Fic: Bobbing for Apples, Miranda/Andrea, (1/2)
Title: Bobbing for Apples
Fandom: The Devil Wears Prada (movie)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama, General
Warnings: Femslash
Summary: That her first semi-rational thought was for her former boss, spoke to just how badly she had failed in moving on from Paris...
Length: 3,100 words
Total Length: 6,209 words
Status: Complete
Author's Note: Now with it's own MOTIVATOR by Glo(tuathadedanaa) here.
Bobbing For Apples
Andy looked up from behind her screen, peeling her eyes away from the text with some reluctance. She had been working at The Mirror for six months and still she hadn't had even one of her articles make it higher than page twenty -just beneath the weather forecast for that day. It had caused quite a celebration back home, her Father said, and the article had been framed and hung on her old bedroom wall. Still, she lived in hope that this one would make it to at least page ten.
The problem wasn't her writing; she knew she had a way with words that made many of her colleagues jealous, but she still wasn't high in the pecking order, and for a relatively small newspaper like The Mirror this often left her covering the newest donated park bench, and on one memorable occasion, the hunger strike of the homeless man who lived on the corner just outside her apartment block.
This week, though, there was an addition to the paper in the form of a new and barely out of college journalist by the name of Ted Drewry. Or 'TeeDee' as he introduced himself.
At this point, Andy would be glad to call him anything his heart desired, for his arrival meant that her own position got bumped up and she was able to pick, actually pick, from an assortment of slightly more interesting topics. After months of substandard work, she finally had to use her brain again. It was proving to be entirely too hard to switch into gear.
It was for this reason that when Andy finally did pull her eyes away from her article, she narrowed them in a glare at the person stupid enough to shout her name.
"Yeah?" Good elocution had been lost some time in the last three months too; Emily and Nigel would be horrified to see how far she'd fallen. And that was without even touching on her clothes.
A junior journalist for The Mirror couldn't even afford to say the words 'Gucci', 'Prada' and 'Manolo'. It was the shoes she felt the loss of most. Her poor feet hadn't known what hit them, when she'd slipped them out of Blahniks one day and into DocMartins the next.
TeeDee stared back at her, his mouth turned up in a smug smile that was amplified by his eyes. His own assignment had been the opening of yet another Thrift store, nothing about that should have produced such a look. Or his apparent level of excitement. Andy felt a tightening in her stomach she hadn't felt since Paris. She just knew that what ever he said next wouldn't bode well for her.
"Don't get too used to that article, Sachs, because I've got something here that's going to have you back writing about park fountains by tomorrow morning." The arrogance was another mark against him, the first fifteen of which she had written on a small piece of note paper in her top drawer. It began with; 'greases his hair' and ended with; 'puts on a terrible fake English accent'. The last, only she seemed to have noticed, but then, no one else had worked for almost a year with Emily.
"Don't tell me, you've found the face of God in an old shawl." A few of the others in the office chuckled; Andy would have been buoyed by this, if she didn't know it was simply the way the newbie was always treated at first.
Sometimes she found herself seriously concerned that news journalists had become bitchier than their fashion-based peers. It was a scary thought best left to the dead of night.
Drewry's smile grew even wider and the sinking feeling intensified. Andy was glad to already be sitting down, it seemed like one of those moments when having a chair close to hand was necessary.
"No, what I have here is a copy, possibly the only copy of 'Whips, Chains and Two Smoking Hookers.'"
Andy stared at him in disbelief; she'd been getting worried, for that?
"Um, Ted, I hate to be the one to tell you this, since I'm sure your parents meant to and just didn't get around to it. But, pornography isn't really newsworthy material anymore. Not since the fifties. You can pick it up at pretty much every video store in New York."
Rolling her eyes at the man, Andy returned her attention to her article, finished with wasting her time. She was pretty sure most of the other writers had returned to their work too.
"Thanks Sachs, for that oh so educational lesson, but tell me, do all these other videos have the Editor of the premiere fashion magazine on the back cover?"
Andy's heart thudded once against her rib cage and then froze. She could not have just heard what she thought she heard. It wasn't possible. Maybe he meant a different Editor, a different magazine. Just because she, and most of America thought Runway was 'the' fashion magazine didn't mean that a little upstart like TeeDee did.
Forcing her lungs to take a deep breath, Andy raised her eyes again.
"Excuse me?" Her heart gave that odd single thud again at the expression of sheer glee on Drewry's face.
"I think you heard me well enough, Sachs. This video here." He waved the offending item in his left hand, and began to walk slowly over to where Andy sat. "This little one-in-twelve-million video, appears to have a friend of yours on the cover. Don't tell me you've forgotten your old boss so quickly. And here, I was led to believe that Miranda Priestly was unforgettable."
He put Andy in mind of a shark. She wanted to see him gutted and hanging from a line.
She was sure there were some things she should be saying. Certain that she should be doing something more productive than staring in shock at the arrogant man in front of her. But her mind seemed to have taken over from her suddenly pounding heart and had gotten caught on a repeated loop of; Oh my god. Oh my god.
Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.
Drewry was laughing at her inaction, and the others were crowding around him and taking turns to look at the video. As it passed hands right across her face, she saw it. The picture that had obviously caught Drewry's attention.
It was unmistakably Miranda; a young and blonde Miranda. A young, blonde, dressed in leather and holding a whip Miranda. But still undeniably Miranda 'Ice Queen' Priestly.
The picture left her sight and Andy's attention snapped back into focus. Oh shit, Miranda!
That her first semi-rational thought was for her former boss, and how this would affect her and the girls, the girls, and not for how her own career had just gone into recession, spoke to just how badly she had failed in moving on after Paris. In forgetting Runway, Miranda and where her loyalties had lain for almost a year.
"What are you going to do?" Her voice was steady, unlike her hands; she tucked them under her desk.
"Why, Sachs, I'm going to watch it, of course, and then write a small piece on it. Don't you think our corner of New York deserves to know a little more about our beloved Queen of Fashion?"
At this point, Andy would have reminded Ted that The Mirror was supposed to be a serious newspaper and not a tabloid, except her Editor was currently fawning over the video case as though it held all the secrets to Midas's touch.
There was nothing she, a lowly junior, could say that would make these men keep this quiet. This was going to happen, Miranda would wake up tomorrow morning to see her past spread across the front page of The Mirror, would undoubtedly be plagued with the rest of the press as she left the townhouse and then be faced with Runway and Irv on top of it all. And there was nothing Andy could do to stop it.
Even after all this time, failing Miranda felt worse than failing herself.
Andy paused. There was nothing she could do to stop the article being published, unless she killed the entire newsroom which wasn't sounding as bad as it probably should. She couldn't stop it going to print, but she could make sure Miranda knew about it now. She could warn Miranda, hopefully lessen the shock of it somehow. She didn't know, it might even give Miranda enough time to pull out a miracle and dampen the impact the revelation would have. She had seen Miranda tear through the inevitable before; Andy had learnt the hard way not to underestimate her.
Drewry had moved his attention away from Andy, eating up the praises offered to him like a child in a chocolate factory and The Video, which much like The Book required capitals in Andy's mind, lay unattended on the desk adjacent to her own.
Feeling like a master criminal pulling off the job of her life, Andy stood with slow, calm movements that belayed nothing of the tension thrumming in her blood and pulled her bag out from beside her chair.
Still moving with careful steps, she walked around her desk and casually lifted The Video from its partner's smooth surface. Stage one complete; Andy forced herself not to just sprint for the door, but instead to take precise steps around the backs of her, she supposed newly-former, colleagues and out the door unnoticed.
As soon as her feet hit the outer step - and she had never been gladder to work on the ground floor - Andy shoved the video into her bag, flipped her phone open, broke into the fastest run of her life and dialled a familiar number.
She was already two blocks away from The Mirror's office by the time Emily's voice came on the line.
"Miranda Priestly's O-"
"Emily, it's Andy, I need to see Miranda now." She interrupted the first assistant as loudly as she could with her breaths coming in fast pants.
"Andy? Andrea? Well you've certainly kept hold of the belief that you are something special. You were a pitiful assistant and a great disappointment to us all, but you were never this dense. I would have remembered. If you think you can just start barking orders at me and actually expect Miranda to see you, then my memory must have turned you into some sort of idealised version of yourself."
Andy had used the time while Emily vented, to run the last three blocks until she had the Elias-Clarke building in her sights.
Pausing to take a much needed breath, Andy spoke into her phone with a sense of calm she definitely did not feel.
"Em, I'm outside the building and I need to see Miranda now. It's important. Really important; like Hermes is out of scarves important." Emily remained silent. "You don't have to say it's me, or even tell her anyone's coming in, just keep her in her office for the next five minutes until I get there. Okay?"
There was a pause during which Andy dodged the lines of mid-morning traffic and ran into the entryway of the Publishing house, and then;
"This had better be good Andrea." Andy hung up almost before Emily, and it wasn't until she stood waiting impatiently for a lift to arrive that she realised she'd had no official way of getting access to the area. She sent an extra smile back to the security guard that seemed to have remembered her, if not that she didn't work there anymore, and told herself she would make sure to send him a thank you box of Krispy Kremes later. If she lived that long.
She was certain the elevator was taking particular delight in moving slower than usual and Andy paced around inside it like a tiger at the zoo, trying to organise her thoughts into some semblance of order. It wasn't easy. She felt like she'd consumed four extra shot lattes in the space of an hour, on an empty stomach. She expected to suffer a heart attack any minute now.
Everyone at The Mirror would have noticed her and The Video's absence, the lack of phone calls only attributed to the fact that she had left her work phone behind on her desk. It would annoy them, would limit just how much information they would be able to write, but it wouldn't be enough to stop anything. Too many people had seen it, and Andy didn't really doubt for a second that 'TeeDee' hadn't made a copy of the case before showing them all. She at least knew he hadn't made a copy of the film; he hadn't watched it yet after all.
The doors dinged open and Andy once again took up her hundred-metres-sprint pace, pelting down the corridors towards Miranda's office, ignoring the looks she received as she breezed past the various offices along the way.
Emily was standing by the entrance to the outer office, hands wringing in front of her and a wild look in her eyes. Andy stopped before her, hands on her thighs as she made a valiant attempt at catching her breath. She absently noted that her replacement must have been sent out on some errand and for a moment wasn't sure if it was pity she felt, or jealousy.
"There you are. Do you have any idea the trouble you've caused with your little phone call? She was supposed to have a meeting with Patrick in ten minutes. I had to tell her he'd cancelled. She sent me to go fetch him myself."
Andy had finally straightened up again and she eyed the inner office doors warily. Now that she was here, it all seemed a little too real. She wondered if this was a nightmare and she'd wake up covered in sweat but safe in her bed. She pinched herself. No such luck.
"Em, trust me, she's going to want to hear this, and then Patrick is going to be the furthest thing from her mind." Andy stopped and thought. "But I could be wrong, so why don't you go out and pretend to be fetching Patrick, and I'll tell her what I've come to say, and she can't blame you for letting me in because you're not here." She accompanied the idea with a shooing motion and after a suspicious look, that had not a little relief in it, Emily complied. Tugging her coat on, the English woman caught Andy's eye before she left.
"This had better be good, Andrea. I will not miss out on Paris a second time because of you." And then she was gone.
Andy sucked in a deep breath, pulled the damned video from her bag and tried to act as though her legs weren't shaking so much she thought she might fall.
There was a small chance she remembered Miranda as worse than she really was. A very small chance. Oh hell, she was screwed.
Andy pushed open the unusually closed doors without knocking and was glad when Miranda didn't immediately look up. It gave her time to take in her first look at the older woman since that moment in the street six months earlier.
She looked amazing. Of course she did. If Andy hadn't seen for herself in that hotel room, she would think the woman had never looked anything but amazing.
Miranda sat bent over a set of negatives, probably for the most recent photo shoot, peering intently through both her glasses and the small magnifying glass. Her hair was as perfectly coiffed as always, and from what Andy could see, she wore a black striped skirt suit, most likely Bill Blass as Miranda's preferred designer for such things, and a well cut white silk shirt that ended nicely in a V that, at the angle Miranda was bent, left just enough to the imagination. Not that Andy was imagining. Not right then, she had far too many other things on her mind.
Just as Andy contemplated making a noise to announce her presence, Miranda spoke without looking up.
"Emily, I assume you have a perfectly good reason for your presence here and not at Patrick's loft?" The voice was the same, soft, sharp and deadly. Andy hadn't realised how much she'd missed it. No one did quiet rage like Miranda
"Hello Miranda." The reaction to Andy's voice was instantaneous. Miranda's head shot up faster than Andy had ever seen the woman move, the action obviously reflexive and not carefully planned. The blue eyes locked onto Andy's seemed to drill right through to her soul. She shivered slightly. Those eyes.
"You." One word, ten types of anger.
"Erm. Yeah, I mean, yes." Miranda placed the magnifier on the desk without breaking eye contact with Andy, and then reached up and removed her glasses. The sensation of falling without a rope seized Andy as she stared helplessly into those eyes.
"What are you doing here, Andreá? You no longer work here, you have no friends here and your little paper has not sent you here to interview anyone." The unspoken; 'you don't belong here' was more obvious than it had been her very first day as second assistant.
Andy pushed off the mixed feelings that had clogged her mind since entering the office, not helped by the way her body responded to the sound of her name spoken so uniquely by Miranda. Taking the few steps to bring her up close to the desk and the woman behind it, Andy reached across and placed The Video, front cover facing up, on top of the black and white photographs, not moving her gaze away from Miranda.
The moment finally broke and Miranda lowered her eyes to the video. Andy watched with no pleasure as Miranda paled behind her make-up, quite a shocking sight in someone with such white skin already. One hand reached out shakily to turn the video over and flew up to Miranda's mouth with a gasp as that picture was revealed. Miranda's breathing speed up until she was almost panting her entire body trembling with an emotion Andy couldn't name. She could guess, but it was likely more than just one emotion.
After what seemed like hours, Miranda raised her head, eyes not quite meeting Andy's and took her hand away from her mouth, just enough to speak. Her voice sounded rough, and not nearly as steady as she probably wished it to be.
"What do you want?" The tone was biting, accusing but the blue eyes, when they finally met her own, were pleading and vulnerable. For the second time that morning, Andy was stunned into silence.
...
...
Part Two
Fandom: The Devil Wears Prada (movie)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama, General
Warnings: Femslash
Summary: That her first semi-rational thought was for her former boss, spoke to just how badly she had failed in moving on from Paris...
Length: 3,100 words
Total Length: 6,209 words
Status: Complete
Author's Note: Now with it's own MOTIVATOR by Glo(tuathadedanaa) here.
Bobbing For Apples
Andy looked up from behind her screen, peeling her eyes away from the text with some reluctance. She had been working at The Mirror for six months and still she hadn't had even one of her articles make it higher than page twenty -just beneath the weather forecast for that day. It had caused quite a celebration back home, her Father said, and the article had been framed and hung on her old bedroom wall. Still, she lived in hope that this one would make it to at least page ten.
The problem wasn't her writing; she knew she had a way with words that made many of her colleagues jealous, but she still wasn't high in the pecking order, and for a relatively small newspaper like The Mirror this often left her covering the newest donated park bench, and on one memorable occasion, the hunger strike of the homeless man who lived on the corner just outside her apartment block.
This week, though, there was an addition to the paper in the form of a new and barely out of college journalist by the name of Ted Drewry. Or 'TeeDee' as he introduced himself.
At this point, Andy would be glad to call him anything his heart desired, for his arrival meant that her own position got bumped up and she was able to pick, actually pick, from an assortment of slightly more interesting topics. After months of substandard work, she finally had to use her brain again. It was proving to be entirely too hard to switch into gear.
It was for this reason that when Andy finally did pull her eyes away from her article, she narrowed them in a glare at the person stupid enough to shout her name.
"Yeah?" Good elocution had been lost some time in the last three months too; Emily and Nigel would be horrified to see how far she'd fallen. And that was without even touching on her clothes.
A junior journalist for The Mirror couldn't even afford to say the words 'Gucci', 'Prada' and 'Manolo'. It was the shoes she felt the loss of most. Her poor feet hadn't known what hit them, when she'd slipped them out of Blahniks one day and into DocMartins the next.
TeeDee stared back at her, his mouth turned up in a smug smile that was amplified by his eyes. His own assignment had been the opening of yet another Thrift store, nothing about that should have produced such a look. Or his apparent level of excitement. Andy felt a tightening in her stomach she hadn't felt since Paris. She just knew that what ever he said next wouldn't bode well for her.
"Don't get too used to that article, Sachs, because I've got something here that's going to have you back writing about park fountains by tomorrow morning." The arrogance was another mark against him, the first fifteen of which she had written on a small piece of note paper in her top drawer. It began with; 'greases his hair' and ended with; 'puts on a terrible fake English accent'. The last, only she seemed to have noticed, but then, no one else had worked for almost a year with Emily.
"Don't tell me, you've found the face of God in an old shawl." A few of the others in the office chuckled; Andy would have been buoyed by this, if she didn't know it was simply the way the newbie was always treated at first.
Sometimes she found herself seriously concerned that news journalists had become bitchier than their fashion-based peers. It was a scary thought best left to the dead of night.
Drewry's smile grew even wider and the sinking feeling intensified. Andy was glad to already be sitting down, it seemed like one of those moments when having a chair close to hand was necessary.
"No, what I have here is a copy, possibly the only copy of 'Whips, Chains and Two Smoking Hookers.'"
Andy stared at him in disbelief; she'd been getting worried, for that?
"Um, Ted, I hate to be the one to tell you this, since I'm sure your parents meant to and just didn't get around to it. But, pornography isn't really newsworthy material anymore. Not since the fifties. You can pick it up at pretty much every video store in New York."
Rolling her eyes at the man, Andy returned her attention to her article, finished with wasting her time. She was pretty sure most of the other writers had returned to their work too.
"Thanks Sachs, for that oh so educational lesson, but tell me, do all these other videos have the Editor of the premiere fashion magazine on the back cover?"
Andy's heart thudded once against her rib cage and then froze. She could not have just heard what she thought she heard. It wasn't possible. Maybe he meant a different Editor, a different magazine. Just because she, and most of America thought Runway was 'the' fashion magazine didn't mean that a little upstart like TeeDee did.
Forcing her lungs to take a deep breath, Andy raised her eyes again.
"Excuse me?" Her heart gave that odd single thud again at the expression of sheer glee on Drewry's face.
"I think you heard me well enough, Sachs. This video here." He waved the offending item in his left hand, and began to walk slowly over to where Andy sat. "This little one-in-twelve-million video, appears to have a friend of yours on the cover. Don't tell me you've forgotten your old boss so quickly. And here, I was led to believe that Miranda Priestly was unforgettable."
He put Andy in mind of a shark. She wanted to see him gutted and hanging from a line.
She was sure there were some things she should be saying. Certain that she should be doing something more productive than staring in shock at the arrogant man in front of her. But her mind seemed to have taken over from her suddenly pounding heart and had gotten caught on a repeated loop of; Oh my god. Oh my god.
Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.
Drewry was laughing at her inaction, and the others were crowding around him and taking turns to look at the video. As it passed hands right across her face, she saw it. The picture that had obviously caught Drewry's attention.
It was unmistakably Miranda; a young and blonde Miranda. A young, blonde, dressed in leather and holding a whip Miranda. But still undeniably Miranda 'Ice Queen' Priestly.
The picture left her sight and Andy's attention snapped back into focus. Oh shit, Miranda!
That her first semi-rational thought was for her former boss, and how this would affect her and the girls, the girls, and not for how her own career had just gone into recession, spoke to just how badly she had failed in moving on after Paris. In forgetting Runway, Miranda and where her loyalties had lain for almost a year.
"What are you going to do?" Her voice was steady, unlike her hands; she tucked them under her desk.
"Why, Sachs, I'm going to watch it, of course, and then write a small piece on it. Don't you think our corner of New York deserves to know a little more about our beloved Queen of Fashion?"
At this point, Andy would have reminded Ted that The Mirror was supposed to be a serious newspaper and not a tabloid, except her Editor was currently fawning over the video case as though it held all the secrets to Midas's touch.
There was nothing she, a lowly junior, could say that would make these men keep this quiet. This was going to happen, Miranda would wake up tomorrow morning to see her past spread across the front page of The Mirror, would undoubtedly be plagued with the rest of the press as she left the townhouse and then be faced with Runway and Irv on top of it all. And there was nothing Andy could do to stop it.
Even after all this time, failing Miranda felt worse than failing herself.
Andy paused. There was nothing she could do to stop the article being published, unless she killed the entire newsroom which wasn't sounding as bad as it probably should. She couldn't stop it going to print, but she could make sure Miranda knew about it now. She could warn Miranda, hopefully lessen the shock of it somehow. She didn't know, it might even give Miranda enough time to pull out a miracle and dampen the impact the revelation would have. She had seen Miranda tear through the inevitable before; Andy had learnt the hard way not to underestimate her.
Drewry had moved his attention away from Andy, eating up the praises offered to him like a child in a chocolate factory and The Video, which much like The Book required capitals in Andy's mind, lay unattended on the desk adjacent to her own.
Feeling like a master criminal pulling off the job of her life, Andy stood with slow, calm movements that belayed nothing of the tension thrumming in her blood and pulled her bag out from beside her chair.
Still moving with careful steps, she walked around her desk and casually lifted The Video from its partner's smooth surface. Stage one complete; Andy forced herself not to just sprint for the door, but instead to take precise steps around the backs of her, she supposed newly-former, colleagues and out the door unnoticed.
As soon as her feet hit the outer step - and she had never been gladder to work on the ground floor - Andy shoved the video into her bag, flipped her phone open, broke into the fastest run of her life and dialled a familiar number.
She was already two blocks away from The Mirror's office by the time Emily's voice came on the line.
"Miranda Priestly's O-"
"Emily, it's Andy, I need to see Miranda now." She interrupted the first assistant as loudly as she could with her breaths coming in fast pants.
"Andy? Andrea? Well you've certainly kept hold of the belief that you are something special. You were a pitiful assistant and a great disappointment to us all, but you were never this dense. I would have remembered. If you think you can just start barking orders at me and actually expect Miranda to see you, then my memory must have turned you into some sort of idealised version of yourself."
Andy had used the time while Emily vented, to run the last three blocks until she had the Elias-Clarke building in her sights.
Pausing to take a much needed breath, Andy spoke into her phone with a sense of calm she definitely did not feel.
"Em, I'm outside the building and I need to see Miranda now. It's important. Really important; like Hermes is out of scarves important." Emily remained silent. "You don't have to say it's me, or even tell her anyone's coming in, just keep her in her office for the next five minutes until I get there. Okay?"
There was a pause during which Andy dodged the lines of mid-morning traffic and ran into the entryway of the Publishing house, and then;
"This had better be good Andrea." Andy hung up almost before Emily, and it wasn't until she stood waiting impatiently for a lift to arrive that she realised she'd had no official way of getting access to the area. She sent an extra smile back to the security guard that seemed to have remembered her, if not that she didn't work there anymore, and told herself she would make sure to send him a thank you box of Krispy Kremes later. If she lived that long.
She was certain the elevator was taking particular delight in moving slower than usual and Andy paced around inside it like a tiger at the zoo, trying to organise her thoughts into some semblance of order. It wasn't easy. She felt like she'd consumed four extra shot lattes in the space of an hour, on an empty stomach. She expected to suffer a heart attack any minute now.
Everyone at The Mirror would have noticed her and The Video's absence, the lack of phone calls only attributed to the fact that she had left her work phone behind on her desk. It would annoy them, would limit just how much information they would be able to write, but it wouldn't be enough to stop anything. Too many people had seen it, and Andy didn't really doubt for a second that 'TeeDee' hadn't made a copy of the case before showing them all. She at least knew he hadn't made a copy of the film; he hadn't watched it yet after all.
The doors dinged open and Andy once again took up her hundred-metres-sprint pace, pelting down the corridors towards Miranda's office, ignoring the looks she received as she breezed past the various offices along the way.
Emily was standing by the entrance to the outer office, hands wringing in front of her and a wild look in her eyes. Andy stopped before her, hands on her thighs as she made a valiant attempt at catching her breath. She absently noted that her replacement must have been sent out on some errand and for a moment wasn't sure if it was pity she felt, or jealousy.
"There you are. Do you have any idea the trouble you've caused with your little phone call? She was supposed to have a meeting with Patrick in ten minutes. I had to tell her he'd cancelled. She sent me to go fetch him myself."
Andy had finally straightened up again and she eyed the inner office doors warily. Now that she was here, it all seemed a little too real. She wondered if this was a nightmare and she'd wake up covered in sweat but safe in her bed. She pinched herself. No such luck.
"Em, trust me, she's going to want to hear this, and then Patrick is going to be the furthest thing from her mind." Andy stopped and thought. "But I could be wrong, so why don't you go out and pretend to be fetching Patrick, and I'll tell her what I've come to say, and she can't blame you for letting me in because you're not here." She accompanied the idea with a shooing motion and after a suspicious look, that had not a little relief in it, Emily complied. Tugging her coat on, the English woman caught Andy's eye before she left.
"This had better be good, Andrea. I will not miss out on Paris a second time because of you." And then she was gone.
Andy sucked in a deep breath, pulled the damned video from her bag and tried to act as though her legs weren't shaking so much she thought she might fall.
There was a small chance she remembered Miranda as worse than she really was. A very small chance. Oh hell, she was screwed.
Andy pushed open the unusually closed doors without knocking and was glad when Miranda didn't immediately look up. It gave her time to take in her first look at the older woman since that moment in the street six months earlier.
She looked amazing. Of course she did. If Andy hadn't seen for herself in that hotel room, she would think the woman had never looked anything but amazing.
Miranda sat bent over a set of negatives, probably for the most recent photo shoot, peering intently through both her glasses and the small magnifying glass. Her hair was as perfectly coiffed as always, and from what Andy could see, she wore a black striped skirt suit, most likely Bill Blass as Miranda's preferred designer for such things, and a well cut white silk shirt that ended nicely in a V that, at the angle Miranda was bent, left just enough to the imagination. Not that Andy was imagining. Not right then, she had far too many other things on her mind.
Just as Andy contemplated making a noise to announce her presence, Miranda spoke without looking up.
"Emily, I assume you have a perfectly good reason for your presence here and not at Patrick's loft?" The voice was the same, soft, sharp and deadly. Andy hadn't realised how much she'd missed it. No one did quiet rage like Miranda
"Hello Miranda." The reaction to Andy's voice was instantaneous. Miranda's head shot up faster than Andy had ever seen the woman move, the action obviously reflexive and not carefully planned. The blue eyes locked onto Andy's seemed to drill right through to her soul. She shivered slightly. Those eyes.
"You." One word, ten types of anger.
"Erm. Yeah, I mean, yes." Miranda placed the magnifier on the desk without breaking eye contact with Andy, and then reached up and removed her glasses. The sensation of falling without a rope seized Andy as she stared helplessly into those eyes.
"What are you doing here, Andreá? You no longer work here, you have no friends here and your little paper has not sent you here to interview anyone." The unspoken; 'you don't belong here' was more obvious than it had been her very first day as second assistant.
Andy pushed off the mixed feelings that had clogged her mind since entering the office, not helped by the way her body responded to the sound of her name spoken so uniquely by Miranda. Taking the few steps to bring her up close to the desk and the woman behind it, Andy reached across and placed The Video, front cover facing up, on top of the black and white photographs, not moving her gaze away from Miranda.
The moment finally broke and Miranda lowered her eyes to the video. Andy watched with no pleasure as Miranda paled behind her make-up, quite a shocking sight in someone with such white skin already. One hand reached out shakily to turn the video over and flew up to Miranda's mouth with a gasp as that picture was revealed. Miranda's breathing speed up until she was almost panting her entire body trembling with an emotion Andy couldn't name. She could guess, but it was likely more than just one emotion.
After what seemed like hours, Miranda raised her head, eyes not quite meeting Andy's and took her hand away from her mouth, just enough to speak. Her voice sounded rough, and not nearly as steady as she probably wished it to be.
"What do you want?" The tone was biting, accusing but the blue eyes, when they finally met her own, were pleading and vulnerable. For the second time that morning, Andy was stunned into silence.
...
...
Part Two