Work Text:
Cordy walked into her office that morning armed with the new script and a cup of white-chocolate chai. She was trying this new ‘no coffee’ thing, but without caffeine in the morning she was a bit of a monster so her assistant had explained the concept of tea to her. It was working…ish.
The whiteboard with today’s schedule clearly marked on it in Veronica’s neat handwriting said that she was only five minutes late for the read-through. She waved hello to Patrick and Peter making out in the hallway and was giggling to herself when she ducked through the doors of the conference room.
Read-throughs meant pastries and free caffeine, which is why Cordy always made sure they were scheduled for Monday mornings. It meant there was always some last-minute flurries of emails with edited scripts being passed around on the weekends – but in the last couple of years she’d learned that writers were more inspired if they got out of their stuffy offices. That three in the afternoon on a Sunday edit took that writer away from their family for a few minutes, but it also meant more creative and interesting writing. Which was her bottom line.
Cordy didn’t notice a new voice through the chorus of good mornings that greeted her as she entered the office, but eventually she noticed it – a new person. The vibe in the room was off somehow. A rare sense of nerves permeated from one side of the office. She tried to casually sniff it out, but it didn’t become clear until the end of the read-through (which went fabulously) when everyone stood up to scurry off to their separate corners of the suite, leaving a clear view of Willow Rosenberg sitting sullenly at the opposite end of the room.
Cordy stood up and walked over, determined to get this awkwardness out of the way as soon as possible, “So, Willow. You’re a vampire now?”
Willow’s eyes flashed and she looked around her to see if anyone else heard.
Cordy plucked at the pink puffy sweater that was hanging off of thin shoulders over a black dress, fishnets, and knee-high combat boots. “You don’t have to hide behind that if you don’t want. And check in with Lydia in costumes – I think there’s a fridge down there with um… your special dietary needs.”
Willow eyed her suspiciously, “They hired me as a research assistant.”
Cordy flashed her best smile, “Well that’ll be perfect for you! So great to have you on the team! We should catch up over drinks later, I know this great bar – you’ll love it.”
On her way out the door to a conference call with the studio, Cordy threw over her shoulder, “Don’t eat anyone on your first day, it’s such a mess of paperwork! And come see me if you have any questions.”
Leaving vampire-Willow sitting alone in a conference room looking confused… or blood-ragey. Cordy didn’t really know how to read these things all that well.
In her office, Cordy sent out an email to Lydia about the new vampire in the research department. And then sent a follow-up explaining that they went to the same high school.
Lydia’s response is instantaneous and charming.
Which isn’t the only reason why Cordy keeps Lydia on payroll, but it is definitely a perk.
In the beginning, Cordy had a very strong anti-vampire hiring policy. She was from Sunnydale after all and didn’t want a bunch of deaths gumming up the works of her new sitcom. And then Lydia slipped through the cracks and ended up getting the sitcom a Grammy nomination for costumes on their 1850’s time travel episode (which Cordy was initially very skeptical of, but the studio said it was either that or a musical and there was no way in hell she could pull that off). Turns out, Lydia was a seamstress in the 1850’s and since she really just needed a job and promised not to kill anyone, Cordy let her stay. They even started getting drinks together on nights when Cordy was available or didn’t want to be available.
Lydia was an awesome beard for when Cordy wanted to be seen, but not seen. (And wasn’t a bad lay, either.)
(And if most of Hollywood had figured out that Cordelia Chase preferred the nightly attentions of vampire females regardless of her very public relationships with various high-powered or up-and-coming men in the circuit, well… that was something the gossip columnists had decided to keep to themselves.)
Mondays were always the most hectic days of the week. Cordelia’s policy being that if Monday was hard, everything else just looked up for the rest of the week; which is why all the most annoying meetings and aggravating tasks were pushed to Monday. Wednesdays there was always a catered lunch from a new restaurant in town just looking for some free publicity. (Yes, there were always enough new restaurants for this to work. This was LA.)
She also always tried to plan her public nighttime outings for Monday night.
No one else went out on Monday night, the novelty alone making sure that she and her manager’s chosen date for the week were definitely seenby all the right people. It would be the only gossip for the week and usually supplanted any weekend news.
Unless of course a drummer got drunk and started a fight in the middle of the week. It was always the drummer and they always seemed to fall off the wagons just before the weekend.
So when she was breezing through the office at seven that evening – exhausted from a day of meetings and shootings and a minor incident with a gopher in the staff room – wearing one of Lydia’s new creations (Cordy never let anyone else design for her anymore) and a pair of ridiculously tall heels, and saw Willow skulking in the hallway she nearly just walked past.
Except that if her old high school ‘friend’ and newly-vampire decided to eat someone, there’d be hell to pay in the morning and she liked all the messes for the week cleaned up by the end of Monday.
There was no way she was going to start out a Tuesday morning with a dead body.
“What are you doing, Willow? It’s late – you should go home.”
Willow shrugged, her eyes gleaming slightly yellow in the dim light.
Cordy sighed and looked at her watch. She had maybe thirty minutes to kill before her lateness was deemed an insult to Mr. Model-or-whatever waiting for her at the new Italian place downtown.
“Do you have a home, Will?”
“I have an apartment,” Willow seemed more insulted than nervous now and Cordelia was sure that she didn’t have enough time for an insulted vampire right now.
“Okay so then mind explaining to me why you are lurking suspiciously in a dark hallway? I thought I made it perfectly clear that hunting at work was prohibited.”
“Well aren’t you just adorably reckless these days,” and Willow came inching out of the shadows, looking nothing like the nervous baby vampire in a pink sweater that she had been earlier that morning.
Cordy smiled brightly, “I’m so glad you’re already starting to feel like you can be yourself here, Will.”
Will was looking at her like she would be extremely biteable (which, to be fair, Lydia had teasingly said to her as she left the office just a few minutes ago – and in Lydia’s strapless pale pink corset and sheer skirt – it was undoubtedly true) and Cordy really didn’t have time for that, so she did the only thing she could think of to deflect.
She made the situation worse.
“So how’s Xander? He know you’re a vampire?”
Willow waved her hand, “Oh I don’t know,” inching her way closer to Cordelia.
“Oh. Well. Maybe we should call him? Get the whole gang back together.”
Willow rolled her eyes and Cordy was suddenly struck with the thought that this Willow was not anything like the Willow she had known in high school.
“You know what I’ve always wondered,” Cordelia mused – not even meaning to say it out loud.
“Hmm?” Willow purred, her mouth now inches from Cordelia’s exposed neck.
“What you taste like.”
She walked into the restaurant only forty-five minutes late, giggling about a work fiasco that just had to be taken care of. Mr Model-or-whatever just smiled and held out her chair as though he hadn’t been waiting in an upscale place for her for nearly an hour while paparazzi and other celebrities watched him curiously, taking bets on whether he’d just leave or keep waiting.
At some point – probably over dessert which is when she finally stopped talking long enough to let him get a word in edgewise – he said, “That’s a cute little scarf.”
Cordy reached up and played with the strip of black fabric she had torn off the edge of Willow’s skirt and wrapped around her neck before dashing off to her waiting car and smiled.