So I wrote this mess of a fic a while ago, sort of in the way that my mindflow works.

Basically, it's like. It might be kinda choppy and hard to read, but I wrote it that way on purpose, trying to mimic my thought patterns whenever I get. Well, get like Reid in this fic.

The idea of the team being Really Awesome And Accommodating about Reid being disabled is a very important idea to me. Probably wishful thinking on some level.

Anyway. Please drop me a line if you enjoyed it!

(warning for: internalized ableism)

He sees her on a Tuesday and a voice in the back of his head telling him nothing good ever comes from Tuesdays is overpowered by the sickening shock of realizing she is younger than him.

Which shouldn't be all that surprising. He is twenty eight years old which is only half of fifty six which is- dear lord in heaven she looked at him.

He can tell she wears contact lenses. He wonders how long it's going to be before she's too tired to bother. As for himself, he hardly even bothers with the glasses anymore.

The world is kinder when it's blurred.

When a voice speaks his name from across the room, he is still staring at her, though she has by now looked away. He thinks her name starts with an S or maybe an R. Or possibly an M or-

Yelping, he jumps. Somebody has touched his shoulder, presumably the same person who just called his name because the voice sounds again, accompanying the startling touch.

"Reid? Are you alright."

Oh. Derek. It's just Derek. Derek who is looking at him with that weird concerned face he gets sometimes when he's Worried About things, and Spencer belatedly realizes he should probably have answered the question.

"Oh, uh. Yeah. Fine. I'm fine. Is there any coffee left?" he asks because what else is he supposed to do. What else is he supposed to say, when that girl is still on his mind, her clear, bright face present in his thoughts no matter how far off the beaten path they end up meandering.

"Yeah," Derek answers closely, watching him with a furrowed brow. Giving him what was probably not a very reassuring reassuring smile, Spencer skirts around him and heads for the coffee bar.

The new agent is younger than him. She's younger than him, and why is that such a strange concept. He is twenty eight years old which is half of fifty six which is.

Which is.

The double helix is a complexly structured type of molecule found in nucleic acids-

"Hey."

-which make up-

A hand on his shoulder, pulling him out of the new tangent his mind had led him down.

"Spencer."

Well shit, Derek used his first name which doesn't happen which means he's Really Worried now, as opposed to normal levels of Derek Worried.

"Hi," he replies weakly. For a long moment that stretches on, filled with the tick of the clock on the wall and thousand mile an hour facts about the structure of DNA, neither of them says a word, until he can't take it anymore. It's too quiet. "She's younger than me."

The crease in Derek's forehead deepens. "Excuse me? You sure everything's okay?"

"There's a new agent here today. She's being shown around the building, and I. She's younger than me."

The way Derek frowns at him says 'okay, go on.'

"She's younger than me and I remember what it was like, I wasn't ready."

The admission feels true, though he's spent years upon years denying and denying that, with a gruff voice backing him up, 'do you really think I'd have recruited him if he wasn't ready'.

But that voice is gone and funny isn't it how once that voice left the truth came so much easier.

"I wasn't ready," he says again.

"I know."

"Derek, I was too young."

First names all 'round, some voice in the back of his head comments sardonically. Incredible.

"You were."

"She's too young."

From the look on his face (one of the looks he has spent years teaching himself to decipher), Derek has some choice words on that topic, but he keeps them to himself.

"Probably. She's probably just a desk agent, kid. She'll be okay."

That's what snaps him, the sugar packet sliding from his fingers and laying discarded on the floor as he whirls around and braces his hands against the counter. This is ridiculous. He's being ridiculous. Calm down. Just breathe and count to ten and-

"She won't be okay! I wasn't!"

This time he cannot see the look on Derek's face but he knows his friend well enough to tell which one it will be. Stunned silence, coupled with the hint of anger he always sees when Derek thinks somebody's been done wrong by.

"She won't be okay, it's going to destroy her, it'll ruin her, and she'll turn out-"

Just like me. She'll end up ruined and wrong, just like me.

"Spencer," Derek says and there's that name again. Derek's voice is calm and deep and quiet. People are probably staring. People have been staring at him since he was old enough to not be what they expected. "How long has it been since you've slept?"

He doesn't answer. Not because he's being stubborn (Derek is only trying to help) or because he doesn't want to (he does). He doesn't actually know. Time has always been weird for him. He doesn't really understand it. (There are a lot of things he doesn't understand, which a lot of people wouldn't believe if he told them but is true anyway.)

"How long?" The repetition is patient. Which is new, really. People aren't generally patient with him, not on bad days.

Funny, he hasn't had a bad day in a long time. Funny because they stopped happening so often right when he found himself among people who might just want to help.

"I don't know," he answers, and it's the truth. He hopes Derek believes him. He doesn't have any other truth to offer.

"Okay. Okay. Here's what we're gonna do." Derek's hands hover for a second, like he isn't sure what to do with them. "Is it alright to touch you?"

He nods, and he's glad for the guiding hands that lead him over to a desk chair that's the wrong height to be his, because it seems like he's forgotten how to do much of anything. Breathing and blinking and nodding is a difficult enough set of tasks, much less moving from point A to point B in anything less than a disastrous tumbling heap.

"You're gonna sit here, and I'm gonna go tell Hotch we're leaving. The case is over, the paperwork can wait. I'm going to take you home. Am I right in assuming this is about something other than the new agent?"

He's not sure why he nods. Probably because it really isn't actually about the girl, the girl is nothing more than a passing surprise that threw him for a loop. Just a surprise, and surprises shouldn't send a person into a downward spiral of panic and confusion and Not A Normal Person-ness.

"Is this like last year?"

Last year? What was last year? Did something happen last yea- oh. Right. That thing. That thing where he'd lost the ability to speak or really do much of anything on the jet, which scared the hell out of Emily who had never seen him like that before. Tan seats and the sunrise outside which kept glancing off the windows. Everybody kept trying to talk to him, but it all sounded like a waterfall, or the plane's engine. The case was over, thank god, because he would have messed the whole thing up and they-

"Hey."

The word interrupting his scattered mental meandering was as calm and gentle as every other one had been.

He nods. He thinks the question was probably about last year. This is like last year. Yes. Yes, Derek, it is like last year. I'm sorry I'm not- not. I'm sorry I'm not. I'm trying, I promise.

"Alright. Stay here, I'll be right back, I'm just going to talk to Hotch. Don't worry about it. You're not messing up any of my plans."

Well damn, maybe losing the ability of speech wasn't as much of a hinderance to communication as he'd thought it was every time it happened, because that was the nail's head right there.

He waits, absently unsure of how much time has passed, because time is. Well, is not among his collection of 'Things Spencer Reid Can Understand Without Significant Effort Right Now'.

Eventually Derek does come back, and he wonders when that's going to stop surprising him. The answer, it would seem, is 'not now, that's for sure'.

"Come on," says Derek, carefully pulling him to his feet and steering both of them towards the doors. "You're okay. You're gonna be okay."

I'm okay, Spencer thinks. I'm going to be okay.

So he's not gonna talk for a couple hours. So he might not fit the mold of what people expect from your average person.

So he might be disabled. (So he's disabled.)

So he might be autistic. (So he's autistic.)

It's not the end of the world.