Chapter Text
Runway did not need another assistant.
Runway needed a miracle, or a sacrifice, or possibly a legally binding agreement with Human Resources that forbade them from sending Emily any more applicants who considered “answering phones” a vague aspirational concept rather than a basic professional skill.
The latest one was due any minute. Andrea something. Emily had read the name once, decided it was not worth preserving, and moved on with her morning. It was already a disaster. Miranda had a breakfast meeting she would inevitably pretend not to remember, two belts had to be collected from Elias-Clarke’s accessories closet before eleven, Nigel needed confirmation on the shoot schedule, and Emily still had to answer the obscene number of emails that had arrived over the weekend from people who apparently believed she existed solely to absorb their incompetence.
Which, to be fair, was not entirely inaccurate.
Being Miranda Priestly’s first assistant was not difficult in the ordinary sense. Difficult implied effort followed by reward. Difficult implied someone might notice if you succeeded. This was something else entirely: a precise, airless exercise in anticipating every possible need before Miranda had the inconvenience of voicing it, then receiving nothing in return except a colder silence than usual if you had performed adequately.
Emily was good at it. Obviously. That was why finding someone to sit at the second desk without imploding should not have been this impossible.
She glanced at the clock. Late.
Of course.
Emily stood, already feeling the first sharp edge of a headache forming behind her eyes as she considered, with mounting despair, that she would have to explain the basics again. For the third time in two weeks. The last girl hadn’t even made it to Friday. Honestly, it was obscene how difficult it had become to find someone capable of transferring a call without turning it into a personal crisis.
She smoothed down the front of her blouse and composed the expression she reserved for people who had no respect for other people’s time: polite enough to satisfy Human Resources, sharp enough to make it perfectly clear they had already wasted hers.
Then she smelled something.
At first, she thought someone had spilled something in the hall. The Runway offices had their own scent — citrus cleaner, expensive perfume, recycled paper, coffee beans, fear — and whatever had just drifted through the air did not belong to any of it.
Cinnamon.
Emily stopped.
Not proper cinnamon. Not the elegant warmth of some absurdly expensive pastry from the sort of bakery where people paid eleven dollars for dough and humiliation. This was cheaper. Sweeter. Almost sticky. Like the last cinnamon bun in a discount bakery window, glazed within an inch of its life and possibly one hour away from becoming a health code violation.
She could practically taste the processed sugar.
Emily frowned.
No one else reacted.
A junior editor walked past without slowing. One of the fashion assistants continued arguing into her headset. The receptionist did not so much as blink.
But Emily could smell it clearly. Too clearly. It threaded through the sterile office air and settled somewhere at the back of her throat, warm and cloying and inexplicably distracting.
Then the lift doors opened.
A girl stepped out.
No.
Not a girl.
The applicant.
Andrea something.
She was an Omega. Emily knew that before the girl had made it three steps into the office.
That alone was not unusual. Runway had Omegas. Runway had Betas. Runway even had a few Alphas who had somehow mistaken aggression for competence and been allowed to build entire careers out of it. But fashion, real fashion, the part with power and access and Miranda Priestly’s name printed at the top of the masthead, belonged mostly to Alphas. Not officially, of course. Officially, Elias-Clarke was committed to opportunity, diversity, and several other words HR printed on glass doors while doing very little to enforce them. In practice, the industry rewarded people who could dominate a room before anyone thought to question whether they belonged in it.
Omegas who came to Runway usually knew that. They arrived guarded. Polished. Strategic. Already performing some careful version of themselves.
This one did neither.
She looked underdressed, overwhelmed, and entirely too sincere, but she did not lower her eyes. She did not soften her voice. She did not offer the automatic little apology so many people gave Emily before she had even insulted them.
She just stood there, smelling like cheap cinnamon and bad decisions, and looked Emily in the face. That was the strange part.
Andrea Sachs — Emily remembered it, unfortunately —in the middle of Runway in a lumpy blazer and tragic shoes, smelling like white sugar, and had the audacity not to look away.
Emily stared at her.
The Omega stared back.
Then she smiled.
“Hi” Andrea said, as if they had met at a coffee shop and not at the mouth of hell. “I’m here for the assistant position?”
Emily looked her up and down.
Slowly.
It should have worked. It usually did.
Andrea’s smile faltered, but only slightly. She did not blush. She did not step back. She did not rush to apologize. She did not perform the careful, polished deference most people learned within five minutes of entering Runway. She did not seem to understand that Emily was giving her an opportunity to be intimidated.
Instead, she lifted her chin. Only a fraction.
Emily noticed anyway.
Interesting.
No. Not interesting. Irritating.
“Human Resources sent you?” Emily asked.
“Yes”.
“On purpose?”
Andrea blinked.
Emily waited. For embarrassment. For apology. For the familiar, instinctive little collapse of someone realizing they had already lost.
It did not come.
Andrea glanced down at herself, then back up at Emily with a look that was almost — unbelievably — amused.
“I think so”.
Emily hated her immediately.
Or, more accurately, Emily decided she hated her, because the alternative was admitting that something about Andrea Sachs had caught her attention before the woman had even managed to cross the lobby.
And Emily did not reward incompetence with attention.
Andrea Sachs had all the survival instincts of a paper bag and none of the proper Omega reflexes to compensate for it. Emily notices that during her first week.
Most Omegas, when thrown into the upper levels of a high-fashion magazine, learned very quickly how the room worked. They calculated: who mattered, who bit, who could be charmed, who should never, under any circumstances, be contradicted before coffee.
Andrea did not calculate.
On her third day, Andrea laughed during a belt fitting.
Not loudly. Not rudely. Worse: it was genuine.
Miranda had been standing in the middle of the office while three people from Accessories presented options with the grim solemnity of surgeons delivering news to a family. One belt was too editorial, another too desperate, and the third had apparently offended Miranda on a molecular level.
Andrea, holding the garment bag by the door, made the mistake of smiling.
Then Nigel muttered something under his breath about the belt looking like it had been skinned from a very insecure couch, and Andrea laughed. A small thing. Barely more than a breath.
Everyone heard it.
The room went still.
Emily looked up from the schedule at once.
Miranda turned her head.
“Andrea” she said. No raised voice. No visible anger. Just Andrea’s name, delivered with enough frost to make the entire accessories team reconsider breathing.
Andrea’s smile vanished.
“I’m sorry” she said quickly.
Miranda looked at her for one long, surgical second.
“If you find the work amusing” Miranda said, “I’m sure Human Resources can find you a position somewhere with lower expectations”.
Andrea flushed. Not prettily. Not delicately. Her whole face went hot, embarrassment blooming over her cheeks as she dropped her eyes to the garment bag in her hands.
“Yes, Miranda” she said.
Emily waited for the rest of it. The shrinking. The little instinctive apology. The careful Omega softness people used when trying to make themselves less offensive to an Alpha with power.
It did not come.
Andrea looked mortified, yes. But not broken. Not cowed. After a second, she lifted her chin again — only slightly — and stepped back into place.
Emily noticed.
Of course Emily noticed.
She also noticed the way Andrea’s scent sharpened, cinnamon turning hot and singed at the edges, like sugar left too long over flame.
Ridiculous.
Emily looked back down at the schedule.
There was nothing to see anymore. Miranda had been right. Andrea had laughed at the wrong time in the wrong room in front of the wrong woman. That was not a tragedy. That was education.
Still, when Miranda swept out ten minutes later and the office began breathing again, Emily found Andrea carefully hanging the garment bag back on the rack, her mouth pressed into a thin line.
“You’re meant to laugh after you leave the room” Emily said.
Andrea looked over at her, startled. For a moment, Emily thought she might apologize again. Instead, Andrea blinked and said, “That’s actually helpful”.
Emily stared at her.
“It was not meant to be”.
Andrea’s mouth twitched.
Emily looked away before it could become a smile.
Another time, Andrea took a call from Irv Ravitz and said, with horrifying sincerity, “I’m sorry, Miranda isn’t available right now. Can I take a message?”
Emily nearly dropped her coffee.
No one told Irv Ravitz Miranda was unavailable. One implied Miranda was occupied with something more important than him, preferably without using words that could later be repeated in a boardroom. When Emily hissed this at her afterward, Andrea only frowned.
“So I should lie?”
Emily stared at her. “You should learn nuance before it kills us both”.
Andrea had the nerve to smile at that.
Then there was the thing with Alphas.
Andrea did not seem afraid of them. Not properly. Not intelligently. She became nervous, yes, and occasionally flustered, and once she spilled half a bottle of sparkling water over a visiting editor from Runway UK after he snapped at her too close to her ear. But she did not soften herself.
She did not tilt her head when a senior Alpha leaned into her space. She did not sweeten her voice to smooth over someone else’s temper. She did not offer the automatic, polished deference Emily had seen from Omegas who knew exactly how to survive rooms built to consume them.
If anything, Andrea seemed baffled by the expectation. As though dominance were just another office custom no one had bothered to explain to her.
It should have been irritating.
It was irritating.
It was also, Emily discovered, impossible to stop noticing.
She noticed the way Andrea held her ground by accident. The way she frowned when someone spoke down to her, not wounded so much as confused by the inefficiency of cruelty. The way she apologized when she made an actual mistake, but not when someone merely wanted her smaller.
She noticed the way Andrea’s scent changed when she was frustrated: cinnamon sharpened by heat, sugar darkening at the edges.
She noticed it far too often.
Which was how Emily knew there had been many moments where things might have gone south.
Very quickly.
Very south.
The first one that came to mind happened a few months after Andrea was hired, on a morning Emily could admit — privately, silently, and to absolutely no one — had been poorly judged.
Going to work near rut was irresponsible.
Going to work near rut with an unmated Omega in the office was worse.
Going to work near rut with Andrea Sachs in the office was, in hindsight, an act of professional self-sabotage.
Not that Emily was attracted to her.
That would have been ridiculous.
Emily was simply aware of her.
Constantly.
Unfortunately.
Catastrophically.
By seven AM, the office was empty. That was how Emily preferred it.
Most people dragged themselves in closer to eight, smelling of burnt coffee, subway air, and whatever poor life choices had carried them through the weekend. Emily did not have that luxury. Emily arrived early because someone had to make sure the day did not collapse before Miranda stepped out of the lift. The schedule had to be correct. The calls had to be prioritized. The notes from yesterday’s meeting had to be rewritten into something Miranda could skim in twelve seconds without discovering three separate reasons to fire someone.
Everything needed to be in place before the day began.
Emily had Miranda’s notes open in front of her, one hand curled around a pen, the other hovering over the keyboard, when the lift opened.
She smelled Andrea before she saw her.
Cinnamon.
Of course.
It moved through the empty office without obstruction, warm and sweet and entirely too present. Cheap icing. Processed sugar. That impossible softness underneath it that Emily had refused, on principle, to identify.
She had skipped breakfast.
That was the only reason her stomach turned. Obviously.
“Hi!” Andrea said. “Fancy seeing you here”.
Emily closed her eyes.
The accent was criminal. It was possibly the worst British accent Emily had ever heard, and she had been living in the States since she was nineteen, so the competition was not insignificant.
“I didn’t know you got to the office this early” Andrea continued.
Emily did not reply.
If she ignored her long enough, Andrea would get bored and wander away. Ideally back into the lift. More realistically to her own desk, where she could commit acts of administrative violence at a safer distance.
Emily stared at the spreadsheet open on her screen.
She could not read a single word of it.
“If I’d known, I could’ve brought you something too” Andrea said. “We can share, if you want”.
Emily’s mistake was looking up.
Andrea was standing too close.
Not indecently close. Not even intentionally close. Just close enough that the cinnamon-warm sweetness of her scent filled the space between them, close enough that Emily could see the faint flush in her cheeks from the cold outside, the loose fall of her hair around her face, the ridiculous softness of her mouth.
She had improved, unfortunately.
The shapeless sweaters were mostly gone. The tragic shoes had been replaced. Today she wore a fitted black skirt, dark tights, and a soft cream blouse tucked neatly at the waist beneath a jacket that almost looked intentional. Her hair was still too natural for Runway, too touchable, too much like something that had not yet been bullied into submission by product and fear.
Emily noticed all of this in less than a second.
Which was unacceptable.
Andrea held out half a blueberry muffin wrapped in a napkin.
Emily stared at it.
Then at Andrea’s fingers.
Then, stupidly, at Andrea’s face.
Brown eyes. Soft lips. Cinnamon and sugar and warmth and the faintest trace of cheap coffee.
Too much.
Too fast.
Emily’s hand tightened around the pen.
She felt heat gather beneath her skin, low and sudden, her body reacting with humiliating disobedience. The room seemed to narrow. Andrea’s voice, Andrea’s scent, Andrea’s proximity — all of it pressed too close at once.
Rut, Emily thought sharply.
That was all.
Poor timing. Low blood sugar. Bad suppressants.
Not Andrea Sachs.
Never Andrea Sachs.
She panicked.
“If you want to keep working here” Emily said, voice cutting cleanly through the air, “you might consider cutting carbs from your diet.”
Andrea froze.
For half a second, Emily saw the sting land.
Then Andrea lifted one eyebrow. It was new, that expression. A few months ago, she would have looked wounded. Now she only looked unimpressed.
She looked down at the muffin in her hand, then back at Emily.
And then she put it in her mouth. Andrea hummed softly, pleased and entirely unthinking.
“But they’re so good” she said, around the bite, eyes bright with challenge. “Shame you’re missing it”.
She meant nothing by it.
Of course she meant nothing by it.
That was the problem.
Emily looked back at her screen so quickly it was almost violent.
“Go answer something” she said.
“I don’t think the phones are ringing yet”.
“Then anticipate.”
Andrea huffed a laugh under her breath, but she went to her desk.
Neither of them spoke for the next twenty minutes.
Emily accomplished nothing.
She reread the same line of Miranda’s notes until the words lost all meaning. Across the office, Andrea moved too quietly, ate the rest of her muffin too slowly, and occasionally glanced up as if trying to decide whether Emily was angry, unwell, or simply being Emily.
All three, unfortunately.
By the time Nigel arrived, the office had begun to fill, but not enough to dilute the air.
He stopped just inside the doorway.
His eyes moved from Andrea, to Emily, then back to Andrea.
Slowly, with the weary expression of a man who had survived too many disasters to be impressed by the early stages of another, he inhaled.
Then he sighed.
“Please open a window before Miranda gets here” he said, already turning away. “It smells like a Highschool gymnasium in here”.
Andrea went red.
Emily did not look up from her screen.
“Thank you, Nigel”.
“You’re both very welcome.” he said, and disappeared down the hall.
Emily kept her eyes fixed on the spreadsheet.
Andrea opened the window.
Neither of them said another word.
The second incident was worse.
The first could be blamed on biology, poor timing, and Andrea Sachs wielding baked goods like a public menace. The second was entirely Emily’s fault.
Which made it unforgivable
It happened on a Thursday, because of course it did. Thursdays at Runway had a particular talent for becoming catastrophes before noon. Miranda had a preview meeting with Accessories, Beauty, and half the fashion department crammed into the conference room. The table was covered in look boards, fabric swatches, jewelry trays, three competing coffee orders, and a selection of belts that had already disappointed everyone by existing. Emily stood behind Miranda’s chair with the revised schedule tucked against her chest, watching six different people attempt not to breathe too loudly.
Andrea was not supposed to be part of the meeting.
Andrea was supposed to be across town collecting a replacement sample from a showroom in SoHo after Miranda had glanced at the original for half a second and declared it depressing.
Andrea was also, apparently, incapable of crossing Manhattan in the rain without becoming a problem.
She came back twenty minutes late, damp from the storm, hair curling at the ends, cheeks flushed from the cold, both arms full of garment bags and looking far too pleased for someone who had clearly lost a fight with both Manhattan traffic and basic meteorology.
Emily noticed immediately.
Not because she had been watching the door.
Obviously.
Because Andrea made noise.
Because the garment bags rustled.
Because she nearly knocked into a very expensive tray of earrings and saved herself at the last second with the kind of graceless little stumble that made three editors look offended on behalf of the carpet.
Miranda did not turn around.
“Emily”.
“Yes, Miranda”.
“Why is she wet?”
Andrea froze in the doorway.
The room went quiet in the way rooms around Miranda often did: instantly, obediently, and with the faint sense that someone was about to be professionally murdered.
Emily looked at Andrea.
Andrea looked back at her, still breathing a little too fast from the rush across town. Her jacket — if the thin, miserable scrap of fabric could be called that — clung damply to her shoulders. A drop of rain slid from the end of her hair and disappeared beneath the collar of her blouse.
Something in Emily’s chest tightened. Not concern.
“She retrieved the replacement sample from SoHo” Emily said evenly.
Miranda’s gaze moved over Andrea once.
“Apparently from the bottom of the Hudson”.
A few people smiled.
Andrea’s face went hot.
Emily hated them all.
Which was irrational, because Miranda was right. Andrea looked ridiculous. She dressed like weather was theoretical and common sense was an optional accessory.
Miranda turned back to the boards.
“Put them there”.
Andrea stepped into the conference room, dripping faintly onto the carpet as she moved toward the table.
Emily lasted exactly three seconds.
Then she crossed the room with the schedule still tucked against her chest and caught Andrea just before she reached Miranda’s side.
“Stop” Emily said under her breath.
Andrea stopped.
“What?”
“You cannot stand in front of Miranda like that”.
Andrea looked down at herself. “Like what?”
“Like Manhattan wrung you out and sent you upstairs as a warning”.
Andrea’s mouth twitched.
Emily narrowed her eyes. “Do not look amused. You are several degrees from corpse”.
“I’m fine”.
“You’re shivering”.
“It’s raining”.
“Yes, Andrea, thank you. I had gathered that from the water dripping onto the conference room carpet”.
Andrea glanced down at the small dark spots near her shoes.
“Oh”.
Emily exhaled through her nose.
“Go to my desk”.
Andrea blinked. “What?”
“My desk. Grey scarf. Back of the chair. Put it on before Miranda decides your tragic little jacket is a personal insult”.
Andrea’s eyes widened slightly.
“Your scarf?”
“No, Andrea. The communal Runway emergency scarf. Yes, my scarf”.
“I don’t need—”
Emily leaned in just enough for her voice to drop into something sharper.
“Go”.
Andrea went.
Emily returned to Miranda’s side and pretended she had not just made a catastrophic tactical error.
It took Andrea less than a minute. That was the problem.
One minute was not enough time for Emily to reconsider. Not enough time to send her back. Not enough time to remember that any Omega with even a passing familiarity with Alpha politics would know better than to walk into a room full of fashion editors wearing another Alpha’s scent around her throat.
Andrea, naturally, walked back in wearing it.
Emily felt it before she looked.
Black tea. Clean perfume. Rain on wool.
Her scent.
Then cinnamon underneath it.
Andrea’s scent.
The scarf sat high against Andrea’s throat, soft grey against damp hair and flushed skin. It should have looked practical. It should have looked like nothing more than a reasonable attempt to stop the second assistant from dripping herself into pneumonia.
It did not.
It looked intimate.
Worse, it smelled intimate.
Andrea tucked her chin into the cashmere as if it were merely warm. As if she had not just placed Emily’s scent directly against her pulse and stepped into a room full of people trained to notice a hemline from thirty paces.
Serena noticed first. Of course she did.
Her eyes moved from Andrea’s throat, to Andrea’s flushed face, then to Emily, where they lingered for half a second too long. Serena looked back down at the jewelry tray, smiling faintly.
Nigel noticed next, though he had the decency — or the survival instincts — to say nothing. He simply glanced at the scarf, lifted one eyebrow, and returned to the layout board.
Emily stared at the schedule.
The words rearranged themselves into nonsense.
This was fine.
This was practical.
This was a workplace matter.
This was not possessive. This was not territorial. This was not Andrea Sachs standing in a conference room full of Alphas and Betas with Emily’s scent wrapped around her throat like a public announcement.
Miranda turned a page.
“I don’t like this”.
“No” Emily said automatically.
The room went still.
Too late, Emily realized Miranda had not been speaking to her.
Miranda turned her head.
Emily looked at the board.
The board, traitorously, offered no explanation.
“I mean” Emily said, because apparently today was the day she chose death, “the structure is wrong. It pulls focus from the coat”.
A pause.
Miranda looked back at the board.
“Yes” she said finally. “Obviously”.
The room breathed again.
Emily did not.
Across the table, Andrea was looking at her.
Not with fear. Not even embarrassment.
With surprise. Soft, ridiculous, open surprise, as though Emily had done something generous rather than something clinically insane.
Emily looked away before it could become unbearable.
The meeting dragged on for another twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes of Andrea standing near the wall with Emily’s scarf wrapped around her throat.
Twenty minutes of Emily’s scent warming against Andrea’s skin.
Twenty minutes of cinnamon threading itself through black tea and clean perfume until the room seemed far too small and far too well populated.
Worst of all, people noticed.
Of course they noticed.
Runway was built on the sacred art of noticing everything and admitting nothing. A crooked hem. A nervous hand. A scent where it did not belong. Every person in that room had been trained, professionally or otherwise, to collect information without appearing to collect it.
Serena noticed and pretended to adjust a bracelet tray.
Nigel noticed and became, suspiciously, fascinated by the layout board.
Jocelyn noticed and said absolutely nothing, which was nearly worse.
By the end, Emily was one insult away from committing a felony.
“Emily” Miranda said, standing.
Emily snapped to attention.
“Yes, Miranda”.
“Have Andrea return those to Accessories. And tell them if they send me another belt with visible stitching, I’ll assume they’ve all lost the use of their eyes”.
“Yes, Miranda”.
Miranda swept out.
The room loosened immediately.
People began gathering boards, phones, coffees, samples, and the remains of their dignity. Conversation returned in low, careful pieces. Chairs shifted. Someone from Beauty laughed too loudly, then seemed to remember where she was and stopped.
Serena brushed past Emily with a tray of bracelets balanced against one hip.
“How generous of you” she murmured, just low enough for only Emily to hear.
Emily did not look at her.
“Walk faster”.
Serena’s mouth curved.
“Terrifying as ever”.
“Then act accordingly”.
Serena disappeared through the door, still smiling.
Emily turned back toward the table, already reaching for the revised schedule, already prepared to pretend the last twenty minutes had not happened.
Then Andrea approached.
Of course she did.
She still had two garment bags hooked over one arm, the replacement sample held carefully in the other, and Emily’s scarf wrapped around her neck as if it belonged there.
It did not.
That was the problem.
“I can give this back” Andrea said.
Her voice was quiet.
Too quiet.
Emily turned.
Mistake.
Up close, it was worse.
The scarf was warm now. Andrea was warm. Her cheeks were still pink, though no longer entirely from the cold. Damp curls clung softly near her jaw, and the scent of cinnamon had deepened, sugar darkening at the edges, threaded through with Emily’s own scent so thoroughly that Emily’s body recognized the combination before her mind could form a defense.
Mine, something low and primitive supplied.
Emily nearly recoiled from herself.
Absolutely not.
Andrea lifted her hands to unwind the scarf.
Emily reached for it at the same time.
Their hands met. Barely.
Andrea’s fingers were still cold.
Emily’s were not.
For one brief, catastrophic second, Emily’s hand closed over Andrea’s wrist instead of the cashmere.
The contact was light. It did not matter.
Andrea went still.
Emily felt the pulse beneath her fingers.
There.
Fast.
Warm.
Alive.
Her scent flared before she could stop it.
Not much. Not enough to be obscene. But enough.
A sharp, unmistakable slip of Alpha possessiveness filled the small space between them, cutting through perfume, coffee, and rain-damp wool with humiliating clarity.
Andrea inhaled.
Only slightly.
Just enough.
Her eyes lifted to Emily’s.
Oh.
She noticed.
Emily released her immediately.
Andrea’s hand dropped, the scarf half-unwound and hanging loose between them.
The room had not gone silent.
Not entirely.
But near the table, Jocelyn had stopped stacking boards. Across the room, Serena had paused near the doorway as if she had suddenly remembered something inside. Nigel was still seated, looking down at his notes with the exaggerated concentration of a man who had seen everything and intended to be insufferable about it later.
Emily straightened.
“Return the Cavalli samples” she said, voice crisp enough to cut glass.
Andrea blinked.
“Right”.
“And take off the scarf before you leave the building”.
Andrea looked down at it.
Then back up.
There was something different in her expression now. Still embarrassed, yes. Still flushed. But also curious in a way Emily did not care for at all.
“Because it’s raining?” Andrea asked.
Emily’s jaw tightened.
“Because you are not being paid to accessorize incorrectly”.
Andrea’s mouth twitched.
Unbelievable.
Unacceptable.
Emily held out her hand. Andrea slowly unwound the scarf and placed it in her palm.
The cashmere was warm.
Emily hated that most of all.
“Thank you” Andrea said.
It was soft. Sincere. Nearly impossible to punish.
Emily folded the scarf once.
Then again.
“Try not to make a habit of requiring rescue”.
Andrea looked at her for a second. Then, quietly, “I didn’t know that’s what this was”.
Emily’s fingers froze around the scarf.
The room seemed much too bright.
“It wasn’t” she said.
Too quickly.
Andrea’s eyes did not leave her face.
“No” she said. “Of course”.
That should have been the end of it.
Andrea should have gone to Accessories. Emily should have returned to the schedule. The scarf should have become a scarf again, instead of an item of evidence.
Instead, Andrea turned away with the garment bags, still flushed, still smelling faintly of Emily.
And Emily stood in the conference room, surrounded by look boards and perfume and people pretending not to stare, clutching warm cashmere in one hand and the tatters of her dignity in the other.
Later, she would decide the incident had been exaggerated. A brief lapse in judgment. A practical gesture misinterpreted by people with too much free time and no respect for workplace efficiency.
But that afternoon, when Emily opened her drawer and put the scarf away, the cinnamon stayed on her hands. No amount of hand cream fixed it.
The third incident was not public.
That should have made it better.
It did not.
There was no conference room full of people pretending not to notice, no Serena smiling into a tray of bracelets, no Nigel filing the entire thing away for future emotional terrorism.
There was only Andrea.
Andrea’s car. Andrea’s hands. Andrea’s ridiculous, worried face.
And Emily, bruised, exhausted, half-useless from pain, and far too aware of every inch of space between them.
She had not meant to call her.
That was important.
She had meant to call a car. Or Serena. Or Paul. Or literally anyone whose scent did not already make Emily’s body behave like an untrained animal.
Instead, she had sat in the hospital waiting area with her wrist wrapped, her ankle throbbing, and her pride in critical condition, staring at her phone until Andrea Sachs’ name became less of an option and more of an inevitability.
Andrea answered on the second ring.
“Hello?”
Emily closed her eyes.
Damn it.
“Do you own a car?”
A pause.
“Emily?”
“That was not the question”.
“Are you okay?”
“Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be calling you”.
Andrea’s voice changed immediately. Softened in a way Emily found deeply inappropriate given that she had done nothing to earn it.
“Where are you?”
“Hospital”.
“What happened?”
“Gravity became aggressive”.
“Emily.” The way Andrea said her name was unbearable.
Emily looked down at the discharge papers in her lap. “I need a ride”.
There was no hesitation. “I’m coming.” Emily hated that most of all.
The ride to Emily’s apartment was mostly silent. Andrea tried, twice, to ask if she was in pain. Emily told her, twice, that she was always in pain and this was merely a more literal interpretation of her daily experience.
Andrea stopped asking.
Which was considerate.
And irritating.
By the time they reached Emily’s building, the pain medication had turned the edges of the world soft and unpleasantly slow. Emily hated it. She hated the crutches. She hated the elevator mirror. She hated the fact that Andrea’s hand hovered near her elbow the entire way up, not touching unless Emily swayed, but close enough that Emily could feel the possibility of it.
Inside the apartment, everything became worse.
Andrea helped her to the sofa. Which meant Andrea’s arm around her waist.
Andrea’s shoulder under Emily’s hand.
Andrea’s body warm and solid beside her.
It was practical.
It was unbearable.
“You can go” Emily said the moment she sat down.
Andrea looked at her.
“You can barely walk”.
“I made it from the elevator”.
“You almost took out a side table”.
“It was ugly”.
Andrea sighed.
Emily leaned back against the sofa and closed her eyes.
A mistake.
Without sight, everything else became sharper.
Andrea’s perfume. Her shampoo. The cinnamon warmth of her skin beneath the sterile ghost of hospital disinfectant still clinging to Emily’s clothes.
“I’m not leaving you like this” Andrea said.
Emily opened one eye. “How heroic. Shall I alert the press?”
“You need to change”.
“No, I need to sleep”.
“You need to get out of hospital clothes and into something comfortable”.
“I am perfectly capable of changing myself”.
Andrea looked pointedly at Emily’s wrapped wrist.
Emily looked away.
Silence.
Then Andrea said, gentler, “Just tell me where your pajamas are”.
Emily considered refusing.
She considered dying.
She considered setting the sofa on fire and blaming structural instability.
Instead, because the day had apparently not finished humiliating her, she pointed toward the bedroom. “Second drawer”.
Andrea returned with a soft white T-shirt and a pair of dark pajama bottoms.
Emily stared at them.
Then at Andrea.
“No”.
Andrea blinked. “No?”
“I can manage.”
“With one hand?”
“I have survived worse”.
“You also called me from a hospital because you couldn’t get home alone”.
Emily’s eyes narrowed.
Andrea had the decency to look only slightly smug.
“Fine” Emily snapped. “But if you make one comment, I will have you transferred to Accounting”.
Andrea’s mouth twitched.
It was, at first, merely awkward.
Andrea turned her back while Emily got the skirt unzipped, which was infuriatingly respectful and therefore impossible to criticize. The blouse was worse. The buttons required more coordination than Emily’s wrist could manage, and after the third failed attempt, Andrea quietly stepped closer. “Let me.”
Emily should have said no.
She did not.
Andrea’s fingers were careful.
That was the problem.
Not clumsy. Not nervous. Careful. She worked each button loose without brushing skin more than necessary, her face lowered in concentration, her hair falling forward near her cheek. Emily stared at the wall over her shoulder and tried very hard not to notice the warmth of Andrea’s hands through the thin fabric.
Tried.
Failed.
By the time the blouse slipped from Emily’s shoulders, her breathing had gone embarrassingly shallow.
Andrea noticed.
Of course she noticed.
Her fingers paused at Emily’s sleeve.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No”.
The answer came too quickly.
The T-shirt was easier in theory and worse in practice. Emily had to lift one arm, then the injured one carefully, and Andrea had to stand close enough to guide the fabric over her wrist without catching the bandage. Close enough that Emily could smell the warmth of Andrea’s skin beneath her perfume, cinnamon softened by laundry soap and the faint trace of coffee. Close enough that Andrea’s knuckles brushed the bare skin at Emily’s waist when she pulled the shirt down.
Emily’s whole body went still.
Andrea’s hands stilled too.
For one second, neither of them moved.
Then Andrea stepped back.
“Pants,” she said, voice slightly thinner than before.
Emily looked at her.
Andrea looked at the pajama bottoms in her hands with the grave determination of someone preparing for surgery.
“This is absurd” Emily said.
“I agree”.
“And unnecessary”.
“Probably”.
“And if you repeat any of this to anyone, I’ll ruin you”.
Andrea nodded. “Obviously”.
Emily should have been reassured.
She was not.
Changing into the pajama bottoms was a disaster.
Emily could manage getting them over one ankle, barely. The injured one made her hiss through her teeth, and Andrea was kneeling before Emily could tell her not to.
Not kneeling like that. Not intentionally at least.
Just crouched in front of her, practical and focused, helping guide the fabric over Emily’s swollen ankle with both hands.
Still, Emily’s body did not care about intent.
Andrea’s head was bent. Her fingers were gentle around Emily’s calf. Her scent was warm in the quiet apartment, threaded with concern and something else Emily did not trust herself to name.
Emily gripped the sofa cushion with her good hand.
Andrea looked up.
“Okay?”
Emily did not answer fast enough.
Andrea’s gaze dropped.
Only for a second. Barely even that.
But it was enough.
Her eyes caught on Emily’s underwear.
On the unmistakable shape there.
On the evidence, hard evidence, Emily could not insult, schedule, or deny out of existence.
Andrea froze.
Emily could smell it.
Warm cinnamon.
The room went very quiet.
Then Andrea looked back up at her.
Her face was flushed now, not from cold, not from embarrassment alone. Her lips parted as if she might say something, then didn’t.
Emily wanted to disappear.
She also wanted Andrea to keep looking.
The combination was intolerable.
“Well” Emily said, voice brutally calm for someone whose dignity had just been dragged into the street and shot. “This has been educational for both of us”.
Andrea blinked.
Then, impossibly, she laughed.
Not loudly.
Not mockingly.
Just one startled little breath of laughter, gone almost as soon as it appeared.
Emily stared at her.
“If you value your employment—”
“I’m not laughing at you”.
“You are very clearly laughing at something in my immediate vicinity”.
Andrea’s smile faded, but the warmth did not leave her face.
“I’m nervous”.
Emily had no response to that.
None.
Andrea looked down again, but this time only at the pajama fabric in her hands. “I can stop”.
The words landed between them.
Simple. Careful. Devastating.
Emily swallowed.
She should have said yes. She should have sent Andrea home. She should have preserved what little remained of the professional boundary currently bleeding out on her living room floor.
Instead, she said, “Finish up already”.
Andrea nodded.
She did not look again.
That was somehow worse.
She helped pull the pajama bottoms up with almost surgical politeness, eyes fixed somewhere over Emily’s shoulder as Emily lifted her hips just enough to get them settled. It lasted no more than ten seconds.
It felt like a felony.
When it was done, Andrea stood too quickly.
Emily adjusted the hem of the T-shirt with one hand and refused to look at her.
“Thank you” she said.
The words were stiff. Difficult.
Andrea heard that anyway.
“You’re welcome”.
Emily hated how soft her voice was.
She hated how careful she had been.
She hated that Andrea had seen her, really seen her, injured and wanting and humiliated, and had not used it against her.
Andrea picked up the discarded clothes and folded them over the chair.
“I should go” she said.
“Yes.”
Neither of them moved.
Then Andrea reached for her bag.
“At the risk of getting transferred to Accounting” she said quietly, “you should probably take the next dose with food”.
Emily looked at her.
Andrea lifted both hands slightly.
“Practical. Not sentimental.”
Emily’s mouth almost moved.
Almost.
“Goodnight, Andrea”.
Andrea paused at the door. “Goodnight, Emily”.
After she left, the apartment seemed too quiet. Emily sat on the sofa in her pajamas, wrist aching, ankle throbbing, body still humiliatingly awake.
The air smelled like hospital antiseptic.
And cinnamon.
And Andrea Sachs being careful with her.
That, Emily decided, was the worst part.