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He’d never been good with change. Even when it was telegraphed ahead of time, the idea that his daily life would somehow look different in the future, even if it was for the better, was enough to send his thoughts spiraling all day. He’d been contented with the team, with the unpredictability of each strange and twisted case butting up against the relative stability of a white-collar job. Maybe not happy — how could you be happy seeing the things they’ve seen? The possibility of worse every day in that meeting room? — but contented nonetheless.
But then Gideon had to leave. It didn’t make sense, and Spencer couldn’t abide things not making sense.
He’d enjoyed elementary school, but only the parts where other people weren’t involved. A structured timetable and all the books he could get his hands on and he was delighted. The teachers were often angry with him, and he couldn’t understand why. Why wouldn’t they want reminding that it was lunchtime soon? Why wouldn’t they want correcting when they wrote Tuesday on the board when it was clearly Wednesday? He wouldn’t mind it if it were him.
“It’s because you’re special, Spencer,” his mother would say, kissing him on the top of the head when he’d come home crying. “They don’t understand people like us. You’re gifted, and they’re just jealous.”
His father would scoff every time. Something about the word special clearly rankled with him, but Spencer could never put his finger on what it was.
“You should have more respect for your teachers,” his father would say dismissively, and wouldn’t look at him. The disappointment would radiate from his father whenever he said things like that, and Spencer could never figure out why.
High school was almost unbearable.
Sometimes he would get pulled out of class, sent to the year above for a period or two to learn about what they were doing, and suddenly find himself put there permanently. The speed of the change never sat right with him, trying to memorize a new timetable and learn where every new classroom was and make sure he was in the same seat every time. Not too close to the door (too distracting), not too close to the window (too distracting), not too close to the bell (he would watch the clock and it would still make him jump every time).
“Lizzie Johnson says you’re a retard,” one girl, Harper, tells him in the library, stretching and twirling her gum from her mouth to her fingers. Spencer can’t stop looking at the spit-slick pink film twisting before him and feels sick. He wants to say that doesn’t make any sense, and Mom says you shouldn’t say that word, but he’s eleven and he’s a high school junior and he’s still not sure what to do when the older kids talk to him. His dad’s not around anymore, but his dad’s advice was never any good anyway.
“Who’s that?” he asks, knowing full well the names of every classmate. Lizzie Johnson was a sophomore held back a grade, with mean eyes and a shark-teeth smile of orthodontics. She tried to trip him every time she saw him in passing.
“Doesn’t matter,” Harper says. Her glossy blonde ponytail bounces as she leans in conspiratorially. “She says you freaked out when the lights came on after the movie in 3rd period English.” He stares into his book, not reading what’s on the pages, repressing the memory of being practically flash-banged when he was just beginning to get invested in Romeo + Juliet. He hadn’t meant to cry, but tears had welled up before he’d even noticed. They well up again, unbidden.
“Please go away,” he manages to squeak out, suddenly very aware of the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead and the strawberry-sweet smell of Harper’s breath.
“Oh yeah, that reminds me,” she says, too loud for the library, forcing the gum back into her mouth with a wet smack. Spencer tries not to wince at the sound.
“Alexa Lisbon wants to meet you behind the fieldhouse after class.”
The PhDs weren’t for his career; they were mostly for fun. Math, because the literature courses weren’t stimulating enough and required far too much group discussion with people who weren’t willing to actually think about the books. But math, pure math, now that was an art, a challenge, for him to work out on his own and sculpt the most elegant equations to solve a problem. Chemistry and Engineering to understand how the world worked on a practical, physical level. He’d been great at grad school, his supervisors couldn’t fault his publication outputs, but no matter how many books on pedagogy he read, he couldn’t figure out how to teach. It was all there in principle, but in practice, with twenty pairs of glassy eyes staring back, he would always stumble over his words and make poor half-jokes that didn’t land.
You’ll be a great professor, Spencer, if you could just learn how to engage with your students, his supervisor had said, clapping him on the back in that old patriarchal way that made him feel very small.
Psychology and sociology though, those were for his future — the FBI, and maybe from there, the Behavioral Analysis Unit. If he could just understand why they treated him like this, his students, his classmates, his father, then he could course-correct accordingly. He’s nearly eighteen, he figures it’s about time he understood why people kept treating him so poorly.
That’s where he thinks about autism for the first time.
He notes the details down with the same efficiency as everything else covered in the psych lecture, a range of conditions lumped together under the heading of ‘developmental disability’. Sure, the thought had occurred to him before — his love of patterns and structure, the way he couldn’t stand change, or bright lights, or loud noises. But the lecture was all to do with children. He’d been like that as a child, but he’d grown out of it, surely? He was better now, less easily overwhelmed by the world around him, less sensitive. The word always sat bitter on his tongue.
He asks Ethan over coffee in the department lounge.
“That last lecture we had, on developmental conditions. A lot of it was about children.” He’s trying to be casual, sips on his paper cup of coffee. It’s burnt, the acridity hidden under a tablespoon of cloying sugar. “I wish they’d say more about adults.” He’s not sure why it’s bothering him so much. He knows autistic adults exist, even if he’s only really learnt about them from a handful of stereotypes in books and TV, but why aren’t they learning about them?
Ethan looks confused, leans forward, as if he didn’t want to be overheard.
“Yeah, I know right.” He’s looking around. “It’s not really fair, especially given y’know…” He tails off, gestures at Spencer with a small hand movement up-and-down.
Something makes Spencer balk at that.
“What do you mean, me? I was just wondering why it was about children, it feels like a really obvious oversight. Why would it have anything to do with me- I’m not autistic.”
“Really?” Genuine surprise crosses Ethan’s face, and he puts down his coffee cup. “Are you sure? I hate to say it Spencer, but you’re practically textbook.”
He didn’t know what to make of that.
“Are you sure it wasn’t picked up as a child?” Spencer rankles at the tone of Ethan’s voice; the way he’s suddenly acting like he’s talking to a kid. He knew he was younger than the other students, but he was friends with Ethan precisely because he didn’t talk to him like that. He’s suddenly hyper-aware of his body, the way his leg is bouncing up and down without him realizing it. He forces it still. He tries not to think of how warm the room is, or how badly it smells of stale coffee and microwaved vegetables.
“I don’t know, maybe?” He puts his coffee down too, leans back, crosses his arms. He’s trying to telegraph let’s drop this, I don’t want to think about this, but he’s not sure Ethan’s picking up on it. He can’t figure out why he feels so defensive, but he’s never been good at figuring out why he feels a certain way.
Maybe he’s right, y’know, a small voice inside him rises up. What if this is why you see the world like this?
A feeling not entirely unrelated to fear swells inside of him from nowhere. And then, an even smaller voice:
Why would it be such a bad thing?
He tries to ask his mother only once.
“Mom, do you remember when I was a kid, and I used to get really stressed at school?” He’s picking his words very carefully, his voice gentle. She’s perched on the dusty couch, turning a copy of Le Morte d’Arthur over and over in her hands, pausing to flip through it now and again without taking any of it in. She’s not having a good day, but she’s not had many good days recently.
“And I would come home crying?” She looks at him, a shred of lucidity pushing up from somewhere deep inside her. Her eyes are so terribly sad.
“Oh, Spencer,” she says, reaching for him on the couch next to her. He lets her stroke his hair, trying to think of what to say.
“Did the school ever mention autism to you? That I might be autistic?”
Her hands still in his hair.
“Don’t say that, Spencer. That… that word. There’s nothing wrong with you. Your father used to say it a lot, but there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re my perfect, sweet boy.”
It’s not the outcome he’s hoping for, but he can’t stop hearing the phrase there’s nothing wrong with you on repeat in his head.
Three weeks later, he turns eighteen, and can only stand and watch as two men escort her from the only home he’s ever known.
He requests a copy of his medical records. If he’s going to apply to the FBI, he needs to know what they’re going to turn up on a background check, and there’s something eating at him at the idea that there’s something about him that he doesn’t already know. He knows about the genetic risks of schizophrenia, and the skills and grades required to get into the FBI, and statistics about broken homes and Las Vegas public schools, but he doesn’t know much about autism.
So he does what he does best: he reads every book he can get his hands on. He learns whole new fields of study he’d not been taught in college, the disability rights movement and the neurodiversity paradigm, activism and advocacy. This is all good to know, this will help me when I work for the FBI, he thinks, pressing down any identification with what he’s reading into a small corner of his mind to maybe think about later, or never.
The medical records arrive by special delivery, a decent stack despite the fact he’s only eighteen and a half. The usual medical check-ups as a baby, standard vaccines, developmental milestones. He tries not to absorb absolutely everything in front of him, but he’s long since learned the worst part about an eidetic memory is that you can’t shut it off. He didn’t need to know that his father took him to most of his baby appointments, but you didn’t need to know any of this, did you?
And he flips the page, and there it is: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome.
Of course it would have been his father who got him tested, probably to prove a point. His mother would never have let them label him like this. He looks away from the page and at the blank expanse of wall. He doesn’t need to read anything else. Would it have helped to know this sooner? Would it have made you feel any better while your father ignored you and the kids kicked the life out of you at school?
He thinks back to the books he’s read, all the similar stories, about accommodations, and support networks, and all the other people out there who’d felt the same way he did, who faced the same strange looks and hushed tones of voice from people who didn’t understand.
There’s nothing wrong with you, his mother had kept saying, and he tries to hold the feeling close to his chest, even if he doesn’t quite believe it.
Spencer Reid meets Jason Gideon for the second time in an upmarket coffee shop in DC. Gideon had given a guest lecture on profiling serial arsonists, and it had taken everything in Spencer’s power not to pepper Gideon non-stop with questions afterwards about exceptions and edge cases and have you maybe considered that—? Gideon had listened though, nodded his way through and even smiled once, at which point he pressed his business card into Spencer’s hand and told him to get in touch.
“A career in the BAU is hard work, but you already know that, I imagine,” Gideon says, blowing gently on his cup of jasmine tea. The glass teapot sits between them, gently infusing the water darker and darker around the flower inside. “Nearly three PhDs and two BAs at your age is quite remarkable.”
Spencer tries not to beam too proudly, but he can’t help but smile, sitting on his hands so he doesn’t gesticulate too wildly. The armchair feels like expensive leather under him. He’s determined to be on his best behavior for Gideon — masking, that’s what the books call it.
“Behavioral analysis is what I’m interested in most though. I started out with the PhDs for fun, but I’d like to apply my skills more practically.” That’s it, think about the transferable skills, how can you be an asset to him? It’s not quite a job interview, but Spencer knows if he does well here, Gideon could be a valuable contact, maybe even a mentor. The thought thrums up inside him like electricity and he has to stop himself from twisting his fingers together in excitement.
He lists off his skills as conversationally as he can muster, quotes Gideon’s academic publications verbatim, and asks all the right probing questions. He’s been practising on Ethan, in the mirror, to anyone who’ll tolerate him long enough.
Gideon looks impressed.
“You would be an asset to the FBI,” he says, noncommittally at the end of his cup of tea. Spencer presses his hands into the fabric, trying not to bob up and down. Eye-contact, but not too much, remember.
“And I think you could be a decent profiler someday.” Spencer tries to subdue his elated response, betrayed only by the small twitching of his knee. “Provided you pass all the background checks and testing.”
“Oh, I have one last question, actually,” and he tries to play it off as if it’s an afterthought, but he couldn’t find anything about it on the websites, or in any of the books he’d read, and the thought had been bubbling up inside him the whole time. “Maybe you could already tell—” of course he could tell, he’s one of the best profilers in the country, “but I’m autistic. Do you think that would, um, hurt my chances?”
Gideon’s brow furrows, like a disappointed schoolteacher. Spencer remembers his father telling him to respect his teachers, and suddenly he has to look anywhere else than at Gideon. Shame wells up inside him, and he’s not sure why. For a brief second, he curses having a diagnosis on file.
“It’ll come up in the background check, but you’ve mostly got it under control, so you should be fine.” Spencer tries not to frown back at him. It’s not like diabetes or blood pressure. “I can always put in a good word,” Gideon says with a small smile that needles Spencer as much as it provides relief.
It was everything he’d ever wanted. But, from then on, he knew that the FBI would only be interested in the parts of him that they could use, that he was a tool for solving puzzles, or reciting facts and statistics, as long as it was— he was under control.
He won’t let it hold him back. He pushes his way through the FBI Academy, pushes his way through every psych eval and one-on-one meeting with authority figures that barely view him as a person. Gideon at his shoulder, don’t say that, don’t do this, you’re better than that Spencer, c’mon. Every night he goes home to his apartment and he can barely speak, barely eat or move, can’t turn the lights on because they’re too bright, can’t stop tapping his fingers to his thumbs until the weight of the day passes. You’re burning out. You shouldn’t mask like this all day, it’s going to burn you up.
He pushes and pushes all the way to the BAU.
And then Gideon disappears.
He keeps his mind on the Milwaukee case as best he can, even with Section Chief Strauss crawling all over them. She never liked him much anyway, didn’t understand why he sometimes forgot basic pleasantries, or didn’t always make direct eye contact when he spoke to her. He’s used to the way she looks at him with faint disgust.
Something’s gnawing at him. It follows him all the way up to Gideon’s cabin an hour away up winding trails and through thick forest. Gideon would have a good reason for missing a case; he never missed a plane, not like Spencer did in the darkest clutches of Dilaudid. He’s probably chasing a complex case, something fringe and arcane, a solution unlikely and brilliant, before he presents it to us tomorrow at ten am.
The lights are off as he pulls up. His stomach sinks.
Maybe he’s having an early night? Maybe the cabin will be filled with the warm smell of roasted garlic and potatoes, and he’s just asleep in a haze red wine and smooth jazz. Maybe this is his way of retiring at last.
Spencer lets himself in and that’s the second sign something is terribly wrong. The cabin reeks of stale air and leaf mulch and old wood. The shelves are bare. A pit opens inside him so cavernous it threatens to swallow him whole. He forces down thoughts of rural Georgia and Tobias Hankel, the image of Gideon swallowing his own gun.
He sweeps the torchlight over the room, tries not to flinch at the shadows that stretch across the wood-paneled walls. He sees Gideon’s gun and badge on the desk, and a letter with his name scrawled in block capitals, just like the one his father had left.
It’s not a suicide note, but it’s not not one either.
“You must be frightened. I apologize for that. I never meant to cause you any pain.”
The wind whistles through the window of the cabin; dark tree branches twist into the sky illuminated by the moonlight. He reads on through the account of grief and guilt, the need for clear-headedness in profiling, and how the world now troubled and confused Gideon in a way it never had before.
Spencer sinks into the chair, clutches the letter in shaking hands. If Gideon could no longer make sense of the world around them, then what hope did that leave for him?
Suddenly, Spencer wasn’t sure who to turn to when he needed advice at work. He bounced his leg in the bullpen and twisted his fingers together in thought while he did his paperwork, and there was no Gideon to tell him please sit still, Reid, you’re making me feel sick. He info-dumped in case introductions, and he didn’t know who to look at to cut him off with a small disapproving look. Everyone else just…let him be. He couldn’t help but feel frustrated — how am I supposed to get better at my job now — not to mention the slow ache of Gideon’s letter growing in his heart, poisoning his thoughts.
He turns to the next authority figure he can think of. In a quiet lull between cases, he knocks on Hotch’s door and is waved in, closing it behind him.
“Is everything alright?” Hotch asks, and Spencer isn’t sure how to go about this, whether to sit, or stand, or pace around the room. He takes the seat, makes the correct amount of eye contact, folds his hands politely.
“Yes. No. Well. Okay.” He takes a breath and lets his gaze wander around the room.
“You’ve probably seen it on my file, but I’m autistic.” He ventures a glance at Hotch, whose gaze softens. Spencer is confused. There’s no fatherly disappointment behind his eyes, no disgust or confusion, and Spencer isn’t sure what to do with it.
“Yes, I know.” A pause. There’s no shame, no embarrassment. “Is there anything we can be doing better to help?” Spencer is blindsided. He was expecting at the very least a terse what’s this all about? or a what relevance does that have to anything that’s going on?
“Oh. Um. I don’t know really. I need to go and think about accommodations.” True, all true. The idea that they might help him rather than punish him for any idiosyncrasies somehow hadn’t occurred to him until right that second.
“I know Gideon leaving has been hard on you,” Hotch says after another long stretching silence. He looks guilty. Why would he be guilty? “And that maybe we’ve not been as supportive as we could be.”
Spencer feels torn down the middle: Gideon’s voice inside him is telling him off for expecting special treatment, saying you’re better than this every time he’s felt overwhelmed at work. The other half of him, the half of him that read all those books, and puts in the effort to unmask every night when he’s too exhausted to even speak, is agreeing, is crying out yes, please be more supportive, please let me move my hands and ramble and do all the things that make me feel better when the day gets too much.
For the first time in a long time, his own voice wins.
“When you figure out what you need, please just let us know,” Hotch says, not unkindly, and for the first time since before Spencer can remember, a dark cloud begins to lift.
He tells Penelope. Of course, she’d clocked him from day one, given him all the space he’d needed to fidget, all the time he’d needed to explain obscure factoids at length from Doctor Who or Star Trek. She was trustworthy. She could keep a secret. She knew, but she’d never tell the others, or be weird about it, and that meant more to him that she’d ever know. He spins gently on the spare chair in her new office, the screens blurring together into a smear of glowing colors.
“I don’t know what to say to the rest of the team,” he admits quietly, bringing the chair to a halt, tapping his fingers on the arms. An old ache deep inside him radiates into the room, shame, shame, shame.
“Why would you need to say anything to them?” she asks, eyebrow quirked. She twirls a pink feathered pen in her fingers with practiced dexterity. “Hotch knows, and if anyone’s rude to you, he can keep them in line.”
The idea of Hotch having his back about this instead of trying to keep him under control is a strange but comforting phenomenon. He’d spent so long trying to impress Gideon, he’d forgotten all the parts of himself he’d lost in the process. A wave of embarrassment roils through him.
“What if-” His voice dies in his throat, and he coughs and tries again. “What if they don’t like me anymore?” He can’t look at her, feels stupid and childish and small. He thinks of the way Gideon, or his grad school supervisor, or his father used to look at him, disappointed and ashamed. Do better. Be better.
He tries not to think about the way Morgan and JJ cut him off sometimes, how frustration flickers across their expressions when he’s trying to articulate a point but can’t get there as quick as they’d like him to. But for the most part they do listen, they prompt him for information that only he can give. They’re kind and don’t pity him, or treat him like a kid, or worse, an embarrassment. They respect him. The thought that might change if he asks for accommodations makes him feel sick.
Penelope’s expression melts into somewhere between horrified and deeply, deeply sad, and Spencer doesn’t know how to respond apart from tapping his fingers and gazing into his lap.
“Reid.” Her voice is gentle, but unyieldingly firm. “If they want to be weird about your disability accommodations, which might I add is your legal right and I’m sure they won’t be, but even if they are, that is on them, not you. You’re not just our colleague, you’re our friend. You’re my friend. Knowing you is a privilege.”
He meets her gaze, and the ache deep inside him begins to shift and reform. It’s the same feeling he’d felt after speaking with Hotch. A lightening of his soul. The feeling of jagged edges being soothed back together.
Not a burden. Not a tool. A privilege. A friend.
“You just keep doing you, my beautiful boy genius.”
With teary eyes, and hands twisting freely, he smiles.