Danny poured out two cups of coffee for the salesmen at the counter, tossed them a friendly smile, and told them he'd "be right back." Pulling his order pad from his apron pocket, he turned to head to his other new table, a guy sitting by himself in one of the booths by the window. As he turned, his elbow connected solidly with something heavy and plastic. With a tremendous crash, the bus-tub full of dishes hit the floor. After a split second of confusion, he glared at the pretty brunette who'd been carrying the bus-tub when she walked behind him with no warning. Every experienced server knew that was a stupid move.
"Say 'behind,' damnit!" he mumbled through clenched teeth.
"Geez! I'm sorry, okay?"
Danny tried to collect himself and get his game face on as he walked toward his customer, and managed a rueful grin by the time he reached the man's booth.
"Sorry about all the ruckus. What can I get you to drink?"
"It's alright," the guest answered, "accidents happen. I'll take a Coke, easy on the ice, please."
Danny gave his standard "on my way," and left the man to read the menu. As he'd suspected, the coffee drinkers were just killing time on their breaks, so he topped off their cups and scrawled a ticket for them, all the while choking on the acrid fumes from their cigarettes. He carried a Coke and a paper-wrapped straw back to the booth by the window, taking a moment along the way to shoot Tammy a nasty look as he passed her trying to clean up her mess.
"One Coca-Cola," he said, setting the glass and straw on the table, "What can I get you to eat?"
"Are the burgers any good?"
"Yeah, they actually are, not to mention being the biggest in town," Danny answered.
Danny took the man's order, gave it to the cook, and carried a coffee pot through the dining room. His own tables were doing well, in various stages of their meals. Several of the waitresses with whom he worked had been neglecting their tables, though, and Danny was obliged to pick up their slack for the umpteenth time. Also for the umpteenth time, he found himself wondering how they made twice his tips with such poor service. Tits and ass, he thought, that's the only explanation.
With smooth, practiced moves, Danny swapped out the ashtray the two salesmen were using for a fresh one, half holding his breath the whole time. God, he hated smokers. Of course, on the outside he was all smiles and sunshine. He'd still be smiling when he pocketed their crappy, fifty-cent tip, too, all the while cursing them for wasting his time.
Forty minutes later, Danny was bussing the dishes off the booth by the window. He slipped a guest-check face down on the chipped Formica with his other hand.
"You sure I can't convince you to try a slice of our homemade pie?" he asked.
"No thanks. You were right about those burgers being big," the customer exclaimed. "I can't believe I ate the whole thing."
Danny smiled, and gave another of his well-rehearsed lines: "a full half-pound of 'Grade A' beef. Makes it hard to sell pie, but you don't go away hungry."
The man returned his smile, and then asked, "You're not from around here, are you?"
"Nope! I've traveled around my whole life, and this is just one more stop," he answered. He got this kind of question all the time, because of his utter lack of an accent. Knowing what was coming next, he offered, "I'm a Junior up at the college."
"I could tell," the man said, picking up his check, "you're a little too smooth a waiter for a greasy-spoon like this."
The man paid his bill, with a tip that was more generous than Danny was used to. Before leaving, the guy shook Danny's hand, which was even more unusual, and introduced himself.
"My name's Tom, and I'll be asking for you to wait on me whenever I come in here. I like your style."
Danny thanked the man, giving him an even bigger smile, both for the compliment and the big tip, and made a mental note to try and remember the guy's name. Feeling the call of nature, he doffed his apron, and headed for the men's room. As he washed his hands after finishing his business, he checked himself in the mirror to make sure he looked his professional best. Danny took a lot of pride in looking like a pro, even though the place he worked was way below his skills as a waiter. His short, dark brown hair was slicked back, his face was suitably clean-shaven (though he only had to shave every other day, thanks to a pretty light beard), and his uniform was neat and tidy-at least as tidy as a knit polo shirt and black polyester pants could be. Satisfied, he got back to work, careful to assume his "waiter-face" before he got back out on the floor.
Tom did come back, and did request Danny as his waiter, every time he worked. The man was always friendly, a pleasure to wait on, and generous with his tips. Danny came to look forward to his visits, and let the other servers know that the man was "his regular." The last thing he wanted was for one of the air-headed bimbos who made up a disproportionate percentage of his coworkers to try and steal the guy away. He was barely making ends meet as it was, working in such a dive. The only reason he stayed was that the management was unusually nice about working around his school schedule.
The first few times Danny waited on Tom, he found himself telling the man quite a bit more about his life than he normally would tell a customer, no matter how regularly they came in. He considered it a mark of the true professional that one's private life stayed outside the workplace. There was just something about Tom that inspired the sharing of confidences. It didn't take long for Tom to find out Danny was twenty-five, single (not even dating, since his last girlfriend dumped him), and studying to be a teacher. They talked about literature, and on his next visit, Tom brought a book of poems by Danny's favorite author, which he unexpectedly gave him as a gift.
Danny was half-inclined to refuse the gift as being too extravagant for the nature of their relationship, but relented when Tom insisted the book had only been collecting dust on his bookshelf at home. From then on, though, Danny felt even more friendly and open toward his special customer. He even started sharing some of his frustrations and pet peeves about his job and his coworkers, something he'd never done with any customer before.
One busy lunch-shift, when the restaurant was packed with customers, Danny was picking up more than "his fair share" of the tables, and getting pretty frazzled, when Tom came in and sat at the counter.
"Hi, Tom!" Danny said, as he scurried by, barely pausing to set the man's usual Coke in front of him. "Be right back!"
It took Danny a good five minutes to get back to him (an eternity in waiter-time), who asked with a wry smile, "A little busy today, Dan?"
"Just a bit. Your usual?"
"Sure thing."
"Sorry it took me so long to get back to you," Danny said as he wrote the order on a guest-check. "We seem to be a body short for some reason."
Just then, Cheryl bustled through the door from the back of the restaurant. As she hurried past the two men, a miasma of cigarette odor followed her.
"Mystery freakin' well solved," Danny stage-whispered to Tom.
"Taking a smoke-break, huh?"
"At the worst possible time, as usual," Danny groused, "One of the big downsides of being a non-smoker in the restaurant biz is having to pick up the slack for the smokers. That and the second-hand fumes from the guests who smoke."
"I've noticed that you're one of the few servers here who doesn't smoke," said Tom.
Danny let it go at that, turning to give Tom's order to the kitchen, then hurrying off to take care of his other customers. When he brought Tom his check, after he'd finished his meal, Danny found him holding a small gift box, like the kind that hold a bracelet or watch.
"What's this?"
Tom, answering Danny's grin with one of his own, said, "The solution to your little problem."
It was a measure of Danny's preoccupation and frazzled nerves that he had no idea what Tom was talking about until he lifted the lid of the box. Inside were a single cigarette and a cheap, disposable lighter. He looked back up at Tom, smiling at his odd sense of humor.
"Providing my coworkers with cigarettes isn't going to encourage them to take fewer breaks," he said.
"No, that's for you. You deserve a break, too."
"But I don't smoke."
"Things change," said Tom. "That's a very special cigarette.
"TRUST ME."
When Tom spoke those two words, "trust me," Danny felt a sudden lassitude come over him. Without another word to anyone, he carried the little box through the swinging doors that led to the kitchen and storage areas, and continued all the way back to the employee break area by the back door. Once there, he took the cigarette out of its box, raised it to his lips, and lit it like an old pro, inhaling deeply.
That part of his brain that was thoroughly confused by his actions expected a certain amount of coughing and wheezing to accompany this event, but there was none. He took another pull on the cigarette, inhaling deeply and smoothly-as if he'd smoked for years-and time seemed to stretch out, slowing down by a factor of ten.
There was no mirror in the break area, which was probably a good thing. It spared Danny the shock of seeing the effects of the next few minutes on him, until it was too late to do anything about it.
Those effects began to manifest with the second pull Danny took. It wasn't much at first, though any witness probably would have noticed. Most obvious was the fact that his previously short hair seemed to sprout two inches, and lightened a shade, all in the time it took him to inhale deeply. He held the smoke in his lungs for a few seconds, and his already-light beard became little more than peach fuzz. The hair on his arms all but disappeared, as well.
Danny relaxed in his chair. He felt so relaxed and calm. Why had he always been against smoking? The benefits obviously outweighed the drawbacks. He smiled contentedly and lifted the cigarette to his lips for more.
This time the results were more dramatic. His hair grew a good six inches, brushing his shoulders, and lightened two full shades to a dark blonde, with gold highlights. His eyebrows thinned themselves into slight arches over eyes that suddenly seemed both larger and greener. His nose shrank a little, even as his lower jaw became smaller and rounder, bringing his cheekbones into prominence. His peach-fuzz beard disappeared altogether, and his sideburns became soft and wispy. Danny's arms and hands grew thinner and more delicate, too, the only other part of him visible outside his uniform.
Danny felt a slight, pleasant buzz. He couldn't wait to thank Tom for such a great gift. Danny's smile changed when he thought of Tom, in a way that might have alarmed him if he could have seen it, and his eyes took on a half-lidded gaze as he considered in his mind's eye Tom's handsome face and broad shoulders. He almost forgot the cigarette in his hand, but not quite.
When he inhaled the fragrant smoke, his face didn't show as much change this time, but his hair grew at a fantastic rate, and finished lightening to a gorgeous golden honey blonde. His complexion and other hair changed, too, showing him to be a natural blonde, with deep, emerald-green eyes. As his arms and hands became yet daintier, his fingernails suddenly grew out to about an inch past the ends of his fingers, looking smoothly and professionally manicured.
Luckily, Danny's uniform shirt fit him fairly loosely. Invisibly to the naked eye, his chest had been slowly developing two small, round mounds, even as his nipples seemed to engorge and swell. The magic of the "special" cigarette now hit those mounds with a vengeance as Danny inhaled, and caused them to grow into a pair of very nice, pert breasts. The growth paused momentarily between drags. Quite by instinct, Danny started to do an expert "French inhale," and his new tits swelled magnificently, tenting his uniform shirt over big, hard nipples.
Anyone walking by and seeing Danny having his "smoke break" at this juncture would see a very pretty, very buxom blonde woman, though the downstairs plumbing didn't yet match that perception. Danny stood, and stretched luxuriously, loving the feeling of the knit polo shirt rubbing across his engorged, sensitive breasts. His cigarette was nearly burned down to the filter. Danny brought it to his lips for one last, long drag.
As he inhaled, several changes occurred at once. While his legs grew slightly longer, his torso grew shorter. His waist became higher, and much smaller. His hips broadened considerably, and his butt became bigger, rounder, and slightly prone to jiggling. His feet and hands shrank to a size and shape that could only be described as dainty. His shoulders and chest narrowed, and his neck became slender and graceful, with no trace of an Adam's-apple. His lips plumped up, his eyes took on a slightly upturned, almond shape above pronounced cheekbones, making his face seem exotic, as well as breathtakingly beautiful.
He held the smoke deep in his lungs, savoring the feeling he closed his eyes, and knowledge flooded into his brain" hair, makeup, clothes, feminine hygiene. Danny suddenly possessed memories of his first period, dating and kissing boys, one special boy in tenth grade who made him tingle all over. Giving his virginity to that boy, who promptly disappeared when Danny became pregnant. The emotional turmoil and physical pain of the abortion that followed. He found that he knew how to walk, talk, dance, eat, drink, and flirt like a woman. He knew a ridiculously great deal about seducing and pleasuring men, and could catalogue dozens of male lovers.
A rush of sensation in his crotch signaled one more physical change for Danny, as his dick shrank to form a clitoris, and a moist, well-used pussy took shape. His balls drew up inside him, and transformed themselves into fully functioning ovaries, while his vas deferens became fallopian tubes. Even his anus got into the act, stretching and acquiring the scar tissue of numerous instances of back-door penetration. In a sweeping wave, the chromosomes in every cell in his body converted from XY to XX, and even the shape of his brain changed, most noticeably growing a thicker corpus collosum.
Danni exhaled, and her memories of her manhood, of her life as a man, mostly flowed out of her with the smoke. With her former self went her male attitudes, desires, and ambitions. Everything she'd learned in school since the tenth grade rode that stream of smoke, since she'd dropped out of school after her shameful abortion. If anyone had suggested that she'd been in college classes earlier that week, she would have just laughed at them. Most of her marketable job skills faded into nothingness, except for the waitressing part. Her IQ dropped from 140 to 95, and she became, literally, a stereotypical "dumb blonde."
As Danni crushed out the butt of her cigarette, piercings appeared in her ears, nose, tongue, nipples, navel, and labia. Several tattoos appeared, and her skin darkened to a shade that bespoke countless hours in tanning booths. Heavy makeup caked her face, and her fingernails were lacquered to match her dark red lipstick. Her clothes changed as well. The knit uniform top she was wearing shrank, stretching ludicrously across her breasts, and her black "waiter pants" became very short, very tight shorts. Danny's sensible shoes became Danni's six-inch stilettos. She picked up her cigarettes and lighter from the break-table and slid them into her apron pocket, then went to find Tom, so she could thank him in a very personal way for the really great tip.