Things Forgotten

[madimpossibledreamer]

….okay legit what are these willow/cordy feels doing here what

Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/SMT Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha (Casts Shadows)
Summary: Willow has a crisis, and Cordy maybe helps.
Word Count: 1888
Rating: Teen

 

         “What’s got you all mopey? You got what you wanted.” Cordy’s one of the last people Willow wants to hear right now, but then, apparently she’s completely fine with hanging out in the kitchen rather than going in to the relative safety of the living room. Maybe she’s just more comfortable pretending that she’s not actually relying on them for anything right now, or being seen in the company of most of the people in there.
         “Commence the mocking,” she spits back, sick of it. Sick of all of this. Buffy had convinced her it’d been a good idea, but obviously it wasn’t working out any better than anything else she’d tried.
         “I’m pretty sure the pirate that found me was going to have his way with me and then leave me for dead,” Cordy states bluntly, and—yikes.
         Just like everything else she says, that’s not the kind of thing you just go and say out loud.
         “...Why are you telling me?” It’s not like the Queen C to be vulnerable and give out blackmail material.
         She shrugs. “Not that it’s going to last, but I gave my oath back there. I might be a little in shock.” Because she hadn’t believed in the supernatural, and now she’s been in danger and gotten absolute proof it’s real. “Everything will be normal again tomorrow, but there’s a truce now.”
         And for the first time, Willow’s forced to grudgingly consider that Cordy actually might be decently good at this social stuff, rather than just having lucked into it through being rich or whatever, because she knows there’s no way Willow would believe her from just a normal promise, so she just goes and hands over a juicy secret. It’d be easy to think that Cordy’s stuck up enough not to even think she might be a target, but that can’t be it, either. More than anything, she has to know how precarious all this is, how hard you have to fight for status. There’s no magical immunity from the viciousness that is high school drama. Gossip is the juiciest about the ones with the farthest to fall. “How’d you know?”
         “What, the whole school uniform schtick? Please. Kind of a giveaway, Rosenberg. That’s not the kind of ‘uniform’ most girls think about.” Cordy pulls out a chair and slowly sits, and after questioning what the hell she thinks she’s doing, Willow joins her. Sitting is weird, but then, doing anything as a ghost is weird.
         “I just…” Trying not to cry is a lot harder when Cordelia Chase of all people is looking sympathetic.
         “The pretty demons are a problem, huh.” And sounding sympathetic, too.
         She puts her head in her hands and startles slightly when there’s a comforting hand on her arm all of a sudden, too, even if it’s a little weird because hey, ghost. Because she doesn’t want to say the worst thoughts out loud, the ones that crawled out of a swamp somewhere inside her she didn’t know she had, because she’s jealous, sure. Jealous they’re so pretty, jealous that he’s falling in love with demons again and not her. But there’s a certain ugly part of her that actually kind of wanted to watch.
         She’d kind of taken it out on him, lashed out in the hopes of humiliating him, but watching him watch Nix fondly, with a blush, had put thoughts in her head, too, about the demon gently, reverently, with a steady stream of praise and endearments and reassurances, holding Xander down and having his way with him as Xander begged. Of Encantado’s flipper changing into a very pretty set of legs and pulling her dress up to ride him hard until he screamed. Xander, helpless and vulnerable and at the tender mercies of demons, and she wouldn’t lift a finger to help even if he wanted it.
         They’re Bad Thoughts, Thoughts of the Bad, and now that they’re here they won’t go away. And the thing is, ugh, they’re both really pretty and she wouldn’t mind if they turned their attention on her next, either. Or maybe at the same time. She’s never noticed another woman like this, and maybe the excuse is just that they’re demons and that’s how demonic seductiony stuff works but she can barely think.
         And it’s even more unfair because Xander was affected, obviously, but the instant stuff started happening and he had to be ready for it, he just was. And yeah, okay, maybe some of this is magical cheating, because he acts like he’s been working with the two of them for a while so maybe he’s gotten used to it, but still.
         “I didn’t get the power to read minds, or whatever,” Cordy’s voice interrupts her thoughts as she’s just rubbing reassuring circles on Willow’s arm, which could be a Bad Touch, too, except it’s just reassurance and she needs to get a grip. “So you gotta use your words. I know you’ve even got a bunch of them.”
         “I don’t want to.” It comes out surly and childish and more than anything else other than stopping thinking about any of this, Willow wants to take them back.
         Cordy sits back, taking her hand with her, and Willow feels somehow more cold. She starts on one of the chocolate bars. “If you had thoughts that led to an orgy, maybe, I’m pretty sure you’re not the only one. With the way Xander was blushing he’d thought about it.”
         Willow muffles her scream in the table, and Cordy waves off the Wonder Woman that comes to check and make sure no one’s getting murdered. “I knew it, you are one hundred percent evil, what is wrong with you putting stuff like that in my brain?” Maybe she should just merge into the table. She can do that. She’s a ghost now. All those thoughts about the ground swallowing her? Those are no longer fantasies.
         Cordy rolls her eyes, and yeah, it’s all just a lie that Queen C was doing anything other than feigning sympathy. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting.”
         ...Huh? Willow glances up and stops phasing into the table.
         “Puh-lease, you think I don’t get horny? Newsflash, honey: liking sex, masturbation, whatever, that’s all perfectly natural. I mean, I don’t get why Xander of all people, but I guess everybody’s got to have someone who thinks they’re hot. And on a completely different note I guess Buffy wasn’t being a pathetic loser trying to call dibs on a man by calling him a vampire, given all this,” she waves at the door, and yeah, that’s good enough to break through practically everyone’s Sunnydale Syndrome field of not noticing things, although it’s hard to tell if that’ll last, “...so you know at least one other person who wants to make out with a demon when it’s not complete Weirdville.”
         Things have gone really, really wrong if Cordelia is sounding utterly reasonable. Wronger than usual. So why does this make her feel a little better?
         Willow floats back out of the table and chair and sits as normally as she can, trying to figure out how to word her next question. “So, um. You didn’t feel weird about looking at Encantado and thinking ‘she’s attractive’?” Not that it’d make her feel that much better if she did, given that having something in common with Cordy might not exactly make her feel happy, but at least she’d be less alone in her weirdness.
         “I mean, duh. I don’t think like that about Aura or Harm or my other groupies, so I figure it’s the Demon Exception, trademarked, or whatever. I bet she knows what she’s doing, though. And the worst thing, the absolute worst, is that I can’t ask her for tips on how she gets her boobs so perky or so slim because she’s a demon. That’s pretty much cheating!” Unlike most of the Cordy Rants, which are like nails on a chalkboard, the absurdity just hits Willow and she can’t help but laugh. And if she’s not hallucinating (which, let’s face it, by this point that’s completely up in the air) she thinks she sees a self-satisfied smile on Cordy’s face, just a very quick one like she’s trying to hide it.
         “It’s when it comes to acting on it with other people that there’s issues, like pregnancy or whatever. That’s when you gotta make decisions about if it’s worth it. ‘Course, it’s easier for you—sure, people care what you do, but it’s not like you’re under a spotlight.”
         Tell that to Jennifer, Willow thinks uncharitably—in fact, she’s pretty sure Cordy had been in on that. She hadn’t been too popular before, but then after people just would not shut up until she’d just dropped out of school entirely.
         “No matter where you are, it sucks. We all make sacrifices,” the ‘Queen’ adds on, like she’s aware she’s being judged, and under normal circumstances Willow would just dismiss that as a justification she’s using to be a terrible person, but right now, she can’t. Taking it at face value, she’s just saying that she’s picked the option that she thinks sucks the least. Which, she’s wrong, Willow’s pretty sure, but. She can see why someone would come to that conclusion.
         That still doesn’t make her a good person for being a bully. But it’s understandable at least.
         “So I shouldn’t feel guilty about fantasies.” She still feels weird about this, mostly about taking advice from Cordelia of all people, but she’ll take it.
         “Well, I’m pretty sure, like, at least thirty people wish me dead every day. I’m not dead, and we’re not arresting them all for being murderers,” Cordy reasons, taking yet another chocolate bar (Willow’s surprised she’d deign to eat peasant chocolate, rather than, like, hideously imported chocolate from Europe or something).
         “I wanted him to be a little more serious, and, I mean, he is. And it is still him, underneath, and he knows me, but not the way I want him to, and he’s all cool and a hero and he looks good in the uniform but he doesn’t need me and I don’t even know which I prefer or if I even ever really liked him, y’know, like that.” The words flood out of her, and it takes Cordy a minute to follow along and catch up. And then she shrugs.
         “A shrug doesn’t help me,” Willow tells her, and this time, deliberately, Cordy shrugs again.
         “Look, I don’t know the answers to your questions and I could not be paid to care. You’re the one that needs to figure all that out.” Her usual blunt, harsh words, yeah, but also, that’s fair enough, because if she’s confused then how is anyone else supposed to know? She doesn’t have to rush it. Aside from maybe any questions or interrogations after they fix all this about secret admirers, but it wouldn’t be right to just force Xander to put up with her being all confusing and maybe hurting him in the process. Because, thinking about it, he is kinda sensitive, isn’t he?
         And then there’s another knock on the kitchen door, and they both freeze for a moment before Cordy calls out in the most obnoxious tone she can, “Password?”
         The helpless giggles catch Willow entirely by surprise.