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A lot has happened over the past year, both good and bad. There have been a lot of changes, a lot of things for Billie and Jesse to have to process, young as they are. So it’s hardly a surprise that there’s been a change in Jesse’s attitude, too. She’s acting out, pushing boundaries - and Sonny knows it isn’t personal when she folds her arms over her chest and tells him she’s too busy to cook with him, or when she says she’d rather play in her room than have movie night with the rest of them. She’s seven - almost eight, Dad - and she’s been through a lot for a kid her age.
Still, there’s a part of him that’s relieved when she asks if they can go for milkshakes; the part of him that hasn’t been enjoying this preview into her teen years, the part of him that was afraid she wouldn’t ever want to hang out with him again.
The girls’ reaction to the baby was probably the thing he’d worried about the most - except when he let himself think about the day Jesse was born and the way Amanda’s face had contorted in pain and the terror in her voice when she’d realised something was wrong - because he’d always said he was content with the family they had and he had meant it. That hasn’t tempered his excitement; he can’t wait to meet their newest baby, a tiny human that’s half him and half Amanda, who’ll complete their family in ways they hadn’t anticipated - but they’d still both worried about how Billie and Jesse would take it.
When they’d told them - the four of them crowded on the couch with Frannie lying at their feet - both girls had been so excited, chattering away about all the games they could play and all the things they could do together. In the weeks that followed Billie had become a little extra clingy with them both, and they hadn’t had their bed to themselves a whole night in over a month, but she still talked to Amanda’s growing belly with enthusiasm and awe.
Jesse would talk happily about the baby with her grandparents, and would draw pictures with a tiny stick figure with hands that she couldn’t wait to hold. But Sonny has known Amanda long enough to know what it looks like when a Rollins girl is throwing up walls - and Jesse had been delivering a masterclass.
And then, on Saturday, she had squeezed into the space between him and the couch cushions while Amanda was getting Billie ready for bed, buried her face against his shirt, and whispered a request for one of their semi-regular milkshake trips.
He had picked her up from school, rushing out of the courthouse to make it on time, and she’d held his hand the whole way to the diner, talking about her day as though nothing had changed.
It isn’t until she’s got a chocolate and vanilla milkshake (with extra whipped cream and sprinkles) sitting in front of her, that she starts to open up. She’s swinging her legs back and forth under the table in agitation, but Sonny doesn’t complain when her foot strikes his calf unintentionally, not when she’s looking up at him with her bottom lip between her teeth, “I wanna tell you something.”
“You can tell me anything, Jesse, y’know that.”
“I’m excited for the new baby,” she says, “They’re gonna be so little.” She smiles, showing off a missing tooth as her grin widens.
“They are,” Sonny says, returning her smile. “I’m happy you’re excited.”
“But,” Jesse swirls her straw through her whipped cream, melting it into the glass, “The baby’s gonna call you Daddy.”
Sonny nods, “Yeah.”
“From when it comes.” Her shoulders slump as she leans forward onto the table, and all of Sonny’s early concerns come back, the worries he’d set aside in favour of the perils of looking after a newborn return tenfold. And this is being a parent, too.
He reaches across the table to take her little hand in his, “That doesn’t make me any less your dad.”
“It does,” Jesse tugs her hand away, “It’s not fair. You were Uncle Sonny for forever but the baby gets to call you Dad its whole life.”
“That makes you extra special,” Sonny says - and he does feel that way, that there will always be something special about the bond he’s shared with Jesse, the way he grew into being her dad year by year - but it doesn’t soften Jesse’s hurt any.
“No it doesn’t,” she counters, “Billie called you Uncle Sonny too. I’m not special you just got stuck with me.”
“Hey, no,” he says quickly. He pushes both of their milkshakes aside so she’s looking right at him, “Don’t ever say that, Jesse.”
She leans on the table, her arms folded and her chin resting on her hands. She looks so resigned and it’s breaking his heart a little. “You love Mommy and Mommy has me and Billie, but now you get your own baby.”
“I was your dad first, Jess,” Sonny says, slipping out of the booth so that he can move to sit beside her. She sinks into his embrace when he wraps an arm around her, “That doesn’t change when the baby comes, I’ll always have been your dad first.”
Her face is buried against his jacket, cheeks red, and Sonny rubs soothing circles on her back as she breathes unevenly against him.
“You were my first goddaughter, too. You know how special that was? When your mom asked me?”
He was sat on the floor in Amanda’s apartment, his knees bent and baby Jesse lying on his legs, looking up at him with those big eyes. He’d had a long day, a tough case intersected with phone calls from each of his sisters, who were all disagreeing about something he hadn’t wanted to weigh in on at all, and looking down at this miniature version of his partner soothed him, every tiny movement, from the expressions on her face to the way she wrinkled her nose.
“She’s really perfect, Rollins,” he said, looking up as Amanda walked into the room.
Amanda shook her head, but she was smiling as she spoke, “Not when she’s puking on me for the third time. Thanks for helping out,” she said, gesturing back towards the bathroom, the shower she’d been grateful to take when he’d offered to watch Jesse.
He waved her off, “It’s fine. Being a mom isn’t easy, I’m happy to help even a little.”
“You help a lot,” Amanda said with a grateful sigh as she sunk back onto her couch, watching him with Jesse.
He felt her eyes on him as he stroked one finger down Jesse’s cheek, “It’s all good, isn’t it Jesse? What are partners for, huh?”
“Not sure most partners would come over after a long day to cook dinner and take care of my baby.”
“Rollins,” he said, “I don’t mind. I wanna help you out.”
He had left out the way he felt compelled to come over, to see her. The way he missed her. The way his heart had been drawn to hers with a date forever fixed in his mind - the day Jesse Rollins came into the world. The way he had been struck by lightning, watching her, and known that he would compare every woman to her, for the rest of his life.
He left out the things he wanted to say but knew he couldn’t. The things she wasn’t ready to hear, might never be ready to hear. About love, about the way he adored her daughter and loved her, too, with every breath.
Amanda reached over to him, her fingers on his shoulder, waiting for him to look at her. When he did, she smiled, “Would you be her godfather?”
She had immediately pulled back, wrapping an arm defensively around herself like she was preparing for him to say no.
And he’d hesitated only a second, only because he was overwhelmed, only because of all the unsaid things held inside. Then he’d grinned, turning back to Jesse with a renewed awe, “Yeah,” he’d said, eyes on the baby girl who’d captured his heart, “Yeah, I’d love to.”
Jesse leans into his embrace for a moment before wiggling away and pulling her milkshake closer to her; she has one hand wrapped around the glass and is leaning her head against the other as she asks, “Are you my godfather and my daddy at the same time?”
“Well, uh.” He pauses to consider, “I guess so.”
“Will the baby have a different godfather?”
“Yeah,” Sonny nods - although he and Amanda haven’t even had more than a brief conversation about what that’s going to look like yet.
Jesse takes a long sip of her milkshake before she speaks again. “’Cause you’re the baby’s daddy for forever,” she sighs sadly.
“Because I was lucky enough to get to be both for you,” Sonny counters quickly.
Jesse just shrugs. “Who’s gonna be the baby’s godfather?”
“Your mom and I haven’t asked anyone yet,” Sonny tells her. He and Amanda haven’t even had chance to make any decisions beyond the immediate and essential - finding a new place big enough for their family of five has taken precedent over everything else. They’ve barely discussed names yet, which is going to be a whole other lengthy discussion, and possibly an early test to their marriage. The religion question will have to sit on the backburner a little longer.
Jesse moves on from her questioning for a moment and Sonny returns to his own seat as she rambles off on a tangent about which teacher she hopes she’s going to have for third grade, if she doesn’t have to change schools - and another about what kind of school she wants to go to if they do move, and her milkshake is almost completely drained by the time she switches back to their previous conversation, “I got another thing.”
“Okay.”
“You talk to the baby now when it’s in Mommy’s belly,” Jesse says, her mouth twisted into a frown.
But Sonny’s relieved - because this is something he can answer easily, something he did with the girls long before they were his daughters, not knowing it would one day heal unintentional wounds across a diner booth. “I used to talk to you and Billie too.”
“Really?” Jesse pushes up onto her knees, the beginnings of a smile on her face.
“Yeah,” he nods, “One time when your mom was pregnant with you we had to drive a really long way and your mom said you were gonna recognise my voice more than hers.”
He remembers that conversation - the way she had rolled her eyes at his chatter as he told baby Jesse that her mom was no good restricted to decaf coffee - and the way she’d fought a smile when she’d said Carisi, this baby hears your voice almost every minute it’s awake.
“Did I?”
“I don’t know,” he smiles at her, thinking back to the baby she’d once been, the way she’d fit against him, her whole body between his shoulder and his elbow, and the way he’d loved every inch of her, from the moment he first held her in his arms, “But when you were a baby you’d look at me like you were figurin’ out who I was.”
Jesse grins, “When I was a baby I knew you were gonna be my daddy.”
“Maybe you did, you’re smart like that.”
Sonny knew that at four months old Jesse Rollins didn’t really have an understanding of the complexities of relationships or how the people in her life all fit together, and so he knew there wasn’t any logical reason for him to assume she liked him better than most of the adults in the room with her. During the early stages of Amanda’s maternity leave he hadn’t been around as much as he would’ve liked, but once things had settled back down at SVU he had started stopping by a couple of times a week, and maybe he was a little more familiar to her than Fin and Liv and Dodds or any of the other people in the room.
But when Amanda had passed the baby to him he could have sworn she smiled up at him like she was happy to see him there, like she knew he was someone who loved her unconditionally, who’d protect her with all that he was.
And it wasn’t the first time he’d had that feeling - even holding her in the hospital that very first night, while Amanda was recovering from her surgery and Liv had headed out to check on Noah and pick up a few extra things for Amanda now that her hospital stay was definitely going to be extended. He’d stretched his legs out in front of him in the hospital chair and settled the baby against his chest, listening to her breathing.
She had begun to fuss and he had started to talk to her - to tell her who she was, and who her mother was. To tell her all the ways he saw Amanda, to tell her in quiet tones how brave her mom was, how strong, how much he cared for her. Then he’d talked about the baby - she didn’t have a name yet then - about all of the things she could see and do with her life, all of his hopes and dreams for her. And like she was listening to the cadence of his voice, like she was soothed by familiar vowels, she had gone back to sleep, tiny legs pulled up, her whole body barely bigger than his hand.
He felt like he and Jesse had a special bond - like her eyes followed him and she lifted her head at the sound of his voice - like they were interconnected in a way he couldn’t understand. Like he belonged to this little baby who was half Amanda Rollins and half a man who had never deserved either of them.
When they leave the diner, Jesse’s hand slips easily into his and she skips alongside him on the sidewalk - but her brain must still be whirring with all the worries she hasn’t voiced up until now, because when they stop at a crosswalk she looks up at him and says, “You’ll be there when the baby is born.”
It’s another reason she thinks this baby will mean more to him, he can tell from her tone.
But they’ve told her this story before, and he’s sure she can remember at least parts of it. “I was there when you were born,” he reminds her.
Jesse nods, her fingers squeezing his, “Billie too?”
“Not Billie, no,” he says, and he doesn’t remind her of Dr Al and that weird time in her life where she lived at an over-sized apartment that echoed with loneliness and expectations for a life that didn’t feel like this one. Instead, he reminds her of something else, “Because I was with you when Billie was bein’ born, right up ’til Mommy called me to say she was here.”
Jesse’s eyes shine with recognition, and she leans against him as they cross the road. He doesn’t know how much of that day she remembers - whether she can picture his anxious pacing or the false smile on his face. Whether she remembers the bit off curse he’d muttered into the phone when Amanda told him that Al had just gone. He hopes she remembers the way he’d carried her into the hospital to meet her new sister, the way he’d told her how special she was, how lucky the baby was to have such a great big sister.
“Who will we be with when the baby comes?” Jesse asks, tugging on his arm as they get closer to the playground a few blocks from their apartment. “Not you?”
“Nonna’s gonna take care of you and Billie,” Sonny assures her, “Then she’ll bring you both to meet the baby.”
“Then we’ll be a family?”
“Then we’ll be a bigger family,” Sonny says.
Amanda carried Billie Mabel Rollins out of the hospital in the car seat that Sonny had brought her. The one he had collected from the pile of boxes that Al had shipped to Amanda’s old apartment - she’d keep almost everything packed up while she hastily secured a new place, one with enough space for their family to grow into.
Sonny himself was by her side, Jesse’s little hand in his as they walked across the parking lot to Amanda’s car. Sonny had brought that, too - collected it from the parking garage where it had been sitting since he’d rushed her into the hospital - and he helped to get the girls settled in the backseat, buckling Jesse in while Amanda secured Billie.
The newest Rollins girl looked so small - smaller than Jesse had been, he was sure - but she was healthy and safe and loved so much already. Jesse twisted in her own seat, leaving Sonny to grapple a little with the straps; she was so eager to get another look at her baby sister, to stare wide eyed at the newest addition to their household.
“We get to keep her?” Jesse had asked, and Sonny had shared a smile with Amanda before he smoothed her hair back behind her headband.
“You do,” he had said, “Billie and you and Mommy, you’re always gonna be together.”
“What about you, Uncle Sonny?” Jesse said innocently.
Sonny had caught Amanda’s eye, a brief moment of tension passing between them.
Amanda had answered before Sonny could formulate one, “Uncle Sonny’s always gonna be part of our family,” she’d said, looking at him like she hoped she hadn’t just lied to her daughter, like she hoped all the promises that had been passed between them as partners were meant to be kept.
And he’d looked at Amanda when he answered; her unspoken question more fragile than Jesse’s. “I’ll always be there for you,” he’d said, “All three of you.”
Sonny caves without question when Jesse inclines her head towards the playground, and her questioning continues as he pushes her on the swings, “How do you know you won’t love the baby more than us?”
“’Cause I love you and your sister more than anything,” he tells her, catching the seat of the swing between his hands and holding it steady while he speaks, “It’s impossible for me to love anyone more than I love you two.”
Jesse wiggles and Sonny releases his hold on the swing, pushing her gently away from him, always ready to catch her when she returns, “What about Mommy?”
“That’s a different kind of love,” Sonny says, pushing Jesse a little higher, watching her grin before the blue sky behind her, “But I love you, and Billie, and your mom so much it hurts sometimes.”
“Hurts? In your heart?”
“Yeah, kinda.”
“Wow,” Jesse whispers, leaning backwards and letting the breeze catch her hair as she kicks her legs, ever aiming to fly higher.
Sonny’s heart had ached for Amanda Rollins before - ached watching her frightened and in pain as she fought to bring her daughter into the world, ached at an almost-kiss that could’ve changed everything, ached watching another man propose and even more holding her as she shook in his arms in an elevator almost a year later, knowing she was safe with him holding her.
He had never anticipated this kind of ache, though. The thumping in his chest that wouldn’t settle no matter how much time passed - the accelerated beat of his heart that had started the second her fingers brushed against his tie and had only increased when her lips brushed his that first time.
Later, in her room, sheets kicked to the bottom of the bed and Amanda’s body curled into his, he felt that ache in a different way, more pleasure than pain, like joy trying to burst out of him.
She was quiet as her fingers slid across his skin and he wondered for a second if it was regret - if, after seven years of want and partnership and longing and hope, she’d realised this wasn’t what she wanted after all.
But then she had spoken, her voice soft, lighter than he’d heard it in a while, almost awed, “Your heart’s beatin’ so fast,” she had said, pressing a kiss right above it.
“Yeah,” Sonny had whispered back, “I can’t- it’s you,” he had said, words getting stuck in his throat. Too many raw promises for a moment as new and precious as this one.
“Don’t go having a heart attack on me, will you?” she had joked as she’d rested her head on his shoulder.
He brought his arms around her, “Y’know I’m genetically pre-disposed,” he’d murmured against her hair, “That’s not funny.”
“Sorry, Doctor Carisi,” she had said, her fingers moving down his body, grazing his ribs before her hand had settled at his waist, holding him as closely as he was her. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?”
“I’m not leavin’,” he’d promised, and the ache had grown, a push to say aloud what his heart was feeling - all of it, not just the beginning. He’d held it in, let his heart beat out its own demands as he held Amanda close in the dark. Amanda’s eyes had drooped closed and he had breathed it all in - the reality of her here with him, the fading scent of her perfume and the warmth of her skin against his as he lay still, watching her breathe. And when sleep claimed him, too, it did so with dreams that mirrored his reality, so that when he woke up to an unwelcome alarm a scant few hours later, it took him several seconds to realise she was still there with him, their limbs entwined, both of their hearts still beating out an echo of one another.
Jesse ducks under Sonny’s arm when he pulls open the door to their building, looking back at him over her shoulder as she asks another question, though the seriousness has long gone from her tone, the worry that had settled between her brows replaced with a curious excitement once again, “Will we still get milkshakes after the baby comes?”
“Yeah, s’long as you wanna.”
She skips ahead of him, bounding up the stairs two at a time, “What if we move house?”
“We’ll find someplace else to get them,” Sonny says, “Or we can drive back here.”
When they reach the apartment door Jesse stops, hands on her hips and one eyebrow raised in a challenge; she’s an echo of her mother more often than either of them realise, “What if the baby wants to come too?”
“Maybe sometimes they’ll come, like Billie does,” Sonny says, returning Jesse’s look with one of his own - one he’s been working on mastering for several months now, a look he knows he picked up from his own father.
“It was s’posed to be a Jesse and Daddy thing,” Jesse says, a flicker of her earlier sullenness returning.
Sonny crouches down beside her, taking her much smaller hands in his, “And it still will be,” he promises, “Sometimes we’ll do things all as a family, but that doesn’t mean it’s not special when we do it.”
“D’you mean it?” she says, her voice quiet, eyes flicking to the door where her little sister is no doubt unleashing havoc. “It’s special?”
“Course I do,” he reaches up to tap her on her noise, “You and me, we’re a team, right?”
She glances over at the door - it’s thin enough that Billie’s giggles travel through to their ears. Sonny loves that his bond with each of the girls is different, he adores Billie with everything he is, her cheeks pressed against him as she squeezes as close as she can get on the couch and her sticky fingers looping around his when they walk in the street, her ceaseless chatter and the way she throws herself into everything she does - but these moments with Jesse, the first Rollins girl he was able to give his heart to, his shadow in the kitchen and a guiding light home to the life he hadn’t known was waiting for him - they mean everything to him, too.
She leans forward, wrapping her arms around his neck, “We’re a team,” she says and he presses a kiss into her hair, lifting her off the ground as he turns to open the door, “Me an’ you and Momma and Billie, and our new baby.”
When they walk into the apartment it’s clear that Amanda and Billie have been enjoying some bonding time of their own, as evidenced by the glitter scattered across the dinner table and the bright yellow nail polish adorning his wife’s fingernails. He isn’t sorry to have missed out on that portion of the afternoon.
He puts Jesse on the ground just before Billie collides with his legs, and it’s a couple more minutes before he wriggles free and makes it across the room to press a kiss to Amanda’s lips in belated greeting, “Nice colour,” he says, nodding to her right hand.
“You wanna match? I’m sure Billie would-”
“Yeah, Judge McNamara will love that, I show up to arraignment court in the morning with, what is this, death by lemons?”
“Blame your mom,” Amanda says, “She dropped them off along with that,” Amanda gestures to a box sitting on the coffee table, another gift for the baby. His eyes dart across the room to Jesse, admiring Billie’s purple and green nails with theatrical enthusiasm.
Amanda lowers her voice, “She okay?”
He nods, “She had a thousand questions.”
“And you had a thousand answers,” Amanda says confidently, one hand resting on his thigh as he settles beside her on the couch.
Sonny shrugs, “Well, maybe like nine hundred.”
“The rest we’ll figure out together,” she assures him, patting his leg gently before she hauls herself to her feet. “I’m fine,” she says, waving him off as he rises with her, “Your baby’s sitting on my bladder again.”
“Our baby,” Sonny says, not able to muster an apology. She shakes her head at the smile that finds its way on to his face and her fingers graze his chest before she pushes up onto her toes, her own smile meeting his as their lips touch.
“Momma,” Jesse calls out as Sonny’s hands slide down Amanda’s back, guiding her feet back to the floor. They both look over at the girls, Jesse’s eyes alight with joy, “Did you know that Daddy loves you so much that it hurts in his heart?”
Amanda glances from Jesse back to him, her fingertips brushing his wrist, “I had an idea, yeah.”
It’s late, too late for long conversations judging by the way Amanda had been fighting to keep her eyes open on the couch twenty minutes earlier, but Sonny’s stretched out on their bed, leaning against the headboard as he watches her go through her nighttime routine. He loves this part of their lives; starting with getting the girls tucked up in bed, reading them stories until their eyes droop closed and standing for a moment in their bedroom door, thanking God for everything he’s got, and then later - this. Watching her.
It used to be a transition from Detective Rollins to Momma to Amanda. Professor Rollins-Carisi doesn’t have the same shadows of the day to pack away, but there’s still something about it - the intimacy, the vulnerability, the trust; he’s the only one who sees her like this, and now she’s carrying his child; he’s seen the ways her body has changed for their baby, and he’s in awe of her every day.
There’s a glint in her eye when she catches him staring and she shakes her head, “Stop it,” she tells him, knowing full well that he won’t. Not really meaning it anyway. It’s taken time for her to believe that she doesn’t need to hide anything from him; not old scars or new ones, but now she relaxes under his gaze, leans into his touch, revels a little in it, even.
“So,” she says, tugging one of his old NYPD t-shirts over her head - she has claimed all of those, and she’ll say it’s because nothing of hers fits right now like she hasn’t been stealing his clothes for as long as they’ve been together, “This thing, about your heart hurting?”
He ducks his head, avoiding her gaze, “I was, uh, tryin’ to explain how we won’t love the girls any less when the baby comes and it kinda just…”
“You got a way with words, Counsellor,” she says, walking around to her side of the bed and perching on the edge of the mattress, “Anyone ever tell you that?”
“Nah,” he smiles, “Well, one time I gave a speech that made this girl fall in love with me so-”
She kisses the smirk right off his face, and when she pulls back she nudges him over then settles against him on the bed, her fingers spread across his heart.
“It didn’t, y’know?”
Sonny lifts his head, puzzled, “Didn’t what?”
“Make me fall in love with you.”
“Oh? What’s this then,” he rests his hand on top of hers on his chest, tapping his finger against her wedding ring.
“Sonny,” she says fondly, tilting her head back so she can look at him properly, “I fell in love with you a long time before that.”
“Maybe part of you knew,” he says, thinking back to Jesse’s earlier words, “That this was where we’d end up.”
“No,” she sits up, “I didn’t know, it wasn’t- this isn’t fate, Dominick. You did this, you got around my walls and you showed up even when I made it hard and you showed me what I- what I deserved.”
“I just loved you, Amanda,” he says - because that’s what it was for him; when everything was stripped back, everything he did, even through all the heartache, all the missteps and those times he thought he’d lose her in more ways that one, he had loved her. Without expectation, but with hopes and desires attached to it, with dreams of a future he didn’t know whether they’d have, he had loved her. And that hadn’t been hard for him - he’d loved her as easily as he breathed, as easily as he put one foot in front of the other. She thought she was hard to love but she wasn’t, not for him. She had showed up for him more than she even realised, had confidence in him when he doubted himself, had let him see who she was deep down. Everything else had been second nature after that.
“You showed me what love looked like,” she presses on, “You let me figure it out, find my way to you.”
“Well, you’ve never been good at being told what to do,” he concedes.
“I don’t like being coddled,” she counters, reaching out to prod him in the shoulder, “I think I’ve been in love with you since before Billie was born,” she admits, chewing on her lip. That’s not something she’s said aloud before; these things are harder for her than they are for him. They’ve talked about their journey to where they are, sure, but when she was ready to say the word love she had told him that she’d realised her feelings had changed when he left SVU, that she’d been hit with it when she had to watch him go, and that it had built from there until it had overflowed that night at a wedding that never was. She’d never said aloud that her heart was his long before all of that.
“I’ve loved you since Jesse was born,” he says, “And it took you a little longer, but Billie-” he smiles; Jesse’s birth had been a light bulb moment for him but Billie had held his heart in a whole different way, and now it felt like there might’ve been more than one reason for that, “Billie brought us closer to here. And this baby,” his palm rests against her belly, fingers spread wide, “They’re proof of all that.”
“Don’t say fate, again, Carisi.”
“Hey, I never said it the first time,” he jokes, pressing a kiss to her hair, “Amanda, everything changed with Jesse. For both of us. Changed again with Billie, too.”
“You’ve always loved them,” she leans against him, eyes misting over, “Even though you never had to.”
“They’re part of you,” he reminds her, “How could I not?”
“You’re something else, you know that?”
He shakes his head, “You are. I told you, I just loved you.”
“Well, I just love you too,” she says, and they fall into a comfortable silence; she shifts in his embrace until they’re back they way the were that first night - a few changes, some pretty big ones, and that feeling in his chest somehow multiplied, all these impossible realities that he could only have dreamed of before they were here.
Amanda’s hand settles over his heart, but it isn’t beating crazy fast this time - it’s a steady and sure rhythm, for her, for the girls down the hall and the new baby he can’t wait to meet.
And though they fall asleep entwined, when he wakes up there is space between them - space filled with blonde hair and giggles, and before he opens his eyes fully, he hears Jesse whispering. It takes him a second to realise her words aren’t for Billie, but for the youngest Rollins-Carisi kid; he opens his eyes wide enough to see one of her hands pressed to Amanda’s belly and Billie leaning in close.
“He was my daddy first,” she’s saying - not with jealousy or possessiveness; she sounds excited to share her secrets with the baby - “And Billie’s too, but we’re gonna share him with you.”
“And Mommy,” Billie says.
“Yeah,” Jesse agrees, “And Mommy too.”
Sonny pushes up onto his elbow so that he can reach around the girls, his hand settling between them as Amanda blinks open her eyes, Billie gasping in surprise. “We weren’t doin’ anything!” she says quickly, and Sonny chuckles as he sweeps her into his arms while Amanda hugs Jesse close.
“We were talking to the baby,” Jesse says, “I was telling them what you said, Daddy. About when me an’ Billie were in Mommy’s tummy.”
“Oh,” Amanda says with a grin, “He talked to you guys so much, I thought you were gonna come out soundin’ like him.”
“Babies don’t talk, Momma,” Billie says knowingly, but Jesse’s smile widens at the confirmation of his story.
Sonny smiles back at her, “Hey Jess, you wanna help me make breakfast?”
“Yes!” she wiggles out of Amanda’s grip, practically bouncing off the bed. Billie flops face first into the space she’s left behind, snuggling into Amanda with a very clear message - they’re staying put until there’s something to eat; breakfast cooking is a Jesse-and-Daddy thing.
He stops long enough to press kisses to the tops of both Amanda and Billie’s heads and then he’s following his oldest daughter’s voice as she calls out from the kitchen - and he can’t stop the grin that fills his face; this is it, all he didn’t know he’d been waiting on - just them, just love.