They should have fucked they should have fucked they should have fucked they should have fucked they should have fucked they should have fucked they should have fucked
Miranda saying « I love working, don’t you ? » with a giddiness you’ve never seen her display before, and then, two minutes later, telling Andy she should write that book about her because « people need to know what it costs » (time spent with your children) with tears in her eyes…
This, to me, is such a good representation of career-driven women who also want a family.
Bonus points to Kenneth Branagh’s character, he was so sweet.
i <3 when women characters feel they aren't able to express sadness in "normal" ways because they don't feel safe enough to cry in their environment so instead they opt for the more acceptable strong emotion of rage and they get recklessly angry at the people around them in fits of misplaced sadness and terror and make irreversible decisions and hurt others. i dont care as much when this happens to a man
Greetings, my liege. I hope all is well with you. I have seen thy earlier literary creations, and am in wonder of thy marvelous master of the language. I was wondering if thou may produce a literary piece concerning the trope of one's employer and their personal assistant. The employer in my mind would be Miranda Priestly, from the wonderful movie "The Devil wears Prada". The employee could be a female reader, if possible (perhaps a tad younger than the employer, if thou didst deem it right) , and the piece may be angsty, considering the employee would be married, and happily, that too. Perhaps some pining (unrequited) , if that is not too much to ask. I shalt be content even if thou may not find time to consider such a request. Once again, I hope all is well with thou.
Good yard, my friend.
Enjoy Your Evening
Miranda Priestly x fem!reader
A/N: Forgive thy humble writer for the long delay, I did lay down my quill for a time and wander from the realm of writing. Yet thy exquisite request lingered, and I thank thee most sincerely for it. It was a joy to bring to life. Enjoy!
Miranda says your name like it is a verdict. Not loudly, never loudly. Miranda Priestly does not raise her voice when she can lower her tone and make the air in a room thin enough to choke on. It is an art form, really.
You watch it land on other people—Nigel, a junior editor, an unfortunate intern who has chosen the wrong shade of black—and you learn quickly: there are worse things than anger.
Disappointment is one of them.
You are not an intern. You are not someone who can be replaced by the next wide-eyed girl with a freshly ironed skirt and dreams of couture. You are her assistant, her right hand, her calendar, her shield, her translator, her scapegoat. You have learned the weight of her silence and the shape of her needs.
You have also learned, with a slow, steady dread that has become background noise in your days, the way Miranda looks at you when she thinks you aren’t paying attention.
It is never leering. Never sloppy. Never hungry in any way you could dismiss as crude.
It is worse than that.
It is careful.
It is like looking at a door you refuse to open because you know what is on the other side would ruin you.
“Is it done?” she asks now, in the backseat of the town car, the city blurring past the window like it is trying to leave you behind.
You hold your phone low, your thumb hovering over the email thread as if it might bite you. Your other hand holds a garment bag that cost more than your first car. It leans against your knee, crisp and immaculate. A whole life sealed in tissue paper.
“Yes,” you say. “The Paris itinerary is confirmed. The fittings are scheduled. The dinner with—”
“Not that.” Miranda’s eyes flick to you, a quick slice, then away again, as if she cannot afford to look too long. “The florist.”
Your stomach drops in a way that feels like muscle memory now. You work at Runway, you are perpetually dropping something—sleep, appetite, composure, pieces of yourself you didn’t know you could lose.
“The florist is confirmed,” you say. “Peonies. White. No lilies.”
“Good.” Miranda’s gaze returns to her phone, the glow lighting her cheekbones. “And the cake?”
“Vanilla bean. The bakery will deliver at noon. I—” You swallow. “I also confirmed the seating chart with your… with the girls’ preferences.”
Miranda’s mouth tightens. Not annoyance. Something else. Something that almost looks like pain, except you know better than to name it.
“You have a life outside of this,” she says, and the words are so quiet you almost think you imagined them.
It is not an accusation. It is simply a fact, stated like the weather, like the stock market, like the inevitability of death.
You dare to look at her fully. Miranda’s hair is perfect. Miranda’s coat is a masterpiece. Miranda’s face is composed with the precision of a museum display. Her hands are steady.
And yet there is a slight tension in her jaw that wasn’t there this morning.
“Yes,” you answer, because she has asked, and you have learned never to let a question hang between you like a challenge. “It’s… it’s my anniversary weekend.”
“Hm.”
That sound contains multitudes. You have heard it used for fashion shows and political scandals and once, memorably, for someone’s attempt at humor. But you have never heard it used like this.
Like a bruise pressed carefully.
“You’ll be leaving early,” Miranda says.
You blink. “I—”
“It wasn’t a question,” she adds, and you almost laugh because of course it isn’t. Nothing with Miranda is ever a question. “You will leave at six. The car will take you home.”
You should say thank you.
You should be relieved.
Instead, a small, irrational part of you feels the way it feels when a door closes softly behind you, and you realize you didn’t even try the handle.
“Miranda,” you begin, because you have trained yourself to speak before you think when it matters.
Her head turns slightly. “Yes?”
Your throat tightens around words you do not want to exist.
I don’t need the car.
I don’t need you to notice.
I don’t need you to look at me like that.
What comes out is, “That’s… generous.”
Miranda’s eyes move over you—your lipstick, the pencil skirt you learned to walk in without wincing, the earrings that were “fine” yesterday, which is Miranda’s version of applause. Her gaze lingers a fraction too long at your throat where your wedding ring rests on a chain, thin and gold and utterly ordinary.
“Don’t make a habit of taking kindness personally,” she says.
And then she looks away, as if she has said too much.
You spend the rest of the ride staring at the reflection of the city in the window, your thoughts sliding and catching on each other like broken glass.
At home, your husband opens the door before you can put your key in the lock.
His smile is familiar in the best way, like warm light. Like the first sip of coffee. Like a song you don’t realize you’ve been humming until it stops.
“Hey,” he says, and his hands find your waist, pulling you in. He kisses your cheek, then your mouth. It is gentle. It is sure. It is a reminder.
You melt into it before you can stop yourself, relief making your knees soft.
“I thought you’d be late,” he murmurs.
“I was going to be,” you confess, and you lean your forehead against his. “Miranda let me leave early.”
He makes a face at the name, an old joke between you. “The dragon has a heart?”
“Don’t,” you say, automatically, because even now, even here, you feel protective in a way that does not make sense. “She’s… complicated.”
He laughs quietly. “So are you.”
There are candles on the table, and the kind of pasta he makes when he wants to show off, and a bottle of wine you’ve been saving for “a special occasion” because life is always too busy and special occasions have to be fought for.
You sit, you eat, you let yourself be held by normalcy.
And still—still—your phone lies on the counter like a loaded weapon.
You try not to look at it. You fail.
“You’re watching it like it’s going to bite,” your husband observes, half amused, half concerned.
“It’s work,” you say.
“It’s always work.”
You shrug, and the motion feels defensive. “That’s why they pay me.”
He reaches across the table and covers your hand with his. “They pay you,” he repeats slowly, “to be on call twenty-four hours a day, to get screamed at by fashion tyrants, to miss dinners, to come home exhausted, to wake up at three in the morning because someone wants a scarf?”
You squeeze his fingers. “I’m good at it.”
“I know.” His smile softens. “I just want you to be good at being here, too.”
You want to tell him you are trying. You want to tell him that you love him, that this is worth it, that you have a plan. One more year, two at most, then you’ll move to something saner, something that doesn’t come with stilettos and survival instincts.
You want to tell him that Miranda is not a person you can leave easily, not when she has wrapped her expectations around you like silk tightening.
You want to tell him so many things.
Instead, you lift his hand and kiss his knuckles. “I’m here.”
For a little while, it works.
At eight forty-two, your phone lights up.
You freeze.
Your husband’s eyes flick to it, then back to you. “Don’t,” he says gently. “It’s our night.”
Your throat aches. “It could be urgent.”
He holds your gaze for a beat too long, then nods as if conceding a battle he’s been losing for months. “Fine. Just… five minutes.”
You go to the counter. You don’t take the phone with you like a person making an innocent check. You pick it up like someone lifting evidence.
The text is from Miranda.
Where are the programs for the benefit?
You stare.
You have them. You confirmed them. They were printed. They are on your desk. You can picture the stack in your mind, crisp and perfect, like every other thing you handle.
You type quickly.
They’re on my desk in the office. I can have someone bring them to your apartment if you’d like.
Three dots appear immediately. Disappear. Reappear.
No.
Another pause.
I will need them in the morning.
Your mouth goes dry. Of course. Of course she does. It’s nine at night. You are in silk pajamas. There is wine in your glass and your husband’s laughter still warm in the air. Miranda does not care about any of that. Miranda only cares about the morning.
I can run by the office now and bring them to you, you begin to type, because your fingers know how this goes.
Before you can send it, another message arrives.
Enjoy your evening.
You blink, thrown.
Then:
Don’t come.
It should feel like mercy.
It feels like a hand hovering just above your skin, refusing to touch because it would burn.
You stand there too long, phone in hand, while the kitchen behind you hums with quiet. When you finally turn back, your husband is watching you carefully.
“Well?” he asks.
You paste on a smile. You have learned how.
“Nothing,” you say. “It can wait.”
He exhales as if he’s been holding his breath. “Good.”
You walk back to the table and sit down. The candlelight makes everything look softer than it is. Your husband pours you another sip of wine.
You try to drink it, and it tastes like metal.
The next morning, Miranda is already in the office when you arrive, which is unusual enough that the entire floor seems to be moving around it, whispers folding in and out of cubicles like smoke.
Emily looks at you with the expression of someone watching a car crash in slow motion.
“She’s in a mood,” Emily murmurs, which is a redundant statement, but you understand her anyway. “She asked where you were at seven. Seven.”
You swallow. “I—she told me to enjoy my evening.”
Emily’s laugh is sharp. “Did she now.”
You don’t respond. The programs are on your desk, exactly where they should be. You gather them up, smooth the edges with hands that have carried everything from couture gowns to Miranda’s reputation.
You knock once on the office door. You hear the inevitable.
“Come in.”
You enter.
Miranda doesn’t look up at first. She is reading something, glasses perched on her nose, the picture of calm authority. The room smells faintly of expensive perfume and cold power.
You place the programs on her desk with a quiet precision that is almost reverent.
“Here,” you say.
Miranda’s eyes lift.
For a moment, you are caught in the full weight of her attention, and it makes your lungs forget what they’re supposed to do.
Her gaze is on you the way it was in the car—careful, deliberate, like she is measuring the distance between what she wants and what she will allow herself.
“Did you enjoy your anniversary?” she asks.
It is the wrong question for this room.
You keep your face neutral. “Yes.”
Miranda’s mouth twitches, something like bitterness. “And you’re happy.”
Your pulse stutters. “Yes.”
She leans back slightly, as if the word has struck her. Her fingers tap once on the desk. A tiny sound.
“You’re very lucky,” Miranda says.
You don’t know what to do with that. Miranda does not talk about luck. Miranda is the architect of her own world. Luck is for people who don’t plan.
“I work hard,” you reply, because you are stupid when you’re nervous.
Miranda’s eyes narrow, and something in her expression shifts. Not anger. Something more intimate.
“You work hard,” she repeats softly, as if tasting it. “Yes. You do.”
A beat of silence passes. The office around you continues to exist—the distant clack of heels, the murmur of phones—but in here, it becomes thin, irrelevant.
Miranda stands.
When she moves, it is always with purpose. Even now, crossing to the window, she looks like she’s stepping into a photograph.
“I need you in Paris,” she says, staring out at the skyline.
Your stomach tightens. “Of course.”
“It overlaps with your—” She pauses, and you know she is choosing her words the way she chooses clothes. “With personal commitments.”
You swallow. “I could reschedule.”
Miranda’s head turns sharply, eyes catching you like a hook. “Can you.”
It isn’t a question.
It’s a dare.
It’s also, you realize with a sick twist of understanding, hope.
And there it is, the thing you have been avoiding naming, the thing that lives in the space between Miranda’s “Hm” and her rare gentleness, the thing in her gaze that lingers on your wedding ring like it is an insult and a prayer.
Miranda wants you to choose her.
Not in a childish way. Not in the way that would end with flowers and a confession.
In the way Miranda understands choice: sacrifice, priority, surrender.
Your hands go cold. “Miranda—”
She cuts you off. “You will come to Paris.”
Your throat tightens. “My husband—”
The word lands between you like a slap.
Miranda’s face does not change much. It doesn’t need to. You see it anyway, the flinch she refuses to let show, the fraction of a second where she looks like someone who has been reminded of a wound she pretends not to have.
“Your husband,” she echoes.
You force yourself to keep breathing. “We have plans. We—” You stop, because you don’t know what you’re trying to defend. Your happiness? Your marriage? Your right to be a person outside of Runway?
Or the simple fact that you can’t be what Miranda is asking for, even if she never asks it aloud.
Miranda’s voice is low when she speaks again. “Do you love him?”
It is the most personal thing she has ever asked you, and it is also the coldest. Like she is analyzing a garment: quality, stitching, worth.
You stare at her. “Yes.”
And you watch it wound her. Not dramatically. Miranda would never allow that.
There is another beat of silence, and in it you see the truth—the quiet, brutal truth Miranda never says because it would make her human in a way she cannot afford.
She has loved people who did not choose her.
She has built an empire anyway.
She swallows, and the movement is so small you almost miss it. “Then you should go home,” she says.
You blink. “What?”
Miranda turns away, as if looking at you is suddenly too much. “You should resign,” she says, like she’s discussing the weather again. “You are wasted here. You are… distracted.”
The words sting because they are wrong and right at the same time.
“I’m not distracted,” you say, voice sharper than you intend. “I do my job.”
Miranda’s laugh is quiet, humorless. “You do it well. That is not the issue.”
You step forward before you can stop yourself. “Then what is?”
Miranda’s shoulders tense. For a moment you think she won’t answer. She has never had to. People don’t ask Miranda what she feels. People ask what she wants.
When she finally turns, her eyes are bright in a way that feels dangerous.
“You have a life,” she says, and the words come out like a confession ripped out of her throat. “A warm, happy little life that you return to. And every time you do, you leave something here.”
Her gaze drops again, to the chain around your neck. To the ring you don’t wear at work because it catches on fabric and you learned, early, to keep your personal life from snagging on Runway’s sharp edges.
“You leave me,” Miranda says, barely audibly.
Your chest constricts, breath turning shallow.
She is not asking you to be her lover. Not really. Miranda Priestly does not ask for things in that way. She is asking for something worse: to be chosen over and over again, to have her importance proved by your abandonment of everything else.
It is not romance. Not the kind that would let you call it love and survive the word.
And yet it feels like love anyway, because it hurts in the same place.
“Miranda,” you whisper, because her name is suddenly heavy.
Her chin lifts, and you see the armor snap back into place. The moment is sealed up, filed away, made into something neat and unassailable.
“You’re dismissed,” she says.
Your hands curl into fists at your sides, nails biting into your palm. You want to say something perfect, something that will undo the damage, something that will make Miranda look at you without that aching restraint.
You want to tell her she deserves something gentler than this.
You want to tell her you are not a cruel person, that you never meant to become the sharp edge against her throat.
But you have also learned that Miranda does not accept consolation. Miranda does not accept pity. Miranda will take what you give her, and she will bleed quietly from the places you cannot touch.
So you do the only thing you can do that is kind.
You turn toward the door.
Behind you, Miranda speaks again, voice barely above the whisper of silk.
“Enjoy your evening,” she says.
It is not permission.
It is surrender.
You pause.
“You too,” you whisper.
And that is the cruelest thing you could have said.
Because Miranda Priestly does not have evenings.
She has work.
She has silence.
She has the echo of doors closing.
You walk out into the bright, busy hallway, and the world keeps moving, and you keep moving with it, your phone buzzing already with the next demand, the next crisis, the next proof that you are needed.
You answer them all.
And later, when you go home to your husband’s open arms and warm laughter, you will feel the echo of Miranda’s voice in your chest like an old bruise.
You will tell yourself you chose correctly.
You will tell yourself this is what love is supposed to be: a steady light, not a fire.
But some nights you will lie awake and remember how Miranda looked at you when she said you were lucky.
And you will understand, with a slow, nauseating clarity, that she wasn’t the only one pining.
You were just the only one who got to go home to warmth.
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