CHAPTER 1: Push and Pull

"What?" Amanda pressed the receiver harder into her ear, fingers gripping the black phone in her hand as if it were a life raft.

The strain in her voice must have been enough to alert Kat that something was wrong, as the brunette rookie had looked up from her paperwork to fix Amanda with a confused look.

"Where? Okay." Amanda slammed down the phone and haphazardly jumped up from her desk, her chair zipping out from under her on its rickety wheels.

"I..we…Cari- Sonny he's hurt." The blonde detective managed to get out, a mix of emotions flashing across her usually controlled face.

The commotion caused by Amanda's outburst and her chair crashing into the desk behind hers brought Olivia to her office door. "What's going on?"

Amanda was too busy frantically throwing keys, phone, wallet into her purse and shoving her sleeves into the arms of her navy blazer to respond to her captain. Kat, who had risen from her desk by now, still gripping a pen in one hand, was the one to respond, "Something happened to Counselor Carisi."

Already halfway to the elevator bank, Amanda called over her shoulder, hand clenched tightly around her cell phone, "A suspect stabbed him. Fin's with him at Mercy now." The elevator, perfectly timed for once in her life, opened just as she reached the sliding bronze doors and she bounded in, pushing and holding down the bolded "L" like her life depended on it. Like his life depended on it.

During her cab drive to Mercy General Hospital, Amanda couldn't help but think back to her last interaction with Sonny. It had been almost two months ago – had it really been that long? – shortly after he turned drinks down with her when she'd surfaced in his office after another strained day of Sir Toby's case. Hurt from the perceived rejection, she'd returned to making snarky comments about his new gig.

This last one, she knew, had been particularly hurtful. The two of them had had multiple conversations about Carisi's insecurities about not measuring up to his friends and mentors, ADAs Peter Stone and Rafael Barba. She knew it got under his skin. So why, why did she feel the need when he was confiding in her about another bump in the road on the way to putting Sir Toby away as they were exiting the precinct, did she feel the need to slip in a petty, "Carisi, what did you expect? Just get it done, for God's sake. Do you think Stone or Barba would let the Defense get away with these sorts of things?"

She shouldn't have said it. She didn't want to say it. It felt like an out-of-body experience, with one half of her internally cautioning, 'Don't say this. Why are you saying this?' while the other, fueled by the pain of his recent lack of interest, drove her to say the hurtful words.

Instead of yelling back, engaging in the way she'd hoped he would, he simply frowned, slowed to a halt at the bottom of the precinct steps. The two of them paused on the sidewalk, seeing his face illuminated in the dim streetlights Amanda could immediately see that she'd hurt him. Over the years, she'd become intimately familiar with the changes of his face. As his partner, she'd come to register his facial expressions so well, and he hers, that they could wordlessly communicate with a cursory glance at one another. Etched across his face now was unmistakably pain and disappointment that she would cross that line, when she knew. She should have known better.

But oh, how she'd wanted to hurt him since that day in his office. She felt so stupid, putting herself out there like that. To him, after everything they'd been through. So instead of retracting the comment, offering an apology, she stubbornly set her jaw, eyes flashing steely blue as they met his.

He'd been carrying her jacket, since the June evening was unseasonably warm. He extended the jacket to her and as she reclaimed it, Sonny said a soft, "Tell Jesse and Billie goodnight for me," and turned on his heel in the direction of the subway, despite their plans to swing by her apartment first to tuck the two girls in for the night. They'd been asking for him.

And instead of going after him to make nice, Amanda rolled her eyes, the sting of rejection still burning in her recent memory, and she turned in the opposite direction to return home to her girls alone.

Little did she know at that time, trudging home through the humid summer air, that the next time she'd see or talk to Sonny Carisi would be at Mercy General Hospital, nearly two months later.

"I'm here to see Detec- ADA Dominick Carisi. I'm his emergency contact." Amanda's grip was still tight on her cell phone, her current lifeline to news of her former partner. The bleary-eyed nurse looked up at the disheveled detective and motioned her to a row of pale blue hospital curtains to her left. "Bed number four."

Before the nurse could get the last syllable out, Amanda was rushing down the corridor of dingy linoleum tile, a floor she and Carisi had paced countless times while they were waiting to interview a survivor, a floor she knew Carisi had paced when she herself had been brought into the hospital for complications with her pregnancies. She didn't like being on the other side.

And she's pushed through the curtain, past a stoic as ever Fin, eyes locking on her ADA, her friend, her other half. Unconscious, pale. Not her Sonny. It couldn't be, he looked so fragile, so void of his usual vitality and earnestness. God, why did he have to be so earnest. So patient with her and her girls.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a friendly hand on her elbow, the familiar voice of Fin breaking through her reverie, "Amanda, doc says he's gonna be okay. Took a pretty nasty stab wound to the gut, but luckily we got him here with plenty of time for the doctors to fix him up before he could lose too much blood. They've got him hooked up to some pretty powerful painkillers, said he might be out for a while – it's a nasty cut. He was lucky, a few more minutes and it could've been bad, he must have someone lookin' out for him up there."

Amanda knew Fin was trying to help, but her heart still beating hard in her chest and her breathing still shallow, she whirled around and stuck an accusatory finger into his chest, "YOU. You were supposed to be looking out for him. What the fuck happened? He's a civilian now. You're supposed to protect him, how could you let this happen?"

Fin put both of his hands up in surrender, Amanda got the sense that he'd been expecting this, because his demeanor stayed exactly the same, "Hey, we had no reason to know the suspect was armed. It was a routine interview; the guy didn't have any priors." He patted Amanda on the back of the arm again, "Alright, I need to empty the tank and fill Liv in on what happened. You're on Carisi watch."

Amanda pulled a faded green chair up to Sonny's bedside, reflexively taking his hand gingerly in her own. She was relieved to be met with the familiar sensation of his warm hand – the few times he'd held her hands in his own, she'd always been struck by how warm they were compared to her own. But that was how it was with them, he was the yin and she was the yang. Where she was cold or negative, he was warm and positive. He helped to pull her out of the depths of the dark places she sometimes found herself sinking into and she helped to bring him back down to earth when he was being too idealistic.

Tracing a figure eight softly on his hand over and over again, in a gesture of comfort she'd developed in recent months while helping Jesse fall asleep after nightmares, Amanda felt herself exhale for the first time in nearly an hour. As the full weight of everything she'd almost lost hit her, she folded her head towards the empty space on his mattress next to their intertwined hands. The nubby hospital sheet was rough against her forehead, but she felt better here, the top of her head nestled against the man she loved.

She'd known she'd loved him for a while now. Longer than she'd like to admit to herself. Looking back, it seemed inevitable that she would fall in love with him, which was maybe why she hated him so much at the beginning. Why he managed to get under her skin with the smallest of comments or gestures. Sonny represented so much of what she'd been before the trauma of her adolescence – lightness, hope, generosity, vulnerability. And for so long she hated him for it. But heart still racing against her chest, she realized now so clearly the weight of her feelings for him. She wanted him, needed him, this missing half of hers. So easy to take for granted when he'd been right next to her, but suddenly so crucial after he was nearly taken from her.

"'Manda?" The familiar voice sounded groggy and gruff, but it was unmistakably his. Amanda quickly straightened to survey the face of the patient, moving to pull her hand away, but stopping when his warm fingers closed tighter around her own. She was surprised to see his eyes were still closed, but both of them had developed an uncanny ability to sense when the other person was close. She blamed years of covering each other's sixes in more pursuits, hostage negotiations, and interrogations than she could count.

Amanda cleared her throat, managing to get out a soft, "Sonny." His nickname felt foreign but familiar on her lips. Why didn't she call him that more?

His eyes flickered open and he chuckled slightly, wincing when it clearly caused him pain to do so. "I like it with you call me Dominick. What happened to that?"

He seemed lucid but was clearly still hazy from the painkillers his doctor had pumped into him. The longer he remained conscious, the more he began making sense of his bearings. His free hand floated to pat his abdomen gingerly, the pain it caused him evident in the appearance of creases across his brow. Next, he reached up to his head to run his fingers through his hair, unsettling his already tousled dirty blonde hair.

Suddenly a goofy grin broke out across his face, he turned his full attention back to Amanda whose hand was still firmly clutching his own, while she simultaneously studied his every move.

"I got stabbed! Never been stabbed before." He reached across his torso to pat Amanda's hand comfortingly. The declaration was made so excitedly, like it was something he'd been waiting for for years, she surprised herself by hiccupping a laugh. Amanda realized she'd been crying. So like Sonny – Dominick – to try to brighten her mood at a time like this.

Before she could wipe her tears away, he was there. She knew it had to hurt, but he'd sat up and was gingerly wiping her tears away with the soft pad of his thumb. The feeling of his fingers on her skin sent goosebumps down her arms and stirred up some of the desire she'd successfully suppressed for this man. Despite their location, his circumstances, the warmth blossoming from his touch made her crave more. She wanted him, now. As if being with him would heal her frayed nerves from the shock of the possibility that he would be gone from her forever.

All her tears squared away, he took one side of her face in his hand firmly, fingers sliding through her hair and thumb resting lightly below her lips. "'Manda, I missed you. I –"

But before he could finish his sentence or Amanda could respond, they were interrupted by the screech of metal on metal as the hospital curtain was whisked open violently, causing the two of them to untangle. In zoomed a tiny woman with dark hair who zoomed to the other side of his hospital bed and flung her arms around Carisi's neck. "Sonny!" She almost yelled in a lightly accented voice – maybe Australian? Amanda wasn't sure.

"Melanie, hey it's okay, it's alright."

Amanda leaned back in her chair as she saw this woman, Melanie (who the hell was Melanie? She'd never heard Carisi talk about a Melanie before), catch Carisi's lips with her own before exclaiming, "Thank GOD. I was so worried. I'm so glad Hadid called me. Are you okay? What happened? Did they catch whoever did this?"

Suddenly, Amanda was gripped by the same anxiety that she'd felt from getting that initial phone call from Fin until about five minutes ago. The tightness in her chest intensified as Carisi turned to Amanda and mumbled, speech pattern slightly slurred, "'Manda, this is my girlfriend Mel."

Girlfriend. Mel.

A/N: Let me know what you think! Jeeeeez, can't wait for S22. Seems like it's been forever. Probably doesn't help that I'm compusively checking Google News for Law & Order SVU updates - does anyone else do this? Please tell me it's not just me, lol. Thinking this will be a multi-chapter fic (targeting 3 total). Check in later this week for chapter 2 :)