I Drove All Night
In the midst of a fight and multiple misunderstandings, Andy remembers all the times she’s driven through the night to get to Miranda, and that every time it was worth it. Based on ‘I Drove All Night’ by Celine Dion.
Never do songfics BUT here it is.
“Andrea, you’ll need to find something to occupy the girls tomorrow morning.” Miranda’s voice drifted yout to the deck where Andy was comfortably lounging as she tried to get her last article in so that she would have more time for the girls and Miranda this week while they were on vacation up at the cottage. It was rare for both women to be able to eke out the time to be able to do so and they were intending on using this time to their full advantage, both with the girls, and without them for some alone time that was desperately needed.
Andy sighed, typing a little more forcefully as she waited for an explanation from Miranda that would excuse her from the fact that she had promised the girls that she would finally teach them how to use the rowboat by themselves now that they’d turned ten.
“In a minute!” she forced out cheerfully although her jaw was set.
“Andrea, did you hear me? Put your laptop away and make arrangements with the girls for tomorrow morning. I have a call with Maserati and Armani to coordinate for the Italian Runway preview.”
Miranda’s lack of please at the end of her sentence, or her demand actually, rankled Andrea and she took a deep breath.
“I will do it, in a minute!”
“Just reschedule, Andrea, have you lost that ability? Isn’t that your job?” she continued, meaning, in actuality that it was Andrea’s job as their mother to participate. But the younger woman almost reared back, nearly falling off the deck chair before she slammed the laptop so violently that she felt the casing buckle slightly under her grip.
“So you think it’s my job then to be your wife? To be their mother? I don’t have any say in what I want to do or accomplish in my future? Do I need to run my articles by you as well?” She knew she was getting worked up, but her frustration with work deadlines and Miranda’s ‘meeting’ that would upset the twins she would then have to console with no good explanation caused her temper to rise to the surface more readily than usual.
Miranda could feel the ice creeping into her tone and sharpening her tongue so that it was ready despite her best efforts. She had tried, at first, to control her ire, but her irritation with the brunette standing in front of her developed into a state that she would not tolerate for much longer. But that same brunette continued speaking, which in Miranda’s eyes was a grave mistake.
“It is not my sole duty to raise your daughters! You might as well have married Cara. At least then could have kept the relationship a secret and you wouldn’t have had to deal with the fallout of coming out and coming out to the press”
At this, Miranda snapped. The younger woman had called Caroline & Cassidy her children instead of the our that had started even before their engagement a year ago. That hurt her more than any other hurled insults could.
“So you would rather ignore your obligations to this family and run around the world, being what you believe to be a star journalist. Something the demands of this family make dreams as such impossible.”
“It’s not like that!” Andrea actually pulled her hair. “God, Miranda, I don’t just want to be the fucking nanny you’re fucking!”
Miranda’s face was white, her jawline tense and her arms rigid at her sides.
“Congatulations Andrea, you sound just like the press you apparently want so desperately to be a part of. I just didn’t think it was this kind.”
Andy took the easy way out, and she hated herself before the words even left her lips.
“So that’s it then, huh? Iced out.”
Andrea bit her tongue so hard she could taste blood. It was a bitter mix with the bile that rose from her stomach as she took in the look on Miranda’s face. A look that meant she had broken the thousands of promises she had made to Miranda over the last 2 years. She couldn’t stay. Her anger and her guilt forced her into a decision she already knew she would later regret.
She couldn’t be here any longer. She couldn’t be around Miranda without either blowing her top again or worse, apologizing before these deeper issues were resolved. It was decided then, she’d just go back to the townhouse early and send Roy up at the end of the week to pick up Miranda and the girls. Then she could finish her article and the vacation wouldn’t be ruined by she and Miranda fighting.
“I’m leaving.” Andrea said, not looking at Miranda as she picked up her keys and headed outside to the Tahoe. If she had looked up, she would have seen Miranda flinch as though she had been struck and blue eyes widen with anger and panic and a whirlwind of emotion that ultimately left her speechless. And so she let Andrea go. Without saying a word, she watched her wife of one year march out the door and she was frozen, still too stuck in her pride to go after the young woman and too fearful of what further conversation might lead to if she dared give chase.
Errantly, she heard the car engine start, but even in the short time it took her to get to the front door it was too late to do anything. All she saw were the painful red glare of the headlights in the evening dusk and the dust the tires kicked up as Andrea revved the vehicle in her haste to leave. To leave her.
Thankful, and mindful that the girls were still asleep, Miranda stood in the dark living room for a long while, taking in all that had happened. No it was simple what had happened, she had left. Again.
Every part of her seemed to ache as she got into bed and she pressed a hand to her heart to stop the sharp pangs that punctuated her barely muffled cries with a forced breath inwards. But as always, her tears were silent. She screamed mutely into her pillow before reaching for Andrea’s and burying her nose in the other woman’s scent, her head throbbing from the innumerable tears that had fallen.
She had left. And she had left so easily. Ready to abandon Miranda and the girls so quickly.
Alone, in the dark, she began to mourn the potential loss of another relationship. But it hadn’t been just a relationship. From the moment they met, there had always been something more. Andrea had described it as being ‘soulmates’ although Miranda would never stoop to such pedestrian, simpering descriptions to describe what they shared.
Angry tears blurred Andrea’s vision as she pushed the speed limits trying to get back to Manhattan. Their argument swirling around her head and pushing more tears out. It was already late when Andy had left and she was exhausted, physically and emotionally but she pushed through. Eventually, the reason for her blurred vision was less in part due to the tears than it was tiredness. She turned on the radio, searching for something upbeat, turning the stereo up loud to keep her awake as the trees disappeared from view and gave way to high-rises. A woman’s voice blasted from the speakers in what seemed like a pathetically ironic romantic anthem. “I drove all ni-iiiight, to get, to you…” Andy snorted, but as the miles went past her mind slipped back into memories of the times she had driven to Miranda.
Actually, it seemed Andrea was always driving to Miranda. To run proofs to a shoot. To retrieve notes or some piece of paper Miranda needed at that instant. True, the longer trips were more infrequent, but they were always memorable.
One time after Paris, and after the two had begun seeing each other, Miranda had sounded off her requirements for each of her staff during the desert shoot in California, sending Andrea back to the shoot’s base in Santa Barbara despite her own desires to keep the brunette close. She later wished she had, no less than an hour after she had sent the young woman off on the two hour route back she began to experience the aura that always precipitated the kind of migraine that always felt like it left her groveling on the floor or facedown on the bathroom tile, desperate for any lasting coolness against her forehead, a washcloth warmed too quickly and she was too exhausted to wet and wring it again. She didn’t know however, that Andrea had turned her vehicle around, dropping off Jocelyn on route to meet up with the other Runway vehicles and speeding back to Miranda. At the shoot today, she had seen the older woman’s eyes flutter, a telltale sign that she would soon be very ill.
Enter one Andrea Sachs. Assistant and girlfriend extraordinaire.
Amazingly enough, the pair had found out through sheer coincidence that an orgasm was often enough to cure them. After delivering such a cure, Andy had nursed Miranda throughout the night, keeping the washcloth on her forehead cool while warming the shivering figure that tossed and turned between hot and cold. It had worked, her efforts had been enough to dull the pain to a manageable level that didn’t leave Miranda miserable and nauseous, trying to avoid the bright lights at the shoot she was supposed to be overseeing. Discrete, consistent doses of medication that Miranda would otherwise forsake for achieving perfect focus and attention to the shoot helped enormously. And Andrea had made sure there was a cooler beside Miranda’s chair with still and sparkling water along with some fruit and light snacks. After awhile, she could no longer find any excuse to stay at the shoot at Miranda’s side and she left reluctantly after failing, predictably, to get Miranda to wear a hat to protect her from the effects of the sun.
Miranda had come back that night to find the young woman still in her hotel room, not gone back to Santa Barbara, a hot bath drawn and a light dinner set out for two. Miranda had been too tired and still too uncomfortable to make love that night, but she stayed no less close to Miranda, dosing out her medication and turning down the bed. It wasn’t necessary in the slightest. She knew Miranda had coped with these migraines for years. But she had tried to make sure this time was so much more bearable and she didn’t have to suffer feeling so ill alone. She had even brought essential oils to rub on Miranda’s pulse points. She had thought of everything without being given a single command. It was later that Miranda supposed that that was what love was, and she had returned the favour when the brunette contracted a wicked case of stomach flu and never even flinched.
But driving away tonight, the brunette’s stomach felt worse than it ever had before, but it still wasn’t enough to quell her anger. Miranda had promised! She had promised that this vacation would be about them as a couple and about the girls. Long ago in their relationship, Andy had had a serious conversation with Miranda about promises, and making them and keeping them. She understood the immense task and the toll Runway took and its cast on their lives like a shadow at times. This had why she had made Miranda promise, that she wouldn’t promise anything, no matter how minor, without truly meaning it. She understood dinners would be cancelled and school events missed and weekends taken up with work and so she didn’t judge Miranda when she was unable to be present, so long as she hadn’t promised it to her or the girls. And on the rare Miranda did have to break a promise, it was always under exceptional circumstances. And what was the reason this time? Andy had to admit to herself grudgingly that she didn’t even know, she hadn’t let Miranda explain herself. But that was only because the older woman hadn’t seemed to think it necessary to let her wife know why she was breaking this promise and reducing their relationship to what it had been before they had been together.
“Is that alright?” the voice on the radio asked. No! It was not alright! It wasn’t! Andy seethed. But her tight-handed grip on the steering wheel loosened as she realized it wouldn’t be alright again until she was back with Miranda. This wasn’t the fight that would end their marriage. Not when both women had been so hot-headed and rash and careless with their words.
“Woke you from your sleep, to make love to you,” the voice crooned, and a different heat surged through Andrea’s veins. That was what she wanted to do, even when she was angry with the older woman and driving to get away, what she really wanted was to throw the bedroom door open and rip the covers off of the slim body even as her lips began to torture and tease and ravish. Miranda wouldn’t be allowed to touch her, this was all about Miranda and making her feel, feel how much Andy wanted her and needed her and needed her to be present in their lives together.
Squeezing her thighs together, her grip on the steering wheel was now slick with sweat. Breathing harshly as the music of the song pounded in her ears, Andy looked around to see where she was. She was almost home, their home, she and Miranda’s. But that’s not where Andrea’s home was at the moment. Her home was hundreds of miles behind her, sleeping alone. At 2:00 in the morning, the streets were empty and the tires screeched as Andy made what she was sure was an illegal U-turn and headed back towards the bridge that would take her closer to where she knew she would find her home.
She was still angry, but sense had returned and she saw that she had made a stupid decision in driving away like that in the middle of the night. Really stupid. She groaned internally. The fashion maven still had some explaining to do but Andy knew that her own actions demanded an apology separate from their original argument.
The song still playing, the lyrics made so much more sense now as she headed north. “No one can move me the way that you do, nothing erases this feeling between me and you.” Miranda might move her to the heights of frustration, but nothing could erase what they had between them. Andy all-out broke the speed limits this time in driving back to Miranda. But looking at the clock on the dashboard and the lightening of the sky outside, Andy just hoped that it wasn’t too late to get back to her love before the night was over and she had made the biggest mistake of her life.
Throwing her keys onto the kitchen table, her eyes adjusting to the dark, she forgot to close the door quietly and she flinched as it slammed behind her, making the stacked plates by the sink rattle. Shit.
“Mama?” A sleepy eyed Cassidy appeared at the door in her nightgown, rubbing her eyes obviously still half asleep as she used the moniker for Andy that generally only appeared when the girls were sick or scared.
Andy couldn’t help but pick the younger girl up, despite her being a little too old and gangly-legged to make it work. “What is it munchkin?”
“Had a dream you left, you were in a rocketship and there were lotsa lights.” Cassidy murmured into Andy’s shoulder and the older woman gratefully inhaled the sweetly shampoo scented auburn curls, burying her nose in them and beating herself up once more for being so stupid as to leave.
“No baby, I’m here. No rocketships. Do you think you can go back to sleep now so you’re ready to make pancakes tomorrow morning?”
“Mmhmm,” the little girl was already dozing back off against Andy’s shoulder and she awkwardly tucked the gangly limbs back into bed and kissed a cheek that was still baby-soft despite the protests she knew her daughter would make at the insinuation that she was still a baby.
She backed out of the room, still looking at the two sleeping girls and she instantly felt Miranda’s presence behind her.
“So you came back,” she said quietly, carefully avoiding eye contact with the brunette.
“You left. I thought your dreams were more important” Miranda’s face contorted in grief before she turned and fled back to their bedroom before the brunette could see another tear fall.
“I left,” Andy repeated, still slightly confused as to why Miranda was so upset over their fight. Oh no no no no no, she could not think Andy had left her for good? No, that was not an option. She marched down the hall and closed their bedroom door before standing in front of an expression as chilling as she had seen on Miranda’s face as the older woman carefully crossed her arms over the tie in her robe. Her delicate features were so beautiful, even swollen with tears and red.
“My articles, the paper - that’s not my dream. You are my dream, Miranda. God, you are my every waking thought and I cannot, cannot live in a world that doesn’t include falling asleep with you in my arms every night. You’re right, I sacrificed a large part of my career when I joined this family. But it was a willing sacrifice. You command my blood, sweat and tears, even without knowing it, but you still give me the space to breathe, and feel and see the world with my own eyes. I was hurt when you dismissed me. It felt like I was still your assistant instead of your wife and the thought of that terrified me and I lashed out. I said things that weren’t true. You know Caroline and Cassidy are the second loves of my life. You know it kills me that I missed out on their childhood, and the reason that hurts so badly is because I think of them as my daughters. The idea that I would leave you is ridiculous! Do you hear me?”
Miranda’s posture was rigid and her arms were still crossed. She raised her head and suddenly Andy was blasted with the full intensity of the blue eyes that were now focused on her. And she read hurt in them, pride too, but the fear tore at her heart until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She had always been protective of Miranda. And if it were anybody else that had made her look at Andy the way she was now she would have torn them to pieces. But it was she, Andy, Miranda’s wife, that caused the trembling in the slight figure. What Andy didn’t know was if the trembling was due to anger or sadness.
“You can’t leave.” Miranda whispered. “You promised, our vows, not only at the wedding but the ones between us that evolved wordlessly as our relationship progressed, the ones we made to each other as you showed me what it was that I had been missing my entire life and in each of my relationships. But it wasn’t sex, Andrea, that made me love you. It was your endurance. Your tolerance of me and your relentless pursuit of my heart and your efforts to show me your feelings in everything you did. You broke a wall Andrea, and tonight.” Her voice grew tight but she shook her head slightly and continued. “Tonight, you nearly broke me.”
“I’m sorry. That was never my intent. But if tonight was good for anything, it was to show you that I’m never leaving. That I will never, never leave you. I can’t. My soul resides in the three other bodies that occupy this house. And so tonight, when I left, even only temporarily tonight it ripped, that fabric of myself was torn. I am here to offer the meagre part of myself, that shred of soul that completed this family in the hopes that it still fits.”
“I am an excellent seamstress,” Miranda murmured under her breath, and Andrea’s heart skipped a beat. She was still processing the hopeful emotions brought up by Miranda’s casual sentence when something hit her, hard. It wasn’t Miranda’s fist though, or her hand, it was her whole body as she crashed against the brunette, nearly bruising her ribs. What hurt even more though were the shuddering silent sobs that came from the other woman as she hid her face in the other woman’s chest, wordlessly seeking the security that she had been without for the duration of the evening, and never wanted to be lacking in again.
New tears ran down Andrea’s face now, into the white hair below. She tried to move her arms to comfort Miranda, but the woman had her in a viselike grasp and didn’t appear to be letting go any time soon. Choosing another avenue instead then, Andy bent her own head and began to press her lips to the snowy crown. Kissing her gently across her forehead and cheeks before nudging the older woman’s head up to face her.
Tear tracks streaked across Miranda’s swollen cheeks and her nose was running as she hiccupped forlornly. Seeing the trail of her wife’s tears and knowing she was the cause made every one of those trails feel like a lash against Andrea’s back, repeating ‘You did this. You did this.’
“Sweetheart, I’m not leaving ever. Please don’t ever think that when we fight I am going to up and leave you. That is not what I signed up for. I knew what I was getting when I put that ring on your finger and I’ll be damned if that ring ever moves a goddamn inch!”
Miranda was settled quietly against her chest now and Andy was able to pull her close. Exhausted from six hours of straight driving, Andy let her head rest against Miranda’s and couldn’t help her eyes from closing, and she supposed she must have swayed slightly because now it was Miranda who seemed to be holding her up.
“Andrea, we’ll talk further in the morning if you wish, but you’re exhausted. You need to sleep.”
“I’m guessing you haven’t gotten much sleep either,” Andy remarked, seeing the dark circles under the older woman’s eyes and her still slightly reddened nose.
“Not without you.” Miranda whispered, her face turned away from the brunette.
“I’m here to fix that. I want to fix everything Miranda, I want to make things right.”
“Silly girl, you are what makes things right.”
“Then let me. It’s four o’ clock, that means there is at least another two and a half hours to show you how much I love you before our daughters wake demanding pancakes.
“I’d like nothing more,” Miranda smiled slowly and Andy fell just a little bit more in love with her wife in that moment.
“However…regarding tomorrow, I do have to attend the call with Maserati and Armani. I put Nigel in charge of Runway Italia and I can’t just leave him without some guidance even though I know he’s ready. I owe him that much.”
“And that’s all you had to say before.” Andy’s fingers traced the curves of Miranda’s body. She knew Miranda had given Nigel the responsibility of overseeing the creation of Italian Runway, not as consolation for the James Holt incident, but because she had always had greater aspirations for the man who had faithfully seen her through so many years as editor.
“I know,” Miranda whispered. “I always know, and I always get it wrong.”
Both sleepless woman heard rustling from down the hallway and the creak of a door being opened, with high voices getting closer.
“Mmm, no. Apart? maybe,” Andy wrapped Miranda in her arms and kissed her before looking at the door that they both knew was soon to be opened. “But I think together, we got it really really right.”