A/N: It warms the cockles of my little fanfic writer's heart to read y'all's comments about how much you love this family and want to be a part of it. ME TOO. Aren't they just darling? I'm glad this story is bringing the joy for some of you. That was my goal. Having said that, very mild trigger warning for mentions of child abuse and sexual assault at the beginning of this chapter. Also, someone asked in the reviews if I was going to finish this story. It's finished. I'm just not posting it all at once, so I have time to edit and such. Happy reading, guys.


CHAPTER 5: Sugar and Spice

. . .

Suddenly the craving was so intense, Amanda could hardly lie still on the exam table. She liked strawberries as much as the next person, but until now she had never salivated over them—well, except when Olivia allowed them in the bedroom, and even then, it wasn't the fruit Amanda was drooling about—never been this tempted to find the nearest produce stand and descend like Godzilla on Tokyo.

It was the damn nurse's fault. Amanda had resented the woman the moment she saw her name tag dangling from the cheeky uterus-shaped badge clip on her candy-pink scrubs: Grace Birdwell, RN.

Of course she would be a Grace, the same name that had caused contention between Amanda and Olivia weeks earlier, when the captain proposed it as a middle name for their daughter. To honor the whoring drunk who had once pushed Olivia down a flight of stairs—karma was a bitch, huh Serena?—for back-talking; had climbed on top of her bleeding, crying daughter and almost strangled her to death; had forced Olivia, already traumatized by the assaults from her childhood and months of rape by her adult boyfriend Daniel, to submit to an unnecessary vaginal exam, essentially raping her all over again.

Amanda was still baffled and, though loathe to admit it, angered by the suggestion. How could Olivia be so damn good at spotting the abuse suffered by others, yet so damn blind at recognizing the abuse she'd endured herself?

"From what you've told me about her relationship with her mother, it sounds like she internalized the belief that she's unworthy, that somehow she deserves the abuse and assaults because her very existence is grounded in them. For lack of a better phrase, she doesn't feel like she's 'good enough' to call it being beaten or raped. It's just part of who she is." That had been Dr. Hanover's take on Olivia's denial, and it made a lot of sense to Amanda. It also broke her heart. Then the psychiatrist had to go and spoil it by adding: "I wonder if it's not a reflection of your own upbringing and experience with normalizing abuse that angers you, rather than your wife's . . . "

Goddamn Hanover. And goddamn Nurse Grace, shoving that name back in Amanda's face. If Olivia had noticed, she didn't mention it. (Of course she noticed; the woman noticed everything.) Nevertheless, it filled Amanda with guilt for putting her foot down so heavily about something Olivia clearly held dear and had shared with such vulnerability and trust.

Mean-Ass Amanda strikes again.

Then Nurse Grace had compared a fetus's size at eleven weeks to that of a large strawberry, and the shame roiling in Amanda's gut had turned to a deep, steady thunder roll of hunger for anything and everything strawberry.

"Wow. I'm a little bit scared to see what you're cooking up in there," Olivia commented, eyeing Amanda's gurgling belly with amusement. She cupped her hand to the small, conical bump that was just beginning to form high on Amanda's abdomen, and soothed their baby girl with her warm palm. "Sounds rather . . . bestial."

"I think that was all me, actually." Amanda looped an arm behind Olivia's waist—the captain had declined the chair Nurse Grace offered, opting to stand at Amanda's side—and gave her a rascally pat on the fanny. They were alone in the room, waiting on the ultrasound technician. She could get away with it. "I am kind of a sexy beast, though. Admit it, baby."

Olivia rolled her eyes with such force, it was a wonder she didn't bruise her brain. "You're definitely a feral little thing, I'll give you that. Sexy? I dunno, I watched you snarf Spam straight from the can the other day, so . . . " But she was giggle-snorting and making lame attempts to dodge Amanda's frisky touch by the time the technician knocked on the door. She snapped to attention like a mustering soldier as the woman appeared, unaware of the interruption or the sudden switch.

"Well, now, that is the kind of greeting I like to see," the tech commented, noting the huge grins that had yet to fade from Olivia and Amanda's faces. If she had looked a little closer, she might have been curious as to why Olivia was so breathless, but thankfully she just shook their hands and asked if they were ready to "meet" the new baby.

"Yes," Olivia said, managing to infuse her whole heart and soul into that one tiny word. If Amanda wasn't mistaken, there were tears already shining in her wife's deep brown eyes.

"Yep." Amanda brought the back of Olivia's hand to her lips for a quick, habitual peck. "Let's find out who's been giving me heartburn and constipation for the past couple months. I'd like a word."

The ultrasound gel was cold on her bare skin, as promised by the tech, but Olivia's palms, one pressed to hers, the other cradling her elbow, were so very warm. Occasionally Amanda wondered if the captain's physical warmth came from some metaphysical place—that heart and soul she wore on her sleeve, or, just as readily, wore like armor—but it was much too sentimental and artsy-fartsy an idea to dwell on for long.

Besides, after a few moments of the tech probing Amanda's pelvis and abdomen with the transducer, resulting in a series of cosmic blue bursts and black-hole-like pulsations, her baby girl came into view on the mounted screen ahead. This time she didn't care how cliché or artsy-fartsy it sounded: the sight took her breath away. Everything else melted away, and for a brief second—and in that second, a glimpse of the eternal—it was just Amanda, her wife, and their child, cocooned in her heart-shaped womb. Safe, sustained, unscathed by the outside world.

"Is that—" Wide-eyed, Olivia pointed to the monitor, a small gasp indicating that she had spotted the baby's profile too. With that hand she covered her mouth, then her heart, eyelashes batting rapidly. There were definite tears now. "That's her?"

"Well, I can't confirm or deny the 'her' part just yet, but yes, that's Baby Rollins-Benson right there," the technician said, and began rattling off a wealth of information about the fetus's position ("Look at that power pose," Olivia commented, of the baby's casually reclined state) and size.

Amanda barely heard any of it, save the confirmation that everything appeared healthy and normal. She was too taken with her daughter, and Olivia's rapt expression—like she'd seen the face of God—to listen very closely. Olivia would hear it all and later be able to repeat it verbatim, if requested. During Jesse's first ultrasound, alone and terrified about raising a child by herself, Amanda hadn't had that luxury. She had cried from fear, as much as joy, back then. Now the tears that pricked her eyes were of pure excitement, pure love. This time she'd gotten it all right.

"She looks like you," she said to Olivia, knowing it was ridiculous (the blob on the screen more resembled some elusive sea creature of the Nessie variety than a drop dead gorgeous captain), and not caring. It was just the kind of thing her wife would love to hear. "Strong profile. And is that a smirk I see?"

Olivia tried to fasten on a smirk of her own, but ended up grinning instead. "I think it's a dimple. She has your bone structure. And you gotta be flexible to maintain that posture. Wait, is that—" She craned her neck, squinting at the monitor. "Yep, she's giving us a tiny little middle finger. Totally your kid."

"Dork." Amanda shook her head and snickered.

Chuckling along at the banter, the technician allowed them another moment or two of googly-eyed adoration before softly clearing her throat and inquiring, "How 'bout it, moms, would we like to hear baby's heartbeat?"

"Yes," said the moms, in tandem.

After another firm rotation of the transducer that cinched it—Amanda would be making a beeline straight to the bathroom once this checkup was over—the tech pointed to a flicker on the screen, no bigger than the head of a pin, and turned a dial on the ultrasound machine. "Get ready for your new favorite song," she proclaimed, just as a hollow gusting sound gave way to a steady thrumming beat.

"Oh," Olivia breathed, so delicately she was barely audible over the persistent knocking of their daughter's heart. She pressed her fingertips to her lips, eyes welling, and this time the tears fell, wetting her cheeks and the back of her hand like a spring rain sprinkling through the sunshine.

Amanda tried to chuckle at her sweet, sensitive captain—such a damn girl—and instead burst into tears along with her. Rubbing her eyes with the heel of one hand, she tucked the other, still holding Olivia's, under her chin. "Babe, you're making me cry, cut it out," she said, with no real conviction. It had to be the damn pregnancy hormones. But each beat of that precious winking heart on the screen, confirming the life growing inside her, went right to the soul. It was the closest thing she'd had to a religious experience, outside a couple tent revivals as a kid and outside of the bedroom she shared with her wife as an adult.

"Sorry, love." Olivia murmured the apology against Amanda's forehead, bussing her there lightly, anointing her bangs with more tears. "Just . . . look what you made. She's perfect."

"What we made." As far as Amanda was concerned, the baby was as much Olivia's creation as her own. Just because biology hadn't caught up with the changing times didn't make it any less true. She was carrying Olivia's child, end of story. And Amanda would keep reminding her of that for however long it took.

"She is perfect, right?" she asked, prying her gaze from the monitor only long enough to glance anxiously at the technician. "'Cause I had a placental abruption with my last pregnancy, and I don't ever wanna go through that again . . . "

Olivia tensed at the mention of the birth complication that had almost cost Amanda and Jesse their lives. She'd been present when the abruption occurred and Amanda knew for a fact the captain had been reading up on warning signs and likelihood of recurrence in future pregnancies (Olivia often forgot to close out of browsers after googling something on her phone or laptop), though she wasn't saying much about it. Amanda didn't like to bring it up, either, but they would both rest easier knowing their baby wasn't at risk.

"I'm not seeing any indication of that here. Fluid pockets look good and the levels are normal, but placental abruptions don't typically occur until the last few weeks of a pregnancy, so it's something you and the doctor can keep an eye on." The tech smiled and handed over a box of tissues like it was an automatic step in the exam process. "The good news is, placental abruptions are fairly uncommon, even if you've previously had one. And baby's heart rate is excellent, your fallopian tubes and uterus are shipshape, and there's no sign of placenta previa. Everything appears totally healthy. Or perfect, as you say."

"Hallelujah." Amanda gave Olivia's hand a faint squeeze, smiling encouragingly when her wife cast a troubled look from her to the monitor and back again.

"What about . . . " Olivia nibbled her bottom lip, her free hand going to Amanda's shoulder in an almost apologetic gesture. "What about her age? Is that something we should be worried about?"

"You calling me old?" Amanda teased, poking at Olivia's belly with an index finger extended from their conjoined grasp.

"Yeah, thinking about changing your name to Methuselah," Olivia said offhand, though her attention was focused on the technician.

The woman, whose name tag read Mei—not Grace, thankfully—laughed at the subtle barb and scanned Amanda's chart on the computer screen beside the ultrasound monitor. "Medically speaking, forty-one is considered advanced maternal age, but women are putting off having kids for longer and longer these days. If it's a major concern of yours, I can do a nuchal translucency scan. It helps rule out Downs, trisomy eighteen, and the like? Just need to draw some blood and look at a couple more things with the probe."

Amanda sighed, knowing full well what the answer would be without needing to consult with Olivia first. Her DIY strawberry festival would have to wait a little while longer, it seemed. "Sure, might as well cover all our bases." She held out her arm to Mei the technician. "Hit me with your best shot."

"Give me one second to grab the syringe." Mei rolled her chair over to the cabinet full of medical supplies beneath the sink in the corner. "Then I'll get you fixed right up, Ms. Methuselah."

. . .

Later, when they were finally home in bed, Amanda consuming a massive bowl of strawberry shortcake and admiring the sonogram picture of baby Samantha ( . . . Joy? Adélaïde? Josephine?), and Olivia fiddling with the fetal doppler she'd driven all the way to Target to buy "on a whim," Amanda suddenly flapped the blotchy screenshot in the air.

"Oh, I figured out who she reminds me of," she said around a mouthful of angel food and Cool Whip. Olivia might not be able to cook worth a darn, but she put together a mean ready-made dessert. She'd even obliged Amanda's request to sprinkle extra sugar over the strawberries. "Captain Cragen."

"I thought you said she favored me," Olivia murmured, her nose buried in the instruction manual for the Sonoline B, eyes skimming each line with impressive speed. She read books, magazines, DD-5's, and anything else with a central theme and a story arc—even about electronic equipment—like they were going out of style. Such a nerd. An adorable, sexy nerd.

"She does. But, you know, she's bald. And sometimes you and Cragen . . . " Amanda wavered her hand side to side and made an iffy ehh noise, as though, occasionally, she couldn't distinguish her wife from her old boss. "In certain lighting . . . I'm just sayin'."

That got the captain's attention, and she fixed Amanda with one of her signature Benson glares over the top of her glasses. It never failed to turn Amanda on when she did that. Her mouth began to water for reasons other than the dessert she was shoveling into it. Stabbing a succulent-looking strawberry half—she'd actually been saving it for last, it looked so good—with the tines of her fork, she used the fruit wedge to scoop up a dollop of whipped cream, and presented the treat to Olivia's smirking lips.

"Just kidding," she said in her most angelic tone, wearing the expression to match. "Cragen can't hold a candle to you, little darlin'. Even if he had hair and didn't look like a French bulldog in a skin suit."

Olivia snorted, but she accepted the strawberry slyly, gathering it into her mouth with a delicate collaboration of teeth, tongue, and lips. She licked the latter, swiping away an errant tuft of whipped topping, that little pink sliver of tongue every bit as appetizing as any sugar-coated berry. "Mmm. Thanks for that mental image." She reached over and drew her thumb across Amanda's lips, brushing away the sweetness collected there and nursing it from her fingertip. "I'll probably never sleep again, but at least you had your fun."

"Sorry. You got that thing figured out yet, or what?" Amanda sopped up the remaining cream and strawberry mush with the last chunk of angel food cake, crammed the whole enchilada into her mouth, and set the bowl aside on the nightstand. "'Cause I can think of some other electronic devices I'd rather fire up right about now." Seductively, she cracked the bottom drawer of the stand, where they kept their growing cache of sex toys. Soon they would need a bigger drawer.

"I hope you don't think I understood a word of that," Olivia said dryly, her eyebrow cocked at Amanda's full cheeks, then at the nightstand. "But if that's your subtle way of telling me you'd rather have sex than listen to our little girl's heartbeat again, shame on you."

"So much for strawberries being an aphrodisiac," Amanda muttered, only mildly chastised, though she flumped back against the pillows, arms crossed and bottom lip protruding.

"That's chocolate-covered strawberries, my love." The captain plinked at the pouty lip with her fingertip, like the tap of a magic wand. She did sound vaguely like a fairy godmother granting a wish when she added, "And I didn't say no sex. Just let me try out the doppler first, then we can play. With whichever toy your horny little heart desires."

"Ooh, pregnant lady's choice?" Amanda cozied down into the bedding, baring her belly for the tube of aloe vera gel Olivia had at the ready. She shimmied her shoulders and the raised hem of her Van Halen t-shirt (the one with the cigarette-smoking cherub emblem on the front). "Lube me up, baby."

When the green goop—much warmer and sweeter-smelling than the stuff at the OB's office—was smeared on her abdomen, Olivia swirling the probe at half-inch intervals and listening as intently as a fibby on a wiretap, Amanda idly twirled a lock of her wife's hair. Once again she found herself hoping the new baby would have hair that dark and luxurious. And once again she found herself thinking about that damn name. "Kinda funny 'bout that nurse today, huh?" she asked, trying for casual but sounding stagey to her own ears.

"Hm? What nurse?" Olivia only had eyes for the bump she was circling with painstaking care, freezing whenever anything besides static came through the speaker below the handheld display. She frowned each time it turned out to be Amanda's heartbeat or noisy innards.

"Nurse Grace. Birdwell," Amanda said, affecting a snooty upper class accent on the last name. Dammit, why did she always feel the need to do that shit?

"Oh. Yeah." Olivia's frown deepened, though she hadn't paused to listen to anything this time. "Why's that funny?"

"Just . . . her name being Grace 'n' all. Kinda funny coincidence we got a nurse with the same name we disagreed on for the baby. For Sammie. Don't you think?" Amanda twined Olivia's hair around her finger and let the tendril spiral loose. She should have kept her damn mouth shut is what she should have done.

Olivia made a noncommittal noise, barely acknowledging that she remembered the disagreement at all. And why should she? She wasn't the one who had flown off the handle about it. She'd given in to Amanda's demands almost at once. Like always. Even over something as monumental and permanent as her child's name, which she'd carried with her all these years, like so many of the secrets she shared only with Amanda.

"Oh, I . . . I didn't notice," she said, avoiding Amanda's eye. She rotated the transducer again, mouth set in a determined line. Everything the captain did was with such purpose.

"Liv." Amanda tucked the loose strand of hair behind Olivia's ear, fingers trailing along her jaw to her chin, gently lifting. "Maybe we should talk about it some more. I know how important it is to you. I—"

The rest went unspoken when Olivia sighed and absently moved the probe to a spot right above Amanda's pubic hair (she'd gone a little more natural since finding out she was pregnant; pretty soon she wouldn't be able to reach it with a razor anyway, and she refused to whine after her wife to please shave her coochie), a faint chugging sound issuing from the portable doppler. Chugga-chug-chugga-chug-chugga-chug.

Definitely too fast to be Amanda's heartbeat, and much too rhythmic to be gastrointestinal. Olivia broke into a wide, delighted grin, looking for all the world—or just the part of it in their little Upper West bedroom—like an ecstatic five-year-old. "Oh my God, listen to her," she whisper-squealed, and though the tears went unshed this time, they sparkled in her eyes all the same. "She's like the Little Engine That Could in there."

"I think I can, I think I can," Amanda tried out, nodding along as if she were jamming to a catchy hip hop song in the backseat of a cruising vehicle. "Yep. Got a good beat. Maybe she's gonna be a rap artist?"

Olivia giggled at that, and Amanda thought it was the sweetest sound she'd ever heard.

Okay, maybe the second sweetest. The little choo-choo train in her uterus was pretty stiff competition.

"She's gonna be whatever she wants to be." Olivia leaned in to kiss the bump, really more of a gentle slope at this angle, then leaned back on her elbow to speak to it. "Even if she comes out male, we won't hold it against her. As long as she's happy and healthy, that's what matters. Right, Sammie?"

The blood test and ultrasound results had been declared normal, the doctor who went over every detail with them—including all the same questions they had asked Mei the tech, along with about fifty new ones—giving Amanda and baby a clean bill of health. He had confirmed the Valentine's Day due date as well. Everything was disgustingly perfect, as Daphne Tyler said. But the more perfect things were, the more Olivia tended to fret about them, unable to trust that good things were meant for her. It was something Serena Grace had long ago instilled in her. Something she might never fully get over.

And yet.

"Samantha Grace Rollins-Benson does have a nice ring to it," Amanda said in a thoughtful tone. She scrunched at the back of Olivia's neck, lightly prompting instead of trying to make it tickle like she normally did. "Little Sammie Gra—"

Catching Amanda open-mouthed, Olivia kissed her so thoroughly and deeply, she almost forgot what she'd been saying. Hell, she almost forgot her own name, let alone the kid's. She knew right then they probably wouldn't be discussing anything name-related the rest of the evening—not with the way her aforementioned coochie was reacting to Olivia's blatant attempt at changing the subject.

The captain had been especially amorous since the bump started to show, as if her libido were somehow linked to the size of Amanda's waistband. By late January, sweet, by-the-book Liv, who read instruction manuals cover to cover and cried over fetal blips and bloops, would be an all-out nymphomaniac if this kept up.

Frankly, Amanda couldn't wait.

She tucked the name conversation away for later, maybe at work so Olivia couldn't jump her bones to get out of talking about it, and threw herself wholeheartedly into the kiss.

It tasted of strawberries and a pinch or two of sugar.

. . .