Archibald James Montgomery — Jim, for short, although he would never ask anyone to call him that — rubbed his aching temples and wondered if there was a term for the opposite of ‘impostor syndrome’. 

He glared at his computer display. Even through the headache-inducing haze of his incorrectly-calibrated lenses, he could still make out the offending message that he’d just received. 

From one of his communications techs, it began:

‘Hey major! How was your weekend? :)’

(Emojis. In comm-messages. Revolting.)

‘FYI I’m about to send the radar comp to CSS Ram. They’ve been having problems with downloads bigger than 6 To, should I split the files?’

He’d been wasting the past five minutes trying to figure out why they were even asking him that question, and whether he was missing something. The tech — he didn’t even know who it was! The internal comm adresses were all encrypted, and no one ever signed their goddamned messages. Did they expect him to just guess?! — the tech, presumably, had the radar comp files right in front of their eyes. Couldn’t they just look at how big it was, and then figure out if it needed to be split depending on whether or not it exceeded 6 To? Why was his input needed here, exactly?

He must have been missing something. There was no way that he was the only competent person in this bunker. He wasn’t even supposed to be here! This was so very, very much not his job. 

Well. Technically, he supposed that it was his job. Just not the one that he’d been trained for.

The door of his office banged open. Jim startled and instinctively reached for his blaster, then relaxed when Sergeant Quillback waltzed in with an exuberant greeting.

“Ah, excellent timing,” he said, allowing himself an internal sigh of relief. “Close the door, please.”

Chuck beamed at him and Jim could feel his own lips twitching up unwillingly in echo. It was unfair to ask the sergeant to shoulder so much of his work, probably, but the man was just so eager. Sometimes it was hard for Jim to remember that he was using the other man, not indulging him. Even though he’d made it perfectly clear that he actually liked to be used. (Professionally. He had informed Jim that he would be more than happy to offer his services at any time or for any thing, professionally. Any other meaning had only been implied. Repeatedly. With euphemistic emphasis. In a way that was actually extremely hard to ignore.)

He tilted his display towards Chuck and gestured for him to come closer. “Tell me what you make of this.”

The Sergeant skipped over to his desk. He placed both hands on the back of Jim’s chair and leaned right over his shoulder to look at the message, far too close than was necessary and definitively not with anything approaching professionalism or respect for any sorts of regulation. Not that Jim would reprimand him for it though — Chuck was his ace in the sleeve, the only reason he had yet to be found out for the fraud that he was. 

He willed his shoulders to relax into the warmth emanating from the other man. It didn’t happen. His back remained as tense as an iron rod. Whatever. Jim didn’t need to be relaxed around Chuck, he just needed Chuck to keep on liking him. (And given Chuck’s… everything, he seemed unlikely to stop liking Jim any time soon. Unless Jim seriously hurt his feelings, that is. He tried not to think about that.)

Approximatively fifteen seconds after the upper limit of time it might take someone to read that short a message, and four seconds before the close physical contact officially lost it’s veneer of deniable plausibility, the weight pressed at his back shifted. Receded somewhat. The hands remained braced on the back of his chair; he could feel knuckles digging into the muscles on each sides of his spine. Jim took a measured breath, then another. He very carefully did not tilt his head back, nor did he strain his ears to listen for soft, murmured breathing. Chuck’s behavior could be tolerated, even though it stretched the limits of acceptable. But he was certainly not about to allow himself to respond in kind.

“So… what’s the matter?” finally asked the Sergeant. 

Jim grit his teeth. Right, so there went his hope that Chuck would just magically figure out the problem without him having to spell it out. 

“Why are they asking me?,” he managed, praying that the question wouldn’t be the one to finally betray his complete, undeniable, terminal lack of a clue. Chuck could help him fool everyone else on the base pretty well; but if he figured him out, then it was game over. 

“Oh, that’s Murray. He just needs you to sign off on it.”

“Sign off,” he muttered. “Right.”

He bent over his keyboard to type out his reply, cheeks burning with the searing heat of embarrassment. He should have just followed his initial instinct and told the comms tech to split the file as needed. He’d over-thought it. Again. 

Chuck let his chair go and came around to sit on the edge of Jim’s desk instead. He resisted the urge to scoff. It couldn’t be very comfortable, with only the one ass-cheek hiked up on the corner like that. Jim’s towering nuisance of a pen holder seemed to be poking into his hip, which honestly, Chuck entirely deserved. His behaviour was far too casual for a man of his rank. Thankfully, he had chosen to inhabit the side of the desk without any paperwork to mess up, otherwise Jim might have had to threaten him with a letter-opener until he hopped down from his perch. 

What’s worse, Chuck’s posture was not just casual, it was inviting. One of his feet was braced on the ground, the other dangling in the air. He made a sort of aborted motion, as if he was about to prop his boot up on the edge of Jim’s chair, but then seemed to change his mind. (A wise choice; if Jim ever had to look at a bootprint marring the pristine leather of his desk chair, then the letter opener would go straight into Chuck’s thigh.) The sergeant folded his knee back instead. He curled his large hand around his ankle and hitched it up right onto the desk. The consequences of this were as followed: One; he was now encroaching into Jim’s workspace. Two; his boot was now on the desk. Three: his legs were wide open. 

As Chuck shifted to get comfortable, the pen holder wobbled and the sergeant steadied it with his hand. Jim took the opportunity to give him a quick once-over before flicking his eyes away. (Horribly unprofessional, yes. But for his defence, when a hot sergeant sat on top of one’s desk and fucking spread his legs wide open, one couldn’t just not look.)