As she tucked the oversized button down into her jeans, breathing in the comfortingly familiar scent that now wrapped around her, Amanda couldn't help but feel a pang of something she couldn't quite place in the pit of her stomach.

She was happy for him. Of course she was. She had seen how hard he worked to get to where he was. She'd been the first one he wrapped up into an excited squeeze when he got the news that he'd passed the bar. But a part of her - the selfish part, she'd imagined - was subconsciously dreading the fact that things were going to change.

They had to.

The District Attorney's office was a different world than the precinct, and the last thing she wanted was to see a world of loopholes and conviction rates turn him into someone he wasn't.

She swallowed the tightness in her throat, and she let out a silent huff of irritation at her own swell of emotion. Maybe she shouldn't have had that last Heineken after all; she always did tend to lose her perspective when alcohol entered the equation.

Finally, with another shake of her head, she flicked off the light and stepped out of the bathroom.

"Thanks for the assist," she said once she emerged back into the living room. She folded up her own beer-stained shirt and placed it on top of her bag. "Didn't think your going away party was gonna get wild enough for spilled drinks."

Carisi, who had been busy brewing a pot of coffee while she changed, turned to look at her at the sound of her voice, his own words dying on his tongue. God, something about the way she looked wearing his dress shirt - the long sleeves rolled up to her elbows and the collar falling loosely around her shoulders - had his head spinning.

Or maybe that was just from the alcohol.

"Yeah…anytime," he assured her once he regained his bearings. "You know how cops are. We don't party often but when we do…" He chuckled, but she could only offer a slightly sad smile in response. "What?"

"Nothing," she shook her head. "I'm just gonna miss nights like these."

His gaze softened, and he no longer held the same playful tone when he spoke again. "Hey…Rollins…come on-"

"No, no, no…stop," she cut him off with a half-hearted chuckle and a dismissive wave of her hand before he could say anything else. "I shouldn'tve said anything."

She wasn't sure exactly what he was going to say, but judging by the soft, almost guilty look in his eyes, she knew it was going to be something either entire too sentimental or entirely too optimistic. She hadn't been looking for an "I'll miss you too" out of pity, or a "nothing's going to change" that she knew he believed despite it being impossible. At the end of the day, there was nothing to say about it anyway. Change was a part of life. She'd changed partners before and she knew she would inevitably change them again in the future.

But he was still looking at her like that. Like the way she'd look at Frannie when she'd go out of town for a few days and leave her behind.

"Carisi…stop."

He held his hands up in a playful surrender at her words.

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to." She assured him with an equally playful smile when another lingering silence settled between them, and she stifled an almost performative yawn as she glanced down at her watch. "I should probably get home though. Al took the girls for the night but he's on the morning shift tomorrow so I've gotta pick them up early."

"That's uh…nice of him to take Jesse too," Carisi commented.

Amanda's eyebrows raised curiously before she responded with an amused chuckle. "Don't worry…Uncle Sonny's still her favorite," she assured him, "but he treats her the same way he treats Billie and she really like him so…"

"That's a good thing," he finished for her. "I know Declan's not around so…it's good that she's got someone."

Well it's not like she doesn't have you.

She bit the words back before she could actually say them aloud. Something about it just seemed too…intimate.

There was a point in time where things got entirely too domestic - with him coming over to cook dinner for them and rock Jesse to sleep like she was his own - and she had subtly tried to distance herself just enough to not make it obvious once she realized. He treated her too much like something more than a co-worker or even a friend, and the last thing that she wanted to do was lead him on for the sake of home-cooked meals and a father figure for her daughter.

But instead of saying any of that, or even hinting at it, she simply nodded in agreement and checked her watch again.

"Alright. Let me walk you downstairs," Carisi said when he noticed the subconscious gesture.

"No…don't worry about it. Your coffee's gonna burn," she reminded him. "But, if you're not too busy you should stop by during the week. The girls'll wanna see you, and I'm sure you're gonna want your shirt back."

"I'm not worried about the shirt," he said with a laugh, "but I'll stop by."

She smiled, but before she could say goodnight and turn to walk out the door, she took a step closer to him instead, wrapping him up into a tight, constricting hug. He felt a little stiff at first - probably due to being taken by surprise, she imagined - but it didn't take long for him to relax and return the affection.

"You were the best partner I could've asked for," she told him. When she unravelled her arms from around him, she pulled away only slightly to look at him with a serious sincerity behind her gaze. "These past few years have been a lot, and I know I wouldn'tve gotten through them without you."

"Come on, Amanda. You-"

"Shh," she hushed him with a laugh before he could make the comment she knew was coming about her being a great mom, or about her not giving herself enough credit. Her eyes rolled light-heartedly and she grasped his shoulders, her hands smoothing absentmindedly down his arms. "I'm just saying I'm glad we met."

He looked at her intently, and he couldn't help but notice that she wasn't shifting her gaze away with a light-hearted comment like she had in the past. Instead, her eyelids fluttered just slightly…subtly enough that he wouldn't have noticed had they not been in such close proximity. If he didn't know any better - he thought - he'd swear she was waiting for him to…

He stopped the thought from breaching his consciousness before it could come to fruition. No…of course she wasn't.

Was she?

God, he wished she was just say something. Or turn away. Or anything that would have given him a direct answer.

But she didn't, and despite every rational bone in his body telling him to stop…that he was misreading the situation completely and was only going to make things between them irreparably strained…he closed the short distance between them.

Admittedly, he was shocked when she didn't immediately jerk away from the feeling of his lips against hers. Instead, her hand grasped the front of his shirt to pull herself closer to him, and her head tilted just slightly to deepen what had previously been just a cautious peck.

She wanted to blame this on the fact that they had been drinking, but deep down she knew just how many nights she had spent lying awake after he'd left her apartment, forcing herself not to think about what would have happened if she had been bold enough to kiss him goodnight when she could swear his eyes had lingered on her lips just a moment longer than they should have. And when she finally broke the kiss, she wasn't sure whether it was to catch her breath or to stop herself from making a mistake that she knew she could never take back.

"Sonny," she breathed out the familiar name in a whisper against his lips, and she searched for the right thing to say before finally allowing her eyes to flutter open to meet his. "I…I'm sorry."

"For what?" He asked, his hand moving to brush a lock of hair away from her eyes. "You have no idea how long-"

"I do. Believe me I do," she assured him before he could complete the thought. She'd be lying if she said she didn't know he had feelings for her, after all, and she had a feeling that he'd thought about this moment just as often as she had. "But what's about to happen here…it can't happen." The hurt in his expression was evident, and a sudden rush of unexplained tears pricked sharply at the corners of her eyes before she stubbornly blinked them back and allowed her voice to drop back into a whisper. "I can't give you what you want."

It was the painful truth, but she knew that he needed to hear it. He wanted a happily ever after. He wanted forever. But she had been burned too many times…hurt by too many different men. She knew that he had feelings for her, but she had to wonder if those feelings were for an idealized vision that she would never be able to truly achieve.

His fingers stroked the side of her face in a gentle caress, and he could hear her breath hitch just slightly in response before he responded in a whisper of his own.

"Just give me tonight."

Every part of her knew that she should reject the suggestion. That she should let him down easy and hope that they'd been drinking enough to forget all about it within the next few days. But no one else had ever kissed her like she was the only person they ever wanted to kiss again. And she wanted this. Selfishly, perhaps, but she did.

And in that split second where things could have gone either way, she made the self-proclaimed selfish choice to pull him into another kiss that wordlessly conveyed her decision, and allowed herself…just for the night…to drift into bliss with him.

A/N: I know someone asked what my SVU tumblr was in the comments of "Whatever Makes You Happy" but I have no idea how to respond to comments on here because I'm technologically inept but for the record it's /sunnyrollins :)