"Blowing Smoke"
By Viridian5
3/6/99

RATING: PG
SPOILERS: None, but it takes place in "Two Fathers," not that you 
need to see that episode for this.
SUMMARY: Working stiffs are the same everywhere.
DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, as long as you ask me first.
FEEDBACK: Hell, yes.  Feedback can be sent to 
Viridian5@aol.com
DISCLAIMERS: All things X-Files belong to Chris Carter, Ten 
Thirteen Productions, and 20th Century Fox.  No infringement 
intended.  Suing me would be a waste of time, since I have no 
money.
NOTES: Written at work as an apology for the nick-fixx list (as is 
the nixxer custom) for sounding off half-cocked on the Empty 
Bodies thread.  A good-natured but much-needed thwap from 
ListNotTheMomma Alicia knocked this loose.


=================
"Blowing Smoke"
By Viridian5
=================

The hard, brittle winter morning hit my face like a shock, with the 
bitter wind smelling as sharp as it felt.  It was one of those 
treacherous days that looked like bright, warm sunlight when you 
looked out the window but felt like death once you walked out the 
door.  It insinuated itself up my sleeves and into my hood, 
burrowed into the bones and sinews of my thin hands.  It was a 
damned shame I couldn't smoke while wearing gloves.  I just 
couldn't.

But I had to smoke, and I had to get out.  Spending 30 minutes on 
the phone trying to get data from a resentful and terminally 
clueless director of admission at a SUNY school had rasped my 
nerves raw.  I'd maintained my professional, bland phone voice the 
whole time, but I'd really wanted nothing more than to get her neck 
in my hands and squeeze.  I dealt with at least one of those truly 
hopeless calls a day.  At this rate I wouldn't make my bosses' 
insane quota this week.  Again.  But none of us were.

I had to get away from the stale office air and futility, had to forget 
I was building an ulcer from a temporary job that only paid me $13 
an hour.  In the absence of escaping for good, I could go outside 
for my break.

He already stood in the doorway, alone, staring moodily out into 
the street.  His body seemed to hum with barely pent-up energy.  
The shirt and tailored pants said hip, urban professional, but the 
battered leather coat suggested streetpunk.  My chameleon stranger 
usually went completely one way or the other, but I liked the 
combination of roles on him.  Hell, he was decorative all the way 
around.

I didn't know his name, and he didn't know mine, even though I 
saw him on some of my smoking breaks.  He didn't chat with the 
others, refusing to abide by the unofficial social rules we exiles 
went by.  But he talked to me at times when it was just the two of 
us.

Sometimes he bummed a coffin nail from me.  I doubted that he 
didn't smoke when I wasn't around--I'm sure he had his own--but I 
could hardly grudge a few cigarettes to a person who added a bit of 
poetry to my life.  A bit of intriguing mystery.  He already smelled 
of smoke even before he got outside.  We worked in a public 
building.  I could only guess that he worked for people rich enough 
to circumvent New York's anti-smoking laws.  People who didn't 
believe underlings had the right to light up along with them.

He looked at me with the usual killer smile, and I tried to hand him 
a cigarette.  He didn't take it the way I expected.  Instead he 
wrapped his lips around it and pulled it from my fingers, which 
had gone nerveless.  He did enjoy his games.  I cupped my hands 
around the lighter's fragile flame to protect it from the wind.  I let 
myself imagine I briefly saw an answering flare of it in his thickly 
lashed green eyes.

He only played with me this much when he was especially ticked 
off about his job.  "Let me guess: your bosses are idiots who want 
the results they're looking for right now but don't understand or 
want to hear about the problems," I said. 

He slowly blew out a plume of smoke that the wind swiftly ripped 
to shreds.  "You could say that.  And they're being threatened by a 
hostile takeover but are hiding their heads in the sand."

I lit my own and let the blessed nicotine settle me.  At least I'd 
dropped from two packs a day to a half.  "Things are tough all 
over," I replied in my best hard-boiled voice.

He smiled darkly.  "A change is gonna come..."

"Yeah?"

"You may not see me again.  I think I'll be getting a promotion 
soon.  I only had to stab a few backs to capture it."

My smile matched his.  "It's not like they'd earned your loyalty." 
More power to him.

A withered man with skin like neglected leather stalked out.  I 
could get a nicotine hit just from standing next to him.  He gave 
me a brief look before he focused on my stranger.  "Time to go," 
he said then turned his back and started to walk to a limo at the 
curb.  

My stranger flashed a look at his back that should have dissolved 
him.  As he stubbed out the cigarette I'd given him, his lips moved, 
but no sound came out.  It looked like he'd swallowed the word 
"soon."

"Thanks for the cig," he said before he followed the man who had 
to be one of his bosses.

"A change is going to come," he'd said.  I wished him the best with 
his ambitions, but I doubted it.  Something always went wrong.  

Nothing ever changed.


**********************THE END***********************