__C Is For Cordy__
By Ann E Berry
-- "'C' is for 'Cordy', covered in clay..."
Cordelia Chase steeled herself and dipped her hand down
into the bucket of cool, gooshy clay. She drew out a dripping
handful of it, made yet another face, then slapped it on her
bare thigh. She stared down at the clinging glob for a
moment, then smooshed the blob flat and spread it out, down
her leg to the knee, under and behind to the pit of her knee.
"The things," she muttered to herself as she scooped up
another handful of the muck, "I do for my -- euww -- Art."
She pulled back the side of her bikini panties to work the
clay up her hip. "Bleah. Can't they make this stuff in coral
pink at least? Or copper? I could at least squint and pretend
it's a nice tan?" She slopped up more of the gunk and smeared
it across her rib cage, shivering as the clay sucked up her
body heat. Chunks of it spattered the drop cloth at her feet.
She gritted her teeth and stepped into it, gushing it between
her toes.
A knock sounded at the door to her apartment.
"Oh of course," Cordelia growled at the offending person
behind that knock, although he was a room away and behind a
well-constructed security door. "You couldn't have come ten
minutes ago. "A broken alarm clock has better timing than
you."
"Dennis!" she yelled into the living room, where the
television was blaring. "Stop watching 'Casper' cartoons and
go answer the door."
She scooped up another lump of guck and slobbered it
over one shoulder, listening to the clunk of the door that
announced her visitor's arrival. "Three o'clock, Wesley!" she
yelled. "I know it isn't three o'clock yet because Dennis
always switches to the 'Love Connection' at three. Don't just
stand there in the living room like you've lost your capacity
to make snarky remarks. I'm preparing for a role, all right?
Be useful for a change and do my back."
After a moment, fingers settled on her shoulders,
smearing the clay tentatively about.
Cordelia blew out a breath of impatience. "This isn't
remedial finger painting, Wesley. Just get it on there." She
grabbed his hand and turned around. The realization that her
visitor wasn't Wesley hit her a split second before they came
face to face. The hand was wider, more calloused than Wes's,
not to mention that Wesley didn't wear a ring.
"Oh!" Cordelia said in surprise, looking into his eyes.
"Hi, Giles. Gee, look at me, I'm a mess." She looked down at
her semi-mudcaked, bikini-clad body, torn between conflicting
impulses. "Okay, here's the deal, Giles. I've been cast as
Eliza Doolittle in 'Pygmalion'-- not the one where I'd sing,
but the artsy no-singing one -- and I'm getting into the role
now. It's called method acting. So if you're going to barge
in without warning, you're just going to have to deal with
the mess. Okay?" She looked at him challengingly.
"Hello, Cordelia," Giles said. "I apologize for
intruding. Should I --?"
"No, you shouldn't, because you've intruded now and
running away isn't going to change that, and besides I need a
second pair of hands and Phantom Dennis is no good with
clay."
She turned and lifted her ponytail. "All over me,
Giles."
After a moment, he bent to scoop up some of the wet clay
and began to smear it over her shoulders. "Pardon me for
asking," he said as he worked. "But I don't recall a mud
wrestling scene in 'Pygmalion'."
"God, Giles, I would have that you'd know the legend
behind the play. Especially that one. You can move below my
bra strap, you know."
His hands stilled, then he stooped to get some more
clay. "I do know the legend of Pygmalion, and I'm familiar
with the play as well, and nowhere does George Bernard Shaw
get this literal with it. Ignoring for the moment that the
original Pygmalion sculpted his statue from ivory. And what
do you mean, especially _that_ legend?"
"Tell that to my director," Cordelia grumbled. "He's a
real bitch, if men were allowed to be bitches. Not that I'm
arguing his artistic brilliance, since he cast me in the
role, which he says I was born to play. But there's these big
chunks of time where I'm supposed to _be_ a statue, so I've
got the get in a statuey frame of mind. Thus the clay. Under
the bra strap too, Giles."
He cleared his throat nervously. "Surely it's not
necessary -- What kind of clay is this, Cordelia?"
She turned to face him. "They had a special on quick
drying cement at the hardware store." He looked aghast. "Come
on, how dumb do you think I am? Don't answer that if you
can't be nice, Tact Guy."
Giles shut his mouth.
"It's theatrical mud." She turned around and lifted her
hair again. "I know this girl who's a professional mud
wrestler. She recommended it. Says it does wonders for her
pores -- we'll see about _that_ -- and it's also a great --"
she darted a look back at him, "-- lubricant."
Giles dropped the clay bucket.
"Watch it!" She righted the plastic pail before the muck
could spill out. "You know how much this disgusting stuff
cost me?"
"P-perhaps you could get Wesley or Angel to -- to --"
Cordelia studied him, then grinned. "No. That wouldn't
work. Neither of them are here right now, and you are. Stop
being such a wuss. It's just clay. What are you staring at?"
Giles blinked. "Uhm, you look just like a -- like a --"
She cocked her head. "Say it, big guy."
"-- a caramel apple," he finished.
Cordelia glared at him.
"It -- it's the color of the mud. And with your hair top
knotted like that, it looks like a stem," he back-pedalled
furiously. "And . . ."
"And?" she insisted. "Are you saying I'm round, Giles?"
His eyes dropped to her breasts, then shot to the
ceiling. "No, sorry, it is an absurd analogy. Do you think
Angel would be in the office if I . . ."
"No." Cordelia bent to get a dripping handful of clay.
"He's going to be in bed right now. Wake him up and get one
cranky vamp. And you don't want to see his bedroom hair. Uh,
not that I do. Not often! And only in the course of duty.
You know he isn't a morning person." She scowled. "You
diverted me. What else about me reminds you of a caramel
apple?"
"Sweet?" Giles tried.
She rolled her eyes. "Try again. You won't know a
moment's peace until you tell."
He sighed. "That is true. I was thinking that you look
delicious. Is that a sufficiently horrible enough prospect to
get you off this track?"
"Delicious?" Cordelia studied her own clay-caked body.
"That'll do," she said with a sudden dazzling smile. Giles
looked staggered. She turned her back to him again with a
vampish strut. "Get back to work, Rupert. Every sixteenth of
an inch of me."
"Oh lord," she heard him mutter, and she grinned again.
But his fingers were less hesitant now, and that was fine. He
had a good, solid touch, kneading the clay into her flesh
with an almost professional familiarity. She found herself
relaxing, flowing under his touch, pondered the possibilities
of getting him to give her a full massage. That led her brain
into other tactile fantasies, fueled by the sensation of his
hands working the calves of her leg.
She looked back and down at him. He was kneeling, like a
supplicant, his head bent over as he concentrated on getting
an even spread of clay all over her leg. His hands traced all
the subtle curves of her muscle, tracing the lines of the
ligaments, brushed through the fine hollows, dips and curves
of her ankles. Cordy felt a visceral thrill of what it must
be like to be cut and molded from actual clay, shaped up by
magical life-giving hands into something to be admired,
cherished, protected, and worshipped. She dropped one hand to
his head, so lightly that he didn't sense it.
A sudden wicked playfulness seized her then, and she
ducked to dip up some clay, and let it fall into his tousled
hair.
Giles looked up at her indignantly. He reached up to
brush the stuff from his hair, but only succeeded in smearing
it further in. "Is that my punishment for intruding?" He
tried to stand, but Cordy pushed him down.
"No. It's your reward," she said, and dribbled some more
clay down the back of his neck. "You know that my nickname to
the loser crowd at Sunnydale High -- which was by the way
just about everyone there -- was Queen C?"
Giles had pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and
was using it to try to get the clay out of his hair. "Dear,
dear," he said. "I wonder how you came by it?"
She rapped him hard with the side of her leg, and he
glared up at her. "Forget that," she said imperiously. "Do
the other leg."
"Perhaps plaster of paris would suit the occasion more?"
he suggested, still working unsuccessfully at the muck in his
hair. "White marble being the material of choice for the
classical tyrants of old."
Cordelia scooped up some more clay. Giles scooted away
from her. "I've got a good throwing arm," she said. "Come
back here. It's for your own good."
"My good?" he echoed.
"You're sitting there feeling like a dirty old man.
Well, we'll get you good and dirty and you'll stop feeling
that way," she insisted.
Giles considered that. "I must admit, it makes a horrid
kind of sense."
"There you go. Now come here and take your mud like a
man." She tossed the muck from one hand to the other.
He watched her for a moment, then shrugged his black
leather jacket off and set it well to one side.
"The shirt too," Cordelia insisted. "That's a nice
shirt. Cerulean blue looks good on you. Who's been doing your
shopping lately? You never had anything that nice, and Buffy
and Willow for sure don't have that kind of taste."
"It was a gift," he admitted as he unbuttoned the shirt.
Cordelia lifted an eyebrow at him. The fusty old librarian
wasn't putting up any kind of resistance to her imposed
striptease. Must be the pragmatic aspect of it, she decided,
and wondered, with a sly grin, how far she could get him to
go with it.
"Should I be worried?" Giles asked her.
She eyed him luxuriously, from his tousled head to bared
chest to jeans. "Oh yeah," she said. "Come here and finish
what you started. I'm getting cold."
He submerged his hands in the clay and came up with a
generous dripping mess of it, which he then slathered over
Cordy's right thigh, his fingers deftly molding it down her
leg. She couldn't stop herself: her flesh goose-pimpled in
the wake of his touch and she shivered. Giles paused to look
up at her, his fingers barely touching her at either side of
her knee.
Cordelia looked up at the ceiling. "Oh god," she
announced to it. Giles began to stand up, but she put an
imperious hand on his head. "Leave and get the whole bucket
of mud on your head."
He looked up at her again, then smiled. Cordelia had
never seen such a smile before, least of all on him. All
wicked and shy and knowing and unconsciously sensuous. She
swallowed. That smile went beyond games. Or could, it said.
Up to her to take it any way she wanted.
"To hell with it," Cordelia said out loud.
"What?" Giles said, frozen in the act of caressing her
leg.
She kneeled, so that she was nose to nose with him.
"It's been one of those years. You know the kind? You
wouldn't give it back, but damned if you don't need to stop
thinking about everything so much."
He stared at her. "I --" he began, then Cordelia shut
him up with a jaw-bending kiss.
Giles gave a little-boy whimper, then with a palpable
tremor of something falling away, he pulled Cordelia, squishy
clay and all, against him and returned the kiss.
Who could've guessed he could kiss like that? Mistress
of the Kiss Cordelia half-swooned, and Giles took advantage
of her moment of wobbled knees to pull her legs about him.
She threw her arms around him and toppled him backwards.
"Ow!" Giles protested, as his head hit her hardwood
floor (waxed cedar), rather harder than she'd intended.
"Sorry!" Cordelia said. "Don't be concussed, okay? We're
just getting started here, and that would suck, since I'm
going to need a hot shower later to get this gunk off."
"Cordy, I'll endeavor to hang onto consciousness for
your libido's sake," he said, rubbing at the back of his
head.
"Okay, sarcasm, that's good. Though I think maybe you
could be sarcastic in a coma." She pushed herself off of him
so she could look into his eyes. "You've got a fleck of brown
in there. Is that normal? Have your eyes always been this
green?"
He stared up at her in mock annoyance. "No. They only
turn green when I'm being straddled by a clay-covered, half-
clad Eliza Doolitle impersonator."
She slapped him hard on the chest. "And you're only
getting snarkier with age." She looked down at the warm,
solid flesh beneath her hands. "When did you get so buff?"
Giles reached up to take her wrists, but to Cordelia's
surprise, instead of disengaging her, he slid his hands up
her arms to the bend of her arm just inside the elbow,
resting the calloused warmth of his fingers upon her
hammering pulse there.
Their arms fit together nicely, like matching puzzle
pieces. Cordy eased herself down to test the overall fit. She
pressed full against him then, leisurely explored the
contours of his mouth inside and out, matching the curvatures
of tongue, hands mapping out those odd areas of his body that
she'd never had the opportunity to explore before, making
sure to get him well-smeared with clay.
She shifted her torso up just enough to get her hands
between them, unfasten his jeans and shove them, along with
his boxers, down his way-too-long-for-her-patience legs. His
arousal pressed hotly beneath her body, distracting her from
goal of stripping him. She reached under to take him in hand,
take measure of the satisfying length and pulse of his desire
for her. Suddenly impatient for him, she tore at his
remaining clothes.
She became aware, as she worked, that he was following
her every move, his hands spanning her ribs, and that he was
sucking slowly, very thoroughly, on her bared right breast.
Somehow he'd divested her of her bikini bra without her
noticing. "Sneaky," she panted, and arced her head back to
thrust her breasts at him for further attention. Giles
obliged her by shifting his attentions to her left breast,
while continuing to trace, massage, paint, and explore the
right with one hand.
He didn't do things, even in the realm of caresses, by
halves. By the time his hand had drifted from her breast down
to her torso, Cordelia was shuddering with the unreleased
sensual overload and certain that he now knew every contour,
pore and dip of that breast as well as she did herself.
His mouth left her breast, and he dragged her down by
her pony-tail so that her ear was next to his mouth. His hot
breath raised the hairs on the back of her neck and sent
shivers down her body.
"Pygmalion..." Giles murmured to her, his words
tickling, "created his ideal of the perfect woman out of
clay." He released her hair and gently threaded his fingers,
sticky with clay, through the stands. Cordelia, torn between
indignation and mesmerization, stayed where he had dragged
her, bared chest pressed to his bared chest, chin over his
shoulder.
His hands roamed over her body, painting the clay, using
it almost as an extension of himself, of his desire for her.
Cordelia squirmed to fix the contours of his arousal hard
beneath her, and Giles moaned, a barely audible sound of such
longing that it shook her out of her impulse to tease him and
thereby regain mastery over this encounter.
"She came alive under his hands," Giles continued, his
hands moving to her bikini bottom and slipping under the
fabric, roaming, exploring, creating. "Burned into existence
by the very act of loving him. Imagine coming into being,
loving and desiring. The painful intensity of those first
feelings --"
"God, yes," Cordelia replied, tears slipping down her
face, making tracks in the mud. "He's a wizard, a genius
sculptor. His touch defines her, doesn't it?"
Gis caresses stilled. "But as a creature of a now
separate spirit, a new life, she's a free agent. Her destiny,
her body, is now her own. Perhaps he doesn't have the moral
courage to recognize this, he's so blinded by the beauty
which he created, but which he doesn't own --"
Cordelia sat up. "That's so profound," she said with a
sniffle. Then she shook him hard. "And it's a crock. It's
just a play, Giles. Is this how you always get every time you
get frisky with someone? 'Cause I've got to say, it explains
why you're still single."
He glared up at her with a mixture of hurt and
indignation. "I'm suddenly feeling mocked. I was trying to
get into the role with you."
"Yes, okay, thank you Robert DeNiro. And I'm thinking:
Actor wannabe much?" She shoved him down as he struggled to
get up. "Look, I'll give you the name of my agent, if you
like, but you're not going to get me all hot and bothered and
then run out on me." She pushed her ass back against his
arousal and grinned devilishly at him. "And you wouldn't be
doing yourself any favors either."
He moaned and thrust up against her. Catching her
breath, Cordelia rose to her knees, pulled him to her, and
then impaled herself on him without prelude. They shouted out
together; Giles smiled sheepishly up at her and Cordy grinned
back as his silent acknowledgment that he wasn't normally
this vocal a lover. She dug her nails into his chest just
hard enough to leave marks and then bent in to scrape her
teeth on his chin, lips, nose while her hands moved to his
hips to pull them hard into her.
"Who's possessing who now, Mr. Smartypants?" she
demanded, and gripped him hard with her inner muscles.
Giles bucked underneath her, another moan tearing
through his throat. He reached around her to grab her hips,
to complete their carnal circle, and grinned back up at her.
"Who's possessing _whom_," he corrected her, and did
something with the hard side of his thumb and her pubic bone
that sent a wave of arrows of sensation straight through her
groin to the pit of her belly.
Cordelia came hard with a surprised scream. But even as
she felt herself coming down from a seemingly endless but
all-too-short spiral of sexual overload, she gave her hips an
emphatic twist and felt a hot rush inside as he toppled over
the edge too. She slumped forward onto his chest, her eyes
closed and a smug smile on her face as she basked in the
pulse of heat of out-of-control maleness -- and more
specifically Gilesness -- shooting up into her.
"Oh lord," Giles murmured dazedly underneath her at the
end.
A drop sheet suddenly billowed up from the floor and
dropped down on top of them. Cordelia blinked at him in the
sudden sheet-colored dimness, then started to giggle. "Sorry,
Phantom Dennis," she yelled out.
Giles blushed. "I forgot about the audience," he
admitted. "Do you think that he's -- uh -- jealous?"
"Who knows, and no he's my roommate and roommates deal.
I'll rent a Gary Cooper movie for him -- that'll cheer him
up." Cordelia lay her head down on Giles' shoulder again and
relished, for a moment, the sensation of being warm, filled,
and contained in a soft white universe with a man who was,
face it girl, a pretty good catch in anyone's book. Anyone
with a modicum of sophisticated taste anyway. She pondered
the irony of her leaving Sunnydale before she'd grown up
enough to develop the taste to appreciate him properly, and
nibbled upon him again.
"Ow," Giles protested sleepily. "That hurt."
"Good," she said. "You'll remember me better."
His arm slid up around her to cradle her to his chest.
"Cordelia, I could never forget you."
Cordelia snuggled. "Don't think this means we're a
couple or anything," she said. "I mean, I like you Giles,
but --"
"You don't intend to become Pygmalion's dream girl,"
Giles said, his voice light but sad. "You have a life of your
own here. And mine is in Sunnydale."
She relaxed. He did understand. Which, damn it, was
another reason for regret. "Don't get me wrong..." she
finally managed, after a long, warm silence.
"Yes?" he prompted when she didn't complete the
sentence.
"You and Buffy. Maybe you're her Pygmalion, or maybe
she's yours. If she ever decides what she wants from you, and
if what she wants isn't what you want -- well...."
His fingers stilled in her hair.
"I recognize potential, is all," Cordelia said, and rose
up on her elbows to kiss him. "And I know the value of
keeping my options open. Okay? You understand?"
He kissed her back, gently this time. "I believe so.
Thank you." He cocked his head. "Somebody is knocking at the
door."
"Damn!" She started to get up, then grinned and eased
herself up off of him. "That'll be Wesley, with his great
timing as usual." She stood, dragging the drop sheet up with
her to wrap around herself, pausing to survey the naked and
clay-smeared Giles on the ground at her feet. "Mmmm, Watcher
al stucco. I might have to get me one of my own." Another
knock at the door sounded, and her expression changed. "Only
not Wesley. Euww."
Giles grabbed at his clothes and started pulling them
hurriedly on. "I thought you said Wesley was improving?"
"He was -- is. If he'd just let me do his clothes
shopping for him. But he can be so annoying. Big brother
much?"
Giles paused in the act of buttoning up his shirt to
kiss her. "Remember those options, cherie."
Startled by the very un-Gilesean endearment, Cordelia
broke out in one of her rare, dazzling, no-holds-barred
smiles. "You, Mister, are way too casual about the
competition."
"And you, my lady, are a clay-caked, tousled Grecian
goddess."
She tilted her head and smiled at him. "Thanks for
stating the obvious, Mr. Watcherman." She pulled her drop
cloth around her and swept off majestically to answer the
door.
The look on Wesley's face when she opened the door in
all her earthy splendor was almost, although not quite,
rivalled by the look that replaced it when Giles slipped past
with a tousled, sheepish and roguish
"HelloWesleynicetoseeyouhopetoseeyouagainsoon" before
disappearing down the hallway.
Cordelia put on her best Eliza Doolittle smile for
Wesley. "'Ello, Wes, wot's up then? We've been talking about
you, we 'ave," she said.
For once, Wesley was speechless.
* * *