It wasn't unusual for Elizabeth and a hand full of staff to be seen milling about the seventh floor on a Sunday afternoon. They were in the lead up to the treaty signing between Japan and China and had been working diligently to ensure everything went smoothly. They were all coffee fuelled and sleep deprived. Jay looked like he hadn't washed in days. In other words it was like any other day in the State Department.
That was until a blood curdling scream sent Elizabeth rocketing out of out of her chair. Her heart thumped erratically in her chest and a cold sweat ran down her back. What the hell was that?
The scream had come from the outer office. Just outside her door. She heard papers and a pencil pot falling to the floor and what sounded like a chair being knocked over.
"Oh my God!" someone cried and Elizabeth began to tremble. What was happening? Was someone dying? Her heart was really thumping now.
She heard Jay wail "don't come near me" and her hairs stood on end. She had never heard him sound so fearful. Different scenarios ran through her mind like a slideshow of doom and terror. Was it an axe murderer? A gun wielding mad man?
She should have pressed the panic button but her legs were carrying her away from the desk. Mouth dry and hands shaking she approached the open door.
The first thing she saw was Blake's chair lying in the doorway. He was pressed against his desk, pale as a sheet. He wasn't dead.
All her staff were in the room. There was no axe murderer and they were all still standing but the looks on their faces did nothing to assuage her fears. They were pressed against the walls, all of them staring fearfully at the same spot on the floor.
It was a spider.
"Seriously?" she gasped as she leant against the door frame. No one took any notice of her. Elizabeth focused on catching her breath and allowing her heart rate to normalise. No one was dead. She wasn't about to die. What a relief.
Everyone else was frozen to the spot, staring at the eight-legged foe as if afraid it might attack, or worse escape. After all an enemy you couldn't see was far more deadly. Elizabeth was surprised their collective stares hadn't burnt a hole in the parquet flooring.
"Is somebody going to kill it?" Daisy squeaked from her position behind Matt. She was using him as a human shield, ready to sacrifice him if the need arose.
"Honestly guys" Elizabeth said while wafting her shirt in an attempt to cool down. "It's probably more scared of you than you are of it".
The spider chose that moment to scurry sideways sending Blake into the air and onto his desk with all the grace of a lame gazelle. On second thoughts…
"It's like the damn hand from the Adam's Family!" Matt said holding tightly to Daisy's arm.
For all their fear, nobody looked prepared to do anything to help themselves. Jay was pressed full bodily against a filing cabinet, Nadine's lips were pinched and her eyes were wide. Poor Blake looked about ready to pass out… It was time to intervene.
"All right. I'll handle it" she said.
"Drop a book on it or something!" Nadine croaked when she took more than two seconds to make a move.
"I'm not going to kill it. I just have to figure out how to grab it without it being startled."
"Don't you have some mad C.I.A skills you can use?" Matt asked.
"This isn't really the kind of thing we covered in training Matt." She bit back a laugh. "Does anyone have a mug or something I can—"Blake threw a paper cup at her from where he was still perched on his desk. It took her by surprise and she juggled with it as it bounced off her body. "Thanks" she said sarcastically once it was in her grasp. He didn't seem to notice.
Everybody held their collective breaths as Elizabeth approached. Her super stealth skills must have helped as the poor spider didn't even budge. "I need a thing—" Jay threw the report he was holding at her from across the room. 'Preservation of bio-diverse species in the Selva region'. That's Ironic Elizabeth thought as she slid the plastic folder under the cup, trapping the spider inside. Poor thing.
The next step was to remove the spider from the building however, that was going to be a little more complicated than originally anticipated. Thanks to the hyper security of the seventh floor, all the windows were designed to be impenetrable and were firmly locked at all times.
She couldn't drop the spider into one of the potted plants if she didn't want a reoccurrence of today's events. Looks like Elizabeth would be taking an impromptu trip to the ground floor.
When she picked up the folder there was a collective intake of breath. "Since I doubt any of you want to show our eight-legged visitor out, will someone please let my security know I'm on my way down?" No one moved a muscle until she raised an eyebrow at Blake who immediately scrambled for the phone.
He was more jumpy than when Russell Jackson paid them a visit and that was saying something. Russell Jackson 2.0. She'd be sure to let Russell know he'd been out done by a creepy-crawly.
When she reached the elevator she mashed her elbow against the call button, being careful not to let the arachnid escape.
She and the spider travelled happily until the lift dinged and stopped on the third floor. Three men piled in. Being who she was, Elizabeth was used to getting stares but this was slightly different. One of the men was watching her hands and she was watching him. His eyes flickered up to meet hers and she pressed her lips together in a tight smile.
What was up with everyone? The State department housed some of the toughest people she knew. Elizabeth was proud to come to work every day with people who were resilient through stress and rapidly changing situations. They dealt with dictators and warlords on a daily basis but a spider…
It wasn't a stretch to imagine Blake losing his cool over the unwelcome visitor. Especially not after the pigeon incident.
It was Nadine who surprised her. Shewas usually the most collected of them all. It seemed strange that she would lose it over a harmless insect, no bigger than a tennis ball.
Elizabeth reached the lobby and two of her security detail flanked her side. Wow, this spider was really getting the V.I.P treatment. Personally chauffeured by the Secretary of State and now escorted by two diplomatic security agents. He could tell all his spider friends about it once he was back in the wild.
Outside the building she looked for somewhere suitable to release 'Russell Jackson 2.0' as she was now referring to the bug. There was a nice manicured shrubbery off to the left. Perfect. Hopefully it was far enough from the door so Mr Spider wouldn't wander back in and scare the pants off her staff again.
Her D.S agents didn't like her hanging out in the open, especially in front of the State building. They preferred to keep her away from prying eyes as much as possible. Out of sight out of… assassins' minds, as the saying goes. She was certainly visible now. The Secretary of State, crouching in the bushes in front of the State Department. People were already starting to notice her and the agents were getting antsy. It was time to say goodbye to her friend.
When she got back to the office, the crowd had dispersed. Blake's desk still looked like a crime scene though the culprit and his acrobatic skills where nowhere in sight. Elizabeth continued on into her office and for the second time that day, Blake scared the living daylights out of her.
He was stood unassumingly against the back wall of her office and when Elizabeth saw him she stumbled backwards into the door. "Damn it Blake!" she gasped in surprise. "There's no need to lurk around my office. You're not Nosferatu".
Blake just gulped and looked at her like a kicked puppy. She sighed.
"It's all sorted, now." she said as she approached him. "Don't worry". He looked worried, and still on edge. "Will you please take this review of the seating chart to the Chief of Protocol's office?" She handed him a file off her desk. Surely a visit with Cyril and his team would shake Blake out of his funk. That or it would frighten him a new one.
Either way she wanted him out from behind her desk and off the seventh floor so she could tidy up his workspace. It was—or used to be her job to read people. It didn't take an expert to see that Blake was afraid to return to the outer office. At least while it was in the state he had left it in. Too many folders on the floor that vengeful arachnids could be hiding under. She gave him an encouraging smile and he scurried off.
When he was out of sight, Elizabeth set to work. She picked his chair up off the floor; it was a heavy piece of furniture. He must have leapt quite forcefully out of his seat. Elizabeth gathered up all of the reports and folders and placed them in a neat pile on his desk. She knew Blake would have some kind of filing system but she wouldn't know where to begin. Hopefully that would do.
Once Blake returned, he didn't sit at his desk like Elizabeth hoped he would but proceeded to follow her around all afternoon. He was more watchful than one of her security agents. Though, she doubted it was he who was trying to protect her but rather the other way around.
Everyone else quickly recovered from the scare but Blake remained incredibly jumpy. His eyes were constantly on the lookout and he would flinch violently if touched. Elizabeth assigned him as many tasks as she could to keep him busy but he still managed to find a great deal of time to hang around twiddling his thumbs. By six o'clock, Elizabeth was about ready to pull her hair out. She couldn't let this continue.
Later that night and after a glass of wine, she was able to make a good story of it over dinner. Henry and the kids reminisced about Jason's arachnophobia and how it was particularly bad when they lived on the horse farm. There was no escaping the spiders there and Jason lived in a constant state of peril.
Allison had even made a chart that counted the 'days since the last spider incident' to tease her brother. Perhaps the office could do with one of them.
Eventually, someone had gifted them a bottle of peppermint scented spray that was supposedly a spider repellent. It had worked like a charm and Allison's chart had been able to count higher than ever before.
Henry made a suggestion that she buy a bottle for Blake and that's how she found herself making a stop at her local flower shop before work the next morning. It was a long shot since she had no idea where the original bottle had come from but miraculously they had some in stock.
Elizabeth waited until Blake was out of sight before she left it on his desk. He had kept quiet about the incident all morning and she didn't want to embarrass him by bringing it up.
It had been an easy morning by Elizabeth's standards. She had been sat undisturbed in her office for the last few hours signing off on reports. It was only when the scent of peppermint reached her did she look up. She smiled to herself. Blake had clearly felt the need to use her gift. She decided to get up and have a peak but when she opened her office door, the smell of peppermint hit her like a brick to the face. Jesus! She held a hand to her nose. How much did he use?
"Blake! What did you do?" her eyes were watering from the stench. She clearly wasn't the only one because Blake turned to look at her with red teary eyes. "How much did you use?" she asked as calmly as she could.
He shrugged and gestured to the bottle that had gone down by at least three quarters since this morning.
"The bottle says one or two squirts! Nowhere does it suggest pouring it around your desk like a salt circle!" Blake looked down at his hands and she immediately felt bad. "I gave you the spray, it's my fault… But I reserve the right to confiscate it" she put her hand out and he gave it to her.
Nadine walked past and began choking on the smell. Elizabeth ushered her into her office. "Blake, you come too. I doubt it's healthy to be breathing in so much peppermint." He followed dutifully shutting the door behind him.
They had only been sat in her office for about fifteen minutes when diplomatic security burst in followed by two guys in hazmat suits.
"Ma'am. We are evacuating this floor. You need to follow me".
"What's going on?" She asked, her heart rate picking up speed.
"Some kind of stink bomb appears to have been set off in the outer office. We need you all to put on these masks and follow us".
"Guys. Its only peppermint" she said but the agent was insistent. They did as they were told and gathered up all the things they would need to continue their work elsewhere. She sighed. It's just one thing after another.
When they left the security of her office there was no denying the smell was bad. It seemed worse than it had been fifteen minutes ago.
"Did you spray more?" Nadine asked incredulously. Blake looked mortified.
They were led out through the cloud of minty stench and into the safety of the emergency stairwell. Elizabeth could see the building's security team evacuating the rest of the staff. They exited at the basement level and were loaded into the waiting car.
"This beats the pigeon incident" Nadine chuckled. Elizabeth shot her a warning look despite the fact she was trying to supress a smile of her own. Blake looked ready to die of embarrassment.
Her phone began to ring and she looked at the caller ID. Russell Jackson. "Uh oh".
"Hey Russell" she said cheerily and bit her lip in preparation for what she knew was coming.
"Did you bring a bomb to the office?" He spat.
"Well, that's a little exaggera—"
"Because I just got a call from D.S, informing me that they are evacuating the State Department due to the fact that the Secretary of State thought it would be a good idea to bring an unidentified, hazardous material to work this morning!" Not even a pause for breath. Impressive.
"That's not how I'd tell the story but—"
"You think this is funny?" He shouted and Elizabeth had to pull the phone away from her ear. Nadine raised her eyebrows.
"Russell. Calm down. It's not that bad. It's just peppermint oil and water... Maybe more oil than water. But it's not toxic."
"It doesn't matter what it is! Your little stunt still put the State Department out of commission… The eve before the Japanese Prime Minister arrives no less".
"We're not 'out of commission', as you put it. I'm on my way to the White House as we speak. If you can wait patiently for fifteen minutes you can berate me then".
"I will. Believe me". He hung up.
"I love you too Russell" she muttered to herself. Nadine hid a smirk behind the clipboard she was holding. They drove the rest of the way in silence.
Walking through the White House corridor, she spotted Henry and the mood Russell had left her in vanished into thin air. "Hey you!" She smiled brightly before she noticed the serious expression on Henry's face.
"Oh my God babe! Are you alright?" he asked embracing her fiercely.
"What?" she asked. Her question suffocated in his tight grip. "What's wrong?"
"On the news. They said there was a bomb. On the seventh floor there was a bomb and they evacuated the building." She would have laughed but the waver in his voice and his concerned expression made her feel mildly ill. "I tried to get a hold of you but you didn't answer your phone".
"I was talking to Russell" she said. "Henry. It's fine. Nothing happened. It wasn't a bomb…" How to explain this one. She looked at Blake but he was avoiding all eye contact.
"Then what—?" Henry asked.
"It was an accident" she said, putting her hands on his chest. "Someone…" not mentioning any names, "spilled that bottle of peppermint spray. The one you thought Blake might want".
Henry was silent as he processed what she was saying. "D.S. are just being overly cautious until the building airs".
"What—?" Henry choked out.
"You know…"She said teasingly. "Some might argue that this is your fault…" She shot him a devilish grin and poked him in the chest.
"What?" He was a little more incredulous this time.
"Well it was your suggestion was it not? To bring a stink bomb into the office" He didn't reciprocate her humour.
"I'm not quite ready to find this funny yet" he said. She worried about what he must have gone through for those five minutes he couldn't get a hold of her.
"Alright" she conceded. "You just let me know when you are ready and when I can start poking fun" she pecked him on the lips with a smile before turning serious. "We're fine you know".
"I know" he said.
"I've got to go. Russell wants my head on a platter".
"Just make sure he gives it back by the end of the day" he smirked and planted a kiss on her forehead. "You smell like the mascot for Crest toothpaste".
"Aw" she grinned up at him. "I've never been compared to a pile of minty goop before".
"It's only because I love you".
"You're sweet" she patted his chest.
This day was certainly one for the books. Time to face up to Russell Jackson 1.0. She hoped Blake was ready.
A/N: A little one shot I hope you enjoy!
Please read and review! :)