Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds and intend no copyright infringement.
"What's the matter, Spence?" Steaming coffee cup in hand, JJ came walking over to Reid's desk.
He didn't react at all, just kept pouring over the sheets of paper he had been staring at for the past ten minutes or so. They didn't look like they belonged to a case file, handwritten as they were. Apparently someone had made a row of calculations with a plethora of formulae in blue ink and then someone else had corrected it in red ink. Lots of red ink.
JJ put her cup on his desk with a loud tock sound.
Still no reaction from Reid.
She pulled up a chair, sat down and gave the desk a not-exactly-subtle kick that caused the coffee right next to his left hand to slosh dangerously.
Did Dr. Reid in any way acknowledge her presence or the imminent peril of his documents getting soaked with brown liquid?
No.
"I'm getting worried", JJ told Prentiss, who had come over from the coffee machine to join her.
"Don't worry, he's just a bit puzzled, that's all."
When JJ threw her a puzzled look, Prentiss explained: "He's tutoring a course in advanced algebra at the local college. A favor for an old professor of his. They had some trouble finding a suitable teacher on short notice and Reid stepped in. Now the students had to take an important test, something out of the ordinary schedule, and one of them spectacularly failed…"
"I explained this to him four times! And he still started exactly the way he always started, although I explicitly told him…even wrote it down for him…" Reid was talking more to himself than to the others. "He kept saying his way works just as well…"
"Kid, you've just run into the greatest force in the universe", Morgan told the young doctor, approaching the desk now, too. Garcia, coming out of her office for a quick chat with the girls, was in close pursuit.
Reid frowned in confusion at Morgan's comment."Greatest force in the universe? Which one, the Strong Nuclear force that operates inside the nucleus? Between the nucleons? Or the electromagnetic interaction mediated by photons?"
"I'm talking about the force that causes wars, stricken power plants, oil in the Gulf of Mexico and tons of broken marriages – stupidity. Sometimes people just don't want to listen, they think they don't need advice, they're too proud to accept help or a mixture of all those factors. It's not your fault."
"Or they just don't see something good, even if it's right before your eyes", Garcia chimed in. She was not looking at Reid at all. Her eyes were trained on Morgan.
"Sometimes stupidity can take on the form of blindness. People walk through their life without recognizing that it could be so much better, if they only paid a little more attention."
"Everything okay, babygirl?", Morgan asked, slightly confused as her uncharacteristically harsh tone.
Garcia however, just turned and walked away.
"I'd really like to kick Kevin's ass for breaking up with her so shortly after Christmas", he grumbled, watching her retreating backside.
"I don't think it's Kevin's ass you should kick", Prentiss corrected him. "She broke up with him, didn't you know?"
"She? But why…?"
"There's a force in the universe even stronger than stupidity, Derek", JJ explained softly. "And she felt she couldn't ignore it anymore."
It took a while till that message got through, but in the evening Garcia received an unexpected telephone call that led to an even more unexpected invitation for New Year's eve.
Talk about a promising beginning…