Chapter Text
Emily is never late to work. She prides herself on it. Everywhere else? Well, that's a different story. There were no stakes to the world outside of Runway, in her eyes. Emily bore the burden and privilege of Runway being her entire world.
This morning, however, Emily had hit snooze on all five of her alarms, when she usually only allowed herself to snooze the first four. Her body naturally woke itself up twenty minutes later, no doubt privy to the sense of impending doom. Emily had all but jumped out of bed, buzzing around her room haphazardly for an outfit and going through the motions with her makeup. Usually, she’d take the subway, but there was no time today, so she ran outside, hailing a cab while she tugged on her earrings.
Miranda wasn’t there yet, thank god , but Emily had only beaten her there by a couple of minutes, failing to find the time to lay out all her magazines and ritualistic items on her desk. She accepted defeat when the elevator dinged, and she heard Miranda’s boots click down the hall methodically.
Emily stood at attention in front of her desk, feeling her heart leap to her throat as Miranda walked right past her, tossing her coat on Emily as she did.
What was strange, and Emily took immediate notice of, was Nigel trailing her. He would either have had to come in with her or have been waiting for her to walk by his office. He was also walking behind her, a place usually Miranda deemed much more fit for someone much further below her than Nigel was. Emily also noticed he appeared to be talking more at her than he was to her, a rarity in their specific case.
Upon entering her office, Nigel shut the glass door. Emily couldn’t hear much, as they kept their voices low, but Nigel’s excessive gesturing wasn’t indicative of a happy conversation by any means.
Emily watched Miranda’s face tighten as she spun around, leaning backwards to half-sit on her desk as she glared at him, lips curling into a familiar purse. It made Emily involuntarily shiver.
She was interrupted by her eavesdropping when the shrill sound of the phone rang.
It had been nearly an hour of Nigel and Miranda cooped up in her office, going back and forth about someone Emily couldn’t quite catch the name of. Sack… or something. She didn’t care enough to hammer out the details of who, but was much more excited by the why.
She was on the phone when the elevator dinged a second time that morning. Both Miranda and Nigel walked towards it at once. She watched in her periphery as the doors opened, expecting a fashion mogul or a coworker; instead, a new face.
“Hello? Emily? Are you there?” The exasperated voice of one of the associates at Coach wailed into the telephone. Snapping out of her daze, Emily made a noise of affirmation to the associate, still trying to catch a glimpse of the obstructed face by the elevator.
All she could make out was a slightly oversized suit; the figure was too thin and elegant to belong to a man, but Emily was sure she would have remembered whoever this woman was if she'd seen her before. Miranda and Nigel seemed to know her well. Miranda greeted her in a tone of voice that wasn't even trying to sell its attempt at kindness, dripping in disdain. Nigel seemed elated.
At the sound of clacking footsteps on the tile floor, Emily tried her best to look busy, scribbling nonsense on the notepad in front of her, even though the Coach associate had long ago switched to ranting about her boss instead of discussing the pieces Miranda would need for their next show.
The woman was fully in view of Emily for only a second. She could make out the chocolate brown hair that cascaded past her shoulders and down her back in soft ringlets, the strong slope of her nose, and joyful deep brown eyes. As she walked past the desk, Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille Eau Du Parfum wafted off of her.
Emily didn’t like her.
“Whooo is that?” Serena asked, looking slightly struck as the woman they both had their eyes fixed on closed the door to Miranda’s office. She caught Emily off guard as she folded her arms on the taller part of the assistant's desk.
“I don’t know,” Emily responded curtly, snapping her eyes back down and trying to make herself appear busy.
Serena scoffed. “Sure, we can pretend you weren’t just oogling her two seconds ago.”
Emily flushed bright red. “Bloody hell, Serena, I was not!” She hissed. “Would you please keep your voice down if you’re going to continue saying such outlandish things?”
“I was just joking, Emily,” she shrugged, further endeared by Emily’s defensiveness. “No need to get all pip, pip, cheerio on me.”
"I resent that implication," Emily snapped, drawing her lips into a thin line, trying not to shift under Serena's feline gaze.
The very unwelcome distraction kept Emily from noticing Miranda’s office door had opened, and she was marching towards them until Miranda had parked herself in front of them.
Emily shot out of her seat like she was called to stand at attention.
“Serena, unless your discussion with Emily pertains to the absolute tragedy of the draft of your piece on light versus dark wash denim I read yesterday… best get back to work.”
Serena nodded once, militantly, whispering a sorry only loud enough for Emily to hear before disappearing towards the stairs.
Nigel looked amused, Miranda set her sights on Emily, who felt her eyes widen as she willed herself not to look at the mysterious brunette standing beside her boss. Her incessant smile felt like it was burning Emily’s skin and was too bright for her eyes.
“Emily, dear,” Miranda said in a way that could only be described as the closest a human woman could get to a purr. It was the tone of voice Miranda put on for ‘guests’, like they were some kind of fucked up family and Emily was her darlingest daughter. Sometimes, and Emily would never admit this to anyone else, she did pretend that.
Miranda reached out a perfectly manicured finger to beckon her from behind the desk. “Come help me show Miss Andrea Sachs around.” She finished, spinning on her heel as soon as the words left her mouth and heading down the hall.
Andy didn’t make a break to follow her. She just watched Emily with her goofy smile, waving to her awkwardly, but not raising her hand past her waistline, so almost the whole top half of her body was forced to wave with her. Emily tried not to be charmed; she narrowed her eyes at the woman instead. She didn’t know quite why. Andrea’s smile never faltered.
“Hello?” Miranda called from ten feet ahead of them; it was sing-songy but chock-full of an annoyance that Emily would no doubt feel the repercussions of later. They both scurried to their boss.
“Emily,” Miranda started, “Andrea here will be coming on as our Head Features Editor. Do not bother me with your questions, please. I know barely more than you do,” she snarled, breaking the illusion of feigned kindness towards the two of them for a moment before seamlessly fixing her face, like it never happened.
Miranda stopped in front of the door of a vacant office. All offices at Runway on Miranda's floor were completely glass, but none were as big or perfect as hers. The one she was in front of was a shoebox, ever-stuffy. It hadn’t been occupied since Emily started working at Runway two years prior; it was a dumping ground for every file that hadn’t yet been stored in a computer.
“Andrea,” Miranda sighed, opening the door and flipping on the light. The place reeked of dust. “This will be your office.” She turned to meet Emily’s eyeline. “Emily, since time doesn’t seem to be of the essence to you the way it is to the rest of us, you will help her clean it up and aid Andrea with any other needs she might have while she’s here. Amari will replace you as my first assistant in the meantime.” Emily’s face faltered for a second, her eyebrows creasing and her lip quivering just once.
Emily could have been overtired, going crazy, praying on a nerve of Miranda’s she didn’t know existed, but she could have sworn there was a fleck of guilt, or… hurt? That was etched upon her face for just a moment. It gave Emily the faintest glimmer of hope, even if it was just all in her mind.
Miranda reminded Emily so much of her mother, the mother she was estranged from. Miranda was somehow… nicer to her, if that was even possible. The difference was that, with Miranda, Emily knew it was an act. She had been there, in the back of the room, while she took a phone call with her daughters or when they’d stop by her office for just a second. Miranda was a mother first. The world fell away when she looked at her daughters. The ice in her voice melted when she spoke to them. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but sometimes Emily thought she saw glimmers of it when Miranda was being hard on her.
Emily's mother's unkindness was never an act, never something that would melt away, especially not for Emily. For that reason, Miranda felt safer, just because she was capable of it. After all, if Miranda was going to have fired Emily already, she would have. Emily had made more than enough mistakes in her first few months to warrant it, mistakes that she watched other girls get fired for all the time.
Miranda didn't see herself in Emily. At best, she saw her daughters, or a third unborn daughter, the runt of the litter - a miscarriage, maybe... in Emily. More realistically, per a comment Miranda had made towards her once, when she'd messed up horribly before her first anniversary at Runway, she reminded Miranda of a wounded animal begging for mercy. She held hope for the former, made peace with being the ladder.
“Remind me why I made you my first assistant in the first place,” she finished, moving back towards the door frame. It wasn't snarky, barely a challenge. It was an offer, a request. It was laced with a gentleness only Emily would have picked up on. Miranda cleared her throat after saying it anyway. “Oh, and Andrea… you already know the rules, but one more for you… No coitus in the office.”
Emily snapped her head to study Andrea’s face, newly curious and finding the older woman just as deeply puzzled as she was.
“Wait, w-” Andrea started, looking like she was about to get stuttery and somehow more flustered.
“That’s all,” came Miranda’s parting gift, lips curling into a cruel smile at neither of them before her exit from the room.
Emily let herself look back at Andrea, who stood wordless, still staring at the door. She let herself fully take her in for the first time. In the more absent glances, Emily would have put her around her mid-thirties. Up close, she placed her in her earliest forties. She didn’t look old by any means. The youthful spirit that Emily tried hard to be annoyed by didn’t make it any easier to see her as her true age. ‘
Much to Emily’s embarrassment and slight horror, Andrea met her eye line with a confusing sincerity. “She hasn’t changed.”
“Who?” Emily furrowed a brow.
Andrea gave her a confused smile, a teasing smile. Much too familiar, in Emily’s opinion, which, at Runway at least, was basically void. “Miranda.”
“Look whose got her own office now.” Emily and Andrea both turned to find Nigel leaning sassily against the door frame, arms folded against his chest and a smirk playing at his lips.
“Thank you again,” Andrea smiled earnestly, embracing him quickly before pulling away to look at him, or more beam at him for a moment.
“Yeah, well, don’t thank me too quick,” he teased, ducking his head and making eye contact with Emily. “I see you’ve met Miranda’s resident punching bag here.” They both laughed, but only Andrea turned to shoot her an empathetic look. Nigel moved to slink around the office with a hand tucked under his chin, no doubt conjuring up ways to fix the place up.
Emily, on any other day, could have written an essay of insults and digs to make at Nigel then. Today, nothing came to her. The few weak one-liners that did, she couldn’t get her mouth open to say. She felt small, uncharacteristically young. And now, for the first time in her time in Runway, weirdly safe.
“Thank god you came back when you did,” Nigel started again, turning his attention back to Andy. “You look like your mother is making you wear your older brother's church clothes.”