DISCLAIMER: The Devil Wears Prada and its characters belong to Lauren Weisberger and 20th Century Fox. No infringement intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story includes angst, and may be upsetting to some readers. If this is you then please to not read, thank you. Beta: shesgottaread (Thank you so much for all of your hard work on this.)
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
An Adventure for the Senses
By Widdy
Sunlight streamed through the open window and bathed the elegantly decorated bedroom in warm rays of radiant light. Stretching languidly Miranda Priestly sighed. Her body ached, but she felt good. No! Good she knew was not the right word; it didn't carry enough expression within it. At that moment, it failed to convey the depth of her feelings. Delightful was a better word, but still not right, it was too nice.
Exquisite!
Exquisite, was right, it held the depth. It was full and lingered on the tongue like a fine wine.
She felt young.
Miranda became aware of a soft and delicate arm that rested about her waist. She glanced over her shoulder and the reason for her exquisite feelings became apparent.
Someone had once asked her many years ago how she stayed so youthful looking. She had laughed at the time and she remembered a book she had read in her youth that had affected her profoundly. The book had given her a view into a decadent lifestyle she had wanted to consume. She had looked into the eyes of her admirer and whispered the name Dorian Gray.
The woman whose name she had quite forgotten, had looked at her in astonishment, she knew that the woman had not quite known whether she was sharing a little joke with her or telling her some dreadful truth. The woman had been both scandalised and amused. She had also seen a touch of recognition in her eyes. She fancied that the woman had believed she had sold her soul for all she had received through her life. No. She was not at all {or perhaps 'completely'?} like the hedonistic Mr Gray; although she did have many traits that were similar to the vain man whom had made the most extraordinary wish, and had sold his soul to keep his youth. No, she had never sold her soul, but she had been the buyer of one or two in her time.
Youth.
Was it truly wasted upon the young?
No! Miranda Priestly did not believe in that statement. There had been times when she wished for her youth to return, for her cheeks to flush once more with the colour of newly bloomed rose petals and for her wrinkles to simply fade and cease to be. She had wished that her skin was once more the colour of fresh milk and as smooth as cherry blossoms. She had wished for the times when her body would hum simply because it had awoken and was ready to partake in the cup of life.
She, however, did not think youth was wasted upon the young.
If anyone deserved vitality, it was the young. They deserved to be free and exuberant, for one day life would label them and with that label would come the true weight of their sins.
The aged simply wished to shed their sins, or at least remember a time when they didn't care about them. To recapture and ensnare the feelings and experiences they had let pass them by. Regret was the cause of such longings. Regret for not having experienced or regret for having experienced too much.
As Miranda breathed deeply, she knew she had experienced a multitude of sin during her life. She had sinned and she had rejoiced in her own corruption. She had taken even more pleasure and joy in the corruption of others.
Influence.
Influence was what she had built her career upon. She had been dictating and influencing the masses for decades. She had at some point become obsessed, infatuated with beauty. Beautiful clothes, beautiful men, beautiful women. Beauty had over the years become the only thing that had mattered to her. As such, she had sought to impose this upon the will of others.
Her influence she knew could also be described as power. She had influenced many. She knew she was not the conventional idea of beauty, but she had heard people talk of her own beauty often enough to know what she possessed. With this influence came ultimate confidence, it was followed by money, high-powered jobs, and significant lovers.
A soft airy breath of air caressed her shoulder and drew her attention before it passed on its way. Looking backward Miranda regarded the youthful face of her latest lover. Andrea Sachs. She had taken both men and women to her bed. She had never regretted either. She did not regret now. The woman was both youthful and beautiful. She was also delightfully unaware of both.
That was something that was new to Miranda Priestly. For decades, like-minded people had surrounded her. People whom like her sought to change the world through influence and power. This youthful woman who lay beside her, she sought to change the world in a different way. She had at first found the Andrea's idealist outlook on life to be amusing and then as she grew to know the beautiful woman she was afraid for her.
Fear was not something she felt often, and when the loathsome emotion did choose to rear its ugly head, like a viper waiting to strike, she usually struck first eradicating any sign of it.
She knew that the girl with skin like rose petals must make her own mistakes. She was just beginning to take the first steps along the long and winding road that was life. She would have to step into mud-riddled puddles and traverse unseemly patches of earth. She must take her own adventures through life.
As sure as she knew this, Miranda knew she was at the twilight of her journey. Oh she did not feel as if she would keel over at any moment, but she felt as if she was coming to the end of the road; however she had not yet lived all she could live.
Andrea's porcelain skin was bathed in sunlight as Miranda returned to her study of her form. The delicate and fine hairs that coated the beautiful young woman's skin were highlighted by the rising sun.
Thick and strong strands of rich brown were spread over the white pillowcase and in parts engulfed the girl's shoulder obscuring the delicate piece of flesh from view. Large full lips were parted slightly and Miranda smiled as the lips curved as if they knew that they were being admired and simply had to respond to their admirer.
Miranda languidly trailed her eyes upwards and traced the long and straight nose that was situated perfectly in the middle of the girl's well-proportioned face. The beautiful eyes that had looked at her and displayed the full spectrum of emotions that one human could express were hidden from view. They moved rapidly behind the wafer thin eyelids.
Miranda shook her head slightly causing a curl of white to fall into her vision. She tried to dislodge her fanciful thoughts; she did not know why suddenly she was thinking of the beauty she had idolised, the youth she had sought to immortalise, and the influence she had thoroughly exerted. She wondered if perhaps she was reaching that age when people questioned their worth. She smiled at that. No, she knew that was not it!
Miranda closed her eyes and breathed deeply, the sweet and earthy odour of amber gris that she had come to associate with Andrea clung and wound its way up her nostrils. Miranda's mind flew backwards and her gaze settled upon the girl and how she had been hours previously.
It had been a chance meeting. Well chance on her part, on Andrea's it had been intentional. She had been readying herself to depart from the office when that sweet smell had wafted through the dimly lit hall and the soft gentle tread of footfalls had reached her ears.
She had though that it was perhaps the night watch man, but the heady scent and then the soft clearing of a throat drew her eyes upwards from the papers that lay upon her desk.
As she had looked up, betrayal had stung in her heart as fresh as it had a year and a half ago.
There was Andrea Sachs dressed like a street vendor, standing in the door of her office with a supposedly charming grin on her face.
The clothes made her baulk, but the depth of the emotional pain she experienced caught her quite by surprise. Something must have showed on Miranda's face because the woman who stood in front of her apologised.
Miranda remembered being short with her and ultimately cold. There had been nothing new in that action, it was how she lived her professional life, and if she were honest with herself most of her personal one. As far as she was aware, being kind never elevated anybody to the top of the corporate ladder.
She had been caught off guard when Andrea had suddenly surged forward and seized her. She had had the fleeting thought that the girl was going to assault her. How wrong and how right she had been. She had assaulted her mouth.
Miranda had been kissed many times. She had been kissed badly, roughly, tenderly, sweetly; she had shared long drawn-out kisses. She fancied she had been kissed every way there was to kiss, until that moment. Andrea's kiss was different. It was new and it was explosive. It stirred something inside her that she thought was long dead. Passion.
She had passion for her job, and passion for the beauty she allowed the masses to view. She had not felt sexual passion for a long time. However as a girl of twenty-six had pressed her lips to her own, Miranda Priestly had felt that passion return with vigour. The moment she did she had responded.
Andrea's being seemed to fill her senses.
She recalled the drive to the town house had been quick and filled with intimacy. Her daughters where visiting with their father and Miranda remembered the fleeting thought of gratitude she had felt towards her first husband that he cared enough to have a place in their lives.
Clothes had quickly been shed while contact had been maintained. They had fallen in an uncoordinated mass of limbs upon her bed and Miranda had allowed the girl to make her feel young. She had felt worshipped as Andrea had murmured silly words about divinity and adoration. A faint blush suddenly stole over her cheeks as she remembered the acts she had performed and had allowed Andrea to perform upon her. The blush was coupled with a sense of divine pleasure.
She had never been ashamed of anything she had done; no matter how stupid and how much she regretted the action afterwards; she had never felt shame. As she looked at the girl in her bed she smiled, she would not be ashamed of taking a woman half her own age.
She recalled Andrea stroking the soft inside of her wrist as she told her little insignificant details of her life. She remembered other lovers doing this but she had quickly set them straight upon the role they were to play in her life. With Andrea she had said nothing as she told her of the man that had knocked her down on the subway as she had come to tell her how sorry she was for her flight from Paris. She smiled when Andrea had told her of her nervous feelings about facing her again.
Andrea told her how she wished to be a journalist. Miranda remembered that she had been informed of this fact before. She couldn't help the slight twist of her lips at this. She detested the press. Andrea would need a heavy dose of realism before this took place. Miranda was loath to admit it, but she had wished that the girl's dreams failed. She would become hardened to the world and she would lose that which Miranda found fascinating if she was to become what she wished.
She would mentally age and that would be a true tragedy. Her charming and rose tinted view of the world would become real and scared, but truthful. The truth always tended to darken everything; it gave rise to pain and suffering. Still it could also shed light upon horrors and invigorate the slow and pulsating masses. The truth she knew was neither good nor evil, it just was. It was the intentions behind the truth that held the true power.
Miranda started as her hand came to a halt an inch from Andrea's lips. Her fingers hovered achingly a mere hair's breadth away from the flesh she had touched with wild abandonment in hours past.
Did she love Andrea Sachs? Is this what love is? Were her rambling thoughts love? Was she questioning her past because she was uncertain about her future? Had her topics of thought been influenced by the woman who lay sleeping in her bed? Yes she was certain that was the case. Andrea was youthful and beautiful. The book by Oscar Wilde that had had such a profound influence on her when she was forming the person she wanted to be came to mind. She had always identified with Dorian but now as she looked at herself she identified with another she realised that in her experience and her pursuit for beauty she had become more like Dorian Gray's mentor and corrupter Lord Henry Wotton.
She was the influencer and she took pleasure in this role. Like Lord Henry had taken the young vain boy and twisted him, she had taken the young and naive Andrea and twisted her. Andrea had followed her lead like the proverbial monkey as she ground her organ. She had influenced her, she had poisoned her, she had forced her to reevaluate her life and in turn Andrea had fallen in love with the pomp and falsehoods that were the fashion world and she had twisted herself and conformed. She remembered the night in Paris when Andrea, like Dorian Gray had with his portrait, had finally looked into the mirror and truly seen what she had become. She had recoiled from the image and run.
Still, after all she had seen, she had come back to her.
Why?
Andrea had told her as she had pressed her young naked body to her own that she loved her, and that she couldn't stay away from her any longer.
She was like a moth to a flame.
Miranda shook her head gently and finally pressed her fingers to Andrea's soft lips. Miranda for once in her life believed someone when they had expressed their love. True there had been many who had declared to love her and had expressed to her many times their undying affection only to move on after they tired of her or she tired of them. Andrea's love she believed was genuine; there had been something she had never seen before in her eyes when she had said the words I love you. A certain desperation coupled with complete devotion.
Deep hypnotic brown eyes fluttered open and as her fingers traced the outline of the soft lips they curled and formed one of the most beautiful smiles Miranda had ever seen.
"Good morning Miranda."
"Good morning Andrea."
Miranda smiled back, she knew there was nothing else to be said. Would she now be a good influence upon Andrea? She doubted that very much, she could no more change that which she was, than a leopard could change its spots.
What would become of this torrid affair? That she did not know either, what she did know was that it would play its course like all things, and it would be an adventure for them both.
An adventure for the senses.
The End