Author's Note: Originally written for a fic challenge on LiveJournal, had to do 500 words without dialogue. And whump of some kind. This was subtle whump. :)

What You Don't Know…

Once again Woolsey was turned around in the depths of the main tower.

He thought he was heading towards the main elevators when he turned the corner, but what he found instead was a long, dimly lit corridor with a faint layer of blue smoke drifting lazily up near the ceiling. Since the fire alarms were not going off, curiosity got the better of him and he started to follow it. It led him to the end of the hall and around another corner where the smoke was a bit thicker and smelled like a mix of burnt plastic, fire retardant foam, and … scorched sweet potatoes?

There was a short hall, and the smoke plus raised voices were coming from one lone doorway. As Woolsey approached the open door, he caught a faint hint of singed hair in the smoke, and when he turned into the room, he froze.

The two occupants of the room suddenly clammed up and froze, too.

Lorne and Zelenka were spattered liberally with fire extinguisher foam, their faces very red as if severely sunburned, and both men were missing their eyebrows. Radek's hair was stiff and sticking straight back, caught in a phantom wind, while the Major's normally stand up hair was … a little shorter than usual. Behind them was a cobbled together high tech version of Hawkeye's still, and it was still burping out little clouds of blue smoke at regular intervals. The sounds it was making were oddly similar to the ones he remembered his Uncle Irving making after Thanksgiving dinner when he was a child, and his eyebrows drew down at the memory. The still continued to burble and make strange gurgling noises in the awkward silence until Zelenka turned around and kicked it.

Woolsey clamped down on his scowl to keep a snicker from escaping, and he could tell Major Lorne read it completely wrong. The man's face dropped into the most impressive whipped puppy expression, and when he opened his mouth to explain, Woolsey just held up a hand for silence, mainly because he couldn't trust himself to speak at the moment. Lorne just slumped, a guilty and thoroughly miserable frown settling on his face. No doubt he was imaging what the Colonel was going to do to him when he heard about this.

Zelenka took his glasses off, his expression actually rather calm and collected. He went to wipe his glasses on his shirt, saw there wasn't a clean spot anywhere, and put them back on, his lip sticking out in a faint contemplative pout. He pushed them up his nose and just shrugged apologetically at Woolsey.

Woolsey glanced around one last time, his scowl even more impressive than usual, shook his head, sighed, and just left. He was halfway down the corridor when he had to let loose an amused snort. He'd reprimand them later, after they cleaned up the mess. He'd call janitorial to send them down what they needed.