“So,” Jin starts as she steps into Andy’s office, twisting her fingers in front of herself, more anxious than Andy has ever seen. “Remember how Miranda decided that we need more young people interested in Runway?”

Andy doesn’t look up from her laptop’s screen, humming something that, if you are generous with the interpretation, can resemble a confirmation.

Jin clicks her tongue. “Yeah, so. She gave us a free rein regarding how do do it, desperate times call for desperate measures, or whatever.”

The sentence in front of Andy’s eyes isn’t making sense. Some word is off, or maybe the structure itself, or—whatever it is, it’s way more important than what Jin is saying, in that very moment. Andy has her priorities straight, and the July issue is very high up on the list.

“So, I made a TikTok where I promised that if we gather a million likes, we’ll do whatever the top comment says, and they voted for you and Miranda to spend the day handcuffed together.”

The last part of the sentence gets said with such a speed that it takes a moment for the words to properly register—but when they do, ice spreads through Andy’s veins, followed by some suspicious warmth blooming in the depths of her stomach. Handcuffed. To Miranda.

She looks up slowly, meeting Jin’s gaze. “Come again?”

Jin twists her hands in front of herself as she licks her lips and repeats what she said, and Andy realises that she, in fact, didn’t hallucinate these words out of thin air—which is good in one sense, and very bad in others, particularly for her sanity, if Miranda follows through with the idea.

“You want me to be handcuffed with Miranda for a whole day,” Andy says at last. Her mouth is dry, out of a sudden, and so are her lips; it takes a staggering amount of effort not to lick them, not to make her thoughts about the idea more obvious.

Jin nods enthusiastically, though her face is set into something between trying very hard not to laugh too hard and not to cry. Andy can understand it.

“And record that on TikTok,” Jin adds, biting her lip. “Look, it wasn’t—it wasn’t you and Miranda, the top comment wanted two random people, the second one was begging that whatever we were doing, they wanted Miranda there, and then we made another TikTok asking who—who’d go with Miranda, and then you got voted. But it’s primarily about Miranda. Not you.”

Andy exhales slowly, massaging the bridge of her nose. “So it’s better because it’s about Miranda and not me?”

“No! No, of course not, it’s just—will you do it?” Jin asks miserably.

Andy gives her a long, considering look, pushing down the laughter that threatens to bubble up on her lips at the absurdity of the situation as a whole. “If you convince Miranda to go with this farce, I don’t see why not,” she says at last, already seeing it in her mind’s eye. No matter how fun the idea is, there’s no way Miranda is going to agree. Which, however disappointing, is the better outcome for Andy’s sanity.

Miranda agrees.

It makes sense for her to agree, really, when Andy thinks deeper about this. If there’s anything Miranda cares about, it’s Runway; she’d do anything to keep it afloat, especially now, after cementing her position. What doesn’t make sense is for the agreement—and with it, the whole thing—to happen out of the blue on a day when Andy is running on way too much coffee to behave normally.

Naturally, then, when Jin pulls her to Miranda’s office at eight in the morning, sets up the phone on the tripod, starts the recording, and handcuffs them, Andy breaks into a fit of uncontrollable giggles.

They have to try four times before they get something that Jin accepts (with a click of her tongue still, her face twisted in displeasure, though she smooths it out when she catches Miranda’s gaze), though even then Andy is having troubles with controlling her laughter. In contrast to Miranda, who just stares at her, unimpressed, and if it weren’t for the way a corner of her lips twitches when she thinks no one is looking, Andy would be convinced Miranda is hating it all.

“You know this ruins the workflow of the entire day,” Miranda says quietly when Jin finally leaves, with a wave and a promise to be back in an hour to record an update.

“You know this is hilarious,” Andy counters, pulling slightly on their joined hands to annoy her, too giddy to think better about it. “It’d be easier if we were holding hands, too.”

Miranda’s nose wrinkles. “I’m not holding hands with you,” she protests, which only makes Andy sigh theatrically, rolling her eyes.

“We both know where this is going, so we can as well cut the chase. You like me, I like you, so stop with the act and enjoy.”

Miranda looks at her from under her lashes, eyes darkening. “I don’t like you.”

Andy snorts, which then turns into another fit of giggles, strong enough that she’s wheezing, pulling on Miranda’s hand as she wraps her hand around her body to calm down. Definitely too much coffee.

“Sit down,” Miranda says at last, when Andy’s breathing is back to normal and her stomach almost stopped hurting from laughing. “You do your work, I do mine, Jin is pleased, everyone is happy, and then we can act like nothing happened.”

“Except that there will be recordings,” Andy points out, her voice shaking with how hard she’s trying not to laugh again.

“Sit. Down.”

Andy obediently sits down.

“You’re loud,” Miranda notices mere fifteen minutes in. Andy does her best not to look up from her screen, though it’s hard when everything seems set on distracting her: the warmth of Miranda’s body, the awareness of her moving her hand, the glass door through which Amari definitely isn’t looking in on accident.

“I am literally silent,” Andy replies sweetly. “Well, until now, because now we’re talking—”

“Your typing is not.”

“Oh, because I can control the volume of the keys, right?” Andy asks, rolling her eyes. “Look, it’s hard enough that I have to type with my left hand only. You could at least try not to make it harder for me.”

Miranda clicks her tongue. “You are loud,” she repeats, irritation bleeding into her tone. “For the love of God, just don’t hit the keyboard like it personally offended you, and we’ll be fine.”

Andy looks up, praying for patience, and goes back to typing without gracing Miranda with an answer.

Jin comes to record them half an hour later, leaves with a wide grin, and then is back in the next hour. The first time, she asks questions. The second, she seems determined to get candids of them on the camera, sitting down on the couch and smiling sweetly, and while Miranda seems determined to not give her this satisfaction, Andy doesn’t have as much experience with controlling herself. Especially when Jin informs them that her only job for the day is getting the TikTok done, and so they can get comfortable with her being there. She has all the time in the world.

And, well. Jin might have patience. Andy does not.

“Do you think you could stop having so many people here?” Andy finally snaps after the third people leaves Miranda’s office, casting a careful glance back at them before disappearing. Miranda kept their cuffed hands under the table through every meeting of hers, though it did nothing to hide the blush spreading across Andy’s cheeks whenever she thought about how close to Miranda she sat. Handcuffed.

Her cheeks are burning again.

“It’s my office,” Miranda drawls, “in which you are a guest, and while your job can be done wherever and alone, I have to meet with people, even now.”

“Couldn’t you—not today?” Andy asks sweetly, deliberately ignoring Jin who is giving her thumbs-ups from behind the camera. “It’s distracting.”

Miranda turns her head to look at Andy directly. “You know what? You’re right. You’re completely right,” she decides slowly. “Amari!”

Amari enters the office almost immediately, casting a curious glance at Jin, and then focusing her attention on Miranda. “Yes, Miranda?”

“Tell Nigel he no longer needs to replace me during that meeting at one. I’ll go.”

The relief filling Andy’s body turns into ice in the span of a second, before Amari even has a chance to nod.

“What do you mean, you’ll go?” she asks weakly. She pulls on their joined hands to get Miranda’s attention. Miranda doesn’t look away from Amari, even as there are muffled giggles coming from Jin’s side.

“You’re right, Andrea” she repeats. “There’s no reason for me to accommodate my entire day for this… TikTok. If you don’t want the meetings to come to me to this office, I will come to the meetings. And since you’re cuffed with me, well.” She shrugs, almost as if she doesn’t care, though the corners of her eyes crinkle with amusement. “You had your chance to be quiet.”

The meeting room is silent when they enter. The only thing to contrast the atmosphere are the barely contained giggles coming from Jin’s side—ones that quickly get to Andy as well, making it very, very hard to stay focused on whatever the meeting is about.

She’s standing next to Miranda’s chair, because of course she is: there’s no free chair for her, and Andy can’t help but think that it’s intentional. This time, their cuffed hands are on full display: Andy blushing, Miranda fully composed, as if it is the most normal event of her life, Jin across the table, pressing a hand against her mouth with her phone pointed at them. Andy keeps all of her focus on standing straight and on not playing with her fingers, and on not laughing even more than she already did, and on ignoring the stares from all across the table.

But while she’s managing all that, she cannot stop switching her weight from one leg to another, over and over again, until Miranda lets out a short, exasperated exhale and stands up.

“Sit down,” she tells Andy, her tone identically cool as it was when they were alone in Miranda’s office.

Andy looks down at her chair, and then at Miranda, and then decides that as much as she’d love to protest, her legs hurt, and the chair looks very comfortable, and so it’d be a shame to pass on the occasion. She lowers herself into it; Miranda waits a moment, as if making sure that Andy won’t try to get up, and then sits down on the table, seemingly perfectly content to continue leading the meeting from there, and Andy does her best not to blush more with embarrassment.

Fails, but at least she tries.

The real problem happens when her physiological needs start to manifest.

“Jin,” she says quietly as the three of them step into Miranda’s office, Jin with her phone in hand still, currently zooming in at their joined hands. “I need to—bathroom.”

Jin looks at her, eyes bright with amusement. “Bathroom what?” she asks innocently. “I’m not stopping you from going anywhere.”

Andy lifts her hand; Miranda’s hand rise,s too, though Miranda herself looks away, embarrassed. Why only now, Andy has no clue. “We are cuffed.”

“So?”

“So, I’d like to go to the bathroom without Miranda accompanying me,” Andy replies, a tad sharper than intended. “Look, I know it’s supposed to be a full day, but could we maybe make an exception for this?”

Jin hums, considering. “We could,” she agrees after a moment. “If you kiss.”

Andy chokes on the air. “What?”

“Absolutely not,” Miranda protests at the same time, as Andy tries to get her breathing under control. “I will not be kissing my worker on camera for the whole world to see. No.”

Jin meets her gaze square-on, and Andy feels a sudden surge of pride with how she doesn’t seem afraid of Miranda anymore. “You kiss,” she counters, “however many seconds, that many minutes uncuffed. You did say you wanted the young audiences to get interested in Runway, and there’s no better way than this.”

“Kissing.”

“During a pride month,” Andy chimes in, fluttering her lashes at Miranda and putting on the face of innocence despite the way her insides are doing somersaults with just the mere possibility of her kissing Miranda. “Come on, it doesn’t mean anything, I’ll be quick, so it’s just a few seconds, and Jin is right, it was all your idea, so the least you can do is own it—”

“Andrea.”

“Unless you want to go to the bathroom with me?” Andrea offers, smiling sweetly. “Look, if that’s the case, just say so, I won’t—”

Miranda kisses her.

It’s better than Andy has ever dared to imagine, soft and sweet, and she immediately wants more, even knowing that it’s all fake. Miranda tastes like coffee, dark and intense, the scent of her perfume filling Andy’s senses until she’s dizzy with it.

When they finally pull away, it’s to Jin giggles filling the air as she stares at them, her eyes moving between Andy and Miranda’s faces, small sparks dancing in them.

“You have to kiss again,” she tells them innocently, nodding her head solemnly. “I wasn’t ready to record that.”

Andy snorts under her breath, only to look at Miranda and see just how grumpy she is, trying to cross arms across her chest despite the way her left one is still cuffed with Andy’s right.

“Jin,” Miranda says, her voice rough.

Jin only giggles. “You want a break?” she asks, raising her phone and pointing it at them. “I want a kiss.”

Miranda takes a long, exasperated exhale, and Andy half-prepares herself to witness Jin’s firing, right there and then.

But Miranda only reaches out to tangle her fingers in Andy’s hair and pulls her face close, and then she’s kissing her again, more greedily, pulling Andy’s head back for better access with firmness that belies the sweetness of her taste. Andy is not proud with the sound she makes then, one that Miranda immediately swallows down, licking the remains of it from Andy’s lips, and them biting Andy’s lower lip, coaxing another mortifying moan out of her.

Jin makes a muffled squeak, and when Andy opens her eyes to look at her—when has she closed them?—she’s faced with Jin blushing furiously, her phone directed at the ground now rather than at them.

Miranda gives Andy another kiss, just because. Not for any TikTok, not for the Runway, just for Andy. Just because she wants to.

“I hope Jin got the content she wanted,” she whispers against Andy’s lips, “but I think we should kiss again. Just to be sure.”