(no subject)
Priestly's Piece of Paradise (8/?)
by Coco (i_heart_cuddy)
rating R
pairing Miranda/Donna
disclaimer I don't own the Devil Wears Prada or Mamma Mia or Meryl Streep: I'm just borrowing them. No money is being made off of this and no infringement is intended.
summary Caroline, Cassidy, Andy, Emily and Nigel come to see how Miranda is settling into her new life of leisure. Is retirement everything Miranda dreamed it would be or is it driving her slowly over the edge into insanity?
Author's Note Continuation in the fic verse set up in Letters to the Editor ♥
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven
"Serena," Miranda set down the stack of papers on the desk, "I don't see the resumes for the art director position."
"Actually, I didn't advertise for any." Serena admitted.
"You didn't..." Miranda pursed her lips, she leaned back in her chair and scrutinized Serena closely. "Now, what motivation would you have for that?"
"Miranda, I would very much like to apply for that position. I think that I am more than qualified."
"Do you have a resume?" Miranda asked noncommittally.
"Yes, I do." Serena hurried over to the desk she'd been using and gathered her resume together and rushed back to Miranda. "I attended the School of Art and Design in Berlin and I studied fashion at the Art Institute here in New York. I've worked for Runway for nine years, but before Runway I was a graphic designer for CosmoGirl and Seventeen. And I-"
"I'm reading." Miranda said impatiently, not looking up from the resume.
"Sorry." Serena sat down in the chair in front of the desk to wait for Miranda to look up again.
Miranda set the resume down and looked at the samples of work from CosmoGirl and Seventeen. Miranda closed the portfolio and looked up at Serena.
Serena looked on hopefully.
"Mock up a layout." Miranda finally said, "then we'll talk about it again. In the meantime, I need you to weed out the incompetents from this pile."
"Absolutely," Serena picked up the weighty pile from the corner of the desk, "which position are they applying for?"
"Those? They're applying to be underlings in the Closet." Miranda stood and gathered up her coat and purse, "I'm going to lunch. Have that done for when I come back."
A few minutes later Emily cleared her throat. Serena looked up and cocked an eyebrow, "yes?"
"Serena, go get me a coffee."
Serena grinned slowly, "I don't work for you."
"You work for the editor-in-chief of Runway. That's me." Emily attempted to stare her down.
"I'm not getting your coffee." Serena scoffed, "I'm not even getting paid for what I'm doing for Miranda."
"So when does your assistantship end?" Emily asked, suddenly more interested in when Serena would be gone than making her perform menial tasks.
"Hopefully soon." Serena attempted to hide her smug grin. Emily rolled her eyes and headed for the door, "hey, if you're going out for coffee get me one."
"Bite me!"
"Maybe later, Liepchen." Serena called.
**
Donna picked up a tray of dishes and went to push open the door before it opened from the other side, smacking into the tray and nearly causing Donna to drop everything.
Sophie poked her head in sheepishly, "sorry, mom."
"Sophie, damn it." Donna set the tray down. "There's an in door and an out door, please try to keep them straight!"
"I'm sorry."
Donna sighed and rubbed her eyes, "no, Soph, I'm sorry I snapped at you. I think I'm having sex withdrawal."
Sophie laughed, "it's only been a little over two weeks, are you telling me you're just going to keep getting worse for six months?"
"Nah, I'll probably have committed sepuku by then." Donna joked. "I mean, I went over twenty years without it just fine but when you have it... and it goes away. It's very difficult."
"Mom, there's actually something I wanted to talk to you about."
"Sweetheart, can it wait until after the breakfast rush?"
"Yeah, absolutely." Sophie nodded, watching her mother carrying the tray into the dining room.
**
Miranda sat down across the table from Cassidy. She stuck a fork into her meager excuse for food and sighed, taking a skeptical bite.
Cassidy pushed the food around the plate, "let's order out tomorrow night."
Miranda raised her eyebrows in silent agreement. She took another pained bite before setting her fork down. "Have you thought about going back to university?"
Cassidy shrugged, "I thought about it."
"And decided what?"
"And decided that I'm 19 and I can make my own decisions." Cassidy said pointedly.
"I don't understand why you won't just talk to me about this." Miranda exclaimed with exasperation.
"Because I'm sick and tired of hearing you telling me I have to go back to college! That I'll never get a good job without a degree because you never went back to college and why are you so preachy about it like you're some kind of damn saint?"
"My mother didn't want me to go in the first place, so when I was expelled she didn't try to convince me to go back, I didn't have anyone trying to convince me to go back." Miranda said, then added, almost to herself, "not that there was any guarantee I could have."
"What does that even mean? Why won't you tell us why you were expelled?" Cassidy demanded.
"Because it was a lifetime ago and it doesn't matter."
"How can you sit there and ask me to be honest with you when you're not honest with us?"
Miranda considered that for a moment, "it's not something I personally wish to discuss."
"Why?"
"Because..." Miranda sighed heavily, "that's my choice and I'm asking you to respect that."
"Yeah... well, I'm an adult and I don't want to go back to school. I'm asking you to respect that." Cassidy crossed her arms across her chest defiantly.
"Fine." Miranda pursed her lips, "I'm not helping you out financially anymore."
"Fine." Cassidy stood up.
"Aren't you going to finish eating?"
Cassidy looked down at the meal prepared by Miranda, "hey, just because you don't agree with my decision is no reason to poison me."
Miranda pouted and pushed away her own food with disdain. After a few minutes she picked up her blackberry.
"Andy Sachs." Andy answered, cradling the phone between her cheek and shoulder as her fingers tapped away at the keys of her laptop.
"Andrea. You're still at work?"
"I am. It's only six, it's not that late." Andy shifted the phone to the other ear, "I get out soon though."
"I want you to teach me how to cook. I'm absolutely dreadful at it. Maybe it would be a nice surprise for Donna if I learned how to make a few things. So she wouldn't always have to cook for me."
"Yeah, I think that sounds sweet. I get out at seven and I'll come over."
"No, meet me at the supermarket, we'll need ingredients. I'll bring my cookbook." Miranda said curtly, "that's all."
"Which supermarket?" Andy questioned and was answered only by dead air, "...Miranda?"
At seven Andy got out and tried her luck that Miranda meant the supermarket nearest the townhouse. She found Miranda hovering over the cantaloupe display. "Andrea, do I like cantaloupe?"
"I think so." Andy nodded, "but I don't know many recipes that call for cantaloupe."
"I could make a fruit salad." Miranda objected.
"I wouldn't call that cooking." Andy quipped.
Miranda tried to glare through a smile, "I could make a tarte."
"That's baking."
"Alright." Miranda set the cantaloupe down, "alright. Lead on."
A couple of hours later, Miranda and Andy sat at her kitchen table with the finished product. It was chicken breaded and baked with bread crumbs and Romano cheese with cooked carrots and sauteed green beans.
"You did it, Miranda." Andy grinned.
It smelled heavenly, even Miranda had to admit that. But she shrugged, "no, I didn't. You did. Credit where credit is due."
"What are you talking about? I didn't even touch the food."
Miranda set down forks in front of each plate, "granted, it was by my hand this chicken was prepared but you instructed me, you had the instincts for when to flip the chicken, when to add more water so the green beans didn't burn." Miranda sighed, "I just don't have the instincts."
"You can learn the instincts."
"Andrea. One cannot learn instincts. By definition, instincts are something you're born with."
"Okay, I'm not going to argue semantics with you." Andy said, "but it's learnable. You can learn how to cook and how to react to it. There's a lot that's common sense when you think about it. Take green beans for example: water evaporates, right? So you have to make sure that there's enough water to cook them, if they touch the pan without water they burn."
Miranda nodded, "that's sensible."
"Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I mean, maybe you won't ever make it an art, but you can learn how to do it." Andy picked up the fork in front of Miranda's plate, "why don't you try it?"
Miranda pursed her lips, "I'm almost afraid to."
"Don't be so trepidatious. You said yourself that I made more of it than you did and I'm liable to be offended by your nervousness." Andy smiled.
Miranda rolled her eyes good-naturedly and took a hesitant bite. "It's pretty good."
Andy took a few bites herself and they ate in silence for a while before Andy spoke, "why don't we do dinner again on Friday, you can cook this time. I'll be over at 7:15, you should start cooking at about 6."
"I... don't think I'm ready for that."
"Oh, don't you even say that. You're Miranda Priestly, you're ready for anything and everything. Just remember a few things: low heat cooks things slower but more thoroughly, high heat cooks things faster on the outside, leaving the inside more raw."
"These things all make sense." Miranda nodded.
By the time they'd finished dinner and they'd done the dishes it was almost ten. "I guess I should get going." Andy said, looking at the time on her phone.
"We're on for lunch tomorrow?" Miranda asked, sad to see her friend go. She'd grown quite unaccustomed to being completely alone and felt a pang of loss by Andy's need to go home.
"Of course." Andy grinned. Lunch with Miranda had always been fun but only since her promotion could she really justify spending as much money as she had to in order to eat lunch with Miranda. In Miranda's absence, Andy typically ate alone, which was nice sometimes, but lonely.
**
Andy opened the door of her apartment about fifteen minutes later. Emily looked up from a cup of coffee. She glanced at the clock on the microwave and looked at Andy with an air of annoyance.
"I was at Miranda's."
"Surprise, surprise." Emily muttered, sipping her coffee and going back to the budget report she was reading.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Andy hung up her coat and went to the refrigerator.
"Nothing." Emily flipped a page in the report and her eyes went wide. "Christ alive, the woman has no concept of a budget! She thinks money grows on goddamned trees."
"What's she done this time?" Andy opened a diet coke.
Emily looked up disdainfully, "that is pure sugar."
"It's diet."
"The carbonation makes you burp."
Andy smirked, "at least it doesn't make me fart."
"You are so crude." Emily had turned back to the budget report. "I have to meet with Irv tomorrow... I don't know how I'm going to justify all of this."
"What did she do?" Andy sat down at the table.
"Well, she canceled my photo shoot and organized an entirely new one which is already an ungodly amount of money that was wasted but she also fired half of the staff and she's paying the replacements almost double the wages." Emily closed the report and rubbed her eyes, "Irv is going to shit a brick."
"You should talk to her about it."
"There's no talking to Miranda. It's all for 'the good of the magazine,' she says there is 'no excuse for settling for mediocrity because it's cheaper.'"
Andy watched Emily for a moment before asking, "don't you agree with that?"
"Well, obviously my first priority is to keep up the integrity of the magazine but my goal is to make the best of the budget I'm given."
"Miranda used to say that Irv gave her a smaller budget than he was actually willing to pay for. You know, because she consistently went over budget. It's more like a conservative estimate."
Emily sneered, getting up from the table and slamming the door to the bathroom behind her.
**
"You're kidding." Sophie stared at Skye who was busying himself with idle work to avoid looking at her.
"No." Skye admitted, "I want to stay here."
"You're the one who's always saying there's more to life than Villa Donna." Sophie took a few steps away from him before walking back, "you're the one who wanted to go out on our own. We said we'd come back to help out my mom while she got the hotel established. She won all that money over three years ago! The hotel has been a goldmine for almost as long. She doesn't need us anymore."
"I need her." Skye snapped. Skye and Sophie stared at each other for a moment before Skye sighed and clarified, "I need Villa Donna."
"What are you talking about?"
"We went out and did the traveling thing. Why do you want to throw away your home?" Skye demanded.
"My home. This isn't some maladjusted last-ditch attempt at the home you never had, is it?"
Skye pulled away from Sophie, "I can't believe you're trivializing my feelings."
Sophie rubbed her eyes, shaking her head out of frustration. "You were a foster kid, I get it."
"Clearly you don't." Skye crossed his arms across his chest.
"Okay, fine, we can get ourselves a house. We can have a home that doesn't have to be here."
"Donna's the closest thing that I've ever had to a mother. I love her and I don't want to live anywhere other than Villa Donna."
"Okay, fine. I can appreciate that, I also love my mother but we can get our own place nearby and still visit, you could even still work here." Sophie put her hands on his shoulders, "because I don't want to live here for the rest of my life and I think my feelings should count too."
Skye considered her words and nodded, "alright. But I think we should wait until Miranda gets back. I think Donna needs our support."
Sophie nodded, conceding defeat, "fine."
♥
by Coco (i_heart_cuddy)
rating R
pairing Miranda/Donna
disclaimer I don't own the Devil Wears Prada or Mamma Mia or Meryl Streep: I'm just borrowing them. No money is being made off of this and no infringement is intended.
summary Caroline, Cassidy, Andy, Emily and Nigel come to see how Miranda is settling into her new life of leisure. Is retirement everything Miranda dreamed it would be or is it driving her slowly over the edge into insanity?
Author's Note Continuation in the fic verse set up in Letters to the Editor ♥
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six | Part Seven
"Serena," Miranda set down the stack of papers on the desk, "I don't see the resumes for the art director position."
"Actually, I didn't advertise for any." Serena admitted.
"You didn't..." Miranda pursed her lips, she leaned back in her chair and scrutinized Serena closely. "Now, what motivation would you have for that?"
"Miranda, I would very much like to apply for that position. I think that I am more than qualified."
"Do you have a resume?" Miranda asked noncommittally.
"Yes, I do." Serena hurried over to the desk she'd been using and gathered her resume together and rushed back to Miranda. "I attended the School of Art and Design in Berlin and I studied fashion at the Art Institute here in New York. I've worked for Runway for nine years, but before Runway I was a graphic designer for CosmoGirl and Seventeen. And I-"
"I'm reading." Miranda said impatiently, not looking up from the resume.
"Sorry." Serena sat down in the chair in front of the desk to wait for Miranda to look up again.
Miranda set the resume down and looked at the samples of work from CosmoGirl and Seventeen. Miranda closed the portfolio and looked up at Serena.
Serena looked on hopefully.
"Mock up a layout." Miranda finally said, "then we'll talk about it again. In the meantime, I need you to weed out the incompetents from this pile."
"Absolutely," Serena picked up the weighty pile from the corner of the desk, "which position are they applying for?"
"Those? They're applying to be underlings in the Closet." Miranda stood and gathered up her coat and purse, "I'm going to lunch. Have that done for when I come back."
A few minutes later Emily cleared her throat. Serena looked up and cocked an eyebrow, "yes?"
"Serena, go get me a coffee."
Serena grinned slowly, "I don't work for you."
"You work for the editor-in-chief of Runway. That's me." Emily attempted to stare her down.
"I'm not getting your coffee." Serena scoffed, "I'm not even getting paid for what I'm doing for Miranda."
"So when does your assistantship end?" Emily asked, suddenly more interested in when Serena would be gone than making her perform menial tasks.
"Hopefully soon." Serena attempted to hide her smug grin. Emily rolled her eyes and headed for the door, "hey, if you're going out for coffee get me one."
"Bite me!"
"Maybe later, Liepchen." Serena called.
**
Donna picked up a tray of dishes and went to push open the door before it opened from the other side, smacking into the tray and nearly causing Donna to drop everything.
Sophie poked her head in sheepishly, "sorry, mom."
"Sophie, damn it." Donna set the tray down. "There's an in door and an out door, please try to keep them straight!"
"I'm sorry."
Donna sighed and rubbed her eyes, "no, Soph, I'm sorry I snapped at you. I think I'm having sex withdrawal."
Sophie laughed, "it's only been a little over two weeks, are you telling me you're just going to keep getting worse for six months?"
"Nah, I'll probably have committed sepuku by then." Donna joked. "I mean, I went over twenty years without it just fine but when you have it... and it goes away. It's very difficult."
"Mom, there's actually something I wanted to talk to you about."
"Sweetheart, can it wait until after the breakfast rush?"
"Yeah, absolutely." Sophie nodded, watching her mother carrying the tray into the dining room.
**
Miranda sat down across the table from Cassidy. She stuck a fork into her meager excuse for food and sighed, taking a skeptical bite.
Cassidy pushed the food around the plate, "let's order out tomorrow night."
Miranda raised her eyebrows in silent agreement. She took another pained bite before setting her fork down. "Have you thought about going back to university?"
Cassidy shrugged, "I thought about it."
"And decided what?"
"And decided that I'm 19 and I can make my own decisions." Cassidy said pointedly.
"I don't understand why you won't just talk to me about this." Miranda exclaimed with exasperation.
"Because I'm sick and tired of hearing you telling me I have to go back to college! That I'll never get a good job without a degree because you never went back to college and why are you so preachy about it like you're some kind of damn saint?"
"My mother didn't want me to go in the first place, so when I was expelled she didn't try to convince me to go back, I didn't have anyone trying to convince me to go back." Miranda said, then added, almost to herself, "not that there was any guarantee I could have."
"What does that even mean? Why won't you tell us why you were expelled?" Cassidy demanded.
"Because it was a lifetime ago and it doesn't matter."
"How can you sit there and ask me to be honest with you when you're not honest with us?"
Miranda considered that for a moment, "it's not something I personally wish to discuss."
"Why?"
"Because..." Miranda sighed heavily, "that's my choice and I'm asking you to respect that."
"Yeah... well, I'm an adult and I don't want to go back to school. I'm asking you to respect that." Cassidy crossed her arms across her chest defiantly.
"Fine." Miranda pursed her lips, "I'm not helping you out financially anymore."
"Fine." Cassidy stood up.
"Aren't you going to finish eating?"
Cassidy looked down at the meal prepared by Miranda, "hey, just because you don't agree with my decision is no reason to poison me."
Miranda pouted and pushed away her own food with disdain. After a few minutes she picked up her blackberry.
"Andy Sachs." Andy answered, cradling the phone between her cheek and shoulder as her fingers tapped away at the keys of her laptop.
"Andrea. You're still at work?"
"I am. It's only six, it's not that late." Andy shifted the phone to the other ear, "I get out soon though."
"I want you to teach me how to cook. I'm absolutely dreadful at it. Maybe it would be a nice surprise for Donna if I learned how to make a few things. So she wouldn't always have to cook for me."
"Yeah, I think that sounds sweet. I get out at seven and I'll come over."
"No, meet me at the supermarket, we'll need ingredients. I'll bring my cookbook." Miranda said curtly, "that's all."
"Which supermarket?" Andy questioned and was answered only by dead air, "...Miranda?"
At seven Andy got out and tried her luck that Miranda meant the supermarket nearest the townhouse. She found Miranda hovering over the cantaloupe display. "Andrea, do I like cantaloupe?"
"I think so." Andy nodded, "but I don't know many recipes that call for cantaloupe."
"I could make a fruit salad." Miranda objected.
"I wouldn't call that cooking." Andy quipped.
Miranda tried to glare through a smile, "I could make a tarte."
"That's baking."
"Alright." Miranda set the cantaloupe down, "alright. Lead on."
A couple of hours later, Miranda and Andy sat at her kitchen table with the finished product. It was chicken breaded and baked with bread crumbs and Romano cheese with cooked carrots and sauteed green beans.
"You did it, Miranda." Andy grinned.
It smelled heavenly, even Miranda had to admit that. But she shrugged, "no, I didn't. You did. Credit where credit is due."
"What are you talking about? I didn't even touch the food."
Miranda set down forks in front of each plate, "granted, it was by my hand this chicken was prepared but you instructed me, you had the instincts for when to flip the chicken, when to add more water so the green beans didn't burn." Miranda sighed, "I just don't have the instincts."
"You can learn the instincts."
"Andrea. One cannot learn instincts. By definition, instincts are something you're born with."
"Okay, I'm not going to argue semantics with you." Andy said, "but it's learnable. You can learn how to cook and how to react to it. There's a lot that's common sense when you think about it. Take green beans for example: water evaporates, right? So you have to make sure that there's enough water to cook them, if they touch the pan without water they burn."
Miranda nodded, "that's sensible."
"Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I mean, maybe you won't ever make it an art, but you can learn how to do it." Andy picked up the fork in front of Miranda's plate, "why don't you try it?"
Miranda pursed her lips, "I'm almost afraid to."
"Don't be so trepidatious. You said yourself that I made more of it than you did and I'm liable to be offended by your nervousness." Andy smiled.
Miranda rolled her eyes good-naturedly and took a hesitant bite. "It's pretty good."
Andy took a few bites herself and they ate in silence for a while before Andy spoke, "why don't we do dinner again on Friday, you can cook this time. I'll be over at 7:15, you should start cooking at about 6."
"I... don't think I'm ready for that."
"Oh, don't you even say that. You're Miranda Priestly, you're ready for anything and everything. Just remember a few things: low heat cooks things slower but more thoroughly, high heat cooks things faster on the outside, leaving the inside more raw."
"These things all make sense." Miranda nodded.
By the time they'd finished dinner and they'd done the dishes it was almost ten. "I guess I should get going." Andy said, looking at the time on her phone.
"We're on for lunch tomorrow?" Miranda asked, sad to see her friend go. She'd grown quite unaccustomed to being completely alone and felt a pang of loss by Andy's need to go home.
"Of course." Andy grinned. Lunch with Miranda had always been fun but only since her promotion could she really justify spending as much money as she had to in order to eat lunch with Miranda. In Miranda's absence, Andy typically ate alone, which was nice sometimes, but lonely.
**
Andy opened the door of her apartment about fifteen minutes later. Emily looked up from a cup of coffee. She glanced at the clock on the microwave and looked at Andy with an air of annoyance.
"I was at Miranda's."
"Surprise, surprise." Emily muttered, sipping her coffee and going back to the budget report she was reading.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Andy hung up her coat and went to the refrigerator.
"Nothing." Emily flipped a page in the report and her eyes went wide. "Christ alive, the woman has no concept of a budget! She thinks money grows on goddamned trees."
"What's she done this time?" Andy opened a diet coke.
Emily looked up disdainfully, "that is pure sugar."
"It's diet."
"The carbonation makes you burp."
Andy smirked, "at least it doesn't make me fart."
"You are so crude." Emily had turned back to the budget report. "I have to meet with Irv tomorrow... I don't know how I'm going to justify all of this."
"What did she do?" Andy sat down at the table.
"Well, she canceled my photo shoot and organized an entirely new one which is already an ungodly amount of money that was wasted but she also fired half of the staff and she's paying the replacements almost double the wages." Emily closed the report and rubbed her eyes, "Irv is going to shit a brick."
"You should talk to her about it."
"There's no talking to Miranda. It's all for 'the good of the magazine,' she says there is 'no excuse for settling for mediocrity because it's cheaper.'"
Andy watched Emily for a moment before asking, "don't you agree with that?"
"Well, obviously my first priority is to keep up the integrity of the magazine but my goal is to make the best of the budget I'm given."
"Miranda used to say that Irv gave her a smaller budget than he was actually willing to pay for. You know, because she consistently went over budget. It's more like a conservative estimate."
Emily sneered, getting up from the table and slamming the door to the bathroom behind her.
**
"You're kidding." Sophie stared at Skye who was busying himself with idle work to avoid looking at her.
"No." Skye admitted, "I want to stay here."
"You're the one who's always saying there's more to life than Villa Donna." Sophie took a few steps away from him before walking back, "you're the one who wanted to go out on our own. We said we'd come back to help out my mom while she got the hotel established. She won all that money over three years ago! The hotel has been a goldmine for almost as long. She doesn't need us anymore."
"I need her." Skye snapped. Skye and Sophie stared at each other for a moment before Skye sighed and clarified, "I need Villa Donna."
"What are you talking about?"
"We went out and did the traveling thing. Why do you want to throw away your home?" Skye demanded.
"My home. This isn't some maladjusted last-ditch attempt at the home you never had, is it?"
Skye pulled away from Sophie, "I can't believe you're trivializing my feelings."
Sophie rubbed her eyes, shaking her head out of frustration. "You were a foster kid, I get it."
"Clearly you don't." Skye crossed his arms across his chest.
"Okay, fine, we can get ourselves a house. We can have a home that doesn't have to be here."
"Donna's the closest thing that I've ever had to a mother. I love her and I don't want to live anywhere other than Villa Donna."
"Okay, fine. I can appreciate that, I also love my mother but we can get our own place nearby and still visit, you could even still work here." Sophie put her hands on his shoulders, "because I don't want to live here for the rest of my life and I think my feelings should count too."
Skye considered her words and nodded, "alright. But I think we should wait until Miranda gets back. I think Donna needs our support."
Sophie nodded, conceding defeat, "fine."
♥