InsaneJournal

A Little Friction
Who: Charlie and Lia
What: Love at first sight! Or, you know, the opposite of that. >.>
Where: The radio station that employs Lia (LA)
When: July 15th, 2011? I think? I could be wrong about this. >.>
Notes: Placeholder!
Warnings: Language!!!



Another day, another dollar, and, to be quite frank, Charlie didn’t have much to complain about. The radio station’s usual security guard was only out sick for one day, but it was a fairly cushy replacement job. All she had to do was sit behind a desk and check badges as people went in and out. The majority of her time was devoted to putting her feet up on said desk and flipping through a hunting magazine - it wasn’t hers and she’d never really participated in such sport, but the guns were nice to look at. Gum kept her mouth busy, and she was amused by the obnoxious snapping noises she could make with it.

The clock on her shift was running down, and soon it’d be time to head home. Or rather, maybe a bar, or somewhere else she could amuse herself instead of putting herself back in her box for twelve hours until her next shift. Snapping the gum satisfactorily, she flipped to the next page, offering the sight of a beaming hunter and his catch, a huge stag with an impressive set of horns.

Lia was late, which was rare enough, but today of all days was just not the one for it. A meeting with the station manager, a backlog of paperwork for syndication, and two e-mails from readers-slash-listeners who couldn’t seem to decide if they wanted to kill her or fuck her -- possibly both? Possibly in that order? Creepy letters happened occasionally, but two in one week might have been a record. Maybe this meant she was moving up in the world.

She gritted her teeth, shaking her head at her own internal, unfunny little joke.

It wasn’t like her to not even look up as she scrolled through her e-mails and entered the lobby, but Joe, the usual security guard, had been working there longer than she had and never asked for her badge. So as she walked past the security desk, she waved, not looking up, and kept walking toward the elevator bank.

Charlie hated having to work for her pay, at least in this current career path. Unless she was bored (which was fairly often), she rarely even wanted to move - but that option was quickly thrown out the door at the appearance of this woman, who apparently thought the rules didn’t apply to her.

“Hey. HEY. Gotta see a badge, cupcake!” Feet slammed to the floor as Charlie sought to pull the woman back with as little effort as possible; the magazine that had previously been resting against her knees landed roughly on the desktop. Some people, really, thought they were above everything. Charlie almost felt that the fact that most civilians weren’t drilled to respond to commands was a negative aspect of society, but then again, she was rarely one to obey anyway. Nails rapped the grained wood, waiting for this woman’s response, her gum snapping once more after the words had left her mouth.

Lia’s brow furrowed at the sound of the unfamiliar voice and its demanding tone. Under normal circumstances, Lia might have flirted with her, broken the tension, laughed sheepishly as she made a little joke at her own expense and showed her the badge. But these were not normal circumstances, and something about the very sound of this woman just pushed the hell right out of some normally deeply buried button inside Lia.

As if she didn’t have enough to worry about.

Without even dipping her hand into her substantial bag, Lia slowly pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head and said, “Excuse me?”

“You heard me - no badge, no entry.” It surely couldn’t have been that difficult of a concept, but maybe Charlie had run across someone with a mightier-than-thou approach. She’d sure as hell enjoy popping that bubble. Leaning back in her chair, arms crossed over her stomach with an attitude of lazy authority.

“So let’s see some ID, or back out the door you go, cupcake. Some of us ain’t got all day.” Of course, Charlie perfectly well had all day, but that was neither here nor there in this particular scenario.

Lia’s face seemed to curl into disbelief at the woman’s words. Her tone, her attitude, even her posture were offensively arrogant and abrasive, and if Lia had started the day with less patience than usual, this woman was clearly set to quickly diminish it further. Impatiently, her hand dipped into her bag, and as her fingers slid across the bottom, she had a sinking sensation that she’d left the badge in her apartment last week. She drew a deep, frustrated breath before speaking.

“Listen, I don’t know where Joe is,” she began, “but I’ve worked her for five years. I have a show here. I’m due in my producer’s office like, five minutes ago. I really don’t have time for this.”

“And right now, the only thing that concerns me is seein’ some proof that you belong here in this buildin’,” Charlie added, as though the sentiment needed further clarification. Swaying a little in her chair, one brow cocked in disbelief of this woman’s story, she could honestly care less where this woman needed to be. Rare were the times when she felt like actually doing her job, but at the moment, this was far more entertaining than a magazine full of guns.

“You wanna keep stallin’, be my guest, but you can stall your way right on back out those doors,” she continued, jerking a thumb in the direction from whence the woman had come.

Lia could feel her blood pressure rising, the anger and frustration welling up in her like a glass too full. It seemed to emanate off her in waves, pushing outward toward the other woman. “I’m not stallin’,” she said, finding it increasingly difficult to maintain anything resembling civility. “I don’t have my badge with me, I live in Orange County, and I sure as hell am not going to drive all the way the hell back there because you’re new and get off on exerting whatever minute sense of authority and power you get out of being a rent-a-cop. So why don’t you just call my producer and let me get the fuck to work.”

“Maybe they bent the rules for yah in the past, but that’s in the past. If yer already late, who’s gonna care about you drivin’ back home to grab what you need?” In opposition to the woman’s rising temper, Charlie was entirely calm, almost serene. If she found anything in the woman’s demeanour to be even in the least bit frightening, the rent-a-cop gave absolutely no sign of such a thing.

“Just ‘cause you looked up a name in a newspaper or whatever and get me to waste their time ain’t proof that you belong here.” Shrugging her shoulders, she leaned back in her chair. She picked the hunting magazine up once more, snapped it open, and neatly folded her legs with her feet propped up on the desk, considering the matter closed.

“My home is a good hour from here in traffic,” she said, gritting her teeth. Could this woman be any more of a bitch? Lia doubted it. At this point, it was obvious she was totally content to ruin Lia’s day, and was having a great time of it. But nothing was going to be accomplished here. Lia could walk right past her, but she had the feeling she couldn’t take the guard in a fight, and she wasn’t going to add insult to injury by going home with a fat lip on top of everything else.

“I am going to call my producer,” Lia said, “while I drive home and get my badge. And I’m going to tell him why I’m going to miss our meeting today, and be late for the taping of my show. And then he can give your supervisor a call, and he or she can give you a call, and you can explain why the fuck this morning has turned into such a goddamn shitshow.”

Charlie gave a deep sigh combined with a shrug. She could honestly care less if she was written up again, or even if it meant termination. But she did need this job - the slight pension she was awarded from the military was just enough to cover rent on her apartment. The crappy security position bought food and put gas in her bike. Though she didn’t like it, she just might have to play by the rules this once.

How irritating was that? This snotty brat was going to get to walk away, having broken her own place of work’s established law, and yet Charlie was stuck just letting her pass on by. She snapped her gum, irritated and unable to let this go. The magazine slapped down on the desk again, her feet thumping to the floor as she glared daggers at the woman, pointing an accusing finger at her.

“You know why it turned into a fuckin’ shitshow, cupcake. Rules are rules, and I’m just doin’ mah job. You got a problem with that, you go right ahead and go tattle-tale on me to whatever bigwig you want. Thank fuckin’ whatever I’m only stuck here today,” she finished, leaning back in her chair, making it squeak a bit with the force of her movement.

Lia dropped her glasses back down onto the bridge of her nose and took out her phone. It wasn’t worth arguing or getting into; she had to find some way to get to Newport Beach and back in an hour -- something that was about about as plausible as this woman and her managing a civil conversation.

“I have a problem with people who are assholes just because they can be,” she said, and started dialing her producer’s number, to which there was predictably no answer.

At the end of the day, it was highly unlikely that the insufferably rude woman would be fired because of anything Lia said or did -- she was following procedure, and Lia was in the wrong. But that thought was nowhere near Lia’s mind as she raised up her middle finger and walked out of the lobby toward her car for the long ride home.