Hell Geeks by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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Apr. 15th, 2014 11:30 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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spn_springflingTitle: Hell Geeks
Pairing: Charlie/Jess
Rating: PG-13
Jess walked through the remains of what Hell used to be, and couldn't help but let out a long sigh. It wasn't like Hell was anything to be nostalgic about, it was a vile, depraved place, but Jess felt it was a shame that all of the erected colonnades and doors with the neat hallways paven into a flat surface of bones had been reduced to rubble that someone could easily trip over. Especially when that someone was wearing heels while sending emails on her Android.
And Jess made it a rule to always wear heels.
She was scanning through a dry email about the definition of demon “kissing” being updated to include hands for the sake of consent that she was CC'd in because Hell's legal department was under her jurisdiction, when she heard a voice ring out in an abandoned office of a building that used to belong to the bribery section of documents.
She veered off the road towards a room where she saw a light shining.
“Frak!” she heard again, and pushed the door open. A young woman whipped around at the loud sound-- it had been years since anyone had greased the hinges with the traditional human fat. Some things in Hell were disgusting, Jess had to admit. But a girl had to make a living, and the singing in the central office of Heaven. The godawful cherubs and their choir renditions of pop songs. At least the screams that had filled the caverns before the “remodel” to Crowley's Lines as Crowley had so cheekily dubbed them had blended into a soothing tempo.
“Uh-- Hi.” the woman provided.
“Hi.” Jess said. She surveyed the situation. The woman was sitting at the desk with the office's dusty desktop Mac turned on and loading a variety of files. An Acer laptop was open on the desk as well, from which Jess could see a background picture of a blonde with a stake in her hand radiating.
After a moment, the woman stuttered “I'm-- I'm Charlie?” It wasn't what Jess had been expected, and it sounded like a question.
“Hi, Charlie, I'm the District Manager of Hell, and I'm wondering what you're doing here.”
“I'm trying to hack into Hell's computer.”
Jess clicked off her Android. “And why would you be doing that?”
Charlie was slowly sliding her laptop off of the desk and into a backpack. “Well...”
“You're already found out. You had might as well tell me what down here is worth risking getting caught hacking into Hell's mainframe. You are hacking, right?” Jess saw Charlie's eyes flick to the desktop computer.
“I know what hacking looks like, I took a Computer Science course in college.” Jess told her, because although she knew the handbooks of Heaven and Hell said that trespassing was to be punished by sentencing to repeated deaths, Jess didn't really care about guidelines. She could get away with doing pretty much whatever she wanted-- that was the perk of a management job in the bureaucracy.
When she had died and entered Heaven, she'd been hired as an intern doing data entry in the admissions office, because they'd learned she had an undergraduate degree from Stanford. There had been some alum in charge somewhere who valued her alma matter. And she had spent the last several centuries moving herself up through the ranks to be precisely this: someone who didn't have to follow anyone's rules.
Jess hadn't become cruel as a result of her time here; she didn't have any intention of killing a perfectly harmless person.
“Well, there's something I really want that I heard I'd have to make a deal with a demon to get. But I'm pretty handy with a computer, so I thought, instead of signing my soul away, why not go straight to the source?”
“Yeah? What's the treasure?”
“Tickets to this year's San Diego Comic Con. I mean, those things are almost impossible to get, especially with this year's new raffle purchase order. You can have two chances if you have Pre-sale, but unfortunately I can't use my old name because I'm on the run...” Charlie had become absorbed in the explanation and Jess was startled to realize that she found it pretty endearing.
“You can bootleg pretty much anything with the new version of Photoshop...” she continued, “but for some reason not the metallic parts of the badge. I tried it repeatedly but no matter which program I use, I can't get it right. And the guards notice these things. So I figured, why not come hack into your files and pull up the tags for this year? I was gambling on you guys owning the soul of at least one person on the Comic Con committee afterall.” Charlie finished with a shrug.
“Wow, you intentionally came to Hell in order to bootleg Comic Con tickets? That's pretty-”
“Reckless? Illegal? Dangerous? Something you're definitely going to kill me for, right?”
“Geeky, I was actually going to say.” Jess said. “Really, really geeky.”
“Oh.” Charlie shifted in her chair uncomfortably, zipping up her bag. “I'm a pretty geeky girl.”
Jess couldn't help herself from laughing. It rang out the open door and through the long-silent caverns of Hell, something Jess had not intended. Charlie gave her an assessing look.
“How are you even here?” Jess asked her. She was honestly interested in the woman.
“Let's just say I'm pretty resourceful.”
“It takes some time to climb down here.”
Charlie shrugged for the second time. “I had some people on my tail, so I needed to disappear for a while. So I thought why not? I always enjoy a challenge.”
“Well, hacking into Hell, that's a new one, Charlie. You're lucky it's me who caught you; there's a lot of sensitive information on these computers.”
“Yeah, I'll just leave. Get out of your Buffy Summers hair.” She stood up quickly, hoisted her backpack over her shoulder, and headed quickly for the door.
Jess reached out and caught her wrist, holding her back. Charlie looked at her expectantly.
“But, if you weren't wicked, you'd be in the incorrect place.”
Charlie's skin was warm under her fingers and Jess could feel her heart beating erratically under it. The smile that spread over Charlie's face was warm, too. “I hadn't thought of it that way.”
“We're working on a PR campaign right now to re-image Hell. And we could use someone with computer skills like yours. If you really want to disappear, I mean.”
Charlie stared at her.
“Do you want the job?” Jess asked her, thinking it polite to remove the grasp that she had on her. She had resolutely retained her manners throughout the centuries of keeping mixed company.
Charlie shifted uncomfortably.
Jess realized here was an occasion where squelching her impulse to be honest might not be necessary. “It gets a little lonely down here, to be honest,” she said to her, laughing awkwardly. “I wouldn't mind the company.”
Charlie gave her another assessing look, and then a smile spread over her face, and she said “Well, I suppose I wouldn't mind a temp job somewhere noone could find me. As long as a graphic designer position is in Hell's budget.”
“Charlie, I run Hell's budget.” Jess arched one professionally shaped eyebrow.
“Well then I'll say yes,” Charlie told her. “If you buy me dinner.”
“Anywhere you'd like to go.” Jess pulled out the small vial she kept in the front pocket of her Prada. “Blood money, the company credit card.”
“There's a really great restaurant in San Diego.” Charlie smiled, “that is, if you have an in to score those Comic Con tickets I just risked my life for.”
“Of course I do. It is an amoral For-Profit afterall.” Jess hoped Charlie was impressed, and then wondered why she wanted a woman who had snuck into the abandoned offices of past-Hell in jeans and a t-shirt to think she was powerful.
“You'd have to come along to the convention with me, of course.” Charlie said, surprising Jess. “I'm thinking of cosplaying DC heroines this year. And, come to think of it,” she took a step back and surveyed Jess like it was all business, which Jess really wished she was unaffected by. “You'd make a fabulous Wonder Woman.”
Jess thought she remembered Wonder Woman from the cover of one of the comic books Sam Winchester had left lying around his dorm room at Stanford. But she left this out, because Charlie didn't want to hear about a random ex-boyfriend she would never meet.
“By the way, this would be a date, if that's okay with you, just so you're not left wondering,” Charlie said, reaching out to shake Jess's hand, with that smile on her face that was quickly becoming familiar.
It was okay with Jess.
Pairing: Charlie/Jess
Rating: PG-13
Jess walked through the remains of what Hell used to be, and couldn't help but let out a long sigh. It wasn't like Hell was anything to be nostalgic about, it was a vile, depraved place, but Jess felt it was a shame that all of the erected colonnades and doors with the neat hallways paven into a flat surface of bones had been reduced to rubble that someone could easily trip over. Especially when that someone was wearing heels while sending emails on her Android.
And Jess made it a rule to always wear heels.
She was scanning through a dry email about the definition of demon “kissing” being updated to include hands for the sake of consent that she was CC'd in because Hell's legal department was under her jurisdiction, when she heard a voice ring out in an abandoned office of a building that used to belong to the bribery section of documents.
She veered off the road towards a room where she saw a light shining.
“Frak!” she heard again, and pushed the door open. A young woman whipped around at the loud sound-- it had been years since anyone had greased the hinges with the traditional human fat. Some things in Hell were disgusting, Jess had to admit. But a girl had to make a living, and the singing in the central office of Heaven. The godawful cherubs and their choir renditions of pop songs. At least the screams that had filled the caverns before the “remodel” to Crowley's Lines as Crowley had so cheekily dubbed them had blended into a soothing tempo.
“Uh-- Hi.” the woman provided.
“Hi.” Jess said. She surveyed the situation. The woman was sitting at the desk with the office's dusty desktop Mac turned on and loading a variety of files. An Acer laptop was open on the desk as well, from which Jess could see a background picture of a blonde with a stake in her hand radiating.
After a moment, the woman stuttered “I'm-- I'm Charlie?” It wasn't what Jess had been expected, and it sounded like a question.
“Hi, Charlie, I'm the District Manager of Hell, and I'm wondering what you're doing here.”
“I'm trying to hack into Hell's computer.”
Jess clicked off her Android. “And why would you be doing that?”
Charlie was slowly sliding her laptop off of the desk and into a backpack. “Well...”
“You're already found out. You had might as well tell me what down here is worth risking getting caught hacking into Hell's mainframe. You are hacking, right?” Jess saw Charlie's eyes flick to the desktop computer.
“I know what hacking looks like, I took a Computer Science course in college.” Jess told her, because although she knew the handbooks of Heaven and Hell said that trespassing was to be punished by sentencing to repeated deaths, Jess didn't really care about guidelines. She could get away with doing pretty much whatever she wanted-- that was the perk of a management job in the bureaucracy.
When she had died and entered Heaven, she'd been hired as an intern doing data entry in the admissions office, because they'd learned she had an undergraduate degree from Stanford. There had been some alum in charge somewhere who valued her alma matter. And she had spent the last several centuries moving herself up through the ranks to be precisely this: someone who didn't have to follow anyone's rules.
Jess hadn't become cruel as a result of her time here; she didn't have any intention of killing a perfectly harmless person.
“Well, there's something I really want that I heard I'd have to make a deal with a demon to get. But I'm pretty handy with a computer, so I thought, instead of signing my soul away, why not go straight to the source?”
“Yeah? What's the treasure?”
“Tickets to this year's San Diego Comic Con. I mean, those things are almost impossible to get, especially with this year's new raffle purchase order. You can have two chances if you have Pre-sale, but unfortunately I can't use my old name because I'm on the run...” Charlie had become absorbed in the explanation and Jess was startled to realize that she found it pretty endearing.
“You can bootleg pretty much anything with the new version of Photoshop...” she continued, “but for some reason not the metallic parts of the badge. I tried it repeatedly but no matter which program I use, I can't get it right. And the guards notice these things. So I figured, why not come hack into your files and pull up the tags for this year? I was gambling on you guys owning the soul of at least one person on the Comic Con committee afterall.” Charlie finished with a shrug.
“Wow, you intentionally came to Hell in order to bootleg Comic Con tickets? That's pretty-”
“Reckless? Illegal? Dangerous? Something you're definitely going to kill me for, right?”
“Geeky, I was actually going to say.” Jess said. “Really, really geeky.”
“Oh.” Charlie shifted in her chair uncomfortably, zipping up her bag. “I'm a pretty geeky girl.”
Jess couldn't help herself from laughing. It rang out the open door and through the long-silent caverns of Hell, something Jess had not intended. Charlie gave her an assessing look.
“How are you even here?” Jess asked her. She was honestly interested in the woman.
“Let's just say I'm pretty resourceful.”
“It takes some time to climb down here.”
Charlie shrugged for the second time. “I had some people on my tail, so I needed to disappear for a while. So I thought why not? I always enjoy a challenge.”
“Well, hacking into Hell, that's a new one, Charlie. You're lucky it's me who caught you; there's a lot of sensitive information on these computers.”
“Yeah, I'll just leave. Get out of your Buffy Summers hair.” She stood up quickly, hoisted her backpack over her shoulder, and headed quickly for the door.
Jess reached out and caught her wrist, holding her back. Charlie looked at her expectantly.
“But, if you weren't wicked, you'd be in the incorrect place.”
Charlie's skin was warm under her fingers and Jess could feel her heart beating erratically under it. The smile that spread over Charlie's face was warm, too. “I hadn't thought of it that way.”
“We're working on a PR campaign right now to re-image Hell. And we could use someone with computer skills like yours. If you really want to disappear, I mean.”
Charlie stared at her.
“Do you want the job?” Jess asked her, thinking it polite to remove the grasp that she had on her. She had resolutely retained her manners throughout the centuries of keeping mixed company.
Charlie shifted uncomfortably.
Jess realized here was an occasion where squelching her impulse to be honest might not be necessary. “It gets a little lonely down here, to be honest,” she said to her, laughing awkwardly. “I wouldn't mind the company.”
Charlie gave her another assessing look, and then a smile spread over her face, and she said “Well, I suppose I wouldn't mind a temp job somewhere noone could find me. As long as a graphic designer position is in Hell's budget.”
“Charlie, I run Hell's budget.” Jess arched one professionally shaped eyebrow.
“Well then I'll say yes,” Charlie told her. “If you buy me dinner.”
“Anywhere you'd like to go.” Jess pulled out the small vial she kept in the front pocket of her Prada. “Blood money, the company credit card.”
“There's a really great restaurant in San Diego.” Charlie smiled, “that is, if you have an in to score those Comic Con tickets I just risked my life for.”
“Of course I do. It is an amoral For-Profit afterall.” Jess hoped Charlie was impressed, and then wondered why she wanted a woman who had snuck into the abandoned offices of past-Hell in jeans and a t-shirt to think she was powerful.
“You'd have to come along to the convention with me, of course.” Charlie said, surprising Jess. “I'm thinking of cosplaying DC heroines this year. And, come to think of it,” she took a step back and surveyed Jess like it was all business, which Jess really wished she was unaffected by. “You'd make a fabulous Wonder Woman.”
Jess thought she remembered Wonder Woman from the cover of one of the comic books Sam Winchester had left lying around his dorm room at Stanford. But she left this out, because Charlie didn't want to hear about a random ex-boyfriend she would never meet.
“By the way, this would be a date, if that's okay with you, just so you're not left wondering,” Charlie said, reaching out to shake Jess's hand, with that smile on her face that was quickly becoming familiar.
It was okay with Jess.
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Date: 2014-04-16 07:35 am (UTC)Jess working her way up through the ranks in the afterlife (and always wearing heels because of course). Charlie hacking hell for SDCC passes. I couldn't have wished for a better gift. I kind of threw this pairing out there with vague ideas of what could become of it, but never did I imagine something as brilliant as this. Also, Jess not mentioning that 'random ex-boyfriend' of hers? Broke my heart. On so many levels.
This is was such a fantastic read--the little details are what made it sing. I'm going to read it five more times before I go to bed. I'm just so happy right now. Thank you so, so much! I really love it. ♥
And PS. still not over that pilot not being picked up so Jess as Wonder Woman is a major yes for me.
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