Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds or any of its characters.
Author's Note: The flowers that Rossi is eating are, in fact, zinnias. Zinnias are edible, just in case anyone was worried about that. Rossi seems to have many problems, but flower poisoning is not currently one of them.
It was ten to five in the afternoon. Will's hands shook as he tore open a new box of band-aids. If JJ happened to come in the house and see the boys like this…
Will was in the upstairs bathroom. Jack sat on the edge of the bathtub, Henry clinging to him and dripping snot all over the place.
"This is really creeping me out," Kevin said distantly. He was in the hallway, looking out the window down into the backyard.
"Yeah?" Will tried to keep the conversation alive. The prospect of being tortured to death by JJ, Garcia, and Hotch had stunned them into silence.
Will leaned out the door into the hallway. Kevin had the white curtains pulled back and was staring down at the activity below. He looked faintly horrified.
Kevin didn't say anything more. Will frowned and joined him at the windowsill. Nothing much had changed in the last couple minutes. The adults, along with two police officers, were apparently partying while wearing ghastly animal costumes. The officers were lucky enough to escape that last bit, however. Both were snacking their hearts out.
In the bathroom, Henry stirred. He removed his face from Jack's shoulder, leaving strings of mucus trailing from his nose. He sniffled.
"If we're gonna die, how come they're tryin' to fix us up?" Henry asked. He didn't sound skeptical, only confused and forlorn. The snot he had sniffled in slowly dripped back out.
Jack was fascinated by Henry's odd mucus display, but he tore his attention away from his snotty shoulder and answered the question. "I think they're trying to make us look presentable for our parents, so that the last time they see us…" Jack gulped and couldn't finish. He smeared the tears off his face again.
"How do we look?" Henry asked. He stretched his neck, but was still too short to see into the mirror.
Jack straightened up a little to see over the sink. The faucet was in the way. He scooted over along the bathtub edge. "Sit here," Jack instructed. He pulled Henry onto his lap.
Henry settled in. He dripped snot down the front of his shirt.
Jack rested his chin on the top of Henry's head. Feeling something wet on the underside of his jaw, Jack shifted his head and took a look. Great spaghetti sauce! How in the world had Henry managed to get snot in his own hair? A bit disgusted, Jack straightened up and began appraising their appearance in the mirror.
Jack stared at his and Henry's grave, pale faces. He didn't look so bad; a little dirty and tear-streaked. Henry looked the same, but with a lot of snot added. His hair was ruffled and matted where he was cut. A warm, wet washcloth would do them both wonders.
"Well?" Henry's prompt sounded thick and mucus-y.
"Kinda gross," Jack replied.
Will swept back into the bathroom. One side of the box of band-aids was in shreds. He dumped the contents out next to the sink on the counter.
"Okay, guys," Will tried to sound cheerful. "We'll get you all fixed up, and then you can go see the grown-ups. Don't show them your injuries, okay? Trust me, they'll be happier not knowing."
Henry and Jack shared a knowing look. They both nodded, but Will wasn't watching them.
"Okay, okay," he muttered to himself. "It's all going to be okay. What do we need? Band-aids. We have the band-aids. That gooey disinfecting cream stuff. Where is that again?" Will tore open a cupboard and rummaged around. He could only find an unopened box.
Kevin popped in with a report. "Rossi's eating flowers," he said.
Will paused in his rummaging. "What?" He shut the cupboard and turned to face Kevin. "Why do we have such weird friends?"
Kevin shrugged. "Do you need any help here?" He looked around the bathroom. Will was on a frenzied hunt for something. The boys looked terrified.
"Nah, nah, I got this," Will told him. Will was now rifling through the wastebasket. He pulled out a crumpled tube that had once held disinfectant cream. "There you are," Will hissed at it. He straightened it out.
"Should I wet a washcloth?" Kevin asked. The longer this went on, the more chance there was of JJ getting suspicious. If she saw the van out front, she would know they were here.
Will looked over at Jack and Henry. "Uh, yeah, that would be great. A few tissues couldn't hurt, either," he said upon seeing Henry's nose.
Kevin opened the linen closet and dug out a perfectly folded washcloth. "Has he always been like that?"
"Yeah. It's pretty harmless, but JJ wants us to mention it next time he goes in for a check-up. She's worried about the money we spend at the store, you know. You wouldn't believe how many boxes of tissues that kid goes through every week." Will squeezed the life out of the poor little tube, only to find that every last bit of the cream had been used up. "Ugh!" Will threw the little bottle back into the wastebasket. He would have to open up a new tube of cream.
Will felt the urge to say a bad word. He suppressed it, but needed a substitute. He looked at Henry and blurted the first word that came to mind. "Snot!"
Kevin chuckled. He turned off the faucet and wrung out the now-wet washcloth.
"Excuse me," Will grumbled. He squeezed between the boys and Kevin and opened up a cupboard. He grabbed the unopened tube of cream and shut the cupboard door forcefully.
Will picked at the box. Why? Why did these stupid things always have to be encased in so much plastic and cardboard?
First there was the shrink wrap. God, Will hated shrink wrap. Sometimes he needed a butcher knife to get through it. What was it for, anyway? Will had spent so many hours pondering this but had never come up with a good answer. Could it be for security purposes? If stores were so paranoid about people stealing products that they shrink wrapped every damn thing, why not just get better security? And if someone was really intent on stealing a tube of disinfectant cream, they probably would have a very good reason, and shrink wrap is not going to stop them anyway! What sort of logic do these people use?
Then came the cardboard. A stupid, teeny-tiny tube of cream was enveloped in this box of cardboard just shiny and foil-wrapped enough to ensure that it could not be recycled. Why? Also, to open the box, you had to find just the right side; the side with the tab on it and the miniscule words saying 'open here'. And then it doesn't open any easier there than if you had just torn it open from the front.
After you get through the shrink wrap and cardboard, you get a feeling of accomplishment that is quickly dispelled by a new discovery: the tube of cream is actually bolted to the box using the kind of plastic that does not ever rip. If you didn't already use any tools, you're going to have to use that butcher knife now. Oh, but be ever so careful so as to not slice up the tube of cream!
Then, you have the damn tube out of the box and you think you're home free. Well, you've got another thing coming! Guess what? The cap doesn't come off until you pull on the plastic tab and tear off a ring of heavy, thick plastic that goes all the way around it!
So now you have in front of you a lot of shrink wrap, the remnants of that cardboard box, a butcher knife (Will had been told that normal people use scissors), and several strips of indestructible plastic. Oh, and a little tiny tube of disinfectant cream.
But you're still not done! You have to unscrew the cap and peel off a little piece of foil that apparently kept the cream 'fresh' and 'uncontaminated'.
By the time you have completed this whole task, any cut you would have liked to disinfect has probably healed.
This whole process usually made Will very angry. That's why he normally made JJ do it instead.