chainofclovers

Title: Agendas
Fandom: The Devil Wears Prada (film)
Pairing: Andy/Miranda
Rating: Hard R
Disclaimer: I own nothing related to The Devil Wears Prada.
Summary: Kissing and caffeine and gossip.
Author's Note: A few weeks ago, I asked my friends list for some writing prompts. I'm planning to use as many of the prompts as possible in various ways, but this story is a response to baggers' request for "New York fashion week. The McCafe stand at the tents. (Seriously, this is a reality.)" So, here's a little less than 2,000 words on that sort of thing.


Maybe it was Paris, the first morning, sunlight streaming through the windows in Miranda’s suite, lightheadedness from coffee and no breakfast, a sudden telepathy that would have been damn convenient during Andy’s first weeks on the job—whatever it was, they meant to go over some last minute changes in Miranda’s schedule (their schedule), and ended up kissing in the breakfast nook.

They lapped at each other like cats, mewling little whimpers from the backs of their throats, their tongues wet and thorough and relentless. When they pulled away, Andy looked at the way Miranda’s eyes glinted keen and alive and knew—just as she suddenly knew they were going to kiss—that Miranda had never, ever been kissed by a girl before.

What Andy didn’t know was what would happen next. She hoped Miranda would say “I want you,” and she liked the idea of kissing again and waiting until tonight to do anything else.

“You had an itinerary to show me?” Miranda asked, but her lips were wet—and not just her lips, but the corners of her mouth and even her chin, because her first time kissing a girl had turned into a mess.

Her lips were wet, and Andy wasn’t going to let her get away with a businesslike charade. Andy could feel how sticky her own mouth was, and she wiped at it with the back of her hand. After a moment’s hesitation, she extended her hand and slowly, deliberately, ran across Miranda’s own lips with her palm. They kissed once more, dry this time, nearly but not quite chaste, and it ended with Miranda saying “Itinerary” again. Andy dutifully supplied it, and then they stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the mirror in front of the door, shakily reapplying their lipstick.

Those kisses ended, and so did Paris, and Andy’s job, but very little else did.

--

Months passed, feverish and unsteady; Andy stuck around out of no apparent obligation.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Miranda panted, sitting up suddenly in bed. Andy’s bed, tonight, but Miranda said things like this all the time: in her own bed and at lunch and in the car and on a train heading to a cottage upstate and in that cottage and—basically, Miranda was getting addicted to Andy and addicted to telling her they had to stop.

Andy tried to follow her upright, but the sheets were tangled tightly around her legs and she flopped against the pillows. “Lie back down,” Andy said. “Please.”

Miranda stretched out again, but she didn’t look at Andy. “It isn’t right,” she said quietly as she got her breathing back.

Those words were a dangerous habit. Poisonous. Andy reached out her hand and tilted Miranda’s face toward hers with her fingertips. “You know what? Maybe it isn’t. You’re old enough to be my mother. Maybe that’s disgusting, and dirty, and sinful.” There was no stopping now—she just had to get through this without crying, just had to play it heavy enough to silence the poison once and for all. Words clicked into her brain like they were being typed; if she could say this as if she were writing, they’d be fine. “Jerry Falwell—if he knew about this, he would hate us. He thinks people like us are the reason the Twin Towers got blown up. My mother hates you, and she’s no Jerry Falwell, she’s a very nice moderate liberal from a Midwestern city. She doesn’t even know we’re together and she hates you. She’d probably hate me a little bit for being with you. And if you deigned to alert her to my presence, your mother wouldn’t think so much of me either. If the press finds out about this, they’ll poke fun of you for weeks, and they won’t be laughing with you.”

She lightly raked her fingers down Miranda’s cheek, stroked across her neck, worked a path from her collarbone to her ribs to her abdomen. “But you’re used to being hated, right, Miranda? That’s not new.” Tentatively, she brushed her fingers between Miranda’s legs. Wet, of course: they were already naked and had been halfway to fucking before Miranda froze up. “Miranda,” Andy said, “if this was really, really wrong, you wouldn’t be this wet.” Miranda’s eyes closed in embarrassment. “I’m serious,” Andy said fiercely, and Miranda opened her eyes again. “If we were truly supposed to stop, we’d have quit a long time ago.”

“I know,” Miranda said, and sighed as if she were inviting the censure of the 700 Club (no tragedy there) and their mothers (less pleasant, but manageable) right into the bedroom.

Do you? Andy asked herself, but what she said out loud was nicer for both of them. “Should I move my fingers now, or take them away?”

“Move them,” Miranda replied immediately, and Andy did.

The next morning, Miranda frowned at Andy as she waited for the coffee to brew. “I can’t believe you brought up Jerry Falwell in bed.”

“I can’t believe I let you pull all that guilt stuff for two-and-a-half months.”

As she kissed Miranda goodbye and, minutes later, headed out the door herself, it occurred to Andy that they were developing a balance in spite of themselves: they’d managed coffee and breakfast and kissing and leaving for work on time.

That evening, Miranda sat down her girls and told them whom she was seeing and for how long and why and that they were all having dinner on Sunday.

“Tell me you don’t have any plans on Sunday,” she said to Andy afterwards, having called immediately following the conversation with her daughters.

Her tone was rather urgent, Andy thought, considering it was already Friday and the night before they’d both “moved their fingers” extremely well. “I’m free,” she said. “But if you need me to come over now and take the edge off—”

“I’m talking about dinner,” Miranda said sharply. “With—” she was trying to train herself out of saying the girls or the twins all the time “—with Caroline and Cassidy.”

--

They were outed in January, photographed kissing in an alley near a theater.

“It was a movie theater, did you hear?” Emily said conspiratorially when Nigel got to work the next day. She’d caught him in the hallway, color high on her cheeks, and clearly wanted to dish as much as possible before Miranda arrived. “Not even a theater-theater. I told her she should be more careful. I mean, not in so many words, but—”

“Maybe she didn’t want to be careful. Wait—you knew?”

Emily rolled her eyes. “If it’s happening with Miranda, I know.”

Later in the morning, when Miranda was situated at her desk and everyone else was very carefully avoiding the topic of headlines and pictures and words—no small feat in the office of a major publication—Nigel decided it was time to be Miranda’s friend again.

“So,” he said quietly, settling into a chair across from Miranda’s desk without invitation. “You like women? I didn’t know.” It was funny, re-starting a friendship with an accusation, the hurt of discovered ignorance. His voice sounded very kindergarten: “Can we share the blocks?” “Want to come over after school?” “You like women?”

“You want to know what I like?” Miranda replied. She looked angry and pretty, and wore a charcoal grey blouse with an onyx necklace that laid just right across her chest. “I like asymmetrical hemlines, and black stockings, and amber jewelry, and...” She trailed off, breaking eye contact. “You can put the pieces together however you like.”

Nigel smiled even though she wasn’t looking in his direction. “What movie did you go see?”

“We hadn’t decided yet,” Miranda said, seeming to have forgotten that she was being stubborn about this conversation. “We didn’t end up seeing anything at all.”

--

For Andy—who hadn’t wanted to stop and knew it—the problem was loving the person to whom you used to bring coffee.

For Miranda—who hadn’t wanted to stop and had no idea—the problem was loving the person who used to bring you coffee.

“You need to be meaner,” Nigel said resolutely, sick of listening to Andy whine over the phone about how things just weren’t working out, how all the chemistry in the world wasn’t ridding them of their deeply embedded habits. From March to October, Andy was the bringer of coffee and Miranda was the none-too-grateful recipient, but now it was another March entirely and Nigel found it ridiculous that they were both so stuck in the past. “Don’t let her get away with anything.”

“That’s easier said than done,” Andy shot back immediately, but she didn’t follow it up with any barbs about Nigel’s eternal tenure at Runway—she was so damn nice—or his indefinite stay in Miranda’s pocket.

“You need to be nicer,” Nigel told Miranda at work the next day. “To Andy.”

Miranda’s head snapped up from her computer, face stunned into blankness. To Nigel’s credit, she didn’t do anything rash. Maybe he’d be at Runway forever—and maybe not—but at least he’d earned the right to tell Miranda the truth.

“She doesn’t belong to you,” he continued, exhilarated. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that he should have been embarrassed to find the conversation so exciting.

“I know,” Miranda said, and Nigel was certain she wouldn’t have sounded so childish if she hadn’t been taking him seriously. He could practically see her brain taking notes.

--

It was only the second day of New York Fashion Week, but Andy felt like she’d been hanging around Bryant Park for a month. The silky white tents held up by metal beams made a funny compromise between indoors and out, and Andy couldn’t decide if she liked it.

“Andrea, you should come with me to Carolina Herrera today,” Miranda said. “I think you’ll enjoy it.”

Miranda had already told First Assistant to deal with seats, and for Second Assistant to help First Assistant. She and Andy were walking through a tent with Nigel, who was relishing his last Fashion Week as a Runway employee, though none present but Nigel knew it, and with Emily, who was doing copy-editing and an apprenticeship in Make-up and still managed to spend more time near Miranda than almost anyone else.

“Carolina Herrera,” Andy said. “Great.”

“You sound tired,” remarked Miranda. “Already. Do you need coffee?” She took Andy’s hand in hers, and Andy mentally congratulated Emily on limiting herself to a minimal cringe. More than a few heads snapped up in recognition as they made their way through the crowd, but there were a million things to gawk at today, not just (gay) Miranda Priestly and her (gay) lover doing all kinds of (gay gay gay) things right in public.

Because Miranda had some sort of built-in divining rod that picked up caffeine signals, they passed a coffee stand almost immediately.

“McCafé?” Andy asked skeptically. “Isn’t McDonalds coffee sort of gross?”

“Snob,” Miranda said, her slight smile the only hint that she understood the absurdity of the accusation.

“When I first moved to New York I ate a Big Mac a day for three weeks. Saved a bunch of money that way,” Nigel said. “It was disgusting, but I wouldn’t mind having one now.” It was ten in the morning.

“I’m somewhat surprised by this year’s corporate sponsorship,” piped up Emily. “Though I suppose I shouldn’t be.”

“I am surprised by very little,” Miranda said, and squeezed Andy’s hand in a way that told her all about being the exception. They passed the coffee stand without placing a single order.