Prompt #94: Pre-Canon Rollisi have to travel to Los Angeles for a few days for a case. It happens to be Halloween, and Carisi's ex invites him to a costume party. He says yes — as long his partner can go too. Of course, Rollins will pick some kinda sexy costume that drives him crazy!
Amidst the Sunshine and the Rain
~oOo~
"Los Angeles? Really?" Amanda scrunches up her nose.
"Sorry, Rollins. Just for a couple days. There's a pattern of behavior here, and we gotta go to the source," Olivia says, plopping thick cardstock plane tickets and an itinerary down on her desk with a dull thud.
"Liv, I don't even know my way around New York yet, and I've lived here for four years. You think I can make it across LA by myself?"
"Oh, you're not going alone. You're taking Carisi."
The agitated groan claws its way up her throat, but Amanda manages to keep her cool. "Fine," she breathes, taking the tickets. "Separate hotel rooms, I'm assuming?"
Olivia snorts, sitting down in her desk chair. "Of course. And besides, the sun might do you some good. It's getting cold in the city," She shrugs, opening her laptop. "Now, go tell Carisi the news. Your flight leaves in three hours."
Fighting an eye roll, Amanda nods and leaves the lieutenant's office.
~oOo~
"Hey, Carisi. Go pack a bag."
He looks up from where he's nose-deep in a case file, his finger paused from where it had been gliding across the lines of text. "Where are we going?"
Amanda's brow sets in a deep crease as she slides his ticket across his desk. "Los Angeles."
His blue eyes brighten as he closes the file. "Really?"
Amanda allows herself an eye roll this time to make up for everything she held in earlier. "Yeah. We gotta be at JFK in 2 hours, so I suggest you get your things together."
He looks quickly at his watch and picks up a stack of files, paying little attention to which ones actually belong to the case they're traveling cross-country for, and sticks them haphazardly into his briefcase. "Be back in an hour?"
"Or less."
~oOo~
"You know, I never saw the appeal of LA," Amanda mentions as they're inching their way up the TSA line. "It's dirty, and hot all the time. And everything's so expensive."
Sonny adjusts the strap on his duffel bag where it hangs over his shoulder. "What, you wouldn't want it to be sunny and 75 degrees every day?"
Her mouth is a thin line as she ponders his question. "I didn't… say that. I just don't see what's so great about the city itself."
They reach the front of the line, where the TSA agent takes their tickets. "Well, there's gotta be somethin' about it. I actually know someone who moved out there."
Amanda's raised eyebrows speak for themselves as the agent waves them through to security. And for all her professionalism, she can't help herself. "Oh? Sonny Carisi, born, raised, and probably will die on Staten Island, knows someone who went all the way to the West coast?"
A smile crinkles the corners of his eyes as he pulls his jacket off to set in a bin. "An… acquaintance of mine. Moved a couple a' years ago."
"An… acquaintance?" Amanda kicks off her shoes and tosses them into the bin next to his jacket. "Would this acquaintance happen to be a girl?"
He finally meets her eyes with his own gaze. "It's my ex, okay? We broke up 'cause she was transferring to the LAPD."
"Wait a second," Amanda pulls her bag back from the x-ray machine, sorting through a messy notebook to a cacophony of angry New York travelers whom she was holding up the line in front of. "Is this… Amelia Grace? As in, the detective who we're meeting with about this case?"
He doesn't answer, much to her chagrin, and makes his escape to the body scanner. Amanda groans, cursing airport security for having so many steps, and puts a mental pin in the conversation until they can get through the rest of the line.
~oOo~
"So your ex-girlfriend is in charge of this case in LA, and we're going to meet with her, and you didn't tell me?" Amanda gestures with her coffee cup after they've settled at their gate.
"I didn't want you to get weird about it," He responds around a mouthful of blueberry muffin. "Which, by the way, you definitely are being weird about it."
"I am not!" But she now hears the shrill in her voice, and corrects to a more whispery tone. "All I'm saying is you could have told me. I would've had more time to prepare."
"Alright," He crumples the muffin wrapper in his hand. "Then you should know I gave her a call, and she's picking us up from the airport."
"What?"
"Now you got about six hours to prepare on our flight."
~oOo~
Amanda notices the heat before anything else as she steps out through the doors at the Arrivals level. Whereas New York was bitterly cold in the evenings now, in late October, the sun shines through the fronds of the palm trees and a warm breeze caresses her face as she sheds her fall jacket.
She almost enjoys the distant honking of horns and the unexpected warmth against her skin until she hears a high-pitched "Sonny!" echo across the wide pickup lanes.
A literal goddess floats across the crosswalk, clad in a chic white blouse and the tightest faux leather pants Amanda's ever seen. Her chestnut hair bounces as if the breeze was blowing just for her, and her boots clicking on the pavement make even the officers manning the security line stop and stare at this ray of sunshine-made human.
"Hey, Amelia—oh!" Sonny takes a step back as she barrels into him, her slender arms wrapping a hug around his midsection. He hesitates for a second before giving her an awkward, yet good-natured pat on the back. Amanda turns her head and pretends that a car down the pickup line is suddenly really interesting.
"And you must be Detective Rollins," Amelia says, holding out her hand, and even her nails are freshly manicured as Amanda shakes it with her own, nail-bitten and callused. "Sonny told me so much about you!"
"Oh, did he," Amanda says dryly, knowing without looking that Sonny's ears are going an embarrassed pink at the tips.
"He says you're the best detective he's ever worked with. And he worked with me for a few months!" Amelia giggles, and Amanda can't see the humor in it, but she gives a half-smile and clears her throat.
"Our lieutenant said you're the point person on this case, that you recognized some of the behaviors of our perp."
"Yeah, totally," Amelia responds, her perfectly perky Cali-girl accent lilting over the "l"s and the "y"s. "But let's talk in the car. I'll drop you at your hotel and then you can come to the station this afternoon?"
~oOo~
Amelia was their self-appointed chauffeur (despite how many times Amanda insisted they could rent a car), but that meant Sonny was automatically in the passenger seat. And Amanda had to sit in the back, like a child, listening to Amelia in her bubbly perfection literally fawn over everything Sonny said. He's funny, sure, but this girl was laughing after every single comment he made. Amanda had stared out the window to avoid her constant eye rolls being caught in the rearview.
And now she slams the hotel room door closed—and surprise, the department had gotten them joining rooms—and plops down on the bed. A few days with this woman? Is this her penance for all the bad decisions she's made over her entire life?
She rubs at her face and takes a second to breathe before she hears a small knock on the joining door.
"What?" She says, a little too harshly, when she opens her side of the door.
"Just wanted to make sure you were… okay," He glances around her room but doesn't come in.
She tries to rein in her standoffishness a bit. "Yeah," she sighs, "the time difference is messing with me a little, I guess."
"Well, I hope you can find time for a nap," His eyes glance over the bed, over the indent where her body lay just moments before. "Amelia invited us to a Halloween party tonight."
"Tonight?!" She feels bad for yelling, but tonight is literally in—she checks her watch— 7 hours, and there's a fifty-fifty chance she can make it down to the lobby of this hotel by herself, let alone get anything for a party. "How the hell am I gonna get a costume for tonight?"
"It's… uh…" He trails off, and she finally meets his stare. And it dawns on her that he's nervous.
"It's…?"
He clears his throat. "Amelia says it's an 'anything-but-clothes' Halloween party."
Despite herself, Amanda lets out a snort. "I haven't been to an ABC party since college."
"I don't think I've ever been to one, actually," Sonny shrugs.
And Amanda can't resist. "Amelia never took you to a no-clothes party?"
"You know we dated, like, a couple years ago, right?"
"Apparently. But it doesn't seem like she got the memo," She sniffs. "Oh, Sonny, sit in my shiny California car and watch me be a good detective and come to a sexy party with me." She pitches her voice up and amps up the accent.
"Hey, come on. She's just trying to be nice," He twists his lips into a smile that doesn't reach his eyes, and Amanda realizes that she's actually being a little mean. And that stings her somewhere deep, like an uncomfortable splinter that she just can't reach.
"Okay, okay. We'll go to her party. But we gotta find some not-clothes, like, right away."
~oOo~
She can't believe what she's wearing.
Or, rather, what she's not wearing.
They went to the LA precinct that afternoon, where Amanda had snagged a roll of yellow Caution tape. And in an interesting sort of dance-slash-tumble around her hotel room, she had managed to wrap it around herself enough times to create an impossibly short sleeveless mini-dress. The bodega down the street had been a lifesaver with double-sided tape, and she had paired it with her black police boots that had a little more of a heel. Even so, she squirms, the plastic squeaking against her skin as she tries to move without exposing herself.
There's a knock on the joining door, an echo of earlier this afternoon, and she takes a deep breath before answering.
He's wearing his bedsheet in toga fashion, wrapped around his waist and up over his shoulder. And in a crown around his head—
"Are those real leaves?"
He's unabashedly staring, his eyes skimming down her body and back up again in a way that sends heat spreading low in her stomach. Then he shakes his head, blinking, and his lips turn up in his trademark half-smile. "Yeah, just don't tell the hotel gardeners. There might be a bare patch in one of their shrubs."
It's Amanda's turn to stare at the patch of sparse hair in the center of his chest, the cords of lean muscle winding down his bare arms. "I won't tell if you don't."
"Do you, uh, need me to hold anything for ya?"
"What, you got pockets in your toga?"
"Actually, sort of. Yeah," he laughs, lifting up the draped skirt part of his costume. Underneath he's fastened a fanny pack, right over—
So he's a boxer-briefs kind of guy. They're dark gray, with a logo around the waistband that she can't see long enough to read. And the heat that had settled in her stomach rises to her cheeks as she lets out an awkward laugh and hands over her phone and her hotel key card.
"There," he says, settling the sheet back around his legs, "now you gotta come find me before you leave."
It's finally time for an eye roll, but she's smiling underneath. "We're staying for an hour, max. Then we're gonna complain about jet lag and go find some Mexican food."
"Yes, ma'am," he mock-salutes, his hand brushing the leaves resting so delicately against his forehead. And though he's trying to be funny, something about his willingness to go along with her plan spreads the heat in her cheeks all over her body.
~oOo~
"You sure this is the place?"
"This is the address Amelia sent me."
Amanda's surprised the house didn't have its own zip code. The sprawling mansion, all white marble and black granite, has an entire wall of windows overlooking the Hollywood hills and the glittering Los Angeles in the distance. There's two—no, three different pools around the exterior, a myriad of lights bleeding through the water in shades of orange and purple. The driveway's a veritable parking lot of expensive, shiny cars, and the house itself is overflowing with expensive, shiny people.
Shiny people wearing literally anything but clothes.
She sees a girl in a dress made entirely of bows, the kind you stick on the tops of Christmas presents and then reuse the following year. A man wearing shorts of what appears to be duct tape holds the door open to the throngs of people passing in and out of the double front doors.
And right in the middle of it all, sparkling ensemble of costume jewelry catching the light thrown by the disco ball, stands Amelia herself. Amanda can't help but marvel at how this creature can make the gaudy, giant necklaces that grandmas wear look expensive and tasteful. She's absolutely dripping in glass beads and reeking of effortless finesse.
And she's headed straight for them.
"Sonny! Amanda! I'm so glad you found it!" She wraps each of them in a one-armed hug, smooshing their shoulders together.
"Yeah, uh, we can't stay long—" Sonny says over the deep pump of the music.
"Let me get you two a drink!" Amelia seemingly doesn't hear his words as she gestures for them to follow her.
And would you look at that, the party has its very own bartender—the only one at the party who's actually wearing clothes.
Amelia hands each of them a bright purple cocktail, which she says is the "warlock's brew" with a wink at the bartender, and it's cloyingly sweet but it burns going down. And Amanda savors the real burn in this world of fantasy.
But too soon, her vision goes just a bit hazy around the edges, and she turns to find a peculiar lack of her partner.
"Carisi?" She calls, but she can barely hear her own voice. "Sonny?"
The music seems to swell increasingly louder, and the lights turn blinding as she makes her way through the horde of gyrating bodies on the dance floor.
She needs somewhere quiet. Somewhere where the lights and sounds don't mess with her mind.
She finds her retreat, down a hallway that seems it was once used for "the help".
And in the absence of the pounding music she can hear a conversation around the corner.
"Come onnn, Sonny. You're only here for two days." An unmistakable Cali-girl accent.
"I—can't." In lilting dichotomy, a gravelly voice from Staten Island. A little closer to home.
"Why did you break up with me, huh?"
"Because you moved here."
"And now that you're here, you're seriously saying you don't want to have a little fun together?"
"Amelia, I'm sorry, I can't. You're great, but—"
"But what?"
"You're not…"
A deafening silence.
"I'm not…?"
A deep sigh.
"You're not her."
A beat. "That blonde detective? Jesus, Sonny. I thought you actually liked having fun. She seems like a big fucking storm cloud."
Amanda can hear the smile in his voice when he responds.
"Well, somethin' about the sunshine here is really makin' me miss the rain."
~oOo~
Sonny finds her right where he left her, at the bar with the warlock, a bottle of water clutched between her fingers.
"Hey, where'd you run off to?" She asks, taking another sip of water and hoping she sounds normal.
"I just… had to use the bathroom," He shrugs, pointing to the bottle in her hands and taking it when she offers. She watches the swallows go down his throat, making his Adam's apple bob. Her eyes follow his tongue as he licks a droplet off his lips.
"Hey, I'm feeling kinda jet-lagged," he says, sentiment full of meaning as he gives her back the bottle. "You wanna head out?"
And Amanda nods profusely, already on her phone to find an Uber.
~oOo~
The only sound is the soft ding of the elevator when it reaches their floor. The hall is blessedly quiet, in forgiving contrast to their hell of a night as they make their way past the closed doors and dimmed wall sconces.
They reach their adjacent rooms, but she doesn't ask for the key. Not yet. They instead lean against the outside of the doors, hands on the handles, staring at the blank wall in front of them.
"Sonny, I—"
"I'm sorry," he cuts her off. "Amelia's… a lot. But I think she means well."
"Oh." It's all she can say without letting on that she'd heard his conversation earlier in the night. "Well, uh, I had fun at her party."
"Rollins."
"What?"
"We've known each other for over a year now. I can tell when you're lying."
She huffs out a laugh. "Okay, fine. It was a lot."
He turns his head, rolling it across the beige paint of the door, and she does the same, finally meeting his darkened gaze. "You looked amazing, though."
"You did, too," she tries in vain to shrug off the weight of the compliment. "Quick thinking with the bed sheet." She reaches out to brush her hand over the swath of fabric draped over his chest.
And she's not sure if she pulls him, or if he simply meets her touch as he's met her every thought and feeling and need over the past year, but in seconds his forearms are framing her head and her hand is tangled in his sheet and his face is mere inches from hers. His breath washes warm over her lips, reigniting that fire in her abdomen.
Inch by inch he moves to settle one of his hands on her waist, the warmth and sweat sticking his palm to the plastic caution tape. Inch by inch she reaches to cup his jaw, the scruff meeting her fingertips with delicious friction. In slow motion, she tips her face up to his, and he tilts down toward hers, as if their bodies were magnets, inevitably attracted to each other, forever reaching to unite. She can feel their exhales becoming one shared breath, and a miniscule movement would connect their lips in relieved passion—
The elevator dings, breaking the spell and forcing them away from each other.
He clears his throat. She brushes her hair behind her ears, looking anywhere except for his face. Because she knows, in her sobering state, that if their eyes met again she wouldn't be able to stop herself. And judging by the heavy breaths coming from her left, she has a feeling he's thinking the same thing.
She's self-sabotaging, suicidal when she glances his way with a small smile.
"Goodnight, Sonny."
"Goodnight, 'Manda."
They open their doors in unison, the clicks of the locks echoing down the hall. And she's not sure when they started using nicknames with each other, but the vestige of his mouth twisting around her name stays with her long after their conversation ceases.
~oOo~
They trudge together into the precinct, weekend bags in one hand and files in the other. They had gotten what they needed from LA, accepting congratulations from the captain there on their shared discoveries with smiles that didn't meet their eyes. Amelia had brought them to the airport and sent them on their way with a terse handshake for Amanda and a stiff hug for Sonny.
And though things had become less than amicable between them and Amelia, Amanda and Sonny had found their way back to a tenuous sort of friendship somewhere over the middle of the country. By the time they landed in JFK they were nearly back to normal.
They had exited the terminal to the sounds of a cloudy New York City day: people yelling, cars honking, planes flying low onto the tarmac. Amanda inhaled deeply, noting the petrichor permeating the asphalt—it had rained the night before. And it would do so again. And despite herself and her jet-lagged brain, she had smiled as Sonny hailed a cab.
"You made it back unscathed," Olivia makes her way through the squad room towards the weary travelers. "Any leads?"
"Definitely." Amanda hands her thick stack of files copied from the LAPD to her lieutenant, confident that they can make an arrest with all the evidence presented.
"Nice work, you two. Rollins, my office for a minute? You can help me sort through these," Olivia turns on her heel, Amanda following closely behind. She gives Sonny a quick half-smile over her shoulder as he settles at his desk. And from across the bullpen, he smiles back.
"So," Olivia starts, closing the door to her office. "How was Los Angeles? As bad as you thought?"
"Actually, not that bad," Amanda shrugs, taking the seat across from the desk. "Carisi's… friend… Amelia, with the LAPD, was actually a big help."
"And how was Carisi?"
A loaded question that Amanda almost manages to brush off. "I think… I think I actually don't mind him as my partner. He's still a little green, but he's got a lot of good insight."
"That's good to hear—because we're low on detectives right now. So you're stuck with him for a bit. That okay?"
Amanda turns her head, peering through the slatted blinds out into the bullpen. Sonny is sitting at his desk, laptop open, a few files spread over the keyboard. And as if he can sense her staring, he turns and meets her gaze through the window. A smirk floats over his lips—lips that she very nearly almost kissed not 48 hours ago—and he inclines his head in a nod of acceptance.
"Yeah. I think that'll be okay."
Note: The author of this SVU: Fall in Love story will be revealed in November