A Beautiful Friendship
PAIRING: Buffybot/Cordelia
RATING: PG-13
FEEDBACK: Very welcome, to [email protected]
BETA: Miss Murchison, with thanks
SETTING: Angel, Season 4
DISCLAIMER: I’m borrowing these characters, and I promise to put them all back in good condition, and only slightly used - oh, except for the Buffybot, I'm keeping her.
“Hi there!”
Cordelia stared. Why was Buffy standing on her doorstep, with a suitcase in her hand, and why was she grinning like an idiot? She closed her eyes briefly. This was all she needed right now. She’d just spent 48 hours straight with the guys at the Hyperion, tracking down a cabal of baby eating demons. They’d sorted it in the end, but she’d come home with sprays of red gunk on her clothes, a collection of new bruises on her shoulder and back, and a thundering brain-melting headache.
“I guess you’d better come in,” she said unenthusiastically. She stepped back, and let Buffy enter, trying to push down the little voice which told her that after repeated demon incursions, the apartment was a dump, that everything she'd bought to replace the good furniture as it had been broken was second-hand junk, and that Buffy was going to pity her for it. Dammit, Cordelia, she said to herself, you save lives! Babies' lives! That makes up for the lack of a fresh coat in the new shades from Para paint and a closet full of Prada and Manolo Blahnicks, right? Right?
But Buffy didn’t seem to be noticing the furnishings - not even the scruffy, slightly worn carpet, or the light-faded curtains. Instead she had run straight to the handy scimitar-bladed throwing axe, that Cordelia nowadays kept conveniently to hand on her chest of drawers.
“Oooh! This is really pretty,” said Buffy, running an admiring finger along the flat of the blade. “I never saw one that shape before.” She turned and beamed at Cordelia. “I’ve got six axes, and I can use two of them at once, though if I twirl them together, I sometimes cut my ear off.”
Cordelia blinked. It seemed like Buffy had maybe taken a blow on the head recently. She pressed a hand to her own aching head. Well, it couldn’t feel worse than hers.
“Would you like some coffee?” she said, feeling her way. “We could maybe sit down, and you could explain why you’re in LA, and why you’re not hanging with Angel.” Instead of hassling me.
Buffy’s eyes grew round. “Didn’t you get Willow’s message?” Buffy’s and Cordelia’s eyes both moved together to the answering machine, blinking on the sideboard next to the axe.
Cordelia pressed the message button, winced at the beep, and then they both heard Willow’s clear light voice, “Hey Cordy, how ya doin’? Still with the vision having and the evil fighting? Anyway ...” Willow coughed, sounding a bit self conscious, “... I sent you a present. She cleans, she cooks, she fights, she Slays - and she gives a great neck massage, if you’re still having all that headache trouble. I finally got her fixed up yesterday, but she’s freaking Buffy out right now, so it might be better for her to be fighting evil somewhere else for a while ....”
Willow’s voice rambled on, as Cordelia stared across her visitor with a growing sense of disbelief. Buffy’s chest had puffed out with pride as she listened to Willow’s message, and she was nodding intently at every word. It couldn’t be... she had heard about the Buffybot of course, but surely she couldn’t look this much like the real thing?
Buffybot felt Cordelia’s eyes on her, and smiled, and tapped her little suitcase. “And I come with my own battery charger, a wrench and socket set, and a spare set of eyeballs,” she said proudly.
Okay, so she could look this much like the real thing. Cordelia stared some more at her ‘present’. What the hell was she going to do with a Buffybot?
..........
Buffybot stepped back to assess the effect of her work. “Too heavy on the eye shadow, maybe?” she asked, her head tilting to one side.
Cordelia leaned back with a pampered sigh, and looked in the mirror. Willow's present had been a huge success. The Bot had about as much sense as a newborn lamb, of course, and she could get into an amazing amount of trouble just buying a pint of milk in the corner grocery store, never mind on the occasions they went demon hunting - but all in all, she made a bouncy, friendly, humble sidekick, and Cordelia was happy to have her. Excellent at massage as advertised, and an eager cook and apartment cleaner. And when it came to make-overs, well ... Dennis was a sweetie, but he couldn’t help her with the more girly aspects of grooming and care. Buffybot, on the other hand, had proved remarkably adept and eager to learn about all aspects of moisturising, make-up, manicure, pedicure, general skin care, eyebrow plucking and the thousand other elements of the female art. And she never grew bored, or suggested that staring at yourself in a mirror for several hours straight was uncalled for when there were so many demons out there to slay, as certain unfeeling men were wont to do.
All in all, now that Cordy couldn’t afford a trip to the beauty salon more than about once a month - once a month was the absolute minimum needed for her to respect herself, and she’d sell her crappy furniture before she gave that up - Buffybot was an absolute godsend.
On this particular occasion, however, the make-over was not simply for purposes of morale. Cordelia and Buffybot were going to an audition. Well, they were also searching for a soul eating werebeast, but right now Cordelia was concentrating on the audition aspect. She’d pretty much given up on the whole acting thing, what with the whole demon culling thing, but she liked to keep her hand in.
“I think not, Buff,” she said after a considered pause. “It’s dramatic, but not over-dramatic.” Then she frowned, “but maybe it isn’t wholesome enough for a tooth whitening commercial. I’m not sure.” She tilted her head and lowered her lashes, and the eyeshadow loomed dramatically. She straightened up and bared her teeth in a dazzlingly white smile. The eyeshadow retreated to the background. Buffybot smiled back at her in the mirror. They both looked like a living advertisement for fluoride and healthy living.
"You look super wholesome," Buffybot said encouragingly. "And your teeth are very white and shiny."
Cordelia nodded, satisfied. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road.”
.............
Cordelia was seething with fury. How the hell could they prefer Buffybot - a robot, mind you - to her?
She'd turned up at the audition, script in hand, with Buffybot tagging along as her assistant and carrying her travelling make-up case, ready to remove any stray hairs from her dress, or repair any tiny flaws in her makeup, as required. And they'd taken one look at the pint-sized bubbly fathead, and before you could say 'All About Eve' Buffybot was grinning at a camera, flashing her perfect white teeth and injecting indecent amounts of sincerity and enthusiasm into the slogan, "From yellow blight to pearly bright - in 14 days, or less!"
Cordelia stood, little make-up case in hand, and resisted a powerful urge to bang her perfectly coiffed head against the nearest wall. Much better to bang Karl the Commercials Director's head against the wall, she thought. Karl with his balding hair tied back in a pony tail, his Armani suit, his Niobe sunglasses, the personal assistant hanging on his every word, and probably a Porsche parked outside to drive him to his beautiful hillside apartment each evening. Cordelia ground her lovely white teeth. Name a guy Karl and suddenly he thinks he's Lagerfeld. When in reality he was the soul of Walmart. Getting rich on teeth whitening commercials! She thought of her own bank balance, and groaned. Why the hell didn't helping the helpless actually pay?
Then she took a deep breath. Cordelia Chase had weathered greater setbacks than this, and still come through flags flying. And she had a new asset, one she could never have anticipated. A small blonde, chirpy asset. She took a firmer grip on the make-up case, and strode towards the dressing room into which Buffybot had disappeared some time ago - quite a long time ago now she thought about it - in the clutches of Karl. She had a plan
Karl's pencil-thin flunky was there guarding the door, and looking shifty. But since Commercials Directors' flunkies always look shifty, Cordelia paid him very little mind. He tried some pathetic excuse to bar her entry, of course, even going so far as to stretch a weedy arm across the door in front of her. But Cordelia had experience in barging her way past far more impressive specimens than him. She put her shoulder down, bunched her make-up case in front of her like a weapon, and knocked him aside with ease.
Buffybot was pressed up against the wall of the dressing room, with Karl's knee between her thighs and his hand in her blouse. He was spouting some bullshit about her teen appeal, and his contacts in the film industry, and how they could be going places together. Cordelia lifted an eyebrow. How cliché. She swung her makeup case in a long arc, and connected with Karl's pony-tailed head. He yelped, and released Buffybot.
"Cordy!" Buffybot ran up, and threw her arms around her. Cordelia hugged her back, planning her next move.
"That man tried to have sex with me." Buffybot pointed an accusing finger at Karl, who had straightened, and was adjusting his fly. "I asked him not to, but he didn't listen. And breaking his kneecaps would have been wrong." Buffybot paused a moment. "Though I think he deserved it."
Cordy patted her back absently. "Don't worry, Buff - if kneecapping is needed, I'll do the job."
She glared at Karl, who was trying to fix a sneer on his lips, but looking a bit nervous all the same. She had settled on her rôle. A year back, she'd played Elizabeth Bathory in a truly dreadful play off the Strip, bathing in the blood of virgins nightly, and twice on Saturdays and Wednesdays. She'd sat naked in a vat of tepid red-dyed cornflour solution every night, and it had got everywhere, and played havoc with her skin. She drew on the fury she'd experienced when she had found cornflour stains on her very last wearable Prada dress, and fed that into her current part. Her glare took on the intensity of a laser beam, and Karl flinched back.
"Let's get something straight," said Cordelia, busily projecting menace and insanity. "Buffy here is my girlfriend, and you will keep your sweaty young-girl-molesting paws away from her - or I'll cut them off. And any other part of you that might come in contact with her." She looked pointedly at Karl's fly, then she tightened her arm around Buffybot's shoulders, and leant down to give her a possessive kiss. Buffybot kissed her back enthusiastically, with tongue. Karl's eyes glazed over.
After a long moment, Cordelia pulled away. "On the other hand," she added rather breathlessly, dragging Karl back from his happy place, "you will phone all those contacts you were taking about - unless you want a sexual harassment suit slapped on your ass. And you'll be glad you did. Because as her manager, I can tell you this kid's got a great career ahead of her."
Buffybot beamed, as Cordelia patted her shoulder, and continued. "She may be no genius, and she has about as much common sense as those guys on Jackass; but she's blonde and pretty and sweet and wholesome, and she's as peppy as a puppy that's taken a course in peppiness. Really, for this industry, she's just about perfect." Cordelia put a gentle hand on Buffybot's cheek, and turned her to face the dressing room mirror. Buffybot caught sight of herself, and her face immediately split into a huge dazzling smile. Cordelia met Karl's gaze across the top of Buffybot's head. "Let's face it. This gal is going places." She took a deep breath, and squeezed Buffybot. Buffybot squeezed her back, gazing up at her admiringly.
"You know, Buff," Cordelia said, "I think this may be the start of a beautiful friendship."
The End
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