Chapter Text
She comes back to her on the rainiest night of the year.
Manhattan is just unlucky enough to be in the path at the tail end of some sort of tropical storm, and the resulting rain is biblical. Flash flooding, gale force winds howling, a sky as dark at noon as at night. Even Miranda Priestly, who famously couldn’t give a damn about acts of god or the weather, had been forced to follow a mandatory shelter in place as the city that never sleeps all but shut down in the face of the storm. Dalton had given the girls the day off, and Miranda might be a tough customer, but she wasn’t going to ask Cara to venture out into that. Caroline and Cassidy had been thrilled to spend the day orbiting around her as she took conference call after call, reviewing layouts and articles via email, and she can admit that she had mostly enjoyed their quiet company too. The past few months had been… difficult, for all of them.
Another father figure gone, the tabloids tearing strips off of her for her ‘frigidity’, the dragon lady incapable of holding onto love. She had to give it to Stephen, he’d put more effort into the smear campaign than her previous ex husbands had - certainly more effort than he’d ever put into their doomed marriage, she scoffed to herself as she read the articles. Things had settled down a bit now that the divorce had been finalised, and in her favour too; why sloppy men thought they could have affairs and still expect to get a dime out of her, she will never understand. Stephen’s face when her lawyers had produced enough evidence to fully void the terms of the prenup is a warm memory that makes her smile even now.
There is a small part of her that is satisfied by the fact that his little stunt, sending the papers during the busiest week of her year, hadn’t even been the worst thing that had happened to her that week. He had tried to destroy it, and for a night at most he had succeeded, but she had moved on quickly because that was the job. Andrea’s departure, sudden as a knife slip, had taken that top spot.
She had meant it as a compliment when she had said that she saw a great deal of herself in her assistant, but in the time since that she has reflected on it, she can see why it wasn’t taken as such. Andrea had been Nigel’s girl as much as she was Miranda’s. Why would she, full of youthful righteousness, want to be like someone who had inexplicably hurt him? Why would she want to be like the woman she had glimpsed in the midst of her grief and loneliness, the devil who placed her career above all? No, she had been right to leave Runway when she did, to follow that righteous heart of hers into journalism and a career that looks, from what Miranda has observed as her bylines grew in number and significance over time, extremely promising. If she had wanted to, Andrea could have done great things at Runway, but her calling was clearly the fourth estate, and Miranda is glad that she had chosen to support her decision and give her a recommendation.
Even if it had meant that the only way she got to enjoy the young woman now was through ink, rather than blinking doe eyed up at her through the glass walls of her office, or standing guard and radiating heat at her back at a function, or sitting just inches away in the back of the towncar.
Her leaving made perfect sense for the life Andrea wanted for herself. Letting her go is something Miranda will regret for a long time.
It had shaken her, to realise that her feelings towards her assistant had grown tendrils and wrapped their way around her heart. It is likely for the best, that Andrea seemed blissfully unaware of the effect she had on her during her tenure in the job a million girls would kill for. The transformation from lumpy and meek to confident and sharp had been quite something to behold, and Miranda couldn’t really put a finger on when exactly her perusal of her assistant had taken on a less than professional quality - it was her great pleasure, to look, to see, to sculpt and create and enjoy, beauty. Every day of her life she looked at some of the most beautiful women in the world wearing some of the most beautiful garments in the world, and none of them had sparked this tender desire in her the way Andrea did. No one could ever have accused her of feeling tenderness towards another person except her daughters. Until Andrea.
It was wrong, of course. Completely inappropriate not only because of their respective positions, their ages, but because she had been married at the time, and while she may be a ‘neglectful’ wife, she is not an adulterer. But she had thought about it. Had wanted… oh, how she had wanted. Each new height of competence that Andrea had reached, striving to please her, to be exactly what Miranda needed, had hit like a physical touch driving her to the edge of propriety. It had been an exhilarating, delicious shock to the system, just right in it’s wrongness, and the feelings which she had assumed were a fleeting thing that would go with the woman, lingered.
In time, Andrea will be a distant memory, a blip in a long and storied life. In five, ten years, even twenty, Miranda is certain that she could forget. For now though, Andrea pops into her head more often than she would like, a fixture of dreams vivid enough to wake her breathless and clenching around nothing, and idle thoughts during long days where no one seems capable of reading Miranda in the way that she had been. Perhaps she should start dating again, if only to find someone to sate her newly roused desire, but the thought of having to go through the motions with some man who will inevitably disappoint her is less than pleasant. Still, she contemplates it, sitting alone now in the dark of her study with the rain pounding at the window behind her.
Through the howling wind, Miranda is startled to hear something that sounds an awful lot like knocking on her front door. If something, a shingle from the roof, has come loose and is being slammed into her paintwork, she grumbles to herself as she heads downstairs to see, she’s going to be extremely annoyed. Flicking on a lamp in the hallway, Miranda draws her robe more tightly around herself, planting her feet firmly as she pulls open the door. What awaits her on her porch would’ve bowled a lesser woman over. There, huddled fighting the wind, stands one Andrea Sachs.
She is soaked to the skin, hair plastered to her head in a dark sheet, pale and shivering in the glow of the porch light, but it is undeniably Andrea.
“This was the o-only address I could rememb-ber,” Andrea gets out through chattering teeth, her brown eyes full of apology.
Stunned is not a feeling Miranda has experienced very often, but the apparition of the woman that has haunted her thoughts, her dreams, her evening, has stunned her silent. She knows she is staring, but this is so surreal that she’s not quite sure she can believe the proof of her eyes. The door feels real under her hands, and the freezing wind blowing through does too, but…
“The track f-flooded, s-sorry, I, I shouldn’t have… is there a, a number for, for a c-cab? I…” Andrea explains haltingly, her shoulders coming up around her ears as another tremor wracks her body. That shakes Miranda from her stupor; if this is real, she can’t possibly leave her to freeze on her doorstep. She opens the door wider, and inclines her head, which Andrea correctly interprets as an invitation and nearly sags with relief as she crosses the threshold into the warmth of the house. Miranda closing the door behind her echoes harshly in the silence, and she lays her palms flat against it, just for a moment, to stop her own shaking before she turns to look at her very unexpected guest.
Andrea hadn’t moved a muscle, dripping miserably onto the mat by the door, and Miranda can’t help it, she takes in every sodden inch of her. The bangs plastered to her brow, the painfully flimsy for the weather likely camel trench, and from the knees down, if she’s not mistaken, Armani denim made almost black with rain, a pair of Saint Laurent boots peeking out beneath the hem. She sweeps her gaze back upward to find flushed cheeks on a deathly pale face.
“Thank you Miranda, s-seriously. If you have a n-number, I can just w-wait here for a cab?”
“No,” Miranda croaks out, finding her words again finally at the thought of letting her leave again, just like that, after all this time, “no. Don’t be ridiculous - as if there will be anyone sane out in this; you’ll stay here.”
Andy blinks at her, those ridiculous eyes more than a little disbelieving. “I wouldn’t want to im-impose.”
“You’re not. Although if you die of hypothermia in my foyer that would certainly be inconvenient,” Miranda says dryly, her chest warming at the peal of startled laughter it gets out of Andrea.
“We w-wouldn’t want that. L-let me just…” She stutters, but she is smiling now, bending down to take off her no doubt waterlogged boots.
Miranda watches on with a growing sort of horror as Andy struggles to make her fingers, blue with cold, work. She had been kidding about the hypothermia before, but the reality seems terrifyingly close to that. The seriousness of the situation leaves no room for anything but practicality, and Miranda knows that she needs to get her out of those clothes and into something dry as soon as possible. Which seems a bit beyond the motor skills Andrea has at her disposal right now. Heaven help her.
“Andrea,” she says quietly, making a valiant effort not to acknowledge the way her head snapped up to attention at the sound of it, “the carpet will survive a little rain, but if you’re going to get dry at some point today it might be easier, and faster, with some assistance. May I?” Miranda gestured down at her boots.
The blush from before returns with a vengeance, and she waits, watching objections cycle across Andy’s rain slick face that she opens her mouth to voice only to close it again, looking down at her frozen hands. “Please,” Andy replies shakily, and Miranda is relieved that at least the idea of accepting her help isn’t so repulsive that it would override good sense. She drops to her knees in one fluid motion.
Wet denim is uncooperative at the best of times so it is no wonder Andrea couldn’t manoeuvre around it with her hands in this state. Miranda drags the hem up and off the leather as efficiently as she can, all her focus on the task in front of her when she wraps a hand around a cold, leather covered ankle to pull the first boot off. Her sock is damp enough that Miranda doesn’t even think, just takes her foot back in hand and peels it off too, dropping it carelessly on the mat. Above, Andy bites back a sound on a shaky exhale that finally makes her look up. She is staring down at her with eyes like dinner plates, still shivering and seemingly helpless as her chilled skin presses into Miranda’s hand more firmly.
“Alright?” Miranda ask carefully. Andy nods, and looks away, obviously embarrassed by her reaction.
“Yeah, y-yes. Just. You’re warm.”
Now Miranda has to fight a blush of her own, because she has been very diligent in not thinking about the fact that this is skin on skin contact in a somewhat intimate place while she’s on her knees in front of the star of many of her fantasies, but there’s no denying it now. She clears her throat roughly, giving the delicate ankle in her hands a light squeeze before putting her foot down and turning to the other before she does something less than appropriate for the situation. The second time she is faster, more certain in her movements now that she knows what to expect and how Andrea’s smooth skin feels in her hands. Once she is barefoot and on solid ground again, Miranda stands and holds her hand out to take her bag and coat.
“The t-tables turn, huh?” Andy jokes lightly, handing over the leather satchel easily and then beginning the Sisyphean task of unbuttoning her coat. Miranda is fine to wait, her mind already spinning over what she has in her closet that will be warm and might fit Andrea best, whether it is better to bring her to the study where she can sit in front of the fireplace and go get the clothes, or to bring her upstairs again and put her in a warm shower first.
“Could you, uh,” Andy interrupts her thoughts, looking down at the long line of buttons awaiting her, “please?”
Miranda doesn’t respond, but she steps in close and starts at the last button. If the boots had felt intimate, this is something else entirely. Speed is going to be her friend, because this is far too reminiscent of a dream she has had before, and it’s only practical, Miranda knows that. In any other circumstance, this undressing would not be happening. In any other circumstance Andrea would not be here at all. Reminding herself of that fact helps her get through all but two, the top one, and the one across her bust, which Andrea does manage to open herself even with shaking hands. With a gentleness she can’t bear to contemplate, Miranda slides the coat off her shoulders and hangs it on the closet door where it can attempt to dry. It’s only when she turns back around that she sees the cream blouse Andrea is wearing, or rather, has stuck to her skin in a sheer imitation of clothing, all pale skin and dark lingerie beneath the gauzy fabric waiting to be exposed. She will not survive assisting in removing that. It’s ridiculous really, to see her in this sorry state and still be overwhelmingly conscious that she is beautiful, that Miranda has spent over a year wanting her.
“A shower, I think, and some dry clothes, hm?” Miranda suggests airily, belying the sorry state of her own thoughts. She heads up the stairs without waiting for a response, assured as she had almost always been a year ago that where she leads, Andrea would follow. It’s late enough that the girls should be asleep, but the guest bath abuts their own, and it would be hard to explain away if one of them did stumble across her. At least, that is the justification she comes up with by the time she realises that she has led them both to her own bathroom without even thinking.
She fusses briefly with laying out towels on the counter, and turns to find Andrea closer than she’d thought she would be, eyes roving over the room like she has a sense that this is Miranda’s personal space and not just a bathroom. Maybe it is because she has imagined her in here before, but drowned though she is, she doesn’t seem out of place here. Not even her ex-husbands had been allowed in long enough to determine that. Miranda doesn’t particularly know what to do with that little piece of information.
She trusts that Andrea is intelligent enough to figure the shower out for herself, so that just leaves…
“B-bad day to wear so many buttons,” Andy remarks dryly. Miranda hums her agreement, pulling professionalism from the depths of her mind in order to look properly with a solutions oriented approach and nothing more.
“Ah,” She smiles, a solution finally presenting itself. “If I unbutton the cuffs you should have room to...”
“Over the h-head. That’s why they p-pay you the big bucks,” Andrea nods, holding both wrists up for her in supplication.
It’s unavoidable really, that their hands brush while she opens fiddly mother of pearl buttons on either wrist. Less unavoidable is the cold hand that wraps around her wrist when she is finished, holding her in place. She is surprised by it, the shock of cold and the touch both, letting out a questioning sound when she meets Andrea’s gaze. The quiet is heavy with all the things Miranda has not said, and she feels the weight of them now more than ever with Andrea’s hands on her not out of necessity but because she has chosen to touch.
“T-thank you, Miranda. I…” Andrea’s eyes are dark and lovely, the confidence she had lacked in the doorway returned to them now, “We’ll talk, after?”
Miranda doesn’t think there is a single thing she would deny this woman. Dangerous.
Her wrist burns where Andrea’s hand rests, heat radiating through her body even though she is so cold.
“I’ll be in the study,” she agrees, swallowing hard against a suddenly dry throat. Only when she has confirmed that they will does Andrea let her go - though her touch, the echo of it, lingers even when her hand is gone. Miranda doesn’t trust her voice, can’t say anything else, and goes, heart thumping in her ears.
After laying a warm set of Olivia Von Halle cashmere pyjamas at the door, she makes a valiant attempt to work for want of something to do that isn’t imagining the woman currently nude in her shower. She finds herself so engrossed in it that it seems like no time has passed at all when she glances up and finds Andrea in the doorway. Her damp hair pinned back off her shoulders smelling of Miranda’s shampoo, bare faced and pink cheeked from the hot water, wearing Miranda’s own navy pyjamas, she looks warm, comfortable for the first time tonight. Affection rises unbidden in her chest.
“Feeling better?”
“So much,” Andy smiles brightly back at her, padding in on socked feet and curling up in the armchair across from her own, “I didn’t think bones could actually get cold but apparently they can and do.”
Miranda hums her acknowledgment, pressing send on one last note to Nigel - why Jocelyn thought pairing the peacock Dior fascinator with that Prada coat would work she will never understand - and closing her macbook to give Andrea her full attention.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left the way I did, back in Paris. It was completely impulsive and I should have stayed and given proper notice.”
Whatever she thought this conversation was going to be, she certainly hadn’t thought it would start there. “Yes, you should have,” Miranda shrugs, “but I understood; you did what you had to do. Your apology is not necessary - appreciated, but not necessary.”
“I think it is. You’ve been so kind to me, like, almost unbelievably generous when I really didn’t deserve it. An apology is literally the least I could do,” Andrea retorts easily, the confidence Miranda had only just begun to glimpse before she left clearly having blossomed in the year since she had been gone.
She huffs a breathless laugh. “I hardly think the hospitality required not to let you shiver to death on my stoop is all that remarkable.” Of course Miranda knows how people see her. The cold, aloof, exacting bitch who would always serve her own interests no matter who she burned to achieve them. Andrea had seen her more fully than anyone else, her vulnerability and fear, the woman beneath the veneer of perfection.
“Maybe not, but you’ve done a lot more than that, or I’d be in a cab half frozen right now. I don’t just mean tonight though,” Andrea says, tucking her feet up underneath her with a little knowing smile Miranda isn’t quite sure how to read.
“No?” She asks with a single brow raised.
“Miranda.” She looks at her like she can’t possibly be serious with the question, but Miranda can’t seem to think straight in her presence, much less when she is happily ensconced in Miranda’s own clothes. “You wrote me a recommendation that got me my dream job like a week after I left. Thank you, by the way, but that’s pretty remarkable,” Andrea says softly.
Ah. That. “I knew you would make good on the promise - although if you knew what I wrote I don’t think you’d feel quite so sunny about it.”
Andrea meets her gaze fiercely, as if daring her to look away. “Of all the assistants you’ve ever had, I am by far your biggest disappointment, and if they didn’t hire me, they were idiots. I remember every word.”
“Well, I won’t say I didn’t mean it, but I could have phrased it a little more diplomatically,” Miranda admits, taking off her glasses. She wouldn’t be doing any more reading tonight.
“I’m glad you didn’t, it’s so… you,” Andy smiles at her with a fondness that makes Miranda’s hands tingle from across the desk.
“So me?”
“You know, straight to the point, funny in that dry way people can’t really believe. I honestly took the disappointment thing as a huge compliment,” She adds, on a roll now of saying things that only make it harder for Miranda to keep hold of her composure. It must be so peaceful not to be completely undone by the person sitting just out of your reach.
“How so?” She hums back, curious to know what Andrea thought she had meant by her words.
“I mean… to be Miranda Priestly’s biggest anything is pretty incredible, but I don’t know,” Andy grins, a hint of shyness returning, “if I’m way off base here don’t even tell me; it kind of felt like you were admitting that our partnership by the end was as good as I thought it was. That we were a good team, a great one even.”
They had been. No one but Nigel has ever been close to being so in sync with her before, or since. Miranda hadn’t necessarily intended to convey that with her missive to The Mirror, but it was the truth at the heart of her disappointment.
“There have been five Emilys since your departure you know,” she says softly, letting the arm of her glasses rest against her lower lip, watching Andrea’s eyes flick to and then back from it, widening in surprise.
“Wow,” She huffs dryly, “they must have really been bad if even I made it further than that; How many Andreas?”
“None.”
Not only because the thought of using her name everyday when she could not have the Andrea that she wanted felt grotesque, but honestly because she had yet to find someone that could deserve the moniker. Emilys were a dime a dozen - young women with dreams of the world of fashion, who worshipped at the altar of Runway and would do anything to get their foot in the door. Andreas, however, seem to be rather singular.
Andy blinks. “Oh. That’s… surprising.”
Miranda can’t imagine why, if nothing else surely Andrea understands how proficient she was at the job. “You think yourself easily replaced?”
“I mean, kind of? A million girls would kill for that job and a lot of them would have more knowledge about fashion than I did when you hired me,” she shrugs, a little furrow between her brows.
“At the beginning of your tenure, certainly. I have much higher standards now,” Miranda allows herself a smirk at the small titter of laughter this pronouncement elicits. It’s true, though. Andrea’s competence, her ability to anticipate needs silently and consistently, to pull off impossible tasks like they were just another item on her list had ruined her for anyone else, made her already high standards higher because she refused to settle for less than.
“I didn’t think that was possible!”
“It’s your fault that now I want the impossible, that I look for it,” Miranda confesses quietly. It’s an outwardly innocuous remark, but it lands heavily - she can practically see Andrea’s brain recontextualising things in the wake of it. She needs to be more careful, lest she reveal something she cannot take back, but it is hard not to in the frighteningly domestic tableau that having Andrea, soft and beautiful in her sleepwear, in her study, like this is just one of many nights they end together in a similar fashion, creates.
“Have you found it yet?” She asks, sounding genuinely curious.
Miranda shakes her head. She doubts she ever will again. “Not so easily replaced after all.”
“I think you’d like my new editor, she reminds me of you, sometimes,” Andy says contemplatively, leaning her head into her palm against the armrest. Miranda bristles slightly at the implication. Here she was, unable to find anyone who could hope to be what Andrea was, what she is still, to her, while she had been replaced so easily. Of course she had been; any editor with a brain could see that Andrea had talent, passion for her work, and the potential to be a master of her craft under the right tutelage. Miranda was simply the first in what will surely be a long line of editors to realise that Andrea Sachs would work to be the best at whatever she turned her hand to.
Maybe some day, that line would lead her back to Runway, though she doubts it. Andrea’s bleeding heart would always keep her writing far from the world of fashion. Far from Miranda. She can’t begrudge her that, even though she longs for the torturous proximity working in the same office would bring with it.
“She’s more adequate at her job than the last one, your articles have improved with the bigger opportunities. I imagine she’s a fitting replacement.”
Andy frowns at the coolness of her tone, the picture of confusion.
“For who, John?” She suggests falteringly, and there’s a beat of silence while Miranda keeps her expression carefully neutral in the face of Andrea’s searching look before it dawns on her what she had meant. Her jaw physically drops. “You’re kidding. Miranda, don’t get me wrong, I love my job, and Susan is good at hers, as you pointed out I can tell I’m becoming a better writer with her guidance, but come on. You made me the girl who can do the impossible. No replacing that, even if I wanted to.”
“Don’t you?” The question slips out without her meaning it to, a thought voiced in a moment of weakness, but it’s out there now between them. Miranda is so rarely uncertain of herself, of where she stands with people, but Andrea has confounded her. She is so tired, and white knuckling her control all day everyday is exhausting enough, but trying to keep some semblance of it with Andrea in front of her is proving to be an impossibility. Something was bound to slip through.
“Don’t I what?”
“Want to.”
For a moment, it hangs in the air between them; the vulnerability shown to so few revealed in the asking, and the opportunity to wield it like a weapon and skewer her with the response if she chooses to, obvious as well to them both.
“No. No I don’t,” Andrea answers seriously, but her face softens, and her voice to match it. She looks sleepy and comfortable, totally at her ease while Miranda is barely holding herself together. It would be infuriating if she didn’t crave it, if she wasn’t trying to take in every detail so she might return to the memory when she is alone again.“It’s funny, but uh, leaving Runway made me realise just how much I learned, how much I loved it. Orbiting you. You’re like the sun,” she says, like it shouldn’t be shocking to hear it, punctuating with a small stifled yawn. Miranda shakes her head.
If anyone is the sun, it is not her - hers is a cold light, exposing flaws, illuminating without warmth. She might not be fully aware of her power yet, how people bend towards her without noticing, but Andrea could be the sun herself if she chose to. Besides, all the sycophants in the world see Miranda like that - distant and untouchable. She has always thought, always hoped, that Andrea saw beyond it.
“I am just a woman, Andrea. An important one, in some circles, but just as fallible as the rest.” Miranda feels every inch of her fallibility now. Her life would have been so much simpler if she hadn’t taken a chance and hired Andrea. Simpler, yes, but worse, because who else would look at her so gently, with such understanding?
“You’re not just anything. Not to me, anyway,” Andrea says effusively, sitting up properly to hold Miranda’s gaze. She doesn’t know what to do with it, this pronouncement, and all the things she wants it to mean but cannot allow herself to put onto it because… Andrea is kind to a fault. She is the type of woman who says things like this to her friends, and means them, certainly, but in an entirely separate way to the way Miranda wants her to. Not for the first time tonight, Miranda has to wrestle her control into place to avoid making a fool of herself.
“It’s late, you must be exhausted,” she suggests, giving them both an out as she stands and pulls her robe more tightly around herself, rounding the desk to leave.
“Well, ok yes,” Andrea says, scrambling to her feet, “but that’s not why I said that.” She plants herself less than an arm's length away, looking up at Miranda through her lashes. In the low light of the study, her eyes are huge and dark, glittering at her. Without her heels, Miranda is just that bit shorter than Andrea - she hadn’t realised that before, and it has her even more off kilter. “Do you know what I thought when I realised your house was the only place I could get to tonight?”
“I hope someone answers the door?” Miranda quips dryly, falling back on humour as a last line of defense.
“No. I mean, yes obviously that was a concern, but I thought,” Andy swallows hard, murmuring low enough that Miranda finds herself leaning in, straining to hear, bending, “thank God. I finally have a reason to see you again. A whole year, and I couldn’t justify just turning up on your doorstep to…”
Her heart, treacherous old battered thing that it is, pounds in her ears. She daren’t hope, and yet she lives on it. “To…?”
“To tell you that I’ve spent the better part of the last 18 months trying to get over it, but I can’t. And honestly, I don’t really want to. To tell you that if, and I know this is a pretty monumental if, but I’m here tonight and I’m aware I might not get another chance to say it so: if you want me, Miranda, I’m yours,” she says finally.
There can be no room for error with this, no misconstrued words or implied meanings, because if this is real, if this is Andrea offering herself up to be hers completely, then Miranda will not be able to let her go.
She holds herself back, just for one minute more, and hopes. “What, exactly, do you mean?”
Andy takes a step closer, her feet sure, her voice soft. “I mean that I want you. I want to kiss you, and touch you, and know you,” She breathes, close enough now that she can touch the loose end of the belt on Miranda’s robe, threading it through her fingers, “and I hate to use my own analogy but I want to stand beside you while you shine, and I want you next to me when I do the same. I know I’m not much compared to some of the people who you could be with-” Miranda goes to interrupt, because how could she think that she is not much when she is everything, but her words catch in her throat at the sudden fire in Andrea’s eyes. The heated look sears her to the bone, leaves her speechless, helpless except to listen.
“But I don’t believe any of them want everything that you are - the late nights and the impossible demands, the bitch in heels and the woman who tries to move heaven and earth for her daughters, funny and whip smart and beautiful, and a completely stubborn nightmare half the time but secretly kind of sweet - as much as me. I don’t think anyone could want you the way that I want you. And it is late, and I’ll happily take the guest room and be gone in the morning before you even wake up, extremely grateful for the hospitality and never darkening your doorstep again, if that’s what you want. Whatever you want. Just tell me what that is, and I’ll give it to you, if you’ll let me.”