“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Sergeant Quillback,” said Archie out of nowhere, maybe taking his own turn at trying to fill the silence of the Brass wing. 

“It’s Chuck. I mean, sir, if you want you can call me Chuck.”

He glanced at the other man quickly, hoping to see that same private smile as the first time he’d offered the use of his name. There it was again! It was just the slightest curl of the lips on an otherwise unreadable face, but damn if it didn’t warm him up right to his toes. 

Because Chuck had to be honest with himself: part of the delight that he felt at ogling his boss was for the simple reason that Archibald James Montgomery had the bearing and looks of a historical romantic lead and Chuck was very much into it. He couldn’t help himself! Archie came across like some fictional duke or lord that would be uptight and respectable all the way until he’d fuck up and then have to grovel at the heroine of the story to forgive him, and it was… it was hot, okay. These books didn’t sell a zillion copies because their duke or lord characters weren’t hot.

But there was also another layer of delight right under that, and it was reserved for when he and Archie just… talked. When they connected with one another like normal people, not a major and a sergeant and also not like a hot marble statue come to life and the poor sap who’d gotten cursed with a crush on him. Just two guys.

“Alright then, Chuck. I wanted to know… And please tell me if this is strange to ask but… why was someone yelling ‘Wake up Trouts’ in the corridors in front of the sleeping quarters this morning?”

There was a beat and then Chuck started laughing. “Oh, the wake up call! Jeez, I forgot that would be weird for you.”

Archie stopped walking to just stare at him like Chuck was a slightly alarming enigma. “The wake up call.” he said, “You mean that this is a regular occurrence?”

“Of course it is! It’s the wake up call, it’s a classic. You didn’t have a custom wake up call at your old base? Werk sounds boring, man.”

“Welch. And… no? No, I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

But now Archie had a slightly uncertain look on his face, like he was suddenly wondering if there had been a custom wake up call in Welch and somehow he’d just never been in on the joke. Which, not to be mean, but Chuck thought that it was probable. Most bases tended to have this sort of long-running in-jokes and Archibald didn’t exactly strike him as the type that would naturally be included in community shenanigans. He seemed like a buzz-kill. Like the guy who would remind the teacher about homework. If it hadn’t been for the entire cock-blocking marriage thing, Chuck would absolutely have introduced him to Bee already.

Uncertain what to say that would make him feel better, he decided to just grab Archie by the shoulders (it was fine, right? They were on grab-by-the-shoulder terms by now, right?) and steer him back towards the more livable parts of the bunker. 

“Well, you’ll be hearing it a lot more now that you’re here. We like the fish puns. Hm, let’s see. Oh! Let minnow what you think about that one: when your boss is watching, you’d better look e-fish-ient! Eh?”

Archie mouthed the words to himself, then made a soft ‘oh’ sound and chuckled. 

“I see. Well, I’m not very fast on the uptake with puns, but at least I’m not gullible.”

Huh? What did that have to do with…

“Oh! Gull-ible! Archie!” He whooped in delight and shook the other man by the shoulders. “You’re gonna be a real trout in no time!”

“Is that a good thing?” he asked as they finally left the Brass wing and came back out into the colourful world of lived-in corridors and ridiculous posters about striking up unfortunate friendships with enemy spies. Chuck let Archie’s shoulders go regretfully for the sake of them both looking a bit more professional. Not that the major ever stopped looking like he’d just stepped out of a carefully planned military photo shoot.

“Sure, why wouldn’t it be?”

“Aren’t trouts somewhat… helpless and confused-looking?”

Chuck shrugged. “You mean the actual fish? I guess. But only when they’re out of their elements, right? Inside of the water they’re like, efficient little predators.”

Archie raised a brow at him. “Are they?”

“What, you’ve never seen a real trout?”

“… No. Have you?”

“Nope!” he said cheerfully. “But my point is, we’re not outside of our elements, are we, Archie?” he elbowed him.

The major let himself be elbowed but he did adopt a lofty air once more. “No,” he said crisply. “We are not.”

Chuck didn’t let himself be intimidated by the return of Major Montgomery of the stuffy demeanor. He’d managed to cajole Archie into being downright companionable for a whole five minutes there and he would do it again. 

“So I take it to mean that you’re sleeping in the bunker, then?” he asked. 

Archie turned a corner and Chuck went right along with him, because he had nowhere pressing to be right now and talking to the major was more interesting anyway. The highlight of his day, really. It was requisition form week and those were always so tedious, no one would miss Chuck if he wasn’t at his desk for a few minutes. 

“Where else would I be sleeping?”

He shrugged. “Well, I don’t know. You didn’t transfer to Trout with a family? A girlfriend? Boyfriend? A spouse?”

The little judging voice that sounded like Bee in his head could go ahead and piss right off. He wasn’t prying for any romantic motives, he was just asking to make conversation. That was allowed. In fact, he was pretty sure that it was polite and friendly to show interest in other people’s lives. Expected, even.

“No, I came here alone.”

“Oh. Well long-distance can be a bit —”

“There’s nothing like that,” interrupted Archie, before he cleared his throat and tugged on his jacket uncomfortably. 

Somehow, they had ended up walking all the way back to the major’s office and now they were both awkwardly hovering in front of it’s closed door, like two teenagers after their first date.

Chuck’s reaction of ‘oh no I made Archie uncomfortable’ warred with his other reaction of ‘oh yay Archie’s single’ so he didn’t really think before opening his mouth again. It wasn’t on purpose; he tended to ramble as a placeholder reaction when he didn’t know how to feel. It didn’t always turn out great for him.

“I only want to know for, huh, professional reasons. I mean, it gets lonely in here, with the little rooms under the ground and no windows and everything. I can give advice, if you want. I mean I’ve been living here for a while, I figure I got used to the bunker life, and you’re brand new, so like.”

He shrugged in a way that was meant to look casual but probably looked somewhat twitchy. 

“If you ever want a — a shoulder, I’ve got great shoulders, man. We could talk. Like, day or night. Nights are good, I mean we’re off work, we can find somewhere alone…”

Did he need to stop talking? Maybe Chuck needed to stop talking.

Archie was giving him that same pensive look that he’d given him before, when Chuck had offered to bypass the scanner for him. It was still as inscrutable and nerve-wracking as ever.

“I do have…” he began uncertainly, then paused for a few seconds. “I have a certain, how to say, curious interest towards the chemistry of pigments in general, and of the Space Mega Black in particular. An interest which unfortunately does not seem likely to be indulged here. I would not turn down…” 

He looked like he was searching for the perfect words, as if everything that came out of his mouth needed to be the exact specific thing that he meant in exactly the way that he meant it. “I would welcome conversation. On any topic that we might find of interest. The pigment is only one such example, of course. But it is one that is on the mind, given the circumstances of my arrival.”

A great wave of warmth washed over Chuck. Aw, Archie was a nerd! And he wanted to talk about his little nerd niche topics with him. Which was just perfect, actually. Touching, because the major was opening up; and convenient, because Chuck had a lot of experience being talked at about whatever subject of interest his friends were into at the moment. 

Bee, for example, was intensely into amateur radio, and had once used to compete in galaxy-wide contests. They were basically a speed run of how many other amateur stations you could contact in a given amount of time. She’d done it for years and was good at it, but then the space cold war had turned radio-ing people in other solar systems into something that just wasn’t done anymore. The risk of being accused of treason just wasn’t worth it, especially not for a military woman, so she’d been forced to hang up her gloves. She still liked to tell Chuck all about it, though, with an insane amount of technical details that he should never be expected to understand. But he was good at nodding a lot, and he liked hearing about the controversies and nerd drama, which he also didn’t understand but made her turn funny shades of purple. 

Like the one year in which the transmissions had been interrupted by weird noises on pretty much every frequencies, and there were still debates about whether that had been sabotage, trolling, or aliens. He was particularly found of that incident, because it had happened shortly after he’d met Bee. He’d been the only one in their unit willing to sit still and listen to her increasingly frazzled complaining while the contest was going on and the noises got more frequent. He liked to think of that long, nerdy, baffling week as one of the events that had really cemented their friendship.

Over time, he’d also secured the friendship of Evans by being willing to listen to him talk about air surfing, and Johnson by volunteering an afternoon to help build a vintage lifepod from a model kit he’d gotten off the holonet. As such, he was perfectly primed to let Archie tell him all about pigments. Or whatever else he wanted to, really. With a voice like that, the man could probably read the maintenance requisition forms out loud and somehow manage to make them sound sexy.

So Chuck leaned his arm casually on the wall next to the major’s head, and he smiled his most winning smile, and he didn’t let himself think about how much of a bad idea any of that was. They were probably all about to get smashed to bits by a vaporizer missile anyway. If Chuck didn’t pursue his bad ideas now, when would he pursue them? (He was fully aware that this logic wouldn’t work on Bee. He tried not to think about that either.)

“I would love that, Archie! Just say the word, and I’ll be right over. We can stay up and talk about pigments all night. Or, you know, whatever you want.”

He winked, and Major Montgomery smiled back at him, and oh, life was good. Chuck was absolutely certain that there would not be any downsides to this, at all, ever.