Chapter Text
Like most life-changing days, it began completely normally—at the normal break-neck pace and with the normal crippling anxiety of preparing for Miranda’s arrival. And now, of course, since Charlotte was gone, she had the additional anxiety of preventing Andrea from causing any new disasters.
Well, no, that wasn’t entirely fair. Emily supposed she could admit—to herself, at least—that Andrea was learning some parts of the job with admirable swiftness. Certainly much faster than any of the fashionable idiots she’d hired before, even though little miss “Can you spell Gabbana?” had started from a much, much less knowledgeable position.
Shockingly, Andrea’s nauseating aw-shucks Midwest sweetheart routine had even charmed Irv into waiting ten minutes for Miranda’s meeting to finish last Tuesday. And he hadn’t even complained loudly, fired anyone, or stormed into Miranda’s office early, which was a first.
Andrea seemed to have this inexplicable ability to disarm people—even fashion people, even Nigel—with her excessive sincerity and her too-wide smile and her too-large eyes and her tedious little platitudes and pleasantries.
If only Andrea would do something about the hair, and the eyebrows, and the clothes, and the shoes, she would almost be pretty, Emily thought. She had good bone structure and a decent body, in spite of her size-six frame. She was tall, and her legs looked quite nice, from what Emily could see under her hideous synthetic-blend skirts. And though her breasts were several sizes too big to be fashionable—she’d never fit into anything smaller than a four, for God’s sake—Emily was absurdly jealous of them anyway. She found her own gaze lingering on them strangely often. Once she even imagined what they might look like in a delicate lace bra under a sheer top instead of a lumpy sweater, and then blushed hotly at her own ridiculous thoughts. Why on earth was she jealous of anything about that dowdy, irritating disaster of a woman?
It was embarrassing, was what it was. More than that, it was affronting. How dare that—that ridiculous girl flaunt her size-six figure in the office of Miranda Priestly herself? How dare she distract Emily with her awful clothes, her unshaped eyebrows, her too-large breasts? How dare she smile sincerely at Emily fifty times a day when Emily spent every waking hour berating her for her incompetence? How dare she stifle a chuckle whenever Emily came up with a particularly good insult?
Some days Emily felt like she might lose it. The girl was a menace. It was honestly unbearable. And the most unbearable thing about it was that Emily could feel herself starting to bend. Christ, she’d almost smiled at the girl yesterday when she said exactly the right thing to Patrick—exactly what Emily would have told her to say, if Emily hadn’t already been on the phone with Ralph Lauren’s assistant.
Thank God Miranda hadn’t seen the upward twitch of Emily’s lips before she got her face under control.
So it was a normal day, and she was chatting with Serena while Andrea was off God knew where—skiving off in Nigel’s office, probably, or maybe crying in the ladies’ toilets because Miranda was peeved with her again.
It was a normal day—until it wasn’t. Until Andrea walked in, wearing the Chanel boots, with her hair sleek and freshly cut, eyebrows waxed, makeup done professionally, finally looking as confident and fashionable as she should have looked from the beginning.
Emily gasped. It was unforgivably gauche of her. She was sure her thoughts must be written all over her face. But she couldn’t help it. Andrea was just so…so hot.
Emily felt herself flush as the thought took shape in her mind. She immediately resented Serena for her ability to act normal about this, to give a sincere compliment, to not be struck dumb by the sight of those thighs in the boots that everyone had been coveting since they’d first appeared in the Closet.
More than that, she couldn’t seem to stop herself from looking embarrassed and betrayed and hopelessly jealous of Andrea’s newfound confidence. Not to mention her obvious favored status with Nigel, which Andrea had now at last parlayed into the makeover she should have begged for months ago.
She looked perfect. She looked edible. And she would have absolutely no use for Emily anymore. None. Nobody who looked like that and dressed like that and was also smart and capable and nice needed to give Emily the time of day, and Emily could hardly blame her.
Not for the first time, she silently cursed her own inability to say nice things, to moderate the sharpness of her tongue, to be anything less than her famously prickly self. Because how shallow and obvious would she seem, to suddenly make an about-face and start being nice now, after Andrea had already completed her ugly duckling transformation? After Emily had been cruel to her for two months?
Emily swallowed. Swallowed again. Finally managed to drag her gaze up and away from those boots, those legs. And then her eyes met Andrea’s and she looked at Emily without fear, or even intimidation, for the very first time. She looked—she looked proud and smug and almost a little condescending. As if she had graciously agreed to continue performing the role of second assistant, but only because she wanted to.
Emily had never seen anything sexier in her life. And then her stomach dropped out as she realized she was wet. Her panties were slick, and she felt hot and sensitive and dizzy with too many awful realizations, far too quickly. She had gotten wet from looking at—from looking at a female coworker she didn’t even like. Who she professed to hate, in fact. Who she complained about constantly and insulted a dozen times a day and—and had been attracted to for months, apparently.
Emily’s cheeks flamed.
She fled to the toilets at something just shy of a run.
It took Andy a while to catch on.
In her defense, she’d been busy riding the high of the approving looks from Miranda, Nigel, Serena, clackers in the halls, even strangers on the subway. It was addicting. It made her uneasy, how much she liked it.
So it took her a few weeks to notice that Emily was looking at her more often than usual. And that was surprising because Emily had already spent far more time than necessary looking at Andy. She used to insult Andy like clockwork as soon as she noticed that she’d been caught looking. Andy had grown accustomed to that rhythm, to the almost enjoyable anticipation of trying to predict what horrible (invisible to Andy) faux pas Emily would lambaste her for now, what inventive insult she would make up on the spot to justify her frequent glances.
In spite of Emily’s rude and absolutely unnecessary meanness, it was hard to dislike her. She was incredibly funny, and Andy was somehow certain that there was a fascinating person underneath all that anxiety and emotional repression and obsession with Runway and disdain for anything unfashionable (e.g. Andy).
So yes, it took a while, but Andy realized, on a Friday afternoon, that Emily had barely insulted her in ages. Since the makeover, actually. But she was looking at Andy more than ever. And her looks felt…different, somehow. Significant.
Out of a strange sort of scientific curiosity, Andy decided to start tracking it. She opened a new text file and began to type a lowercase “e” every time she noticed Emily looking at her. Over the next four hours, she made thirty-one notes. Thirty-one! And there had only been two insults. At the beginning of her tenure, she would have received far fewer looks and far more insults.
Andy was, frankly, baffled.
Yes, she’d gotten the dream makeover from Nigel. She’d gotten a haircut and makeup samples and hair products and styling tips from the Beauty department. She’d gotten clothes from the Closet. But she was still fundamentally the same Andy Sachs who hadn’t even heard of Miranda Priestly a few months ago. She could no more identify designers on sight than she could fly. She was still herself, still annoying, ignorant Midwestern Andy. But Emily was reacting to her so differently now. She was weirdly quiet, and sometimes her cheeks went pink when she noticed Andy noticing her constant glances.
Emily’s insults, when she offered them at all, felt weak. Her heart was clearly not in it anymore. And something about her sudden uncertainty struck Andy as oddly adorable. For one thing, she was clearly discombobulated by her own behavior, because she would often look away and shake her head slightly after a particularly unconvincing rude remark.
The other, even more intriguing change in Emily’s behavior was how she responded to Andy’s smiles. She’d actually stuttered for a second when Andy said good morning with a big, slightly smug smile once. If Andy didn’t know better, she’d almost think that Emily had a crush.
No.
No, surely not. Emily Charlton, mean girl extraordinaire, who insulted Andy with every breath and ordered her around with apparent relish? That was ridiculous.
And yet…Andy peered at Emily out of the corner of her eye and stretched ostentatiously, allowing her back to arch, her chest to push forward, and her head to tip backwards. Emily’s head turned instantly, and she bit her lip, cheeks flushing as her eyes dragged across Andy’s face, neck, and torso, before she quickly looked away.
Andy’s heart did something terribly inconvenient in her chest. A lurch, or a stumble, or some other ludicrous reaction to being briefly looked at by her female coworker, who didn’t even like her.
Andy felt her own cheeks warm as her traitorous heart sped up. Her skin tingled with the sudden, intoxicating awareness of exactly how Emily was looking at her. It was somehow better than Serena’s compliment, than Nate’s appreciative looks, even than Miranda’s approval. Andy shivered as goosebumps swept down her entire body.
Not for the first time, Andy was deeply, deeply relieved to see Miranda rise from behind her desk, signaling the end of her workday. Although Andy’s reasons for that relief were certainly different today than they’d ever been before.
She leapt up to grab Miranda’s coat and bag, hoping wildly that Miranda wouldn’t notice the frantic throb of her pulse in her neck. A pulse was objectively a ridiculous thing to feel self-conscious about, but Miranda could practically read minds, sometimes, and Andy did not even want to consider what such a mind reading might reveal just then.
Fortunately, Miranda swept out without giving Andy so much as half a glance, ignoring Andy’s slightly shaky “Goodnight, Miranda,” with her usual aplomb.
Andy sat back down, took a subtle (she hoped) deep breath, and exhaled it slowly before risking a glance at her fellow assistant.
Emily was staring fixedly at her own computer with a hint of her earlier blush still lingering in her cheeks. It was…cute, really. The way she was working so hard to pretend that nothing had changed, that she didn’t care about the makeover at all, that she was entirely indifferent to Andy. But Andy had seen it, had noticed Emily noticing her, and now she couldn’t unsee it.
Andy tapped her pen on her desk as her brain started recontextualizing so many earlier interactions.
Had Emily’s insults been deflections all along? From a woman who was allergic to emotions and probably terrified of showing weakness to the pack of hyenas that was Runway? It made sense. It made a lot of sense.
Andy heard the typing from across the room slow down, felt Emily’s eyes on her again. For some reason, this time her breath caught as she saw those piercing blue eyes glance briefly at her chest and then dart immediately down to her hand.
“For God’s sake, Andrea, spare us your tap-dancing pen and go home. Some of us have more work to do, but you might as well run off with your fry cook and…do whatever bland, Midwestern things you people do on the weekend.”
That was actually surprisingly considerate of her. Andy dredged up a shaky smile. “Thanks, Em! I’ll see you Monday.”
“Unfortunately,” Emily muttered, avoiding eye contact to an almost improbable degree as she typed even faster.
Andy gathered her things and walked briskly to the elevator, feeling as though she had made a very narrow escape indeed.
For no particular reason, she and Nate had a lot of sex that weekend. More than they’d had since she started working at Runway, probably.
Miranda did not call her once. And Andy did not think about work at all. Not Runway, not Miranda, and definitely not Emily. She did not imagine blue eyes glancing across her chest, or soft pale cheeks covered in a delicate blush, or how Andy’s favorite shade of lipstick would look smeared with Emily’s—
Nope, Andy didn’t think about any of that. In fact, she did such a good job not thinking about it that she was almost shocked to arrive at the office on Monday morning and make startling, electric contact with the sharp blue eyes of Emily Charlton.
Andy teetered on her stilettos as the ground seemed to sway underneath her. She somehow managed to look away and steady herself as her stomach dipped and heaved.
“Morning,” Andy said weakly.
“Good morning,” Emily replied, for the first time ever.
Andy blinked in astonishment, brows rising as her head snapped instantly back toward her fellow assistant. “Wait, did you just—”
Emily blushed a deep and unmistakable shade of pink. “Don’t let it go to your head, Sachs. We have a lot of work to do today. Why are you still standing there? The run-through is in two hours, and the accessories still aren’t here! Go!” She emphasized her final command by snapping and pointing.
Andy smiled. She couldn’t help it. Emily was just so—so Emily. All that bluster, but now that she knew what was underneath, it was like watching a very cute kitten try to be threatening. “Sure thing, Em.” And then, still a little breathless, she dared to give Emily a cheeky wink before heading back towards the elevator.
The next few months at Runway were, on the surface, almost calm. Runway was never truly calm, of course. One feature or another was always on the edge of disaster. But having a competent second assistant who was now trusted to deliver The Book was a huge relief.
Yes, aside from the hellish nightmare that was Andy going upstairs and almost getting herself fired, then somehow achieving the impossible to save herself, work went fairly smoothly.
The problem, of course, was that the bell that had been rung could not be unrung. Now that she was finally dressing properly, Andy was both too beautiful to look at and too magnetic to look away from.
Emily kept telling herself that it was aesthetic appreciation for the outfits Nigel was giving Andy, or admiration for the work of whoever had taught her how to use eyeliner properly. Or even just a halo effect from the overflow of relief that Emily finally had a capable second to take some of the work off her shoulders.
But when she lay awake at night, trying to somehow fall asleep without the assistance of alcohol, Emily knew better. She remembered her “aesthetic appreciation” of Mrs. Murphy, her year 7 teacher, and Diana, her roommate from boarding school, and Bex, her best friend from university. She remembered a particular very formative sleepover that had left Emily with an ache she hadn’t understood at the time, but understood all too well in hindsight. Even more damningly, she remembered a number of dates with attractive men who left her completely unmoved, followed by a couple of short-lived, unhappy relationships with the most tolerable of the bunch. Even…even sex with men, whenever she’d felt it necessary, had left her cold. And yet here she was, practically having heart palpitations over a single wink from her female coworker.
It wasn’t fair. It was just…so, so unfair.
Emily was, of course, well accustomed to the unfairness of the world. You had to be, to succeed in fashion. You also had to have a thick skin, a boatload of self-confidence, and enough ambition to make the early mornings and late nights and horrific diets and mangled feet worth it. You had to be prepared to accept that anyone less than perfect, anyone less than exactly what the taste makers wanted at any given time, was left in the dust. The lucky few would always succeed instead of those who were better qualified, but less well connected. Or less thin. (Or less straight, particularly for women.)
Emily had done everything right, had spent years avoiding any serious sexual or romantic entanglements that could derail a budding fashion career, and yet here she was panting after Andy. After all that time surrounded by the beautiful daughters of England’s elite and the even more beautiful women of Runway, it was provincial, fat, fashion-ignorant Andy who made her forget all her ambitions and decorum and drool like a teenage boy.
Andy made her blush, constantly, without even trying. To Emily’s horror, Andy even made her stutter again, for the first time in years. And Emily couldn’t even bring herself to offer more than the occasional half-hearted insult anymore, because Andy and her kind eyes and her beautiful smile were terrible for Emily’s ability to say anything that wasn’t a weak insult or an utterly pathetic compliment.
The partial collapse of Emily’s sarcastic front (at least with Andy) was the most embarrassing thing that had happened in Emily’s entire life, and she felt like even more of a fool for wanting so desperately to believe that this sudden, crippling desire was mutual. That Andy’s long, searching looks had some sort of deeper significance beyond trying to understand why Emily had made such a sudden about-face in her behavior.
Andy is straight, Emily reminded herself viciously, for perhaps the thousandth time. She has a boyfriend. She doesn’t want to have sex with you. She doesn’t spend even two seconds thinking about you while she’s off sleeping with a scruffy man who doesn’t support her ambitions and probably smells like used cooking oil.
Worse, Emily was far from the only Runway employee disappointed by Andy’s coupled status. Andy had started receiving admiring looks from men and women alike the second Nigel had revealed the beauty that was underneath all along. She had also become increasingly flirtatious since her makeover, though she never took it too far. Bloody hell, she’d even started winking at people. Emily hated how much she liked it, how much it made her feel special, even though she was sure Andy winked at plenty of other people when Emily wasn’t around. She hadn’t caught her at it, but that proved nothing.
Now that Andy was actually playing the game, she was just as likely to flirt with others to get ahead as any other clacker would have been. Emily had no right to be excruciatingly, seethingly jealous of every single person Andy smiled at.
Just because she gave Emily that wide, innocent-looking smile and called her “Em” and wished her good morning and good night and asked about her weekends didn’t mean she wasn’t doing the same with everyone else. Just because she laughed at Emily’s jokes, and asked for Emily’s opinion of her outfits, and looked pleased at even the tiniest, most backhanded compliments, that didn’t mean she was interested. It only meant she liked attention—just like everyone else in this whole godforsaken industry.
Once or twice, Emily could have even sworn she caught Andy staring at her legs, although that was obviously wishful thinking. She’s probably admiring your shoes, you daft cow.