A/N: We made it to the finish line.
"So you're still not gonna tell me where we're going?"
"Nope." Olivia smiled with her back turned to Amanda as she continued writing on the calendar, making sure Sienna and Lucy knew where each kid was supposed to be at any given time. Three kids made for a helluva schedule and when it came to schedules, Olivia was old school.
"But I don't know what to pack." The blonde frowned while wrapping her arms around her wife.
Wife. It still felt a little weird to use that word, even three weeks after the wedding.
"I already packed for you. Well, most of it."
"Then why is nothing missing from my closet?"
"It's taken care of. Now stop with the questions, sergeant Rollins, and go to bed. Our flight leaves at eight so we should probably be there by five."
"Dear lord." Amanda scoffed, rolled her eyes and turned around to walk out of the kitchen.
And at ten past five am, dry eyed and basically fresh out of the shower, Amanda looked at the different destinations on the board, studying all the flights leaving at or around eight.
"See something you like?" Olivia asked next to her.
"I've heard Dayton is beautiful this time of year."
"Looking at the wrong board, babe."
"Oh." She was too tired to realize that she'd been looking at domestic flights and not the international ones.
"Fine, I'll put you out of your misery. Flight 1493"
Amanda squinted her eyes until Olivia got too impatient, took off her glasses and put them on her.
"Liv... That's..."
"Thailand."
"We're going to Asia." The blonde stared wide eyed at the board before she turned to look at her wife.
"Yup."
"You're taking me to Asia?"
"Mhm."
"Liv... Holy shit!"
It felt completely surreal, and six months ago it would've sounded absolutely ridiculous.
One Saturday morning, a little more than three weeks after that fateful night at Barba's cabin, Amanda woke up to find the other side of the bed empty. She panicked for a short moment before she recognized the smell of fresh coffee and something else, something sweet.
"Mama made pancakes, mine has banana on it." Billie said.
"I... can see that."
"Good morning, hon." Olivia smiled from across the table before she sipped her coffee.
"Morning." The blonde said, sounding weirdly suspicious when she was really just confused and surprised.
But as it turned out, it really was a good morning, and the start of many to follow.
Olivia had more or less slept for twenty-four days.
When she wasn't sleeping, she was either screaming in terror after one of her nightmares or pushing down the food that Amanda forced her to eat.
"I can deal with the sleeping and the nightmares, Liv. But I can't deal with you not eating."
So it became a silent agreement. Food, or being admitted.
The former captain usually spent one hour with the kids when they got home from school and daycare and then it was back to bed after a quick shower. It was all her exhausted body was capable of.
Amanda reminded herself every single day that she had told Olivia that if she wanted to spend the rest of her life in bed, she could.
And by day twenty-three, she had almost accepted and gotten used to their new way of living. As monotonous as it was.
"You made pancakes." Amanda said a little dumbfounded, echoing her daughter's words.
"I did."
"Do you want banana or chocolate, mama?" Jesse asked as she looked up from the coloring book next to her plate.
Amanda didn't answer at first, she simply walked over to where Olivia was sitting, cupped her cheeks and kissed her more intently than she had in weeks. She looked into her favorite pair of brown eyes and smiled. "Chocolate."
After that, a lot of baby steps followed.
First visit to the park, first appointment with Dr. Hill, first meeting with Garland, first time taking the kids to school and daycare, and Amanda's personal favorite, Olivia's first real laugh.
They had been bickering over something in the kitchen when Jesse walked in with a piece of paper. "I made a drawing for school, mama!"
Amanda stared at Olivia with her "we'll finish this later" look as she grabbed the drawing.
"Jesse... Wh-"
"The teacher told us to draw a picture of what our mamas or papas was doing when we're at school."
And there, on the white paper was a drawing of a blonde woman in a police uniform, holding a gun.
Except it did not look like a gun.
"Wow, Jesse... That's so pretty." Olivia said and Amanda could hear the laugh hidden in her voice. "Actually, I think it's so pretty that we should put this on the fridge and you can draw another one for your teacher, ok?"
"Ok!" Jesse beamed and ran back into the living room to get started on another drawing.
Olivia's shoulders were shaking with laughter when she placed the drawing on the fridge.
"Interesting job you got there, Rollins. Is this why you spend so much time at the shooting range?"
"Shut up." Amanda said while looking at the picture and partly covering her face.
And then they both burst out laughing and soon neither of them could remember what they had been bickering about just a few minutes earlier.
A couple of weeks later, Olivia finally managed to talk Amanda into taking the sergeant's exam and the blonde spent most of her remaining time on personal leave to study.
One month before the wedding, she passed with flying colors.
When she got home from work after Fin had shared the good news with her, it looked like Olivia and the kids had robbed a party balloon shop. The apartment was filled with "Congratulations!" and "Love you!"
That night, there were no nightmares, and barely any sleep at all.
By then, life, all though very different from before, had taken on a new and comfortable normal.
The nightmares were few and far apart, and as worried as both of them had been, planning a wedding didn't become the stress trigger they had feared.
Still, even after a lot of unexpected smooth sailing, Amanda had never been more ready to fly away from New York and spend two weeks on a different continent.
"Do you think we'll miss the kids by tomorrow?" The blonde asked when they were somewhere over the pacific ocean.
Just then a baby started howling a few seats behind them.
"Maybe by next week?" Olivia snickered while looking over her shoulder.
Turned out it didn't take long before they both missed the kids and as soon as they got to the hotel Amanda had to talk Olivia out of FaceTiming them. "Time zones, honey. They're all asleep, hopefully."
"Are we selfish for doing this?" Olivia asked while Amanda did a test sit on the king size bed.
"Come here." The blonde said with a smile on her face as she got up, grabbed her wife's hand and guided her out on the terrace.
"I think..." She pulled off her T-shirt. "That we deserve this."
Olivia folded her arms and stared at her with a crooked eyebrow. "Really? We've been traveling for like eighty-six hours. I'm disgusting."
"You can just watch. If you want." Amanda shrugged but the look on her face was unmistakable.
This is what I get for marrying someone thirteen years younger than me.
Amanda stepped out of her boyfriend jeans and turned around. The morning fog made her silhouette look almost unearthly.
Olivia had picked the resort on the island of Koh Samui for several reasons. The private pool just outside the bedroom being one of them.
And as her wife let her underwear fall to the ground, she mentally patted herself on the shoulder for her wise decision and excellent travel planning skills.
"What'll it be, Mrs. Rollins?" Amanda said with a wicked grin as she looked over her shoulder.
"Someday you'll get me arrested for public indecency."
"I promise it'll be worth it."
The water was much colder than expected and the brunette let out a string of curses as she stepped into the crystal clear pool. But as soon as Amanda's lips found hers, she forgot all about the cold.
Excellent travel planning skills, indeed.
"I need to tell you something." Olivia sat down her glass and let her fingers play a little nervously with the stem.
After nine days of nothing but food, sex, wine, books and swimming, she was finally ready to delve into something a bit more serious.
"Ok?"
"I talked to Barba."
"Are you leaving me for him?" Amanda asked, her voice thick with sarcasm.
"Yes, and, after we had wild and mind blowing sex-"
"Ew."
"We kinda came up with an idea."
"Gay world domination? I'm here for it."
"Ah, the jokes just keeps coming today. No, no world domination, but... with my experience at SVU, his experience as an ADA and his political connections, we figured we might be able to do some good."
"I'm listening."
"A bill to get better sex ed in schools with more focus on consent, mainly to prevent sexual assaults in high schools and college. Not just the basics with how to use a condom and the dangers of STDs. There's a lot we could do differently, better. And if we could just prevent a single assault, wouldn't it be worth it?"
"And you're sure you want to do this?" Amanda already knew the answer. She hadn't heard Olivia talk like this in a long time. And she was a little surprised at how much she had missed it.
"Absolutely. I mean, I thought about that hairdresser thing but I figured I could do that on the side." The brunette joked.
"My wife gets to be a total badass and I get free haircuts, sounds like a win win situation."
"But would you support it? Do you think I'm ready?"
"That's two very different questions, Liv. Would I support it? Wholeheartedly. Are you kidding? You would be perfect for something like that. And only you can know if you're ready. If you feel like you are, great, and if it turns out you're not, that's ok, too. As long as you're happy."
Olivia smiled with tears in her eyes. She felt a sudden rush of immense gratitude for everything in her life. Especially the family she had always longed to be a part of.
And none of it would've been possible without the incredibly kind, unbelievably brave and breathtakingly beautiful woman sitting in front of her.
"I love you, Amanda Rollins."
"I know."
A/N: So, that's it for A Little Pretty.
Your reviews have given me so much motivation, and I'm so grateful for every single person who joined me on this wild ride that was supposed to be a simple one shot.
Sending extra love and gratitude to M on Twitter who was the first to read the prologue (Not Alone), and who encouraged me so much while writing this.
Thank you!