Spencer Reid sat at the table opposite the man who, half an hour ago, had walked up to him and kissed him as if was about to go out of fashion and tried to make sense of what he was hearing.
"Differential calculus?" he asked again as if the answer might change. Spencer looked around the table and took in the various nodding heads.
"Power, derivative, thing to the one less; differentiate and put equal to zero; chain rule; quotient rule..." The looks were getting more confused. "Math 201?" This final garnered a look of comprehension.
"You did physics or chemistry or something didn't you?" One of the, currently nameless, inhabitants asked.
"Chemistry but..."
"So you had to do this stuff didn't you?" All Spencer could do was nod, still confused as to how an entire group of, presumably intelligent, men hadn't done differential calculus in high school and were apparently failing now.
"So here's the deal. You help us get through the course." Agent Hotchner's insane brother said.
"I'm not going to help you cheat." Visions of high school jocks paraded through Spencer's mind. A wall of shocked faces stared back at him.
"Well if that's what you think..."
"I don't believe it!"
"What's the point in that? There's little things called midterms..."
"You help us get through though the course." Sean cut across his study group. "In return we provide some manual labour moving things into your new place. And," he held up his hand for some silence. "As an additional bonus, Mike here will feed you at the sessions."
Mike, who had mean leaning on the wall and laughing broke in with his own, "hey," then looked Spencer up and down before adding, "then again he does need feeding up. He looks like Charles Atlas' before photo!"
Spencer could feel himself going red under all the scrutiny and could only nod at the question, "deal?"
This all led Spencer to here; sitting on the sofa in the den, wedged between Sean and Mike trying to eat chips and salsa, while the other two were jumping about from excitement at the game on the television. Starting to feel battered it was something of a relief to get to the commercials, even if it did focus the attention to the two men on Spencer and the bowl of chips.
"So, what do you do at the FBI?" "Is big bro treating you alright?" Questions came from both sides and Spencer's head bounced back and forth as if he was watching some demented tennis match.
"Agent Hotchner is one of the agents in charge. I don't really have a lot to do with him." Switch. "Most of what I'm doing at the moment is reviewing old case files trying to understand the profiles, doing my own and matching what I've come up with against the ones that caught the unsub." Switch. "He's out of town at the moment with SSAIC Gideon. Gone to Boston on a case." Switch. "Hopefully in a couple of months I'll be going on the bigger cases with the team." Switch, but the attention had reverted back to the television.
Spencer reviewed what he had just said. It was true that he hoped to one day be as good a profiler as agents Gideon or Hotchner, or even Morgan, but he had to admit to being terrified at the thought of travelling with the team. For all the early advancement in school and going to college so young he really was something of a homebody.
For now it was companionable to sit with these people, who if they had been at his high school would have numbered amongst his tormentors, and ponder how things had changed. Finally, he was grateful that Gideon had convinced him to apply for the FBI and had pulled the necessary strings to get Spencer assigned to the BAU with no seniority. It was a world away from the job offers from industry even knowing the satisfaction to be had from solving a process engineering puzzle, this felt like a good fit.
