Title: "Personal Personnel"
Author: C.S. Williams
Summary: 'Gate technicians really do see everything that comes through the 'gate. When Elizabeth's day takes a turn for the worse after the latest Earth transmission, Chuck tries to help out.
Spoilers: "Intruder"; takes place after "Sunday" as well (could potentially be considered a slight AU too, considering placement in the series)
Pairings: Slight Sparky, but ignorable I think
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate Atlantis or the English language, even if I hijacked them for my own purposes with this story.
A/N: This is based on something I wondered about after watching "Intruder." And I love fleshing out Chuck's character (who doesn't love those 'gate technicians?), so thus a story was born…hope you enjoy!
"You're not going to, you know, actually show them to her, are you?" Mel asked Chuck in a hushed voice, leaning over as though that would make their conversation less obvious.
Chuck rolled his eyes. "I don't really have a choice. Besides, Stargate Command sends them to her first for approval."
He knew instantly it was the wrong thing to say, because Mel's eyes widened. "Oooh, do you think she'd nix his application?"
Chuck leaned over conspiratorially. "You know, I heard she might. You know what else I heard?"
Mel's eyes widened even further. "What?"
Chuck leaned closer. "She threatened to resign if they even considered his application."
"No!" gasped Mel.
"Yes!" Chuck said dramatically. "That's not all."
"What?!" Mel was practically salivating at this point.
Chuck leaned even closer. "I heard that you just took over the top spot on the Genii's most wanted list."
Mel gasped. "But how could that be? I've only just come to Atlantis; I haven't even stepped through the 'gate yet…oh, shut up, Campbell," she snapped as Chuck doubled over laughing.
"Ahem."
The small throat clearing behind them had them both instantly at as close to attention as civilians could get. Mel hurriedly bent over the console and pretended to look busy, leaving Chuck to glare at her briefly for her betrayal before pasting a smile on his face and greeting their formidable expedition leader.
"Yes, Dr. Weir? Anything we can help you with?"
She raised her eyebrows at them disapprovingly. "Shouldn't the two of you be working?"
Chuck visibly cringed this time. "Uh, sorry, ma'am. It's been pretty quiet and—"
He was definitely not winning any awards for thinking-before-speaking today. Angry Weir meant a sincere apology with as few words as possible, looking submissively at her shoes (unless you could manage Colonel Sheppard's infamous puppy dog expression).
"'Pretty quiet,' Mr. Campbell? I believe it was 'pretty quiet' before the Replicators came to wipe us out last time, wasn't it? And are the Wraith going to be broadcasting alert beacons to remind you to check your post—" She stopped suddenly, pinching the bridge of her nose as if to ward off a headache. When she spoke again, her voice no longer sounded angry, merely tired. "I'm sorry, Chuck. Could you please transmit this to Stargate Command when you get a chance?"
"Of course, ma'am. Right away," he promised, taking the laptop she handed him with a mixture of relief and concern.
"Thanks. There's no rush." She turned quickly, almost marching back to her office.
Mel leaned over. "The approval request?" Chuck nodded silently, his eyes darting from the computer in his hand to Elizabeth, who was currently hunched over her desk massaging her temples.
"She approved him, didn't she?" It was more of a statement than a question, but Mel felt the need to ask anyway. She too was looking at the expedition leader through the glass, which resolved any doubt left in her mind.
Still, Chuck nodded anyway. "Hey, transmit this to Walter, will you? I'm going to head down to the infirmary for a second."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Mel asked, tearing her gaze away from the glass at last.
Chuck shrugged, looking significantly at their hunched-over expedition leader. "Can't hurt, can it?"
Mel merely raised her eyebrows at him.
Chuck rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, famous last words, I know. I'm just gonna go grab some Tylenol; I'll be back in a minute, I promise."
As he left, Mel couldn't help sneaking a quick look at the laptop for confirmation of their suspicions. Sure enough, near the bottom of the personnel approval files the name "Wallace, Simon, M.D." blinked innocently back at her.
He had kind of been hoping the infirmary would be empty, but he should have known on Atlantis that was never a safe assumption. And, no surprise here, it was Colonel Sheppard sitting on the infirmary bed being patched up by Dr. Keller. Ronon stood off to the side, aimlessly twirling those fighting sticks, leaving little doubt as to why the colonel was currently needing medical attention.
Chuck was about to turn around and hide (he wasn't proud of it, but sometimes a 'gate technician's gotta do what a 'gate technician's gotta do) until they left, but Dr. Keller spotted him as he moved to leave.
"Hey, Chuck. Did you need something?" she asked, looking up from stitching up a cut over John Sheppard's left eyebrow.
He was sorely tempted to say no, he'd just gotten lost, but he suspected that might have sounded a tad suspicious given that he had been living here for over two years now. Instead he cleared his throat, hoping a plausible excuse might conveniently occur to him suddenly.
"Ah, nothing urgent," Chuck stalled, trying to smile innocently. He realized abruptly the effect was probably ruined by his inability to look her in the face, which he also realized (belatedly) was the mark of someone who had something to hide.
Oh great, now she was looking concerned. And the colonel was getting curious, and Ronon was getting suspicious. Perfect. And still not an excuse to be found. Why was it when the city was under attack he handled pressure just fine, but when it came to thinking under pressure he was useless?
"Chuck, is something wrong?" Dr. Keller moved away from Sheppard, evidently deciding Chuck was the more urgent concern.
"No, no, of course not," he denied immediately, again completely failing to look her in the face. Well, maybe he could simply omit a few details…"I was just wondering if I could maybe get something for a headache?"
Keller's brow creased. "You've got a headache?"
OK, on second thought, maybe blatant lying was the way to go. "Yeah, it's kinda working its way up to migraine, so I was hoping maybe I could get some meds so I could finish my shift."
Now he was looking her in the face, which was good, right? Maybe top it off with a slight grimace of pain, accentuated by a touch of innocence…
"How long have you been on duty, Chuck?" she asked, throwing him off-balance. She must have taken his look of surprise for bad news, because she was immediately tapping her radio. "Dr. Weir?"
Chuck's surprise instantly turned to alarm. "No no no no no no no!" he whispered quickly, furiously making slashing motions with his arms to get her to stop.
Dr. Keller frowned at him before continuing. "I'm relieving Chuck Campbell of duty for the rest of the day. No, nothing serious, just a headache," she assured the expedition leader as she turned away from the rest of them to finish the conversation. Chuck took this as his cue to start banging his head against the nearest wall.
"I don't think that's gonna help your headache, buddy," Colonel Sheppard offered helpfully.
Ronon glanced at him off-handedly. "And Keller's gonna freak if she sees you."
Chuck continued to pound away until, as predicted, Keller noticed and forced him to stop. At least now he could say his head hurt without lying…
"Look, I'm going to finish up the colonel here, then I'm giving you those pain meds and making sure you take the rest of the day off, got it?" Keller ordered sternly. He nodded resignedly, all his denials dying on his lips.
Keller's face softened. "Chuck, Dr. Weir's not going to be upset you're taking a day off, you know. She's just relieved you're all right; I think I may have worried her a little by telling her you were relieved of duty…"
Chuck couldn't help whacking his head against the wall one last time for good measure.
He was sitting on one of the infirmary cots, waiting, when Mel bounded in, clutching his personal laptop. Before he could stop her, her mouth dropped open in astonishment and she began the rapid talking for which she was infamous.
"Chuck! Why didn't you tell me you were sick? When you left I thought you were going for Dr. Weir—"
She finally seemed to catch on to his newest attempt at slashing motions, and he had to give her credit; she barely stumbled.
"—d, Dr. Weird, you know that crazy one in the labs that McKay's always going on and on about?" Mel glanced around nervously before gamely plowing on. "Anyway, I figured you'd want your laptop, so I decided to bring it to you, and now I'm going back to the control room to do my job, so I'll see you later, Chuck."
It had to be the single hastiest escape from the infirmary ever, and that was including even Sheppard's best. Mel was out the door before Chuck could even yell a thank you after her (loaded with sarcasm, of course).
"What's wrong with Elizabeth?" Sheppard demanded immediately, ignoring the glare from Keller as he turned away abruptly and messed up her bandaging attempt.
"No idea what you're talking about," Chuck tried to say convincingly, but with his gaze now firmly pinned to his laptop, he had the feeling he hadn't succeeded particularly well.
Ronon snorted. "Lots of other Dr. Weirs around Atlantis, huh?"
"That's not what Mel said," Chuck said defensively.
He could almost feel the alien's smirk. "Oh, right. So which scientist do I get to rat you out for calling 'weird'?"
"Chuck?" Dr. Keller asked in that damned 'I'm concerned, so I'm not taking no for an answer' voice. "Is Dr. Weir ill?"
"No." Not a complete lie.
"You don't have a headache, do you?"
"Yes." Stick with the one-word answers.
A sigh. "Did you have one before you hit your head on the wall?"
"…No."
Sheppard finally lost all patience. "What's wrong with Elizabeth?!"
Chuck found himself cringing for the third time in the last hour. "Look, it's really nothing, she just looked like she had a headache and she was having one of those really hard days, so I figured it couldn't hurt, especially after she caught Mel and me messing around on duty. Wait, no, that came out wrong, not that kind of messing around, we were just goofing around, I swear—no, wait, wait, wait, that sounds bad too, I just meant we were joking around and…" He trailed off, realizing suddenly he was rambling.
"She was fine at the briefing today," Ronon said with a scowl. Or at least, Chuck thought it was a scowl; Ronon might have been confused. Or just concentrating. Lots of expressions looked the same on the giant Satedan.
"Yeah…" John said, trailing off. "Rodney was even better than usual. Civil, even. Which for him is a major step up."
"And when I had lunch with her, Dr. Weir even commented on how well her day was going," Dr. Keller added. "I mean, I discharged Sergeant McKellen this morning, so up until Ronon here decided to attack Colonel Sheppard, the infirmary was completely deserted. It's not often I get to give her good news. So it must have been after that; she said she was just going to look over some files that came through with the last Earth transmission…"
All three's eyes narrowed with suspicion as they turned to Chuck, whose gaze was once again firmly planted just above their heads.
"Chuck?" asked Keller expectantly. "What came through in the transmission today?"
"Oh, you know, the usual…" he stalled, suddenly shifting his gaze downward to play with the edge of the sheet covering the bed beneath him. "Um, yeah, nothing out of the ordinary, and as a matter of fact, I should get back up there and make sure they transmitted everything properly, you know how they can be sometimes…"
Chuck hurriedly jumped off the bed and grabbed his laptop, only to be stopped when he found a rather large Satedan blocking his escape route. He sighed and turned back to the other two in the infirmary.
"Look, I'm sorry, it's really not my place to say anything. She's probably already suspicious that I disappeared right after…after she saw me in the control room," he said, faltering slightly and pretending not to notice the Colonel's sharp glance at his pause. "I really should be going…"
"Wait," Dr. Keller said, going over to the medicine cabinet. "At least give her the pain reliever you came here for. And tell her to see me if it gets any worse."
Chuck started to nod his head, but Colonel Sheppard interrupted. "I'll take it to her." At their questioning glances, he explained, "I've got to hand in my mission report from this morning anyway."
As he left the infirmary with the medication, Chuck raised an eyebrow. "Why didn't he just turn it in at the briefing this morning?"
Ronon smirked. "He did."
By the time Chuck returned to the control room, he saw Colonel Sheppard had beaten him back. Sheppard was already perched in his customary corner of Dr. Weir's desk, causing Mel to abandon all pretenses of working. She had her eyes glued to the expedition leader's office, no doubt making mental notes to feed the rumor mill as soon as she was officially off-duty. She was so intent on her task she didn't notice Chuck come up behind her, lean down, and whisper, "Gave up on 'subtle,' huh?"
Mel gasped, whirling around in her chair and knocking Chuck to the ground in the process. "Chuck! You scared the crap out of me!" She continued to glare at him, making no effort to help him up.
Evidently she decided sharing gossip was more important than continuing to be mad, because she whispered excitedly, "So you'll never guess what's happening!"
"It sure looks like Colonel Sheppard and Dr. Weir are…no way! They're totally sitting there, talking!" Chuck said in mock astonishment, refusing to give into her obvious fishing.
Mel rolled her eyes. "She's laughing, Chuck," she pointed out before muttering something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like, "honestly, men."
Chuck was about to retort but stopped short when he realized that yes, she really was laughing. There was no trace of her previous defeated expression, although Chuck did notice some slight unease when Colonel Sheppard picked up some priceless artifact from her desk and began fiddling with it. Even then, she couldn't quite seem to manage genuine annoyance.
Maybe going to the infirmary hadn't been such a big mistake after all, he mused as he sat down at his customary station.
He hadn't been there more than thirty seconds before Mel leaned over to whisper again.
"So, do you think that's why she approved him? So he'd come and see her with Colonel Sheppard? I'll bet she wants to make him jealous. I mean, let's face it, whoever he is, he certainly can't compare with the good Colonel in the looks department…"
Outwardly Chuck rolled his eyes.
Inwardly he was thinking he was definitely going to have to let Major Lorne know about these new developments. The new personnel were arriving by Daedalus in a few weeks, and they were going to need to add some new options to the betting pool…
A/N: So I was thinking of doing another chapter when Simon actually arrives; any general comments on continuing and/or suggestions for improvement?