New fic: Mercy, Part I
Title: Mercy
Fandom: Devil Wears Prada
Rating: M
Summary: Andy has a dark, miserable day.
Author’s notes: It’s been a while, but I’m still here, folks! Back to my OTP. Thanks to my fab beta Xander, who gave this a once over. All errors are mine, since I cranked it out in a hurry for IDF. Can’t miss out on that-hope you all enjoy!
Mercy
Part I.
Andy sits in the coffee shop, wondering how many people are staring at her. Probably none, but she’s paranoid all the time. Has been for the past four months. She can’t seem to shake the feeling of eyes crawling over her, judging, whispering. She glances around out of habit, and no one looks away, at least that she can tell. She’s gotten good at recognizing the quick motion that people’s heads make as they turn from her fast. None of that happens today.
Andy looks back down at her laptop, using yet another potential keyword to find something of interest on monster.com. It’s bad out there, especially for writers. She tries not to let humiliation and terror creep up again, choking the hope out of her. It takes effort to remind herself she’s got good experience, the kind that in another market would have landed her a solid spot on a staff. Andy spent a year covering the crime beat, which is way more high profile than she deserved. Since Andy started the job 18 months ago the paper got thinner and thinner. Financial news, entertainment news, crime news--that’s about all it covers anymore. The ad dollars aren’t exactly rolling in, so the Mirror had to narrow its focus to city news. That means no war stuff, no politics outside the Civic Center. It helped, but the editorial staff was still slashed by half back in October. Andy survived because she was new. Cheap. Willing to forgo insurance. She’s twice the journalist a lot of the others were, and was paid a hell of a lot less. It was an atypical way for the Mirror to make cuts, keeping on newbies, but business is business. Andy was grateful.
For a while.
Till the ax fell again, this time on only her head. John said it was for a lot of reasons. Budgets, the board making noise, that kind of thing. But Andy saw the truth in his eyes.
She was an embarrassment to him, and to the paper. Everyone knows about her and Miranda now. She’s survived being raked over the coals during the divorce hearings. Called a homewrecker, a gold digger, a carpetmuncher and worse in black and white on a daily basis. She couldn’t get the paparazzi to leave her alone. She tried to melt into the background everywhere she went. Begged them to leave her alone, over and over. They were just average folks trying to make a living, same as she was. Didn’t they understand?
No, they didn’t. They never gave a shit. She made Gatecrasher and Page Six once a week just by trying to do her job. The time she and Miranda took the girls to Cape Cod to get away for the weekend, they were in USA Today, Perez and Gawker.
The USA Today mention was the most awful. Her mother saw it, and so did all her friends. They didn’t talk much for a while after that.
Anyway, she doesn’t have to worry so much about reporters following her around when she’s on stories anymore. Certainly she won’t starve, at least at this stage, but telling Miranda is out of the question. It’s not Miranda’s fault; really it has nothing to do with her at all. It’s Andy’s fault, for not being able to stay under the radar. And it’s her fault that word got out in the first place. Her fault that they couldn’t stop kissing that day after Miranda came home from her vacation in Switzerland.
As she stares at the computer screen, Andy’s vision blurs for a moment thinking about it. They hadn’t intended to see each other until later that night, under cover of darkness. The wolves weren’t paying attention to Miranda then, even though the divorce was well under way. They only had a few more months to wait before it would be finalized, and neither was contesting it. Stephen was single, Miranda was single, and that was all there was to it.
But there was more than met the eye, of course.
After Andy had been working at the Mirror for a while, she saw Miranda a second time near Elias-Clarke. It was a stroke of both luck and dedication-she’d tried desperately to catch a glimpse up until then, but hadn’t been successful. Upon seeing her, she’d smiled. But the image of Miranda’s face, and clothes, and hair made her heart freeze and melt at the same time. Andy had felt broken. Lonely. And loath as she was to admit it, she was certain Miranda was right about one thing: they had a lot more in common than Andy would have believed all those months ago.
That day, somehow she’d caught the gentle motion of Miranda’s head as she motioned Andy to come closer. Andy had sprinted across the street, almost taking out a bike messenger and three nannies with children in strollers, but she didn’t care. She was inside the limo in seconds, shivering as Miranda looked down her long nose in derision.
Andy could barely recall what they’d talked about. But two weeks later, Andy made the first move in Miranda’s townhouse, and subsequently had the hottest sex of her life on the hard wood floor where she’d first seen Miranda arguing with Stephen. She had terrible friction burns on her ass for three days after, but every time she sat down, she grinned.
When she thought back, she was pretty sure they were falling in love by that point. Neither of them said the words for a while, but it worked. Their interactions were primarily sexual at the beginning, which bothered neither of them. But then Andy started hanging around after the sex, and then in the mornings, and then for weekends. The twins met her again (as a non-assistant) and didn’t seem to care one way or the other what she did. Andy didn’t get in their business, but after a few months, they warmed up. Maybe because she was female, and basically non-threatening. But Caroline confided to Andy eventually that their mom was nicer to be around now than she had been for ages. They’d wanted to wait and see what Andy did, and she had lived through her trial period. The twins had privately agreed to like her, and that made Andy like them.
So, they weren’t a family, but they were more than a friendly group of four. Life was good. But then Miranda just had to go away for three weeks to Switzerland, and when she came home, she didn’t go straight to her empty townhouse, where her children weren’t waiting. Instead she had the driver go to Avenue A and East 5th, where Andy was sweating over a story in her shitty studio apartment with no air conditioning. When the buzzer rang and Andy heard Miranda’s voice, she didn’t even change out of her tank top and boxers. Instead, she threw some fancy underwear, a bottle of wine and her computer into a backpack and flew down the four floors. Once in the car, neither of them could wait for the privacy screen to go up.
That was probably a mistake.
Needless to say, the next day, it started.
Mud was slung. Andy’s parents threatened to disown her. Her friends went silent, more so than when Nate had pulled the plug a second time on their wrecked relationship. But worst of all, Miranda’s lawyer went ballistic, with Stephen’s lawyer right behind him. The public assumed that their little tete a tete had started when they’d worked together. Andy wished now that they hadn’t wasted so much time dancing around each other and just started fucking when she’d gotten the gig.
But, they hadn’t. Now, Miranda is in court, and Andy is in a coffee shop in the middle of the day. Jobless. Miserable. And worst of all, guilty. The guilt eats her alive from the inside out. If she’d only waited longer, to see Miranda, to kiss her, to love her, everything would have been easier. But she hadn’t been able to. She is the one at fault. Once she held that silver hair between her fingers, she wouldn’t have let go for the world.
And it seems the world they share will be sacrificed for her greed.
Her phone buzzes; it’s a Google alert. As she scans the title of the article, her heart falls through the floor, burrowing down into the earth to rest below layers of concrete and filth.
DEVIL GETS HER DUE: TOMMY-BOY TAKES THE POT
She had it coming all along... Miranda Priestly, accused by now ex-husband Stephen Tomlinson of adultery, mental cruelty and general all-around bitchery, got hosed. Tommy swept the table in court. The judge granted him a divorce to the tune of seven million smackers. Where all her cash came from we don’t know, but the fact is that the Dragon Lady has to pay up pronto. We’re sure plaything Andy Sachs will lick her wounds with gusto tonight, yessiree. Unless Andy’s already moved on to her next conquest, which a little bird told us is a distinct possibility. We wouldn’t put money on the current Priestly pair lasting much longer. Taking bets now-who’s in?
Tears roll down Andy’s cheeks. Her phone buzzes again, and again as the texts roll in from other news sources. She shoves her sunglasses on her face and slams the computer lid shut. She should have known the judge wouldn’t rule in Miranda’s favor. As much as the court purports not take a moral stance on divorce cases, how on earth could she believe otherwise if Miranda has to pay Stephen so much money? He is, or was before the crash, a successful financier. He had to have a zillion bucks stashed in the Caymans or somewhere.
It doesn’t matter now. Andy prays to God Miranda won’t lose the house, or anything in it.
Her hands shake as she sips the last of her iced latte. Time passes, and she loses track of what she’s supposed to be doing for the rest of the day, which is look for a job and not get caught out by the press.
Turns out she sucks at both things, because after an hour of sitting and staring at the wall, the first flashbulb goes off in her face. “She’s inside!” someone shouts. Andy’s stomach turns, and she wonders if she throws up on someone’s shoes if it will end up on the internet. Probably.
Forty minutes later she stumbles into the townhouse, red-streaked eyelids swollen from crying. She didn’t remove her enormous Chanel shades the entire time, so at least she won’t have to suffer that humiliation.
Glancing around at the opulent surroundings, Andy feels insignificant. She will never be good enough. She’s brought Miranda and her kids nothing but heartache since they’ve been together, and undoubtedly there’s more on the way. After a week of joblessness, Andy can barely stand to look at her own face in the mirror. Miranda won’t resent her yet, surely; she’s too wrapped up in her own problems. But soon, it will happen, and Andy will end up with less than what she has now, which is nothing. Fourteen grand in the bank, a few shelves of books, and some clothes, half of which really belong to Miranda, if she thinks about it. And she only has the savings because she doesn’t pay rent.
Somewhere along the line, Andy became a kept woman, and it never bothered her before last week. More specifically, today. And now Miranda has to throw millions of dollars at someone who happened to live here for a while before Andy showed up. Someone who was such a pathetic spouse that Miranda thinks even Andy is a better option.
Andy would never ask for money if they married and divorced. She’d rather crawl back to Ohio before she’d accept anything from Miranda. And after watching Miranda seethe and curse Stephen in private, Andy can hardly bear the thought of Miranda saying the same things about her.
She climbs the stairs to the third floor, where she shares a room with Miranda. Well, it’s Miranda’s room, really. Andy sleeps there, and keeps her clothes there. Her books are still in boxes in the downstairs office, because they couldn’t decide what to do with them. Though she will never say it aloud, Andy thinks that’s because Miranda doesn’t know how long they’ll be together. Is it worth the effort to mix their stuff up, and then eventually have to pull it apart again? Andy believes her books would be like weeds amidst an elegant, manicured garden. She thinks the same about her clothes.
“Miranda has to pay Stephen seven million dollars,” Andy says out loud for the first time. Her voice sounds small in the enormous bedroom.
Tears overflow once more. Andy wonders if maybe she ought to pack a bag and go away for a while. She doesn’t have a job to miss, and Miranda and the kids… well, they’re busy. Miranda will be a nightmare at work and home, and she might find out soon about Andy losing her job if she isn’t more careful about where she keeps herself during the day.
Where is her suitcase? There’s one somewhere, there has to be. She checks the guestroom next to Cassidy’s room, but the closet is empty. After two more rooms, she finds it. It’s a rolling bag that she used to carry on airplanes, back before she first met Miranda. Her mother bought it, for $29.99, at Ross. Looking at it makes her feel pathetic. She hauls it back to the bedroom and throws it on the bed. When she opens it, it seems tiny, not large enough to hold the things she’d need for a week on her own. For a few minutes, she stands in front of the closet, considering what she might bring. Where she might go.
Part II.