Chapter Text
Spencer was starting to lose his patience with Derek. Derek had been constantly asking him about dates or hookups, trying to set him up on date after date and it was really starting to piss him off. One of the times Spencer had snuck off to talk to Maeve during a case, Derek had bothered him about it for nearly a whole day. Spencer almost snapped at Derek when he started asking much more pointed, needling questions about where Spencer had gone or what he had done. He knew Derek was doing it out of concern but Spencer really didn’t like the suspicion and doubt on his sobriety.
“I swear, I’m going to shoot Morgan if he doesn’t stop,” Spencer sighed as he took a seat in the booth he, Alex and Merlin often took up for their book club. The cafe was busy but quiet, which was perfect for them.
“Is he still bothering you?” Merlin asked. They had shared a room on the case so Merlin got ranted at by Spencer as he complained about Derek not giving him space and disrespecting him.
“It’s not as bad as it was before but he keeps telling me to get out there more, find a girlfriend,” Spencer complained. Merlin rolled his eyes.
“Derek should have no say in any of your relationships, apart from cases where your physical or mental health is at risk but that’s not the point, especially about when you should be getting into one,” Merlin sighed, “you should only get into a relationship when you feel ready to. Getting into a relationship because you feel pressured to or because you think it’s the right thing to do or because it’s what’s expected of you just leads to resentment. From both parties. Either way, you really should only get into a relationship when you’re at a point where you’re happy being single. A relationship should add to your life, not lead it. The best relationships are the ones that form naturally, as opposed to those sought out and created from a sense of loneliness or obligation.”
“You have a lot of thoughts on this,” Alex said, her eyebrows raised.
“Sorry,” Merlin murmured, scratching the back of his neck, “my husband almost got married to someone else because of his dad. A business marriage he didn’t want but felt he had to do. It’s part of the reason his dad hates me. I talked to my husband, only a friend and technically employer at the time, about my thoughts on the marriage and how much I hated it, and he called it off after thinking about it on his own.”
“What does your in-law think happened? Seduction?” Alex teased.
“Maybe, I don’t know. He was a very paranoid man,” Merlin shrugged.
“You do have a lot of good points though,” Spencer butt in, bringing the conversation back to the original topic. “There is the addition of each relationship looking and being different. I’ve had partners before but the team doesn't know because I tend to keep it to myself until it becomes more serious, although it often doesn’t reach the point I feel comfortable sharing about them with the team.”
“And that’s completely fair,” Merlin shrugged, “I don’t talk about my husband much because I prefer having my personal and work life separate. I like being able to forget about all the things we’ve seen and just be with my husband and I like that I keep him away from all of this.”
“I just want to figure out how I can make him stop,” Spencer sighed.
“Sign him up for that gay hook-up app,” Merlin shrugged. “He’s trying to ‘encourage’ you into a relationship you don’t want, and don’t appreciate him trying to set you up. Give him a similar payback.”
“Now, how do you know about Grindr?” Alex asked, a mischievous look in her eyes.
“One of my mates uses it sometimes, or he did before he met his boyfriend,” Merlin offered.
“I don’t know,” Spencer brushed off, “I don’t know how to set up an account on a dating website, besides, way too many of them have really bad security measures or protections.”
“That’s fair, do you just want to make him stop or do you want to humiliate him a bit as well?” Alex asked. Spencer was silent for a moment as he thought about it.
“Honestly, a bit of both,” Spencer grinned.
“Oh! You should get Pen to change his notification sounds to the Grindr’s,” Merlin offered.
“That works, I don’t want to do anything too big and it’ll just be a small thing only some people will get,” Spencer nodded.
Spencer tried his best not to laugh as the Grindr notification sound went off for the fifth time in three minutes. He’d noticed multiple people in the bullpen perking up or glancing around to try to see whose phone was making the noise as Derek tried his best to inconspicuously hide that it was his phone. Derek had tried turning his phone to silent mode to stop the distinctive sound from ringing out, but whatever Penelope had done made it so Derek couldn’t turn the sound off at all. Derek had already gotten some weird looks and side glances because of the notifications. It seemed that Penelope made all of his notifications the same Grindr chime. Of course, no one knew that was what happened.
So, Derek definitely knew it was Spencer who got Penelope to help him prank Derek. He was pretty certain since his desk was completely covered in saran wrap, all of his belongings and stationary trapped under layers and layers of plastic.
“Do I want to know?” Hotch asked as he stopped to stand beside Spencer, coffee in hand as they both stared at the mess in front of them.
“Probably not,” Spencer offered, he then put his messenger bag down. “Can I borrow your pocket knife?”
“Just don’t dull it, don’t carve into anything and don’t steal it,” Hotch monotoned as he handed the small knife in its sheath to the youngest member and continued to his office. Spencer started to carefully cut his desk out from the mess. He also had to carefully cut out his belongings from where they had also been individually wrapped.
He left the mess of saran wrap on Derek’s desk.
Spencer stifled a laugh as Derek stubbed his toe against his desk for the fourth time that day and cursed to himself, though it looked more like a flinch. JJ let out a groan as she knocked her pen pot over for a second time, having to scramble to stop all of them from falling onto the floor. Spencer very diligently kept his eyes on his own screen and desk.
“Why are JJ and Morgan having such a hard time today?” Merlin asked, having rolled over to Spencer’s desk to ask quietly.
“Because of your suggestion, we’re stuck in a prank war. Penelope and I moved their desks an inch to the left and all their things an inch to the right. Everything is just slightly off, especially since once you get into a habit your movements are more reliant on muscle memory than what you observe so they will be having some trouble until they recalibrate or move everything back,” Spencer explained, his volume matching Merlin. He felt a little proud at the smile that Merin gave him.
“Point to you,” Merlin grinned, then he rolled back to his own desk.
Spencer could feel Merlin fuming next to him. He’d come in to his desk almost exactly as he left it but when he reached for a book to site some research he found it was actually the antique copy of The Picture of Dorian Grey, the very rare and very expensive book Merlin had very kindly lent to Spencer, on the condition it stayed in the office and unharmed. Spencer almost started screaming at Derek for messing with his books, especially when he saw that all of them had their sleeves swapped around. He knew that Merlin was annoyed because he’d lent Spencer several antique and almost delicate books that he’d promised to keep safe and in their specified opaque, protective sleeve cases, yet Derek had gone and tampered with them, possibly even damaging them.
Merlin had chosen to stay late with Spencer to sort through all of the books Spencer had on his desk to make sure all of them were safely back into their original sleeves.
“I’m so sorry this happened,” Spencer muttered.
“No, you couldn’t have known Derek would have done this,” Merlin denied, “granted, your last prank involved desks and he probably didn’t know how delicate some of these books are, he just got me an excuse to join in.”
“Are you sure?”
“Very.”
Spencer smiled as he heard Derek groan and mutter about his mouse not working. He’d already asked Spencer, Merlin, Alex and David, when the older man walked by, about the state of their mice and all of them had said they were working fine. He’d even asked Penelope if she could help him figure out what was wrong with his mouse when she stopped by for a morning coffee and chat, though she’d convincingly tested out the mouse, checked the bottom, valiantly ignoring the obvious tape stuck to the bottom of it, and said she couldn’t figure it out. JJ wasn’t in yet so he couldn’t ask her, though that did mean that if Derek figured out the prank before she got in, he would just tell her so she wouldn’t end up getting affected.
When JJ came in, just on time, and noticed her mouse wasn’t working, she fiddled with it for a few seconds before flipping it over and finding the tape. Which finally clued Derek into checking the bottom of the mouse himself. He shot a light-hearted glare at Spencer as he peeled it off.
Something Spencer wasn’t expecting was for Merlin to keep reapplying the tape every time Derek and JJ left their desks, which didn’t happen very often throughout the day but each time, it made Spencer laugh a little.
An additional karmic justice from the universe was the fact that Derek and JJ’s seats kept squeaking. It wasn’t too obvious to Spencer and he could only tell because Derek had slid over on his own seat to ask Spencer about a case and he’d noticed it then. He’d noticed JJ’s because he’d stopped by to greet her and heard the squeaking then. He saw Derek and JJ swap their seats with a spare one at least twice, one of those times Derek insisted he had to swap with Spencer but when they did, the seat was silent for him and Spencer’s old seat started to squeak when Derek sat in it. Spencer let out a loud laugh then.
Spencer groaned as his headache only seemed to worsen. He took another gulp of coffee, hoping, praying, pleading it would at least help just a little bit. It doesn’t. And the bitterness of the straight black coffee was starting to grate on his taste buds.
Before Spencer could complain into his mug more and drink another gulp, his mug was replaced with another. He snapped his eyes up to stare at Merlin, who grinned and sipped at his own drink.
“The prank war continues,” Merlin muttered, swirling Spencer’s cup of coffee. Spencer frowned, last he checked Merlin was on his side, besides, what kind of prank was stealing Spencer’s coffee? Then again, Merlin did place a different mug into his hand. Spencer gave it a sniff and felt his eyebrows crease at the smell of black tea. What? Why?
Wait.
Black tea had the highest amount of caffeine per cup.
Derek replaced the coffee with decaf!
Derek just declared war.
Hotch could only sigh as he watched over the bullpen, watching his team. His very intelligent, mature, professional team who had just spent almost three months pranking each other. He could figure out when it started and who started it but Reid often didn’t do anything without reason so there must have been something someone did to annoy him first. Seeing who was the first person pranked, it was probably Morgan. And that just left a long list of things Morgan could have done. Morgan and Reid were good at getting on each other’s nerves. Most of the time they could keep it professional.
Normally, Hotch was fine with letting them prank each other and have fun; it was kept off of cases, it was not too disruptive, nothing permanent and most of the time it was kept to the people involved. Unfortunately, this time it seemed to be getting out of hand, involving more and more people. It started off with just Reid and Morgan, and maybe Garcia. Then JJ joined, then Ambrosius, and Hotch could see both groups approaching Rossi and Blake so he had to put his foot down.
Hotch could tell when it changed from a playful game to a proper prank war, it was after Morgan had replaced the coffee with decaf. Which, why would he do that? They all knew what Reid was like with his coffee. Reid responded by putting post-its all over Morgan and JJ’s desks. The response to that was a page stuck to the door saying it was broken and to use another one; the only door into the bullpen. Morgan’s contact names were changed around causing some awkward phone calls. Hotch started to lose track of what happened after that but they kept happening so Hotch had to put his foot down and make everyone stop.
How was this the best profiling team the FBI had?