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Sonny Carisi’s eyes, Amanda Rollins learns early on, are blue. Amanda’s all too familiar with blue eyes, from the mirror and and a few bad boyfriends and family members that let her down more often than not, so that fact alone shouldn’t be remarkable, but there’s something about Sonny’s eyes, so light they’re almost gray, soft emotions always plainly swimming there, that draws Amanda to them.
i. - November 2015
She doesn’t mean to get drawn to them so quickly, of course, but there’s the issue of the hormones and the fact that his eyes are the first things she sees when she comes back to consciousness, limbs heavy and stomach sore. Her eyelids flutter open slowly, and she’s trying desperately to shake her mind free of the fog that’s clouding it, swallowing hard as her fingers rub against the blanket she’s under in an attempt to figure out where she is.
“She’s wakin’ up,” a familiar Staten Island-tinged voice whispers. Carisi?
“I’ll go get the doctor,” says another voice, female this time. Liv.
There’s the squeak of a door sliding open followed by muffled hallway noise, and then a pair of gray-blue eyes are hovering over hers, the warmth in them soothing the panicked nerves that are sending small jolts of fear through her.
“Hey, Rollins,” the voice attached to them says, “you’re okay, the baby’s okay, just try not to move too much.”
The baby. It’s then she remembers where she is—she sees flashes of the hospital and the blood and the alarmed expressions on the nurses’ faces as they wheeled her to the operating room, and the words he’s just told her about not moving become immediately pointless as she jerks herself upward, ignoring the sharp pain in her abdomen when she does, eyes wide as she searches the room.
“Where’s—” she starts breathlessly, stomach stabilizing when her vision adjusts, taking in her partner’s form in the chair next to the bed she’s in, a bundle cradled in his arms that could only be her daughter.
“She’s right here,” Sonny says, soft smile gracing his face as he leans toward her, the sight of her daughter’s face, pink and smooth and healthy, flooding a surge of relief through her body that makes Amanda’s eyes start to brim with tears. “She’s perfect, Amanda.”
He’s right—the second he places Jesse in her arms, all Amanda can think about is how perfect her daughter is, fingers brushing softly over the shape of her face, lips pressing gently to Jesse’s forehead. “Hey baby,” she breathes, “I’m your mama.”
***
“I, uh—hope it was okay I held her,” Sonny tells her nearly an hour later, after she’s fed Jesse and gotten her back to sleep, when Liv’s gone home to check on Noah and it’s just them in this tiny hospital room.
“Hmm?” Amanda says, thumb stilling where it’s brushing against her daughter’s cheek, lifting her eyes fully for the first time since he placed Jesse in her arms.
“It was okay that I held her, right?” Sonny says, and there’s a nervousness in his eyes as he bites his lip slightly. “I’m really sorry you didn’t get to do it first, but they, uh—they asked if I wanted to hold her while I waited for you to wake up and—”
Amanda returns his smile then, voice warm when she speaks. “I didn’t want her to be alone, Carisi. Of course it’s okay.”
He visibly relaxes then, arms falling to his sides as he leans forward, eyes softening as they settle on Jesse’s sleeping form. “She’s neva gonna be alone, Rollins. Not as long as she has us.”
“Thank you,” Amanda manages over the lump that’s in her throat, the tears that have been threatening to spill out finally doing so, and she throws her head backward to stop them from spilling on Jesse, angling her body with a wince as she reaches for the tissues on the side table.
“Here, I got it,” Sonny says, holding the tissue out to her.
She stretches toward it, hissing lowly and swallowing hard when the movement pulls too harshly on her stomach.
Sonny moves his hand toward her almost automatically, stopping inches from her face and letting out a shaky breath. “You, uh—you want me to?”
She nods then, and the fabric of the tissue brushes against her face, his fingers gently moving overtop as he wipes the tears from her eyes. “There you go.”
***
He stays later than he should, moving to leave hours later with a stifled yawn and a stretch of his lanky limbs. “Liv’s comin’ back in the morning,” he says, “but I’ll come by in the afternoon when my shift is over.”
“You don’t have to—” Amanda starts, but he cuts her off with a wave.
“It’s no problem, you’re on my way home.” He pauses next to her bed, hand resting on top of hers for just a beat, voice soft when he speaks. “You did good, Amanda.”
“Thanks, Sonny,” she murmurs back, voice thick with emotion.
He pauses next to Jesse, asleep in the crib next to the bed, on his way out. “Goodnight, pretty girl. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Amanda has a good view of his eyes then, the fierce warmth she sees burning there—a pure kind of goodness she’s not used to seeing from anyone, least of all men—melting the trickle of guilt she’s had since she woke up. It will never fully go away, but it’s smaller now—because even though hers weren’t the first set of eyes Jesse saw, she knows without a doubt that the first gaze that held her daughter’s was one full of love.
ii. - November 2017
Amanda doesn’t know exactly what caused it, but one day she looks up in the squad room, makes contact with the set of light blue eyes that feel like home, soft smile on her face like she’s done so many times before, and finds something more than just the warmth of friendship reflected back at her.
At first, she thinks she’s just imagined it, a trick of the lights overhead that’s causing the tightening in her chest and the leaden feeling in her stomach. But then they go to lunch—it is a Tuesday, after all—and the light doesn’t explain the quick way he rises from his chair, the way he slides the keys over to her without even a hint of the protest that’s usually there, or the extra softness in his voice when he insists on paying, and her heart beats a little too quickly for the rest of the afternoon.
He hasn’t said anything, of course—he’s not one to try to cross that line at work of all places—and that fact alone lets her breaths come a little easier, makes the thundering in her ears quiet just enough so that she can hear her own thoughts again, can figure out exactly how to change the fiery warmth in Carisi’s eyes back into the soft familiarity she’s used to seeing there, the familiarity that’s already so much more than she deserves.
She’s just about figured out a plan, something she can do in a way that will leave his heart intact for whatever person comes along later, more whole and undamaged and more ready for him than she is, when Liv’s voice cuts across the squad room—”Rollins, you’re up.”
The jolt that runs through Amanda then, ice cold and paralyzing, is about more than just the trip, because the prospect of nearly seven hours in the car with Carisi never feels more earth-shatteringly terrifying than it does when he looks at her, the warmth from earlier back in his eyes as his accent lilts over a “Guess we’re goin’ on a trip, huh?”
She talks about Jesse for almost the entire car ride—Jesse’s favorite books, the way Jesse calls for “Fwannie” in the middle of the night, Jesse’s obsession with Paw Patrol—partially because she can’t imagine being away from her baby for a night, even if she knows Jesse’s never safer than she is when she’s with Liv, and partially because reminding him of the weighted baggage she comes with feels like the only safe way they can continue sharing the same space.
It’s not quite enough, though—there’s still an electricity that’s bouncing off the air between them, something almost too soft in the way his hand hovers behind the small of her back when they walk into the bar, something far too loving in the gaze he trains on her when Chuck asks how long they’ve been partners.
She swallows hard as they sit, the swirling in her stomach suddenly stilled by the memories she has of a bar eerily similar to this one, because it forms the basis of a new plan to dull the warmth in Sonny’s eyes—a way to remind him exactly what kind of woman she is, that the kind of relationships she has with men are fleeting, ephemeral ones that are the exact opposite of what he deserves.
But she’s three drinks in by the time she remembers to tell it, and the way he’s looking at her is making her heart float instead of sink, so it comes out lighter than she intends, breaking them into a shared laughter she suddenly wants more of. And between that and the adrenaline from the bar fight, she’s almost completely forgotten she’s supposed to be trying to stop the warmth in his eyes instead of leaning into it like every nerve in her body seems to want to.
She’s inches from his face when the scent of the beer on his breath, of all things, runs a jolt of clarity through her, sobering her thoughts just enough to remind her that the softness in his gaze isn’t meant for someone like her, and she pulls back just before she gives in, before lets them explore exactly what that look would lead to.
She should feel relieved—should collapse on the bed and go straight to sleep, but her head is still spinning, her breath still catching, and her shaking hands can only steady when she pulls out the receipt from the bar, the bartender’s number carefully sprawled across the back.
***
Buck’s eyes are not blue—they are brown. They are deep and dark and there’s absolutely no emotion in them but lust, and that fact alone makes her stomach stop lurching and her breath start to come normally, because it’s exactly how she deserves to be seen and no more. So she rides the wave of that look into familiar territory that restores her equilibrium, even despite the slight ache that remains in her chest when he rolls over.
Even though he doesn’t sneak out before dawn like she’d hoped, she still thinks she’s gotten away with it, that no one but the two of them will ever know what happened—that is, until she catches Sonny’s eyes as she shoves her bag into the back of the SUV. It’s then she realizes that achieving her goal also took her far beyond it—because even though the warmth in his eyes is finally gone, there’s pain reflected there too, and she swallows hard as she registers the fact that she accidentally punished someone more than just herself last night.
***
Punishing him, of course, was never the goal. She didn’t mean for it to get like this, tension thick in the air between them—she just wanted to tone back the warmth in his eyes, not to make them so weighed down by hurt they can’t even look up at her.
So she gives him a line about being human, a reminder that she’s fallible, hoping it’s enough to make him realize it’s about her and not him—but his eyes stay pained and his voice still comes out deflated, so she smirks through “and sometimes with people who are pains in the ass,” a little glimmer of hope as an apology, even if she knows that he’ll have found someone long before she’s ready to make it a reality.
And it takes a few days of forced smiles and painfully awkward small talk, but by the next Tuesday they’re at lunch again like it never happened, and the warmth in Sonny’s eyes is the gentle kind that speaks only of friendship, no trace of the something more she’d seen there last week.
Amanda’s not sure why, but she finds herself missing it.
iii. - January 2019
Her new daughter’s eyes are blue, just like Amanda knew they would be. Mercifully, they’re the same shade as the ones she sees in the mirror—a deeper blue than Al’s, a reminder that Billie is hers too, that her baby has a mother who loves her even if she has a father who doesn’t, who held her for all of two minutes before saying he’d mail her the checks.
The cold way he said it is still making guilt course through her, bile burning in her throat. But the eyes looking up at Amanda from where Billie’s latched against her breast are the unmistakably deep blue of the Rollins family, and Amanda manages a quiet whisper of thanks for that as she strokes her daughter’s cheek.
All is quiet for a moment, just their soft breaths coming in tandem as Amanda leans back against the couch, no TV she can turn on for background noise yet—not that it would matter, Amanda’s eyes closing the second the back of her head connects with the softness of the cushion. But the silence is broken a few seconds later, her front door rushing open and a muffled, Staten Island-lilted “fu—fudge,” greeting her as Sonny Carisi comes into view, the cardboard box in his hands dropping to the floor with a resounding thud.
“You don’t have to watch what you’re saying, you know,” Amanda smirks. “She doesn’t understand you yet, and Jesse’s not back from Liv’s until five.”
“Good practice,” he smiles back, and Amanda winces slightly when she hears how labored his breaths are.
“That bad, huh?”
“How many books does a three-year-old have?” He asks, hands resting against his knees as he leans against the wall.
Amanda offers him a sheepish smile. “I’m sorry. There might be some of mine packed in there.”
“That explains it. Felt like I was back at the Academy doing drills.”
He laughs softly then, and Amanda can’t help but join him for a second, biting her lip before she speaks next. “I wish you’d let me help, Carisi. You don’t have to do all this by yourself.”
“You’re a little occupied,” he quips back, eyebrow raised as he gestures at her.
She shrugs her shoulders as best she can without moving Billie, pointedly avoiding his gaze. “She’ll be done in a minute, and then—”
“So will I. I only got like four boxes left, Fin and Liv got most of them yesterday.”
“But—” she starts.
He cuts her off with a wave, voice just as pointed as hers. “It’s fine, Rollins. Seriously, I don’t mind—”
The earnestness that’s threading through it, equal parts genuine and warm, makes Amanda’s stomach flip, breath catching as she looks at him. “Really? You don’t mind giving up your entire weekend to help me move with a newborn because I’m—” her voice breaks then, tears she’s managed to hold in since the hospital starting to spill out. “I’m so fucking stupid, Carisi,” she whispers.
He crosses the room in a blur, a gentle hand on her shoulder before the tears are even fully down her cheek. “Hey,” he whispers, “no you’re not.”
“Yeah I am,” she says, using the hand not supporting Billie to wipe at her face, the fact that she can’t even find tissues right making her the tears fall even harder. “Why did I think it was going to be any different this time?”
“That’s on him, not you.”
“I moved in with him, Carisi. I let him in Jesse’s life—in Billie’s life—and now—now he’s never going to show up again.” She takes a shaky breath then, biting her lip to stop any more tears from spilling out. “I’m just setting them up for disappointment.”
There’s a beat of silence that’s only marked by the sound of her own heavy breaths before he speaks next, voice impossibly gentle. “Amanda, look at me.”
She turns her head slowly then, breath catching when she meets his eyes, the force of the warmth that’s swimming in them making the tears burn for a different reason.
“You’re a great mother,” he starts, squeezing her shoulder lightly. “Everything you do is to help these girls, and they’re going to know that. And I promise you, we’re all gonna be here for them, even if that asshole isn’t.”
She doesn’t say anything back; she can’t say anything over the lump that’s in her throat, the lump that keeps growing as she looks at him, the depth of the compassion reflected in his gaze—compassion she knows she doesn’t deserve, least of all from him, rendering her speechless.
She settles for a nod instead, a watery smile as he softly rubs her back until the tears stop, swallowing hard when a thought echoes in her mind, not for the first time, about what it would be like if Billie’s eyes weren’t dark blue but light gray, if her limbs weren’t short and stocky but long and thin, if the promise her partner just made her wasn’t an unexpected gift but a foregone conclusion.
“Thanks, Carisi,” she finally manages, hoping he’ll just blame the shakiness of her voice on what she just told him rather than the words she’s leaving unspoken.
She’s managed to put those thoughts to the side an hour later, when Billie’s finally napping in the bassinet they’ve got tucked next to the couch, Sonny quietly sitting on her floor to put together the TV stand. It’s the calmest her life has been in days, but it doesn’t last long, Billie’s wails starting the minute Amanda stands up from the toilet seat, and she rushes through washing her hands with a groan.
She comes back to relative quiet, though—Sonny’s got Billie nuzzled against him, head bent over hers as he whispers soothing words to her. His voice is so tender, his eyes shining so brightly, that the weight in Amanda’s chest starts to lift, because even though Billie’s eyes will never be light gray, she’s going to spend her life with a pair of them looking at her with all the love she deserves—and maybe that will be enough.
iv. - November 2019
The thought of her girls’ eyes are the only things that keep Amanda going in a dank motel room in East Branch, the way her stomach lurches when she pictures the tears that would fill them if she doesn’t make it home simultaneously making her breath catch and her vision sharpen—because if she can just figure out a way to slip the gun into her fingers without Bucci noticing, she’ll be able to see joy in her girls’ faces again.
The promise of those eyes—and the chance to look into them when she tells them time and time again that they deserve all the happiness the world has to offer—keeps her hands steady on the wheel as they drive back, gives her the strength to park the car and walk Bucci into the lobby and into the elevator, like he’s a regular perp and it’s a normal Friday and not one of the longest days of her entire life.
Her girls’ eyes are all she can think about until the elevator—but then the phone call with Sienna ends and her adrenaline crashes and the full force of the ice-cold panic she’d managed to swallow down hits her. It’s Sonny’s soft “Rollins?” that breaks the dam, has her collapsing into the safety of his arms.
He holds her tightly the entire way down—even when the doors slide open he doesn’t let go, waits for her to shift in his arms and take the first few shaky steps toward home before he moves, his hand soft but sturdy between her shoulder blades as they make their way to his truck.
She feels the weight of his gaze on her the entire ride home, the quiet sound of his head turning filling the otherwise silent car every minute or so. But she can’t look up at him—not yet, not with the way her stomach is still sinking, her breaths only slowing when her eyes trace the patterns of his floor mats.
He seems to know it, too—doesn’t say anything the entire way there, even though she can practically hear the questions falling from his lips, throat tightening as she tries and fails to picture the words she’d say in response to them. No, she doesn’t hear his voice until long after the car’s shifted into park, well past when she should’ve unbuckled her seatbelt, should’ve flung open the door and run up the stairs.
“It’s okay if you’re not ready to go up,” he whispers.
“They can’t see me like this, Carisi,” she breathes as another tear spills out, swallowing hard in a vain attempt to stop the way they’re flowing from her eyes.
He slides her a tissue from the package he’s got nestled in the center console, voice impossibly quiet when he speaks next. “Whenever you’re ready. I’m not going anywhere.”
The words send a ripple of something warm through her, and she’s finally able to swallow the lump in her throat, even if it takes her a few seconds before she turns her head toward him.
That’s when she takes in his eyes fully for the first time since she’s been back, and what she finds there—a concern so deep it’s bottomless—makes her breath catch again before the next words come tumbling out. “Plead him out.”
“What?” His eyebrows shoot up then, incredulity mixing with the concern.
“Plead him out,” she breathes again, steadier this time.
“Amanda, he abducted you—”
“But he didn’t hurt me. Not physically,” she starts, voice still shaking slightly. “Carisi, I—I can’t testify.” She locks her eyes on his again, hoping he can hear without words what she’s leaving unspoken.
He does, of course—Amanda watches the way his gaze shifts from concern to resignation, can see the way the lines on his face soften as he takes her words in.
“Okay,” he says, and between those words and the gentle weight of his hand on her shoulder, Amanda’s limbs loosen, her seatbelt coming undone and the door flinging open.
“Let’s go see my girls.”
***
He’s there for an hour before he has to leave for the courthouse, and the minute he’s gone her chest aches from his absence—an ache she tries to tell herself its just about the missing extra pair of hands to hold her girls tight and not about the loss of the protective gaze she can feel from across the room or the way her stomach lifts and her nerves buzz when he rests a gentle hand on her shoulder for a beat longer than he needs to on his way out the door.
Her eyes find his again a little after six, an overnight bag slung over his shoulder and a grocery bag in his hand. The concern from earlier is still floating through them, but there’s something else too, a spark she can’t help but softly smile at—and even though her nerves have just finally stopped sending aftershocks through her, Amanda feels her knees go a little weak anyway.
But it’s the smile he flashes her when he slides her plate across the table, gentle and warm in a way that makes her feel like she’s coming home, that connects it all for her—there was a third pair of eyes she was terrified of never seeing again, and now that she’s back in their view, it’s well past time she did something about it.
Except maybe not tonight.
So she smiles softly at him in the faint light of the living room, drinking in just enough of the familiar light blue looking back at her to lull her into a blissfully restful sleep instead of the nightmares she’d been terrified would come.
v. - May 2021
She knows he’s looked elsewhere, of course. They didn’t get like this completely blindly, and she’s felt the gentle touch of his hands against places he can’t see at her eye level. He’s also told her as much, soft whispers of you’re so beautiful filling her ears. But now they’re here, chest to chest, his breath warm against her face, and all Amanda can think about is how his eyes haven’t left hers, except when a strand of hair drops in front of her face and he moves to swipe it back, lips curving into a soft smile as he does. “There we go.”
His own pupils are blown, but the light that’s dancing in the sliver of blue she can still see, warm and sparkling and wholly unlike any light she’s ever seen in his eyes before, is about more than just lust. In fact, Amanda thinks she knows exactly what it is—can practically hear the words fall from his lips, the same words she almost told him just a few hours ago, the ones that until a few days ago made her palms sweat and her stomach flip.
She knows this much, too—he’s not going to say them tonight.
No, Amanda can read Sonny too well, can see it in the wonderment that’s still worked into the lines of his face, can hear it in the quiet way he whispers “I’ve wanted this for such a long time” as they move together, can see it further still in the way his eyes are still locked onto hers like he’s afraid she might disappear if he so much as blinks—much like she did, he didn’t ever think they’d get this far, and to speak the words they’ve both long kept buried would be putting too much weight on something so fragile.
In a way, she’s grateful for that, because she’s pretty sure her nerves, which haven’t stopped buzzing since the Hudson, can’t handle anything beyond what they’ve already started, not with the way they’re still sending jolts of elation through her that have almost nothing to do with the way he’s touching her and everything to do with the simple fact that he is—because he very nearly wasn’t, and she let them dance so close to the line where he never would that just thinking about it makes the air leave her chest.
She takes a shaky breath then to steady herself, eyes squeezing shut for just a second to soothe her inflamed nerves, to ground herself back in the physical sensations she’s feeling, to push everything else back into the dark recesses of her mind where they belong. She thinks she can make it work, can open her eyelids with a quick smile before she presses her lips to his again, can snake a hand down his back and run her nails along his skin and the momentary fear will be gone and forgotten about.
But as the world comes back into view, the full force of why that won’t work practically slams into her, because the hands warm against her belong to Dominick Carisi Jr.—and instead of having his eyes screwed shut or buried into her neck like every other person she’s ever been with, his eyes are still wide open, forehead inches from hers, concern now mingled into everything else she’d seen there before.
“Hey,” he breathes, and she still can’t believe how impossibly tender his voice comes out. “You still doing okay?”
“‘M fine,” she murmurs back, stretching up her lips toward his.
He returns the kiss for just a second, pulling back faster than she wants him to, and she lets out a small groan before his voice, laced with even more concern, comes back. “Amanda, are you sure? Because if you need to stop, we can—”
“I don’t want to stop.” The words come out clear and firm, and she can see his eyes soften, feel his muscles relax against her.
“What’s going on, then?” he whispers, running his hand gently along the side of her face.
She chews her lip for a second, words sticking in her throat, and she knows if it was anyone but him, that’s where they’d stay, but he’s looking at her with so much worry that her chest aches and she can’t help the way they start to fall out or the tears that start to collect in the corner of her eyes.
“I just—I almost lost you,” she murmurs. “We—we almost didn’t have this because I was too scared.” Her voice breaks slightly over the last bit, the tears escaping her eyes as they fall down. She tenses slightly as they do, muscle memory making her wait for a clipped “Seriously, right now?” or a grumbled “Guess the mood is ruined then” or an eye roll or any of the things her previous partners would’ve done.
But it doesn’t come. Instead, he falls to the bed next to her, turning himself so he’s facing her, running a soft hand along her cheek as his thumb swipes at her tears.
“Hey, look at me,” he whispers.
Despite the way her heart’s thrumming in her ears—so much louder than it was a few minutes before—she slowly turns until she’s parallel with him, letting out a deep breath as she lifts her eyes toward his. She almost wants to laugh at the Amanda who thought the love in his eyes was evident earlier, because that’s absolutely nothing compared to what’s burning there now, a floating ember changed to a raging inferno—the only emotion she can find in his eyes complete and total reverence for her.
She’s suddenly very thankful she’s already lying down, because there’s no way her knees would be able to support her weight if she saw that, air rushing through her chest and her breath catching even as she tries to force a watery smile to tell him she’s still okay.
“None of that matters, okay? We’re here now. And I’m staying here.” He trails a hand along her side, fingertips brushing her skin, and she can tell by the gentle way he does it that it’s just about comforting her. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise you.”
The words rush just enough warmth through her to let her smile genuinely, the lightness that’s floating through her enough to make the tears stop. “I know.”
She reaches to cup his face, thumb trailing against his cheek.
“Thank you,” she breathes against him, soaking in a few more seconds of his love-drunk gaze before pressing her lips firmly back against his.
And the way he kisses her back, somehow managing to be equal parts soft and passionate, tells Amanda that she’s in for a lifetime of finding his reverent gazes meant for her.
& vi. - June 2022
Amanda Rollins’ eyes, Sonny Carisi knows, are deep blue, an ocean he’d drown himself in time and time again. He wakes to them that morning, already open and alert when his own eyes greet the world. There’s a smile spread across her face that’s lighting them, a sparkle there he’s seen countless times by now but that still manages to leave him slightly breathless.
“Hey,” she whispers, finger tracing along his jawline, “you ready for today?”
“Never been so ready,” he breathes back, leaning forward to press his lips gently to hers.
He means to keep it gentle, too, but she returns it more fervently, pressing a hand against the back of his neck to pull him impossibly closer, and before he even realizes it, one of his hands is tangled in her hair and the other’s brushing against the skin under her tank top, and he can feel her smirk against his lips when it does.
But they have to break apart to breathe, and some semblance of rational thought runs through his mind, making his hands stop moving, even if his words still come out heated. “Do we even have time for this?”
She bites her lip, and a tiny spark of recognition flashes in her eyes that tells him he’s right, that there’s a whole litany of things that should force them out of bed, but there’s something else there too, a passion smoldering in the small slice of blue that’s still visible. It’s that passion that makes its way into her voice with the lilted “if we hurry” she breathes against him, and the few dregs of resistance he’d managed to scrounge up melt away, because he can’t deny her anything today—not any day, if he’s being brutally honest with himself, but especially not today.
“I think we can do that,” he smirks back.
And the satiated look on her face when they’re done, the bliss he finds in her eyes when he brushes his hand against her face, smoothing the hairs that have fallen out of place, is worth every second, even if they have to scramble when they finally get up, the girls’ clothes a little more haphazardly shoved into bags than they should be, Frannie’s walk cut a few minutes shorter than she’s used to.
But the way he gives in to the look in her eyes that morning is nothing compared to the way he loses himself in them later that afternoon, her fingers threaded in his and the voice of the officiant in the background reduced to a low drone.
It’s not the first time she’s looked at him this way, eyes delicately soft yet somehow burning fiercely at the same time, but the fact that she’s doing so here, in the City Clerk’s office, in a flowing dress she managed to keep hidden from him for three weeks, makes him breathless as his own eyes start to mist. She rests a soft hand on his cheek then, bringing him back to Earth in just enough time to say his vows, even if his voice breaks over a few of the words in them.
But then she starts her own, and he’s once again drowning in the warm rivers of emotion floating through her eyes, the deep devotion he finds there again making his knees go weak, because no matter how many times she does it, it still makes his breath stop that he can look at Amanda Rollins and find all the love he’s held for her over the last seven years shining back at him.
His smile then, wide-spread and glinting, is mostly about that, but there’s a hint of a smirk underneath it all, because it hits him then how right she was, because for all the back and forth they’d done over this, every argument she made has come true—the pointlessness of a big ceremony and the simple beauty of a wedding done this way.
It’s the most right she’s ever been about anything they’ve ever debated, and he’d put up with a hundred more lectures from his family just to defend their decision to do it this way, explain that it’s actually better they aren’t here, because they’d expect to talk to him, to be engaged in the ceremony, and get nothing but disappointment in return—because the Pope himself could be their officiant, and Sonny Carisi would never find the strength to look anywhere but directly into Amanda Rollins’ eyes.