FIC: Incineration - Embers Drive Series
She couldn’t help the awkward feeling beating on the edges of her consciousness as she looked over at the table her wife and her lover were sitting at. She had already thanked her parents for their support, and gave proper recognition to her publishers, and now all she had to do was thank her wife for her unwavering devotion, and then she could leave the stage. This wasn’t the first acceptance speech she had given, and most likely wouldn’t be her last, but it felt different. She felt as if she should say something different, like she should try and be honest for a change. She was tired of feeling like a fraud accepting an award on some ghost’s behalf.
“I’d also like to thank my wife who has been an incredible force of support and love in my life. And I want to say a special thank you to Emily Arrington who has always been my compass, even when I didn’t realize I needed one.” It wasn’t a wild declaration of love, but she knew that it was different enough to call attention to the woman looking back at her as if she had just announced their affair live on television.
She kept her eyes locked with Emily’s for just a moment longer before walking off the stage and letting people she didn’t know guide her towards the cameras. They took pictures of her with her award, and then they started asking their probing questions about her life. Eventually, she escaped to the women’s restroom, and rested her back against the cool surface of the heavy wooden door. She didn’t want to go back to her table where her wife would be waiting with questioning eyes and Emily’s chair would most likely be empty.
She pushed up off of the door and then stumbled towards the sink. Her hands were shaking, and her stomach felt a little funny. Her speech was not brave, at least not how she had intended it to be. It was too obtuse for anyone to pay close enough attention to. Well, anyone except for her wife and her lover who would lock onto her words and demand answers.
“If you truly want to be left alone, then you should learn to lock the door.”
Emily’s voice startled her, but her body was already shaking so it made no difference. “Old age is making me forget things,” she tried to joke.
“You have lost your mind, haven’t you?” Emily slowly walked towards her. “Miranda just gave me a look that would have incinerated a weaker foe.”
“I’m sorry,” Andy apologized, not yet sure what all exactly she would have to be apologizing for.
Emily sighed, and then rested her weight against the sink Andy was holding onto. “You better damn well be. You’re impossible, you do know that?”
Andy met Emily’s eyes in the mirror. “Do you want to know what I was thinking?” She chuckled, but didn’t give her lover a chance to answer before she said, “I was finally thinking that you deserved more.”
Emily raised a questioning eyebrow, but said nothing.
“More of my time, more of my effort, more of my…everything really.” She brushed an unsteady hand through her hair. “I should give you more, at least once.”
Emily crossed her arms in front of her and released a long sigh. “That’s very sentimental of you, Andy, but you’ve obviously forgotten the memo about how we actually haven’t made love in over a year, two nearly. We’ve somehow managed to piece our friendship back together and you’re just stupid enough to want to mangle it all up again.”
Andy let go of the sink. “Since when did I have to make love to you for you to be my lover?”
Emily uncurled her arms and then dropped her head into the palms of her hands. “Oh god,” she muttered. “You’re being terribly unfair.”
“I’ve always been unfair,” she closed her eyes, “to you and to my wife.”
“Are you going through some sort of early mid-life crisis you’d like to tell me about, because I’ll be more than happy to buy you a Maserati and a plane ticket to Las Vegas if it’ll end it.”
They had stayed apart from each other for so long just so that they could build lives that didn’t involve the other. Emily had lived in another country for almost two years, and Andy had finally stopped touring the world so that she could spend time with her wife. They had done everything they thought they needed to do to make their detachment final, and had thus far been doing a wonderful job of fooling themselves with their faulty success.
Emily moved back to New York shortly after her father had died. She did not return to Runway, but had instead taken a job as a senior editor for their number one competitor knowing it would have been a bad idea to return to Miranda. She kept her distance, and did everything within her power to maintain a friendship with Andy, and Andy had done the same.
They met up in public places or only when their spouses could also be present. They didn’t talk about their past relationship, and Andy finally took off the ring she had worn around her neck like an albatross. There were no lingering touches or longing looks. It was all kept friendly and platonic.
But Andy knew she was right, making love was not what had made them lovers. Their love manifested in thousands of small ways, and no matter how hard they tried they couldn’t just turn it off. They couldn’t just turn off being immediately at peace in each other’s presence. They couldn’t just wipe away their bodies’ instincts to drift towards each other even when half the world separated them. They couldn’t just develop isolated amnesia and forget that when they were together, the world was right and everything felt right. Even now as they were arguing, no uncertainties stood between them.
Without question they were best friends, but they were also lovers and sex had never defined that. Sex had just been added to it when they had become too weak to ignore their physical need for intimacy.
Emily reached out and grabbed onto one of Andy’s shaking hands, forcing Andy to open her eyes and look at her. “Andy, don’t do this,” she pleaded.
Andy wanted to ask, ‘do what?’ but she already knew ‘what’. Emily didn’t want their worlds to become shaken again, and honestly Andy didn’t want that either. She didn’t want to risk claiming Emily’s love, but a certain fear had been building inside of her ever since Emily’s father’s funeral. No, Andy softly chuckled, that wasn’t true. The fear had been building ever since the first time they had made love.
She had misunderstood the fear, renamed it, denied it, and regretted it, but the fear always remained. It wasn’t fear that Miranda would discover what they had done. It wasn’t fear that they had made a grave mistake. It was fear of loss. She was afraid of losing Emily, and she had never let that fear guide her until tonight, because perhaps part of her never actually believed that Emily would ever disappear.
Yet, Emily was standing right next to her holding onto her hand and Andy could feel Emily quite literally slipping through her fingers. Emily had a husband she cared for, if not loved. She had a beautiful daughter she was one hundred percent devoted to. Her career had blossomed and surpassed even Andy’s expectations. Somehow, along their winding road, Emily had somehow figured out how to keep their paths intertwined but diverged at the same time.
But Andy didn’t want a lover that she was no longer in love with and that was no longer in love with her. What was the point of that? What worth was it to go on being completely addicted to someone she no longer craved?
“I’m tired of watching you slip away.” Andy curled her fingers around Emily’s.
Emily looked down at their joined hands. “Why won’t you let me go?”
She could answer the question with a question, but Andy knew better than to try. Emily wouldn’t let her get away with it, and she probably wouldn’t stay to finish the conversation either. “As barbaric as this sounds, you’re mine.”
Emily’s eyes narrowed, and her body tensed. “That’s it then? You Andy. Me Emily. Let’s fuck?” She ripped her hand off of Andy’s. “Apparently whatever is left of your mind has become severely degenerated. “
Andy grabbed onto Emily’s hips before her lover could complete a dramatic exit. “I know that for a person who makes a living putting words together, I’ve done a shitty job of explaining anything to you, but I don’t know how else to say that I’m certain that we belong to each other.”
Emily didn’t try to escape, but her body remained stiff in Andy’s grip. “We do not belong to each other,” she precisely enunciated her words, drawing them out as if she were speaking to a child who understood no English. “You, Andrea Sachs, belong to Miranda Priestly, and I belong to Raymond Aditsan.”
Andy tightened her hold, forcing Emily’s body closer to hers. “If we belong to them then why are we standing here right now with each other even talking about this?”
“Because,” Emily immediately answered, her voice raised, “you just publicly disrespected your wife and threw me head first into a fiery pit.”
She ran her speech through her head once more, searching for evidence that would back up Emily’s words. “I’m sorry.” She dropped her hands away from Emily’s body. “But I’m tired of being a fraud. I love Miranda, I do. I always have…” Her voice died when the truth behind her words finally sunk in. She did love her wife, yet she was intent on breaking Miranda’s heart.
She swallowed pushing down the lump that had begun forming in her throat. “Martyrdom has never looked good on me,” she shamefully declared. “But I always insist on falling on my own damn sword anyway. My marriage to Miranda proves that, doesn’t it? And my willingness to be at your beck and call even if you haven’t called for me proves it, too.” She closed the distance between her and Emily once more. “So, I guess it’s only appropriate I’m doing this in a bathroom at an awards ceremony honoring my humanitarianism,” she sarcastically noted. “But, to answer your question that I’ve already fucked up answering, I can’t let you go because no matter how hard I try I have always and will always love you more. And no matter what happens in this room between us or what happens after we leave, I can’t continue to be with Miranda.”
Emily tipped her head back, closed her eyes and began rubbing at them with the forefinger and thumb of her right hand. She gave the impression that she had just developed an unbearable migraine that would soon topple her to the ground. “Andy,” she whispered out her anguish.
Andy reached up and stilled Emily’s hand. “I’m not asking you for anything.”
“No.” Emily opened her eyes. “You’re just doing what you always do by offering me everything with one hand while taking everything else away with the other.” Her body began shaking and Andy wrapped strong arms around her to still her. “And your wife might look at me like she wants to incinerate me, but god damn it, Andy, you actually have the power to do it. Don’t you get it? I haven’t completely uprooted my life just for fun; I’ve done it for survival.”
Andy thought she had been staying with Miranda for survival. She thought she was making the best decision she could make in a bad situation, always trying to spin a golden blanket out of tattered wool sheared from a sickly sheep infested with fleas and covered in feces. But she could finally admit that she hadn’t made her decisions in anyone’s best interest but her own. She had stayed with Miranda because it was easier than leaving her, especially when she knew, at least thought she knew that Emily would love her no matter what.
“I’m sorry,” Andy apologized again knowing that repeating the words actually didn’t make anything easier or anything better.
Emily finally wrapped her arms around Andy. “You talk to me again after you’ve talked to Miranda,” she ordered. “I’ll not make you any promises.”
“Even that is more than I deserve.”
Emily rolled her eyes and then let her head fall onto Andy’s shoulder, letting their bodies rest against each other. “I’m not sure you completely understand just how much I hate you sometimes.” Her breath brushed against the skin on Andy’s neck, making the moment more physically intimate than they had been in almost two years.
“I’m sorry.” Andy had nothing else she could say. She was an ass, and had just proven it multiple times.
A few more minutes passed before Emily pushed away from Andy. “I’m leaving,” she announced. “I’m going home.” She turned to walk away, and this time Andy didn’t try and stop her. Instead, she followed her out the door, but was forced to stop when she ran into Emily’s back. Emily had come to a sudden halt, and Andy opened her mouth to ask why when she spotted her wife resting casually against the opposite wall waiting.
“I assume the both of you are finally done,” Miranda commented pushing away from the wall she had been leaning on.
Emily nodded, and then sidestepped away from Miranda’s reach. “I’ll… um speak to you later.” She walked away then, not bothering to look back.
Andy’s palms had begun to sweat. She looked around, trying to figure out if she should run or stay to face her wife, but as she was wasting time trying to make her decision Miranda decided for her and grabbed onto her arm. “You look awful,” Miranda said.
Andy let her wife lead her away from the restrooms, still unsure of what she should do or say so she kept silent.
“Emily told me she was leaving to yell at you,” Miranda filled the silence between them. “I didn’t think she was being entirely serious.”
Yell at her? Andy didn’t completely understand. Hadn’t Miranda just listened in on everything she and Emily had said to each other in the confines of the women’s restroom? Wasn’t this supposed to be the overplayed scene in which the spouse caught the cheaters cheating?
Miranda stopped and looked at Andy with questioning eyes. “I can assure you, Andrea, that she was much more upset about your speech than I was. I think you have for too long overlooked Emily’s contributions to your work, and your recognition of her was overdue.”
Her wife could be devious, Andy knew that. Miranda was an expert at sending mixed signals, but Andy got the distinct impression that her wife wasn’t being anything but genuine. “Emily got the impression you weren’t pleased,” Andy finally found her voice.
“I’ll admit that I wasn’t at first,” Miranda casually admitted. “But while Emily had cornered you in the restroom to yell at you, I thought about it and decided she deserved your recognition.”
Somehow, without Andy remembering how it happened, she was standing outside leaning against her wife waiting for their limousine. Her award would be sent to her at a later date and time, and there were no more pictures to take and no more questions to answer.
Their limo pulled up, and the door was opened for them. Andy slid into it before Miranda, and once her wife was safely inside and the door was closed, Andy finally realized that Miranda hadn’t heard a damn thing that was said between Emily and her in the restroom. There would be no easy outs for her. She’d have to sit her wife down and tell her that she had carried on an affair with someone for almost as long as they had been married. She’d have to be the one to admit it; it couldn’t just be something her wife disastrously stumbled upon.
This wasn’t a movie. The scene wouldn’t end with an amicable divorce then transition into a happily ever after with Emily before everything faded to black. This was her life and it was very real, and all of her troubles were her own damn fault.
“Don’t forget about that dinner with Irv tomorrow,” Miranda reminded as she yawned. “He keeps reminding me to bring you along.” Her hand dropped onto Andy’s thigh. “The man is enamored with you.”
Andy covered Miranda’s hand with her own. “Don’t be jealous,” she leaned in closer to her wife. “I find his receding hairline very attractive, but you’re the one I want.”
Miranda smirked. “You’ve had too much alcohol.”
“Maybe I’m just horny,” Andy whispered into Miranda’s ear and then kissed her wife’s neck.
Miranda tilted her head so that Andy could have better access, while she reached out to press the button that would raise the privacy screen. “You’re always horny.”
“Only with you,” Andy said before she captured her wife’s lips and repositioned her body so that she was fully facing Miranda. She slid her hand down Miranda’s thigh, her fingers bunching up the material of Miranda’s dress until she reached the hem, and then she slowly pushed her hand up under it until her fingertips were resting against the apex of her wife’s thighs.
She continued kissing her wife, doing her best to infuse every stroke of her tongue and every thrust of her hand with all the love she felt for the woman sitting next to her. When her eyes were closed she didn’t imagine Emily sitting in front of her. She wouldn’t do either of them that disservice. She kept her wife’s name at the forefront of her every move. She was having sex with her wife and would not imagine otherwise, and as Miranda whimpered as her orgasm overtook her, Andy kept her fingers inside of her wife and made sure to tell Miranda just how much she loved her.
She rested her head against her wife’s giving them each a chance to calm their breathing. She inhaled Miranda’s scent that had filled the backseat and could even smell her own excitement filling the air. It would be easy for her to get lost in the moment, but she stopped herself. Sex with Miranda was easy and felt good. It was a distraction from the constant guilt she felt sitting in her wife’s presence. It gave her an outlet when she knew she was on the verge of admitting to something she knew would end her marriage. It made her feel like less of a fraud, but she wouldn’t fall into the trap she had just laid for herself, again.
No matter how many times she told Miranda she loved her, and no matter how much caring she put into having sex with her wife, it didn’t change the fact that Andy was a fraud. She wasn’t in love with her wife, and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t make that love appear.
“Where have you gone?” Miranda ran her hand down Andy’s cheek, drawing her away from the intense thoughts that were threatening to drown her.
“I don’t know,” Andy lied. “Suddenly I just kind of got overwhelmed.”
Miranda’s hand brushed away Andy’s tears, tears she hadn’t even realized she had begun to shed. “I love you too, Baby,” Miranda kissed the spots Andy’s tears had rested, and Andy just cried harder.
Fraud or not, her tears were real and she currently felt like the only one who hadn’t escaped incineration.