(no subject)
Title: A Lot To Learn
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Charlie, OC
Word Count: 772
Rating: PG
Prompt: toestastegood wanted Charlie fic, and has a thing for the internet.
Author's Note: My first time with a real OC. Not a Mary Sue, trust me on this. Also, I am insane, let that be known.
Summary: AU. Of all the people to come back he's fairly sure he's the only saddled with an assistant.
Of all of the people to come back he’s fairly sure he’s the only one saddled with an assistant. He isn’t sure how that makes him feel. So Charlie decides to take it as an ego boost.
Not just a survivor of Flight 815, one of very few, but also a back-from-the-dead rockstar whose popularity only increased after his untimely, apparently untrue, death. That means extra security, that means extra precautions, extra press, and now an assistant.
He expected some older gentleman, perhaps with a pleasant speaking voice and a kind manner. What he gets is a 22-year old, fresh-faced, communications major.
Somehow he connects that idea with a groupie. A party girl’s dream come true, working with a rockstar, and he can see where this will only be more hassle than it’s worth. Then again, it’s been a long while since he’s had people hanging all over him. It makes a person feel important, even for just a little while.
But she isn’t a groupie and that dream is crushed before it can be fully formed.
Angie - never Angela, she thinks it makes her sound older - wears glasses, keeps her dirty blonde hair hanging loosely around her shoulders or pulled back into a ponytail, wears less makeup than he does on stage, and can usually be found with either a computer or something called an iPhone, something he is very, very unfamiliar with, in hand. Apparently while he was gone Apple took over the world, or at least the technological world.
That isn’t the only thing new to him.
“You know the only people who pay attention to press conferences anymore are like...the forty and up crowd.” She tells him, her third day with him, dismissive of the whole notion of staging a press conference in order to announce the band was getting back together.
“So?” He asks, getting the same look he’s already gotten a handful of times that day. The look that tells him he has a lot to learn, with a shake of her head. She’s younger than him and she acts like he’s the child.
“Do you guys have a Myspace?”
“Pardon?”
Her eyes widen. “Myspace? Major social networking site? Frequented by teens and 20-somethings, quite often looking for new music?” None of this is ringing any bells for him. “Okay, that was around before you...disappeared; there’s no excuse for that.”
“I’m a musician,” he offers, like it’s a get-out-of-jail free card. It’s not. “I think our manager used to handle of this stuff.”
“You don’t have a manager.”
“Past tense.” He clarifies.
“Right because of when the band broke up.”
Not exactly. More like an overdose before the band broke up, but he doesn’t point that out. There’s no reason she needs to know anything about film canisters full of little bags of heroin or lives lived and wasted. “Right.”
It only takes her a second to get the conversation back on track. “So you can still have the press conference but I’m thinking if we set up a Myspace and post information there too it might help attract a younger crowd.”
Charlie is five seconds from informing her that they do indeed have a younger crowd when he remembers debating which album was better with John Locke and quickly rethinks his words. Even their fans from before are bound to have grown up and maybe even forgotten them. “Can you do that?”
“Are you kidding?” Sarcasm. That he can figure out, thank you very much. “Give me half an hour and it’s done.”
“Good,” he shifts in his chair, watching her hands move quickly over the keyboard, feeling a bit out of place. Apparently some things do not change. It’s the island all over again, he notes, and he’s out of the bloody loop. “I’ll just um...I’ll leave you to that.”
She makes a noise that he accepts as her acknowledgement before she holds up a finger with a, “wait”. He looks her way and, even though she isn’t looking his way, instead at the monitor, she seems to know that. “Should I do the blogs or do you want to?”
More unfamiliar terms. Fantastic. “Those are what again?”
Now she’s looking at him. The ‘you have a lot to learn’ look. He counts six now today. There’s a biting comment on the tip of her tongue, he can hear it already, but to his surprise she stops. “You know what, I’ll take care of it. You just...go make music and let me handle this.”
Music. He can do that. He’s good at that. Isn’t that what it was always supposed to be about anyways?