A/N: Happy SVU Day! I wanted to get this posted earlier, so there would be plenty of reading time before the new episode tonight, but... life. It's a short-ish chapter again, though. (Most of the remaining chapters are longer.) Sorry to skip over Daphne's birthday party; I know some of you were looking forward to it, and I did plan on writing it at first, but I really wanted to keep everything baby-related and at a different stages of the pregnancy. There is still a party in this chapter, just a different kind. Also, I mention a couple of original characters in this chapter—they haven't officially made their debut in the Devilishverse yet, because their introduction story takes place around the time of the previous chapter. I've had it finished for a while, but haven't posted it because it was a major spoiler for this fic. So, anyway, when you come across some characters you don't recognize: no, you didn't miss anything, and yes, they're there for a reason. :)
CHAPTER 7: Hey Diddle, Diddle
. . .
Their sweet potato was now the size of a papaya, and according to Amanda, she was twice as active in the womb as Jesse had ever been. Twice as stubborn too, her refusal to make her presence known to Olivia becoming a running gag between the mothers. "Think you're just wearing one of those rubber pregnancy bellies so you can steal my clothes and get outta work," Olivia had mumbled, when Amanda grabbed her hand, waking her from a dead sleep, and splayed it on the bump a few nights ago. "Go t'sleep, you big fat fakers."
"What the hell's a biff aff acre?" Amanda had mumbled back, neither of them awake to hear an answer—or to feel the fetus turning somersaults for another half hour, still energized by her mothers' pre-bedtime workout. They certainly liked to wrestle, those two ladies who were always chattering at her.
Today, they were chattering with a lot of other ladies whose voices Samantha didn't recognize, though they seemed to be focused on her, and a new hand settled over her every few minutes. She only liked it when the ones called Mommy and Mama did that, so she kept to herself and napped through most of the baby shower. After all, she was no bigger than a papaya, and the extra attention was very tiring.
"What even is this?" Daphne asked, turning over in her hands the box that sported a blissfully smiling woman next to the Tommee Tippee label. She studied the Actual Size picture of the device within, obviously not reading the fine print. "A baby trumpet?"
"It's a breast pump," said Bella Sullivan, née Carisi, the giver of the gift in question. Sonny had insisted that his younger sister would attend the baby shower, despite having her own brood at home and one more on the way. She was twice Amanda's size and hadn't stopped grazing the snack table since her arrival. Most of the spread—which included a macaron tower in pink ombré, strawberry tarts made to resemble tiny pastry diapers, and a cheeseball shaped like an alphabet block—had been supplied by her mother, whom she'd brought along by special request. Mrs. Carisi was a big hit at parties.
"Mine was a lifesaver with my little ones," Bella added, rubbing her massive baby bump compulsively. "I'd have had a kid permanently attached to both sides without it. Never would've left the house."
"Bella," Mrs. Carisi scolded lightly, a hand on her daughter's arm.
Daphne pulled a face, upon realizing what she held in her hands, and she hastily shoved it towards Kat like she was passing a football with several linebackers in hot pursuit. Kat set the box aside using only her fingertips, which she then wiped down the thighs of her pants to get the cooties off. Maybe the two younger women were made for each other, after all.
Their antics made Olivia roll her eyes and snicker as she polished off one last bite of the fruit salad that was served inside a watermelon carved into a baby cradle. Just wait till they got a load of the postpartum mesh underwear and cotton breast pads Amanda had raved about ("Trust me, babe, I'm gonna be leaking like a sieve for a few months afterwards," the detective confided, rather ominously), and which Olivia had purchased in bulk for her soon-to-be excessively moist wife. Daphne and Kat would probably implode at the words "lochia" and "colostrum."
Baby showers, on the whole, were kind of ridiculous, Olivia must admit—she refused to melt candy bars onto diapers and pass them around for guests to sniff, lick, and "guess the poo"—but she was enjoying herself nonetheless. It was yet another rite of passage as a mother that she had missed out on, until today.
Some of the women were even doting on her, as though she were the one giving birth. The chief's wife, Lamai, and Mrs. Carisi in particular kept shooing her back to the couch whenever she tried to clear paper plates from the coffee table or offered someone a refill. A new mother should conserve her energy, they kept insisting, no matter how many times she pointed out that the baby wasn't due for several more months and Amanda would be the one in labor. "You sweet child," Mrs. Carisi had chuckled, patting Olivia on the cheek. "A newborn is a whole new set of rules. Especially with three other little ones still needing their mama. Once I hit four, I was ready to pack up my bags and move to Positano."
"Gee, thanks, Ma," Bella piped in.
Speaking of the other little ones, today joined by Abby Garland, Sofia and Nicholas Sullivan, and Jesse's best friend Jillian: they had wandered into the living room to stare at the grown women who were currently voicing a chaotic, poorly harmonized rendition of the I Dream of Jeannie theme song, inspired by the Diaper Genie that Amanda had just unwrapped. And, of course, led by the party maestro herself, Daphne Tyler.
When the chorus ended, the kids and the adults faced off a few moments longer. Then Jesse proclaimed, "Y'all need to calm down"—an assessment she and her siblings often heard from Amanda, during their rowdier playtimes—and sauntered over to wedge in between her mothers on the couch.
The other children filtered in after her, each joining their respective mothers (or grandmother, in the Sullivans' case), scattered about the room in whatever seating arrangement they could find. Matilda scaled Olivia's knees like an expert mountaineer, luxuriating in the embrace she was wrapped into; Noah perched on the arm of the couch beside Amanda, assuming the role of sentinel that he'd bestowed on himself since finding out his Ma was pregnant.
"We're bored," Jillian announced, rather boldly for such a shy little thing. That's what a month of after-school playdates and sleepovers with Jesse Eileen would get you.
"Yeah, is the party over yet?" Abby asked, draping against Lamai's chest with a dramatic sigh.
"We're hungry," chimed the Sullivan siblings.
A clamor of names rang out as the mothers shushed their restless younglings, but it was the nannies, Lucy and Sienna, who really rescued the festivities and the children—death by boredom—from an untimely end. The two young women gathered their charges, old and new, for an outing to the park, Jules offering to tag along and help wrangle the septet. She was understandably cautious about letting Jilly out of her sight now, especially with women she didn't know well.
Despite whittling down the guest list to a mere six attendees, the apartment was still overcrowded and a bit stuffy when the park-goers left. Olivia suspected the stew of pregnancy hormones wafting from her wife and Carisi's sister might have something to do with the room's close atmosphere. Luckily, there were only a few presents left to open (a set of plush zoo creatures, with an attachable pacifier, from Kat; a wreath constructed of rolled up onesies, special delivery from Grandmama Brooks and Great-Aunt Ouise all the way in Loganville; and about a million diapers in organic, cloth, and good ol' Pampers, from everyone else), and Melinda Warner was soon besting the entire group at Guessing Mama's Measurements, her lengths of snipped yarn an exact match to Amanda's current belly and bust sizes.
"I don't even wanna know how you did that, do I?" the detective asked, covertly, of the wryly grinning medical examiner. Melinda had done very well about not talking shop in front of the civilians this time around.
"Not even a little bit."
They were in the middle of playing a game called Feed the Baby, which entailed partnering up in twos—bibbed and blindfolded—and trying to feed each other from cups of applesauce with tiny spoons, when Amanda eased off Olivia's blindfold, hushed her with a finger to the lips, and motioned for her to follow towards the bedrooms.
It was a shame to leave while Mrs. Carisi and Bella were driving every bite home with impressive accuracy, clearly in it to win it; Daphne and Kat were bathing in apple goop, squealing and gagging, their hair and faces smeared with golden slime; and Lamai and Melinda were laughing too hard to even locate each other's mouths. But Amanda tugged Olivia insistently by the hand, leading her down the hall and into the nearest bedroom, which belonged to their daughters. She pushed Olivia inside, shut the door behind them, and turned her back to it, a wide, mischievous grin on her slightly rounded face.
"Sweetheart, I know the hormones have you all, uh, hot and bothered right now," Olivia said, and cast a pointed glance at the battalion of dolls lined up on Matilda's side of the room. That should be enough to put the kibosh on any romantic notions the detective might be entertaining. "But I am not having a quickie with you in our daughters' bedroom while the chief's wife is sitting at our dinner table. Suck it up, tiger."
"It ain't that. Well . . ." Amanda paused to reconsider, then shook her head as if dismissing the thought. "Maybe later. Just gimme your hand, hurry. Oh, not like that, hush up. Our kid's all up in here doing Krav Maga or some shit, and I don't want you to miss it."
Olivia gave the baby bump a skeptical look when Amanda gestured to it emphatically. She loved any excuse to touch her wife's burgeoning belly, but the disappointment of not feeling that quickening she so anticipated—so longed for—had started to weigh on her mind. What if Samantha just . . . didn't like her? If a mother could give birth to a child and feel absolutely nothing for it, no matter how hard the child tried to win her love, mightn't the roles be reversed as well? A child feeling nothing for its mother (especially one it didn't share any DNA with)?
The thought made her hesitate, hand outstretched, heart aching. As she had in so many of the most crucial moments of her life, she froze. From the outside, barely noticeable; from within, Olivia felt like she was falling. Her stomach flip-flopped the way it had when she watched Amanda sliding off the edge of that cliff in the Catskills. Only this time, she was the one about to take the plunge.
But then Amanda had her by the hand, guiding it to the bump and giving her something real and steadfast to hold onto. Beneath her palm, cupped gently to the warm swell that had already entirely captured her heart, she felt her daughter stirring. Not quite the flutter she had expected, it took her a second to perceive the glimmer of sensation, and she almost drew back in surprise.
"Oh my— I think . . . " Olivia coasted her hand lower on Amanda's abdomen, seeking out the fleeting movement. It felt like a little fish skimming her palm underwater. Just darting by to say hello. She gasped and pressed her other palm to the undercurve, as if she might catch the little fish barehanded. "I can . . . Wow. Is that really her? It's not just all those pigs in a blanket you ate?"
Amanda scoffed at the mention of the finger-food platter she had decimated within minutes of Mrs. Carisi's arrival. The cocktail weenies had smiley faces drawn on in mustard, to resemble swaddled infants. Kind of creepy, but Amanda loved hot dogs in any form, even when they resembled those demon kids from Village of the Damned. "I only ate three. Plus, four more. And yes, smartass, that is our child, not my gastrointestinal distress."
Tempering the sassy retort with a fond smile and a playful duck-lipped kiss, Amanda rested a hand on the back of Olivia's, and they reveled together a while longer. "She's strong," Amanda whispered, as if anything louder might break the spell and send the fetus into hiding once again. "Might have to call her Samson, 'stead of Samantha, you think?"
Snickering, Olivia wrinkled her nose at the proposed name change. "It's a little masculine," she whispered back. "Might give her a complex."
"True. I guess we'll just have to stick with Samantha . . . " Idly, Amanda stroked Olivia's wrist with her fingertips, making it tickle. She glanced up with a searching expression. "Grace?"
It had been a while since they discussed the dilemma of a middle name—one that didn't represent someone whom Amanda loathed and Olivia recalled with only a painful yearning, not unlike that quiet desperation of wanting to feel her daughter kick for the first time. She had thought it might be a step towards healing, towards forgiving Serena, by passing her middle name and initials on to her granddaughter, a perfect, innocent soul who would inspire only love and happiness in Olivia for the rest of her time on earth. But maybe that was an unfair burden to place on the shoulders of one so very small. Maybe Amanda was right, and the specter of Serena Grace should be put to rest for good.
Just as Olivia started to respond, Daphne's voice sang out brightly from the dining room, "Oh, Livvy Sue? Mandy Lou? Olly olly oxen free!"
"Oh, Lord," Amanda groaned, and nodded in that direction. "We better get back out there before she forms a search party. Or makes up even worse nicknames. I just wanted you to be the first to feel them little papaya legs kicking. Happy baby shower, baby."
Olivia pulled her wife in for one last warm and lingering kiss before they rejoined their friends. She poured her heart and soul into it, along with a whisper of tongue. "Thank you," she murmured, her forehead against Amanda's, hand stealing one more stroke at the belly. "For just . . . for everything."
Amanda pecked her lightly on the tip of the nose. "You can thank me later, darlin'. Nice and hard, all night long."
. . .
