DISCLAIMER: The Devil Wears Prada and its characters belong to Lauren Weisberger and 20th Century Fox. No infringement intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Another appetizer for a (slightly) AU series I'm calling "Life is a Banquet." I can't promise that you will always find it entertaining (what writer can?), but I can promise, on my honor as an editor, that it will be literate, well-punctuated, and (mostly) free of typos. Comments welcomed.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
FEEDBACK: To medoramacd[at]yahoo.com
… in Bed
By Medora MacD
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Dear Diary…
We had Chinese take-out tonight. The girls are now feeling comfortable enough about us to joke about our relationship. That's good. I almost split a gut, though, when they started playing a game someone at school taught them recently. You know, where someone reads the fortune from their fortune cookie and you tack the words "in bed" onto the end? Mine was fairly innocuous: "You are going to get some new clothes … in bed." A safe bet, given M's interest in me wearing something more fashion-forward than a T-shirt. But OMG, the look on her face when hers turned out to be …. "Your flair for the creative reaps great rewards … in bed!"
God! If people knew what Miranda was really like in bed. And no, not that way. Here's the thing: You can't control what you do when you're asleep. Which makes what she does in our bed every night all that much sweeter.
Andy paused, considering what to write next. If she'd been asked to predict Miranda's sleeping habits before they became lovers, she would have guessed that she slept "regally." On a king-sized bed with bedclothes of the finest materials and dressed in something resplendent. (She would have been right about that.)
And that Miranda would lay on her back, looking a bit like King Tut awaiting the rewards of the next life, her hands folded demurely across her chest and not a lovely, white lock out of place on her head. (There she would have been wrong. About as wrong as she had been about what Miranda was like in bed that way. When her hair had a tendency to get decidedly disordered. Along with her clothing, the sheets, their breathing…)
It was impossible to tell from looking at people what their sleeping styles were, Andy mused. Were they hug-the-edge-of-the-bed types? Wallow-in-the-middle types? Steal-the-sheet types? Snorers? Farters? Teeth grinders?
Sleeping with Miranda — once they'd gotten around to that — had been a revelation. Miranda did damn little of it, thanks to the impossible hours she kept, but she did it extremely well. Given the stresses of the woman's day, Andy had expected insomnia, lots of tossing and turning. She'd forgotten that with Miranda's stresses came a lot of physical exertion, from her morning yoga routine to traversing miles of marble, linoleum, and concrete while balanced on four-inch heels.
Miranda had her restless nights, of course, usually when something was going on with the twins, but at most other times she was asleep in five minutes or less. She settled into bed, relaxed into the pillows, and poof! The results were startling.
She goes boneless. Like a…kitten. The sound she makes is almost like purring, too. A soft…surration? is that a word?…no, susurration, I think…like the whisper of a breeze through aspen leaves or the burble of a stream. Her face relaxes too, losing that look of eagle-like vigilance and intensity and revealing where Caroline and Cassidy got those sweet pusses of theirs.
And when she dreams, when her eyelids flutter in REM sleep, she smiles. That's a recent phenomenon, she says, something she owes to me. I don't know if I believe her — and I'm certainly not going to poll her past bed partners to find out — but I'm committed to doing whatever it takes to make sure it continues for the rest of my life. It's like…watching the sun rise.
Andy paused, studied the woman sleeping beside her. She resumed writing.
I expected her to be more…selfish, I think. I mean, she's had a bed to herself most of her adult life — except for six years with Gregory and two with Stephen. She shares, though, and not just square footage. She's considerate and generous, just as she is when we make love. Even when she's not awake, she shifts when I shift. Doesn't hog the covers. Doesn't care that I need the sheets untucked on my side of the bed so my feet can hang out. Stays close, but doesn't smother me.
According to the fanfic bards, Gabrielle and Xena are always wrapped around each other when they sleep — which given Xena's muscularity sounds damned uncomfortable, not to mention impractical if you're likely to be jumped without warning by warlords. But I digress. It may sound weird given my own tendency to snuggle in the morning, but I've never liked it when a bed partner treated me like an overstuffed pillow or gigantic heating pad, a thing placed in bed solely for his comfort.
Miranda doesn't do that. When I come to bed, she curls up behind me, often without even waking, and places a hand lightly on my back, fixing my position in relation to her own and assuring herself, I think, that I'm home with her and safe. It's usually still there in the morning, no matter how many times we shift around, warming the middle of my back. Warming my heart.
It could feel…possessive, I suppose. And maybe it is, a little. Which is appropriate, since this woman possesses me, heart and soul as well as body. It doesn't feel like an anchor, though, something to keep me in my place. It's more like a tether, something to assure that wherever my dreams take me she'll come with. I don't feel constrained. I feel…cherished. Like the Velveteen Rabbit. Her touches have brought me to life.
Andy read what she'd written, declared it complete, and ended her daily journal entry as she had been doing since January 1 — with the phrase she'd borrowed from Miranda:
That's all.
Then she added four more words, capitalizing and underlining the last one for emphasis.
No. That is EVERYTHING.
The End