Chapter Text
xiv. we’ll shout hallelujah and just get happy (happy days, happy nights that’s all i’m asking for)
Andy finishes moving into her new apartment three days before the new year and finds herself completely besotted with the space. It’s charming without being obnoxious. Cozy without being confining. And there is something final, something solid that sinks into her bones when the last book has been slipped into the reworked tall boy bookcase the girls got her for Christmas.
The two bedroom, one story apartment in a prewar style townhouse, nestled away in lower Manhattan with its windows tall enough that the sun has practically moved in as well, and ceilings high enough that she can breathe without hearing her own exhale have her falling in love with this city and her life all over again.
It’s a wonderful feeling to be so wrapped up in.
She’d have never picked this home out for herself, she doesn’t think, and refuses to dwell on the why, will save that for her therapist to unpack, because here now, with the broken little slants of light filtering through the bare trees outside, cutting hundreds of fractured patterns on the Sandringham Moss rug Miranda brought her five Christmases ago, she thinks she understands why her friends pushed this one so hard.
It’s too big an apartment for just her but she doesn’t mind at all. She’s much too excited to let her roots, new and old plough their way through the chestnut stained hardwood floors, wants them to dig deep enough that she can’t be uprooted ever again. Spends hours and hours languishing away those first few days. The hem of her nightgown had tickled her ankles constantly as she gently paced up and down the long narrow hallways. Letting her bare hands run along the original textured wallpaper, acquainting herself with all the creaks and groans hundred year old buildings are wont to sound, occasionally answering in kind. Ma would tell her to cut it out, probably, implore her to stop haunting herself, but Andy’s never had an apartment she hasn’t introduced herself to before and she isn’t about to start now.
Especially when it was picked out just for her.
Lily hadn’t wanted her to dwell in the first mold riddled studio she would have signed for first thing. Miranda hadn’t wanted her to hide away, to miss the sun and she’d have done both of those things if left to her own devices, she is not too proud to admit. It’s unnerving to have people love you this way, she muses to herself. And it might be left over Christmas fuzzies. Or it might be Miranda, perhaps, it might not be anything at all but she finds herself completely overcome by the idea that her very best friends know her so completely. Finds herself sort of bereft, maybe, at being so perceived by these people because she’s just Andy, isn’t she?
Just Andy.
Or Andy with a lightness in her chest because they, her friends, ultimately the truest loves of her life, have brought the sun to her.
In the living room Nana’s grandfather clock chimes four times and Andy starts because she’s let herself drift away again and it’s New Years Eve and she’s running late. Miranda’s lot will be here for dinner soon, Lily’s as well and she’s not even so much as set her oven to preheat.
She’s nervous. Incredibly. About lots of things really, having to cook dinner for her family in a kitchen she’s only used to make one omelet in so far. Having to face her boss next week after extending her leave of absence. Whether or not the date her mother went on on Monday went well, but this thing with Miranda–their thing–has somehow clawed its way back to the top.
Andy doesn’t mind that so much either if she's being honest.
Not now that she’s allowed herself to want it. Want her and it feels different–good different–that she can want it this openly after living with it buried for so long. And God does she want. She wants it all. Miranda at her messiest. Meanest. Miranda at her truest. Miranda at her feet were she hasn’t been in years and years.
And perhaps she should feel more guilty than she does for never truly opening herself up to Ben but she can’t. Not anymore and she tells herself as she enters the long, narrow kitchen with its soft yellow walls, that she hadn’t done anything wrong in choosing to try and love people outside of Miranda. That she hadn’t been using him any more than he was using her (and her therapist had had plenty to say about that as well) because she had loved him in her own small way.
It’s just that she has always loved Miranda louder than anything else she has ever done with her little life.
“Thank you, sweet girl,” Andy smiles much later in the evening, accepting a steaming pie dish from Caroline. “That’s everything. Can you go round everybody up please?”
“Sure, Andy,” Caroline says, darting forward to kiss her cheek before turning on her heel, her dark hair, a little longer now, flicking behind her with her sharp movements. “Don’t you dare open my oven–” she calls over her shoulder as she goes, “my cheesecake will sink and then I’ll have to hurt you!”
“Yes, boss!” Lily salutes, rolling her eyes as she does, only adding a light, “Little Edie sure is serious about baked goods,” once Caroline is out of earshot. “You open the kids oven one time and it’s your scarlet A.”
Andy can’t help but aim a teasing grin at her friend at that. It’s healthy that everybody is just a little scared of the girl. Keeps them on their toes. “You started that,” she says, shaking her head as she tucks precut squares of aluminum foil over the dishes edge. “‘Of course I’ll show you how to bake! It’s so easy!’ Now she takes every flop like a personal slight.”
“Well that’s just what cool aunts do. How was I supposed to know she’d take it to heart? Sometimes baking fails. The air is too moist. Too dry. Breathe in, breathe out or whatever,” Lily shrugs but the lift in her eyebrow gives her away.
And oh, Andy is filled with so much sun despite it being seven o’clock at night because her friends love her family just as much as she does. Even when they didn’t get it. Even when everything was so muddled.
“I dare you to say that to her sweet little face,” she laughs, carefully piling warm bottomed dishes on her left forearm. “Right now.”
“Yeah right,” Lily snorts, hoisting two dishes on to her own arms. “I’d like to see the new year in at least.”
Andy grins. “Good call.”
She turns away from her friend, leads them out of the kitchen, snorting heavily when she catches the glare the other woman throws at the oven in question. “And we don’t even get to eat it,” Lily mutters to herself.
“Nope,” Andy commiserates. “Not unless you somehow snagged an invite to her little New Years brunch tomorrow. She’s turning into a true Southern hostess. Ma is ridiculously proud.”
“I bet she is,” Lily smiles, wide and proud as well. “You know, it’s a little scary how alike Caroline and Ma are. Like. Very scary.”
And very true. Andy loves that too.
“Sorry, my table isn’t very well dressed–” Andy says over her quiet footfalls. “I couldn’t find my placemats in any of the boxes.”
“They’ll be in the ones Miranda stored. She had most of your kitchenware. I had bed and living room. I’ll bring the rest of what's left at mine when the weather clears up,” Lily says following her the short distance from the kitchen to the dining area, setting her dishes in the middle of Andy’s new dining table before helping Andy deposit her own. “It’s not much. A rug, a lamp. That lucky tan suede coat we thrifted down South when we were sixteen and still miraculously fits us both today. It’s your go with it anyway. Dinner!”
“Look at you and your sisterhood of the traveling coat,” Cassidy teases, already pulling a chair out to sit. “And it’s lucky? Very small town girls. Much 90’s girl-core. So fetch.”
“Shush, you, I wore that jacket the day I met your Mom so it must have had some luck imbued in it because she hired me, didn’t she?” Andy smiles brightly before dimming slightly. The corner of her thumb finding her teeth. “I’ll need a bit of that when I go into the office next week. Hopefully John has had as good a Christmas as us and isn’t too upset with me for extending my sabbatical.”
“If he is…” Miranda starts as she rounds the doorway, flicking her still damp hands. Henry trailing behind her, lips flattened in an effort to contain his amusement she’s sure, but she lets the threat trail off. Tilting her head in that way that Andy finds utterly adorable. Even when she means to threaten someone's livelihood.
“We'll thank him and move on,” Lily jumps in, nudging her shoulder against Miranda’s. “No big scary Miranda Priestly allowed this soon after Christmas. It's against the rules, probably.”
“Oh, haven’t you heard?” Miranda teases, freer than Andy has seen her be in a long time, “big scary Miranda makes the rules, Lillian,” she smirks, teeth flashing as she tosses her forelock from her eye.
Lily rolls her eyes again here, pulling her lips inwards in an effort to swallow her laughter and Andy feels it all sink into her feet. Closes her eyes and feels those roots slithering into these foundations, digging and cultivating and prodding right through the earth's crust, right into the center and she knows she’ll have this forever.
A barely there brush against her arm, no more than a whoosh of air tickling the space around her has her eyes slowly blinking open and immediately finding a pair of startling blue. There’s a question floating through them, a gentle check in and Andy lets the corners of her mouth lift, lets a little of that sun shine through as she gazes back at her feeling steadier than she has all year.
0(o)0
“I thought I’d find you out here,” Andy hears from behind and jolts at the shock of it, hurrying to expel the coils of smoke lingering above her head. “Only me,” Henry laughs and she joins him, cigarette free hand pressed to her heart, willing it to slow down.
“You’re as bad as Miranda,” she jokes because that’s easy. They know how to do that. “I’m liable to go gray prematurely for all the frights you both give me.”
He titters, shrugging apologetically. “She’s just sent me out with your beanie. You left it on the stool.”
Andy’s cheeks slowly warm under his barely lit grin and she grumbles a soft, “I told her it wasn’t that cold,” as she takes it.
He only chuckles, moving to perch on the half wall next to her, plucking the cigarette from her hand once he’s settled. And she’s so thankful that they got all the awkwardness out of the way over Christmas. She couldn’t bear it if she’d lost this friendship, even if she didn’t deserve his warmth at all.
“Camel,” he says, tasting the flavor of the cigarette. “I never knew you smoked these. Always knew you to be a Marlboro girl the odd occasion I’ve seen you imbibe.”
“I am mostly, when I do,” Andy shrugs, rolling the lighter across her palm. “I was feeling a little...my dad used to smoke Camels when I was a girl. Something, something, the taste of bitterness. Something, something I am my fathers daughter,” he passes the cigarette back to her and she takes a long, deep pull before exhaling loudly. “Don’t let the girls see me,” she only half jokes here. “I told them I had to take a call. They’ll blast me all over their social media for being a ‘hypocrite’ and I'll never hear the end of it.”
His broad shoulders shake as he titters. “Just the other day I caught Cassidy sneaking a bottle of Vintage Port out of the house–it cost more than one semester at her school, mind–and the night before that Caroline came home smelling like a dropout stoners wet dream,” Andy snickers here, with the joy of a parent who didn’t have to discipline either of those infractions. “Oh well,” Henry sighs. “It's actually quite amusing watching them swan around with their cherubic little faces as though they don’t leave an acre of debris in their wake,” he sighs through his nose, scratching the tip of it as he does.
“That is true,” Andy smiles, “they almost got me fired when I worked for Runway. Twice.”
“I had heard that,” he grins. “Hard to stay mad at them though, no?”
“Much like their mother,” she groans lightly. She’s long ago made peace with the fact that she’ll always forgive them. Well before they’ve even sinned. “Hurricane Priestly sweeps through like clockwork. All three of them,” and it’s so easy to get swept up along with them. “They’re settling down now, finding their feet but…they are my most favorite disasters.”
“I’d heard that too,” he smiles, once again reaching for their shared cigarette. “You’re a good mama, Andy Sachs.”
“Thank you,” she rasps, letting her head drop onto his shoulder.
“Here,” he says after a brief dip in conversation, one hand tucked in his coat pocket. “A house warming gift–no I know we said no gifts,” he hushes her when she means to interrupt. “But I couldn’t let you begin this new venture without a little something. It’s only small. Hold your hand out.”
His pocket rattles when he pulls his hand from it, and she can’t help the confusion painting her face when he drops it into her waiting palm. She hums bemusedly, holding it up towards the nearest light source.
“It’s a keychain,” he explains, tapping a nail against the print of her name until it swings where it hangs. “I had it pressed from the cork of the bottle of champagne we popped the night we celebrated you leading and publishing your first exposé.”
Andy gasps, clutching the keychain as though it’ll fly away on the brisk January breeze. “Henry,” she wobbles, unaware he had even held onto a memory like that. Let alone something that had been so important to her. Everything had felt so much bigger, back then, bigger than her work. Bigger than a piece of cork. Everything bigger in a way she wasn’t sure she could fold into. “Henry, I–I love it,” she manages, running a finger along the smooth edge. “This is the sweetest–Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he smiles, watching as she happily tucks it close to her chest.
They smoke the cigarette down to the filter in companionable silence, listening to the hustle and bustle of the city below them made more exuberant by the excitement of another year closing out. She’s teary eyed and woeful but underneath that, so incredibly ready to love Miranda. Is sad it has come at Henry’s expense. The oversized coat Henry is wearing is warm against her cheek made frigid by the dry winter air and her heart clenches violently when he butts the cigarette out with one hand, unbuttons his coat with the other, tenderly tucks it around her shoulders and welcomes her in.
It isn’t a complex. She knows it isn’t. But she’s always struggled with the differences in how she views him. Their dynamic has always, of course, been different to the one she shares with Miranda. And though she never questioned why , he had always been this with her, hadn’t he, it had been a lot to unravel within herself. Because how can he be this incredibly warm, deeply paternal figure, something he has willfully stepped into with her, something she eagerly accepted like a greedy little girl who has only ever known how to disappoint her actual father, only for her to be so completely in love with his wife. It doesn’t make sense. It makes perfect sense. Andy will never know sense ever again.
There is something tragically Shakespearean about this entire thing.
Her head angles towards him even as her eyes lower from his own heavy gaze. “I never meant for any of this to get so–”
“Nothing to apologize for, lovey,” he shrugs and she envies the ease in which he does. All of this has seemed so weightless, for him. “I mean it, Andy. All this stuff is just…it’s life. It is. All the mess of it. All the love of it. It’s just life.”
“How do you do that?” She asks without thought. Without meaning to. “How do you just–” she makes a soft sound as she passes her hand over her head.
He smiles here, a soft rumble of laughter escaping him. “Oh it’s the perks of getting old, dearest. You’ll see as you go. You’ll learn to take the good when it’s here and let the rest of it roll on by without claiming it.”
Andy spends a few long moments chewing on her bottom lip, stewing on whether or not she wants to let the conversation chug along in the direction it’s heading. Ultimately decides she must because she slumps even further into him and finds it all escaping her anyway. “Ben never–he couldn’t ever just enjoy it, you know? It wasn’t so bad in the beginning. I did love him, I did, and okay we wouldn’t have lasted but we had something real, right? Even if I couldn’t ever let him in because–”
“He wasn’t safe,” he says and something unfurls in her. Ben hadn’t been safe at all. And she’d always known that. However unconsciously. “He wanted to consume you,” he adds, gentle and kind and Andy could weep. “And we both know only one singular entity could ever be capable of that.”
“She’s my best friend,” she gasps, and in the minutia of him tensing, she knows he recognizes her meaning. She’s leaning heavier into him now and choking on a sob when he lets her. “I have always been Miran–,” she swallows harshly here, sucking in an unsteady breath.
“I know,” he says. “I always have, in some way far off way.”
“And oh, I’m glad it was you–” she says, tears cooling on her chilled cheek. “Miranda was lucky, so fortunate to have had you. We all were. You’re better than any of us,” she sniffles, blames it on the cold and finally raises her teary eyes to his because he, Henry, had given far more than she deserved as well. “Thank you for loving Miranda–for loving me–as deeply as you did. Thank you for it all.”
“Is it weird if I thank you for giving me the opportunity to love her? Probably, but I’ll do it anyway,” his left cheek twitches his mouth into a half smile, she sees, before he dips down to press his slightly wind chapped lips to her hairline as though he’s always meant to. “I might not have–I’ll never know Miranda as you do, but I am a better man for knowing her at all. The same goes for you,” he lets out a breath here. Slow and deep. Mindful.
“I’m sorry,” she gasps again, because she’s never wanted this for him. Because she knows what it is to love Miranda, has never wanted to take that from him. Her stomach roils, has her twisted enough to shift and press her damp eyes into his shoulder. “God, I am.”
“Don’t, Andy,” he says against her forehead. “It isn’t–who could ever apologize for love, hm? It'll never be anything anyone needs to apologize for. Never be anything you need to apologize for.”
“You’re only getting divorced because of me,” she tries, trembling from chill and reanimated emotion. “That’s plenty to–”
“Not because of you,” he breathes and adds, after she throws a look of pure disbelief his way, “I’ll hear no more of it, Andy. You’re allowed to want Miranda without having to pay for it. You’ve both done more than your share of that, hm?”
Something unfurls within her at that but she doesn't speak on it, doesn’t say anything further because what else is there to say to that? Doesn't want to disrupt this peace they’ve always managed to share even in the most turbulent of times. Only snuggles in deeper, lets the downy hair on his chin tickle her temple as they sit on this balcony three hours away from a new beginning.
“You’re okay,” he whispers, tucking her deeper into his coat. “You’re going to be so okay, Andy. And I don’t need to tell you Miranda will be as well because I know you’ll make sure of it,” down below, a small posse walk by. Loud and happy. Happy to be loud and he smiles at their off key singing before shifting enough to look at her face on, a look she’s never seen before painted across his face. “Because she isn’t easy to know–to–God knows Miranda Priestly is an impossible woman but when she lets you in–when she lets you in…” he trails off, wistful and grateful and a thousand other things all at once and Andy understands completely.
“When she lets you in,” she parrots. Magic. So thick and heady there isn’t anything to do but bask while it’s here. Andy knows. Intimately. And she’d have done everything exactly the same wouldn’t she? Even if all roads had led them here she would have done it exactly the same because she could have gone years and years more, only loving her in the fractures of light allowed to them, but fuck it’s so compelling loving her in the hundreds and thousands of slants of it. And she doesn’t ever want to apologize for that.
“We’re going to be okay,” he says again. Sure enough that Andy decides they can’t be anything else.
“Happy New Year, Henry,” she mutters into the still air and they’ll always be tied together as well. The two people who loved Miranda more than anyone else. The two people who loved her enough to let her go.
0(o)0
“What will you do after this?” Miranda asks later in the night, quietly tucked against the table in the entryway before everyone splits for the night. Miranda’s voice here is hushed, as soft as that look in her eye and Andy shivers in response to it as well as the tenderness at the tip of her fingers when she brushes a stray twirl of hair away from her gloss shined lip.
They haven’t worked everything out. There is still too much that needs to be discussed but for the first time since she entered Miranda’s orbit, light-years ago, does she see a clear path. They know where they’re heading. Where they’ve been. And they know what dust left to gather is capable of growing into, if left alone in the dark. Knows it’ll collapse them in on themselves if they’re not careful but they’re on the same page, finally. Sitting on the same shelf, a part of the same book. They’ve never been more them.
That’s all that matters. Everything else is just stuff.
“Lily’s dragging me to some new club that’s probably meant for newly twenty-one year olds who don’t know better and not thirty somethings whose knees ache after walking up three flights of stairs.”
Miranda chuckles, rolling her eyes at the audacity of her complaining about rickety knees at her age. “Ridiculous.”
“Oh completely,” she snorts, winding her arms around Miranda’s shoulders and tucking her chilled nose into Miranda’s warm neck, can’t help but giggle at her stuttering inhale. Presses a closed mouth kiss to the spot her nose touches because she wants to. “We’ll drop the girls at their parties on our way. What about you–have any charming, slightly lascivious plans to ring the New Year in?”
“You know,” Miranda smirks, her own hands finding her waist. “I can’t say that I have any that exciting, no.”
Biting her lip, Andy bats her lashes, overdoing it on purpose. “Would you like some?” She asks, half tempted to throw her own plans out the window.
“Are you flirting with me,” Miranda mumbles teasingly. “Is this how you flirt now? I don’t remember you being this–” She cuts herself off with a hushed mewl when Andy finds the collar of her blouse and shifts it away with her tongue. Leaving them in near silence for a long moment, only the sound of her quiet, shallow breaths passing between them. “Um–” she stutters uncharacteristically when Andy lets her lips part further. “Uh.”
“Yes?” Andy says, delightfully, made reckless by the sweetness of Miranda’s nearly inaudible moan.
Miranda tastes the same.
Day faded perfume and early winter chill sits heavy on her tongue and it’s like a volt has been set off in her stomach. Like she’s suddenly been handed the sequence of the universe. And it’s so lovely to press her lips into the hollow of Miranda’s neck, over and over, until she’s had her fill. Finds herself growing slightly crazed because it’s wild that she can after only having the remembrance of it to keep her warm.
Miranda has to clear her throat more than once before she gets the words out and Andy can’t ever remember being this thrilled. “I have an appearance. At a party…For some charity. No more than…oh–”
“Hm?”
“At the–fuck–something or other. I don’t know. Andrea,” she gasps, tipping into her. “Do not start something we–one, have no time for. And B–and B–”
Andy hums into the next kiss, wetter and sloppier than the previous, trailing them all the way up to her ear. “And B?”
“B–I have no idea,” she sighs, neck elongating when she tips her head back. “Is it too late to cancel, do you think? Surely I could get away with sending the hospital a check after the holiday. A sizable one. With more zeros than–”
Andy laughs gently, carefully scraping her right incisor down a protruding tendon. “I like your funny words, magic man, but alas, we have stuff to do. Attendances to attend. A year to close out.”
“That means–oh–nothing to me, you realize that, I would much rather spend it with you anyway. We haven’t had New Year’s together since, oh I don’t know. The girls were fourteen, I want to say?”
“I know, and I’m sorry for teasing you when we have places to see and people to be or however it goes,” Andy sighs, pressing one more kiss to her jaw before surfacing. “But it’s one last thing. One last goodbye and then we’ll have however many New Year’s you want–”
“Oh, so all of them, then?” Miranda tilts her head and they both soften here. Because yes.
“Yeah,” Andy manages around the lump in her throat. “Yeah, so I mean, you better not R.S.V.P yes to any functions, work or social next year or ever again. Because every New Year’s Eve after this you’re all mine, lady.”
“Well,” Miranda huffs now, “how was I supposed to know–I only agreed because I didn’t know if you’d be home by then–”
“Semantics,” Andy sighs teasingly. “I’ll see you before you’re back at work. You don’t start back until the fifth, right?”
Miranda blinks, glazed eyes clearing with the slight distance between Andy’s lips and her neck. “Yes, you’ll see me before then.”
“Good,” because Andy is scared she’d have not only bailed on her friends, but banned them from ever inviting her anywhere again if she’d missed out on days and days more of this. “If all goes well I don’t start back until the twelfth and I have stars to gobble and suns to touch before then.”
A staggered inhale answers her. Miranda leaning heavier into her at that. “Then I shall definitely see you before then because funnily enough, my day planner looks exactly the same,” she hums, dipping down to press a quick, chaste kiss to her lips and it isn’t until she’s pulling away that Andy realizes.
It’s the first time they’ve been…any of this–no space between them, traces of Andy’s lipstick on her neck, an imprint of Miranda’s tinting her own–all of this exchanged in a not completely empty space where Miranda didn’t check their surroundings first.
It makes Andy feel awfully brave. Stupidly so. Makes her feel seen. Wanted. Real. Makes her feel like she’s enough exactly the way she is, with her sticky lemon tainted fingertips because she spent all afternoon zesting a bunch of them, occasional dip into that old existential dread that’s followed her most of her life and the breakup bangs that stubbornly refuse to grow out.
It happens all at once. She can’t feel her feet and suddenly she doesn't want to let Miranda out of her sight. Wants to keep her here until next December 31st, making up for all that they’ve lost being fucking idiots. “I take it back. It isn’t too late to cancel at all, in fact why don’t we just kick everybody out, lock ourselves in and waste away all day tomorrow. Me. You. Food we didn’t have to cook,” she’s mostly joking. Mostly. “The girls will be too hungover at their own-wherever-they-land-to notice we’ve both disappeared.”
Miranda’s chuckle is heftier here, though she looks just as likely to agree. “As enticing as that is, you're right. We both have things we committed to and you’ve been looking forward to this night with Lillian since its inception. And besides, you’ve got lunch with Douglas and Zane tomorrow,” she reminds her gently. “You haven’t seen either of them since your ostentatious return.”
“You can come with?” Andy pouts, doesn’t even begin to try and hide it.
Miranda laughs Andy’s favorite laugh then. A snigger that means she’s amused because she loves you. “Bit hard to talk about the major shift in your life when she’s sitting right there,” she chuckles.
“Oh I wouldn’t–”
“Mm, much to discuss, though, I shouldn’t wonder,” Miranda’s eyes haven’t left her own and Andy blinks mesmerized. Some part of her expected it to be slightly awkward, maybe, when they finally arrived at this point, that they’d drown, maybe, flounder, have nowhere to put all that longing they'd been sheathed in but it isn’t any of that at all. It’s the coziest, easiest thing. It’s a full belly after starving all day. A roaring fire in the middle of winter. It’s the ebb and flow of the ocean following the moon and a chrysalis drying out long after its butterfly has chased the wind.
And she can still feel that warm gaze on her back when she steps away to gather her coat, tenderly draping it over her shoulders, fluffing with it until it sits just so, trying to pretend like she isn’t willfully prolonging their goodbye.
Henry is waiting in the car outside, with the patience of a saint most likely, having been yoked into attending whatever little gala Miranda had agreed to show face at. Andy had offered him a ‘pleased it isn’t her’ yet heartfelt consideration as they said goodnight.
“Come here,” Miranda finally says, drawing her in because it must show on her face, a sort of devastation that their night is over so soon. “I’ll see you when I do,” she murmurs against her mouth.
“I’ll see you when I do,” Andy manages, choking on a swirl of sudden emotion that only swells when Miranda smiles, tearful too, in the soft glow above them. “I don’t know what's wrong with me,” she laughs tightly, leaning into the hands cupping her cheeks.
“Nothing. Nothing is. It’s been a long year, hm? Go and spend some time with our Lillian. Get belligerently drunk. See the New Year in and know that I’ll be thinking of you for the last second of this one and the very first of the next and every moment after. Have fun tonight, darling,” Miranda whispers against her left cheek, fingers splayed across her right. And nobody can fault her for following her movement as she opens the door with her free one and passes the threshold.
“I suppose I’ll have to save my New Year's kiss for when I see you next," she teases, swiping her wrist across her cheek.
“Oh, I should hope so,” Miranda whispers, eyes narrowing. “And Andrea,” she drawls. “If I don’t have that in hand by mid morning on Friday, well, I don't have to tell you the likely outcome of that.”
The chuckle Andy exhales as she watches her go lingers far longer than her precisely sprayed perfume does. And she waits until she can feel her feet beneath her once more before she calls her back, half leaning out the door. “Hey, Lady!”
“Yes?” Miranda turns back, eyebrow raised. She’s trying for a haughty air but the flush in her cheeks and the gleam in her eye lets her down.
In a hallway that is just as warm, just as welcoming as her apartment, Andy smiles. Shy and in love. “Are you happy?”
“Indescribably,” Miranda’s answer comes immediately, her entire face open and soft. “Terribly. Willfully. Any and every other wholly encapsulating word for it,” she says, the corners of her mouth curling upwards before, “you came home, darling. Of course I am.”
God, Andy is all of that too.
“I love you and I like you,” she waves, the part of her that will live under her mothers kitchen table forever probably, yawning her input.
“And I you, Andrea,” Miranda winks before her demeanor shifts entirely, onwards into the night.
0(o)0
She’s dreaming the same dream she’s had for years. And years more, in fact, Andy can’t remember not having that dream. Always the same.
She’s floating in the big wide nothing of the ocean, face down because of course she is, why wouldn’t she be. The waves are still, mostly, not even a hint of a wave or a taste of a breeze. Just still water big enough to drown Blue Whales and swaddle them completely. And it’s pitch black, like it always is. So black she can’t even see her hand in front of her face and she does try, every single time even though she knows it’s futile.
Most time’s when she dreams this, she lets it carry her, lets it exist how it will until she’s pulled from the sea by the morning sun. Sometimes she fights it, fights to pull herself out of the cold dark because there’s only so much of it she can take.
She's never tried to analyze it, what it all means, doesn't really feel the need to know, isn’t inclined to confront the her of it all, is more than happy to let the dream pass her by. And she doesn’t mind this dream when she has it, it’s actually quite nice sometimes, drifting in the nothing–the only time she actively hates this dream is when she sees herself. A version of herself, she supposes. Deep down in the nothing, floating beneath her, a mirror image in everything except the eyes.
The eyes beneath her are darker, angrier, and she is torn between hugging the other her or gauging that painfully dead look out of them. Either way it hurts. But tonight, right when the other her is beginning to form a hair's width beneath her, right when her heart starts to pound and her mouth opens to release a soundless scream there is moonlight penetrating the body of water surrounding her suddenly. Slowly lighting the murkiness until she’s seeing grays and blues and a hand not her own.
Andrea. Andrea. Andrea and Andy sinks even further into herself, rolling onto her back to look up at the full moon sheathed by a glittering sky, more stars winking at her then Fiji even and takes her first breath. Because it has to be right, she’s been holding it for all these years and Miranda–
She snaps awake with a painful sob even though her heavy eyelids drag open too slowly and twitches herself onto her back. There is cotton in her head and mouth both and she gasps, bringing a heavy, uncoordinated hand to her face, tapping a finger to the beat of her pounding heart against her temple.
“Shh,” she hears from the dresser in the corner and blinks in the soft glow of the room. “Shh, you’re okay.”
“M’rana,” she mutters blindly, staring up at the shadowed ceiling. “Miranda,” she tries again, thick with sleep.
“I’m sorry, darling, I didn’t want to wake you but you were having that dream again.”
Andy heaves a breath that makes her chest ache and shrugs sleepily, runs a hand through her loosened braid and pulls herself up enough to half sit up against the headboard, watching the other woman finish changing. “Sorry,” she rasps, nearly poking out an eye with how hard she rubs her thumb into it. “I tried to wait up.”
“It’s alright,” Miranda smiles at her, all midnight soft and lovely and shakes her head, “no, don’t sit up, go back to sleep, I’ll be along shortly.”
“‘Kay,” she mumbles, slumping back into the warmth as the other woman moves from the dresser. “Did you get Cait?”
“We did,” Miranda’s voice carries through the open bathroom door. “Rayna too.”
“Congratulations,” she says and means it. Knows how much it means to her.
“Thank you, darling.”
She watches through sleep gritted, hungry eyes Miranda’s shadow move with a comfortability not usually emanated from the woman. In her bathroom, cabinets open and close, a tap gushes, jewelry clinks. Miranda’s favored night time perfume permeates through to her bedroom until it’s hugging her from the inside.
Miranda didn’t even have to hunt for it in her overnight bag either. Has doubles of everything that lives right here in Andy’s apartment. They’ve spent more time here than anywhere else anyway–because Miranda has never been any good at being by herself but that’s okay–Miranda insists that the townhouse is too empty, too much space, that they’ll exhaust themselves trying to fill it all with the girls back to school. Henry has officially moved out by now too, around the corner from here actually and on the days they feel like it, they invite him around for tea. And on the days he feels like it, he joins them. Because they’ve always fit, the three of them. It just looks a little different now.
And it’s all these little things, isn’t it, all these little things. Andy takes a second. Just a second. Mourns a little for her younger self who always wanted this. Just this but doesn’t let herself wallow for long. Chooses not too because somewhere she might have missed out but she has it now, the ordinarily mundane humanness of a life with Miranda. Isn’t quite sure she fully deserves it even now but kisses the stars in thanks for giving it to her anyway.
When next she speaks, she hopes Miranda doesn’t hear the thickness in her throat. “I’m glad it all worked out.”
“Mm. And I don’t mind sharing this with you,” she says, “now that every line has been signed and dotted, but I was somewhat nervous we wouldn’t be able to bring her in. I was afraid to want it as much as I did.”
Andy doesn’t laugh though the feeling is bubbling beneath her diaphragm. The understatement of the year and they’re only five and a half weeks in, says instead, “nobody could tell,” and takes the look she gets for that on the chin. “Honestly. Well, I could tell a little bit but only me. Not even James could tell and she can read you like her own palm by now,” she gets a snort this time, only slightly nicer than that glare and stretches her arms out. “Come kiss me?”
Miranda does. Comes to her lightning quick, bare and immense, perfectly tailored silk nightgown swishing at her ankles, fingers tapping her own hips. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”
“But you woke me up so now you have to kiss me. It’s like the law, if I’m remembering it properly.”
“Oh? Did they cover that in the one semester you did over twelve years ago?”
“That one exactly. Something, something if a person is abruptly awoken from the depths of sleep, she is entitled to take reparations in the form of sweet kisses, something, something.”
Throaty sniggers here, accompanied by wry headshakes but she gets her due. Miranda sinks into the bed knee first, has to pull her nightgown up then too. Ebony eyes catch only a brief flash of pale skin before Miranda is on her. She’s missed kissing Miranda the most, she thinks. Has missed the very texture of her smooth tongue teasing hers out.
She sighs into it.
Miranda tastes like toothpaste and cherry wine. Like an odd mixture of old and new perpetually winding in on itself. Miranda tastes like they won, like they dragged each other through the trenches and finally reached the other side. Like perhaps, they might be enough to stop the sun from exploding at all.
They settle into Andy’s bed, a bed which has never smelt of anyone else but them, pressed close enough that not even dust can pass through and she never wants to be anything else. Their kisses remain languid, unhurried. There’s no rush this far into winter, and Miranda hums, and Miranda sighs and Miranda grips at her neck tight enough to hurt.
“Good?” She asks, already knowing the answer based on the sounds Miranda makes.
“Yes.”
“More?”
“Please.”
“Go ahead, sweet girl,” she whispers, lifting up enough to kiss her eyes. “But don’t you dare stop kissing me.”
The bedding is warm and rumpled and Miranda is warm too, when Andy slowly raises her nightgown to her hips, bunches it up there, uses her grip to pull her in before settling her fingers around the middle of her back.
“Go on, sweet girl. Take however much you can handle.”
“I’m sorry,” she stutters, already in motion. “I’m sorry we can’t–”
“Don’t,” Andy breathes. “You don’t have to apologize. Nothing else matters but this.”
Because she knows they’ll kiss until their lips are swollen, until Miranda is wide open and grinding rhythmically against her hip. And Andy will keep her hands to herself, will let Miranda take as much as she needs to get herself to where she wants to be because Miranda is someone else entirely to the one who shared her bed last, has been touched by perimenopause and long buried sexual issues resurfaced, needs to be loved differently now. Andy doesn’t mind. Doesn’t mind at all because when Miranda finally gasps against her ear, choking on an eruption of euphoria, it’s still Andy’s name on her lips. And the stars will flare and galaxies collide and Andy and Miranda will be left standing in the sunlight, when it slants just so, enough that it envelops them both.
This is what Andy chooses to interpret her dream as meaning, if she were in the business of wanting to analyze it. Miranda pale moon and pink cheeked pulling her from the depths. Miranda diving in with her and letting an ocean eat them whole. Miranda and Andy carving out a little pocket in the universe and claiming it all for themselves.
Or something like that.