As Spencer Reid walked into the bullpen, he was already mid-sentence, words tumbling out faster than anyone could track. In his hand — of all things — was an energy drink. That alone earned a few raised eyebrows. Reid hadn’t touched caffeine in months, not since the “triple espresso incident” that Garcia still refused to let him live down.

Now, though, he was practically buzzing. His voice quickened with every breath, jumping from the neurological effects of dopamine on motivation to the behavioral patterns of historical serial killers, with no pause between subjects.

Morgan leaned back in his chair, grinning. “Man, how much caffeine is in that thing?”

Rossi smirked over the rim of his coffee mug. “Enough to make him start his own crime podcast, apparently.”

JJ tried to follow along — she really did — but by the time Reid began connecting Charles Whitman’s case to modern psychological profiling, she was completely lost. Still, she smiled, nodding like she understood.

Hotch didn’t even look up from his paperwork, though the faintest ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. Prentiss leaned over and whispered, “And here I thought I talked fast.”

Reid kept going, oblivious to their amusement, his sentences colliding and overlapping — a caffeine-fueled storm of intellect and enthusiasm. And even though no one could quite keep up, the bullpen felt a little brighter for it.