Memories

Breathing.

I straighten myself out, literally and figuratively. I straighten my tie and do breathing exercises to calm my nerves. I never liked crowded spaces, especially with people I don't know. I hear the elevator make a beep sound, the moving machine suddenly stops. My eyes widen, and my breathing begins to rapidly shift. The doors open and I swiftly turn to the bathroom, with no one noticing I was even there.

I rushed inside, looking around making sure no one was nearby. I stand In front of the mirror splashing water on my face, I look at myself and take a shallow breath. I open my bag and pop one more pill, "they should've worked by now.." I say trailing off with mumbles even I can't hear. My hands are gripping the countertop. My eyes stuck on the granite counter. Studying each and every detail as I calm my breathing.

And I walk out, pretending like I haven't taken more pills then I was supposed to today.

I walk towards Penelope's office, knocking only a pattern we know. "Oh my god!" I hear her excited tone and her heels shuffling towards the door. "Boy genius!!" She says, basically engulfing me in a hug, I was never fond of hugs, But she was always the exception. She starts rambling on and on about how excited she is that I'm here and stuff about the team, my legs coinciding with her speed as she runs through the glass doors yelling about an announcement, me.

The team shuffles around Penelope and me, I meet each one individually. Avoiding shaking hands.

"Hey pretty boy, I'm Derek Morgan." He puts his hand out, expecting me to shake it. I just wave and explain I don't really do that. "Alright, then." He says with a sort of chuckle.

"Jennifer jareau, JJ." She waves with a confident smile explaining what she does.

"Emily prentiss, the only good person in here" she waves and gives a look to JJ who just hit her on the arm and laughed. I could tell they liked each other.

"David Rossi, I'm sure you know who I am." I look at him with a knowing smile, I fangirl over his books, even quoting some words. His smile fades as he realizes who I am. "Your Spencer Reid? Gideon sent for you a while ago."

"Gideon, yeah." A strange look appears on my face I think, I feel their faces twisting, profiling my mannerisms. I look to the rest of the team and explain what I am, and what I can do to get off the topic of him.

"So you're a genius?" Derek says. "I have a lot of PHDS, and an IQ of 187, with an eidetic memory and I can read 20,000 words per minu.." I see their faces, "yeah I'm a genius" I feel a bit embarrassed, I look to Penelope for support. "You haven't met our unit chief yet, have you?" She says with a certain enthusiasm

"..no?" I didn't think so.

"Let's go!" She grabs my hand and basically pulls me across the room and up the flight of stairs. Which seems impossible to me right now because she has extremely tall high heels on.

She knocks, "it's open." A familiar voice says.
She walks in, hiding me against the wall. "Sorry, I'm interrupting! But you have a new recruit to meet, he's in the main room!" She grabs my hand and pulls me once more. "And now we wait." The team seems to have very high anticipation.

After a few minutes, I started rambling about germs because I gave everyone hand sanitizer.

After a even longer wait, everyone was sitting at their desks, besides me. I was sitting on prentiss' desk, rambling on and on because she seemed genuinely interested in some of the stuff I was rambling about. I was also messing with a rubix cube to pass the time.

Then I hear a door open and Garcia speaking to him about me, then I hear her say "Hotch." And that struck a nerve. I have never turned my head so quickly.

We stared at each other, his eyes darting around the room avoiding eye contact after a few seconds. He walked up to me. His hand placed hesitantly in front of him with a stunned expression staring back at me.

"I don't shake hands." I say in a cold tone. His eyes widened, "right." His hand ran through his hair smoothly. He chuckled and went to talk to JJ.

I can feel my breathing starting to speed up, my hands start shaking and I get off her desk, I stumble quickly across the main room and to the bathroom. Not looking back.

My legs start moving without my mind's input, I can feel a sting in my throat, and a salty taste.

I run into one of the stalls and start vomiting, my eyes starting to get all watery again, my hands shaking getting worse and worse with each passing minute. My vomiting stopped for a minute and then continued for a while. It was a repeated cycle of torture.

Once I stop, I sit back on the wall.
Violent cold shakes pulsating through my body.

I dig through my bag looking for a small capsule of ibuprofen, as well as a miniature bottle of water. My hands roughly shake as I rip apart my brown leather crossbody. I throw it across the floor once I find the pills, the bag roughly reminding me of him.

I close my eyes and pop a few of the colored pills.
My head is leaning against the hard tile, causing another headache.

I feel another person sliding down the wall next to me, my eyes violently open, looking at the person next to me, my vision is blurry but I can somewhat make out who it is.

"He got you good, huh?" They say, as they bring me close.
(992 words)