Walter doesn't know why he suggests it, honestly.
It's not like he just loves trick-or-treating. And that stupid costume itches – don't even get him started on the wig – so really, there's nothing to be gained here.
But then Paige walks over, in her short skirt and white lab coat and those glasses that make him have to mentally recite the periodic table on an endless loop to avoid doing something stupid –
And yeah, it kind of makes sense then.
"Ralph honey, Tim says he's really sorry, but he won't be able to make it back in time to go trick-or-treating with us." Paige frowns sadly.
"That's okay," Ralph responds. "Walter said he could come with us!" He sounds much more excited than he did earlier when Paige told him that Tim would try to make it, and Walter tries really hard not to feel smug about that.
He's not very successful.
"Oh." Paige looks at him. "Um, are you sure? I know it's not your thing – "
"I don't mind," he says quickly, looking up at her. Ralph gets called over by Sylvester to help him make a tower out of Kit-Kat bars; Paige moves so he can get behind her, but that brings her closer to Walter, so close his knees brush her lower legs, and he unconsciously looks down, swallows hard when he sees her lab coat open in the front, showing just how short her skirt is and the heels she's wearing just make it a hundred times worse.
He drags his eyes away from her bare legs; thankfully she doesn't seem to have noticed.
"Walter, I don't want to get you in trouble. What if the INS agent comes while we're gone?"
"We'll wait an hour," he tells her, "and if it comes down to it, we'll just tell her the truth."
Paige cocks her head, and Walter forces the bitter words past his throat. "My friend's boyfriend couldn't make it, so I tagged along with her and her son."
Paige gets an odd look on her face, but he thinks he catches a glimpse of hurt in her eyes before she smiles brightly.
"Okay, if you're sure. I know Ralph would like that."
He nods, and turns back to his plate of brightly colored candy. Paige walks away a few seconds later, and he lets out a slow breath.
"Interesting."
He groans. "Not now, Toby."
"I'm serious," Toby perches on the edge of the table, munching on candy corn and looking down at him in surprise. "You're actually just doing this to make her happy, not to try and edge your way between her and Tim."
Walter grits his teeth. "It's not my place to interfere in Paige's personal life. However, she is my friend and it would make her happy to have someone accompany her and Ralph. Clearly, Tim would be her first choice but he is unavailable."
He feels even worse after giving such a logical explanation. Because he can't quite bring himself to admit that it's just his excuse, and his main reason for going is something along the lines of "I find myself overwhelmed by how attractive Paige looks dressed as a scientist and I would love nothing more than the opportunity to stare at her for an hour or two uninterrupted."
Toby nods sagely. "Hm. Well buddy, I can't say I think it's a great idea. But if you feel like getting your heart ripped out of your chest, go ahead."
He bristles. "I'm fine. I – "
" –am hopelessly in love with Paige and yet are stuck in the second-string position." Toby pats his shoulder before adding as he walks away, "Just…don't do anything stupid, okay?"
Walter runs one hand down his face; he feels more tired than normal recently, and a part of him that actually listens to Toby's psychobabble wonders if seeing the woman you love with someone else can have physical side effects.
It certainly feels that way, like someone is squeezing his heart with an iron fist every time he sees that soft smile on Paige's face as she reads Tim's latest text. The first time it happened, he'd grown worried and perused Toby's medical journals for chest pains; he'd been fairly sure it wasn't a heart attack but it had hurt so much, and he still feels ridiculous when he remembers reading an article about how a broken heart can actually be detrimental to one's health.
He scoffs internally. That's basically saying he is literally ill over Paige's obvious happiness.
He may be emotionally stunted, but he knows that doesn't sound like a good friend to him. So he clears his throat, and goes upstairs to lay out the George Washington costume (he decides against the wig, though).
/
As the person who makes her living by emotionally stabilizing a team of awkward, blustering geniuses, Paige is very much accustomed to knowing how to handle her feelings.
Which is why she feels incredibly…weird.
The thing is, Walter isn't doing anything different. He and Happy trudged their way through the INS visit, but the woman has an uncanny shenanigans radar, so the stress of having the case over their head isn't relieved any at all.
Still, they make the most of it; the moment the team is alone Walter dashes upstairs and comes back dressed as George Washington (sans wig), and carrying an empty pillowcase for Ralph to collect candy in because, as Toby phrases it, "plastic pumpkins are for trick-or-treating pansies with no ambition".
She did some research and asked around the other school moms for safe neighborhoods that had good candy, and the closest one is fifteen minutes away. Walter offers to drive, and she's honestly dead on her feet – spelunking is quite the calorie burner, turns out – so she gladly accepts.
It turns out to be a good system; the front of the neighborhood has houses that are really close together, and grow further apart as the subdivision goes back off the main road. So they let Ralph walk between the clustered houses, and follow in the car at a snail's pace. This neighborhood is full of rich people who can afford things like fog machines and animatronics, and some of the houses are just plain freaking awesome. More than once, she gets out to snap photos.
One house has a faux graveyard, with very realistic zombie limbs propped to look they're crawling up from the ground. Paige actually walks closer to get a better shot of that one. As she climbs back into the passenger seat, her phone slips and clatters to the pavement; she wraps her left hand around whatever it can reach, and leans out to retrieve her cell.
She straightens back up, grateful not for the first time that Happy had designed her a phone case that could probably survive the nuclear apocalypse, and only when she's made sure her phone is unscathed does Paige notice that she grabbed Walter's hand, not the gear-shift like she thought.
She's not sure why she didn't notice that immediately, it's not like the cold, plastic gear shift handle feels anything like Walter's hand (privately, she's positive that there is nothing on earth that feels like Walter's hands. They're like their own element or something). But notice she did not, and now she stares at the way his fingers gently grasped hers on instinct.
An apology is already on her lips; she looks up to try and smooth over the tension, but then her voice leaves her for an entirely different reason.
Walter's eyes are riveted on her legs.
And it's not a big deal, okay, obviously her skirt rode up a little bit when she leaned out, and despite all of his many quirks and abnormalities Walter is a straight man with a pulse and working eyes. He's not the first to stare – she used to work in a diner, for crying out loud.
But it has never, ever felt like this.
Something Paige noticed very early on in her employment at Scorpion, was the focus with which Walter approaches things, particularly things that intrigue or confuse him. His level of concentration is perhaps the most amazing thing about his gift, and it's always evident in his facial expressions when he's in the zone – not quite the rabbit hole, but still very, very intent on what he's doing.
Except what he's doing now, is blatantly and unashamedly checking her out, his eyes starting at her knees and making their way up her torso, lingering in all the right places and when his gaze finally meets hers, Paige is barely coherent enough to be glad she was already sitting down before that started.
To her surprise, he doesn't jolt back to reality when he makes eye contact; he just sits there…and looks at her.
This is the kind of moment Paige has been anticipating (with exhilarating joy, with overwhelming dread) since he woke up in the hospital after the rocket incident.
But she finds that she's woefully unprepared for the way it makes her heart pound, so hard that she's absolutely positive he can hear it even from so far away, for the way she feels warm and soft all over.
The worst part is, it's not even the desire in his eyes that's making her feel so swept away.
It's there, of course, in the way his irises are barely visible, in the way his chest is rising and falling a little more rapidly as his breathing accelerates, in the way he keeps licking his lips nervously.
But no, that's not even the worst of it, because lust isn't the predominant emotion in Walter O'Brien's gaze right now.
What she sees, what's making her fingers tremble and her voice catch in her throat, is longing.
It's almost too much; and the embers that are lying beneath her skin reach their flash point when his eyes leave hers, and wander down to stare at her mouth.
Paige is panting – and more than a little turned on – and all he's doing is holding her hand and looking at her, this is ridiculous.
"Mom?"
She snatches her hand away, clears her throat but knows it won't be enough, and settles for raising her eyebrows expectantly.
Ralph frowns. He's already having to heft his pillowcase over one shoulder because the weight of all the candy in it is making it drag the ground if he lets it hang by his side. "Are you guys coming? I was three houses ahead and thought you were right behind me."
Now she feels bad – something could have happened to her kid, and she would have been three houses away because she was too busy letting a man (who isn't even her boyfriend!) make her feel like a goddess.
Because that's what it really was. Paige knows she's not ugly, but when Walter looks at her, she feels like she belongs in a museum.
It's another one of his gifts, she supposes. But for now, she clears her throat again. "I'm sorry, honey. I dropped my phone. Did you say thank you?"
Ralph nods, bends his knees – since when is he tall enough to have to bend his knees to do anything? – to look at Walter. "The houses are starting to get more spread apart. I think I'd like to ride between them in a few more minutes."
"Sure thing, pal." Walter's voice almost makes Paige's jaw drop; there is absolutely no trace of the man who just sat there and had blatant eye-sex with her. Ralph nods, and they follow him up the street after Paige closes her door.
That imposes ringing silence on them once again, even though both their windows are rolled down.
She almost feels like she should apologize, but as soon as the thought materializes she's a little irritated that she had it at all. She didn't do anything, okay? She reached over and grabbed something to keep her balance, accidentally grabbed Walter's hand, and then he was the one who sat there and ogled at her for what felt like hours.
"Paige?"
His voice is quiet, and has just the slightest vein of uncertainty running underneath it. It's the closest he'll come to acknowledging what just happened, she knows.
"Yeah?"
They stop to watch Ralph politely thank Frankenstein's monster and his bride for a double-handful of candy (math puns are the way go for costumes, all right?), and when Paige waves at him before he heads to the next house, she pauses, turns to look at Walter.
He's not looking at her this time, but rather straight ahead. She can see him swallow, brace himself for whatever he's going to say.
"The glasses were a nice touch."
The words are spoken softly, like he's almost afraid she'll hear them.
But she does hear them, and she turns to look out her window so he won't see the way they make her smile.
"Thank you, Walter."
/
What how why did this happen I am such an actual trashcan these two nerds have ruined me