"Green"
By Viridian5

RATING: R.  K/P.  If m/m interaction bothers you, run away now.
SPOILERS: none, really.
SUMMARY: A mouse and a Rat disturb the ordered peace of 
Pendrell's lab.
DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, as long as you ask me first.
DISCLAIMERS: All things X-Files belong to Chris Carter, Ten-
Thirteen, and 20th Century Fox.  I'm just sharing and not making a 
cent off it, I swear!  No infringement intended.  Suing me would be 
a waste of time and a mean thing to do.  I have no money.  At all.
FEEDBACK: Hell, yes.  All feedback can be sent to 
Viridian5@aol.com or Viridian5@altavista.net
NOTES: Another Manic!Viridian written-at-work-when-I-should-
be-doing-something-else story.
Lyrics at the end because I just *had* to.
Beta work by the enchanting Dawn Pares, who appreciates my 
insanity... I think.  Thanks to Alicia for helping me be discrete... 
uhm, *discreet*.


=================
"Green"
By Viridian5
=================

Sean Pendrell slid on his hands and knees across the floor of the 
lab crooning, "Here, Pooky... heeeeeeere, Pooky.  Come to 
Daddy."  //Thank God no one else is here to see this.//

He knew he looked ridiculous, but he looked ridiculous in the 
name of scientific advancement.  He was chasing a green 
labmouse.  That was what happened when you worked with 
Spooky Mulder, he supposed.

Pendrell had seen flash of neon green just out of the corner of his 
eye once in a while for a week.  At first he thought he had to cut 
down on his overtime, then wondered if someone was spiking his 
coffee as a joke, but the green streak kept showing up.  Then it 
came close enough for him to see that it was a mouse.  He'd 
thought that maybe its fur had been covered in something that gave 
it that color, but its eyes were green too.  It ran under the table 
before he could catch it.

He immediately thought of all the vials of bizarre "alien" goo 
Spooky Mulder had brought him, but Pendrell kept them locked 
securely up with the other biohazardous materials.  No way 
anything could break in there.  He wondered if the mouse had 
come from the fabled basement office, where Mulder no doubt 
kept some things he shouldn't have. 

Then Pendrell got another look at it later and recognized the 
mouse's stumpy tail.  The little guy had to be Pooky, who'd made 
a jailbreak two weeks earlier.  Pendrell wasn't in the habit of 
giving the lab animals cutesy names, but Pooky had always had 
more personality and been friendlier than the other mice.

Now the name was almost appropriate.  Pookas changed shape, 
while Pooky had somehow been exposed to something that had 
transformed him at a genetic level, made him change color.

Pendrell wanted to know if the changes were more than cosmetic.  
He wanted to see if the mouse's eating habits or life cycle had 
changed.  He had thoughts of mating Pooky to see if the green was 
recessive or dominant.  He wanted to find out how the mouse had 
been exposed to whatever had changed it.  Pendrell wanted to find 
the catalyst for the mutation.  When the little guy came to the end 
of his natural //unnatural?// life, he could be dissected and 
examined for other changes.

Pooky twitched pale green whiskers at him and gave him a look 
that appeared almost wry.  The look said, "Humiliate yourself all 
you want, but I'm not going back to that cage, bub."

"You know I won't hurt you, little guy.  You'll live like a king.  
The best food, some girl mice..." //Sure, Sean, part of the change is 
that he now understands English.  If he does, he's laughing his 
little mouse ass off at you right now.// 
******************************************************

Alex Krycek congratulated himself on leading Mulder astray 
again.  While the agent checked out a sextoy warehouse for 
nonexistent evidence of aliens, Krycek would be back at the lab a 
floor above Mulder's office stealing real evidence.  He looked 
forward to his former partner eventually figuring it out.  The 
confrontation that would result would be fun.  He loved forcing 
emotion into that blank face and monotone voice.  Maybe someday 
Mulder would figure it out... 

Krycek quickly looked into the lab to check it before he walked in.  
No one should be here at 10 pm, but he preferred to be safe.  He 
didn't see anyone.

"C'mon, Pooky, I would never hurt you.  I'm taking you home to a 
nice nest of wood chips and easy food.  I would never hurt you."

//I *have* to find out what this is about.//  As quiet as a mouse, 
Krycek leaned to look around the lab table and saw a young man 
wriggling around on his hands and knees on the floor.  The lab coat 
covered a lot, but from the way it moved over the young man's 
body, Krycek could imagine...

Then the kid looked up and saw him and, worse, *recognized* 
him.  Apparently the lab tech kept track of the FBI's most wanted. 
He leapt to his feet, and his hand went for his gun, but Krycek 
grabbed his wrists first.  They faced and stared at one another with 
their arms outstretched over a lab table full of glass beakers and 
test tubes.  

The kid looked like a choir boy, too young and innocent to be 
allowed out after 10, but Krycek had used the young and innocent 
facade himself now and then.  The lab tech tried to be 
expressionless, but his pulse jumped through his wrists, his 
naturally pale redhead's skin looked paler than it should, and his 
blue, blue eyes burned with rage and fear.  //Rarr.  Just the way I 
like it...//

Krycek smiled.  "C'mon, Pooky, I would never hurt you."
*****************************************************

Pendrell stared at the man who'd help kidnap Agent Scully, who'd 
thrown away all his honor, who'd cast aside the oaths he'd taken to 
defend and protect.  Traitor, the lowest...  Krycek threw off a sense 
of danger like summer lightning, and his green eyes could have 
been chips of arctic ice, deep, cold, and giving the impression of 
infinite depths.  Then the eyes started to warm a little with 
amusement.  

//The bastard's laughing at me.//

Pendrell tried to struggle discreetly, get his wrists loose without 
plunging his arms and Krycek's down on a table full of glass.  He 
couldn't do it, but he didn't see how the traitor could do anything 
either.  Impasse.  //I wonder what he'll do now.//  Pendrell tried to 
anticipate the former agent's next move.

"You think you know and understand everything, don't you," 
Krycek's eyes, warming further, flickered to the ID badge on the 
labcoat, "...Agent Pendrell?" His smile turned deeper, darker.

Unsettled by the sudden cat-eating-the-canary look but desperate 
not to show it, Pendrell just shook his head slowly in negation.  
This man could torture or kill him, and no one would ever know if 
Krycek dumped him somewhere else.  He braced himself for the 
worst.

Krycek caught him completely off guard anyway.  The former 
agent abruptly pulled him forward by the wrists and into a kiss.  
Pendrell felt beakers rattling just under his chest, but that seemed 
less and less important as a rush of sensation hit his body, 
accompanied by an expert tongue that surprised him into admitting 
it into his mouth.  When he opened his eyes he drowned in warm, 
thick green and wondered how he could have ever seen those eyes 
as irrevocably cold.  He couldn't think; he could only surrender.  
Pendrell wanted to get closer...  Traitor, killer, spy, whatever, the 
man could kiss.  

//What is he doing?  What am *I* doing?//
******************************************************

Krycek had kissed the kid on a mischievous whim, just because he 
could, and hadn't expected the immediate acquiescence.  He 
appreciated it; he just hadn't expected it or the fact that the kid 
could *kiss*...  Sean Pendrell moaned against his lips, and he 
shivered.  The thought of corrupting an innocent always turned 
him on, and the lab tech provided that without, it appeared, the 
often frustrating ignorance that went with it.

//I came in here for a reason.  Damn.//  Regretfully, he pulled back 
and away.  The lab tech's eyes, which had the rich blue of the sky 
on a clear autumn day, looked dazed and so damned hot.  //Another 
time, kid.  Definitely another time.//  Krycek headbutted Pendrell 
and, with difficulty, controlled his descent to the floor.

Krycek found the specimen and notes right where his employer 
told him they would be.  He filed that revealing bit of information 
away for later.  With everything he'd come for tucked into his coat, 
he went back to check on the kid.  

Pendrell lay sprawled out on the floor, looking like he'd taken a 
nap.  //He could identify me.  I should kill him, or take him away, 
kill him, and dump the body somewhere it will never be found.  
Why didn't I just let him split his head open on a table on the way 
down?  He looks so sweet...//  Krycek started to smile.  //I don't 
think he'll be in a hurry to report this incident.  Maybe I have a soft 
spot for workaholic federal agents, even if the two aren't alike in 
any other way.  I have to work on changing that, but not tonight.//

Then Krycek saw the mouse sitting on Pendrell's shoulder.  The 
*green* mouse, resplendent in bright emerald shades even down to 
its eyes and whiskers.  //So much for living the life of a normal 
operative for hire.  Maybe I could get a bonus for this.//  He gently 
picked up the mouse and put it in his pocket before planting a kiss 
on Agent Pendrell's slack lips and leaving, humming a jaunty tune 
under his breath.

//Till next time, kid.//
******************************************************

Pendrell came to on the floor with a pounding headache and the 
taste of spearmint on his lips.  The events preceding his collapse 
came rushing back, and he moaned.

A torrent of thoughts clashed and collided.  //He took me down so 
damned easily.  Did he steal anything?  I have to check.  He felt so 
good...  What did he come here for?  That kiss, that kiss...  He 
helped those bastards take Agent Scully...  Will he come back?  I 
have to tell-- but I can't tell anyone what happened here tonight!  
I'm not even supposed to be here.  I can just see it: "I stayed over 
to try to catch a labmouse.  Well, this was a very special labmouse.  
It was green.  Then former agent Krycek came by, and I locked 
lips with him.  Who knows what else I would have agreed to do 
with him if he hadn't knocked me out.  Please commit me."//

Pendrell still hadn't caught Pooky.  He didn't know if Krycek had 
stolen anything.  Right now, Pendrell didn't care.  It could all wait 
for tomorrow.

As he left the lab as if the devil chased him, confused and 
unsettled, he thought that everything he wanted that was out of 
reach was green...


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

"It's not that easy being green;
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves.
When I think it could be nicer being red, or
   yellow or gold
or something much more colorful like that.

It's not easy being green.
It seems you blend in with so many
   other ordinary things.
And people tend to pass you over 'cause you're 
   not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water-
   or stars in the sky.

But green's the color of Spring.
And green can be cool and friendly-like.
And green can be big like an ocean, or important
   like a mountain, or tall like a tree.

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why
Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine,
   it's beautiful!
And I think it's what I want to be."

- "Green"
lyrics by Joe Rapposo, sung by Kermit the Frog