Once upon a time, an elementary school teacher of his had used a metaphor about a frog slowly being boiled alive. The increase in temperature had been so gradual that the poor frog, according to his teacher, hadn’t noticed that the water was about to boil until it was too late. Jim had likely taken the entirely wrong lesson from her story; whatever she meant to convey, what he had learned was that one could pull any number of nasty tricks on a person as long as the ramp up was so slow as to be unnoticeable.

He’d always suspected that her intended point had probably been something about mental stress, or the pressure of school, or what have you. Well, Jim wasn’t in school now. But he was suddenly, intensely aware of the concept of mental stress. And of how little you actually noticed it building up around you until something snapped.

The room was lined with windows. He could see the sky. And once he was done here, Jim would have to step away from those windows, and return into the bunker. Underground. Stifled. Entombed. Jim would have to turn right back around, ride the fucking goddamn elevator back into the bowels of this stupid fucking moonlet, and let himself be buried alive. Eighty feet down and tens of thousands of pounds of steel and concrete pressing on him like so much boiling water poured over his head. He would drown, down there in the darkness. He would have to be Major Fucking Montgomery again, for who knew how much longer, and the weight of his own name — the part of it that no one else knew — would curl up like a snake around his neck in the dead of night and squeeze.

Jim couldn’t even remember how long he’d been in the bunker, now. How many weeks, stretching out into the past? How many weeks, stretching out into the future, all of them bleak and lifeless and all so fucking identical? Walls, walls, walls, and no windows, and nothing but a rank and a job and dumbass blurry messages with emojis and no fucking instructions!

How could he have not noticed that the bunker was slowly killing him, until he saw the sky? How could he go back? But he had to. He was dead if he didn’t. He was dead if he did.

Jim dimly felt himself start gasping — shit. He couldn’t catch his breath. His head was spinning. He folded in half, then straightened up again in blind panic, because creases — please, fuck, let him not mess up his uniform. Hands grabbed at him and he slapped them away, tried to press himself back into the wall. But the hands were too strong, and he didn’t have enough air, and — fuck. He pawed at his chest. He needed to get at his blaster — oh. Chuck. 

False alarm. No need for his weapon. These were Chuck’s hands, and Chuck’s voice. He still couldn’t breathe right, he was panting and there was a weight on his chest now, but he was… sitting? He was sitting. Chuck had sat him down, on a chair and not on the floor, which was. Fine. It was fine, his clothes would survive that, although he’d be drenched in sweat again, ugh. His hand was on Chuck’s chest now, his mind still spinning. 

“Breathe,” he heard distantly. “Breathe with me now, major. That’s an order.”

Something in him snapped to attention. He couldn’t think, still, but he’d been given an order and he strove to follow. 

What the fuck? Jim had never once fucked with orders in his entire life. But he was doing this, he was breathing with Chuck. Panting, really, if one cared for specificity. 

His hand was on Chuck’s chest, and the man was holding it there, and he was taking long, exaggerated inhale-exhales. He wasn’t trying to look into Jim’s eyes, which was great, because if he had tried to hold eye contact right now then Jim would definitely have had to shoot him with his blaster and then commandeer a shuttle and use it to skip town. Dear lord, had he babbled? Did his accent slip? Un-fucking-believable. A lifetime of diction classes, and one measly panic attack was all it took to set him back.

His breathing (more like wheezing) was slowing down, thank fuck. Chuck was crouching in front of him, one warm hand braced on his knee — fuckity fuck — and the other one still clasping Jim’s to his chest. He could feel his ribcage expanding and contracting under his palm, and it was one of the most intimate things that had ever happened to him, which. Yikes. How sad was that.

 He closed his eyes and tried his best to just focus on his respiration. Chuck’s was too slow, he decided. Even now that he was winding down, he still couldn’t quite match it. Jim didn’t think that he had ever been that slow at anything, even at his most relaxed. It wasn’t something that happened to him often. Being relaxed. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, mind you. Jim was stressed, and jumpy, and paranoid, but at least he was alive. And he had the high blood pressure and fast resting heart rate to match. 

The panic passed, eventually. It always did. It left nothing but bitter, disappointed exhaustion in its wake, and Jim slumped backwards into his seat, his hand slipping out of Chuck’s. He tilted his head towards the ceiling. What he wanted was to slump forward, and maybe press their foreheads together, or collapse down onto his shoulder but… Yeah, no. Better not. He was already humiliated enough as it was. Archibald James whatever-the-fuck did not cling like some child after a night terror. Especially not with Chuck, who would treat him tenderly and without an ounce of mockery. It would be intolerable.

It was already intolerable. Jim sprung up. He paced around. He fussed with his uniform and went to stand at the windows. 

“Archie? Are you, um…” came the shy voice from behind him. 

He gritted his teeth. “I’m fine, sergeant.” 

“Yeah, okay.”

A few seconds passed. 

“I’m sorry I brought you up here.”

Jim clenched and unclenched his fists. “I didn’t have a panic attack because of the location, Chuck. This has nothing to do with you.”

“Oh,” he said. Then he fell silent. 

Jim stared out at the view while he tried to chew through his boiling frustration. It was a goddamned magnificient view, was the problem. The moonlet was awash with the glittering night-time lights of the city, and the roiling purple clouds of the planet that dominated the horizon was a sight to behold. The sky beyond the forcefield’s dome was dotted with stars and shit. Snacks were arrayed on one of the desks that occupied the circular room, clearly placed there ahead of time by Chuck himself. It was all so ridiculously picturesque.

And what had Jim done upon arrival into this perfectly romantic setup of a room? He’d had a nervous breakdown. Good going, Jim. Clearly he needed more time with his warning-slash-instructional poster because his technique sucked ass. He sighed. Maybe there was a way to salvage this somehow.

“I’ve realized that I don’t like living inside of the bunker much,” he offered, in what had to be the understatement of the century. But he couldn’t really say ‘I would rather be tortured again then sleep another night in that place’, so that would have to do.

“I get it,” Chuck said softly. Still far too softly, damn it. Jim had clearly freaked him out.

He felt… guilt. He hated the thought of hurting Chuck, or scaring him. Clearly, he was in too deep already, but he didn’t really see a good way to stop. And lord knew how much Jim wanted to stop all of this before someone got hurt. But he also knew that sometimes, when the heat had been cranked up all the way and the water was boiling, the only way out was to see it through. Or to hang on until you either made it out or you didn’t. The decision wasn’t really in his hands, anyway.

“Have you thought about applying for one of the free houses?,” suggested Chuck. “See, mine is right over there.” He walked up right next to Jim and pointed at one of the city streets down below. “I had to jump through a couple of hoops to qualify, but you’re a ranking officer. I checked the criterias, and you’d be eligible. I could even help you fill out the paperwork, if you want.”

Jim blinked. He stared at Chuck. He blinked again. 

“… I can apply for what now?”