DISCLAIMER: All hail CC. Even in dreams they're his, not mine. No money made. Not even any dream money.
SPOILERS: Two Fathers/One Son mostly. Various Krycek eps as well.
FEEDBACK: snakedoctor13@yahoo.com

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When Smoke Gets In Your Dreams
by Ratadder
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He often comes for me in my sleep.

Wait, let me rephrase that. With a man of his particular persuasions, that sort of sentence can be a little too prophetic. If he ever does come *for* me, it may indeed be in my sleep. Though I rather think he'd prefer me awake. Awake, aware... afraid. But he might begin by coming for me in my sleep, and then purposely wake me up. Yes, I can see that. That would be very him.

Well anyway. Safer by far to rephrase the thought, and not worry that I'm shaping my own future with a wayward turn of a word. Future-shapers get a little cagey about that sort of thing.

He often comes *to* me in my sleep. That's a little better.

Sometimes he's wearing a Carmen Miranda fruit hat. Now those dreams I know are going to be the good ones. The ones that I wake up from with a jolt and an awkward feeling on my face that it takes me a moment to realize is a smile.

A real smile, not the sardonic expression I parade around for my colleagues and Fox Mulder when I really want to piss him off.

But more often there's not a fruit to be found, and instead it's black leather. I know it's cliché, and I do try so hard to be original, but who could dream of him and not dream of black leather? I ask you. And I see the leather and I have a moment of a sinking feeling, knowing that if he's in leather I've lost him already.

I'd like to dream of him in those old suits. Now those... those gave me a feeling of real power. When he was in the very clothes I chose for him. True control, to dress a man to your specifications, right down to the Hanes briefs. To dress just such a man. To choose the tie he will wear, and the tie he will leave in the closet. To tell him the too-large jacket is the one he will have because it emphasizes his youthfulness. To have his eyes snap anger at the thought, and to have him put the jacket on anyway, without a word of complaint.

But I never dream of him in those suits. I don't mean to whine, but it's quite unfair. They're my dreams, they should follow my orders as my people do.

Oh, who am I kidding. Even my people only follow my orders half the time. I'm old. And getting older. I should be thankful I suppose. I survived the last clean-out. And actually I should credit him with that, too, in a way. It was his very absence that first clued me something was wrong. I was on guard the minute I realized he wasn't present. On guard enough to realize, to *move*, when everyone else was just standing like idiots even when they *knew* we hadn't sent the signal and those doors were opening anyway...

What a death. Fried by rebels like just any old abductee. I shudder to think. I'd almost prefer he did come *for* me in my sleep, to that. Except that I have a funny feeling if it comes to him coming for me, he's going to be having much much too much fun. Too much water under, over and knocking out the dam, when it comes to the two of us.

But the dreams. No suits. No polished little puppy. Not for my dreams. Clichéd black leather. It's enough to make you want a cigarette.

And of course I always do. He appears... walks forward out of nowhere and I'm never quite sure where we actually *are*... it always seems vaguely familiar in the way that supermarkets in other towns seem familiar, because the same basic *everythings* are there, but the everythings just aren't in the right places. The bread is where the soup usually is... the deli and the frozen food sections are reversed. You go to find cigarettes and you find health food bars. It's enough to make you shudder again.

Cigarettes. I always want a cigarette the minute he walks toward me. I reach for my pack and it's right where it should be. But... I never have a lighter. Now, in my days, I always have a lighter. Obviously. But in the dreams, I never have a lighter. I think that alone should qualify them as nightmares. Or not, because he always has a match. He produces it from nowhere like a magician calling forth a silk scarf and it's just in his fingers as his hand opens. He offers it to me with that little smile -- the one *he* uses to piss off Fox Mulder. Although from what I've seen on the tapes I think it works better on Mr. Skinner.

But that's neither here nor there. Because he steps forward and offers me the match. I try to take it and he gives me his most charming devil's grin and shakes his head slowly and holds the match out of reach. Smirks and looks at me through his lashes and offers it again. I nod, and lean forward, cigarette in my lips, and he strikes the match on his thumb and holds it perfectly steady for me to draw from, I just need to lean forward, lean down... bend and accept the fire from him. While he watches.

And I do. It feels wrong, uneasy, dangerous, but I always do. I suck in, I watch my cigarette catch, I straighten back up. Nothing bad happens. I get my cigarette lit, and that's that. But it still feels like he's won... something.

You'd think at this point I'd realize it's a dream, especially since it's always the same, but I never seem to.

I have my cigarette, and I should feel better. It always makes me feel better. Except here. Except now. It doesn't help. He's standing there with the still-lit match and just watching me as the match burns down and down. Closer to his fingers. The only fingers he has. I want to stop him, I want to stop the flame, but it eats down the little sliver of wood and I stand and stare and the flame meets his flesh and flares and dies. He does nothing... it's as if the fire is simply subsumed by his heat. Fire meets fire and is absorbed.

I'm never quite so poetic in the actual dream. In the dream I'm sweating by now. Feeling very wrong indeed. And that's when he speaks to me. Whispers to me. I can never hear what he's saying. I want to... I want to so badly. It's important, I know it is. I watch his lips, try to read the words that way, but I get lost in the movement and want to reach out and touch. I lose all sense of what he might be saying because, let's face it, the man has lovely lips. I feel hypnotized, my muscles feel heavy, he's bringing me under with no effort at all.

Why? Why is it so easy for him. He's pretty, but so what. I've seen lots of pretty, and to tell you the truth, it's lost appeal for me. I had a pretty wife, before she was abducted a few hundred times and started telling everyone and their brother to kill her. I had a pretty lover, no... a beautiful lover. Teena was... everything. Everything I couldn't have, and everything I thought I wanted. And she and I produced a very pretty son. A pretty son who is a royal pain in the ass and who hates me, but well... you can't have everything can you. I've had pretty lovers. I have a pretty lover now.

No prettiness has ever affected me the way he affects me. In these dreams. I can't breathe, I can't swallow, I can't look away. I can't lift my burning cigarette, can't draw from it the strength and pleasure, the comfort, it offers. I can only stare, transfixed, and crumble to ash myself before him. What does he do to me...

I have him back at my side. In the waking world. He walks my conference rooms, speaks my lines, presents the "facts" to my colleagues. Or did, before they became the latest example of the efficacy of alien toasting technology. He heels at my command once again. He has looked down the barrel of a gun at me, and turned it aside. He has eaten his own hatred and stands by me again. He is a true heir to the throne for that. And does he think I know nothing of his hand in my other son's rebellion... I'm not stupid, Alex. Send you out with the boy on one damn assassination, and he comes back looking at me differently, and before you know it he's trotting over to his brother's side of things. I suspected you couldn't resist. You're a true heir to the throne for that, as well.

I mean, after all... it's exactly what I would have done.

I never could fault Alex for being so perfectly... rational. For being so much like me.

Which still doesn't explain this power he has over me in my dreams. The power to make me feel bewitched. Hesitant, like a child. Dizzy. I need the cigarette smoldering in my hand. Just to feel it between my lips. Please.

The dreams are more frequent now that he's back by my side. I thought perhaps they would fall off. I thought perhaps they were a product of that stupid phrase about absence and fond hearts. I thought perhaps my completely necessary but fortunately unsuccessful attempts to kill him had created some weird sort of guilt complex after all we'd... shared, back in the beginning. When I was choosing his ties.

The weird sort of guilt complex I'd never once experienced after putting my wife into the hybridization project. But then... Alex and Cassandra? Hardly a comparison, now really.

But he's back in my life on an almost daily basis, alive and mostly well and not even actively trying to kill me at the moment. Actively trying to undermine me, but I expect, respect, and appreciate that. I see him more now than I have since the days when he was practically living with me. And the dreams aren't stopping but coming more often.

What is my inane subconscious trying to tell me?

Do I regret what I did to him? Of all the people I've corrupted, and there have been so very very many, few took to it so readily, so hungrily, as he. Talk about ducks to water. He was practically begging to quack. I remember thinking "born to it, this one". I was right. I know I was. I had to be right. If not me, he would have found his own way into the game. I have no doubt. I can't have any doubt.

I could regret the arm, but I had nothing to do with that, and the dream never seems to be about the arm.

Because he just stands there whispering to me, words I can't hear. He could be telling me important details about work, he could be talking to me in Navajo, he could be admitting he's in love with my pain-in-the-ass son, he could be telling me exactly how he's going to kill me and how much he's going to enjoy doing it... he could be whispering sweet nothings. To me. I can never tell. I can feel the continually growing urgency to touch him, but my arms still won't move, and if I can't even get a drag off the cigarette in my own hand, I certainly can't get a grasp on the six foot assassin in front of me, no matter how desperate I am. For both.

His eyes are always soft and dark. I don't think they'd look like that if he was telling me how he was going to kill me... would they? I wish I could hear him. Every time I try so hard to hear him.

My sense of smell is always fully active. I can smell my cigarette burning. I can smell him. Oh, how I can smell him. I wish he'd take up smoking, really. So that during the day, when I'm standing near him and I can smell him for real, the scent would be like the dreams. That mixture of smoke and Alex, Alex and smoke. I can taste him on my tongue through that scent. Olfactory perfection.

I can see him. In excruciating detail. So sharp and vivid he burns my eyes like smoke carried back in my face by the wind. And my fingers tingle with the feel of his skin that I remember so well, even though I can't lift my hands to refresh the old, old tactile memory. Even the fingers that lightly roll the familiar round firmness of the cigarette in hand are actually feeling him... him...

But the sound. The damn sound is muted like a background buzz of bees. His voice weaves around me and strokes my skin and it's husky and delicious just as always but it's just noise. What are you telling me, Alex... why can't I hear you and why does it make me so... disturbed. If you're going to haunt my dreams, the least you could do is do so intelligibly. Give me something to work with. Some *statement* to puzzle over and dissect. But then it is so you to be so perfectly frustrating.

We seem to stand for hours, you and I. Me leaning toward you, at least as much as I can make my uncooperative body do so. You standing always just beyond touch, perfectly relaxed, perfectly at home in my head. Me struggling, trying in vain to understand, trying in vain to reach out. You nonchalant, seemingly quite confidant that I'm understanding all.

Is that it, Alex? Is it as simple as that? Is my head simply telling me I never understood you as well as I thought I did?

Somehow I doubt it. Somehow I doubt anything involving you would be that easy.

He's never afraid of me anymore. Not in my dreams. Not in my days. I find I miss that. I miss it a lot. *I* could be afraid of this man... I who have treatied with alien beings, gambled with hybridization, double-dealt with my closest and most dangerous colleagues... even treatied with alien beings wearing *his* face, controlling his body. I could be afraid of this man before me who lights my cigarette and then somehow prevents me from smoking it, who tells me innumerable secrets while preventing me from understanding a word of them.

Sometimes I could also be afraid of the man he is now in my days, as well. The man who stared down on me in Quebec, hating his assignment and so close to tossing it aside, so close that I read my death right there in those snowy woods. The man who needed to make his point with a speeding car so close I felt singed by its passing. The man who drops and heels at my every "Alex"... even when his eyes *shift* every time the name leaves my lips. The man who knew not to even show up at that damned hangar...

I know he bides his time. The man in my dreams, the man in my days. I only hope the man in my dreams makes his move before the man in my days does. I look forward to it. Even when I wake, heart pounding and muscles still locked, I look forward to the night I'll understand the words, solve the mystery, smoke the cigarette... touch him again.

But those fruit-hat dreams. Now *those* really worry me sometimes.

-end-