Okay, I've said this a million times before and I will probably continue to say it a million more, but Reid reminds Albert of Coop (circa five, ten years ago) so damn much that there's definitely some projecting going on there, but it's mild and not at all in a bad way. The thing with Reid is that he still seems to have a lot of that whole "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new kid on the force" thing to him — and that was really what originally made Albert peg him as so much younger than he was, not his looks — and Albert's kind of old and jaded and cranky, but he remembers being like that once. He remembers Coop being like that once, too, and there's some history there with that, because there was a case in particular where Coop ended up dead for two minutes before they were able to bring him back, after which he fell into a pretty hefty depression, and Albert has always been kind of the one who pulls him back up out of that and sort of anchors him when he's in trouble. And he sees a lot of that in Reid, too, that need for anchoring and the occasional (or frequent) kick in the head, and it's natural for him to do it, so he just kind of does.
The other two ways that Reid has really had an advantage in terms of getting on Albert's good side are that a) he's fucking smart and b) he's FBI. Albert likes smart people, and he's very much used to being the smartest one in the room at any given time — he was first in his class at Yale, for one thing, and if you pay close attention to his behavior in canon, his insults are pretty much always targeted toward disparaging the other party's intellect. It's never about how they look or some other cheap shot; it's always "god, you're stupid, and I am so much smarter than you." So with Reid it's like OH. A SMART PERSON. OH THANK GOD. SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS. Particularly since Albert remembers what it's like to be the weird kid who nobody likes because he's too smart for his peer group, and so he can commiserate on that, too.
But the easiest one is that Reid is FBI, and Albert operates on a pretty firm Bro Code when it comes to the Bureau. In canon he takes a pretty strong "us/them" mentality, where the "us" is "people who are FBI agents" and the "them" is "everyone else". He's HUGE on the idea of Bureau men looking out for their own, because that's just what you do — you take care of your guys. Period.
So basically, as far as Albert is concerned, Reid is one of the few actually tolerable people in Johto and he legitimately cares a lot about him. Granted, he'll probably always be "the kid" in Albert's book, but he's absolutely as much a member of The Team as Gordon and Coop are by now.
Albert on Reid
The other two ways that Reid has really had an advantage in terms of getting on Albert's good side are that a) he's fucking smart and b) he's FBI. Albert likes smart people, and he's very much used to being the smartest one in the room at any given time — he was first in his class at Yale, for one thing, and if you pay close attention to his behavior in canon, his insults are pretty much always targeted toward disparaging the other party's intellect. It's never about how they look or some other cheap shot; it's always "god, you're stupid, and I am so much smarter than you." So with Reid it's like OH. A SMART PERSON. OH THANK GOD. SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS. Particularly since Albert remembers what it's like to be the weird kid who nobody likes because he's too smart for his peer group, and so he can commiserate on that, too.
But the easiest one is that Reid is FBI, and Albert operates on a pretty firm Bro Code when it comes to the Bureau. In canon he takes a pretty strong "us/them" mentality, where the "us" is "people who are FBI agents" and the "them" is "everyone else". He's HUGE on the idea of Bureau men looking out for their own, because that's just what you do — you take care of your guys. Period.
So basically, as far as Albert is concerned, Reid is one of the few actually tolerable people in Johto and he legitimately cares a lot about him. Granted, he'll probably always be "the kid" in Albert's book, but he's absolutely as much a member of The Team as Gordon and Coop are by now.