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1. February 2019
Everyone told Sonny that becoming a father would change him - that he could never truly appreciate that kind of love until he held his baby in his arms for the first time, and as Billie grows he thinks there’s something to it. It’s not that he doesn’t share that love for Jesse too; Billie’s birth just opened up a part of him he hadn’t known existed, and suddenly he found himself loving both of those girls more than he had thought possible.
The first day he went back to work after Billie was born was a wrench; he’d been up more than half the night, taking his turns and a couple of Amanda’s just so that he could have more time with his newest love. He’d eaten breakfast and downed a mug of coffee with one hand so that he could hold her a little longer, and he'd only reluctantly handed her back to Amanda when his phone rang; Fin, telling him he was going to pick him up so they could go straight to a scene. He’d pressed a kiss to her tiny forehead and another to Amanda’s lips, only to find a third reluctant goodbye when Jesse wound her arms around his leg.
“Hey Jess, I gotta go to work,” he said softly, a running a hand over her hair.
She clung tighter, “But what about the baby?”
“Momma’s gonna look after Billie, just like she looks after you.”
“But you said-” Jesse started, but then she pulled back from him, swiping angrily at the tears in her eyes, “We’re a family.”
He dropped to his knees with a soft sigh, pulling Jesse in for a hug, “We’re still gonna be a family, I just gotta go to work so I can keep your momma in the lifestyle she’s accustomed to,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at Amanda shaking her head at him, “I’ll be home tonight.”
Jesse had gotten used to having him around in such a short space of time, and he’d gotten to used to being at home with them - his girls. When he finally pulled himself away, another round of kisses while his phone buzzed in his pocket letting him know Fin was outside, he had spent the rest of the day thinking about getting home to them.
It got easier, day by day, week on week - and he appreciated that Amanda was able to take a slightly longer maternity leave than she might have otherwise; she missed a handful of tough cases, and though she grumbled about going crazy at home with the baby, he knew she was revelling in every minute of it. He called her from the courthouse during the Annabeth Pearl trial; a difficult case that he was kind of glad she wasn’t around to go through, and the sight of Jesse and Billie’s faces on the video screen lightened his leaden heart.
No matter how late he’d got stuck at work, no matter where the cases had taken him or how bone-tired he was at the end of the day, he gravitated straight towards girls’ room whenever he got home - sweeping Billie up into his arms, cradling her close even as he battled his own yawns. And on the days she was sleeping when he got in he would stand over her crib, watching her sleep, just as enamoured with her as he had been the day she was born. He just couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
He spent hours - even when Amanda had returned to work too and was missing the girls just as much - sat on the couch just holding Billie in his arms, running his finger gently down her soft cheeks and over her light, downy hair. Jesse would curl up on his other side, reaching out her own hands for her sister, always eager to help or to hold her.
Sonny enjoyed watching Amanda with Billie, too - the mother of his child, the love of his life, the woman who had given him not one, but two, perfect daughters. He’d stare until she chastised him for it, “Knock it off.”
“What?”
“You don’t get enough of looking at me during the day?”
“Not since Liv split us up,” he grumbled; the two of them were out with Fin more than each other these days, and no one had more to complain about than Fin - used to be I could spend half the day getting on quietly, now you can’t keep your hands to yourselves and I’m out on every damn call - but even if they weren’t, Sonny didn’t think he’d ever get enough of Amanda. He certainly hadn’t when they were partners.
“I can’t get over how much she looks like you,” Amanda said, turning towards him with Billie’s head resting softly on her shoulder, her eyes blinking shut as she fought sleep. Jesse was already tucked up in bed, after clinging to Amanda’s hand tightly and asking for a second bedtime story. “I was saying that to Liv, earlier,” she added.
“You were?”
“Kind of, we were talking about genetics, y’know, Emerson not being Rowan’s kid, and I was thinking Billie has blue eyes. Your eyes.”
“You have blue eyes too,” Sonny countered.
Amanda nodded, her hand moving in circles on their daughter’s back, “But Billie has yours; they’re lighter than mine,” she smiled, “I love that.”
Sonny grinned back, “She doesn’t not look like you,” he said, but he couldn’t deny that he liked the way Billie kind of looked like him; this tiny person that was half him and half Amanda, and had his eyes, and was so unequivocally theirs.
2. October 2019
It had been a hell of a year in so many ways. A year ago, Amanda was pregnant with her second child, with no real clue how she and Sonny were going to navigate co-parenting. She had still been living in a tiny apartment and getting Jesse used to the idea of being a big sister and sharing her Momma and Uncle Sonny. Since then so much had changed - Billie was such a huge part of their lives that Amanda couldn’t imagine not having her, she lived in a great apartment with a man she was falling more in love with every day and her two daughters, and a couple of weeks ago Jesse had reached out to Sonny at bedtime and tentatively whispered, “Goodnight Daddy.”
But there were other changes too, changes she was less fond of - Sonny had gone from being her partner at SVU to her partner in every way but. Not just the months of working at the closest thing they could get to a distance whilst still being part of the same unit, but now - now he wasn’t even part of that unit anymore. That was a tough thing to get used to; and a small, self-sabotaging part of Amanda thought that maybe she wasn’t supposed to - that she didn’t deserve to have everything falling into place the way she wanted it to.
It was that thought, exacerbated by a lack of sleep both from the case and life with two kids under four, and by how much she missed Sonny, that had her temper on the edge. So when they started arguing about the case it blew up - ended up with her shouting at him in the squad room until Liv told them to go cool off, and though Sonny had hesitated, trying to catch her eye, he’d walked away.
And Amanda had stewed. She’d shrugged him off when he asked if they were good, and then he’d left again - he had to be in court, Amanda knew that, but it still felt like he was giving up on her, and it twisted in her stomach when she got home. That ache deepened when Billie looked over Amanda’s shoulder, clearly seeking out her father, and Jesse innocently asked, “When’s Daddy coming home?”
He came home. Of course he did.
Sonny had proved to her time and again that he was exactly the kind of man she’d hoped he was, and the sight of him eased the part of her brain that was flashing with images of her own father walking out the door, of waiting for him to come home and blaming her mother when he didn't.
That didn’t mean things were magically okay - the air was stilted between them; he took Billie from her arms but he didn’t press a kiss to her cheek like he usually would - he was hesitant, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed. His attention was on the girls from the minute he walked in the door until the second Jesse’s eyes drooped closed, and in that moment Amanda wanted to retreat - to run from him and this.
Instead she stood in the kitchen, her back to him as she washed up the dishes from the dinner he’d cooked with Jesse. He followed her, standing a few feet away leaning against the fridge, “Amanda,” he said softly, imploringly.
She didn’t turn around, “No, Carisi, not right now.”
“Amanda, we need to talk,” he said, taking a step closer to her, his arms outstretched like she might bolt if he startled her.
“I swore our girls would never see us fighting and I’m not about to break that promise now,” Amanda said, eyes still firmly on the dish water.
“I don’t wanna fight with you,” Sonny said, emotion in his voice that was drawing her in against her will, “I wanna- I wanna fix this.”
“There’s nothing to fix,” Amanda said, looking at him at last, “It’s simple - you left, and it sucks.”
He bristles, that defensiveness from last night creeping up again, “You know how long I wanted this,” he said, “An’ with Billie…”
“What?”
“You know how many times one of us has been in real danger?” he said, “How could I- I’ve come home to our baby and had to wash off blood before I could hold her, an’ I kept thinkin’… We can’t both keep doin’ this. Not to her, not to Jesse.”
The implication of his words felt like a knife and she rounded on him fully, only her determination not to disturb the girls keeping her from raising her voice, “If you’re saying I shouldn’t be a cop just because-”
“No, that’s not what I’m sayin’,” Sonny insisted; he was standing right beside her now, reaching out for her. She didn’t resist as he rested one hand on her arm, “I’m sayin’ that- that I had a chance to do somethin’ I’ve dreamed of for years and at the same time make sure our kids don’t have two parents havin’ guns pointed at them at the same time. I had to take it.”
“You left me, Dominick,” she dropped her head, her voice small and broken in a way that filled her with shame, but he didn’t buckle; his right hand moved to her other elbow, and his fingers were gentle as they slid down her arms until they were resting neatly between hers.
“I didn’t, hey,” he said, waiting for her to look up at him, “I did not. I’m here with you.”
“That’s not what I meant-”
“We talked about this,” he said, and she catches the pain in his eyes, the pain she put there, “We talked about it in circles, you said you were proud of me.”
She tugged her hands from his, not quite managing to keep her voice quiet, “I am proud of you!”
“Then why am I the bad guy in all this?” he asked, stepping back from her.
“You’re not,” she sighed, leaning against the counter and running a hand over her face, “It’s not- I just, you’ve been so distracted and stressed even at home,” she swallowed back the tears she could feel pricking her eyes, “And then we’re at work and I- I know we weren’t partners those last few months, not officially, but I’m used to you being at my side.”
“I’m always gonna be at your side, Amanda,” he insisted, and he was reaching for her again, his hand on her forearm, “Even if it’s not- not the way it used to be.”
He tugged her to him and she let him fold her into his arms; he pressed a soft kiss to her hair as he held her, and when he pulled back his eyes were fixed to hers and his expression was serious, “I’m sorry I’ve been distracted, it’s a new job and it’s hard, startin’ from scratch all over again, not havin’ you in my corner. And then when I’m home y’know, it’s time with Billie and Jesse and every minute I’m not worryin’ about work I’m worryin’ about them and you and how the hell I’m gonna propose when we barely get five minutes to ourselves and that’s usually-”
Amanda was struck by his words and she couldn’t help the, “What?” that escaped her lips - cutting him off, his eyes narrowing in confusion.
“What?”
Amanda’s breath caught in her throat for just a second before she spoke again, hope and love in the tremor of her voice, “You’re gonna propose?”
3. March 2021
Sonny adored being a father - he adored both of his daughters with everything that he was, but as he changed Jesse’s wet sheets while soothing Billie’s tears at 2am, he couldn’t help but feel an extra jolt of admiration for Amanda; those first few years, just her and Jesse against the world. It couldn’t have been easy.
Jesse was on the floor, clean pyjamas on and tears running down her cheeks as she leaned back against Billie’s crib, “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said, curling her arm around her knees.
“Hey,” he looked at her over his shoulder, “You don’t need t’be sorry, okay?”
“I didn’t mean to,” she said, “I’ve been really good.”
“You have,” Sonny assured her, “And it’s alright. Accidents happen.”
“Are you gonna tell Mommy?”
“You know we don’t have secrets,” he said, rubbing a hand on Billie’s back as she whimpered into his shoulder at the mention of Mommy.
“I don’t want her to be mad.”
Sonny abandoned the sheets, crouching down beside Jesse as steadily as he could with a toddler clinging to his neck, “Jess, you listen to me - Mommy won’t be mad, you’ve been doin’ so well, but you’re still gonna have accidents sometimes, and we’re all feelin’ kinda sad with Mommy away.”
“Is Grandpa going to die?” she said, her voice small. Jim Rollins wasn’t an active presence in Jesse’s life; he was a man she’d met really only once, the same week he’d had an overdose in their living room, scaring her half to death. Since that day he’d been in sporadic contact with Amanda and had a handful of video calls with the girls. They’d been building relationships with their grandmother since she moved to New York, but Jim was still just the concept of a grandfather to them.
“He’s gonna be fine. Mommy’s takin’ good care of him,” Sonny said, thinking back to his phone call with Amanda two hours ago, her voice breaking down the phone line, a worry low in his stomach that she might have cried herself to sleep in a lonely motel room.
“Mommy,” Billie wailed in Sonny’s ear, gripping at his t-shirt, twisting the fabric in her little fist, “Mommy come home.”
“Soon, Billie bear,” Sonny soothed, and he looked at the girls - at Jesse’s half-made bed and the tear tracks on her face, at Billie’s red cheeks and her body shaking against him as she cried. Screw routine, he thought, just this once, “How about you guys come sleep in with me?” he suggested.
Ten minutes later he was back in bed, with Jesse curled into his side and Billie’s head tucked into the crook of his arm; it was another twenty minutes before their soft snores filled the bedroom, and only a few seconds later that his phone lit up with a text from Amanda: You awake?
He glanced at both girls; their eyes closed, their chests rising and falling with steady breaths as they slept, and he pressed the video call button, angling the phone so that she could see he had company.
She answered with her head propped up on her arm, hotel pillows stacked behind her, “If you’re calling for-” Amanda started, before she spotted the girls and the sleepy smirk on her face changed into something softer. She lowered her voice to a whisper, “What’re they doing in with you?”
“We’re all missin’ you,” Sonny said softly, “And havin’ a rough night.”
“What’s going on?” she whispered, concern clouding her features, adding to the sadness he could already see clinging to her.
“Jesse had an accident,” he said, “An’ she didn’t wanna wake me so she tried to change her sheets herself,” he sighed, “Then Billie woke up and she was shouting for you and-”
Amanda frowned, “I’m sorry, I should be there.”
“No, don’t apologise,” he said, “You're where you need to be. They’re really missin’ you, but they’re fine, I don’t want you thinkin’ you need to rush back, I got this, they just-”
“I know you’ve got it,” Amanda said, “But I still miss them every minute. You too.”
“It’s only for now,” Sonny reminded her, “How are you holdin’ up?”
“I can’t sleep,” she admitted, “The bed’s too big and no one’s stealing my blankets and… I’m just- I don’t know how to do this, Dominick. Be here for him, get through this.”
“There’s nothin’ you can’t handle, an’ I’m here for you to lean on when you need me.”
The smile she gives him, thankful but a little uncertain, adds to the growing ache in his heart - the physical distance between them is hard, but what’s harder is knowing she’s struggling and he’s not there with her. But they’d agreed - when she got the call, interrupting their first moment alone in days, and during the frantic drive from his office to their apartment so she could pack her things - it didn’t make sense for him to go with her, to sit at the bedside of a man he’d only met once, and disrupt the girls and their routine by leaving them with either of their grandmothers.
“Hey,” he whispered, moving the phone a little closer so that it was only his face on the screen, “I love you.”
“I love you too,” she said, “Stay on the line?”
They continued to murmur to each other and shared wistful smiles before they drifted off to sleep, and it was almost - almost - as though she she were here with him. When he woke in the morning the call had ended; his phone battery was at a meagre 2% and Frannie had climbed up alongside Billie, pinning his legs to bed with half of her body weight. Before he extracted himself to plug his phone in he took a quick photo to send to Amanda, Bed still feels empty.
4. October 2021
It was strange, Nick Amaro back in the squad room like he’d never left. There was so much that had changed since they’d last seen each other and though they’d kept in regular contact at first, with one thing and another it had gotten away from them; there was so much he didn’t know about her life, and so much she no longer knew about his.
Amanda wasn’t quite able to contain her surprise he when he told her he’d married Cynthia, her mouth dropping open before she smiled at him. He talked proudly, happily, about his blended family, and Amanda realised they had more in common than she thought, even years and miles apart.
“And you have, uh, two girls now?” Nick asked, confirming what he must have picked up from the photo on her desk - one Sonny had taken on the Carisis’ back porch that summer.
“Yeah,” she said, a proud smile on her face, “Jesse’s five and Billie’s two.”
“Billie Rollins,” Nick said with a smile, “She’s gonna be a jazz musician or something.”
Amanda turned to look at him, watching his expression as she corrected him, “It’s, um, it’s Billie Carisi, actually.”
It was Nick’s turn to look surprised, his eyes widening as he worked out what she meant, “Carisi? As in-”
“Yeah,” Amanda curled her arms around herself, suddenly feeling defensive, like Nick’s opinion could change things.
He bit his lip in consideration before he answered, but whatever criticism she was expecting didn’t come, just a raised eyebrow and the beginnings of a smirk, “And the two of you?”
“Married almost a year now,” she said - and that was proud, too. She gestured vaguely to the rings on her finger, the simple engagement ring that had once belonged to Sonny’s grandmother and the wedding band he’d slipped onto her finger in the courthouse last November, a perfect match for the one on his own hand.
Nick nodded; it was clearly not a development he’d expected but Amanda saw something like approval in his face - like he knew how good Sonny had been for her, for her daughters, “So should I be calling you Detective Carisi?” he said with a laugh.
“No, no definitely not,” Amanda laughed along with him, “It’s still Rollins, at least as far as work’s concerned.”
Once the case had wrapped up - the Ian Ridley part, anyway - Amanda invited Nick over to really see the life she’d built since he’d left. She was a different person now than she’d been back then; she’d grown so much, and a part of her - the part of her that had clung to Nick Amaro like a life raft while she was cascading through the roughest storm her turbulent life had thrown at her - wanted to show him that, wanted him to see for himself who she’d become.
He took one look at Billie, shyly waving from her mother’s arms when Amanda answered the door, and said with a laugh, “Yeah, she’s a Carisi for sure.”
Billie was still the image of her father - Sonny’s parents had shown Amanda dozens of childhood photos of him and she saw Billie in every one. There was definitely no denying where she’d come from - and Amanda still loved that, still loved looking in her baby’s eyes and seeing her husband’s reflected back at her.
“I couldn’t picture it,” Nick said later, while Sonny was tucking the girls into bed, “You and him.”
“Why?” she said it defensively, but Nick waved her off.
“Because he’s Carisi, and you used to hate him,” Nick shrugged, holding up a hand before she could argue, “But it works. The two of you.”
There was a kind of smile that thinking of Sonny, of their journey together, still brought to Amanda’s face even now, and she felt it spreading across her face as Nick spoke, “We didn’t plan it,” she admitted, “One day we were just friends, then everything changed.”
5. January 2022
Staying up until 1am tying balloons and hanging up banners was not necessarily the way Sonny would’ve chosen to spend his first night alone with his wife in over a week, but there was a little girl down the hall that he would gladly walk through hell and back for, so really a couple of hours putting up party decorations wasn’t much of a sacrifice.
Amanda handed him a balloon to tie off and nodded towards the clock, letting them know they were well into January 18th, “How do we have a three-year-old?” she said, shaking her head.
“We have a six-year-old too,” he said with a shrug; having a first grader definitely made him feel older than curling up on the couch watching Paw Patrol with their pre-schooler did.
“You know what I mean,” she said, nudging him gently in the ribs, “Three years and nine months since you and I started this.”
He finished tying off the balloon - pink - and wound ribbon around it, tying it to two others - yellow and white, “Technically Billie was premature so it’s actually more like-”
“Carisi.”
“What?” he let go of the balloons and leaned in to kiss her, “I get it, three years an’ nine months since I rocked your world so much you-”
“You’re heading for never having your world rocked again,” she said, but she closed the gap between them anyway, pressing her lips to his for a brief moment before they heard a shout from the girls’ bedroom. She pulled back with a smile, “I’ll go check on her.”
She turned before she reached the bedroom, looking back at him, “But if you finish putting those balloons up I might reconsider,” she said, flashing him a smirk over her shoulder as she slipped out of the room.
Billie was up before the sun; Sonny could hear her in her bedroom, a thud that told him she’d leapt from her bed to the ground - probably after bouncing on it despite the number of times she’d been warned not to since she’d transitioned from her crib - followed by excitable yells that were getting louder as Jesse joined in.
Amanda unwound her arm from around him with a groan, “What time is it?” she murmured, rolling onto her back with her eyes firmly closed. Sonny reached out for his phone, squinting at the time, “Almost six.”
“We should’ve gone to sleep earlier,” Amanda murmured, but the hand that crept its way back across his chest told him she didn’t really mean it.
Sonny rested a hand on top of hers, letting his eyes slip closed again, “Maybe if we just lay here she’ll think we’re asleep,” he suggested.
No such luck, of course. The yelling only grew louder - the girls’ bedroom door flying open with thud, the clunk of the door knob hitting the wall, and then a screech of, “Balloons, Jesse!” that signalled another twelve seconds before their bedroom door opened, Billie crashing through it. Through half-open eyes Sonny saw Jesse’s hand, poised to knock on the door before her sister had raced into the room.
“It’s my birthday!”
“Yeah it is,” Sonny said, pushing himself up, Amanda’s hand dropping away as she did the same, “Happy Birthday!”
“Come here,” Amanda said, gesturing to the girls, and Sonny’s heart tightened in his chest a little as they climbed up onto the bed, thinking back to a time when Billie was far too small to get up there; when Jesse needed a little help too. They were growing so fast. Amanda hugged Billie close, pressing a kiss to her forehead as she whispered, “Happy Birthday, baby,” and Sonny pushed down that tightness, instead laughing along with the girls as Billie leaned over, eyes wide and pleading for “Birthday waffles, pretty please, Daddy?”
As the day wore on - through waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, dozens more presents than any three-year-old could possibly need, and an apartment full of pre-schoolers, followed by dinner with both sets of grandparents as well as Liv and Noah - Sonny’s mind kept wandering back to that thought, how fast his baby was growing.
His whole world had been completely changed three years and about seven and a half months ago; he’d gone from loving Amanda quietly, painfully, and without hope of ever seeing that love returned - to this. It was even worth the weeks of awkward avoidance that had followed their night together, crossed wires and fearful hearts keeping them from turning that one night into forever, to have everything he’d ever dreamed of.
When Amanda first told him she was pregnant he had been bursting with joy every minute, and he had hoped that they could one day be a family without expectation or promise. But when they tucked their daughters into bed, their grown up three-year-old and their headstrong first grader, he knew. Knew what he had objectively known since he had tentatively leaned into kiss Amanda in the kitchen and she had brought her lips to his in a silent promise that this was forever, what he had known with absolute certainty the second Billie was placed into his arms for the first time - that he had never loved so much as he did Amanda and their children, that he would never be loved so much as he was by those two little girls and the woman who had given him them.
Slipping out of the bedroom, agreeing to Billie’s plea to, “Leave the night light on!” that reminded him she was still his little girl, really, he wound his fingers through Amanda’s, tugging her towards the kitchen.
“What’re you-” Amanda started, but she stopped when she caught the expression on his face.
He dropped her hand when they stood next to the sink, ignoring the dinner dishes he was yet to wash and turning to look at her. This was where they’d taken that leap, and it was also where he’d accidentally proposed. A smile crept across Amanda’s face and he knew she’d realised it too.
“You’re about to make me cry, aren’t you?” she said, a hand reaching for him, her fingers curling around his forearm.
“Nah,” he said, “I just- I just love you,” he shrugged, “An’ them. Our little family.”
“Yeah,” Amanda whispered, pressing her forehead to his, “Our little family.”