Work Text:
Charles was simply busy sketching another graph to finish up their documentation of Operation Mincemeat, he really was. The precise, monotonous scratch of his pencil on the paper was enough to lull himself into peaceful productivity. Well, until something in the corner of his eye captured his attention.
The rubbish bin usually sat in the corner, empty and a bit dejected-looking – not its usual state, but it didn’t serve much of a purpose nowadays, since their mission had come to an end. But it had been moved from its regular spot as of late, and there was no way a detail like this would escape Charles. In fact, it had been moved towards Jean’s own desk, resting right up against its side.
Charles furrowed his eyebrows as he rose from his seat, taking a closer look at the peculiar sight. It shouldn’t have been important in the slightest, but for whatever reason, Charles couldn’t let go of it. Someone had moved the bin.
“Ah— Hester? Monty?” Why is the bin next to Jean’s desk?” Charles inquired.
The two others with him in the room could not care less, as it turned out. Monty could not even be bothered to look up from his typewriter. Hester glanced up briefly from where she was working and looked toward the subject of Charles’ curiosity. He found himself to be grateful for even the smallest shrug and acknowledging hum from Hester, who promptly returned to flipping through the papers on Monty’s desk and filing them away neatly into their respective folders.
Charles was just about to sit back in his desk chair, pushing down his fascination, until he saw something peeking out over the top of the bin’s metal rim. A ball of crumpled, slightly yellowed paper revealed itself. Now Charles certainly couldn’t let it go.
His mind was itching to know what it was. He stood at his desk, resting his hands on the wooden surface. Apprehensive curiosity filled him. There was no way he was going to reach into the bin to get a closer look at it, he could only imagine the looks he would get. He stood up on his toes briefly, squinting his eyes to take another glance towards the mysterious page. Being fair, it was the only thing in the bin. It couldn’t hurt, right?
Charles stood back on his heels and anxiously glanced toward the door. Jean had only left briefly to grab herself some tea, and she had been gone for maybe two minutes already, so she was bound to return any moment.
A buzzing filled Charles’ limbs, spreading to his fidgeting fingers. If he dashed towards it carefully right now, he might be able to read the paper’s contents and return it to its rightful – and rather depressing – position in the rubbish, completely unnoticed. But with each ticking second, Charles’ time window only grew shorter and shorter. If he was going to do it, he had to do it now. Gosh, he was overthinking this.
By this point, Monty had noticed that Charles was standing behind his desk with a worried expression for slightly longer than is usual, even for his odd colleague.
“Charlie, what—” Monty began, but his words fell on deaf ears. Charles was now on a mission. Sprinting across the room and grabbing the paper, he unfurled it with fervor. It felt creased under his hand as he straightened it out the best he could on his lap.
On the back, he could see the words ‘BURN LATER’ scrawled hastily across in large, grey letters, underlined twice. Charles’ face contorted in confusion.
Only now had Monty become perplexed himself. His work entirely forgotten, he stood up and marched over to where Charles was investigating his new find. Just as Monty could make out the bold letters, Charles was flipping the paper over.
Then Monty halted in his tracks.
What. Is. That.
Charles’ mouth was immediately agape, his eyebrows raised in shock at what the paper contained. This was certainly the last thing he expected.
At this very moment, by some brilliant cosmic coincidence, Jean walked in, piping hot tea in hand. The fairly pleased expression on her face dropped in an instant, recognising the paper in Charles’ hands immediately.
Everything was motionless. The whole room went dead silent, save for the sound of shifting papers under Hester’s deft fingers.
Realising everyone else was no longer at their desks, she looked up over her glasses with curiosity. Furrowing her eyebrows and letting her papers slip from her hands back onto Monty’s desk, she neared the others, as if she were the only one apathetic to the sight of a gruesome crime scene. Her eyes landed on the sheet of paper, but it took her a few moments to really understand what was on it.
“Oh lord.”
That was the only thing Hester said.
In a flash, movement took over the room. Jean flew towards her desk, placing her tea on its surface before throwing herself at Charles to get the paper back. Charles stepped away just before her hands could snatch it from him, Monty shielding Charles and getting a closer look at the peculiar text and images. Hester covertly tried nearing to Charles, unbound curiosity causing the polite workplace mask she wore to slip momentarily.
“Hold on- Charles- that- you weren’t supposed to see that-” Jean said, who quickly realised fighting three people was futile and turned away in sheer embarrassment.
Well yes, what she said was evident. They certainly weren’t supposed to see that. Because in big, bold letters at the top, the title of the page read “Ewen Montagu IS A CAT: A series of observations by Jean Leslie”.
The three capitalised words were double-underlined with bold strokes – there was clearly a theme here. A set of six pieces of what could only be described as… evidence for her claim could be seen, with illustrations under each of them.
Upon seeing this, Charles couldn’t help but feel pleased, fleetingly. He always had fancied himself a good diagram.
“What in the—” Monty, on the other hand, was not pleased.
“What is this?!” he said, flabbergasted, squinting his eyes at the rapidly sketched drawings, “Number One, always on top of furniture? When have I ever done that?!”
Jean was still facing away from the rest of the team. All Charles could see was her fist clenching in embarrassment, arm trembling at her side as Monty read her private thoughts aloud.
“To be fair, you do sit on the desks an awful lot, Monty,” Charles took a knowing glance toward his coworker. Charles was rather amused at the cat ears, paws and tail Jean had given Monty in each of the illustrations, the current one depicting Monty perched atop a closet while someone watches him from below.
Monty shot Charles an annoyed glare before his eyes returned to the page.
“Number Two, always being a pain?!” Monty continued, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by that, Miss Leslie,” He complained. Hester sent Monty a glance which he could only imagine would be followed by a stern Don’t you? Monty pretended he didn’t see this. Hester cleared her throat.
Poor Jean had accepted her fate of complete humiliation as her face was now in her hands, rubbing harshly at her temples. Charles couldn’t help but let out a breath of laughter at the way Jean had drawn Monty this time. His cat ears were almost shaped like little devil horns while his devious expression poked out from behind his desk. He had one paw lifted, ready to push a mug straight off the table and to the floor.
Monty, exasperated, tore the paper from Charles’ hands. The two previously surrounding him gravitated towards the paper like magnets, glancing over either of Monty’s shoulders to look at the drawings as he continued.
“Number Three, very territorial— oh come on, that’s not fair!” Monty exclaimed, looking up at Jean, whose blushing face was clearly visible even from behind, with cheeks so hot they were practically burning a hole through the back of her head.
The drawing depicted Monty on all fours, hissing while guarding his briefcase.
Hester sighed and spoke up with unexpected honesty.
“I mean that’s a rather true illustration, seeing as—”
“Actually, I think that’s enough— hold on, yes, exactly! Monty, we never read the whole amateur filmwriting script you were hiding away in that briefcase of yours, even though it was quite embarrassing” Jean finally turned around, making another attempt at snatching the script from Monty, “You lot have had your fun, now let me have it back!”
“Not a chance,” Charles laughed, and through all the commotion managed to grab the paper from Monty. He held it up high above his head. Jean’s… lacking height was unfortunately no match against Charles’ towering figure. Finding her efforts of no use once more – and feeling more than slightly humiliated by her attempts to jump up and get her page back – Jean settled for turning back around and burying her face in the wall. Much like a woodlouse burrowing into damp soil, Charles remarked.
“Number Four,” Charles took on the role of reading the entries out loud – Monty and Hester had given up on trying to read them from this distance and instead stood and listened. The light shining through the translucent paper made the words slightly harder to make out. Lucky for Charles, there was only one to be seen under this specific point.
“Lazy.”
Anticipatory silence filled the room.
“That’s it?” Monty asked incredulously.
“That’s it.” Charles nodded.
Monty scoffed and crossed his arms. He took another glance toward Jean, who was still trying to pretend like she didn’t exist. And like Monty didn’t exist. And like this whole ordeal never existed.
“Although this one’s quite adorable, Monty’s just a little sleeping cat,” Charles smiled genuinely and tilted his head to see the image better.
“Charles— let’s not—” Monty stuttered out, nervously laughing as his face flushed with embarrassment. He never did finish his sentence.
Charles lowered the paper, pointing it away from himself and toward Monty and Hester, like a small toddler proud of his own drawing. A drawing which turned out to be Monty, paws and all, curled up in a ball on the floor and snoozing away.
“No really, look! You’re looking rather–” Charles began, chipper.
“I can’t believe you’ve drawn me like this, Jean!” Monty hissed at her with humiliation. By now, Jean had melted into a puddle and become one with the wall.
“Number Five,” Hester read, uninterested with the others’ antics, “No concept of personal space.” She hid an amused smile as she beheld Jean’s newest masterpiece, Ewen Montagu’s cat persona now perched calmly in the lap of a stiff, tense Charles.
Monty’s face went even more red. His eyes were now glued to the floor.
“My, Jean, these drawings are quite impressive,” Hester observed.
Jean sighed a sigh of resignation.
“Thank you, ma’am,” she mumbled into the wall’s shoddy paint job.
Charles turned the paper towards himself.
“She’s right, Jean! My, that drawing of me is quite uncanny, and—” Charles’ eyes scanned the page. His words came to an abrupt halt as he spotted that Monty was sitting on his lap. He, too, found himself speechless as his thumb started fiddling with the crooked edge of the paper, eyes averted. A light dusting of crimson settled atop his cheeks.
Charles wished he could join Jean where she was fused to the wall.
Jean, however, now dared a timid glance toward the rest of the team, all of whom had gone quiet. Seizing the moment, she quickly dashed toward Charles and snatched the paper right from his hands. Charles didn’t get a chance to fight her as she took it and ran back to her corner.
“And Number Six, he has his favourite people, in conclusion, Ewen Montagu is a cat, that’s it, we’re done here,” Jean spoke rapidly, looking ready to tear the paper to bits. As she should have done hours ago.
“Hold on— what’s the drawing under that one?” Monty asked and reached out to stop her hands from ripping up the page.
Jean looked down at the paper.
“Actually, there isn’t one.” Her eyebrows drew together.
Then, a most wicked idea formed in her head. One to get back at the people in the room who had read out her most private, and well, possibly most meticulously planned out thoughts.
“But I have got an idea for it,” Jean said, pulling out a sharp pencil from the drawer of her desk. She quickly scrawled down another drawing on the paper’s back, since the front was so full of her brilliant ideas. It was more crudely drawn than the rest, but it would do the trick.
Once she finished, she turned the paper to face the others, who had awaited her creation silently.
On the page sat Ewen Montagu, now curled around Charles’ neck. Charles appeared much more relaxed than in the previous drawing, giving his colleague a scratch behind the ears as Monty’s cat persona calmly purred.
Both Monty and Charles could only stare, wide-eyed and about as red in the face as two ripe tomatoes. Charles was the first to glue his gaze to the floor and begin awkwardly fidgeting with the end of his tie.
Hester nodded, her expression conveying a pleased hm, not bad at all, Jean . Jean’s features showed a similar message, but hers really sounded more like a proud hell yeah Jean, you’ve bloody done it .
Hester glanced aside and cleared her throat politely. She strolled over to where her files sat, neatly organised, and took a few of the folders in her hands. Still seeing no motion from the others, she cleared her throat again. Nonetheless, they stayed unmoving. She sighed.
“Well, I’d best be off with these, Bevan will want to file through them before they are officially stored.” She was ready to get on with her day.
And just like magic, Bevan stepped through the door at that very moment. His usual stern expression was welded solidly to his face. Hester’s eyes lit up in recognition when she saw him.
“Ah, sir, I was just about to—”
Though Hester, it seemed, had forgotten all about their ordeal. Because as soon as Bevan laid his eyes on the sheet that Jean was still proudly presenting to the two – now three – men before her, his firmly furrowed eyebrows shot upwards in surprise. He, too, was now locked in the group’s motionless trance.
Jean’s smug smile melted from her face to one of utter horror. Her hands slowly lowered the paper.
Charles and Monty were in another universe entirely. Monty was taking uncharacteristically timid glances toward Charles, who would never in a million years meet his gaze. Charles’ eyes were now well acquainted with his neatly tied shoelaces. Neither seemed too concerned with what their boss had just walked in on.
Hester let out a displeased sigh.
“Your files, sir.” She held out the files toward Bevan.
Pulled back to reality, Bevan’s furrowed eyebrows returned. He stood with silent concern, making no motion to take the folders.
“The files from Operation Mincemeat?” Hester said, maybe with a little more impatience than she ought to have expressed.
Bevan’s eyes were blinking in a frazzled attempt to wipe the images in Jean’s little art project from his vision.
“Right yes, let’s— ehm— if you would just follow me to my office,” Bevan said, still shaken. Better to leave it, he decided. Hester followed him as they shuffled up the basement stairs, leaving the others.
The others, who were in quite a state.
Jean was busy replaying every embarrassing moment of her life that had led her to this point, paper clutched so tightly in her hand she was creasing the edges Charlie had before tried to straighten. Monty and Charles were not much better.
“I’m— uh— I’m going to take a moment,” Jean uttered, life drained from her eyes. The paper, which before had been so poignant, fell from Jean’s hand, now completely forgotten. She picked up her half-cold tea with a shaking hand and took a sip, heading upstairs. She would need a much stronger drink to wipe this one from her memory. Many, many much stronger drinks.
“Right, good call, Jean,” Monty affirmed quite unenthusiastically. The man was distracted.
Charles tried his best to ignore that Monty and himself were left all alone in the basement, together. Taking a shaky breath, he diverted the conversation.
“We should probably get back to w—”
“Would you like to get dinner tonight?” Monty asked, cutting right through Charles’ words.
Charles finally looked up. Monty decided he found Charles’ look of gentle surprise and the pink hue of his cheeks quite pretty. Charles’ breathing stopped altogether for a couple moments, and, as Monty realised, so did his own.
“Yes, I’d like that, Monty,” Charles finally breathed out.
Monty smiled.