SUMMARY: Cordelia becoming computer-literate.
SPOILERS: First few episodes of AtS
CONTENT/WARNINGS:
RATING: U - nothing untoward at all, just fluffy filling-in-the-blanks
fic.
DEDICATION: Thanks to Kassie for Beta-ing
DISCLAIMER: I am not now, nor have I ever been, Joss Whedon. (If I
were we'd see Lindsey naked every week.)
She'd made a point of not knowing anything about computers, because
only dorks knew about
computers. Fashion leaders whose biggest future worries - once they'd
picked out an appropriately rich
and handsome husband - involved choosing the most fabulous place to
visit for their next vacation, girls
like that did not need to know how to switch on a computer. In the
unlikely event that the necessity ever
arose, somebody else would always do it for them and be charmed by
their feminine incompetence with
all things electronic. This was the natural order of things.
Monsters came and monsters went, but some things remained constant.
Willow Rosenberg didn't wave
pompoms and Cordelia Chase didn't know which bit of a computer was
called a mouse or why.
It was kissing Xander that did it. Cordelia had given the matter a
lot of thought and she'd concluded that
this had been the moment when she sent the world hurtling off its axis
by screwing with the natural order
of things in the worst possible way. From that point on all the other
Bad Things unfolded naturally,
inevitably. Small wonder that she soon found herself lying in a hospital
bed with a hole in her side and a
broken heart; small wonder that she lost her car and found herself
working as a shop girl to pay for a lousy
dress; small wonder that she made a fool of herself over the Watchers'
Council version of Mr Bean. Small
wonder that she ended up living off sandwiches purloined from parties
and worrying about how to pay the
electric bill. Cordelia had heard all about that butterfly-wings-causing-hurricanes
stuff and she'd traced the
decisive moment of doom to the instant her lips met those of Xander
Lavelle Harris - an action so
abhorrent to all laws of nature that it had knocked her charmed life
from its predestined course altogether.
Cordy was convinced that there was some way of spinning things back
on course, but she didn't have a
clue what it was. You never did know until afterwards, that was the
problem. 20/20 hindsight was all well
and good, but what Cordelia really wanted was some way of knowing what
little butterfly-flap-type thing it
was going to take to get her back to the life she was supposed to be
living right now. Maybe it was
kissing a handsome prince instead of a frog, maybe it was being spotted
at the right party or getting put
forward for the right audition or maybe something else entirely·but
she was sure there was *something*
that could get her back to Plan A. Back to comfort and stability and
clean sheets and maid-service and
unpronounceable food and designer clothes and bills that just got magically
paid. Back to the way it was
all supposed to be.
She hoped that this job was it, or at least part of it. She had a nasty
suspicion that she was actually
miring herself deeper in all the Bad Things, but she simply needed
this too badly, on too many levels, to
walk away. OK, secretary of a vampire detective agency really hadn't
been part of the original Cordelia
Chase gameplan, but it was worlds better than anything else currently
on the cards. That was how much
her life sucked. A regular income. A place to go every day. People
who looked *at* her instead of through
her - who made her feel like a swan again instead of an ugly duckling.
Or at least the little Irish man did,
and he wasn't much but he was better than nothing. The times they were
a-changing and although
Cordelia Chase used to have a much better class of admirer, right now
she was happy to accept even
pathetic Jesse-style adoration. Her ego really needed some TLC.
Not long ago she'd been so miserable that she was resigned to doing
pretty much anything Russell
Winters told her just so long as he'd help her improve her circumstances.
Or at least anything short of
becoming Snack-Girl. Secretarial work for a big strong superhero that
she could boss around seemed a
much better alternative. And it felt *good* to have people in her life
who actually knew her name and would
worry if she didn't turn up to work.
As it turned out, Cordelia Chase really wasn't half bad at being the
secretary of a vampire detective
agency. Who knew? But she actually kind of enjoyed filing and organising
stuff - making order out of
chaos. If there was one thing Cordelia knew about it was hierarchies.
Back when she'd had her own
walk-in wardrobe Cordelia had organised its contents with military
precision, dividing items by season,
subdividing them by designer and sub-subdividing by colour. Granted,
Cordelia's system might not be
immediately obvious to other people, but there was method to it. She
knew where everything was. She
was also pretty good on the phone and she'd picked up decent research
skills from Giles and Willow.
(Not for Cordelia Chase a nailpolish-chipping combat role in the fight
against Sunnydale's more
mortality-challenged residents.) It was Cordy that got Angel Investigations
listed in the Yellow Pages and
the Pandemonium Almanac; Cordy that went out and bought Pledge and
bleach and cloths (and handed
her receipts to a surprised Angel); Cordy that got hold of a second-hand
coffee maker and bought fresh
coffee every week (and handed her receipts to a less-surprised Angel);
Cordy that got business cards
printed up with an attractive freehand representation of an Angel that
looked nothing *at all* like an owl or
a butterfly (and handed the invoice to a stoically resigned Angel).
But she had always made a point of not knowing about computers, and
there was no getting away from
the fact that a secretary or office assistant or whatever she was now
really did need to be computer
literate. She'd borrowed some disks from her agent's secretary, who
was quite helpful and sympathetic
(unlike her agent) and now had half a dozen tutorial programs, including
one for touch typing. She just
needed a little help getting started - and since Angel wasn't exactly
a master of all things Twentieth
Century, that meant asking Doyle for help.
She lay in wait for him with a cup of coffee and when he showed up
Cordelia directed her most dazzling
smile in Doyle's direction and watched his eyes widen.
"Hi, Doyle!" she called cheerily. "I made you a coffee. Say, is that
a new shirt?" He looked pleased, and
then a beat later his eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"You hate this shirt, Cordelia." Duplicity was really not one of Cordy's
strengths.
"Yeah, I *really* do," she admitted with disarming candour. "Honestly,
Doyle, I've seen bag ladies with
better shirts. Look, you're kind of a computer geek, aren't you? I
mean, not a geek-geek, more of a
seedy, downloading-naked-pictures-geek, but you're pretty good with
one of these babies aren't you?"
"Well, I·"
"Good. Cause I was wondering if you could help me with this?" He came
a little closer and looked at the
screen. After a short pause Doyle said in a level voice:
"Um·it's not switched on, Cordelia."
"Well, *duh*! I know that, Mr Observation Skills. Which part of help
me' was it that you didn't
understand?"
"Alright, princess - sorry, sorry!" he said, bobbing forward obediently
to switch it on. "Not to worry,
darlin', we'll have you computer literate in no time."
The smile Doyle directed at her was actually kind of cute, and surprisingly
he was both patient and good
at explaining things. Cordelia found herself thinking fondly that he
was really quite sweet - like a small,
friendly dog that you were a bit nervous of letting near any furniture
or breakables but still wanted to take
home.
After a moment she remembered who else that kind of reminded her of
and she was very glad Doyle's
eyes were on the screen because she found herself blushing crimson.
Xander Harris.
Well no way Jose - this girl was not going down *that* route again
in this lifetime. No more fixer-uppers.
From now on it was going to be men who used words like "stock options",
"tax breaks" and "futures";
men who didn't think Wall Street was just the title of some 80s film.
Kissing Xander Harris had got her
into this fix to start with, she was sure of it. God only knew what
world of trouble she'd find herself in if
she ever kissed Alan Francis Doyle, so she wasn't going to start to
start to think about *thinking about*
having any kind of warm and fuzzy feelings for the little leprechaun.
She was going to be Little Miss
Platonic, the Duchess of Platonia as far as Doyle was concerned - it
was strictly wealthy hunks only from
now on for Cordelia Chase.
She'd just let him help her get the hang of using the computer, that
was all.
Absolutely positively nothing else.