Spencer Reid Headcanons - Tumblr Posts
Hi Mei!! ♡ How about Reid dating a sunshine!reader who tells obviously wrong facts when he is in earsight, just to mess with him? Bc I think it would be so funny 😭😭 Anyway, have a nice day, and thank you so much for all your quality content, you're saving lives <333
"Oh my god Emily, you're never gonna believe this," You lean in towards the brunette grinning at you, but your voice stays loud enough for Spencer to hear across the desk, "I just found out that bowling is more dangerous than dinosaurs are."
Her brow dips but her lips quirk up, "Alright, you've hooked me. What's the punchline?"
"No punchline," You shake your head, feeling Reid's curious stare on the back of it, "In 2019 someone died at a bowling alley after slipping on the floor and splitting his head open. But in that same year, there wasn't a single death by dinosaur. Isn't that insane?"
Spencer is already piping up before Emily can properly laugh, but you can still hear her beneath his frantic, "Uh, honey, that's not- that's not exactly right. I mean, dinosaurs would be incredibly dangerous, if any of them were still alive. Which, in 2019- uh, they were not."
"Statistically speaking, Spence," You use his favorite phrase against him, but you're not sure he picks up on the teasing grin set on your face beyond the concern he's stewing in, "You can't argue with the numbers."
"Well- you can't, but in 2019, the number of dinosaurs alive was zero, so that's- that's the only number that really matters, baby, but if you wanted to read more about the risks associated with communal sports venues, I'd be happy to share some articles I've looked into on-"
"Ah, leave it to Reid to turn a sick-ass discussion about dinosaurs about the dangers of fun," Morgan scoffs. He wasn't in on your plan from the beginning, but he's happy to jump on the bandwagon, "Besides, the last Jurassic Park movie was made in 2022, so there were dinosaurs alive, duh."
something that i think is Very funny about the first scene with reid and ethan is that reid jumpscares ethan (and the audience) and to me it seems like it was intentional. like yes he's smiling because he has dumb gay feelings but hes also smiling like "haha i got you >:)"
do you think he did this regularly when they were friends (or together, depending on how you read their relationship). do you think ethan was scared every time he turned a corner because half the time reid would be standing there like 🧍♂️
i know canon suggests reid and ethan met as children but ive always pictured reid as a friendless child (sorry </3) and so to me they met in college and in my brain they Did Not Get Along at first. anyway here's my reid/ethan timeline:
reid graduates HS at twelve, takes a gap year because he's worried about leaving diana, then goes to college at fourteen
during reid's second year, ethan starts, having graduated HS at sixteen—also early, because anyone who reid can describe as someone he "competed with constantly" has to also be very intelligent
they meet one way or another, and reid fucking hates ethan. ethan likes reid at first, but when he picks up on reid's dislike of him, he responds in kind and they form a rivalry
the reason reid hates ethan at first is because he sees ethan as being him, but better in every way. growing up as a friendless, awkward child with a...complicated family, reid rationalised to himself that that was just the price he had to pay for being as intelligent as he was. so what if he's dodging cps? so what if he's facing relentless bullying? so what if he can't figure out how everyone navigates social situations so easily while he fumbles? he's a genius. it's fine, it's an exchange. it's one or the other and he's okay with that. and then...ethan. ethan is extroverted and personable and likable, has a close and largely uncomplicated relationship with his family, and is also a genius. and now reid has no choice to admit to himself that everything fucked up about his childhood wasn't the universe balancing itself, but just...fucked up. and he hates ethan for making him think about that.
i have three different ideas of how they eventually become friends: a happy one, where ethan, who, yes, responds to reid's obvious dislike of him by also being a shitty teenage boy, but who also is determined to kill him with kindness and annoy the shit out of him until reid gives in and stops also being a shitty teenage boy. then a darker one, where reid somehow discovers ethan's own demons (either his alcoholism or the issues that led to it) and is like "oh nvm i was right! we geniuses really are doomed to be unhappy people :) we can be friends now" although ethan would eventually knock some sense into him. and finally a silly one where they're mid-argument and then for reasons neither of them can name, they kiss. they argue to this day about who initiated
anyway. they decide to keep up a facade of dislike because their rivalry has become kind of infamous on campus and it would be so embarrassing if they had to admit they like eachother now. god can you imagine. so in public they have increasingly dramatic arguments and then laugh about in private. especially true if you, like me, believe there was something non-platonic going on between them, simply for safety reasons. one person sees them making out in a closet but nobody believes them when they try to spread that around because wtf are you talking about. they want eachother dead. if you're going to invent a rumour at least make it believable god.
so. in seven seconds they show a cd in katie's house and reid is like "oh hey that was my favourite movie when i was a kid :)" you can just see "babar" on the cd, which is fine, but the wiki says it's specifcally babar: king of the elephants which came out in feb 1999?? and he was born oct 1981??? so. the wiki is almost certainly just wrong and it's actually one of the many other, more timeline-appropriate babar films. but im going to make it angst now fuck you.
dont think about reid watching a ton of children's films after committing his mother in an attempt to relive his childhood dont think about it dont think about it dont think abou
re one of ur last posts - what are ur nonbinary elle and spencer hcs?? :))
AH i actually dont have that many so a lot of these literally just came into my head. also i'm very sorry this mostly became "elle helping spencer realise he's nonbinary" headcanons, i'll have to think more about elle :((
this one is not my headcanon. i tried to find whose it is but for the life of me i cannot track it down, so if anyone knows please tell me so i can link them: they share a wardrobe. the only one who remembers which clothes initially belonged to which person is spencer, for obvious reasons. EDIT: got this from this post by @/spritehouse
elle has her shit figured out pre-canon but isn't doing anything about it because it's 2005. spencer does not have his shit figured out until after he gets with elle
well. he has it a little figured out. he knows there's something to figure out, he knows he isn't a cis man, but he's just like. i have way too much going on in my life already to think about that so i will ignore it <3 because that's worked out so well for him
pre-figuring his shit out, spencer is constantly (and largely unintentionally) mixing "menswear" and "womenswear". i really struggle to see a version of spencer where he and diana didn't experience serious financial issues after william left, and even as an adult, high-quality private psychiatric care like diana's is expensive. so, the majority of his clothes are thrifted (yes, i know about the $500 cardigans in later seasons. gifts from rossi <3) and he doesn't really care what section of goodwill he finds them in. so he's constantly wearing, like. a men's shirt under a women's cardigan over men's pants held up with a women's belt. post-figuring his shit out, this becomes intentional and he starts blatantly mixing styles. the kind of thing that gets him stopped in public by someone going "hey you know that's a women's...?" and he goes "yep! :D"
by contrast, elle, while she largely has things figured out, does not present the way she wants to for safety reasons. spencer helps her gradually feel more comfortable presenting the way she wants while she helps him figure out his gender stuff
as for reid's gender stuff, i think for a long time he's really overly fixated on labelling himself. the closest any label comes is bigender but that doesn't feel quite right and he has a lot of unnecessary angst about it. (not projecting at all shut up). eventually he's venting to elle one day about how he feels this and this and this about his gender and if he was to describe it he would describe it like this but he just can't figure it out. and then elle gets genuinely confused because it sounds to her like he very much has figured it out. it takes a long time for him to understand and accept that there isn't a magic word that will describe all parts of him, and he may never find one. and that's fine
elle does spencer's makeup. he looks in the mirror and cries.
penelope is the first person they come out to and she is DELIGHTED to have other trans people on the team. one more and they outnumber the cis people...
morgan is next. spencer says "we're nonbinary" and morgan says "is this like a 'we're pregnant' situation or are you actually talking about both of you" and elle hits him in the head. spencer immediately feels many times less anxious than he did before. i love u morgan
morgan asks spencer in private if he wants him to stop calling him pretty boy. spencer tells him to please never stop. calling him "pretty", an adjective usually used to describe women, paired with "boy" makes him very happy. with this in mind, morgan starts calling elle "handsome girl". elle pretends to be nonchalant about it, but it makes her really happy.
they never tell gideon. spencer can't handle the thought of him reacting badly. (gideon was under the impression that spencer was just closeted this whole time. oops!)
like i said, spencer REALLY likes being described as masculine and feminine in the same breath. when elle first introduces him to her friends, she says "this is spencer, she's my boyfriend" and spencer runs away to stim in private. elle's friends are very confused.
random cm headcanon: reid sneezes like a bomb going off
the first one popped up on my dash again! I got it from this post from @/spritehouse
re one of ur last posts - what are ur nonbinary elle and spencer hcs?? :))
AH i actually dont have that many so a lot of these literally just came into my head. also i'm very sorry this mostly became "elle helping spencer realise he's nonbinary" headcanons, i'll have to think more about elle :((
this one is not my headcanon. i tried to find whose it is but for the life of me i cannot track it down, so if anyone knows please tell me so i can link them: they share a wardrobe. the only one who remembers which clothes initially belonged to which person is spencer, for obvious reasons.
elle has her shit figured out pre-canon but isn't doing anything about it because it's 2005. spencer does not have his shit figured out until after he gets with elle
well. he has it a little figured out. he knows there's something to figure out, he knows he isn't a cis man, but he's just like. i have way too much going on in my life already to think about that so i will ignore it <3 because that's worked out so well for him
pre-figuring his shit out, spencer is constantly (and largely unintentionally) mixing "menswear" and "womenswear". i really struggle to see a version of spencer where he and diana didn't experience serious financial issues after william left, and even as an adult, high-quality private psychiatric care like diana's is expensive. so, the majority of his clothes are thrifted (yes, i know about the $500 cardigans in later seasons. gifts from rossi <3) and he doesn't really care what section of goodwill he finds them in. so he's constantly wearing, like. a men's shirt under a women's cardigan over men's pants held up with a women's belt. post-figuring his shit out, this becomes intentional and he starts blatantly mixing styles. the kind of thing that gets him stopped in public by someone going "hey you know that's a women's...?" and he goes "yep! :D"
by contrast, elle, while she largely has things figured out, does not present the way she wants to for safety reasons. spencer helps her gradually feel more comfortable presenting the way she wants while she helps him figure out his gender stuff
as for reid's gender stuff, i think for a long time he's really overly fixated on labelling himself. the closest any label comes is bigender but that doesn't feel quite right and he has a lot of unnecessary angst about it. (not projecting at all shut up). eventually he's venting to elle one day about how he feels this and this and this about his gender and if he was to describe it he would describe it like this but he just can't figure it out. and then elle gets genuinely confused because it sounds to her like he very much has figured it out. it takes a long time for him to understand and accept that there isn't a magic word that will describe all parts of him, and he may never find one. and that's fine
elle does spencer's makeup. he looks in the mirror and cries.
penelope is the first person they come out to and she is DELIGHTED to have other trans people on the team. one more and they outnumber the cis people...
morgan is next. spencer says "we're nonbinary" and morgan says "is this like a 'we're pregnant' situation or are you actually talking about both of you" and elle hits him in the head. spencer immediately feels many times less anxious than he did before. i love u morgan
morgan asks spencer in private if he wants him to stop calling him pretty boy. spencer tells him to please never stop. calling him "pretty", an adjective usually used to describe women, paired with "boy" makes him very happy. with this in mind, morgan starts calling elle "handsome girl". elle pretends to be nonchalant about it, but it makes her really happy.
they never tell gideon. spencer can't handle the thought of him reacting badly. (gideon was under the impression that spencer was just closeted this whole time. oops!)
like i said, spencer REALLY likes being described as masculine and feminine in the same breath. when elle first introduces him to her friends, she says "this is spencer, she's my boyfriend" and spencer runs away to stim in private. elle's friends are very confused.
random headcanon number whatever: reid gets ridiculous nosebleeds. often in his sleep. he forgets to mention this to the team until one time it happens while he’s bunking with Morgan and gives him the shock of his life when he wakes up looking like he ate someone.
so. in seven seconds they show a cd in katie's house and reid is like "oh hey that was my favourite movie when i was a kid :)" you can just see "babar" on the cd, which is fine, but the wiki says it's specifcally babar: king of the elephants which came out in feb 1999?? and he was born oct 1981??? so. the wiki is almost certainly just wrong and it's actually one of the many other, more timeline-appropriate babar films. but im going to make it angst now fuck you.
dont think about reid watching a ton of children's films after committing his mother in an attempt to relive his childhood dont think about it dont think about it dont think abou
i know canon suggests reid and ethan met as children but ive always pictured reid as a friendless child (sorry </3) and so to me they met in college and in my brain they Did Not Get Along at first. anyway here's my reid/ethan timeline:
reid graduates HS at twelve, takes a gap year because he's worried about leaving diana, then goes to college at fourteen
during reid's second year, ethan starts, having graduated HS at sixteen—also early, because anyone who reid can describe as someone he "competed with constantly" has to also be very intelligent
they meet one way or another, and reid fucking hates ethan. ethan likes reid at first, but when he picks up on reid's dislike of him, he responds in kind and they form a rivalry
the reason reid hates ethan at first is because he sees ethan as being him, but better in every way. growing up as a friendless, awkward child with a...complicated family, reid rationalised to himself that that was just the price he had to pay for being as intelligent as he was. so what if he's dodging cps? so what if he's facing relentless bullying? so what if he can't figure out how everyone navigates social situations so easily while he fumbles? he's a genius. it's fine, it's an exchange. it's one or the other and he's okay with that. and then...ethan. ethan is extroverted and personable and likable, has a close and largely uncomplicated relationship with his family, and is also a genius. and now reid has no choice to admit to himself that everything fucked up about his childhood wasn't the universe balancing itself, but just...fucked up. and he hates ethan for making him think about that.
i have three different ideas of how they eventually become friends: a happy one, where ethan, who, yes, responds to reid's obvious dislike of him by also being a shitty teenage boy, but who also is determined to kill him with kindness and annoy the shit out of him until reid gives in and stops also being a shitty teenage boy. then a darker one, where reid somehow discovers ethan's own demons (either his alcoholism or the issues that led to it) and is like "oh nvm i was right! we geniuses really are doomed to be unhappy people :) we can be friends now" although ethan would eventually knock some sense into him. and finally a silly one where they're mid-argument and then for reasons neither of them can name, they kiss. they argue to this day about who initiated
anyway. they decide to keep up a facade of dislike because their rivalry has become kind of infamous on campus and it would be so embarrassing if they had to admit they like eachother now. god can you imagine. so in public they have increasingly dramatic arguments and then laugh about in private. especially true if you, like me, believe there was something non-platonic going on between them, simply for safety reasons. one person sees them making out in a closet but nobody believes them when they try to spread that around because wtf are you talking about. they want eachother dead. if you're going to invent a rumour at least make it believable god.
random cm headcanon: reid sneezes like a bomb going off
usually my headcanon for spencer has been either bigender or unlabelled but Not Cis. but sometimes I think about genderfluid spencer where diana might not always know that she has a child, but when she does, she always knows if she has a son or daughter.
random headcanon number whatever: reid gets ridiculous nosebleeds. often in his sleep. he forgets to mention this to the team until one time it happens while he’s bunking with Morgan and gives him the shock of his life when he wakes up looking like he ate someone.
spencer reid likes to put crushed ice in a bowl and eat it like it’s a meal (he is anaemic)
usually my headcanon for spencer has been either bigender or unlabelled but Not Cis. but sometimes I think about genderfluid spencer where diana might not always know that she has a child, but when she does, she always knows if she has a son or daughter.
silly headcanon/overthinking time
the book reid is holding on the jet looks to be "revue des deux mondes" (review of the two worlds) which according to wikipedia is a "monthly French-language literary, cultural and current affairs magazine published in Paris". it says "1871" on the bottom, so i'm guessing it's a compilation of all the issues published that year.
who on the team was just in france, specifically paris?
i'm headcanoning that reid, wanting to get close to emily again after her faked death, went and bought a french magazine so he would have something to talk to her about. except since he's, well, himself, he bought one published in 1871.
he tries to talk to her about the articles in it and she just kind of. stares at him.
ragh i know this is a throwaway line but it makes me sad. i very much like the popular headcanon that he gambled to be able to pay for diana's care and that this was the consequence.
don't think about freshly-eighteen spencer hitting up casino after casino after casino, playing until he's kicked out so he can get her the help she needs. don't think about how dangerous and scary that would be. just don't think about teenage spencer at all don't think about don't think about him I SAID DON'T THINK ABOUT HIM