I fell alseep and all I got was this lousy journal
Zach had a problem.
This realization hit the 2nd Lieutenant as he sluggishly walked down a hallway that, he hoped, would take him back to his room. He had been in the lab - not the one that smelled like tuna fish, the other one searching the Ancient database for any information that would be relevant to the experiment Dr. McKay and Zelenka were planning to attempt that week. This task had proved to take up far more time than he’d ever imagined it would, especially after he’d accidentally discovered an Ancient version of the game Solitaire. Somehow, it all ended with him stumbling out of the lab just in time to see the sun rise up over the ocean filled horizon, which, while a lovely sight, was slightly concerning seeing as when he’d gone into the lab it had just been beginning to get dark out.
So, Zach had a problem. It wasn’t anything you’d have to organize an intervention for, but it was still a problem. In the scale of things it probably wasn’t even that big a problem, certainly not a big problem when compared to something like the Wraith, but still it was a problem. Just a little problem, a tiny little thing that was bad. His problem was that he was definitely, without a doubt going to fall asleep.
Not that he had a problem with sleeping; in fact if there was ever anything in Zach’s life that he could consistently depend on being non-problematic it was sleep. It was just - well the saying “the three most important things in life are location, location, location” seemed particularly apt at that moment seeing as he was in the middle of hallway. Hallways, Zach had learned early on in his forays in public education, were not a good place to fall asleep; it was a lesson he suspected was universal, although that was a theory he wasn’t too keen on testing out any time soon.
Yet the testing of it was inevitable, and definitely imminent - after years of being an experienced sleeper Zach knew when he was going leave the world of the awake and go off to his own personal dreamland, and that time? Was now. So there was his predicament, any second now and he was going to crash into a state of dream-filled unconsciousness in the middle of the hallway, and then when everyone woke up they’d find him and he’d never ever live the incident down. They’d all think he was stupid, and they’d ship him back to Earth the first chance they got because clearly they didn’t need stupid, sleepy, prone to falling asleep in hallway people in Atlantis and he didn’t want to leave Atlantis because Wraith and killer nanoviruses aside it was an incredible city that they were learning a lot from, and he wanted to be part of that. …And, and it would just be really, really bad, and… and -- oh god it was happening.
Slowly, Zach maneuvered himself towards the nearest door as he fell victim to his drowsiness and drifted off to sleep. As he fell into his ill located slumber his body, which had been leaning against a random door in the hallway for support slowly started to slip down its wooden surface until he wound up crumpled on the floor - his head making a thudding noise as it hit against the door.
The collision of head and the door, while costing him brain cells, turned out to be what saved him.
~
Zach woke up with a start. Then he remembered the circumstances under which he had fallen asleep and closed his eyes again in the vain hope of avoiding the mocking his hallway siesta was going to cost him for just a little bit longer.
“Oh, come on now. I saw that, you’re awake.” A woman’s voice said; a voice with a distinctly French accent.
Zach made a half grunting, half groaning noise that was universal just woke up language for, “No I’m not.” Still in spite of his desire to not wake up he couldn’t help but sneak a peak and open his eyes for just a second - to check out the surroundings. What he could clearly make out from his half-second view of blurry vision was red hair. Red hair and a French accent?
Oh good God, Mayday! Waking up to an infamous French woman full of cooking related fury, he must have really messed up falling asleep for them to do this. He’d heard stories of her beating Captain Stackhouse with a spatula!
“Look you did it again, you’re awake, alright? No good denying it.” Mayday continued, “Look, if you wake up there’s some hot tea waiting for you - granted it’s the Athosian stuff, we ran out of the Earth kind ages ago, but it’ll do.”
Tea? Well, he was awake anyways, might as well get it over with. With a resigned sigh, Zach opened his eyes; only to seconds later temporarily close them again out of surprise. Where was he? He was on the ground, which was to be expected seeing as he gone to sleep on the ground, but it was the ground of a room - definitely not the hallway he’d started out in. Speaking of the room it was, based on the bed that was adjacent to him, a bedroom. Based on the posters of the Eiffel Tower hanging on the room’s wall he guessed it was Elise’s. How on earth did he get here?
Speaking of Elise, she was watching him from where she sat at a desk across from him and seemed to notice his looking around the room in bewilderment.
“Sorry about the floor,” she apologized, “I tried to get you up on the bed, but you weigh a ton and it was hard enough pulling you in here.”
Maybe it was the fact that he had just woken up, maybe it was the fact that he was still trying to figure out what had happened; regardless what Elise said did not compute with Zach. Which lead to him saying a very confused, “What?”
“You fell asleep -- ” she started to say.
“-- Well I know that!” Zach said.
“ -- In front of my door.” Elise concluded with a huff, annoyed at being interrupted. “I figured you wouldn’t want to sleep out in the hallway - who knows where people’s feet have been - so I pulled you into my room. Couldn’t get you into a real bed, but hey you got a pillow and blanket, which is more than the hallway offered.”
This was true. Zach decided to ignore the weirdness of the situation, and appreciate Elise’s hospitality, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” she waved him off, “Now, here eat this. You’re obviously not eating properly if you’re just falling asleep any old place.”
Zach was about to point out that his falling asleep probably had something more to do with his staying up too late, but then stopped upon seeing the plate of scrambled eggs and ham, along with the cup of tea that she offered him.
Mistaking his gaping for distrust Elise assured him, “Don’t worry, it’s still warm. I had it sitting on a hot plate.”
Making a noise that he hoped sounded like a “thank-you” Zach accepted the meal, still completely baffled as to how she got around the “one personal item ONLY” rule. Because between the posters, the hot plate, and the… cricket ball that were in plain view in the room he was definitely counting more than one.
As Zach ate his breakfast, Elise typed away at the laptop on top of her desk. Which wasn’t unusual, they all had work to do of course, but was unusual was the fact that at one point her work caused her to… giggle?
“What are you doing?” He asked curiously.
“Oh, uh, well reading journals,” Elise admitted with a sheepish grin.
“We have journals?” Zach repeated skeptically.
“Oh yeah, we’ve had them for a month or so now.” Elise said with a shrug.
“How come I didn’t know about this?” He asked, wondering if his catnaps had caused him to miss out on something interesting.
“Well… there’s a campaign of sorts to keep Stackhouse from finding out about them, so they’re all very hush hush I guess.” Elise said, shrugging. “You want one?”
And so that’s how Zach got a journal.
Um, testing. Does this thing even work?