As he attempted to focus back on his work, Jim reached for his mouse near Chuck’s bent knee and wondered what would be more undignified: to move it discreetely away, or to indulge himself and gently let the side of his fingers brush the fabric of the man’s pants. 

Using Chuck, he sternly reminded himself. To advance his career. 

He slid the mouse away. 

“There’s only one transmission planned on the docket for Ram,” offered Chuck after a moment. 

Jim paused in the middle of painstakingly typing his name and full rank at the bottom of the message. Surely there was a way for the software to do that by default, but if so he hadn’t found it yet. Neither had anyone else in this place, evidently. 

“So if we’re sending the files in two batches, then it’s a deviation of established procedures. Which means a brass has to sign off on it.”

“I see.”

He resumed his slow typing. Chuck chuckled and unfolded his leg to poke the side of Jim’s seat, unaware of the letter-opener stabbing that might occur if he kept that up.

“The lieutenant in charge of the tower is like, very into rules. Big hard-ass.”

Jim made to reach for his mouse again, then hesitated. “By sign off,“ he asked warily, balancing on the knife’s edge between his paranoid need for more clarification and his paranoid need to look like he knew what he was doing, “do you mean that there is an actual, physical form that I need to sign?”

Chuck blinked. “Hey, you know what? Actually I think there’s one, yeah. Technically. But it’s a category five, nobody ever really bothers with those.”

A fucking form. Of course. Why bother specifying that when you could send emojis instead?

Jim jabbed at the backspace area of his laser keyboard with something akin to hysteria. Could hysteria be angry? Could it share a close fraternal relationship with exhaustion and a violent need to sob? Every single damned day since he’d entered this bunker, Jim discovered hitherto unknown emotions and he liked exactly none of them. He’d been tortured, for heaven’s sake, and that had somehow managed to be a less distressing experience overall. At least with torture, you knew what was expected of you! It was fairly straightforward! 

For the millionth time, Jim thought that he should have refused to take the job. He’d been told that it would involve pigments. He liked pigments. 

He poised his fingers over the projected keys, ready to compose a new message. “Where can I find this form, then?”

“Well, Murray should have it. But like I said, it’s not super important or anything. Verbal confirmation is just as good.”

“The point of procedures,” he grounded out, “is presumably that they be followed.” He started typing. “What is it called?”

“Huh… let me think. Unscheduled… Yeah, that’s it. Unscheduled transmission approval document, category-five.”

Jim dutifully typed it out. He crafted a perfectly terse but polite request for Murray (first name and rank still unknown, but he wasn’t going to push his luck by asking) to send him the required paperwork so that they could get on with it already. 

Chuck watched him send it with a flourish. He was bouncing his leg up and down, making Jim’s pens rattle in their holder. He almost, almost grabbed his knee to make him stop. If he were a lesser man — or perhaps a better one — he would have. Whether it would have been worth it was anyone’s guess. Chuck was almost too painful to look at. Men like him didn’t — 

Jim turned his attention back to his messages rather than finish that thought. 

The Sergeant was still looking at him. He was still bouncing his leg. His bent knee was still encroaching shamelessly into the area where Jim’s mouse was supposed to be, within range of his hand. He also still had to offer a reason for coming into Jim’s office in the first place, if such a reason even existed. Chuck tended to dip in and out of his office often, like a cat that doesn’t actually know if it wants to be inside or outside of the house. It was playing with his nerves.

“He’s gonna freak out, you know,” Chuck said casually. “Murray. He’s gonna be like:” — Chuck smacked his hands to his face and deepened his voice, presumably in an imitation of someone — “ ‘Oh shit, I didn’t even know there was a form for that! Major Archie’s gonna think we’re a bunch of incompetents!’ Plus, I bet me and Bee are probably the only ones who even remembers where the cat-five documents are kept.”

“Yeah, well this is why you’re my favourite,” he mumbled, then hurried to add before Chuck could get any ideas: “Besides, there is a reason for that paperwork.”

“Yeah?,” breathed the other man, the besotted look on his face making it clear that all of the ideas had already been had. 

“Imagine, if you will —”

“I will!”

“— that we send the two transmissions when there’s only the one scheduled on the docket, and then no one bothers to document that. Couple of months pass, we check the logs, and then we wonder ‘huh, what was that second transmission for? Who approved that?’. But there’s no trace of it.”

Chuck was nodding slowly. “Bit annoying, that,” he agreed. “Discrepancies are always more work.”

“No,” he said. “I mean yes, but no. My point is, if we don’t know who sent the transmission, we might think —”

Jim gestured at the poster on the wall of his office, then his throat closed up around the rest of his words. It was one of these ridiculous signs about the myriad ways that an enemy spy might befriend you for information. Jim had gotten rid of most of the decorations in his designated office on arrival, preferring a sparce, orderly working space. But this one poster, he’d put up in place of honour on the wall. Where it was impossible for him not to look at it, every minute of every day.

He didn’t need to be told that it was an exceedingly torturous thing to do to himself. But he wanted the reminder. He needed it. Without the accusing afterimage of the poster burning on the back of his eyelids day and nights, who knew what Jim might be tempted to do? What if he fooled himself into thinking that it would be fine to pick up on what Chuck so earnestly put down? The very thought of it sent heat burning through his veins and a large part of that heat was far too delicious for it to be guilt. 

The truth, you see, the naked ugly truth that couldn’t ever be revealed, was that Archibald James “Jim” Montgomery was an unbalanced man who had never once possessed anything approaching an appropriate amount of guilt. That, more than anything, was the singular cause of all of the problems in his life. Without all of the hangups and anxieties that he had developed around his work — the singular focus; the obsessive need to do it properly, professionally, and without mess; the gut-churning hatred of unknown variables — then there was no telling what he could potentially be up to. He certainly had never been stopped by petty concerns like ‘morals’ and ‘the law’.

But Chuck didn’t need to know that. Chuck was sweet. He was sweet, and men like Jim didn’t — 

Here was another thought that didn’t particularly need to be seen to it’s conclusion. 

Chuck didn’t immediately get what Jim was getting at by gesturing at the poster, but when he did his mouth fell open. 

“Oh, because we might think that — OH! That a spy used the array to call home! Oh my god, you’re right, Archie! Gosh, you’re so smart.”

Jim felt another hot flash of not-guilt, as well as the strong urge to roll his eyes. Really, posters everywhere and not a one of them acted like they had even read them. A spy could waltz right into this godforsaken bunker and take them for all they were worth and none of these incompetents would notice. Well, he supposed that it was a breath of fresh air, in a way. Jim had spent his entire life surrounded by people who ranged from ‘professionally paranoid’ to ‘recreationally suspicious’. Not having his every move judged — and judged harshly — was certainly an experience that took some getting used to. He busied his hands straightening up a pile of papers that didn't particularly need it. 

"Yes, well, we cannot afford to let things like this slide," he grumbled. "We have been granted stewardship of the King's bunker, for heaven's sake. It’s an honour, and one that ought to come with the reminder that Trout could be called upon to fullfill it’s function at any moment. We have to be ready. This complete lack of rigueur is unbecoming."

Chuck chuckled. "Should I scold the comm techs then? For their lack of rigueur?"

"Don't mock me."

"I'm not!" he said. But he was laughing as he said it, so how was Jim supposed to interpret that, really. 

He glared. Chuck changed the subject. 

"Have you met Bee, up at the comms tower yet? I mean, Grace, technically. Lieutenant Grace Bitterling. Her name’s Bee, though, you know. I just think you two would get along famously."

Jim had to think about it. "I don't think so," he finally said. "The tower wasn’t a part of the tour you gave me.”

That, and he thought he might remember meeting someone called ‘Bee’. It made sense that a person with such an unusual nickname would be Chuck’s friend. The man wasn’t particularly big on propriety. He wondered what, exactly, gave the man the impression that Jim might get along with someone who went around naming themselve after a type of bug. Insects were repugnants, although he supposed that he could give a pass to honeybees, given that the little terrors actually had little jobs. Unlike all of the other six-legged crawling freeloaders that planets were unfortunately riddled with. One could only wonder why humanity had seen fit to colonize more dustballs when they had the means to build and maintain some perfectly respectable, pest-free space stations.

"Oh yeaaah," said Chuck after a couple of seconds of hesitation, accidentally interrupting Jim’s completely sane and non-hysterical mental tangent. Everyone had strong feelings about bugs, right? Right. "So. I don't technically have the clearance to be up there."

He might not have the clearance, but the way that he was shifting his eyes around told Jim that he was likely up in the communications tower every other day regardless, and twice on sundays. Which meant that he absolutely could get Jim in there, if sufficiently motivated. He pressed his lips together, biting down on the pleased smile that was threatening to escape. 

"How disappointing. I suppose that I'll have to find someone else to show me around."

As expected, Chuck snapped to attention, wide-eyed and eager to please. Always so, so eager. It was almost too easy. Jim didn’t let his eyes stray back to his poster. He didn’t need to look to know exactly what it said, and the words were starting to sound less and less like a warning and more like an instruction manual.

“Now, Archie, let’s not be hasty! I might actually be able to get you in. I know a guy.”

His lips twitched. “Let me guess. Is his name… Eye-Eye?”

Chuck couldn’t even do a decent approximation of an innocent look. He wiggled on the desk, which creaked alarmingly under his weight. “… maybe?”