"Ouch," said Debi from somewhere beneath Giles. "This sucks. I didn't know that acting was so -- owie."
"Fucking great!" Rory Vitali was yelling from beyond. "That's a wrap! Let's get onto the next thing! Lena, baby, they're all yours!"
"Where's my stake?" Giles muttered groggily. His back hurt; he realized a second later that that was probably because Cordelia was sprawled across it. The stake lay to one side, currently not doing any damage to anyone. He intended to change that state of affairs soon, but first he had to do something about Cordelia. Debi lay beneath him, her knee uncomfortably situated in the pit of his stomach. They were covered in fine bits of a glass-like substance.
They were all coughing. The room was fogged with smoke.
Lena was seated on the couch -- the one they'd just been pitched over after crashing through a pane of breakaway glass -- smoking a cigarette and watching them. Natasha and Boris, the borzois, sat next to her.
"What the fuck happened to the stuntmen?" Giles snarled at the director as he tried to turn over enough to roll Cordelia off of him. She was very much not in the mood to roll though, and he got an irate elbow in the spine for his efforts.
Lena made a sympathetic face. "Sorry about that darling. Jeff decided the stunt was too dangerous to risk them, especially since it didn't require any special skills. It was inexcusable, and believe me I'm going to give Rory a piece of my mind about it."
"Too dangerous? The stuntmen are vampires." Giles said.
Lena lifted an eyebrow at him.
"I'm going to kill them all!" Cordelia muttered. She finally rolled off of his back and scrambled over to grab the stake. She tried to stand, wobbled and then fell. "Shit."
"Are you hurt?" Giles pulled himself off Debi.
Cordelia had pulled her foot into her lap and was examining it with dismay. "Snapped heel. Three hundred dollar Guccis down the toilet."
"Can I have a cigarette, Lena?" Debi said from her sprawl.
"Of course, sweetling." Lena lit one and passed it down to the secretary.
"I thought I told you people: 'No Smoking'. . ." Giles sat up and looked around the hazy lounge. "Damn. Never mind." He slumped against the couch in defeat.
"Fucking wonderful! Even if you morons can't follow directions," Rory said cheerfully as he stopped by the couch.
"You shoe killer," Cordelia said bitterly.
"What?" Rory bent to pluck the murdered shoe from her hand. "Gucci, three hundred bucks. Hey Wilson! Get your ass over here with the payroll!"
"Not to criticize your stage direction, Rory sweet," Lena said, "but didn't your boys go just a teensy bit overboard on the smoke?" She waved a billow of smoke from her face.
"Yeah the fuckin' special effects guys broke out The Super Fogger." Rory lit up a cigarette. "Last time we used that was for a tank battle over on the Salt Flats. Ballsy special effects yes, moronic fucked up screwing with the mood crap no. Vishinsky can have the bastards back."
Another vampire sidled up to Rory and offered him a big steel box. The director flipped the box open and drew out several fat wads of bills. "Three fuckin' hundred dollars for the shoes -- crap sweetie let's make it six hundred -- two thousand fuckin' dollars for the one line and two screams. Five thousand fuckin' dollars for the stunt. And another five hundred because you've got a great rack." He tucked the money into Cordelia's broken shoe and handed it to her.
Cordelia stared at the shoe.
"Your bee eater ruined my sweater," Debi said hopefully from the floor.
"Crappy sliceage," Rory grumbled. "He should've gone for the tits. And he didn't cut either of my menaced couple at all." He counted out another large wad of bills and dropped them onto her chest.
"Maybe we should reshoot?" Debi suggested.
Giles gave her a sharp kick to the thigh.
"You're a sport, babe," Rory leered at her.
"So what was my 'rack' bonus?" Debi said, rubbing at her thigh as she thumbed through the money.
Rory tossed a fistful of money into Giles' lap. "That's it then. Lena'll pay you for her scene."
"We are so in awe of your payroll technique, dear," Lena said drily.
"Work with non-union people, you have to be casual about it." Rory drew Lena up from the couch and gave her a lingering and frighteningly gentle kiss. "Go to it, baby. Get 'em hot enough to cook on."
She sighed irritably. "If we can film them through all this smoke. Oh never mind. We'll work it in."
"Knew I could count on you." He knocked Giles in the head with the side of his knee. "See you around, Ripper!" Before Giles could react, Rory had swept away again, bellowing dispersal orders to his crew.
"Hmmm," Lena said, and bent to reclaim her cigarette from the table.
"I though they did several different shoots usually," Debi said from the floor. "Don't you do several shoots usually?"
"Yes darling. But Rory is very much a hit-and-run director. He'll have to redub the dialogue of course, but given the decibel levels of his usual sound tracks, it hardly matters who he gets to do the dubs." Lena frowned at the younger woman. "Damnable man has left me a dilemma. My scene was supposed to come before his. Now he wants it to come after, but he gave me absolutely no idea as to the why and wherefore of it. You two darling children were supposed to die a bloody death under the psycho's knife." She nodded at Giles and Cordelia.
"And me!" Debi added.
"Yes, and you, dear girl. But since you had to go and extemporise, we now have you as survivors. An entirely different plot. And we're going into my love scene with exhaustion rather than tension. And we have one too many surviving ladies."
"Maybe Cordelia broke her neck in the fall?" Debi suggested.
"As if," Cordelia snapped. "You were the one who ended up on the bottom."
"But you broke a heel. . . Oh-oh." Debi hauled herself to a sitting position next to Giles to check her own shoes. "Whew! They survived."
"Well of course they didn't break," Cordelia said. "$5.99 Walmart special wedgies."
"Payless," Debi said proudly, rubbing at a smudge on the side of one shoe. "And I got 'em for $3.99!"
Cordelia stared at her.
"We'll have to all go out on a shopping expedition someday," Lena said. "I'm sure it will be endlessly entertaining. Are you done with your R&R, Rupert? I really would like to get on with things."
"Will you promise to go then?" Giles hiked himself onto the couch by his elbows. Boris edged over to lean his long head on Giles' arm.
"Darling, I have my own film to get back to. A union crew sitting around playing poker on my dollar, waiting for Rory to send the lemurs on over. Which Rory won't do until his script supervisor says our scene is fait accompli. Yes, I promise to go." She finished her cigarette and stubbed it out on the table. "We can have our own post-production celebration later in the week. Cordelia, my darling, are you ready?"
"She broke her heel," Debi said. "I can be her stand- in."
"You wish." Cordelia struggled to a stand, where she wobbled precariously on one high-heeled foot. "This is my scene. My big screen smoochies scene, and you're not going to steal it out from under me."
Giles rubbed wearily at his smoke-stung eyes. "Cordelia, you're not going to be kissing anybody you haven't kissed before."
She glanced at him in confusion. "Xander? He wasn't even in --" She looked again at Giles. "Ohmygod."
"It's okay!" Debi climbed onto the couch next to him. "I'll be your body double!"
"You don't look anything like me," Cordelia argued.
"Mae Belle can give me a long dark wig."
"Dear, I don't think --" Lena began.
"Oh com'on," Debi urged. "You can see she doesn't want to do it. You want a hot smoochies scene, I can burn up the lip gloss with the best of them. And I think Mr. Giles is the hottest thing since the habeņero."
Giles looked at her. "You do?"
Debi smiled at him.
"Well it's not like he's the grossest guy around," Cordelia said.
"You never seemed interested," Giles said to Debi. "I assumed I wasn't your type."
Debi glanced down at her lap. "Well gee, you're smart and sophisticated -- in a geeky sort of way -- and British. I never figured that you'd ever be interested in me."
"I've kissed him before," Cordelia insisted. "It wasn't that bad."
"I think I really was attracted to you all along and just kidded myself into thinking that you were a dork," Debi declared. "Hey, Ms. Wertheimer, you know that romance novel I gave you? All that Repressed Desire and Exploded Frustration?"
"It does have a certain fictional inevitability to it, doesn't it?" Lena said philosophically.
"Like hell it does," Cordelia said. "This is supposed to be my smoochies scene. I don't care if it is with Giles, you're not going to backstab me to my face and swipe him."
Giles shut his eyes and rested his aching head against the couch back. "Technically, Cordelia, a backstab is to the -- uh -- back."
"Oh shut up." Cordelia eyed him with an icy determination. "If we're having smoochies, you're going to have to let me do the talking."
"Rupert and I have chemistry," Debi insisted and shoved herself to her feet to stand up to Cordelia. "We were going out for margaritas tonight!"
"Mr. Vitali said that Giles and I have a really twisted chemistry," Cordelia retorted.
"The next Tracy and Hepburn," Lena encouraged her with a smile.
"Well we are the next Richard Gere and Julia Roberts," Debi snarled and kicked Cordelia in the ankle.
"Ow! You slut! Those nylons cost --"
"Hah, can't take it can you, Miss Silver Spoon?"
"You want to fight?" Cordelia kicked off her one good shoe. Giles flinched away as it zipped past his left ear. "Come on! I'll show you a real Bitch Fight!"
"Hey Giles!" Xander appeared from beyond the lounge. "Did you get to see everything? Wasn't that great?" He looked around at the radically depleted crew in the lounge and his face fell. "Are they going now?"
Willow appeared next to Xander. "We got to run through a shower of sparks, Giles! Uh, what are Cordelia and Ms. Marble fighting about?"
"Smoochies," Giles said wearily. "Have you two exhausted your enthusiasm for the theatrical arts? Can I trust you to run down the hall and make sure that Mr. Vitali's crew is putting things to rights, as promised?"
"What kind of smoochies?" Xander said, staring at his girlfriend and the school secretary who were currently exchanging hair-fu death grips.
"Willow?" Giles pleaded.
"What? Who?" Willow looked wildly from the fight to Giles.
"Please?"
"Oh, right!" she grabbed Xander's arm. "Com'on, Xander, or we won't get back in time for the next scene!"