Somehow Deeks had escaped the wrath of two angry and embarrassed senior agents and made it through the day relatively unscathed, though thoroughly threatened. The two senior partners thought that they would be left alone in peace now that they had instilled the fear of god into their supposed perpetrator but apparently this wasn't to be the case.
The next morning the whole team arrived at around the same time, bickering about something or other as usual only to find that all their desks had been covered with plastic cups; plastic cups that appeared to have been filled with water, although Deeks and Sam's side looked fuller than Kensi and Callen's. On closer inspection, all the plastic cups had been stapled together, making it harder for them to be removed.
The four stared at the scene in front of them with much trepidation, and very unsure of what to do. This was not a situation they had ever been trained for or faced before. Kensi broke the frozen line of people by cautiously moving forward towards their desks. It was then she made a discovery.
"Uh guys, they're on the chairs as well," she informed them, groaning for effect more than anything as she already knew where al the cups where and probably how many there were exactly,considering how long it had take her to set up.
That broke their frozen trance that they had been in, assessing the scene, unsure of what to do and wondering, once again, if it was safe to enter their bullpen after it had been invaded again. All three moved forward, some with much more caution than others for the precariously balanced cups full of water *cough*Deeks*cough*.
Deeks grabbed a cup at the end of the desk, not seeing the staples and, ignoring Sam's shout of NO!, pulled. Water sloshed from the cup as it tugged against its fastenings, moving all the other cups and sloshing water over both Deeks' and Sam's desks. Sam's face turned angry again and Kensi watched fear grow in her own parter's before shaking her head.
Turning to Callen, who was also trying to ignore the growing argument and threats being thrown about, she told him not to touch anything and grabbed her bag before leaving the bullpen. Callen watched her retreating form, shrugged and decided to take a seat on the sofa. He then found the paperwork, or, more specifically, he sat on their paperwork.
Leaping up and whipping the blanket back after he felt the seat sliding sideways under him and rustling, he saw all of their paperwork sat there in neat piles for each of them. Hetty chose this moment to grace him with her presence.
"I see you have all been redecorating Mr Callen but I feel that a water feature my not be appropriate for a government agency that needs to get work done. I suggest you remove it as quickly and cleanly as possible so you can get to work on all," she said, gesturing at the paperwork. She turned to leave but left Callen with one final parting shot. "Oh and Mr Callen, please do remember that my paperwork is not a seat. Next time find somewhere more appropriate to sit or don't at all or I'll skin you with my letter opener."
Callen was left staring, very much in shock, at Hetty's retreating form. He considered seeing if he could move the cups but decided that it was not worth risking the wrath of Kensi Blye for. Instead he heeded Hetty's warning and went to steal a chair from elsewhere in the building before sitting next to the sofa and getting to work on some of the paperwork that was due today.
Ordinarily he would go to the gym or the shooting range and avoid the paperwork at all costs but Hetty had informed him that if he didn't have it in by today, she would find the most uncomfortable outfits for his undercover jobs as she physically could and generally make his life as miserable as possible, or at least that was it paraphrased.
Callen knew just how serious she was from previous experience and so decided to use this time to his advantage, although his pile of paperwork was not the biggest, once again that was Deeks' pile!
Kensi and Eric had known they had to throw suspicion off of themselves. Callen and Sam blamed Deeks for now but they couldn't guarantee that would hold up or that Deeks wouldn't figure it out so the easiest way to throw suspicion off was to prank themselves slightly as well as the others but have a solution just in case.
It was that solution Kensi was going to pick up. She had checked a store close by before they had set up the prank, to make sure they had what she was looking for. And what she had been looking for had been polymer crystals that absorbed water. Drop some into each of the cups and most of the water would be absorbed, enough so that they could diktat the cups and remove them one by one. Knowing that they had set up the same surprise for Eric and Nell just away from too many electricals and at their desks so little would be damaged, she bought plenty of bags and made her way back to Ops.
She made it back to see Sam and Deeks still arguing, very little of the water left in their cups, most in the floor or their desks. Callen appeared to have found the paperwork and was working away on that, but he looked up as son as she arrived back. Dropping her bag and purchases on the floor and scooping up a couple of the bags of crystals.
Tossing a couple to Callen, she got to work, pouring a few of the crystals into each of the cups and adding more if they needed it. Callen quickly caught on and before long they had built up quite the rhythm. Sam and Deeks had paused their argument to watch their progress but the silence was broken by the arrival of an irate Eric.
"Why is there cups of water near my very sensitive technology and who the hell thought it would be a good idea to put them there because I swear if one drop of water gets on anything then I will ..." He was cut off by several bags of crystal hitting him in the chest. Kensi had got bored of his rant (turns out he was a very good actor because he was in on it) and decided to give him the solution.
He muttered a thanks and stomped back off to his technology lair very convincingly to remove the water before it actually was spilt. With Eric gone, Kensi finished filling the last few cups, dropped her supply of crystals and reached intone other drawers of her desk where the de stapler that they had all been supplied with was kept.
Silently she begun to pull out the staples from the cups, one by one. Callen once again caught on quickly and soon they had all the cups freed, including the ones on their chairs and binned all the cups.
Kensi smirked and high fived an also smirking Callen, he always like to get one up on his partner and Deeks and Kensi was a good partner for that, before offering their partners the crystals to try and clear up their mess. While they worked on that, Callen and Kensi got to work on more of their dreaded paperwork.
Deeks tried to get Kensi to help him by pouting exaggeratedly but it had no effect whatsoever and she continued to ignore him, much like he was an annoying fly buzzing around that you knew you could never catch or stop, so it wasn't worth the effort even trying.
The rest of the morning was pretty quiet and boring, until a grumpy Eric emerged once again, this time with a hand behind his back.
"Ok,this just isn't funny guys," he said. "Who thought it would be funny to feed my flip flops to a dogs dither leave them under my desk for me to find? You all know these are my favourites."
He removed the hand from behind his back and the team could now see that, in it, was a pair of mangled flip flops covered in slobber and teeth marks.
Turns out that dog on the beach that had decimated his favourite pair of flip flops that morning had been helpful to help him turn suspicion away from him. He knew that Kensi had a plan of her own in averting suspicion and figured that, despite the water this morning, he probably also needed something to throw them off his scent.
All eyes turned to Deeks.
"Why are you all looking at me?" he asked. "It's not like I chew on flip flops so I don't see how it could be me."
"Well I don't know about the chewing thing ... and you do have a little bit of that shaggy dog look going on ..." Kensi began. "But you are the only one of us that owns a dog so ..."/
This sparked yet another argument and an outraged huff from Deeks that was only stopped by a sharp shrill whistle. Everyone naturally looked to Eric but he looked as puzzled as they were so they looked up to the balcony where they saw Nell looking down at them.
"We have a case guys," she said, interrupting the fight. "And Eric, you may want to put on some shoes. Director Vance is on the line."
Eric opened and closes his mouth like a fish, no words coming out, shocked at being ordered around by his friend and fellow brain like he ordered the team around at times. She was taking his job again!
Bickering ceased for the time being as they all prepared for a long hard case, as it was bound to be if the director was calling about it, and ascended the stairs. For the moment it was a ceasefire, so to speak.
Hope you like this. Once again sorry for any mistakes but I haven't got a beta for this story so they may be quite a few. If you like it please review. Sorry about the problems with this chapter. I have had them before and they are a pain but I don't know how to stop them. If anyone know, PM me please And I would be very grateful.