Title: Unspoken

Author: Firebird93

Pairing: Miranda/Andy

Summary: Andy tells herself that she is not breaking her rule with this thing with Miranda Priestly.

Disclaimer: The Devil Wears Prada and its characters do not belong to me. I am making no profit from this story.

Andy Sachs can't do sex without love. Well, she can; the mistake with Christian Thompson proved that. And though she knows on an intellectual level that sex and love are two entirely different things, she has discovered that one without the other leaves her feeling dirty and empty. So she makes it a rule to avoid it.

She tells herself that she is not breaking her rule with this thing with Miranda Priestly. Because Andy is in love with her ex-boss. It's just that Miranda is not in love with Andy.

When this arrangement (it is not an affair, since neither of them is cheating on someone else) began several months after Andy quit working at Runway, Andy believed that having part of Miranda Priestly would be better than having nothing at all. She may not have Miranda's heart, she consoled herself, but at least she could have her body. She could revel in the fact that Miranda Priestly, one of the world's foremost authorities on beauty, desired her.

Andy was wrong. Having part of Miranda has only made more acute her awareness of what she is missing. She mourns deeply what she will never have with Miranda: morning conversations over coffee, quiet dinners at home, evenings spent in companionable silence as Miranda reviews the Book and Andy works on an article, falling asleep in each other's arms.

In an attempt to ease the ache, Andy thinks about all the negative things she is being spared, not least of which is being the object of intense press scrutiny (no doubt her esteemed Fourth Estate colleagues would label her a gold digger and Miranda a cradle-robber undergoing a serious midlife crisis).

It doesn't work. Because Andy is so deeply in love with Miranda that she would gladly bear the ridicule and the pressure; she would find a way to deal with any and all of the challenges and obstacles a relationship with Runway's editor in chief would no doubt entail.

Every time she and Miranda have sex (she can't say "making love" and she won't call it "fucking"), Andy's heart breaks a little more. She is careful to hide this from Miranda's sharp gaze, just as she has taken great pains to hide any emotion other than sexual desire. She struggles to keep any hint of her feelings from her own too-expressive eyes. She refrains from giving into the urge to caress Miranda's beautiful face, to take her in her arms and simply hold her, to place the gentlest of kisses on her lips.

By tacit agreement, gestures of emotional intimacy such as those are not permitted.

Even so, their sexual chemistry is nothing short of astonishing. The eerie synchronicity they developed toward the end of their working relationship seems to have carried over into the bedroom, where they effortlessly and accurately read and anticipate each other's deepest desires and respond to each other openly and unselfconsciously. Miranda, unsurprisingly, is an extraordinarily skilled lover; she makes Andy explode like a star gone supernova. And – and Andy marvels at this – Andy does the same for Miranda.

It's not enough anymore. It never really was. The arrangement has to end. Because Andy is dying inside.

So on this particular cold winter night, after she and Miranda have fucked (she forces herself to think the hated word) each other nearly comatose and Andy is preparing to leave the editor's Upper East Side townhouse as she always does, she turns toward the bed.

She breathes in the scent of sex and Miranda's signature perfume, drinks in the sight of Miranda gloriously naked, her pale skin flushed, iconic white hair tousled, blue eyes hazy with sexual satisfaction.

She wants to weep.

"Goodbye, Miranda," she says softly and brushes her lips over Miranda's for the first – and last time – ever.

She knows with that single word and that one small act, she has revealed everything she has worked so hard to hide. And she knows that in doing so, in confessing her violation of one of the unspoken rules of their agreement, she invites Miranda's ridicule, disdain, or contempt.

But better Andy herself should suffer utter humiliation than risk hurting the woman she loves. Because ending this thing between them with no explanation, no indication of why, would certainly hurt Miranda's pride. Miranda would most likely think that Andy walked away because she has grown tired of Miranda.

Before Miranda has time to react, Andy leaves.

Though her throat is so tight she can barely breathe and her eyes burn and her chest aches and her stomach hurts, she does not let herself cry until she gets back to her tiny apartment. But once there, she curls up on her bed and sobs.