A/N: Based off a post were I suggested that the team competes in various events during the downtime created by the lockdown. A full story was requested by someone. If you would like to claim it, let me know in the comments.
As you might expect, this is filled with ridiculousness.
"That's it, you're disqualified, G!" Sam declared as he yanked a throwing knife out of the wall, the handle still shaking from being recently hurled.
"Why am I disqualified?"
"You almost hit me in the head!"
"Well, maybe you shouldn't have been standing so close to the target." As they continued to bicker, Eric, Nell, Kensi, and Deeks sat down on the bleachers set up in the gym.
"I wonder how long this argument is going to take." Nell said, sounding mildly disinterested. Over the course of the day, they had competed against each other in various events, including completing a hundred pushups, a 100 meter sprint, non-dominant hand shooting, and miniature basketball.
The day long competition was the result of them all having far too much idle time while most of the state was in some form of lockdown.
Sam, Kensi and Deeks had been neck and neck for the pushups. Nell had given up after 10 in favor of watching Deeks and Sam finish. In the end, Sam had beat Kensi by three. Kensi and Deeks had tied in the sprint, which had resulted in a mini argument over whether or not they could have two winners and Sam had easily won in the shooting event. Callen had won the mini-basketball round.
"Well, I'd say it depends on how quickly Sam figures out that Callen is messing with him," Deeks said, settling in for a good half hour of debate.
"How do you guys wear this stuff all the time?" Eric asked, doing a weird half lunge thing as he frowned down at his under armor shorts. "I always feel like it's squeezing me to death."
"Well, it does have its perks," Deeks commented, wiggling his eyebrows at Kensi as he glanced pointedly at her strappy black sports bra.
"Mm, yes it does," Nell agreed, eyeing his chest appreciatively. Deeks looked down at his skin tight tank top and shrugged.
"Anyway," Kensi said, rolling her eyes. "We should probably intervene or we'll never get to the next event."
"You just want to get your trophy," Deeks teased her.
"Hey I won the knife throwing competition fair and square. No one else even came close."
"C'mon Deeks!" Kensi shouted, clapping her hands as Deeks and Callen went up against each other on the climbing walls. "You can do this! Climb faster!" She'd already lost against Callen earlier and had taken sides. Nell had also joined Deeks' side, but Eric seemed torn.
"G, don't do this to me again!" Sam shouted over Kensi's encouragement. Deeks thought he heard Callen mutter something sarcastic about not being a show monkey.
Deeks was about 2/3 of the way up with Callen several feet under him. He grabbed the next two handholds, propelling himself another two feet. To the sound of Nell and Kensi's combined shouts, he climbed the last few feet and touched the top.
"Yes baby!" Kensi cheered as he dropped onto the mat below. Callen let himself fall too and said,
"Well, thank god that's over."
"Unbelievable," Sam said, sounding deeply disappointed. "How could you let him win again?" Callen stood up, breathing heavily with his hands on his hips.
"Once again, he's got longer arms and have you seen his muscles these days? His arms are like freaking trees," Callen pointed out. "Besides, I beat you."
"I have more weight to lift." Before Callen could respond to that, Nell cut in.
"I believe it's time for the three-legged race."
"Ooh, I won the three-legged race every year at my summer camp," Eric said excitedly. He extended his arm to Nell. "Shall we, M'Lady?"
"How are you this uncoordinated?" Kensi shouted at Deeks as they tumbled to the ground for the third time in a minute. Sam and Callen were only doing marginally better; if he'd been less focused on not falling, Deeks would have found the sight of them fumbling around hilarious.
"I don't know, maybe because one of my legs is tied to yours?" he suggested sarcastically, groaning as he Kensi tried to stand up and ended up yanking at his bound leg.
"As the only married couple, we should be better at this." Kensi sounded ready to kill him and he tried to sync his movements with hers.
Ahead of them, Nell and Eric were somehow managing to move at an impressive speed despite their vastly different heights.
Kensi growled as they fell yet again.
"This is a cruel, cruel sport," Deeks sighed. In the time it took them to get back up, Eric and Nell crossed the finish line and immediately hugged, jumping up and down in excitement.
Deeks released the Velcro brace wrapped around his left leg, rubbing at the sore spot the rough material had left as they slowly walked across the field.
"Congratulations," Kensi told Eric and Nell, managing a smile despite her disappointment.
"Thanks, but it was all Eric," Nell said, giving him a proud look. "He's a great leader."
"Oh, I'm only as good as my partner," Eric insisted, one arm wrapped around her waist.
"You two are disgusting," Sam commented, trying to brush grass stains off his clothes.
"Nell, how often do you play mini golf?" Callen asked, sounding suspicious as Nell tapped her bright blue golf ball through a windmill and straight into a hole marked with a white 16.
"I may or may not have lived near a course when I was a kid," Nell answered with a grin. She sank another ball with a single tap. "We played every weekend for a couple summers."
"I should've known when you insisted we include it in the competition," Kensi commented. She was a few strokes behind Nell and one in front of Deeks.
"Hey, I play to my strengths." Nell shrugged, not seeming in any hurry to get to the next hole.
"At least the rest of us are doing better than Eric and Sam," Deeks said, nodding to where Sam and Eric were struggling to get past a river that kept swallowing the ball and spitting it back out on the other side.
"I don't think I've ever seen Sam this angry," Callen said, his voice filled with poorly concealed humor. As they watched, Sam shouted something and threw his club across the course where it landed in the middle of a small sandpit. "I better go calm him down before we get kicked out."
"Maybe we should cancel this event. I mean, this is just supposed to be for fun," Kensi said, watching Sam stalk away as Callen tried to talk to him. Eric was still futilely whacking at his ball.
"Not a chance," Nell said fiercely, pausing to line her club up to the ball. She swung, the blue tennis skirt she'd chosen to wear swishing with her movement, and smiled in satisfaction as she got another hole in one. "I won this trophy and no one is taking it away from me."
"Nothing like a game of mini golf to foster familial goodwill," Deeks commented wryly.
Beep beep beep.
"Alright, pencils down," Nell announced to the sound of frantic scratching. Deeks leaned back, having finished his 10th Scattegories list several seconds early.
Kensi swore under her breath and tossed her pencil down, glaring malevolently at him.
"Ok, starting with Eric, gifts/presents, terms of endearment, kinds of dances, things that are black, vehicles, tropical locations, college majors, dairy, products, things in a souvenir shop, and world records," Nell said. "And they all must start with the letter L."
By now her voice was hoarse and she sounded like a teacher who had spent all day corralling misbehaving students. It wasn't far off.
"Alright, I have Lady Lark, locket, love, nothing, nothing, Land Rover, Latin, nothing, leg warmers, lip balm, and nothing," Eric rattled off, looking a little stressed. He'd taken his jacket off half an hour ago, apparently overheated by the pressures of the game.
Nell sighed, crossing a couple things off her list.
"Ok, Callen?" He'd been toe to toe with Deeks for the last five rounds and seemed pretty confident. Clearing his throat dramatically, he started reading off his list.
"Lewis and Clark, lima beans, lima beans, lima beans-"
"Wait a second, you just said 'lima beans' three times in a row," Sam interrupted.
"Lima beans would make a great present in my opinion," Callen said, leaning back in his chair and twirling his pencil carelessly.
"Well, I don't. Besides, you can't use the same thing more than once." Callen sighed and tossed his paper on the table.
"Then you're probably not going to like the rest of this list."
"You seriously wrote down lima beans 11 times?" Kensi asked and he shrugged again.
"At this point, I just want the game to be over," he said, earning a disgusted sound from Sam.
Kensi, Nell, and Sam all read off their lists, scratching of a word here and there. Deeks had insisted that he go last for each round, to give them a better appreciation of his brilliance. No one had argued, but that might have been more for the sake of expediency than that they actually cared. When it was his turn, he noisily cleared his throat.
"Lincoln, as in Abraham, lingerie," he paused to glance at Kensi who rolled her eyes. "Ladybird, lap dance, lemurs, Lamborghini, Laos, law, low fat yogurt, a license, and liquor," Deeks said, dropping his board on the table with a smug expression. "Boom."
"Damn," Eric muttered. "Why didn't I think of lap dancing?"
"Because you have an ounce of self-respect," Kensi said a little meanly, which Deeks put down to her losing another round.
"Ok, so Deeks is officially the winner," Nell announced, to no one's surprise.
He took a bow, dodging Kensi's elbow.
"G, that's not a word," Sam sighed, gesturing for Callen to move the letter tiles he'd just laid down. The board was covered with a grid of words. Deeks had most recently added "erotic", built off of Kensi's "elbow". Sam hadn't liked Deeks' word either, but didn't have grounds to protest it.
"Yes, it is," Callen insisted. "And now I'm out of tiles too and since that's 7 with a triple word score, I win."
"Um, I don't think so," Kensi argued, crossing her arms as she glared at him. She'd played extremely competitively, contesting almost as many words as Sam. "You used an already existing word, so you can't use the 'S'."
"And it's not a real word."
"It's in the Harry Potter books." Callen lifted his hands like that was definite proof, leaning back with a grin. "So I'd say it's a real word."
"Actually "lumos" is adapted from the Latin word "lumen", Deeks explained, "so it's really a made up word and even if it wasn't, foreign words aren't allowed or I would have killed this game."
"I'm not taking it off."
"Let's never do this again," Nell said to Eric from where they were sitting off to the sides as Sam pulled out a giant dictionary.
"But we're still getting trophies, right?" he asked worriedly. Nell snorted.
"Of course. I am the champion of mini golf after all."
A/N: Just for fun little side note, I really dislike mini golf. One of the first times I played (I was a teenager), I got so mad that I had a similar reaction to Sam's. Ever since my family has been very cautious around me while playing the game.
And Callen with the lima beans is also based on a real-life anecdote.