"Spencer, my office" Gideon called as his fast pace led him there, he didn't bother to check if Spencer was following, he knew he was. When he heard a hesitant and stammered "yes sir?" He smiled, knowing that the young man was likely thinking all sorts of possibilities, that perhaps he'd done something wrong, perhaps he was being fired, perhaps his mentor was actually a psychopath and was going to kill him upon entering. The fact that it was so amazingly unlikely didn't stop him from thinking it. It wasn't a lack of trust, nor lack of intelligence, that much always obvious. But with a mind capable of so much thought, a mind working as mindmaps and flow charts, a mind that has to work so much harder to understand the world, but so much less to understand, well, just about anything else, it's not surprising that some ridiculous thoughts passed through, as well as all of the perfectly logical ones. Somewhere in that mess of thoughts about this unknown situation, was probably a quiet thought saying 'maybe he just wants to talk to me'.
Which would be correct.
"Spencer, nothings wrong" he said warmly "take a seat" when he looked up to a confused face he realised, but not fast enough to prevent the "where to?" That the young man responded. He smiled and chuckled slightly. "Sit down" and when Spencer did, he continued.
"So, this is a big change right?" He said referring to the change from the FBI education department to the BAU. Spencer nodded. "How are you handeling it?" He asked. Spencer thought for a moment before saying "it's ok" without looking up. "How do you feel about all the changes?" Jason furthered, hoping to get a better idea of how he was doing. "I don't know" was the quiet response followed by a much more confident "did you know that alexithymia, or the impairment of the ability to identify ones own emotions is quite common in people on the autistic spectrum, but it's commonly confused with not feeling emotion." How was that expected and unexpected at the same time? "Ok, but if I asked you to tell me if it is red or green, which would it be?"
"Brown"
"Brown?"
"Yes"
"Why brown?"
"It's a mixture or red and green"
"Ok, so what's green?" Gideon asked, that will be easier to talk about than the bad things, we'll build up to that.
After thinking for a moment Spencer replied "I like having my own desk, mine is near Morgan's desk, sometimes he puts his paperwork in my pile but he thinks I don't know, and I like being good at things."
"Ok, that's good, now what about the red things?" At this Spencer ducked his head, unsure of what to say, not wanting to say it. "It just; takes a bit of getting used to..." he said, hoping to avoid the question, when he was met with silence he knew he had to continue "it can get kind of loud, and people sometimes touch me and I don't like it, and I don't like not knowing when I'm going to have to leave" his voice was rising in pitch and his eyes were beginning to water. The steady bounce of his leg was replaced by a jerky rock, his hands were wringing around one another and his eyes were secured to the floor, his posture so rigid it looked as though lifting his head might snap his neck. You could see the ragged intake of breath. "Ok, it's ok Spencer , now I know about this I can help you" getting no response he slowly stood up "come on, let's sit on the couch" he said, hoping the less formal setting may calm him slightly, and after a few moments Spencer seemed to comprehend what he had said and slowly moved toward the couch in question.
"Deep breaths Spencer" Gideon tried, hoping that it would work
Quiet cries filled the silence in the room as Reid brought his hands up to his face and rocked back and forth. All of a sudden he heard Spencer speak, far higher than usual and spat through tears. "Make it stop" he said quietly.
Moving to be lower than Spencer's face so as not to be intimidating Gideon softly said "make what stop?" Hoping he could finally help to young genius. No such luck.
As soon as he finished the sentence Spencer all but jumped to his feet, immediately Jason could see this would end badly. "MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP!" Spencer was now screaming at the top of his voice. His hands were tight in fists and were being hit full strength against the side of this face. The shouting was only getting more and more desperate, and was past beginning to draw attention. People in the bullpen were looking up towards the office, probably wondering what in the world was being done to him. Gideon was now on his feet trying to calm Spencer down, to no avail. After a moment Hotch appeared at the door, he of course knew of Spencer's autism, but had not expected anything like this. "What happened?" He directed the question towards Gideon, not expecting to get a coherent response from the youngest any time soon. Gideon gave a silent look that said 'I have no idea'. The only thing he could think about was trying to calm Spencer enough to at least stop hurting himself. He had seen this type of thing happen before but never this bad, he'd always managed to catch it early but this had just happened. "Spencer, it's ok, everything's ok" Hotch tried, but apparently that was the wrong thing to say. Before he even knew what was about to happen, which is pretty fast considering how fast his reflexes are, the younger man had drew his arm back and slammed it into the wall with all his strength, a very loud bang let the profilers know that that was definitely going to hurt later on. Not until his adrenaline calmed down though. All the commotion and the sudden bang had drawn the other members on the BAU to come to the office, and seeing the state of the kid he was slowly getting to know, but already grown a brotherly protectiveness for, Morgan ran forward to grab his arms before he could do anymore damage. Reid of course did not like being grabbed, struggling to get away from Morgan's grip he began to scream even louder "NO! ITS NOT OK EVERYTHING IS NOT OK!" Choking for breath. Hotch ordered the others out of the room, and Gideon began instructing Morgan to try to give Reid some deep pressure. Eventually the desperate breaths turned more into sobs, and the struggling began to subside and so the two set Spencer lay out on the couch. Gideon coached him back to some sense of calm and eventually all that was left to do was to get a soft blanket to put over him as he feel asleep, exhausted from his meltdown. His hand had swelled where he'd hit it, but he was refusing to have any ice, not wanting to upset him further Gideon dropped it for now. He watched the young man sleeping from his desk, noting the hundreds of red and purple dots appearing on his face from crying enough to cause blood vessels to leak. He knew when Spencer woke up he'd have a blinding headache and would probably feel a bit out of it. But for now he was asleep. Just as he had told Spencer, he needed to solve one thing at a time.
