Chapter Text
Jason Gideon had always found Spencer Reid's behavior to be more than a little strange. For years, the young man had been bouncing his legs up and down against the carpeted floor, fidgeting with anything he could get his hands on, and talking at great length about whatever topic had any slight relevance to the current conversation. The office had taken a while to get used to it, but could see that it was never going to cease, so they tried not to show their annoyance at the disruption until it eventually became the rest of the team's normal.
The FBI agent had always known from the beginning that Reid was different. He watched the young man's behavior with a mix of fascination and frustration, wondering why he couldn't just sit still like every other agent. He saw the way that Reid would rock back and forth whilst filling out his files and looked away in irritation.
At first, Gideon had simply tried to ignore it, chalking it up to Reid's eccentricity. But as time went on, he found himself becoming more and more frustrated with his youngest teammate's odd behavior. He would often find himself snapping at Reid, telling him to stop the near-constant fidgeting and cutting him off mid-explanation of some obscure topic that no one was actually paying attention to. In his mind, it was just a matter of professionalism. He believed that Reid's childlike and repetitive actions would make it impossible for everyone to do their jobs properly.
It wasn't until they were assigned to a particularly difficult case that Gideon began to become harsher on Spencer. They were trying to catch a serial killer who had already managed to evade them multiple times. It was a frustrating case and one that had left everyone on edge. In those moments, Gideon found himself taking his frustration out on Reid more and more often. As he watched the young man's mind work, he began to marvel at it. Reid had an incredible ability to see connections that others couldn't, to piece together clues in ways that made no sense to anyone else. He could tell the agent was stuck in thought because he was repeatedley tapping his knuckles together in a pattern that was becoming increasingly loud and annoying. Trying to block out Reid's irritating knocking, he picked through the evidence gathered from the latest crime scene, but the sound was very quickly grating on his quickly fraying nerves until he couldn't concentrate on anything excpet the tapping coming from Reid's desk, breathing heavily, he snapped.
"Reid, could you please stop that ridiculous tapping? We're trying to focus here and you're being extremely unhelpful." Gideon said, his voice loud and aggressive.
Startled, Spencer stilled his fingers immediately, his eyes, wide as saucers, looking up at Gideon's stern expression, without making their eyes meet. He wasn't used to such a direct and public reprimand from his boss.
"Sorry." he mumbled, his cheeks flushing immediatley with embarrassment.
The rest of the team exchanged curious glances, knowing that Gideon's outburst was unusual, none of the others had registered that Reid was doing anything out of the ordinary, they all knew by now that his tapping, rocking, and bouncing was just to help him focus. Derek Morgan and Penelope Garcia shared a look at the youngest member of their team, who had brought his knees up to his chest and started to curl in on himself, seemingly upset by Gideon's outburst.
The meeting continued, but the atmosphere in the room was tense and awkard. Spencer struggled to concentrate on the paperwork he was supposed to be working through. His hands were tightly folded in his lap to stop him from tapping subconciously. His fidgeting had been how he was able to concentrate whilst also trying to ignore the loud sounds of the office as people worked, and Gideon's telling-off had left him feeling insecure, just like his father had done when he was a small child.
As the day progressed, Spencer found himself more and more on edge, being unable to regulate his emotions properly, for fear of being told off by Gideon again. He retreated to his desk after making himself an overly sweet mug of coffee, feeling like he was under a microscope, every movement being studied by Gideon. After noticing Spencer's unease, Derek Morgan approached him quietly.
"Hey, Reid, don't take it personally," Morgan reassured him. "Gideon's just really stressed out about this case. We all are. You know how he gets sometimes."
Spencer nodded silently, but in his head, he knew it was more than Gideon just being stressed by the current workload and the unexpected comment had left its mark, practically throwing him back to his childhood, when his father was less than nice about Reid's stimming. Gideon had never snapped at him like that, even after some of their most horrific cases he hadn't shouted at anyone, and yet here he was shouting at Reid after a relatively average case, over something Reid hadn't even noticed he was doing. Despite that, the case was eventually solved, the tension in the office began to subside, and everyone moved on, despite Reid still feeling a bit put out.