"Visual Chaos: A Tale of Two Sissies"
"Visual Chaos: A Tale of Two Sissies"
A one shot, verging on crack,
inspired by too much coffee and my friend's arachnophobia
Rating: PG 13 for swearkskies and allusions to sexy things
I don’t own the movie or the book or any of the characters, most depressingly, Miranda is not mine. I play in the Runway universe, and sometimes it is kind to my fantasies
M-I-R-A-N-D-Y
Visual Chaos: A Tale of Two Sissies
Andrea gazed drearily at the screen of her Mac, willing God or the Universe or whoever the fuck else was out there to speed up the passage of time so she could flee the offices of Runway for the sanctity of her bachelor apartment and sleep off the remainder of the world’s worst hangover.
But as the seconds of the exposed-gear analog clock hanging near her head continued to take hours between their dull little tics and tocks, the percussive noise like chisels slowly chipping away at the young woman’s skull, Andy realised- with no small amount of ire- that she was in it for the long haul. Perhaps Miranda would send her out on a Starbucks run, so she could at least grab an Americano to ease her beleaguered, harassed temples.
After all, the only reason the editor’s now first assistant had been pounding back double neat scotches the previous evening was the fact that Andy had a seriously stupid, seriously problematic, seriously awkward crush on her boss.
Awkward, because Miranda was certainly into dudes- or gentlemen, Andy corrected herself. Problematic, because if the editrix born of Satan found out, poor little ‘Hometown Cincinnati’ would be ridiculed out of her skin and shipped back to Ohio faster than the Buckeyes could lose the season playoffs. Not that Andy was into college football.
And stupid? That in itself, Andy groused silently while trying to suppress a burp which tasted of Chivas and Pepto, was self explanatory. It was Miranda Priestly she was lusting after.
But, c’est la vie, right? There was shit all she could do to remedy her unfortunate situation, and Andy was damned if she would quit her job simply because she wanted into Miranda’s heart. And her pants, for that matter.
So there she sat, glaring at La Priestly’s schedule, which she had optimized and re-optimized at least seventy-three-thousand times that afternoon, waiting for Miranda to pick up and leave already, so Andy could at least give up the pretence of working and take a much-required breather while waiting for the Book.
A breather which would hopefully include at least half an hour of steamy, lascivious daydreams featuring herself and none other than the White Witch of Elias Clarke. Turkish delight not included.
In fact, it probably wouldn’t hurt to slip her active imagination into something more comfortable a little early, Andy thought as she slouched into her chair and began constructing an image of the older woman, sitting behind her desk, clad in nothing but an Hermes scarf and at least a quarter of a squeeze bottle of chocolate syrup.
An image which was quickly torn to hell when Miranda’s less than amused voice pricked the bubble of fantasy currently surrounding the first assistant’s head. Grumbling under her breath, Andy grabbed a notepad and prepared herself for the onslaught of complete fuckery which Miranda’s more-than-usually annoyed voice portended.
Andrea entered the igloo to find Miranda staring at something obviously offensive on her desk. The editor looked up for a split second, and seeing the girl, hastily returned her vigil to whatever it was that had her La Perla panties venturing up her ass.
“Was there something you needed, Miranda?” Andy queried cautiously, though unable to keep the edge out of her voice, tired and nauseous as she was.
“Close the door,” Miranda offered tersely, backing her chair slowly away from the desk until it was almost pushed clean up against the window.
Andrea frowned, kicked the door close behind her, and took a few steps towards her boss. “Okay?” she asked, clutching her pen while developing a serious case of ‘weirded out’. Maybe she was about to be fired.
Miranda glanced at Andy. She looked back at her desk. She gazed pointedly at Andy again. Andrea raised an eyebrow, beyond confused by the older woman’s strange behaviour; maybe her boss was having a stroke. Or a nervous breakdown. By Andy’s calculations, the woman was about a decade overdue for either.
“Miranda?” Andy asked, her annoyance mounting. Usually, she could read her boss like a book; tonight, the only literature she was getting was that something was on the desk, and that something, whatever it may be, was seriously pushing the editor‘s little red button. And not the fun one.
The assistant wandered ever closer to the editor, surreptitiously examining the contents of Miranda’s office furniture; trying to find anything that wasn’t supposed to be there.
Okay, Andy thought. We have a laptop. We have two or three magazines. We have a Mont Blanc pen. We have a half-way to tepid triple grande non-fat, no foam latte. We have a spider. We have-
“Really?” Andy said before she could catch herself. She eyed the speck of a spider while waiting for the fires of one or more hells to rain down upon her.
Andrea looked up to find Miranda pursing her lips into invisibility. “Just. Kill. It.” She managed to hiss between tightly clenched teeth.
The first assistant slapped a strategic hand to her mouth to disguise the smirk which had just plastered itself to her face. Miranda scowled, somehow knowing that the young woman was silently laughing at her.
“It’s tiny,” Andy offered in a mollifying tone, biting her lip and looking at the insect in question; trying to believe that the editor wasn’t in actuality asking her to stoop to spider-extinguishing duty.
“Which is beside the point,” Miranda snapped. “I’m not paying you to be a bleeding heart, so- get rid of it.”
Andy was about to lean forwards and smite the offender, when she realised an opportunity had presented itself. And opportunity, she thought gleefully, which would only- could only- come once in her career.
She was going to tease Miranda Priestly. She was going to do it, she was going to enjoy it, and if Miranda didn’t like it, too freaking bad. Because Andy had an ultimatum. Put up, or feel the wrath of the arachnid currently inhabiting the brief corridor between Vogue and the left side of the editor’s laptop.
Perhaps her sudden bravado was brought on by hangover-induced insanity, or maybe Andy had finally just snapped in general; too much pining, too many nights dreaming about Miranda, too many days being treated mostly like shit and occasionally like a semi-competent human being. Whatever the cause, Andrea Sachs was going to get nothing short of a serious kick from what she was about to do.
“So,” she began, peering at the desk, “how long has that spider been there?”
“Excuse me?” Miranda blustered, trying to maintain her usual scathing calm. “I fail to see why on earth how long it’s been there is an issue. I don’t want it there now.”
Andy smiled serenely. “I mean…how long has it been sitting there, and you haven’t killed it yet.” Miranda glared at her. “Oh!,” she commented lightly, giving Miranda one more chance to save her dignity. “I see you’re out of tissues. I’ll just grab the box from my desk, then, and you can take care of your little friend.”
“What- no.” Miranda blanched, though she quickly tried to restore her fallen mantle. “I didn’t tell you to get tissues, I didn’t tell you to fetch me a fly swatter. I didn’t demand a sledge hammer. Just do what you’re told.”
Andy grinned. It might’ve been the last thing she’d ever done. “You’re not afraid of the spider, are you Miranda?” she queried innocently, chocolate eyes wide and sweet.
“Of course not,” the editor said waspishly, immediately contradicting herself by eyeing the bug warily from her seat in the corner.
“Because,” Andy continued coyly, “I’d kind of have to say by the way you’re acting that you’re afraid of it.”
“For God’s sake,” Miranda exhaled suddenly, as the last vestiges of her editorship went flying out the window. "I'm not afraid of it, Andrea. It simply has too many legs-” she paused to wiggled all eight fingers in the air, for emphasis, “It's a visually chaotic being. And I abhor chaos. Furthermore, I- Jesus Christ, it's coming this way, kill it!"
Andy snorted with laughter as the spider skittered across the glass towards the woman who was on the verge of cowering in her sleek leather swivel chair.
Suddenly, Miranda not-so-causally leapt onto her desk, crossing her legs and bracing her hands against the glossy surface lest she need commit to another death-defying stunt in lieu of being consumed by the editor-eating arachnid.
“What just happened?” Andy queried calmly, while trying not to smirk at how adorably ridiculous the editor was being. “Where’d it go?”
“It fell onto the floor,” Miranda stated quickly, her eyes laser-focused on the near-invisible speck of a spider which was chilling quite happily near a leg of the office chair. “Over there.”
Andy pulled a sheet of paper from her notepad and crumpled it up; it was as good a murder weapon as any. She was about to investigate the situation when the office door suddenly flew open to reveal about the only person who wouldn’t necessarily burst into a terrified deluge of tears at the scene presented.
Miranda, looking shell shocked, perched on her desk and ready to jump to warp, and Andrea, looking bemused, slightly devilish, but not much worse for wear, standing beside the older woman, a crumpled up piece of paper in her hand.
“Uh,” Nigel began, ghosting his hand over his smooth scalp, “hello?”
Andy saluted cheekily, and Miranda attempted to roll her eyes towards the art director without actually ceasing her surveillance of the spider.
“You- er- wanted to see the proofs from the YSL shoot-”
“Not now,” Miranda whispered harshly.
Nigel shot a perplexed look at Andy, who shrugged her shoulders happily. “What’s going on in here?” he asked, knowing he was, in fact, putting his job on the line simply by asking the question.
Miranda glared at her first assistant, as if to silence the girl, but Andy merely grinned back and turned her attention to Nigel. “There’s a spider in here that Miranda’s too afraid to kill, and I was just about to take care of it, when-
Nigel paled. “Hold on. Did you just say spider?” He glanced nervously around the office, as if a beast the size of a large cat was about to crawl out from behind the filing cabinet. “I don’t do creepy crawlies.”
Andy sighed mightily, but the art director was oblivious to her obvious disapproval of his lack of balls.
“I’ll just- uh-” Nigel fumbled for words as he started to back out of the editor’s office. “I’ll leave you to that, then. Miranda,” he held up the folder of photos, “I’ll be back with these later.”
The older woman narrowed her eyes at the retreating man, as if trying to employ sheer will to do her bidding and incinerate the guy on the spot.
Andy, who was starting to wonder if it was a prerequisite of Runway employees to exhibit arachnophobia, blew out a disgusted gust of air. “You two are such a couple of puss-
“Language,” Miranda chided, but without much of her usual acidity. Andy shrugged again, and when she made no further motion towards hunting down the invader, the editor started to look a little squirrelly.
“Are you going to kill it, Andrea, or are you going to torment me for the remainder of the afternoon? I realise this may seem silly to you, but exploiting someone else’s phobia, even mine, is nothing short of a display of meagre compassion and even less intelligence.”
Andy nearly swallowed her tongue at the older woman’s sudden plea for asylum, even if it was, as usual, offered up on the offensive. “I’m sorry, Miranda,” she said seriously, embarrassed by her behaviour, and the sting of ashamed tears in her eyes.
“I’m not saying I don’t deserve it,” the editor rambled on quietly, and any of the bitterness Andrea felt due to her unrequited love- and lust- melted away.
Well, shit the young woman thought to herself. Just when she’d given up the ghost, just when she figured Miranda was, in fact, completely impossible- the older woman had to go and say something like that. “Of course you don’t deserve it,” Andy offered quickly, and the older woman‘s eyes widened as if seeing a part of Andrea she‘d never seen before. “I’ll take care of it straight away.”
Miranda nodded, and the younger woman balled up the paper in her hand and advanced on the spider’s last known location. But it wasn’t there.
“It moved,” Andy offered a little forlornly. “I don’t see it anywhere.”
The editor made a noise halfway between a whimper and a moan, and her eyes darted frantically around the room; the spider remained MIA, however, and Miranda’s breathing quickened. After all, and enemy you couldn’t see was far more threatening than one you could. Even if said enemy was the size of a pin head.
Andy dropped to the floor, scanning for any sign of the eight-legged creature with the world’s largest death wish, but stopped when it became painfully clear that her boss was in the midst of succumbing to a case of hyperventilation.
“Hey,” she soothed, standing and taking a hold of Miranda’s clammy hand. “You’ve gotta calm down, okay? If you pass out on me, I can’t guarantee I won’t have to fireman haul you out of this office while we wait for the ambulance.”
Miranda was obviously trying to enlist the aid of one of her flesh-melting glares, but it came out more as a wince, and she put her hand to her chest. “I can’t- get- any air,” she wheezed, panic flashing through her blue eyes.
On auto-pilot, Andy placed a hand on the back of her boss’ neck, and gently cupped the older woman’s hot cheek with the other. “Shh,” she whispered. “You’re fine. Breathe with me- in and out.” Miranda locked gazes with her assistant and focused on the girl’s gentle eyes. Her lungs finally acquiesced as her breath slowed, and began processing oxygen. Dizzy, she leaned forwards and Andrea caught the woman, who seemed in danger of falling off the desk.
“Whoa,” Andy said, wrapping her arms around the editor. “You’re okay.”
Embarrassed and shaken, Miranda did the most natural thing she could think of, and rested her cheek on the young woman’s shoulder. “This is ridiculous,” she offered quietly.
Emboldened by the fact that the editor seemed content where she was, Andy moved a hand in slow circles over Miranda’s silk clad back. “Like you said,” she offered. “It’s a phobia. You can’t help it. Why don’t you get out of here until I find it, and I’ll give you a ca-
“There it is!” the older woman said suddenly, her voice at least an octave and a half higher than normal.
Andy released her boss, and glanced around. “Where?”
“Windowsill,” Miranda offered shrilly. “Beside the picture of the girls.”
The young woman zoned in on the area in suspicion; lo and behold, there sat the spider in all of it’s panic-attack-inducing glory. She crept ninja-style towards the expanse of plate glass, arm tensed for the strike. Feeling impish, she offered a mighty Hai- YA! and made the kill shot.
Andy inspected the paper, and sure enough, the crumpled body of the minute spider was spectacularly splattered within the creases, a truncated leg twitching here and there.
“Get it?” Miranda questioned breathlessly.
“Got it,” the young woman confirmed happily.
“Good.”
Andy continued to look at the mangled body of her victim. “Wanna see it?” she asked Miranda. “To confirm it’s demise?”
“No, no,” the older woman said, going a little green and holding up her hands defensively. “I trust you.”
“Okay,” Andy nodded, and lobbed the balled up paper into the waste-basket which sat near the kitchen door in the outer office. “Nothing but net,” she smiled.
“My hero,” Miranda offered sarcastically. “You enjoyed all this, didn’t you?”
Andy nodded. “But not for the reason you think,” she offered elusively. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Miranda?”
A delicate blush crept up the woman’s ivory neck and blossomed across her pale, perfect cheeks. “That’s all,” she said gently. “For now.”
Hysterical drawing courtesy of the lovely i_heart_cuddy, with whom I was conversing during the creation of whatever the hell it was I just posted
A one shot, verging on crack,
inspired by too much coffee and my friend's arachnophobia
Rating: PG 13 for swearkskies and allusions to sexy things
I don’t own the movie or the book or any of the characters, most depressingly, Miranda is not mine. I play in the Runway universe, and sometimes it is kind to my fantasies
M-I-R-A-N-D-Y
Visual Chaos: A Tale of Two Sissies
Andrea gazed drearily at the screen of her Mac, willing God or the Universe or whoever the fuck else was out there to speed up the passage of time so she could flee the offices of Runway for the sanctity of her bachelor apartment and sleep off the remainder of the world’s worst hangover.
But as the seconds of the exposed-gear analog clock hanging near her head continued to take hours between their dull little tics and tocks, the percussive noise like chisels slowly chipping away at the young woman’s skull, Andy realised- with no small amount of ire- that she was in it for the long haul. Perhaps Miranda would send her out on a Starbucks run, so she could at least grab an Americano to ease her beleaguered, harassed temples.
After all, the only reason the editor’s now first assistant had been pounding back double neat scotches the previous evening was the fact that Andy had a seriously stupid, seriously problematic, seriously awkward crush on her boss.
Awkward, because Miranda was certainly into dudes- or gentlemen, Andy corrected herself. Problematic, because if the editrix born of Satan found out, poor little ‘Hometown Cincinnati’ would be ridiculed out of her skin and shipped back to Ohio faster than the Buckeyes could lose the season playoffs. Not that Andy was into college football.
And stupid? That in itself, Andy groused silently while trying to suppress a burp which tasted of Chivas and Pepto, was self explanatory. It was Miranda Priestly she was lusting after.
But, c’est la vie, right? There was shit all she could do to remedy her unfortunate situation, and Andy was damned if she would quit her job simply because she wanted into Miranda’s heart. And her pants, for that matter.
So there she sat, glaring at La Priestly’s schedule, which she had optimized and re-optimized at least seventy-three-thousand times that afternoon, waiting for Miranda to pick up and leave already, so Andy could at least give up the pretence of working and take a much-required breather while waiting for the Book.
A breather which would hopefully include at least half an hour of steamy, lascivious daydreams featuring herself and none other than the White Witch of Elias Clarke. Turkish delight not included.
In fact, it probably wouldn’t hurt to slip her active imagination into something more comfortable a little early, Andy thought as she slouched into her chair and began constructing an image of the older woman, sitting behind her desk, clad in nothing but an Hermes scarf and at least a quarter of a squeeze bottle of chocolate syrup.
An image which was quickly torn to hell when Miranda’s less than amused voice pricked the bubble of fantasy currently surrounding the first assistant’s head. Grumbling under her breath, Andy grabbed a notepad and prepared herself for the onslaught of complete fuckery which Miranda’s more-than-usually annoyed voice portended.
Andrea entered the igloo to find Miranda staring at something obviously offensive on her desk. The editor looked up for a split second, and seeing the girl, hastily returned her vigil to whatever it was that had her La Perla panties venturing up her ass.
“Was there something you needed, Miranda?” Andy queried cautiously, though unable to keep the edge out of her voice, tired and nauseous as she was.
“Close the door,” Miranda offered tersely, backing her chair slowly away from the desk until it was almost pushed clean up against the window.
Andrea frowned, kicked the door close behind her, and took a few steps towards her boss. “Okay?” she asked, clutching her pen while developing a serious case of ‘weirded out’. Maybe she was about to be fired.
Miranda glanced at Andy. She looked back at her desk. She gazed pointedly at Andy again. Andrea raised an eyebrow, beyond confused by the older woman’s strange behaviour; maybe her boss was having a stroke. Or a nervous breakdown. By Andy’s calculations, the woman was about a decade overdue for either.
“Miranda?” Andy asked, her annoyance mounting. Usually, she could read her boss like a book; tonight, the only literature she was getting was that something was on the desk, and that something, whatever it may be, was seriously pushing the editor‘s little red button. And not the fun one.
The assistant wandered ever closer to the editor, surreptitiously examining the contents of Miranda’s office furniture; trying to find anything that wasn’t supposed to be there.
Okay, Andy thought. We have a laptop. We have two or three magazines. We have a Mont Blanc pen. We have a half-way to tepid triple grande non-fat, no foam latte. We have a spider. We have-
“Really?” Andy said before she could catch herself. She eyed the speck of a spider while waiting for the fires of one or more hells to rain down upon her.
Andrea looked up to find Miranda pursing her lips into invisibility. “Just. Kill. It.” She managed to hiss between tightly clenched teeth.
The first assistant slapped a strategic hand to her mouth to disguise the smirk which had just plastered itself to her face. Miranda scowled, somehow knowing that the young woman was silently laughing at her.
“It’s tiny,” Andy offered in a mollifying tone, biting her lip and looking at the insect in question; trying to believe that the editor wasn’t in actuality asking her to stoop to spider-extinguishing duty.
“Which is beside the point,” Miranda snapped. “I’m not paying you to be a bleeding heart, so- get rid of it.”
Andy was about to lean forwards and smite the offender, when she realised an opportunity had presented itself. And opportunity, she thought gleefully, which would only- could only- come once in her career.
She was going to tease Miranda Priestly. She was going to do it, she was going to enjoy it, and if Miranda didn’t like it, too freaking bad. Because Andy had an ultimatum. Put up, or feel the wrath of the arachnid currently inhabiting the brief corridor between Vogue and the left side of the editor’s laptop.
Perhaps her sudden bravado was brought on by hangover-induced insanity, or maybe Andy had finally just snapped in general; too much pining, too many nights dreaming about Miranda, too many days being treated mostly like shit and occasionally like a semi-competent human being. Whatever the cause, Andrea Sachs was going to get nothing short of a serious kick from what she was about to do.
“So,” she began, peering at the desk, “how long has that spider been there?”
“Excuse me?” Miranda blustered, trying to maintain her usual scathing calm. “I fail to see why on earth how long it’s been there is an issue. I don’t want it there now.”
Andy smiled serenely. “I mean…how long has it been sitting there, and you haven’t killed it yet.” Miranda glared at her. “Oh!,” she commented lightly, giving Miranda one more chance to save her dignity. “I see you’re out of tissues. I’ll just grab the box from my desk, then, and you can take care of your little friend.”
“What- no.” Miranda blanched, though she quickly tried to restore her fallen mantle. “I didn’t tell you to get tissues, I didn’t tell you to fetch me a fly swatter. I didn’t demand a sledge hammer. Just do what you’re told.”
Andy grinned. It might’ve been the last thing she’d ever done. “You’re not afraid of the spider, are you Miranda?” she queried innocently, chocolate eyes wide and sweet.
“Of course not,” the editor said waspishly, immediately contradicting herself by eyeing the bug warily from her seat in the corner.
“Because,” Andy continued coyly, “I’d kind of have to say by the way you’re acting that you’re afraid of it.”
“For God’s sake,” Miranda exhaled suddenly, as the last vestiges of her editorship went flying out the window. "I'm not afraid of it, Andrea. It simply has too many legs-” she paused to wiggled all eight fingers in the air, for emphasis, “It's a visually chaotic being. And I abhor chaos. Furthermore, I- Jesus Christ, it's coming this way, kill it!"
Andy snorted with laughter as the spider skittered across the glass towards the woman who was on the verge of cowering in her sleek leather swivel chair.
Suddenly, Miranda not-so-causally leapt onto her desk, crossing her legs and bracing her hands against the glossy surface lest she need commit to another death-defying stunt in lieu of being consumed by the editor-eating arachnid.
“What just happened?” Andy queried calmly, while trying not to smirk at how adorably ridiculous the editor was being. “Where’d it go?”
“It fell onto the floor,” Miranda stated quickly, her eyes laser-focused on the near-invisible speck of a spider which was chilling quite happily near a leg of the office chair. “Over there.”
Andy pulled a sheet of paper from her notepad and crumpled it up; it was as good a murder weapon as any. She was about to investigate the situation when the office door suddenly flew open to reveal about the only person who wouldn’t necessarily burst into a terrified deluge of tears at the scene presented.
Miranda, looking shell shocked, perched on her desk and ready to jump to warp, and Andrea, looking bemused, slightly devilish, but not much worse for wear, standing beside the older woman, a crumpled up piece of paper in her hand.
“Uh,” Nigel began, ghosting his hand over his smooth scalp, “hello?”
Andy saluted cheekily, and Miranda attempted to roll her eyes towards the art director without actually ceasing her surveillance of the spider.
“You- er- wanted to see the proofs from the YSL shoot-”
“Not now,” Miranda whispered harshly.
Nigel shot a perplexed look at Andy, who shrugged her shoulders happily. “What’s going on in here?” he asked, knowing he was, in fact, putting his job on the line simply by asking the question.
Miranda glared at her first assistant, as if to silence the girl, but Andy merely grinned back and turned her attention to Nigel. “There’s a spider in here that Miranda’s too afraid to kill, and I was just about to take care of it, when-
Nigel paled. “Hold on. Did you just say spider?” He glanced nervously around the office, as if a beast the size of a large cat was about to crawl out from behind the filing cabinet. “I don’t do creepy crawlies.”
Andy sighed mightily, but the art director was oblivious to her obvious disapproval of his lack of balls.
“I’ll just- uh-” Nigel fumbled for words as he started to back out of the editor’s office. “I’ll leave you to that, then. Miranda,” he held up the folder of photos, “I’ll be back with these later.”
The older woman narrowed her eyes at the retreating man, as if trying to employ sheer will to do her bidding and incinerate the guy on the spot.
Andy, who was starting to wonder if it was a prerequisite of Runway employees to exhibit arachnophobia, blew out a disgusted gust of air. “You two are such a couple of puss-
“Language,” Miranda chided, but without much of her usual acidity. Andy shrugged again, and when she made no further motion towards hunting down the invader, the editor started to look a little squirrelly.
“Are you going to kill it, Andrea, or are you going to torment me for the remainder of the afternoon? I realise this may seem silly to you, but exploiting someone else’s phobia, even mine, is nothing short of a display of meagre compassion and even less intelligence.”
Andy nearly swallowed her tongue at the older woman’s sudden plea for asylum, even if it was, as usual, offered up on the offensive. “I’m sorry, Miranda,” she said seriously, embarrassed by her behaviour, and the sting of ashamed tears in her eyes.
“I’m not saying I don’t deserve it,” the editor rambled on quietly, and any of the bitterness Andrea felt due to her unrequited love- and lust- melted away.
Well, shit the young woman thought to herself. Just when she’d given up the ghost, just when she figured Miranda was, in fact, completely impossible- the older woman had to go and say something like that. “Of course you don’t deserve it,” Andy offered quickly, and the older woman‘s eyes widened as if seeing a part of Andrea she‘d never seen before. “I’ll take care of it straight away.”
Miranda nodded, and the younger woman balled up the paper in her hand and advanced on the spider’s last known location. But it wasn’t there.
“It moved,” Andy offered a little forlornly. “I don’t see it anywhere.”
The editor made a noise halfway between a whimper and a moan, and her eyes darted frantically around the room; the spider remained MIA, however, and Miranda’s breathing quickened. After all, and enemy you couldn’t see was far more threatening than one you could. Even if said enemy was the size of a pin head.
Andy dropped to the floor, scanning for any sign of the eight-legged creature with the world’s largest death wish, but stopped when it became painfully clear that her boss was in the midst of succumbing to a case of hyperventilation.
“Hey,” she soothed, standing and taking a hold of Miranda’s clammy hand. “You’ve gotta calm down, okay? If you pass out on me, I can’t guarantee I won’t have to fireman haul you out of this office while we wait for the ambulance.”
Miranda was obviously trying to enlist the aid of one of her flesh-melting glares, but it came out more as a wince, and she put her hand to her chest. “I can’t- get- any air,” she wheezed, panic flashing through her blue eyes.
On auto-pilot, Andy placed a hand on the back of her boss’ neck, and gently cupped the older woman’s hot cheek with the other. “Shh,” she whispered. “You’re fine. Breathe with me- in and out.” Miranda locked gazes with her assistant and focused on the girl’s gentle eyes. Her lungs finally acquiesced as her breath slowed, and began processing oxygen. Dizzy, she leaned forwards and Andrea caught the woman, who seemed in danger of falling off the desk.
“Whoa,” Andy said, wrapping her arms around the editor. “You’re okay.”
Embarrassed and shaken, Miranda did the most natural thing she could think of, and rested her cheek on the young woman’s shoulder. “This is ridiculous,” she offered quietly.
Emboldened by the fact that the editor seemed content where she was, Andy moved a hand in slow circles over Miranda’s silk clad back. “Like you said,” she offered. “It’s a phobia. You can’t help it. Why don’t you get out of here until I find it, and I’ll give you a ca-
“There it is!” the older woman said suddenly, her voice at least an octave and a half higher than normal.
Andy released her boss, and glanced around. “Where?”
“Windowsill,” Miranda offered shrilly. “Beside the picture of the girls.”
The young woman zoned in on the area in suspicion; lo and behold, there sat the spider in all of it’s panic-attack-inducing glory. She crept ninja-style towards the expanse of plate glass, arm tensed for the strike. Feeling impish, she offered a mighty Hai- YA! and made the kill shot.
Andy inspected the paper, and sure enough, the crumpled body of the minute spider was spectacularly splattered within the creases, a truncated leg twitching here and there.
“Get it?” Miranda questioned breathlessly.
“Got it,” the young woman confirmed happily.
“Good.”
Andy continued to look at the mangled body of her victim. “Wanna see it?” she asked Miranda. “To confirm it’s demise?”
“No, no,” the older woman said, going a little green and holding up her hands defensively. “I trust you.”
“Okay,” Andy nodded, and lobbed the balled up paper into the waste-basket which sat near the kitchen door in the outer office. “Nothing but net,” she smiled.
“My hero,” Miranda offered sarcastically. “You enjoyed all this, didn’t you?”
Andy nodded. “But not for the reason you think,” she offered elusively. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Miranda?”
A delicate blush crept up the woman’s ivory neck and blossomed across her pale, perfect cheeks. “That’s all,” she said gently. “For now.”
Hysterical drawing courtesy of the lovely i_heart_cuddy, with whom I was conversing during the creation of whatever the hell it was I just posted