AN: Here is a smutty flashback reward for all of the Rollisi shippers who had a small heart attack Wednesday but are also kinda confused and annoyed we didn't get the money shot. Even if we never do, at least you know fanfic will take care of ya. Also, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit "Delicate" by Taylor Swift came to mind while writing this. Listen to it if you have no standards (I definitely don't at this point).

This tidbit is NSFW, obv.

PS: Angst is coming (and so is the baby!) because I can't help myself. Consider this my preemptive apology.

this ain't for the best / my reputation's never been worse so / you must like me for me

Five and a half years earlier.

Six beer bottles littered Amanda's coffee table. Three belonged to Sonny and the others were hers, her forth almost empty and dangling from her hand as she sat comfortably on her living room couch. With her legs curled beneath her, her knees rested gently atop Sonny's thigh as both of their eyes focused on the television showing the evening news. A drunk driver had crashed into a convenience store in Brooklyn with a prostitute in the passenger's seat of his Honda Civic. Both individuals were unharmed but sufficiently mortified.

"Poor bastard," Sonny muttered into his beer, eyes bright with amusement as the fifty-something-year-old perpetrator's homely mugshot appeared on the screen.

Amanda quirked an eyebrow. "Karma."

Her phone buzzed on the table; the screen was bright in comparison to the dim lighting of her apartment. It made the message from Nick Amaro stand out perfectly clear: thinking about you. you up? Amanda bit back a grin as she leaned forward to retrieve it, the collar of her over-sized t-shirt falling down her shoulder in the process. She experienced such a sick thrill out of knowing that years later, she still crossed her old flame's mind. Sex had been the cornerstone of their tumultuous half-relationship; Amanda had to assume that she was naked in whatever fantasy now occupying Nick's head three thousand miles away. Truthfully, she couldn't say that she missed him.

"You still talk to him?"

Oh, right. Sonny was sitting very close to her, their sides squeezed together on her couch like they were a single beer-drinking unit. Amanda arranged her face - she was non-plussed, cool - as she glanced over at him. He looked something between confused and disturbed. She shrugged, her shirt creeping even lower down her arm. "Sometimes."

There was a beat of silence before he asked, "about what?"

Amanda fiddled with her phone in her lap. The notification vibrated again, the sound loud between them. "I don't know, stuff."

"Like what kinda stuff?" Sonny pressed.

"I don't know, Sonny," she blurted irritably. "Like stuff you talk about with friends." She added unnecessarily, "like stuff you and me talk about."

"We're friends?"

"Of course we are."

"So that's what we're doin' here? Bein' friends?"

"Why are you being so weird?" Amanda clambered up from the couch, suddenly warm and antsy. She could feel her heart rate increasing as she stalked over to the adjoining kitchen.

"I'm not bein' weird." Sonny stood up and followed her, remaining a few paces behind like he was hesitant to get too close. "I'm askin' you a question."

"Well, it's a stupid question." She yanked open the fridge. The rush of cold air felt good on her hot face. "Y'want another beer?"

"Don't change the subject."

"What subject, Sonny?" She whirled around with two fresh bottles clenched in her fists and set them on the counter. She couldn't meet his eyes, so she focused on popping the tops off of the beers. "God, just... say what you're thinkin' already, would you? You're like a teenage girl with this vague, passive-aggressive bullshit," she scoffed, the words leaving her mouth thoughtlessly. They were sharp, cold, and Amanda didn't really mean them. She didn't really mean them, but... now she felt committed to her role as aloof and annoyed. "You think we're more than friends? You think we're dating?"

"Well..." Sonny cleared his throat. "I mean, maybe..."

Amanda lifted her icy gaze. Sonny looked serious and it made her nervous; she was hoping that he would be stuttering and shy. She curled her fingers around the bottle caps, the jagged edges biting into her palm. "You haven't taken me out on a date."

"I could." He shrugged, standing in front of her in the kitchen. He added earnestly, "I would."

"I don't want you to. I can buy myself dinner," Amanda snapped. She threw the caps away and crossed her arms over her chest tightly. "Sonny, look. I know that in your Staten Island white-picket-fence universe if you have sex with somebody you feel like you should act like you're interested in more than that but, you don't have to," she assured him. "It's just a thing to do. A fun thing to do."

Sonny took another step closer. "I am havin' fun. It's just... I like you."

Her eyes widened in what most would mistake for shock, but really it was terror. Oh, no, she lamented internally. No, no, no. She didn't want to have to reject Sonny in the middle of her kitchen, but now it was a necessity. Now, a line had been crossed. Amanda had turned down plenty of men, but this felt especially painful. That was part of the problem: she felt too many things with him. Best to end it before her heart got all warm and vulnerable and pathetic. "No, you don't."

His brows knitted together. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Tell me how I feel."

Amanda went to turn away from him, to pretend to busy herself at the sink. "I just know -"

His strong hand reached out and gripped her upper arm, preventing her from moving. "You don't know," Sonny insisted quietly. "That's why I'm tellin' you."

Her heart jumped into her throat at the way just one set of his fingers kept her so firmly in place. It didn't hurt, but there was enough force to still her. She shifted just slightly until her lower back encountered the edge of the counter. Her eyes moved from the base of his throat up to his face. "Okay," she heard herself reply.

"Y'know, you're always on me about how much I talk," he went on, letting go of her arm but standing so close to her that there were only centimeters between them. His fingers toyed with the hem of her t-shirt. Meeting her gaze, a smirk pulled at his mouth. "You talk just as much. The difference is, when you do it, it's not really about what you have to say."

Her face contorted in outrage. "Hey-"

"You just like the distraction," Sonny interrupted, his voice low and gruff but somehow smooth, too. "You're hopin' people are hearin' you but not listenin'. There's a difference, you know." His hand slid beneath her shirt, the pads of his fingertips encountering the bare skin above the waistband of her leggings, followed by the warm expanse of his palm as he traveled upward. "When you're hearin' it's all noise. When you listen, there's more."

The hair at the back of Amanda's arms stood up, and not just because Sonny's hand was now enveloping her breast, which was only clad in a thin, relatively useless bralette. Her impulse was to arch into his touch, but she didn't want to give him the satisfaction. "And what do you think you're listening to?"

His hand dipped beneath the swath of lace, freeing the flesh there so he could roll a thumb over her nipple. "I'm listenin' to you bein' scared."

Her breath caught in her chest and she squirmed. "I'm not scared of anything."

"Mm, that's not true," he murmured with a special sort of smugness. His breath ghosted over his lips; his mouth was hovering over hers in an almost-kiss. "I think you're scared of me."

Amanda let out a gasp of laughter, tilting her head back and giving in to the urge to curve upward toward his fingers. "Not a chance."

"I know things about you by now, the stuff you don't offer up to other guys 'cause that would mean you'd be more to them than a warm body." The pad of his thumb continued to toy with her in infuriatingly slow circles. "I know that you brush your teeth with warm water and still have all your old track and field medals under your bed. You take your coffee with a little bit of cream and exactly one sugar. Sometimes you sing Tom Petty to Jesse to put her to sleep. The smell of honey reminds you of your grandmother and nobody's ever bought you flowers, not even a crappy corsage on prom night."

"So?" she breathed. She was trying to sound oppositional, but it was contradicted by the way she strained against Sonny's frame, wordlessly pleading for more. She didn't know what was making her blood run hotter: the way Sonny was expertly strumming her nipple or how he could identify the private pieces of her she hadn't even realized he had been collecting.

"So..." Sonny's hand dropped from her chest so he could set a palm on each of her hips. "That freaks you out." The muscles in his forearms flexed as he gripped her waist and lifted her just slightly so she was sitting on the very edge of the counter. Instinctively Amanda helped him, standing her tip-toes to shorten the distance. "You know no guy would ever turn down fucking you," he went on, his hands splaying over the tops of her legs, his thumbs grazing over her inner thighs. "But what if they learn about all the other stuff and they don't want it, huh?"

Amanda felt a tug of desire in the pit of her stomach at the way his fingers explored but neglected to touch her where she wanted. It distracted her enough to admit hoarsely: "there's a lot of other stuff."

"Yeah..." He lifted a hand to cup her cheek. His thumb grazed over her lower lip. "I've learned it. I want it."

A flush blossomed across her face and chest. Whatever speech she had been silently preparing to keep Sonny at arm's length was failing both literally and figuratively. Amanda raised her eyes to meet his gaze and found that something was different about the color of his - they had gone from bright blue to steely gray. "Then take it," she prompted him quietly, provocatively, before nipping at the pad of his thumb with her teeth.

A hint of a smile flickered across Sonny's features before he finally closed the tiny space between them and kissed her. She let out something like a sigh into his mouth, both relieved that he was touching her and still yearning for more. She spread her legs to wrap them around his waist, simultaneously pressing her body as close to him as possible without losing her balance on the edge of the counter. She felt Sonny's fingers anchor themselves in her hair, his grip tight against her scalp like he was afraid she might attempt to escape. He never handled her like she was delicate - he didn't see her strength or grit as the antithesis of femininity, either.

She slipped a hand between them to palm him through the rough fabric of his jeans, satisfied by the arousal she found there. She felt Sonny exhale into her mouth, then his fingers were tugging blindly but insistently at the waistband of her leggings. With an arm slung over his shoulder, Amanda was able to get enough leverage to lift herself up and allow him to drag the stretchy black fabric down one thigh, then her calf and foot. That was good enough for her: she hooked her bare leg around Sonny again the moment it was free.

Her trembling, anxious fingers fumbled with his belt buckle and yanked at the leather, but Sonny grabbed her wrist and stopped her. Chest rising and falling rapidly in anticipation, she gaped at him, wide-eyed. He licked his lips like he was enjoying the expression of surprised desperation on her face, then hoisted her up off of the counter in one, swift movement. With her feet back on the floor, he turned her around and pinned her against the counter, this time with her lower abdomen pressed into the edge. Behind her, Sonny dragged the rest of her leggings down toward the tiles, along with the lacy fabric of her thong.

Amanda heard his low noise of his approval at her half-naked body, felt his rough palms squeeze her ass appreciatively. She felt high off of his attention; she couldn't help it. "Mm, fuck," she breathed as she leaned back against his frame. She rolled against him, arching her back to press her ass very deliberately into his crotch. "Tell me something," she purred, fingertips reaching up to blindly graze over the stubble along his jaw.

"What?" he replied huskily, a hand slipping to her front. His fingers spread her apart with slow, firm circles.

"At work, ah... at work, d'you think about this?" she gasped, heat pooling in her stomach when he brushed over her clit once, twice. "About me, like this?"

"Y'mean, do I think about bendin' you over your desk in the middle of the precinct?" Sonny murmured hotly into her ear, still toying with her. "All the time."

Maybe that should have bothered her - that in a male-dominated field, her colleague fantasized about her naked instead of admiring her police work. Instead, it made her feel powerful. "Good."

The torturous movement of his fingers stopped and for a second, she thought he was punishing her for being too smug. Of course, Amanda would have turned the tables back in her favor with her sticky-sweet Georgia-peach act - except that never seemed to work on Sonny. She was just about to turn around when she heard the jingle of the metal of his belt buckle. Her heart rate quickened when he dragged her hips back and she sunk her teeth into her swollen bottom lip when he suddenly filled her. Her palms pressed against the cheap formica of her countertops, bracing herself against the force of his thrusts. His grip on her was hard; maybe there would be marks left to admire tomorrow.

Her hair fell messily in front of her face as she uttered his name in a gasp at the deliciously rough way he was taking her. There was no more patience for teasing; he was on a mission. She didn't dare glance over her sweaty shoulder to look at him, even though she loved the sight of his face flushed and eyes dark especially for her. It was almost as if Amanda was afraid that Sonny might read her mind, and even if he had her bent over her own kitchen counter half-naked and inside of her, still nothing made her feel more vulnerable than a man privy to her emotions.

But Sonny wasn't just a man. He was so many other things - a partner, a friend, a trusted confidant...

Her orgasm crept up on her. First it was simply a tight coil at the base of her spine, then it was a hot explosion of muscles contracting and releasing, her arms shaking as she fought to keep herself upright against the counter.

Amanda sealed her eyes shut as the aftershocks coursed through her. This feels too good. The sex. Sonny. Sex with Sonny. Had she ever fucked somebody she actually cared about before? Was that what this was? Her, caring for him?

Nick left for California and she shrugged. Declan opted to stay undercover overseas and she was relieved.

If Sonny disappeared, Amanda's little world would go cold.

She needed his warmth.