lit_gal | Wish Upon a Cheating Boy

Opening dialogue taken from "The Wish"

Okay, this is for the flist celebration, and this is the request from

lothy which is based on a challenge she made HERE

Wish Upon a Cheating Boy (1/3)
Xander/Cordelia
Femdomme
Rated: TEEN

When Cordelia's wish is not for Buffy to disappear, but for men and their stupid hormones to not run the world, Anya creates a whole different kind of alternate reality. I think this will have two or three parts, that's all.

School had become a lame version of hell for Cordelia, and Harmony and her twits led the demonic... oh who was she kidding? They were just lame, too. And Cordelia had obviously fallen prey to the same pathetic lameness because it all bothered her so much. Xander and Willow walking around without holes in their stomach--that's what really blew. She got rebar through her stomach, had Harmony lead a revolution within the Cordettes, was considered Xander Harris' castoff, and had Jonathon the geek-boy's pity. Private school was starting to look good. Military school might even be better than Sunnydale. Cordy was stopped by the new girl appearing in front of her in the middle of the hallway. She braced herself for one more round of bash-the-former-queen. Like her father had said, people are just jealous of success and take any opportunity to make you pay for having some success.

"Go ahead. Dazzle me with your oh-so-brilliant insults. Just join the club," she said with as much aplomb as she could muster under the circumstances.

Anya smiled. "Hardly. Uh, actually, I've been looking for you. Ever since we met this morning, I was, like, thank God there's one other person in this town who actually reads W."

"But Harmony..."

"Oh, she follows me around. If that girl had an original thought, her head would explode."

Cordelia was caught between wanting to defend her ex-friend and just being so frustrated that she could cry over the fact that Harmony wasn't following her any more. High school could just not get any worse. Time for a change of topic. "Is that Gucci?" she asked.

Anya reached up and fingered her necklace. "Um... no. It's an actual old thing, sort of a, um... good luck charm my dad gave me."

"Too bad I didn't have one of those pre-Xander." Cordelia felt her guts twinge at the name, and she didn't think it was the stitches. He'd been so damn loyal to Buffy and Willow. He'd put up with everything Giles had said, even when Giles said really horrible things after that Valentine's Day spell. And when she had dumped him, he went and risked everything just to get her back. He was supposed to be the one who was loyal to her 'til the end. She'd given up most of her cool points for him, and then he went and macked on Willow Rosenberg the skank. But that was behind her, and she had to move forward. She looked at Anya for a second, waiting for mocking that just never came, and Cordelia could feel the stress ease. Anya was cool, and she knew her Prada, so if Cordelia had to start a whole new social group, she could do that. She and Anya could outclass Harmony and her sluts any day. The only cool points Harmony had every earned came from being in Cordelia's shadow. She didn't have the class to run the Cordettes herself.

Anya leaned in a bit. "Can I just say... Men."

"Second it," Cordelia agreed cheerfully.

"Apart from being without class, the guy's obviously blind. Deserves whatever he gets."

Cordelia smiled tightly. That's right, he did. If he didn't love her enough, then she was going to make sure she didn't love him. And if stupid Buffy and Willow wanted to stick up for the blind loser, that wasn't her fault. "I'm not even thinking about him. I am past it. I am living my life," she said haughtily. She might not feel quite queenish yet, but she knew how to fake it until she made it.

"Still, I mean..." Anya shrugged. "Don't you kinda wish..."

Wish. Cordelia thought about Xander and then about John Lee who wouldn't even be seen with her in public now and her father who had refused to even consider that school in Sweden with the maids in the dorms and the stupid principal who had threatened to kick her out and make her redo her senior year if she missed any more school. "That someone hadn't put stupid men with their stupid hormones and their stupid rules in charge of the world?" Cordelia snorted. "Totally."

"Done," Anya said in a dark voice. Cordelia glanced at the girl and she'd gone all veiny and ugly and definitely demony. Cordelia jerked away, slamming her back into the lockers, and Anya smiled, which was a pretty terrifying expression what with all the veins, and then she was just gone.

"Anya?" Cordelia called softly. Students walked by, none of them seeming to notice Cordelia or the mysteriously vanishing Anya. "Okay, that was freaky," she whispered to herself before she tightened her arms around her books and headed for history. Maybe she'd stop by the library and talk to Giles later because that... that seemed slightly on the demony side of the street and that was the side Giles and his merry band of losers lived on. She lived on the side with gardeners. Geez, a girl wasn't even safe in the halls any more.

Cordelia hit history class seconds before the bell rang, and only two seats were left: one up front near Harmony and one in the back row between Jonathan and Andrew. Ew. Okay, she was the queen, so she could handle this. She slid into the seat next to Harmony and focused on the board. Frowning at the assignment written in neat block letters, Cordelia tried to figure out whether her mom had brought her the wrong homework while she was in the hospital because that was definitely not the assignment she had worked on.

"Have you figured out what you're going to do?" Harmony whispered. Cordelia looked at her in confusion as Mr. Clark came bustling into the room, his arms full of books.

"Young mistresses, boys, so sorry for the delay. I've managed to gather a number of books for you so that you may work on the assignment. As always, the requirements are listed at the top of the assignment sheet I handed out yesterday."

"I don't know why we need to study the contribution of men; it's not like they contribute much except sperm," Brooke Thaddus laughed, and the girls all giggled. Harmony shot a smug look toward the back of the room, and when Cordelia glanced back, most of the boys were blushing. Xander Harris himself was in the far corner, staring at his own knees. And now that she looked, all the boys were sitting in back. Even Wendell the front-row nerd was sitting in the middle, in front of the boys' section, but behind the last girl.

"Well, I know many of you have that impression, and while it is true that history has been largely shaped by women, men have influenced critical periods of time. During the Great War, men were instrumental in the underground and in carrying communications that had been largely cut off by..."

"Yeah, but it's not like they fought. It's not like--" Harmony started.

"So, those are history books?" Cordelia cut Harmony off as she stared at the books Mr. Clark had dropped on his desk. Cordelia was starting to get the idea that something fairly big had just happened, and right now, researching a little history was sounding like a pretty good idea. In fact, she could safely say that she had never wanted to study history so much in her life.

"Of course, Mistress Chase," Mr. Clark immediately answered. Cordelia stood up and grabbed one... the biggest one... from his desk. On her way back to her desk, she could see the other girls exchange confused looks for a second, but then they followed suit, getting up and claiming their books. Only after the girls had gone did the boys start coming to the front, but by that time, Cordelia was engrossed in the tale of the insane Klara Poelzl and her weirdo son, Adolf, and how they had tried to take over the world. Oh yeah, Cordelia definitely needed to talk to Giles.

~o~o~o~o~

"So," Giles said carefully, "she simply said 'done' and then the entire world changed?"

"Exactly. This is your thing, so fix it," Cordelia said testily. She'd repeated the story three times, and she wanted to get out of here before Buffy and her little crew showed up.

"Fix it?" Giles said vaguely. "Fix the whole world?" The glasses came off as he polished them, so Cordelia figured that was some sort of proof that this was at least a version of her world. Giles and his glasses polishing was some sort of universal constant, like Willow and her backstabbing and Xander and his cheating. She'd already poked around enough to figure out that those two had still betrayed her, but at least in this world, Harmony actually seemed to be sticking by her... for now.

Cordelia frowned at him. "Isn't that what you're for? You do some research thing, and then you fix this."

"Hey, what's the what?" Buffy called as she came through the doors of the library. Cordelia crossed her arms and glared at the other girl. Buffy lost a half step and then smiled weakly as she came in a little slower.

"Cordy," Buffy offered. Cordelia sniffed.

"Yes, well, according to Mistress Chase, we have a demon situation."

"Excellent, and will this slayage get me out of sixth hour, because me and studying men's influence on history? Totally unmixy. I mean, how boring can you get? Let's just study boiling water. Oh, wait, I think we did that in third grade, but studying boiling water was infinitely more interesting than studying men's history."

"Please do remember that I am a man," Giles sighed, and Buffy gave him a contrite look.

"Well, yeah, but you're an interesting man. I don't suppose Clark would have biographies of watchers, would he?"

"I highly doubt it since we are a secret organization. However, right now Mistress Chase has come with an interesting story."

"Is this going to include Willow in several small, bloody pieces on the floor?" Buffy eyed Cordelia.

"Please, like that skank is worth my time, or the damage to my manicure." Cordelia rolled her eyes.

"Good. Because, you know, she totally deserves the smackdown for grabbing someone else's guy, but please do not do the smacking in front of me because I would feel a weird solidarity that would make me feel guilty if I didn't get in there and stick up for her." Buffy hopped up on a table and crossed her legs under her. "Not that she deserves to be stuck up for," she added.

"She doesn't, and neither does Xander Harris," Cordelia sniffed.

"We all agree their behavior was rash," Giles agreed, "however, according to Mistress Chase, she was visited by a demon earlier, and any demon sighting on school grounds is rather disconcerting."

"Yes," Buffy exclaimed enthusiastically. "Just point me at the slayage and I will make the school demon free by seventh hour!"

"Anya vanished. Poof. Thin air," Cordelia said, and Buffy immediately look a lot less interested.

"According to Mistress Chase, this demon changed the nature of the universe."

"What, reversed black and white or something?" Buffy asked with a frown.

"She put women in charge of everything all through history," Cordelia quickly said.

Buffy just blinked at Cordelia for a second, a small frown on her face. "Okaaaay. I know history's not your strongest subject, Cordy, and hey, I'm right there with you on sleeping through class and getting one of the boys to do the homework, but I'm pretty sure girls have always been in charge of everything. The alternative would be boys in charge, and that's a picture I don't even want to think about. The brain hurts when I think about thinking about that."

"That's just it," Cordelia snapped, "girls haven't always been in charge. Adolf Hitler started that war, not his mother, and that was the second time the whole world had a war, which makes it World War II, not the Great War, only now the books are calling it the Great War. And the presidents? We've never had a woman president, only now all the presidents are women. President Anthony? President Earhart?"

"I always liked her. Amelia was a woman after my own heart. Take risks first, figure out if you're going to survive it later," Buffy interrupted.

"But she's supposed to be dead," Cordelia almost yelled with frustration.

"Well, yeah. She was like forever ago. I mean, all the presidents before…" Buffy glanced over toward Giles.

"All the presidents before President O'Connor have currently passed on," Giles finished for her.

Cordelia tried to remind herself that they weren't intentionally annoying her, but it was getting hard. A little part of her just wanted to turn around and go back to Harmony and the Cordettes who in this world had apparently gathered around her, or at least they were gathered around her for now. The sharp tone of their questions made Cordelia think that they were big with the waiting for something, but she wasn't sure yet what they were expecting. This world was just too different. Taking a deep breath, she tried to find her calm, royal center before continuing.

"Amelia Earhart was never president. She disappeared into the ocean. She died way before she got old and political. And even if she had gotten old and political, no one would have ever voted for a woman because that was back when women didn't even have the right to vote." Cordelia thought about that for a second. "Maybe. Maybe it was right after women got the vote. Look, I'm not good with history, but the presidents are definitely all guys. But then I make a wish that men aren't in charge of the world, and poof."

"Poof?" Buffy echoed.

Cordelia crossed her arms. "Poof," she insisted firmly.

"Okay, we have poofage. Giles, do we have any poof demons that I could track down and slay?"

"Poof demons?" Giles asked with just that hint of sarcasm. Buffy leaned back and glared at him in a way that Cordelia had definitely never seen Buffy glare at Giles before. The librarian ducked his head and pulled his glasses off to clean them. "We might start with any demon that grants wishes; I have a book on jinn, and Marissa Hamilton has a treatise on demons that prey on human desire, so that would be another possibility."

"Right, so it looks like you have the research part down. Let me know when there's slayage to be had." Buffy jumped down from the table and started for the door without a look back.

"Mistress Buffy," Giles said softly. Buffy stopped and looked at him. "If we find this is a demonic spell or influence. . . do we truly want to undo our entire history and way of life?"

Buffy stared at him for a second, her face blank. "Way to bring the seriousness, Giles."

"Of course, it is your decision, but I had thought to at least bring the issue up. Most likely the Council will want to discuss this with you and Mistress Chase directly, so perhaps we should talk about this before you need to face them."

Buffy didn't answer right away as she chewed on her lip. "We can talk it through later?" she finally asked him.

"Of course. I'll be here when you're ready to discuss the options and when I have some information to offer." Giles quickly smiled at her, that fatherly look that Cordelia would occasionally catch when he thought no one was looking. But right now both her and Buffy were looking, and he wasn't even trying to hide that proud father expression he was still giving Buffy. Buffy smiled back.

"You're the best," she said as she linked her arm in Cordelia's and pulled her toward the door. Cordelia resisted for one second before realizing that the slayer was scary-strong in any universe, so she walked with Buffy to avoid the whole uncoolness of getting dragged. "So, Cordy, since it looks like I've got a big decision to make, let's you and I sit down and talk about history. And oh god, I'm voluntarily talking history. Giles, you might want to research any coming apocalypses."

"Yes, I'll get right on that," Giles said in an amused tone without even bothering to get up from the table.

Buffy didn't say anything else for a while as they walked the halls. Harmony closed in on them at one point, but she quickly backed off when she spotted Buffy. Steering them into an empty classroom, Buffy sat on a desk and started swinging her legs as she stared at Cordelia. However, Cordelia was not one to be stared down. She crossed her arms and waited in silence with her own cold glare aimed right back at the slayer. Eventually Buffy sighed.

"Men in charge?"

"Not necessarily in charge now, but in history? Yeah," Cordelia agreed.

"Can I just say freaky, here?"

"Think how I feel," Cordelia pointed out. "Look, this is strange on both our parts, so let's make a deal. I give you a piece of information about my world, and you give me a piece of information on yours," she suggested. Buffy laughed.

"Queen C, angling for angles to the end, which is why you will always be the domme, even if I could kick your ass," Buffy admitted as she shook her head. "Well, that and I keep getting distracted by the eminent world ending… or is that imminent?" Buffy frowned. Cordelia didn't wait for Buffy to gather her thoughts before she bulled ahead on what really mattered to her at this point.

"How do people see what happened with Xander and Willow? I mean, do they think there's something wrong with me for not keeping Xander's interest?" Cordelia demanded. Buffy blinked at her with an expression of shock for a second.

"Wrong with you?" she asked. "Okay, that's weird. Why would there be something wrong with you because Willow poached your territory?"

"So, they blame Willow?" Cordelia asked.

Again, Buffy just gave her the wide eyes of shock and confusion. "Blame? Um, not really. You really don't know?" Buffy asked.

Cordelia crossed her arms and stared at Buffy. "Okay, okay," Buffy said, her hand held palm up. "If you don't get this, I'm guessing your world is big with the weird. I guess most people wonder if Willow is making a move for your social position, not that she could because of her whole lack of social position or ability to actually defend herself." Buffy sighed and made a pained expression. "The rest of the school would probably say that trying to take what's yours and rub your nose in it seems pretty challengy even if we know she was just going with her normal lack of common sense. If you don't do anything, I suppose they would think there was something wrong with you, but not because Xander got led around by his hormones. Men always get led around by their hormones, but Willow doing the leading when you had declared an interest… that was not of the good. So, my turn for a question. Am I the slayer in your world? I'm thinking a world without vamps and slayers would be a really nice fantasy. I'd have time to challenge you for your queendom."

Cordelia sniffed at that thought. "It would take more than getting rid of the vamps for you to even dream about my throne," she pointed out. "But even in my world, you're busy being the one girl in all the world, well, except for the fact that there's two because in my world Xander brought you back to life after the Master killed you, so that activated a second slayer."

"Same here," Buffy nodded. "But if girls don't have power in history, how could the slayer function?"

Cordelia shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, sure, they couldn't vote or own property, but do you actually need civil rights to kill vampires?"

"Okay, that's weirdly disturbing. Slayers could save the world, but not own a piece of it. I'm thinking that pretty much defines unfairness."

With a shrug, Cordelia had to give Buffy that one.

"And watchers? Are they still with the serving the slayers?" Buffy asked.

"I think manipulating, controlling, and pushing around slayers actually comes closer to the truth, but Giles is actually pretty okay. You and the whole Council, though, are not exactly on good terms because you aren't really good at having them try to tell you what to do."

"Wait, the Council are guys? The watchers' Council? The people in charge of stopping world endage are guys with guy hormones and the inappropriate habit of thinking about sex for most of their adult lives?"

Cordelia blinked as she considered that for a second. "I hadn't ever thought of it like that; guys just act like they're in charge of everything, but you have definitely put your foot down and told them to stop giving you orders."

"Go me," Buffy said, but her smile was weak. "And I'm still with the freaked."

"I'm right there with you," Cordelia admitted. Funny, but she liked this Buffy a whole lot more than the one in her universe. Then again, she hadn't given the Buffy from her universe a chance to take sides. When she'd seen the slayer in the hall, she'd ducked into empty classrooms and even the pot-smokers' bathroom. Now she wondered whose side Buffy would have actually been on because this Buffy seemed to be on the 'Willow screwed up' bandwagon with her.

"What are my options for slapping Willow down for the whole stealing of Xander?" Cordelia asked.

Buffy looked at her sharply. "You seriously expect me to help with that?"

Okay, Cordelia's Buffy-like levels took a sudden drop. "I don't even know what the options are, so I'm just asking you for a Miss Manner's guide to how to handle boy-stealing whores who think I won't make them sorry they were ever born," Cordelia said with that calm sweetness that could and had left men emotionally bleeding and writhing at her feet.

"You're scary, you know this, yes?" Buffy asked.

"Yep."

"Right." Buffy sighed and looked around the room. "I am so going to bad-friend hell for this."

"Since Willow will be there with you, not a problem," Cordelia quickly pointed out.

Buffy gave her a glare. "Okay, options. You could challenge Willow directly to a fight. Me? I'd totally go that way. Get it out of the way under the eyes of a couple of teachers and have it done. Of if you don't want to directly challenge her, you could file a complaint with either Principal Frank or probably the police, and see if they would publicly flog Willow. Since she was definitely with the poaching, she would probably get five to ten lashes. And then all would be over, no mess, no fuss."

"Lashes? Lashes like with a whip?" Cordelia took a physical step back, shocked at that.

"Well, yeah." And that was Buffy looking at her like she had just grown an extra head or something. Cordelia resisted the urge to check herself for weird limb growth as Buffy stared at her with concern. "How else do you punish someone?"

"Detention? Grounding? A firm lecture in an English accent about the foolishness of youth and the misuse of the word football," Cordelia shrugged. Buffy's worried expression just sort of deepened.

"Okay, Giles giving me a lecture... that would be freaky, but ignoring the specific freakiness of my life, do you really think a detention is going to make any sort of point? I mean, if this were gum chewing, yeah, an hour of cleaning the school would so be fair. But if you make a formal complaint, someone's going to figure out that you slipped because Willow was poaching, which makes this a little more serious than detentionsville."

"And one step up from detention is a whipping? What about... I don't know, juvenile hall or community service?"

"Okay, I'm not sure I even want to know, but what do they do in a hall of juveniles?"

"It's like prison for people who aren't old enough for prison."

Buffy made a choking sound. "Wait. You'd be okay with Willow being taken away from her friends and her family and stuck in a prison with people who are seriously with the badness, but a few lashes freaks you out? I am officially voting your reality weirdest ever. Give me a couple of lashes any day of the week," Buffy said with a look of horror.

"You can say that because you have slayer healing."

"Which is true, but still, after I burned the school down in L.A., I could deal with a lashing way better than being taken away from my mother. And may I very happily say that there will be no hall of the juvenile for Willow." Buffy shuddered in horror. "If you want to tell the authorities the whole truth with the Willow poaching leading to the falling and impaling, then she'll get a few lashes, no mess, no fuss."

"And if I want mess and fuss?" Cordelia asked as she listened to Buffy's entirely too quick answer. Oh yeah, Buffy was definitely trying to avoid a third option, and whatever Buffy wanted to avoid, Cordelia definitely wanted to know. Buffy sighed. "You do enjoy the slower tortures, don't you?"

"When someone makes me look like an idiot, yes," Cordelia immediately answered. For a second, she didn't think Buffy would answer, but then she nodded.

"You could ask Xander's mother permission to punish him, and do it somewhere that Willow is sure to see. They've been friends for so long that she really thinks of him as hers, so watching someone else punish him would be big with the hard." Buffy pulled in on herself as though trying to escape the idea of even answering Cordelia's question.

Immediately, Cordelia could feel the rightness of this solution. She could make both Xander and Willow suffer at the same time and prove to the Cordettes that she still had the ability to defend her own territory. "Xander would rather be punished than watch Willow be punished or get the beat down she deserves," Cordelia said firmly. If this Xander were anything like her Xander, she knew that much about him.

Buffy nodded. "Yeah, he would. If you're looking to punish Willow, go after Xander, but…" Buffy stopped.

"But what?"

"I know that after what they did they both deserve some punishment, but don't take this too far, Cordy. Xander really adores you. He was physically sick when you went to the hospital. We're talking yaking all over the place, and the EMT's said it wasn't just from the hit on the head with the microscope. He's really suffering, so just don't take this so far that you damage him, okay?"

"You're worried about Xander? He went and kissed Willow, he stabbed me in the back when I put my reputation on the line for him, and you're still worried about whether his feelings will get hurt?" Cordelia might have slapped Buffy if it weren't for the whole super-powered girl bit. But the way her week was going, Buffy would slap her back and Cordelia would be in the hospital again.

However, her words struck home because Buffy flinched. "Hey, I get it. Remember Angel, the stabbing me in the back boy? I totally understand, which is why I'm big with the sympathy, but Angel and Xander, they're boys… okay, in Angel's case he's a really, really old boy, but you get the point. They do stupid shit. It's like built into their genes to do stupid shit. And if you want Willow to really pay, yeah… putting Xander on his knees or publicly flogging him is going to put the moon landing of all guilt trips on Willow. But don't take this so far that you break Xander."

"Xander doesn't break that easily," Cordelia said firmly.

"I'm not so sure you're right on that," Buffy countered.

"Whatever." Cordelia turned her back and headed out of the classroom. She was not in the mood for another round of sticking up for Willow and Xander. They were wrong. They were wrong and Cordelia was right and she definitely needed a book on punishing men, she decided as she headed for the library. The only truly sucky part of this brave new world was all the research she was having to do. Short of the whole research thing, this wish wasn't turning out half bad.