
“You two do know you’re in a hospital, right?” Fin’s voice breaks through the love-drunk haze clouding Sonny’s mind, and he and Amanda separate, color rapidly flushing to their cheeks as they turn toward Fin, who’s standing in the doorway with raised eyebrows and a half-smile lighting his eyes.
Sonny and Amanda glance between them, mouths slightly open and breaths still coming heavy, as they struggle for words.
“I was gonna tell you it’s your turn to go see Liv,” Fin continues, “but it looks like you guys are already seeing each other.”
“Listen, Fin, we—” Sonny starts, rubbing a hand at the back of his neck.
“Don’t give me that damn friendship line again, lover boy.”
“Just give us a week, Fin,” Amanda says, arms folding protectively around her chest, “please.”
It’s her “please” that does it, Fin’s eyes softening and a sigh escaping his lips. “Fine, one week. Then you have to tell the Cap. Now, which one of you cares enough to go see her in her hospital bed?”
***
It’s not until the next morning, after a conversation seven long years in the making, after he wakes up tangled in Amanda’s sheets, her head resting on his chest, that she reminds him of Fin’s words.
“What did he mean by ‘friendship line’?”
“Ah, nothing,” Sonny says, lightly running his fingers through her hair. “I just uh—he might’ve threatened me a few years ago—”
“He what?” Amanda’s head shoots up, leaning over Sonny with a hardened look on her face.
He reaches a steadying hand for her arm, gently rubbing his thumb over the skin there. “No, it wasn’t like that, he—he just thought we were sleeping together and wanted to protect you—”
“Jesus, I can handle myself—” she starts, and Sonny can’t help but smile at the indignation in her voice and the determined way her jaw is set as she talks.
“I know you can, Amanda. I don’t think that’s what it was, though—it was right after you had Jesse and he was just trying to protect you. Anyway, it’s fine, I told him we were just friends.”
A soft smile breaks across her face, a sigh escaping her lips as she drops back toward him. “I’ve told a lot of people that.”
“Yeah,” he sighs, pressing his lips gently to hers. “Me too. But not anymore.”
She smiles back at him, running her thumb along his cheek. “Nope, not anymore.”
And if the warmth floating through her eyes as she says it is any indication of their future, never again.