A Gummy Sort of Problem
Crawley was sick and tired of people eating all of his candy. Look, you took one or two pieces NOT one or two handfuls. And the chocolate was always gone within a day. It didn't matter if he bought those adorable little sampler bags or two kilograms of Hershey's kisses. It all vanished in one day. Crawley was not the kind of guy who normally poisoned his coworkers but even he had his limits. No, he didn't want anything lethal. Just a harmless bout of diarrhea or two if they ate too much candy from his candy bowl. If you ate one to three pieces, you would be fine.
Crawley sighed as he scrolled through his candy options on Amazon. Sadly, they did not offer mildly poisoned candy. If he tried to order them from Scorpia, they'd send him something strong enough to poison all of London in one bite. Little trigger-happy shits. Although, most of their assassins were pretty well-
"Hello, Crawley!"
The man pulled out a bag of sugar-free gummy bears. Andrew was one of the few people who bought him replacement candy. Good Andrew. "Good afternoon, Andrew."
Andrew beamed at him. Crawley was unsure why the man liked him. Crawley knew that he wasn't that likable. "How's the budget going?"
Crawley decided to deadpan. Andrew wasn't exactly the smartest guy in the organization but he could keep his trap shut. "Terrible."
Andrew flinched. His smile dimmed slightly. "Is it going to be okay?"
Crawley rolled his eyes at the man. "Okay, yes. Are people going to like the new budgets? No."
Andrew let out a sigh. Crawley patted him on the hand. "Anyways. I brought gummy bears. They're sugar-free because I'm pre-diabetic."
Crawley took the gummy bears. Andrew was getting extra money added to his budget. "Thank you, Andrew."
Andrew's smile returned as he left Crawley's office. Crawley looked at the gummy bears Andrew left. Sugar-free gummy bears seemed like a fitting punishment until he found mildly poisonous candy. Crawley cheerfully dumped them in the bowl and decided to order more sugar-free gummies to hold him over until he figured out the diuretic situation. Laxatives powder, maybe?
Dear Crawley,
To start with, I'm glad you decided to make yourself more approachable. Candy is a great strategy! However, there was a slight issue. I took a few of your gummies and they appear to have caused me diarrhea. Several of your coworkers have also noticed similar symptoms. Could they possibly be expired?
Thanks,
John from HR
John looked at the gummy bears. He looked at his email. Crawley began laughing his ass off. This was fantastic. Human resources made a point of trying to be polite. This was just too fucking good. Crawley checked the brand on the gummy bears and pulled up his work account. This should be interesting. There were a few reviews that noted similar digestive issues. Crawley decided that three gummy bears were probably fine, but eating a lot of them probably wasn't. Excellent. That was exactly what he had been looking for. Gluttony was a sin.
Andrew should probably get a bonus since he had been more helpful than he knew. Crawley decided to give him the employee of the month bonus and send him some nice flowers. The man deserved it more than the field agents who usually got the award anyways. Crawley may be slightly angry about the department's nasty habit of dumping the incomplete or wrong paperwork on him.
Dear Crawley,
I heard that you were making an effort like we talked about in our last meeting with John. People are quite fond of snacks and tend to talk more when they eat them. However, there continues to be digestive issues with your coworkers who eat them. Might I recommend changing the brand? I would hate to have to escalate this.
Thanks,
Joseph
Head of Human Resources
Crawley grinned to himself. Perfect. You know what, at this rate, he might just have to get Andrew Christmas presents. A small price to pay for the amusement that this entire affair had brought him. Honestly, this was probably the most fun he'd had in a good decade. He was going to ignore that email. It wasn't like HR had any real teeth while he was revising their precious budget. Besides, Joseph was a complete asshole. The man had tried to force him to go to socialization lessons designed for children.
Crawley made a mental note to pull every excuse in the book to try to get rid of his holiday bonus. Joseph was a dick and he deserved to suffer in every petty way that Crawley could think of. It wasn't like Legal liked him either. Especially after the whole dating a new law secretary while being married ordeal that had resulted in multiple people being stabbed with scissors. Crawley was going to have a bit more fun with this.
Dear Crawley,
Stop poisoning your coworkers or MI6's legal department will be forced to fire you and press charges. This is your only warning from me. Enough is enough.
Yours,
Tulip
Crawley dearly wanted to ignore Tulip's email and order more gummy bears. However, he knew that his boss didn't fuck around. He was surprised they had gotten her to email the threat to him. Maybe he had gotten one of her precious field agents? Whoops. Not. He was still stuck filling out back paperwork that had been submitted incomplete and six months late. How about Tulip firing them instead of him? All he did was pull a relatively harmless lesson on some of his coworkers. Getting greedy was for Scorpia, after all.
Crawley eyed his bulk box of gummy bears thoughtfully. There were a lot of them. Hmmm. There was always the possibility of giving them out at the office holiday party. Then again, it would be traced back to him and he would probably be called "the party pooper" until he retired. Maybe he could drop them at a school? Give the little shits the shits. That would probably get him on Tulip's shit list, though.
Crawley was struck with a sudden burst of inspiration. He pulled up a certain Venice address on his computer and printed the MI6 shipping label. MI6 could afford to pay to ship ten kilos of gummy bears to Scorpia. It would be fun. Crawley stuck the label on all of his boxes of gummy bears. He couldn't wait until Scorpia had to deal with the shit.
Fin
Based on a prompt by Zyzyax (see story summary). This is the 223rd work in the Winds of Change 2022 Alex Rider Prompt event, where a new prompt (plus a short 1-3K work) is posted every day. For more details, see the AO3 collection. We have an index of all the prompts used in this event so far and going forwards - join the discord to get access to the online index (and to take part in our events, chat about everything and anything, and meet a load of awesome people!