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It’s a mostly dreary December morning when Amanda opens her eyes, shifting slightly as she stretches and tries to fully wake up. Only for the arm draped across her waist to tighten and a grumble to come from her left side.
“The girls are gonna come runnin’ in here any second,” Amanda tells him with a chuckle. She turns her head towards the baby monitor on her bedside table. “I’m actually surprised Nicky hasn’t woken up yet.”
“Maybe he knows we’ve had a long week.”
“Right,” Amanda scoffs, letting her eyes fall close for a moment, slowly falling victim to the soft sheets and the warm body of her husband next to her. Between a rocky case, Thanksgiving at his parent’s - where there was a case of pass the baby and an eight year old’s birthday - December had quickly come upon them and they had few moments to rest .
Almost as if on cue, there’s a slight knock on their bedroom door before it’s flying open and two blonde blurs are invading their bed.
“Where’s the fire?” Sonny jokes, his arms going around Billie as she flops in his lap.
“It’s Christmas decorating day!” Jesse shouts.
In truth, they were supposed to start decorating last weekend - as it’s what Jesse wanted to do for her birthday; but then Amanda had gotten roped into a case so they’d postponed it. And Amanda - with the help of Olivia firmly putting her foot down against calling her in to work again - had done everything in her power to make sure to make it this weekend.
“It sure is,” Amanda replies just as a cry comes through the baby monitor. She turns her head towards Sonny and presses a quick kiss to his lips. “You start breakfast, I’ve got the baby.”
She hears the audible groan from the girls but catches the matching grins on their faces.
Amanda slips out of bed and doesn’t fight the smile as Jesse and Billie start talking over each other about what they want for breakfast. She meets Sonny’s gaze one last time before slipping out of the room and the look there - a sparkle and a grin so full of love - warms her.
She walks down the hallway, towards the nursery and lifts her son out of his crib, gently soothing him as she does so.
“Hey there little man,” Amanda coos, running a hand over his back. “It’s okay.”
She feeds him and changes his diaper before holding downstairs to find the rest of her family already in the kitchen. Sonny turns around as she walks in and wordlessly passes over a cup of coffee.
The fact that this is her life now - waking up in the mornings next to the love of her life, their daughters excitedly rushing into their room, and a little boy filling another spot in her heart - in a house they’re trying to make a home is still shocking to her.
She glances between where Frannie’s head bent over her food bowl, Jesse and Sonny in the kitchen and where Billie’s perched on the chair near the island, with a cup of juice, talking a mile a minute about a dream she had last night. And Amanda feels the love in the air between the five of them as her gaze moves back to Sonny.
She knows that their kids are gonna grow up so differently than she did, feeling so loved and knowing exactly what they deserve. Suddenly she’s overcome with emotion and she tries to secretly wipe away the tears she feels prickling at the corners of her eyes - but Sonny catches her, he always does.
Amanda flashes him a smile, wordlessly telling him that she’s okay, that it’s a good kind of emotion. And the look he shoots tells her that he understands.
“Just know I am not taking you to the emergency room if you fall off that ladder,” Amanda calls from her spot, planted firmly and safely on the ground.
“ I’m not gonna fall ,” Sonny tosses back, clipping another strand of lights to their gutters. “Unless you push me.”
“Thinking about it,” she muses, her tone playful and teasing. “If your son keeps waking us up in the middle of the night.”
“So he’s only mine when he’s in a mood,” he quips, glancing down at her.
“I don’t think you were the one in labor for eight hours,” she tilts her head down, glancing at their son; where he is securely curled into her side.
“Can I have more lights while you’re thinking about my doom or not?” he calls down and she hears the slight chuckle in his voice.
Amanda walks towards the porch where she’d left the rest of the boxes before returning to the ladder where Sonny meets her halfway when she hands them up.
She turns her head towards where Jesse and Billie are glancing around at the decorations and their house, deciding where to put things. “So which one of them batted their eyelashes and got you?”
“What?”
“We’ve got a Chase, a Skye and a Rubble inflatable,” Amanda says pointedly, running a hand over their son's back. “Not to mention the Olaf and Sven, on top of all the other decorations.”
“Maybe they both did,” Sonny replies and she knows if he could see his face, she’d find a blush there.
Amanda smiles, shaking her head. “They've got your number.”
“Yeah well, their mother does too.”
Amanda opens her mouth to respond but she’s distracted by Jesse and Billie calling her for her, finally deciding where all of their inflatables are going to go.
Sonny walks over and Amanda passes over their son before opening up the boxes and laying the inflated around where the girls tell her too.
“You got it?” Amanda asks while Jesse shoves the stake into the ground.
“Yeah,” Jesse huffs out and Amanda hands her another stake for the other side, before tying the string around a third stake, to help Billie shove that one into the ground.
It goes like that, a routine - one she never thought she’d have - of Amanda handing out stakes or tying strings to other ones.
Amanda places a hand on the girl’s shoulders when they’re done, as they come to a stop on either side of her, glancing at their house as Sonny flips the light switch and the inflatables slowly come to life.
The lights hanging, the wreath on the door, the mismatched Christmas inflatables the girls wanted, and the candy canes trailing the sidewalk. It’s definitely not cohesive or aesthetically pleasing as her mother would complain about but it’s them.
As Amanda glances between Jesse and Billie and the smiles on their faces - she doesn’t care. As long as her girls are happy, she’ll deal with their house looking like Christmas threw up.
It’s the first time since she was teenager that she’s even had a house to decorate.
“Just wait until it’s dark out,” Sonny calls, stepping off of the ladder. “It’s gonna look so much better.”
They had finally gotten the new house decorated, most of the rest of the boxes unpacked and sorted, aside from a few stranglers here and there - just for there to be more boxes and totes littering their living room. However this time, all the boxes held Christmas decorations and a maybe too tall tree.
There’s an excited chatter coming from Jesse and Billie as they dig through the boxes; Sonny helping them sort through. Amanda softly sings along to the Christmas music that fills the space as she rocks their four month old. Frannie's fully content to just lay on the armchair over, her head draped over the side, looking over at the girls.
This is a mess she’ll gladly take any day.
“Don’t you think you’ve gone a little overboard?” Amanda questions, walking around an obstacle course of plastic totes that’s sitting in the middle of their living room, along with shopping bags full of new decorations littering the couch and the chair.
“It’s going to be our first Christmas in our new house , Amanda,” Sonny retorts, a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eyes. And well, she can’t really fault him there ; but he’s definitely rivaling his antics for Halloween.
“That it is,” she breathes out.
He closes the space between them, wrapping an arm around her waist, pulling her in for a quick kiss, before also pressing one to their son's head.
It is also the first time in so many years she’s actually allowed herself to be in the Christmas spirit. Sure, last year was a normal Christmas and the first one she hadn’t had to work; but there were so many emotions warring in her head from leaving SVU, getting ready to start a new job - not to mention she’d just discovered she was pregnant.
This is different. Maybe it’s because she knows this is going to be her normal for the future.
“I still can’t believe it honestly,” her gaze flips between Sonny and their son, two sets of identical eyes staring at her. She’s got a husband who loves her, three perfect children, a dog and a house - so many things teenage Mandy Rollins wouldn’t have dreamed of.
“Is this even real?”
Sonny pulls back slightly, his thumb idly tracing circles across her hip. “Seems like it is.”
He smiles and she returns it. Though the tone of his voice tells her that sometimes he can’t believe where they are either. They’ve come so far from that night against a pillar in the corner of a courthouse hallway.
“Now we might want to join our girls in decorating.”
“Before they string everything out on the floor, you mean?”
Amanda walks forward, meaning to join Jesse and Billie but something in a bag on the couch catches her eye and peers inside. “Did we really need new stockings?”
“I had to get one for Nicky,” Sonny says. “And ended up with a new set.”
“Not really a set if they don’t match.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
She raises an eyebrow as she turns to look at him. “And you couldn’t tell Jesse and Billie no to new ones.”
“To be fair though, I think the stockings got lost in the move.”
“So five new stockings.”
“Six,” Sonny responds immediately and at Amanda’s confused look, he reaches into the bag and digs around for one of them.
Amanda lets out a breath as her gaze falls on the paw print on the stocking he’s holding. “I didn’t forget about my other Rollins-Carisi girl.”
She takes the stocking back to put it back in the bag. Amanda starts to reach for another bag; but Sonny snatches it out of the way before her fingers graze it. “Not that one…those are your stocking stuffers.”
“Sonny…I told you, you didn’t -“
“But I did. There wasn’t any way I was going to leave your stocking empty,” he tells her, a twinkle in his eyes. “And you can see them on Christmas.”
“I could just peek before.”
“Not if I hang it where you can’t reach it.”
She smacks his shoulder at that comment before the girls are calling their attention to start decorating the tree.
So the rest of their afternoon is spent decorating their tree; Sonny wrapping the lights and the garland around the tree and taking a break for lunch.
Afterwards, their son goes down for a nap and Amanda sits on the floor in front of the tree with the storage box of ornaments next to her, handing them to Jesse and Billie - letting the girls put them wherever they want, while Frannie lays next to her, head in lap, Amanda running her hand over the dog's back. Sonny drags over a step stool for the areas the girls can’t reach, staying nearby while they climb it.
It’s when Amanda’s hand grazes over a new box that she pauses, sending a confused look over to Sonny who’s just grinning.
“You’ve found it.”
“What?” Amanda asks even while she’s opening the box and gasping at what she finds inside.
Baby’s first Christmas.
2023
She’d done the same for Jesse and Billie when they were born; but in all the chaos of the end of the year, she had forgotten all about it. But it seems as if her husband hadn’t.
“Figured it would go great next to the girl’s,” Sonny whispers as he leans down next to her. He holds out a picture of their son and Amanda wordlessly takes it and slips it inside the ornament.
“Billie and I were with daddy when he picked it out,” Jesse says, coming to a stop in front of Amanda.
Amanda lifts her head and holds out the ornament, just as Sonny pulls two more out of the box. Billie runs off with her own 2019 one while Jesse waits patiently for Sonny to unwrap hers from 2015 - the ornament that holds a picture of Jesse that Amanda remembers Sonny taking that day in the hospital right before Amanda was discharged.
Amanda sits there, watching as Jesse hangs Nicky's ornament right under hers but next to Billie’s; three squares that hold pictures of her babies, on display on their tree, and it suddenly hits her that her first baby is now eight and a big sister to two.
An arm wraps around her and she sinks into Sonny’s side, leaving her head on his shoulder.
“You want to put ours up there?”
Amanda bites her bottom lip as she thinks about the cheesy ass Mr & Mrs ornament that Sonny bought last year. Though if she’s being honest, she doesn’t hate - revels in the idea that this man loves her so damn much and shows it in everything he does.
“I still can’t believe you did that,” she says, pulling her head back to glance at him.
“It’s probably the hopeless romantic in me,” he says softly.
“You really are tryin’ to make me cry, aren’t you?”
“Not on purpose,” he responds, quickly, reaching over and running his thumb across her cheek.
“I guess it comes with the territory of being married to you.”
“Guess you better get used to it then.”
Amanda closes the distance between them and presses her lips to his. “I already have.”