December 9th - Mistletoe, Snowmen, and a Hippopotamus

Garcia frowned as she stared out at the crowd of people in the vast ballroom. Apparently, office Christmas parties were considerably less fun when alcohol was removed from the equation.

Strictly speaking, it wasn't mandatory that she not consume any alcohol while on the treatment... And she would have been dangerously close to breaking her self-imposed embargo, had it not been for the team's very generous offer to remain sober with her.

She had repeatedly told them that, though it was a very kind offer, she couldn't ask them to do that, especially knowing how horrendously boring most of the parties were, but they had insisted that they wanted to do it. Although, she was pretty sure that they were regretting that now, not that they'd ever admit it.

"We need something to liven up this party..." she said to the table at large.

There were several noises of agreement and Emily leaned in to whisper conspiratorially, "What did you have in mind?"

Then, Reid's eyes lit up. "Oh! What's it called? That thing where you have a list... Of a bunch of things to find..."

"A scavenger hunt?" Morgan supplied skeptically.

"Yeah!" Garcia said, clapping her hands happily.

"We can all add one thing to the list and we have to collect as many of them as possible before the party ends," JJ piped up.

"What's the winner get?" Morgan asked, still a little hesitant.

"Well, I think there's still a container of cookies left," JJ said, though not without shooting him and Emily a glare.

"Okay, I'm in," Morgan said, laughing slightly to himself at the memory.

******

"Okay..." JJ said, reading out the list they had come up with, "1. Materials for a snowman (two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and three buttons). 2. Convince someone to sing a Christmas carol at the top of their lungs. 3. Ten kisses under the mistletoe. 4. A recipe for cookies. 5. A video of someone over sixty telling you about the funniest gift they ever received for Christmas. 6. A Christmas joke. 7. A picture with someone wearing a Santa hat." She frowned, finding it difficult to believe that they had managed to come up with this list sober. "Then, once finished with the list, each person must then go outside and build a snowman using the things they've collected and take a picture with their snowman to prove it."

"I think I'm going to sit this one out..." Hotch said.

"Me too," Rossi agreed, "This is going to be too entertaining to miss..."

"Fine, but you're gonna miss out."

As the other five set out to complete their lists, Rossi pulled a ten dollar bill out of his wallet and said, "Ten on Morgan to win."

"Ten on JJ," Hotch bet.

Morgan came sprinting back to get something he had left behind and added, "Twenty on Garcia."

******

Reid huffed out a breath; he had no idea of where to start. And, evidently, as he heard someone burst out in a rather loud and slurred version of 'I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas', he was already behind.

He turned towards the source of the noise to see who had gotten the jump on the game, only to find Emily, the neckline of her dress slightly less buttoned than it had been five minutes ago, spurring on one of their more inebriated coworkers as he sang.

So that was her trick... Taking advantage of her looks to extort drunken men into doing her bidding. He shook his head, he had no doubt that the other women were doing the same thing. And he was sure that Morgan was similarly coercing the women.

So, where did that leave him? Geeky and awkward wasn't going to get him very far in this game...

******

JJ smiled wryly as she listened to a woman gush over cookie recipes as she scrawled the ingredients needed to make her favorite shortbread on a napkin. Usually she was better at pretending to listen, but right now she was trying to keep an eye on the competition. She knew she wasn't losing, but she definitely wasn't winning... And she would be damned if she was going to let Morgan or Emily win.

Finally, the insufferably chatty woman passed the recipe to her and wished her luck.

Thanking her, JJ added, "Oh, and if anyone else asks you for a cookie recipe, don't give it to them."

She smiled, pleased with herself. There hadn't been any rules prohibiting running interference for the others... And she had gladly taken full advantage of that fact. And honestly, she didn't even really feel bad about it. It might have been kind of an underhanded trick, but she didn't really mind at this point... She still had to collect kisses.

******

Garcia couldn't help the feeling of smug self-assuredness now washing over her. Apparently, people were very eager to help when you told them you were sick and in the midst of a high-stakes scavenger hunt... And it didn't hurt that many of the party-goers were made pliable by copious amounts of liquor and wouldn't remember any of this the next morning.

She had 'borrowed' one of the decorative sprigs of mistletoe, making her hunt much easier. It was just a simple matter of trading a kiss for any of the other items on her list; not exactly an equal trade-off, especially when considering that each item for the snowman had to come from a separate person, but it was still much more efficient than whatever system the others seemed to be using.

She mentally checked off the final item on her list as a particularly wasted attorney handed her a random button from the contents of his pocket for use in her snowman. Though, she was really wondering why he just happened to have an unattached button on his person, she decided to just go with it and leave the matter unquestioned. Giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, she took off towards the nearest door.

She had a snowman to build.

******

Morgan glanced up quickly to check that he still had time, only to see Garcia disapear out the door. Damn.

He had made a mutually beneficial pact with Emily when he realized that she had nearly half her list finished in the time it took him to do one thing. So, now, he called her name and gestured towards the door.

"Damn," she hissed and he smiled.

Then, he realized that he had inadvertently alerted JJ as well and she was closer to the door than he was. And, of course, he was still competing against Emily, despite their peace treaty, so he took off at a run, earning more than a few questioning glances as he went.

They were lucky that this was one of the warmer nights of the winter, not only because it made the snow easier to build with, but also because they had all neglected to put on their jackets in the rush.

Garcia had a good head-start over JJ and even more so over Morgan and Emily, seeing as her snowman almost had a thorax. There was no way they were going to catch up now...

"I say we just build a giant communal snowman," Emily suggested, "Then we all win..."

The others turned to eye her consideringly. "Fine," they agreed at length.

But as they all began rolling snowballs of their own, Garcia added, "But we all know I won."