Inside Greg
By Salzara Tirwen

Disclaimers apply.

Rating: Mature

Pairing: Janus/Stillson… kind of
Summary: Oh shit, Smith saw that.

All around him the voices whisper. You have a destiny. You can be great. You will lead this country to its proper place.

He is surrounded by these, the voices of powerful, shadowy men, pushing him toward the peak of his ambition. Not that he is inclined to argue with them. He wants to rule. But he doesn't quite know how. He has grand words, and the charm of a snake, but his ideas for actual policies are no more substantial than a child's fantasies. When I rule the world everyone will have a pony and I'll eat nothing but candy!

When I rule the world everyone will go to church and I'll have a harem of beautiful interns!

Malcolm Janus, he senses, is the one with the concrete plans. Janus, the shadow master. Greg remembers sitting at the other end of the long table, Janus at its head. Other men lined the table but they may well have been more puppets. Could have been janitors dressed up for all it mattered. Janus is the hand that moves the pawn.

Somehow Smith knows this. He doesn't think about Smith too much: the man has a way of speaking uncomfortable truths. Knows too much. Why hasn't Janus eliminated him?

Greg is never alone.

So it comes as something of a shock when, having been preoccupiedly washing his hands in a restroom sink, Greg looks up and sees those burning eyes right behind him. Then a hand comes up and clamps on his shoulder. Smith gets that distant, unbodied look for a few seconds, before Greg shakes his hand off and the eyes focus again.

So he asks the question he never has wanted an answer to before: "What?"

And Smith gets the world's most infuriatingly bemused look on his face, shakes his head, and walks out.

Later, as Greg is staring unfocused at his office wall, Malcolm's teeth in his neck and hand down his pants, he realizes: Oh fuck. This is what he saw.

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