A Breach of Information Security (F, hayfever)

[Heathcliff]

Please note:

This story is a romantic fantasy. It is not meant to be realistic. In no way do I suggest it is a good idea to do this at your workplace in real life.

A BREACH OF INFORMATION SECURITY

(Female sneezes, hayfever)

This was the sort of day that Josh's grandmother had always called 'glorious' and he always thought of the word on a day like this.

The sun was bright and the heat of the late Spring was beginning to emerge now. All the trees on the banks of the canal had exploded into colour as they had blossomed. Even the grass seemed to shine with a vibrant green.

As he turned into the small business park, the inauspicious location where his company's offices were, he wished for a second that he could just keep on walking along the main road. That he could forget about work for the day and walk down the side of town and off into the countryside, away by the river where no buildings could be seen. This was far too nice a day to spend in an office.

Well... another day, perhaps.

Josh held his card up to the office door, which bleeped as it unlocked. With a slight feeling of sadness he entered the office and went up the stairs. At least it was air-conditioned, not like the previous place he had worked. It had been unpleasant and sweaty being stuck in there on a hot day. This wasn't so bad.

As he reached his desk he realised the office was deserted - at least, his side of it was. Several people had taken holiday, and presumably many others had chosen to use their post-pandemic homeworking allowance and were working at home.

His mind was already on work, drifting away from his wish to be outside on this sunny day. He was reading emails when he heard the office door open and shut again, and then he heard a sneeze from the stairway. He could barely hear it through the door, but he knew who it was.

"Ahhh-yissshh-ooooh!"

He thought with a jolt - Alison had decided to come in to the office today.

She came through the door, holding her backpack in one hand and with a tissue held around her nose in the other. She looked flustered, as though the sneeze had taken her by surprise. She saw Josh and looked embarrassed.

"Oh! Hi Josh." She half-turned away and blew her nose into the tissue. "Hayfever..." she said, smiling at him and giving a quick "How annoying!" gesture.

She wore a light cotton top and blue jeans. Her hair went from golden to shades of dark blonde; it glinted in the shaft of sunlight from the window.

"Yeah - high pollen count today, isn't it?"

"Ugh- tell me about it." said Alison. "As soon as the sun comes out." She looked around, noticing that they were the only ones on this side of the office. "Looks like it's just us round here today?"

"Uh, yeah. Looks like it." Josh said. "Nice and relaxing, at least. Apart from the usual call from Chris!"

Alison grinned. Chris was Josh's manager, with a natural talent for unnecessary micro-managing - something which they had joked about many times.

"I'll try not to sneeze too loudly during the call, then." she said. Her comment made Josh suddenly forget what he was going to say, and he paused for a moment.

"Uh, well..." he tried valiantly to recover, "I'm sure Chris will cope."

--------

The day went on and Josh managed to put thoughts of Alison and her hayfever out of his mind. Despite what she had said, though she had been blowing her nose and snuffling all morning she hadn't sneezed at all. He was glad, really - as enjoyable as he found her sneezes, they also made him feel guilty sometimes. He didn't think that hayfever could be much fun for her. He was grateful he didn't suffer from it himself and didn't like to see her looking uncomfortable.

He looked at the screen with annoyance - his code had failed to work for what felt like the fiftieth time. He contemplated getting a cup of coffee, stepping outside for a few minutes, anything to take a break. Maybe he could go for a walk at lunchtime to clear his head.

Then, behind him he heard Alison take a big sniff, and then a gasping in-breath.

"Hahhhhhhhh..."

For a moment there was silence; Josh fought the urge to turn around and look at her. Then her breathing quickened, as the sneeze finally happened.

"Huh-haaah... Haaah-Isssh-shoo!"

Was that it, he wondered? Perhaps... or perhaps she felt another sneeze building up. Sure enough, a few seconds later he heard a more vocal

"Haaah-YISSHHOOO!"

Josh kept his eyes on his monitor, still not daring to turn around. He heard the sound of Alison's desk drawer being opened and then the zip on her bag as she hunted about for a tissue, followed by the soft wet sound of her blowing her nose. This seemed to get rid of her tickle, at least for the moment.

Neither of them had spoken - but Josh opened Microsoft Teams and clicked on Alison's profile picture to open a private chat. Without looking up from the screen he typed

"Bless you"

Behind him at her desk, Alison smiled. She replied

"Thanks 🙂"

Josh sat for a moment, gazing at the tiny photograph of Alison looking up at him from the Teams window, all blonde hair and over-wide profile picture smile. He could hear her sniffling gently over the tap-tap of her computer keys. Without particularly thinking about what he was doing, he opened a text editor and began to write:

Your hair is polished gold,
In my dreams I bless your beautiful sneezes
As flowers burst around you.

Suddenly the sound of an incoming Teams call brought Josh to his senses. He put on his headset as he opened the video screen to show his boss, Chris, with palm trees on either side of him. The background filter was set to create the remarkably unconvincing effect that Chris was on a desert island.

"Hi Chris, what's up?"

Chris launched into a long explanation of something which Josh could not hear, as the call was in complete silence.

"Chris, you're muted."

Chris fiddled with the microphone on his headset, looking slightly confused.

"Can you hear me now?"

"Yes," said Josh. "What can I help with?"

"I'm trying to find Andrew. I've been messaging him for the past fifteen minutes and he's not there! I'm fed up with him thinking he can just waste time like this. Is he in the office?"

"I haven't seen him today. I thought he had the morning off for a dentist appointment."

"No, that's next week." said Chris dismissively.

"Really? I'm pretty sure he said-"

"No, no, he's supposed to be at work!" said Chris "If he's skiving in the kitchen again I'm not going to be happy."

You already aren't happy, thought Josh. Hiring Andrew had probably not been good for Chris's health, though it had provided him with an abundant source of things to complain about.

"Do you want me to check?"

"Yes please. And if you see him can you ask him to get back to his desk?"

"No problem Chris. I'll get back to you in a minute."

Josh ended the call and got up from his chair. Alison turned and raised her eyebrows at him. Her eyes looked wet and her nose was slightly pink where she had been rubbing it with a tissue. It struck a contrast to her pale skin.

"Anything wrong?"

"Chris is on the warpath again." said Josh. They both smiled. "He's got it in for Andrew."

"Poor Andrew."

Josh walked around the building. Like Josh and Alison's side of the office, the workplace was mostly deserted. One of the junior developers, a thin woman in her twenties, was sitting watching a training video and looking bored. David Price, one of the senior developers, was staring at the code on his computer screen in hawk-like concentration. The head of department was talking animatedly on his headset in his glass-fronted office. Andrew, though, was nowhere Josh could see.

Josh went through to the kitchen, which was empty. Wherever Andrew was, he wasn't on the extended coffee break Chris had expected.

Josh took out a mug and made himself a cup of tea as his thoughts went back to Alison. He pictured the metallic-gold colours in her blonde hair, the pale freckles on her forearms that the sun had produced... and the beautiful shape of her nose.

It was looking so irritated today, the pollen must have been bothering her all morning - making rub and massage her nose, trying desperately to relieve those itching sensations. But that wasn't quite enough sometimes; when the tickles and itches built up and got strong enough, when she couldn't hold back any longer and didn't want to - she would sneeze.

For goodness sake, he thought to himself - you shouldn't be getting distracted by women like. But then... it's not just any woman that's distracting you, is it? It's her. It's Alison.

Josh took his tea back to his desk and typed a message to Chris.

"Andrew isn't here. I can't see him in the anywhere."

After a minute, Chris replied.

"Sorry! He is at the dentist. Was looking at the wrong week on the calendar!"

"Oh for God's sake..." muttered Josh. He closed the chat window and took a sip of his tea; then nearly choked in panic.

He had left the text editor open. When Chris had called he had not thought to close it, and the lines he had written had been open on his second monitor when he had gone looking for Andrew. He should have locked his screen when he left it - "A breach of information security", that was what the office handbook called it. Chris would have told him off for that - but this could be so much worse.

Open for anyone to see... but there was hardly anybody in the office today. Nobody would have needed to walk past his desk.

Apart from... a possibility had occurred to him that made his stomach flutter, and made him start to sweat. If Alison had gotten up from her desk behind him, and turned around, she would have been facing his desk. But she wouldn't have read it even if she had, would she? Of course not. Alison wouldn't read other people's documents. Well - she didn't seem like the sort of person who would.

Josh closed the file and permanently deleted it. He cleared his throat rather too loudly, and tried to focus on his work. Stop being silly, he told himself.

He paused, realising Alison had stopped typing. For a moment there was complete silence. Then he heard a sniff, and the soft clicking of Alison's keyboard began again.

------

Alison felt the familiar tingling sensation in the side of her nose. Her hand stirred and slightly raised the tissue in anticipation. It felt like another sneeze was coming... but should she let it out, or try to resist? Her sneezes had suddenly become more significant.

'Beautiful sneezes'... Once those two words had caught her eye, she had read those strange lines before she could stop herself. She ought to feel weird, or angry. It was probably against the rules; surely there was some office guideline about not writing bad poetry about your colleagues' sneezes. Actually, she thought, there probably wasn't - there were some very specific rules in the employee handbook but sneeze poetry was unlikely to be covered. But doubtless it was forbidden by something.

She should feel uncomfortable... but she found that she didn't, not in that way. Was it because it was Josh.

'Beautiful sneezes'... could her sneezes be described as beautiful? She was not shy about sneezing; the sound was not overly harsh, nor overly feminine - at least, as far as she could judge. She had never been able to understand women who sneezed with a high-pitched, almost performed sound - it reminded her of women she had occasionally seen acting up in a girlish way in front of men, something that she had never liked.

She had once been talking to a friend, and been overcome by a fit of hayfever sneezes on a bright Spring day like this one. Her friend had laughed and said:

"Bless you again! How many is that? You've sneezed like twenty times since we left this morning."

"Ha..." said Alison, sniffling. "I don't keep count!"

"I don't think you could! But you've got quite a _nice_ sneeze."

"A nice sneeze?" Alison had tried to laugh but felt self-conscious. "Um... thank you? I don't know how my sneeze is nice."

"It sounds kind of..." her friend thought for a moment. "...musical."

"Musical? Is that good?"

"Yes! It's not like my sneezes sound."

"How do yours sound?"

"Snotty."

They both had laughed at that.

The conversation had stayed in her mind, and she had come to accept that someone could label her sneezes "nice", or even "musical". Maybe her sneezes were not an unpleasant sound; the thought made her less self conscious if a loud sneeze overtook her in public.

But it had never crossed her mind that someone would find her sneezes beautiful.

She sometimes found her sneezes a nuiscance - sometimes annoying, if she was trying to concentrate on something and that tingling, irritating sensation spread through her nose, stopping her thinking of anything else until the climactic moment when she inhaled... and then impact of the sneeze, that moment of pleasure with the

"Ahh-YISSH-OOOooh!"

and the feeling of breathing freely afterwards, feeling cool air in her nostrils. She quite enjoyed it sometimes, if she had a tissue close by to unfold in front of her nose and catch the explosion. If she was alone she let herself sneeze as loudly as she wanted; not exaggerated, but without any holding back.

Alison breathed in gently through her nose, and the tickle got stronger. Involuntarily, her breath hitched and her chest tightened. She raised a tissue to her face and gave herself over to the coming sneeze. She began to inhale-

"Heeeh..."

At the last moment, her sneeze died away, and she was left with the tissue ready around her nose.

How annoying, she thought. She was left with the tingling sensation in her nostrils, and no relief. How annoying, now my nose is bothering me and I can't sneeze...

...and I wanted to sneeze for him. For Josh.

All of a sudden, she had put the thought into words inside her head. The thought of sneezing, here, just a few steps away from Josh had given her an intense feeling in her stomach. Why had it taken those strange lines he had written about her sneezes to make her acknowledge something this? Something she knew had been there for a while.

She lowered the tissue, and began to rub the side of her nose with her finger, very gently. At first, the itch started to lessen. Then as she touched gently with the tip of her fingernail, the tickle began to grow again, making her twitch her nose.

She wondered for a moment how it would sound. Would she sneeze differently, now she knew Josh was listening for her sneeze? Enjoying it? Then, her nose tingled more strongly and she realised there was no resisting now. She inhaled sharply and let herself think of nothing but the sneeze.

"Huhhhhh- HAYISSSSHOOO!"

Alison's head dipped forward with the big sneeze. At the last moment it had overwhelmed her and emerged more powerful than she had expected; that teasing, coming-or-not buildup seemed to have irritated her nose even more and her body had known she needed a forceful sneeze to clear it.

She gave a wet sniff and realised that the tissue in her hand was damp; the sneeze had been messier than she would have liked. She screwed the Kleenex up and threw it into the wastebasket, on top of the small pile of balled-up tissues she had used that morning.

Her chest was almost aching after the sneeze, but she still felt a buzz of excitement. What had Josh thought of that sneeze? It was quite loud - had it startled him? She sniffed again - she really needed to blow her nose. There must be another tissue somewhere...

Abruptly, insistently, the tickle came back. She realised she was going to sneeze again - she needed to find another tissue.

She had used all the Kleenexes in her desk drawer, so she rummaged again in her bag. She found her plastic pack of tissues - but it was empty. The urge to sneeze increased, and she was unable to hold it back.

"Hahh- HSSCCHmmph!"

She narrowly avoided sneezing onto her bag - she had instead stifled into her hand with a wet, desperate sound. There was nothing "musical" about that, she thought - but that memory didn't seem quite as funny right now. She hated to sneeze like this and was now embarrassed; and Josh would have heard. What if he thought her messy sneezes were disgusting?

Oh no... her nose was tingling again.

There were no more tissues in her bag. She frantically went back to her desk drawer in the hopes that she had missed some. The prickling, buzzing sensation filled her nose and she sneezed another wet stifle onto the back of her hand.

"HaahMMMSSSSCHHmph!"

She exhaled in exasperation. Her nose was beginning to run now. She looked through her drawer, moving pens, her notebook, old papers aside... there were no tissues. She felt another sneeze start to build up inside her nose and chest, persistent and inevitable.

I'm not going to stop, she thought. It's one of my hayfever fits where I won't stop until I can blow my nose. Where can I get some tissues?

She stood up, feeling the next sneeze getting closer. If she went to the bathroom, she would have to walk around the corner past the others on the far side of the office, runny-nosed and sneezing all the way. She blushed; that didn't seem like an attractive prospect. She was now feeling very self-conscious about her sneezes.

There was nobody but her and Josh on this side of the office though - the other desks might have tissues in them, but she could hardly go around rifling through other people's belongings in the hopes of finding a pack of Kleenex.

Or, she thought... I could ask Josh if he has a tissue.

The thought made her blush harder, and she felt angry with herself for it. Why shouldn't I ask him? There was no shame in having hayfever; the shame was in writing stupid poems about her sneezes and leaving them open on his computer screen. Maybe he won't think my sneezes are so beautiful if he sees how messy my hayfever sneezes can actually get.

"Hhhuuh..."

She gasped, then swallowed and managed to hold the sneeze back.

Oh, she thought - fuck it.

"Josh," she said as she turned around, "Do you h-have a tuh- have a ti-IISSSHHH-OOOH!"

The sneeze burst from her, unstoppably, interrupting her... but at the last moment it was caught in the large tissue that Josh had quickly put into her hand. Her heart skipped; as she had turned to ask him for a tissue, he had been about to offer her one. He must have heard her stifled sneezes, and realised how much she needed to blow her nose. Oh God - how wet had they sounded?

She wanted to turn away, but her need for relief was too great and she blew her nose noisily into the tissue, then folded it up and wiped the underside of her nose clean. At last the need to sneeze had subsided.

She looked at Josh, and suppressed a smile. He looked very nervous. Did he realise what she had seen on his computer screen?

"Er- bless you," said Josh. He picked up a box of Kleenex from his desk and thrust it clumsily into Alison's hands. "Here, have the box. I think you... uh... need them more than I do."

"Thanks." said Alison, sniffling. She took out another tissue and wiped at her nose, more gently this time. "I think I do."

"There's... a lot of pollen today, isn't there." said Josh. "I, er, I try to make sure we keep the windows shut. But some people, you know... some people... open them."

This remark almost made Alison laugh, it seemed so ridiculous.

"Yes, they do." she replied. "Thanks for the tissues, I should have brought more."

For a moment, they both said nothing and looked at each other. Alison felt a warm stirring deep in her stomach again.

"I'm sorry about all my sneezing." she said, trying to sound casual. "I just can't help it."

"Oh! That's alright, don't worry." said Josh, looking flustered.

"It's just a bit embarrassing... those weren't my most _beautiful_ sneezes, really."

Josh's eyes seemed to widen and he looked as though he wanted to run and jump out of the office window.

"Right!" he said, "Well! I'd better get on with some work."

"Yes."

They both sat down and went back to their screens. The tapping of keyboards filled the silence again, as Alison replayed the conversation in her head.

Not my most beautiful sneezes... but my sneezes aren't beautiful, she thought. Josh is beautiful. He may be awkward sometimes, he says stupid things... but he's beautiful.

And I've felt this way for quite a long time now.

She sniffed, and dabbed at her nose with her tissue, almost without thinking. The code on her screen had momentarily lost its meaning.

"Josh..."

When there was no reply, she realised he had put his headset on again, perhaps determined to shut out his embarrassment.

"Josh!" she said loudly. He started in his seat and put his headset down with a clatter.

"Yeah?"

"I don't want to spend all day in the office. At lunchtime, do you- do you fancy going out somewhere for lunch?"

"Er- sure."

"Just you and me?"

"Oh..." He coughed nervously. "Yes. That would be- that would be nice."

"Of course," she said, feeling a surge of excitement, "There's a lot of pollen out there. It might make me sneeze some more."

"Oh, well-"

"But to be honest-" she said, swivelling her chair around to look at him, "I really don't mind... if you don't."

"No..." he said, looking straight into her eyes now. "I don't mind."

THE END

[terro]

so cute!!!! 

[SuspectRNZ]

Nice work, love the slow build

[NoV]

Really great office fantasy  I completely empathise with the hearing someone sneeze, but being unwilling to turn around to see who it was in case they are embarrassed/annoyed by the attention!

[anna]

Sooo good

[TheCakeIsAlive]

That was rather cute.  Thank you for sharing.  

[AceUpYourSleeve]

That was lovely, just like the poem Josh wrote. The part of "[...]very specific rules in the employee handbook but sneeze poetry was unlikely to be covered" had me laughing 😆