AN: Thank you all for your kind reviews and messages. If there is still interest in these two (four... almost five!), I won't be abandoning the Rollisi ship! Honestly, I just didn't want to bore you guys with my little hobby.
Coming up, full disclosure: I stole a bit of dialogue from the "Sheltered Outcasts" episode (one of my personal faves) to set the scene. Nobody sue me, I ain't got time for that.
close my eyes and think of you / go to sleep and dream of you / we don't get to be here long
Four and a half years earlier.
"You want me to smack Carisi around a little bit, make his cover look good?" Fin asked Liv hopefully.
The lieutenant rolled her eyes. "Fin, we had two rapes in Inwood this month. That's why Carisi volunteered to live in that shelter undercover." She added with a smirk, "would you like to take his place?"
Fin held up both hands in wide-eyed surrender. "No, copy that," he assured her before slipping out of her office.
Amanda lingered. Chewing on her lower lip, she watched Liv fuss with papers on her desk. There were anxious words trapped behind Amanda's teeth, threatening to escape. She rocked back and forth on the heels of her boots, knowing that she should leave, but wanting relief from her mounting worry. "Carisi does look like hell..."
"Well, I think he's just trying to fit in. Right?" Liv responded breezily. "If he wants out, he'll let me know himself."
"See, I don't think he would," she blurted, then winced when she watched a shadow cross her lieutenant's face. Yep, she should have left with Fin. God, fuck, why can't I ever just leave well enough alone? she cursed herself internally. "Never mind," Amanda stammered stupidly. "I'm glad you're back, you're the boss and uh, like you said... we just have to trust each other."
Liv's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Exactly."
The next morning, Amanda slid an envelope across the sticky surface of a table at Westway diner. "Here's a letter from your 'P.O.' for Robin," she murmured, then added with a small, sly smile, "we made you the coverboy for Probation Magazine."
Sonny took the document and quickly shoved it inside of his coat. "Thanks," he smirked. With a sigh, he pulled off his beanie, revealing a mass of unruly hair. He carded a hand through it then slumped back into the booth.
She wrapped her cold palms around her warm coffee mug the second the waitress put it in front of her. It was six in the morning and Amanda was fresh off of a brisk run. Usually, she went right home to get ready for work, but that day she had planned a detour: she had offered to personally deliver Sonny his fake probation letter to bolster his cover. It was totally unnecessary - he could have come by the precinct - but Amanda didn't want to share him with anybody. It had been five days since they had been alone together - yes, she had been counting. That was one of the problems with sleeping with a colleague, particularly one who was working a case that forced him to reside at a homeless shelter. Their jobs came first.
Their relationship - whatever it was - was brand new. It was their unspoken, shared secret. Amanda had quickly become infatuated with Sonny, so much so that she often felt like she was losing her mind. It made her nervous and itchy and terrified, but she still couldn't seem to get enough. A few weeks ago, she had allowed him to sleep over for the first time, instead of awkwardly escaping his apartment or having him leave hers at two in the morning. It hadn't been planned; it was the seductive combination of warm, tangled limbs, Sonny's scruffy face nuzzling the crook of her neck while his rough palms mapped out her body like he was doing his very best to memorize it. To memorize her. Amanda found a different sort of need satisfied when his breathing got slow and even, his weight sturdy and sure behind her half-asleep frame. Y'want me to go? he had rumbled into her hair obediently. As usual, Sonny didn't sound angry or even annoyed by her commitment to keeping emotional distance between them. Amanda didn't know what made her shake her head and tell him no, stay that night, but now when she was in bed, she couldn't remember why she ever preferred to be alone.
"How ya doin'?" Amanda asked him.
He shrugged. "Okay. Hungry. The food at the shelter blows."
Amanda nodded and took a thoughtful sip of her coffee. "How are your roommates?"
"Whaddya think? They're all scumbags," Sonny scoffed. Gaze downcast, he toyed with his mug, brow furrowed. "But like, it's weird, y'know? We shoot the shit in between groups and talk about sports and play cards and I find myself... almost enjoyin' their company, which makes me feel... well, like a scumbag."
She frowned. "You want out?"
"Nah. I'm good," he insisted. His eyes brightened as he asked, "how's Jesse?"
"She's good," she smiled. "She's just starting to teethe, which is kind of a nightmare."
"She cryin' all the time?" Sonny guessed, cringing.
"Pretty much, yeah," Amanda sighed.
Sonny nodded slowly. For a moment, neither of them said anything, but it wasn't uncomfortable silence. He sat up straighter, then leaned in, resting his forearms on the table as his hands wrapped around his coffee. "I miss ya."
Like a love-struck teenager, she felt heat rise in her cheeks at his words. "I miss you, too," she murmured, eyes on the liquid in her own cup before she flickered them back up to Sonny's face. He looked a combination of earnest and shy, which was only intensified by how wonderfully ridiculous his hair looked sticking up in every direction. A grin tugged at the corners of her mouth. "Here, you've got, let me..." Leaning in, Amanda reached across to gently tame some of the wilder strands. Her fingers lingered at the gray at his temples before dropping down onto the table once more. "There."
He smiled, then his hand crept across the surface between them to interlace their fingers. They sat like that for awhile.
After they finished breakfast, they both shrugged their coats back on and pulled hats over their ears. Huddled against the cold morning air, they walked side by side, shoulders bumping occasionally. Once they arrived outside of the bustling entrance of the Rockefeller Center station, they stopped on the sidewalk. Amanda stared up at him expectantly through the sweep of her bangs; with only her sneakers on, he was five inches taller than she was.
"We probably shouldn't get on the train together, huh?" Sonny suggested, then added with a smirk, "if somebody sees me... these guys gossip more than teenage girls."
Amanda nodded in agreement. "I'll get on at Bryant Park."
"No, I will. You gotta get to work."
"Okay."
Sonny cast a furtive glance around, then tugged at the sleeve of her jacket to prompt her to follow him into the small alley between a near-by jewelry store and Starbucks. Confused, Amanda stepped aside with him into the dingy space, people moving past them down the sidewalk. She was about to ask what, exactly, he was doing - until his rough palms were cupping her face and her mouth was suddenly occupied by his in a kiss. He tasted like coffee and cigarettes and syrup, all of it warm and exciting on her tongue. Amanda's fingers tugged at the fabric of his coat, simultaneously bracing herself and pulling him closer. She had to actively suppress a whine; she wished he could come over. She couldn't recall the last time she felt so helplessly desperate for another human being, all Amanda knew was that when she was around him, the clouds in her world lifted.
"I'll call ya later," he murmured against her lips.
She pressed closer to him. "Promise?"
He kissed her again, slowly and deliberately. "I promise." His hands dropped from her face to cover hers at his chest. "I gotta go."
Amanda nodded, fingers slowly uncurling their grip on his jacket. "Yeah, alright."
With one last brush of his lips against hers, Sonny left her there, burning hot and fervent despite the biting winter wind.
"Pass me the tape, will ya?" Sonny asked Amanda.
She rummaged through shreds of wrapping paper, bows and ribbon strewn across the comforter of their bed to unearth the tape dispenser. One of the few rooms in their house with a lock, it was the safest place to wrap Christmas presents without fear of Jesse or Luca barging in. Both of them were asleep, but that didn't guarantee anything, especially since Luca had only recently transitioned from his crib to a bed. It had been an interesting process: sometimes she would wake up to him hovering by the edge of their mattress, demanding, get up, mama! at four thirty in the morning. So even though she and Sonny had a lot of things to get through, it was oddly relaxing, sitting quietly with him while they worked.
Amanda carefully tied a red ribbon around a wrapped toy for Bella and Tommy's son, Gabriel. He was only a baby, but she still took care to make the box attractive. Satisfied with its appearance, Amanda set it at the end of the bed with the other completed gifts. Next, she pulled a Lego Duplo construction set from the big bag beside her; it was for Luca. She chose wrapping paper covered in little cartoon penguins to begin to cover the box with it. On the gift tag, she scrawled, To: Luca, Love: Santa. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Sonny's profile, his brow furrowed in concentration as he worked to pick off the backing of a bow. Amanda smiled to herself; he consistently tackled every task he was handed with all of his effort.
"What d'ya want for Christmas?" he asked her randomly.
Amanda set Luca's present next to Gabriel's. "Knicks tickets."
Sonny grinned proudly. "I knew I married you for a reason."
She smiled, too, until she felt a sharp jab in her ribs that made her wince. "Ow, shit."
"What's the matter?"
"I just got kicked in the - ah!" The sensation struck her again and she curled forward around her six-month-pregnant stomach, her face scrunched in discomfort.
"Lemme feel," Sonny said eagerly, shifting closer to her.
Amanda slumped back so her shoulders rested against the headboard, the swell of her stomach protruding. She reached for Sonny's hand and set it at the top of her abdomen, toward her right side. "Feel it? I think that's, ugh, a foot in my ribs."
"Oh yeah, there it is. So cool," he gushed excitedly.
"Hurts," she grunted.
Sonny's hand slowly soothed over curve of her belly, a welcomed contrast to the intense spasm-like feeling taking place inside of her. "Y'think maybe it's time to move some stuff into the baby's room?" he suggested gently. His gaze flitted from her stomach to her face. "I can paint it whatever color you want, maybe put Luca's crib back together..."
She looked over at him: his expression was so eager, so hopeful, that Amanda couldn't help but grin. The nursery had remained empty in the months after her miscarriage; she hadn't even gone in there since discovering she was pregnant again. She knew it was silly, but even six months later with a healthy child rolling around inside of her, she still feared getting her hopes up. She would never forget that feeling of crushing grief, how disappointed and confused she had been after losing that baby. The experience had made her grateful, but wary.
"I still like light gray," Amanda told him tentatively.
He nodded. "Maybe we can go to the store this week. Get some stuff."
After a thoughtful moment of silence, she concluded, "elephants."
Sonny quirked an eyebrow. "Huh?"
She chewed on the cuticle of her thumb nail. "I saw this... cute blanket with little elephants all over it," she admitted shyly. "I thought it'd be sweet to make it, y'know, kind of a theme."
"Okay." Sonny gave her stomach an approving rub. "Whatever you want."
"Those were the most lights I've ever seen in my whole entire life!" Jesse exclaimed as she skipped ahead of them on the sidewalk.
"Your whole entire life, huh?" Sonny repeated skeptically, amused that she thought that was a particularly long time.
Pelham Gardens in the Bronx was the home of the Garabedian estate: a sprawling mansion with gardens that the affluent family decorated lavishly for Christmas. The light displays, nativity scenes, angels and animated figures drew hoards of New Yorkers beginning the day after Thanksgiving. It had taken some convincing to get Jesse to want to go, but once she was on the property, her eyes were wide with wonder. The cold was irrelevant; she probably would have slept there if Amanda would have allowed it. Even by the time they were back on their street in Queens, the five-year-old was still buzzing with excitement.
"Does Santa live there?" she asked Amanda and Sonny curiously.
"No, silly. Santa lives in the North Pole," Amanda reminded her as she fished around in her purse for her house keys.
"That's his Bronx vacation house," Sonny added from his spot behind Luca's stroller.
"Do we have a vacation house?" Jesse wondered.
Sonny snorted. "I wish."
Once she had unlocked the door, they all clambered inside of the warmth of the house. They took off their coats and hung them up, then Sonny freed Luca from his stroller to allow him to toddle around the living room. With a satisfied sigh, Amanda pulled off her gray beanie and smoothed her hand over her hair to straighten her disheveled bangs. Her feet and hips were sore from standing and walking around, but before she could sit down, she was desperate for a snack. She padded into the kitchen and pulled open a cabinet, on the hunt for the container of peanut butter filled pretzels that Sonny loathed.
"Mama, where's my iPad?" Jesse called to her from the living room.
"You left it on top of my laptop on the coffee table," Sonny's voice responded.
"Your laptop's not here," the five-year-old insisted.
"Huh? It was there when we left..."
"Nope."
"Are you really lookin'?"
Amanda rolled her eyes and closed the cabinet door. "They're probably both in our room," she told them, shoving a handful of pretzels into her mouth. She walked out of the kitchen and began to climb the stairs. "I'll look."
On the second floor, she flipped the light on in the hallway, then their bedroom. Instead of finding the space as (surprisingly) neat as she had left it, she was met with a disaster. Everything was ransacked: all of their dresser drawers were open, clothes strewn about haphazardly. Her jewelry dish and stand were both tipped over, as were her perfume bottles - one of them was shattered, leaking Marc Jacobs all over the shiny wood surface. The contents of their bedside tables were displaced all over their king bed, like someone had dumped them out onto the comforter to better sort through the items. It didn't stop there: their closet was a messy tangle of blouses, suits and shoes. Beneath the piles on the floor that the burglar had created, Amanda could see the wrapped Christmas presents she and Sonny had hidden had been unearthed, the paper torn to reveal the boxes.
"Sonny!" she shouted from the doorway.
"What?" he called back lazily from the living room.
Immediately distracted by her growing concern, she ran across the room to the closet and attempted to maneuver over the mess to reach up for where she knew their gun safe was. Her eyes widened at the realization that the old black box was gone, too. "Oh my God," she moaned, dragging her tremulous fingers through her hair. Unarmed, she ran into the hallway and into Jesse's room, then Luca's, then to their bathroom. All of it appeared undisturbed, windows in tact and locked. Nobody was lurking, but Amanda's heart was still racing. She flitted back to their bedroom and assessed the dresser: the majority of her earrings and necklaces were very obviously gone, as was the gold watch she had given Sonny for his birthday. She clutched her left hand, palm pressed hard into the diamond on her ring finger, momentarily thankful that she hadn't left her most precious piece of jewelry at home that night. Next, she dug around the messy top drawers to look for the spare cash they usually kept hidden there - and found that to be missing, too.
"What the hell happened in here?" Sonny's anxious voice came from behind her.
She whirled around on her heel to see Sonny with Luca on his hip in the doorway. He looked justifiably alarmed. "Somebody's been in here," Amanda told him breathlessly. "Almost all of my jewelry is gone, the money in the dresser, your watch... they went through the Christmas presents and the gun safe... it's gone, too."
His eyes widened. "Did you clear the other-"
"Yeah, yes," she interrupted him hastily. "No signs of forced entry. Nothing. Just in here."
"Ah, Jesus," Sonny groaned, roughly rubbing a palm over his face. "What the hell is wrong with people?" he asked rhetorically. He waved her over. "C'mon, let's go downstairs."
Back in the living room, Jesse was rolling around the couch impatiently, blissfully unaware.
"Jesse, sit on the couch with your brother and don't move or touch anything," Sonny ordered, setting Luca down beside her.
The little girl scrunched up her face and wriggled up into a sitting position. "Why?"
"Because I said so," he responded curtly before walking away with his phone in his hand.
"Mama, what's going on? Where's my iPad?" she whined.
Amanda crossed her arms over her chest as she hovered in front of the coffee table. "I just need you to sit tight, alright?"
Pregnant and without her gun, Amanda felt useless. She could hear Sonny in the kitchen, undoubtedly calling dispatch. She milled around the living room, checking the locks on the windows, all of them securely in place.
"Dad said not to touch anything," Jesse sneered haughtily.
Amanda ignored her daughter. Her eyes scanned the familiar space: except for the two missing electronics, everything looked the same. The tree was still upright and adorned with ornaments, the television sat on the stand and all of their framed photographs remained intact. Frannie was lounging on the rug, lazy and unfazed. She was all bark and no bite, so whoever had broken in probably escaped unscathed.
It didn't take long for two uniformed officers to arrive at their front door. Sanchez and McCarthy were familiar faces, two long-time cops who preferred to work patrol than climb up the NYPD ranks. Both Sonny and Amanda had worked with them countless times before, but it was different now that it was personal.
"Anybody have a key?" Sanchez asked Amanda as McCarthy went upstairs. "The lock is totally in tact."
"I know, I used it fine to let us in. Sonny said the back door is normal, too. But... I mean, yeah," Amanda responded distractedly, crouching down to pick up Luca, who was tugging insistently on the hem of her sweater. "Sonny's parents have a key, our babysitter, Audrey..." A horrible thought struck her suddenly, as shockingly uncomfortable as somebody dumping ice cold water over her head. Kim. Kim had a key.
"Rollins?" Sanchez prompted.
With her free hand, she rubbed at her forehead anxiously. She was suddenly very warm and nauseous; she didn't want to tell Sanchez what she was thinking. She didn't want it to be a possibility. Meeting Sanchez's eyes, Amanda swallowed. With her luck, withholding this information would come back to bite her in the ass someday. "My sister has a key."
"Oh my God, she still has one?" Sonny exclaimed from her side. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see his face contorting with his shocked outrage.
"What's your sister's name?" the officer asked.
"Kimberly Rollins..." Amanda sighed. "Don't bother radioing in, I can tell you right now she's got a warrant. I haven't seen her in a few months."
"Amanda, why does she still have a key?" Sonny demanded; he wasn't going to let this go.
"I mean, what was I gonna do? Rip it from her hands while she's in a hospital bed?" she snapped at him incredulously, glaring in his direction.
"No yell," Luca requested sweetly from her arms, his little hand grabbing at Amanda's face.
"Would she do something like this?" Sanchez asked her. "I mean, to her own sister?"
"Oh, please," Sonny scoffed, angry and sarcastic, his arms crossed tightly over his chest as he paced. "She'd do this - and more. I'm tellin' you, it's her."
"Wait, wait. Hold up a second," Amanda pleaded. "Just because Kim's done stuff like this before doesn't mean it's her. She doesn't need to steal, she would ask my dad-"
"It's not about need, 'Manda," he insisted. "It's never been about that. She likes the thrill-"
"I don't even know where she is, Sonny!" she cried. She was behaving like the witnesses and victims that always frustrated her the most: passionately in denial, making an investigation more challenging then it needed to be. She couldn't help but want to protect her sister's name, even if it had been tarnished for years. "She could be... I dunno, in another country or something."
Sonny rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, I-"
"Okay, okay," Sanchez interrupted loudly, clearly wanting to avoid a domestic dispute on top of a burglary. "We'll check it all out. You guys know how this goes. We'll look for prints in case whoever did this is a total moron and didn't wear gloves. But the odds of clearing this-"
"Yeah, we know," Sonny said flatly. "They aren't in our favor."
Amanda sunk down on the couch, hot and dizzy with mounting anxiety. It had been a long time since she had felt so violated, so foolish. She wished she had forgotten that Kim had a key, because as much as she wanted to defend her, it seemed more and more likely that her sister was the perpetrator. Kim knew where everything was: she had seen her put her gun away and stash money in the top drawer of the dresser. She had played with Jesse on her iPad and learned that Sonny brought his computer home from the precinct almost every day. She had vocally envied Amanda's small but valuable jewelry collection. In fact, Kim was jealous of almost everything her older sister had. You know, I wanted to be a police officer first, before you, she used to sneer, wild-eyed and buzzing from cocaine. Kim wanted a house and a family, too, but she could never seem to get ahead and make it happen. Maybe that's what she had meant that night in the hospital when she had told Amanda that 'her way' was too hard; maybe Kim truly believed the only way she could have anything was forcibly taking it from somebody else.
Even if that person was her own sister, over and over again.
