So I went with something a little different than usual this time. It came into my mind and I had to write it down but now I'm really unsure about it.
I don't think I've ever been this afraid of posting something before.
I apologise in advance. It's a bit all over the place.
Well, here it goes… Enjoy.
Disclaimer: these characters belong to people who are not me.
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The one thing Spencer Reid is one-hundred-percent sure of, is that nobody - nobody - owes you anything.
His childhood, with its knack for invisibility, is proof of that.
On the playground, in high school, at college, amongst fellow classmates, teachers, he was a child and nobody noticed.
A human-being, at heart, despite every outlandish fact and an mounting accumulation of knowledge. But no-one really cared about that.
Those who were older, who were supposed to know better, took because there was so much packed into such a extraordinarily youthful body - surely that head has enough to spare when it's so close to exploding? They set up tests and gave him big thumbs up while they marvelled at his potential. They scrutinized his intellect when they should have scrutinized his clothes - worn and dirty and much too large for a kid his age, as they weighed down heavily on his malnourished bones.
As for his peers… Well, he might as well have been an alien, for all they knew. Weird and separated by their very language, (Spencer, with his lack of social grace and words that quite frankly scared them, intimidated them) they could do as they pleased, say what they wished, because he was so odd that it couldn't be cruel.
So he learnt, from an early age, that flaws were expendable the same way 'friends' were provisional.
He tried - he tried so hard - to be the best that he could be. But what if being the best was the very obstacle you couldn't hope to overcome?
His solution? Being as unaffected as possible.
Reid prided himself on letting the insults roll off his back as he buried himself in books and built a wall of facts that were as solid as they were safe.
In public, he stayed strong. Alone - that's the only place he could afford to fall apart. It wasn't even about showing weakness, as such, for they too could be endearing if you played it right. Mutual shortcomings draw others in. You can laugh it off. Play it down.
So long as you don't show that it can be upsetting, you can rise above it. Perfectly okay with imperfection.
It's the darker sides of yourself… those weaknesses are never to be unburdened. Like being addicted to dilaudid, for instance. Sure, the team discovered this little titbit eventually, but he wasn't exactly running to tell them and he seldom speaks of it, even now. Even back then, it had confirmed what he already knew - that broadcasting problems only ever generates distrust and uneasiness, never warmth. He saw it in the way Morgan or Hotch's eyes would narrow in suspicion if he was ever a few minutes late, or after a particularly tough case if he retreated to the back of the jet to be alone, cocooned in thought.
They way they sometimes still do.
In the end, no-one is going to force themselves to stay with you.
Don't give them a reason to leave.
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It started off small.
Thumbing the volume on his I-pod so that it only ever played on an even number, only ever putting his bread in the left side of the toaster, locking the door twice, just to be sure; Nothing to worry about.
Over a while, he guesses, it just sort of.. Snowballed.
The problem, Reid realised, was his eidetic memory. Every time he did something in a particular way and it registered that, hey, he's done this exactly the same way a handful of times before, he… he just couldn't let it go.
And the concept of forgetting, even once, was enough to spark a flare of panic in his chest and it became so much more important not to lose sight of…of these things.
Repeating developed into a must.
And it spiralled.
Case after case of blood and gore and lives taken over and over, time and time again, simply because they can, and Reid was wound so tight, and it just helped quiet something inside of him that was dirty and repulsive and wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong.
He was so flawed that everything else must remain perfect.
No coffee stains. Black pens, never blue.
Left - always on the left where it's right and everything's well and good.
Perfectly disordered - flower pots tilted, angled towards sunlight, in a perfectly aimless direction. Books stacked in order - first by series, then by ranking in said series, followed by author, while perfectly incorporating colour. Blue alongside purple, purple next to grey, but grey with yellow? That's… that's just. You just don't.
Deodorant there. Where he can snatch it at a moment's notice and stuff into a go-bag. A go-bag that's always packed and loaded, conveniently propped up against that wall, over there, see, by the door. Oh, and the clothes, either folded or discarded on the back of this chair. Perfect. Perfect even amid imperfection, because he put it there.
Secure now, he can breathe cleanly, sleep soundly.
Nothing bad will happen.
He was panicky and shaky, but this helped. He's not sure how, but it helps.
In control, when in fact, essentially, these actions aren't even his own.
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The first person to notice something off about their cherished little genius was Morgan.
He'd been so careful not to let anyone observe any of his daily rituals, (the most difficult to conceal being the inconvenience of working on the fifth floor. He had to ride all the way up to the sixth on the elevator before he felt satisfied. Then all he had to do was take the stairs down to their own. It wasn't too far) and out of them all, this had to be the most ridiculous, which was saying something.
"Hey, Pretty Boy?"
He poked his head around the door frame to see Morgan investigating the window. His muscles locked right there, holding him in place. "What's up with this, man? Every time I come over to your place, these curtains are always shut. I don't get it. It's, like, the main source of light for your living room."
Swallowing around his swollen tongue, he remarked defensively, "So?"
The curtains were another thing that had gotten out of hand. He'd left in a hurry for a case in the middle of the night and when he'd returned five days later, Reid simply couldn't bear to touch them.
"So…" Morgan shot him a strange look. "It's odd, is all. Do you dislike the view or something?" He shrugged. "I always thought it was pretty neat."
"It's not that-" Reid began, but the words quickly dried up in his throat.
As casually as if he hadn't just caused his best friend's blood pressure to spike to an all-time high, Morgan reached out to peel back one half of the fabric, and Spencer all but lunged at him for it.
"No! Wait! Stop!"
The pained cry astonished the other profiler, who flinched at the sudden sound.
With the blood drained from his face, Spencer stood on trembling legs, on the verge of hyperventilating. His hands clenched into taut fists at his sides and his teeth clattered. Clattered, for God's sake!
Morgan, needless to say, was overwhelmed by the reaction.
His first response, naturally, was to calm Reid down, but after… after, confused and concerned, he asked, and he begged, and he demanded answers, but Spencer wouldn't budge.
Overcome with guilt and shame, he requested that the FBI agent leave him alone, and alone, that guilt turned to anger, and in anger, he silently seethed.
It was cruel, he eventually decided, to barge in and rip open those curtains - cruel to flood his darkness with light that gushes with truth and the distinct inability to hide.
It was cruel, really, to make him confront the fact that there is no explanation, and let him burn with the humiliation of everything he could never hope to say.
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After the incident with Morgan, the BAU members became much more attentive of their youngest.
Too attentive. They must have held some secret meeting they'd obviously neglected to invite him to.
When JJ walked into the coffee room while he was getting a refill - having specifically waited until he was alone. God dammit, she just had to follow him in there! - it was the next shift in the nightmare that would become his unravelling. Dousing his cup under the tap, then drying, then rinsing again, (twice. It has to be even, remember?) he'd topped his coffee with six sugars and counted his six separate stirs before Reid was startled by a sudden cough. Eyes sharp and fastened on his.
He'd forced himself to steady his breaths and chanted with as much vigour as he could possibly muster, it's okay, it's alright, it doesn't matter, she doesn't know, she didn't see, and by the end of his mantra, as she carried on as normal, Spencer dared to hope that he'd been spared.
But then he noted the scarcely perceptible wrinkling of JJ's forehead and deep inside, he had to wonder: had he really?
His next mistake came several days later, when Garcia knocked into his desk by accident as she came marching by with her arms laden with files that then toppled onto his own pile, both of them intermixing and scattering everywhere.
"Oh, my God!" she gasped, her mouth falling open. "I am so, so sorry! Reid, I swear, I didn't mean to! Here, let me help you-"
"No!" he'd snapped and immediately felt pangs of remorse as the tech goddess' face fell and the bullpen plummeted into silence.
"I mean," Reid scrambled, quickly assembling the papers. The sooner they were organized, they sooner this thing would quit smothering his chest. "It's okay. I can manage. Don't even worry about it, Garcia. I'll sort them out and send them up when I'm finished, alright? It'll save you the hassle."
"Uh.. okay," she tentatively agreed, hurrying away looking absolutely shell-shocked.
Everyone stared as he tallied the pages and raced to set them right, but despite all the attention his crazed actions were receiving, he simply couldn't stop.
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Reid hadn't known it then, but that had been strike three.
Together, Hotch and Rossi called him in, and he'd sat across from them, tearful, robbed of breath, and divulged his sins.
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"I have brown eyes."
Settling back in the chair, she appraises the pokerfaced profiler with a posture so stiff, he almost smiles. Good. "Alright," she continues in that moving-on tone of hers that he finds ever so charming, and huh, look at that, her lower lip tightens. "Anything else you'd care to share, Doctor?"
That cardigan you're wearing is positively hideous.
"My hair, incidentally, also happens to be brown," Reid murmurs pensively after some tense consideration. "Would you say chestnut? I think it's chestnut. But that's the thing, isn't it? My brown, in all probability, isn't necessarily the same as your brown. I read somewhere, once, that our identification of colour is shaped by the world around us, but it follows no predetermined pattern," he rambles, becoming more and more animated as he struggles to push the words from his lips at the same speed they enter his mind.
What's interesting, though, is that our differentiating perception of colours has little to no effect on our emotional responses to similar shades. Blue, for instance, tends to have a more calming effect due to the shorter wavelengths of light hitting the retina, whereas brown…" His brow furrows, his heart pulsating with anxiousness though he can't quite pinpoint why. "People rarely-they rarely like brown."
The hand previously still is now scribbling furiously.
Another lengthy pause.
"Dr Reid, though true to the question, this isn't the sort of information I was hoping for. How about something a little more personal, perhaps? Growing up, did you have any kind of pets? Hobbies? Favourite film or book? That sort of thing."
Frustrated by her single-mindedness, Spencer scratches the back of his neck where his nails can dig generously into the heated flesh without the intrusive nudging of a certain gaze.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," he shrugs, but it's stiff and jerky and not the least bit convincing. "But this is personal. What, do tell, could be more personal than my appearance? It's the image that stares back at me in the mirror everyday, a brief pausing in your step and that's all it takes to fixate. No matter how many well-meaning, inspirational quotes that you place around it, our reflections are what usually procure our focus." A tightening of his skin, in his chest, a pause mid-breath. "Not only that, but it's one of the first aspects of ourselves that we evaluate, compare, grow to love or hate. One could argue, that much of our self-esteem relies on how we look. I know, for a fact, that whenever I'm in the field or out somewhere, anywhere, for a case, that it's my appearance that consistently lets me down." He momentarily falters. "Because I'm so damn easy to overlook."
Tone dark and unwavering, the underlying message is more than apparent.
Dr Flynn straightens immediately as if personally slighted, and with an inward roll of the eyes, he knows, in that instant, that he will not bow down to whatever holier-than-thou garbage she tries to throw at him.
"Dr Reid, I'm sure the other officers you encounter are nothing short of professional-"
"You know what?" he stands abruptly, "We're done here."
Therapy, he decides, may not be for him.
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Later, when the bullpen's dark and chilled by those who've went home, Hotch corners him in the corridor.
"What happened?" he demands, having no doubt been filled in.
"She didn't want to listen to a thing I said, Hotch. And I didn't want to listen to her."
One look at the expression on the younger agent's face, and he sighs before tiredly rubbing his eyes.
Silence thickens the air.
"I'll make some calls," the unit chief finally says, and even with the usual veil between his thoughts and his features in place, there's a pale saddening that seeps into his shadowy eyes nevertheless, that makes guilt tear through Reid's spine. "We'll find the right person, Reid. We won't let you down, alright?"
Again, a small voice pipes up, that part that can't forget, Won't let you down... again.
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It takes a while, - two months, to be exact - to find an acceptable therapist.
He attends sessions weekly, but when all is said and done, he still returns home and indulges in some behaviours.
It's chaos of the mind that manifests into an almost dangerous frenzy of order.
And chaos can't be fixed overnight.
But he'll get there. Slowly, and with the help and support of his team - of his family, maybe, when he's feeling sentimental - he'll get there.
Thank-you so much for reading. As always, please let me know what you think.