This isn't the sort of thing Gideon is supposed to be doing. This is wrong, this is... immoral.

He had spoken to the woman three times in his 'courtship' of Reid to the FBI and yet even knowing of her condition, he can't help but find her so attractive. Physically, no, he'd never seen her. Apparently there are strict rules about who could come and see the in-patients, but emotionally, intellectually...

...Dr. Spencer Reid, age 20, is a genius, to this there is no question... but Dr. Diana Reid? She is by far the most brilliant woman Gideon has ever had the pleasure of speaking with. Her defiance that her son shouldn't be in such a dangerous position, that he needs taking care of, that he needs a father figure more than a boss...

He files these under things he will do if it gets her to give her son the approval to go ahead and do it, to let him join the FBI.

And he does. Reid might secretly write to his mother every day, but Gideon makes a call every week. And even when he tries to convince himself he has to try elsewhere, he just can't forget the sophisticated way Diana can pour on and on the information with a seduction that Spencer in his youth just does not have.

When he leaves the BAU he leaves a note in the cabin for Spencer- but he takes a road trip to Las Vegas to -see- Diana.

To his absolute befuddlement she allows him in, and for the first time in almost eighteen years, she has the kind of coitus that can clear her head for an entire afternoon.

...It's regrettable that this is when she realizes that as the man has built himself up to be her Spencer's mentor, his stand-in father figure and then subsequently LEFT him again that this is not something she can pursue. Had she been able to, Gideon certainly would have released her into his care and grown old with the woman, but now? No. Now he just has to accept that maybe friendship with her is redemption for what he had done to Spencer by being yet another man to walk out on him when he depended on him.

Gideon really was a shitty father, he couldn't even manage to keep in Stephen's life, how the hell did he expect better odds with a kid who wasn't even his?

Fin.