Miranda Priestly wasn't wearing any makeup. This was the first thing Andy noticed, and it forced a choked little 'Oh' up from her lungs.
She looks old, Andy thought, flabbergasted. And… tired. Exhausted.
"I-I'm sorry," she eventually managed to get out. "I can come back in the morning. This can wait—"
"Quit blathering and come in," Miranda said, in her quiet and yet vastly uninterested way. She turned and went back into the hotel suite without even bothering to see if her assistant was following, and Andy was able to relax a little.
She stopped in the entryway to divest herself of the heavy stack of papers she'd been hauling around for the last half hour, and by the time she made it to the living room Miranda had already taken a seat on the couch. Huddled in the corner, Andy noted. And not meeting my eyes…
Miranda looked up, down, cleared her throat. "We need to go over the seating… uh… chart. For the luncheon." She spoke haltingly, and with agonizing slowness, as if she kept almost forgetting what she was saying after every word.
Andy hesitated only a fraction of a second, deciding that she could talk to Miranda about what she's originally come here for later. "Okay. Um, yeah, sure… I have it right here." She set her bag down on a chair opposite the couch and started to dig through it.
"By all means move at a glacial pace, you know how that thrills me." Head still bent over her bag, Andy raised an eyebrow; as typically Miranda as that remark was, something about her voice just wasn't all that convincing. She dared to let just a little of the skepticism linger on her face when she looked up to hand over the elusive chart, but Miranda took it without looking at her anyway.
"Okay… so… First of all, we need to move Snoop Dogg to my table."
"Your table's full."
The look she got made Andy's throat tighten. After a moment, Miranda said, "Stephen isn't coming."
"Oh. Stephen isn't…" Andy, struggling to stay afloat in all of this strange, assumed a bright and cheery tone as she dug out her planner. "So I don't need to, uh, fetch Stephen from the airport tomorrow?"
"Well." Miranda continued to speak with ponderous slowness, like an explosion viewed from a distance. "If you speak to him and he decides to rethink the divorce, then yes, fetch away." She took off her glasses; perhaps it was a nervous gesture, or perhaps it was so that Andy could get the full effect of her pale gaze. For a moment Andy felt like she had dived so deep underwater that her lungs were going to implode, and then Miranda looked away again.
"And when we get back to New York," Miranda continued, "we need to contact, um… Leslie. See what she can do to minimize the press… on all this." Andy stared wordlessly, and after a moment Miranda—still looking off to the side at nothing in particular—murmured, "Another divorce. Splashed across page six. Just imagine what they're going to write about me. The Dragon Lady—career obsessed—'Snow Queen Drives Away Another Mr. Priestly'. Rupert Murdock should cut me a check for all the papers I sell for him. Anyway, I…"
Miranda looked up sharply then, and the bitter twist to her mouth made Andy's heart beat in the strangest way. "I don't really care what anybody writes about me. But my, my girls… it's just so unfair to the girls. Just… another disappointment. Another letdown. Another father… figure. Father figure." She chuckled darkly, but the sound turned into more of a choke, and she buried her face in her hands.
Andy swore the world was spinning when she stood up. She knelt rather hastily on the floor in front of her boss, and then with slightly less haste rested a hand on her upper arm. Miranda flinched visibly at the contact but did not actually try to move away from it. "Oh, Miranda." She opened her mouth, and shut it again. After all, how much could you really say? After a moment she settled for, "Is there anything I can do?"
Miranda scoffed, though she did not look up. "Oh, please," she whispered. "What do you think you could possibly do?"
"I'll do anything I can," Andy replied honestly. "Anything."
Miranda lifted her head just enough to scowl out from between her fingers, and she still managed to muster an impressive amount of malice even though her eyes were wet. "My dearest Andrea, try and understand. You… have a life. A boyfriend. Friends outside of the industry. You won't do 'anything'. I doubt you'll even keep working for me for more than another month or two before you give up."
"Not anymore." At Miranda's quizzical look, Andy clarified, "I don't have a boyfriend, um, anymore." Snort. "Or much of a life, really."
"Oh." Miranda lifted her head the whole way, and actually managed a small smirk. "You're selling your soul, you know."
"I know." Andy met her boss's eyes frankly, and refused to look away even when she noticed a sort of unsettling interest in Miranda's expression that hadn't been there a moment ago. "So if there's anything I can do to help, please let me know."
"Hmm. Oh, I don't know. Selling your soul is a good start," Miranda replied in a voice laced with dry amusement. And then, seemingly on a whim, she reached out to touch Andy's face.
Miranda's fingers were cool, and they trailed lightly along the younger woman's cheek and lingered under her upturned chin. And suddenly, it was hard to breathe again. Suddenly Andy's stomach felt strangely light, like she'd just gone over a hill on a rollercoaster. Her lips parted in surprise and confusion, and she saw Miranda's eyes flicker down and then up again.
"If you would just stay with me…"
"Stay… with you." Andy didn't seem to be capable of much more than that just at the moment.
"I need someone… dependable. Someone I can trust, and who's genuinely concerned for my welfare." Her fingers curled around Andy's chin in response to her tentative attempt to look away. "I've been through four husbands now and still haven't found anyone who could do something as simple as that."
Andy gaped openly. "I…" And just like that, Miranda let go of her chin, looked away (though a hint of smirk remained). Andy abruptly remembered that her hand was still resting on Miranda's arm, and jerked it away as if she'd been burned. She looked down at her lap, fighting a sudden inexplicable bout of nausea.
"You should go to bed," Miranda said softly. "We have a long day tomorrow." Andy nearly jumped to her feet, and when a glance down at her boss confirmed that the woman seemed strangely calm now, she turned briskly to the business of packing her bag back up. Behind her, Miranda stood more slowly, straightening her plain white robe.
Why am I suddenly so spooked? she wondered. I mean… it was really weird, getting to see her open up like that… She resolutely ignored that fact that she could still feel a faint tingle down the side of her face.
Miranda followed her to the entryway. Just before Andy put her hand on the doorknob, she said, "Thank you…" and with a tired little sigh, added, "…for listening."
The realization that Miranda had probably never told her 'thank you' for a single thing she'd done ever made Andy turn around. "I… will stay with you," she said hesitantly. "It's not as if I have anything better to do anymore." She offered a wry smile, but the gesture was not returned; in fact, Miranda's expression was totally unreadable. This wasn't all that unusual, so she turned back to the door.
"Andrea."
Somewhere in the midst of turning around for the second time, Andy lost track of events. There were hands gripping the front of her shirt, and all of a sudden there were crushing, bruising lips. There was a probing tongue in her mouth, and there was a hand pulling the hair at the nape of her neck in a way that made her gasp in pleasure, and there was a soft warm body flush against hers. Miranda (she noted, in some deeply calm part of her mind) tasted mainly of extremely expensive alcohol, but that was okay because she smelled divine.
Miranda eventually pulled away, and Andy's world attempted to right itself. Then, still just inches away, she met Andy's eyes, and Andy sucked in a breath that she forgot to let out again. "Don't forget your papers," she whispered. "That's all."
She turned away, disappeared around the corner, and Andy remember the giant stack of papers she'd left on the entryway table, and her makeup-less lips had been red with Andy's lipstick, and oh God.
A/N: Bwahaha. I kind of can't believe I wrote something so cliché. The style is so over-the-top. It's been a long time since I wrote anything, geez. But it's pretty much straight wish fulfillment (careful! you shouldn't drink too much of that straight), so maybe some people will like it? I mainly wrote it for myself, which is maybe why I just managed to write more than I have in the past year in one sitting. It's kind of nice to write stupid crap again XD
Other than that… you know that dizzy feeling Andy got, back on page 2? That was the feeling of this universe separating from the real one. You should really be sitting down for that. Because seriously, up until that point the story was almost word-for-word what happened in the original scene… except for Miranda greeting her at the door. In the original, Andy comes into the suite and Miranda is already sitting on the couch. The more I thought about that, the more I couldn't figure that one out… I mean, if it was Miranda's suite, wouldn't she have knocked first? And if it was her suite, wouldn't she be a tad more creeped out to find Miranda having a mini mental breakdown in her living room? And surely Miranda has more than enough money that they wouldn't be sharing a suite, even in France! Now don't get me wrong, the perv in me would love it if they were sharing a suite, but I just can't make it make sense…
Shit, this is long. Just to wrap it up, there will be at least two more chapters. They will hopefully be less cliché too, especially the last one! Always assuming my dubious writing ability doesn't go into hibernation again—I don't actually foresee that happening, I'm really excited about writing the rest of this, but it might still take a while because I'm going to be in Europe for three weeks starting in three days.
Oh my God. SHUTTING UP NOW.