Chapter Text
Benji Barnes is everything Andrea Sachs is not.
"Hey, did you know that Andrea Bocelli is a man? I mean of course he is a man when you hear him sing, but you know, if we were to just look at the name Andrea, I never would've guessed!" Benji exclaimed.
"Who?" Emily snapped, suddenly going very rigid in her loose hold of the man sprawled across her arms.
Benji had been on one of his uninformative and downright ridiculous rambles while flicking through the TV channels, to which Emily would nod along dismissively at intervals while thinking of the next Dior meeting details or the occasional "Yes, Benji, I'm listening." thrown haphazardly his direction when he thinks she isn't paying attention.
But she caught something she hadn't heard in a very, very long time. A ghost of a name.
"What did you just say?" she asked again and turned to face him properly when he hadn't responded fast enough for her liking.
Having picked up on her strained tone, Benji chuckled nervously. He cleared his throat and repeated, "I never thought Bocelli was a man until I heard him sing. Is something wrong, baby?"
Oh.
Bocelli, the Italian tenor.
Not her.
"Well that's rather funny,” a deadpan. “And no, I was just thinking about the new flagship store and what could be done about it," she replied, instantly realizing she just admitted to turning a deaf ear on him when he talks.
But this was Benji. And she found that she didn't really care even if he did pick up on it.
"Oh baby you're always all about work work work, let's live a little! I'll fix us up a bowl of jellies, because Bocelli, right?" he guffawed at his god awful joke and made to leave for the kitchen island.
Emily didn't react as her mind was still hung up on that one word, the name, because no, she cannot, and will not conjure the image of brown doe eyes, almost always shining with a slight sheen akin to holding in unshed tears because that is just how her eyes are when she looks at you attentively like you are-
No no no no no no no.
Get out of my head.
She wills herself to erase the picture of those eyes floating in her mind the same moment she turns to grab Benji's arm as he stood. She swivels him around with a panicked urgency she's usually able to conceal because she cannot eradicate the forming memory of her eyes the time she looked up at her, twenty years ago, seated at her second assistant desk while Emily stood, impatiently explaining the benefit's guest list to her.
Emily is spiraling and she needs to ground herself fast.
Pandora's box shall not be unsealed.
"Ooh dear, yes what is it?" He all but giggles childishly, clearly excited at the prospect of Emily latching onto him with an iron-like grip because in his opinion, this means she's equally obsessed with him as he is with her, so delightful.
"Look at me."
Benji complies, still giggly and overjoyed, and looks into Emily's piercing gaze. Her eyes travel from his scruffy eyebrows, down to his left eye, then the right, and she continues the cycle of flitting in between them, analyzing the shape of his eyes, hooded and prominent brow bone, her mind supplies, the colour, not that shade of brown, I'm looking at hazel here, to the length of his eyelashes, rather long, but no, until he blinks flirtatiously at her. Reverie broken, she takes in the whole of his face: his thin and cracked lips from the water-diet even she found foolish and that disgusting, unkempt growth of hair patches he maintains as a beard. A masculine trait. Also very Benji Barnes.
Definitely not dewy, and not hers.
This is safe.
This is stable.
This is what Emily should need.
She forces a chuckle at his antics and pouts her lips a little, an indication that Benji do the same so she wouldn't have his atrocious hair-growth scratching and tainting her delicate skin with crumbs and god-forbid germs from this morning's breakfast when they kiss. He sticks them out and Emily manages a quick peck before pulling away and patting his cheek like she would her children.
"Go get the gummies, darling."
Those dangerous doe eyes have vanished and all is well with Emily Charlton because she is currently dating Benji Barnes, richest man in the world, and she is present with him, at his new villa in Milan for fuck's sake.
She chose Benji.
He is everything she is not.
This was months before those eyes, 'more tired, but still those bloody haunting pair of eyes,' Emily thought, materialized in front of her at the Dior building down on 57th Street during the meeting with Runway.
Emily's locked onto hers, past Miranda and Nigel's frames, and said eyes crinkled at her in return.
"Hi Emily."
She is everything and more.