criminal minds | one-shots ✓

23. an eye roll, a scoff, "boys"

emily rolls her eyes as derek puffs out his chest and challenges spencer to a duel.

she watches, with exasperation and thinly-veiled amusement as penelope sets up a round - including resetting the miniature scoreboard they've created and pulling up and stabilizing the plastic boundaries - and they both get ready.

they set their fingers on the little pieces of folded up triangle shaped papers emily hasn't seen since she was in middle school, at least. kids used to line them up in rows on the desks and see if they could either a. make them stick in the ceiling or b. hit the teacher with them. they got double points for doing the latter, though it never ended well.

"on your marks," penelope says and emily vaguely looks over to see alex watching with mildly piqued interest.

she wonders if alex would be able to calculate the distance and the velocity needed, etc., etc., if that was a general nerd thing or if since alex mostly had knowledge focused in english, it was different.

"get set,"

as terrible as emily knows this is going to end up, she's too morbidly fascinated to turn away. she actually leans forward a little bit, sends a quick prayer to whoever the hell that hotch doesn't walk out, and resists the urge to yell something so they accidentally false start and fail or jump and fail.

"go!"

derek and spencer's papers go flying and - while spencer's does actually make it in the goal, although barely, surprisingly - derek's flies over it and hits alex in the forehead, landing in her lap.

emily scoffs in disappointment and derek's miss as he mutters oops? and also because really? and alex meets her eyes with an eye roll.

"boys." they sigh.