text: “Glad you asked, boss! So you know how people get plugs put in for everyday interface stuff, then get casemods for them so they look like fancy shit?” Logan was very much aware of that because Logan was very much aware of cybernetic enhancements in general. You worked in the hangar long enough and you learned how to tell the different plug arrays apart from twenty paces, and if you had certain less than innocent opinions about a man with some hardware modification going on you could practically fucking smell the difference. There was no expert quite like a man with a fierce paraphilia on his side. “Well, small fry here has gone and tried to pass himself off as ex-Navy. And it is just the shittiest chrome job you’ve ever seen. Like I bet he got it done in a drinking buddy’s basement, that’s how shitty.”
  “It gets better! So I try to let him have his fun, because nobody needs to be That Guy, right, boss? Weekend warriors out in Nowheresville don’t hurt anyone. But then someone goes and asks where he served during the war, ignoring that he was probably going to junior prom the day before the armistice, and he goes and says the USS Wendy Davis. So that makes my ears go up because now it’s personal, right? I want to see just how much of a fuckup he is with the details, even if it means biting my lip clean through to not be Lieutenant Um Actually.” He giggled to himself. “So everyone’s oohing and aahing about our wannabe flyboy and he’s making up all these details about various battles, and at least he’s read the newsfeeds or something because he gets those more or less right. And then someone asks him what callsign he went by. You’ll never believe what he said next.” Bajram laughed again. “Go on, go on, guess!”
  Some days there just wasn’t enough headache medicine in the world. “Did he have an excuse for why he didn’t have the ID tattoo?”
  “That’s the thing, he had one, but it was just the most embarrassing thing, like the coding was upside down and there were two Ls in ‘Meltemi’ and the numbers might as well have been 420-69 for how accurate they were. By then I’ve paid for my meal and I just can’t stand not saying anything, so I go over there and I ask to take a look at his tat. First off the kid doesn’t note the writing on my jacket, or maybe he thinks I’m cosplaying or something, because fuckin’ nerds, right? So I take a look at yep, up close it’s still the worst. And I ask where he got it done, because I’ll still give the little shitstain a little room to redeem himself and fess up that he’s not exactly yours truly, ace fighter pilot, but he has the audacity to say, ‘In the Navy, duh,’ and oh my God, boss, when it comes to social graces this little fucker makes me look like a bastion of modesty. Ask me what I said next!”
  Logan shook his head with a grin even as he cringed from secondhand embarrassment. “So what did you say?”
  “I said, ‘Huh, I thought the tattoos you got in the Navy looked more like this,’ and I pulled my arm out of the jacket sleeve and rolled up my suit a bit and whoops, guess whose ink looked extra godawful next to the real thing? If he could’ve just melted into the floor right there he probably would’ve.”
  Bajram made a sound usually accompanied by a dismissive hand gesture when he did it in person. “Learned it from the best, boss!” he said, which made Logan laugh ruefully. God protect him from sassy submissives. “I made it up to him by telling war stories for, like, an hour, I wasn’t going to leave him like that. I mean, he was the most adorable clueless baby. Did you know he had no idea you could take a Huitzil on a ground mission? He asked me how many girls I got while deployed, and I told him the number was a big fat zero, but I had a guy waiting for me at home I met in the service, and while I’m pretty sure he’s straight as an arrow he could at least appreciate that, so that went okay.”
  “So is that the happy ending you promised me?” asked Logan. He checked the time on his phone’s screen. They’d been talking for quite a while now; it was probably just as well that Bajram would be staying put for an entire 24-cycle at this rate, but there was work to be done in the morning on Logan’s end….
  “The what? Oh! No, I was thinking that could be the end result of a little more interesting discussion just between you and me. Assuming you’re not too tired, boss. I know how you need to rest up for a long day of telling teens to get off your lawn.”