Reid and Reid Ship Oneshots

Reid's Prosopagnosia

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When Reid was four, he grew a particular interest in the circus, and magic, and acrobatics. He attempted to create a balance beam and tightrope out of a broom, a few chairs, and his backyard fence. It obviously didn't pan out well, and the architectural integrity of the build—despite Reid's genius—didn't hold well.
He fell hard to the ground, also landing on the edge of the fence as he did so.
He ended up being taken to the hospital for stitches in his hand and an MRI because he hit the back of his head on the concrete flower pots lining the fence.

The MRI scan showed abnormal swelling in the fusiform gyrus, which controls the brains facial perception and memory.
After a few days in the hospital to monitor him, he lost the ability to recognized peoples faces.
The place someone's face would be wouldn't be any different from what he had known as himself. Their faces were indistinguishable from each other.
They'd have mouths, and noses, and eyes that moved as they should according to emotion or stimuli, but they all looked like him, or at least what he thought looked like him.

Being only four years old when this had happened, Reid had lived his whole life adapting.
He took a special interests in profiling despite his inability to differentiate faces from one another. Even though they looked like himself, they still made expressions, albeit most of the time faint and hardly noticeable, they still happened.
He became an expert—extraordinarily gifted—in reading a person posture and body language. He could detect the smallest details in a persons posture and arms or legs due to his heightened sense of awareness from his lack facial recognition.

His prosopagnosia was a general disadvantage, but his genius IQ, eidetic memory, and remarkable kinesics all reigned over his disability.
But early on in his career at the BAU people were skeptical. It was hard for Reid to put someones face together even when given all of the features needed. This led him to forget names, be slower at reading social cues, and made his relationships with his colleagues develop much more gradually.

His first awkward encounter with his bustling work place was on his second day on the BAU. He was already well aquatinted with Jason Gideon, but he met everyone else on the team; his boss Aaron Hotchner, the technical analysis Penelope Garcia, the media liaison Jennifer Jureau, the sex crime specialist Elle Greenaway, and Derek Morgan, their specialist in obsessional crimes.

He knew their names and wouldn't be forgetting them anytime soon, but he couldn't really connect their faces with their names. He relied on their voices, the way they dressed, their height and build, and their gate to differentiate all of them.

He had known Gideon for almost two years before he even joined the BAU, so it was easy to tell who he was even in passing.
Hotch—a nickname for Aaron Hotchner among the team—had a voice that was very monotone most of the time, unless talking with Garcia. He held himself tall and was around 6'2. Reid knew that because he was 6'1 himself and Hotch was barely taller than him. He also had a heavy walk suggesting he had an ankled gun holster.
Garcia was about 5'6, but Reid wasn't sure because he didn't speak with her long enough. All he knew for sure was that she was very bubbly and spoke in a high pitched voice. She dressed extremely colorfully and inordinately. She'd be easy to pick out of crowd, even for Reid.
JJ—the nickname for Jennifer Jureau among the team—was just an inch shorter than Garcia, but there was a more obvious difference between the two women. JJ was modest and very professional. She dressed in woman's button downs and dress pants, at least she did the one day Reid was introduced to her. Her voice was optimistic, but not considered bubbly like Garcia. Reid compared the two of them a lot.
Elle was slightly taller than JJ and Garcia, standing in at 5'7, but she was basically a mix of the two of them personality wise, but was also very determined in everything.
Derek Morgan was different from everybody in a lot of ways. He was as tall as Reid for one, which kind of made Reid uncomfortable, especially considering how much bigger—muscle mass wise—he was than him. Having a much darker skin tone than himself, Reid found it very easy to evaluate who he was. Morgan's personality was made clear to Reid when he couldn't stop himself from cracking a joke once Gideon had introduced his facial blindness to the team on his first day.