A/N 1: Sometimes real life takes over and you want to jump off a cliff but then you remember there are fanfics to read and write and the world feels like a better place.
A/N 2: It's taken me almost half a year to complete such a small thing, can't imagine attempting some of things you brave people do. Thanks for all your lovely stories.
A/N 3: This is the last part so really hope you aren't let down. It's un-betaed, so all mistakes (there will be some) are mine.
And then the cold came, the dark days when fear crept into my mind
You gave me all your love and all I gave you was "Goodbye".
For a moment I'm frozen in place and that December night comes rushing back to me. Those irrational thoughts of not actually being in love with you, you being a rebound, a rope to pull me up and help me survive cloud my mind for about a nanosecond. I can't see clearly anymore because I too am silently crying but I know this isn't a solution. My goodbye to you last December could not have been the final one.
So this is me swallowing my pride
Standing in front of you saying, "I'm sorry for that night."
And I go back to December all the time.
It turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you,
Wishing I'd realized what I had when you were mine.
I'd go back to December, turn around and change my own mind
I go back to December all the time.
So I let go of everything, my pride, my mind, my normal self and run, run for my life, for you, my Andrea. Because this is it, it is now or never. I realize my life is walking away from me like I walked away from it last December. I will simply not allow it this time. Not if I can.
I don't really realize but suddenly I'm running through the glass doors and screaming at the top of my voice 'Andrea! Andrea! Please wait.' I can hardly see anything anymore because the tears are falling much too freely now and even my body is failing to cooperate because I can feel your legs give way as I stand on the pavement looking at your retreating form.
I miss your tanned skin, your sweet smile,
So good to me, so right
And how you held me in your arms that September night –
The first time you ever saw me cry.
And then, then, suddenly out of nowhere, you're there, beside me holding me up, guiding me towards the silver Mercedes because I have given up, completely. I, Miranda Priestly who prides herself in being brave am being carried almost literally to the car by a strong woman half my age, whom I've come to realize I love unconditionally.
I've never lost self control this way before, well, on that September night maybe. I'm just a babbling mess today because I've come to realize since last December that you're it. You're my life and no matter what, I need you and will do anything to get you back.
I allow you to carry me back to the car as I cling onto your coat's lapels for some physical support and inhale your scent which transports me back to another time.
'Pray Andrea, do tell me, do you wear the deodorants that your cook boyfriend left behind' Miranda says as she buries her face into the younger woman's body while they lay on the creaky single bed in Andy's dingy apartment wrapped up in blankets on a cold November morning. The girls are having a sleepover through the weekend and Miranda would rather be here (inspite of her constant scathing remarks about the condition of this apparently crumbling apartment) than be in her swanky luxurious townhouse.
'Please Mira, you weren't complaining about my scent a while back when you were buried between my legs!' Andy smirks while nuzzling her nose in the snow white of her lovers head. She can almost sense Miranda blushing profusely and looking super embarrassed.
The older woman playfully hits her chest and says 'Look at you talk like a caveman. You have no shame, do you?'
'No, why should I? Besides I'm wearing cade lavender-it's supposed to be a woman's perfume but apparently it smells like 'a man who's just taken a shower', but I only came to know it after I had wasted my precious money on it, so I'm gonna use it, like it or not! Do I ever tell you anything when you smell like a rich prostitute with fake tits?'
'Excuse me?' Miranda looks furious as she pops up her head from where it was buried in Andy's body.
'Yeah, when you wear those expensive perfumes and go to the grand Runway soirees! You smell so beautiful right now- like some heavenly creature-' she closes her eyes as if to breathe in every smell emanating from the older woman 'amber, vanilla, bergamot, lemon, iris, sweat and sex! I might be missing something here and there, but it is so much better than that Chanel No.5 or whatever you wear to those places. Now, this smell,' she wraps her hand around Miranda's petite frame and pulls her to towards herself as if to inhale her scent 'reminds me of the woman I love and there is nothing in the world better than this.' Andy says as she tucks a stray lock which has fallen onto her lovers beautiful face.
A tender look crosses Miranda's face and her eyes almost cloud over with a mix of unknown emotions, then she smiles, a real smile much unlike the fake party smile, a smile that Andy has come to love, a smile that she associates with the woman she loves and not the editor-in-chief.
She blushes, again (Andy has come to realize that it is really pretty easy to make Miranda blush) and says, 'I'm glad.' And that's all she says.
Then after a quiet moment, she adds, 'I like you this way too. You smell like, you smell like' and that blush again 'home. And everything in my world that is beautiful and right.'
Although we're in the car and you've given Roy directions to take us back to your apartment (which is still the same) I cling onto you like you're my last ray of hope.
I haven't cried as much, not since that night in September...
'Oh.' Andy realizes she has walked in on something she should never ever have seen.
The moment her eyes rest on the fragile woman with the tear stained cheeks and red rimmed eyes sitting barefoot, in a grey bathrobe on the sofa of the grand hotel suite, she knows her life is irrevocably changed. It is then that Andy accepts and lets in the feeling that she's been ignoring for quite a while now. That, she cares for Miranda, not at a professional level, but at a personal level and feels different things for her, one of them being love. Yes, love and a fierce sense of protectiveness washes through her whole being seeing Miranda, her Miranda like this. She wants to kill the person who has inflicted so much pain on this invincible woman, who has put those tears in her eyes.
'Oh, there you are.' Miranda says trying to sound as authoritative and unaffected as possible, but her voice breaks. Their eyes meet. Miranda's eyes are a whirlpool of emotions. Andy realizes that the quote 'eyes are a window to the soul' is indeed true at this moment because Miranda's eyes tell her that her soul is wounded and a sharp physical ache courses through Andy's whole body. She resists the urge to do something entirely stupid.
'We need to go over the seating, uh, chart for the luncheon.' She puts on her glasses and tries to get back to her icy self-composed and bored.
'Okay. Um, yeah, sure. I have it right here.' Andy ignores everything her heart is telling her to do and works on autopilot mode, but her mind is still elsewhere and she fumbles for a while before she finds the required folder.
'By all means, move at a glacial pace. You know how that thrills me.' And the facade is back on.
Andy gives her the folder and takes a seat on the opposite sofa.
'Okay. So, first of all, we need to move Snoop Dogg to my table.'
'But your table's full.'
'Stephen isn't coming.' Andy notices a sliver of grief in Miranda's voice, but says nothing.
'Oh, Stephen isn't- So I don't need to fetch Stephen from the airport tomorrow?' she says nonchalantly while jotting down the change in plans.
There is a pregnant pause and then, 'Well, if you speak to him and he decides to rethink the divorce then, yes, fetch away. You're very fetching, so go fetch. And then when we get back to New York, we need to contact, umm, Leslie to see what she can do to minimize the press on all this.'
That bastard. Andy wants to kill him. She had always disliked him but to act like a complete asshole and divorce Miranda in the middle of Paris fashion week. She is going to take a flight right this minute and knock all his front teeth down. She can totally visualize doing it but Miranda has more to say.
'Another divorce splashed across Page Six. I can just imagine what they're gonna write about me. The Dragon Lady, career-obsessed. Snow Queen drives away another Mr. Priestly. Rupert Murdoch should cut me a check for all the papers I sell for him. Anyway, I don't, I don't really care what anybody writes about me.' She nods her head sideways with a cynical look on her face while she tries to keep herself from crying.
'But my, my girls, it's just so unfair to the girls. Another disappointment, another letdown, another father- figure,' a wry chuckle, 'Gone.' And with that she breaks down, completely.
She looks defeated, deflated; while she sobs with abandon her whole body shaking from the sobs, the sound of them piercing a huge hole through Andy's heart.
She lifts a hand weakly to dismiss Andy and then lets it drop callously onto her lap.
Andy knows she should obey her boss's order and leave the room immediately, because this, this scene is far far removed from seeing the professional Miranda.
This Miranda is human, destroyable and vulnerable and it scares the shit out of Andy, but she can't get herself to turn her back on this fragile, broken woman.
So, all reason can go to hell. Everything. She does the 'unthinkable' in Runway terminology, she reaches out for this woman sitting on the sofa and touches her. Takes her in her arms, literally, and envelops her in her warm embrace.
Without missing a beat Miranda accepts the embrace much unlike what you'd expect the editor to do.
Andy doesn't bother with soothing words or caresses or attempts to quieten the crying woman, instead, she lets her cry. And she does.
She cries and cries and cries what seems like forever. Andy doesn't know what Miranda is mourning-her failed marriage, the daughters losing another father figure, or the personal that she has traded for the professional, or something completely different that Andy has not the slightest idea about.
Even when Andy feels like Miranda has spent her entire reservoir of tears for the next million years she still keeps crying and Andy gets scared that she might begin to hyperventilate. But her fears are quelled when suddenly Miranda goes quiet.
She looks down to see Miranda breathing evenly, her eyes closed, as if she's come to peace with everything in her life at this moment.
Andy wonders how many times Miranda has cried like this before and if there's been somebody to hold her this way. She also wonders how many times this woman has come to terms with everything she's lost in her life.
Before long Miranda, the woman of her dreams is quite literally sleeping in her arms. Oh how she would have liked the situation to be different, but Andy will take what she has. Her back's stiff from sitting in the same position but she'd rather be here than anywhere else in the world, least of all on a date with Christian Thompson.
So she sits through the night while Miranda sleeps in her arms-quietly, peacefully, like a baby and Andy falls in love, a little more with this complicated woman.
Then the morning comes; there is no awkwardness, only gratitude from the silver haired beauty, a gratitude that would soon turn into love in the coming months.
It's déjà vu all over again, because I do the same thing I did that night: I cry in her arms while she holds me, the ever faithful, the unconditional giver of love, the woman who wanted nothing but to make me happy.
She is quiet again like that day, while she holds me securely in her arms in the backseat of the Mercedes.
Maybe this is wishful thinking, I'd go back in time and change it but I can't.
Probably mindless dreaming,
But if we loved again, I swear I'd love you right.
So if the chain is on your door I understand.
But this is me swallowing my pride I go back to December all the time.
Standing in front of you saying, "I'm sorry for that night."
And I go back to December...
It turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you,
Wishing I'd realized what I had when you were mine.
I'd go back to December, turn around and make it all right.
I'd go back to December, turn around and change my own mind
All the time
This feels all too familiar, something that I've missed gravely, something I need for my sustenance. So I will do anything to get her back, but I feel too weak. All I say is 'Sorry' and keep repeating it against her chest, because I can't tell her in words how sorry I am, how much I need her, how much I love her, how much we fit together, how right this is, her and I in the backseat of our car however gravely misplaced this situation is.
So I give her what I have, a simple heartfelt five letter word and I hope against hope that she will accept it. I hope I could turn back in time and accept the most romantic of all the proposals I've had but I can't. All I can do is hope to make my, our, future better and right.
I wake up to birds chirping and beams of sunlight lighting up the room that I have etched in my memory. I don't remember how I ended up here, Andrea, as usual, must have taken care of it. I look up when I sense something warm against my body and see those ever familiar warm chocolate brown eyes. I look down at our bodies and see we are entirely decent, thank God I didn't mess it up even before starting out again.
I look up at her again and there is a little smirk on her face which makes me blush.
'Don't worry, we did nothing. You cried and slept off, in my arms, again.'
Then she adds after a moment and says quietly, 'and kept saying sorry again and again.' With a faraway look on her face.
I blush again. My face is so close to her neck that I can smell the familiar scent again and can hear her beating heart. The warmth emanating from her body makes my mind go delirious with want but I resist. I make an attempt to move away from her, but she stalls me with a strong hand on my back and pulls me up.
Our lips are this close. Our hot breaths intermingling in that little space between us. The blue and brown meet and then they travel to the others lips. Before I know it, we're kissing, again. But this feels new. The lips are the same, the clash of tongues feel the same, the physicality of it remains same. The spark that courses through my body is the same.
But I'll tell you what's different. There is nothing frightening about this kiss, nothing based on a survival instinct, nothing pathetically needy like they were in December and before.
The sensuality, the sweetness, the slow pace, the passion, the want is new. Something I've never felt before.
I realize, in that moment that the fear I had in December is gone. I no longer need Andrea like something to cling onto as a last ray of hope. I need her to make me happy, because I'm healed and I've come out of that place where I was last December. Now I only need her because I love her, I need her in a different way now.
And Andrea senses this because she smiles while we continue to kiss. She feels something new in me too. It's been the same for her since beginning, but not for me. Her eyes tell me she feels safer with this new me-less mad, less needy in a desperate pathetic way.
And I have hope.
We pull apart only when we can't breathe anymore. Our eyes meet again. And she nods a simple yes.
Everything will be alright. I can feel it in my bones. I need nothing more than this. Being here in bed, a creaky one at that and loving the woman who has loved me forever.
This is enough. Enough solace. And that is all.
Hope it didn't look rushed. Would love so constructive criticism and reviews! Thanks for reading!