DISCLAIMER: I do not own Scorpion or any content/characters related to the show. All rights belong to CBS :)
Enjoy!
Unlike many people, Walter O'Brien found the thunderous bad weather sort of soothing. Especially given that the odds of seeing one in Los Angeles weren't very promising these days.
The surprisingly loud and rhythmic chirping of the rain drops against the roof top and the occasional thunder booming in the distance worked wonders by silencing his overloaded mind for a bit. Walter was inclined to believe that, even without his eidetic memory, the rain would always bring him back to Callan's endless green landscapes and simple lifestyle, but seeing the already flooded streets turning into rivers of dirt, all kinds of flyers and garbage, he thought this thunderstorm was not really bringing back sweet childhood memories. Not that he had many to speak of…
The electricity had been down for almost an hour now, and even with the rain easing his mind he was beginning to feel as anxious as the blond-haired boy two tables ahead of him, who had been fidgeting with his bag since the first droplets of rain. Usually, Walter enjoyed spending time at Kovelsky's Coffee Shop; it was the most decent place to get his, and occasionally the team's morning caffeine that was a comfortable drive away from the garage. But his visits never extended past fifteen minutes and he wasn't very comfortable with the thought of how much work awaited him at the garage when he couldn't exactly drive there through the endless rivers of rain in his car. So he'd been stationed here, sitting on a vinyl lounge chair with no more company than an empty coffee cup, a kid suffering from severe anxiety and the shop's staff.
Walter remembered feeling quite proud about discovering Kovelsky's Coffee Shop two weeks ago on his way home. Ever since their former pot had died, the team had agreed to take turns on who was in charge of buying their daily coffee and Walter stumbling into Kovelsky's the day prior to his turn, had been of the likes of a miracle; if such thing existed, of course.
Apparently, he'd been proud enough to let it slip the moment he'd handed Toby's order fresh out of his recently discovered coffee shop the following week. The shrink had already started his angry rant about having to get his coffee elsewhere due to Cabe's new coffee machine, ─given to them as a gift a few days after the first broke─ also dying under suspicious circumstances.
He rarely shared personal information with the behaviorist knowing it would ultimately lead to an over-analysis on the potential emotional background of his most trivial choices, but this coffee machine problem had consumed his already sparse patience and truth be told, he ─or the team as a whole, for that matter─ didn't function properly before drinking an early morning dose of caffeine. That had been the ideal set of variables that resulted in Toby successfully getting in his toes, apparently.
"I knew you were behind those ridiculous names on my coffee cups!" he said before taking a swig of his coffee "You tell that hot brunette barista that I'll be paying her a visit to get our order next time"
Walter choked on his drink. He grimaced, tongue burned.
An image of Kovelsky'sbarista, Paige, sprang in his mind flashing him a genuine smile as she handed him his order and change that same morning. Besides having Walter's lack of social skills as a disadvantage, he'd picked on the hint in Toby's snarky comment surprisingly fast. Walter made use of all his willpower to not blurt out more things that could potentially drag him even deeper into the hole, like the actual shade of brown of the hot brunette barista's hair, for starters.
"Just thought I needed an appropriate comeback for Emotional Dumpster Fire and Ego-maniac" he responded, perhaps a little too late.
Walter cursed himself for hesitating on that last remark. Now, he was sure he had seen those nicknames in his coffee cups sometime this week, but he didn't really know if either of them had been written on the one from two days ago ─when Toby had been in charge of taking care of their coffee orders─ but he'd been in a rush to cover up his slip and his brain had acted on the usual unfiltered auto-pilot.
Toby clicked his tongue, his lips curving into his trademark devilish grin. "You are such a terrible liar, mi amigo" he said, his fingers tapping on his cup excitedly "by the way I highly suspect of you deliberately messing up our new pot, but I'll let it go in the light of this new interesting chain of events"
Had he not being busy taking another glorious sip of his coffee, Walter might've even blushed at that last comment. He had indeed messed up said coffee machine, not intentionally at least and certainly not because keep going to Kovelsky's had been his plan all along ─something he surprisingly didn't mind at all─. In fact, and much to Walter's embarrassment, the sudden and disastrous malfunction of the machine had come off as a result of his first ─and probably last─ attempt at replicating Cinnamon dream,Paige's coffee recommendation of the week.
"T-that's not─"
"It was definitely a clever move to keep visiting our friend at Kovelsky's, actually" Toby said, cutting off his embarrassing stutter.
"What was a clever move to keep visiting our friend at Kovelsky's?" Sylvester, who apparently had been able to eavesdrop on Toby's last remark, asked as he joined them at the kitchen to get the lone apple that awaited him on the countertop "do we have a friend at Kovelsky's?"
"You all know, Kovelsky's?" Walter asked, his eyes shifting between both the mathematician and the behaviorist in bewilderment.
"That's the place where I get our coffee orders on Wednesdays, sometimes" Sylvester said as he proceeded to wash his apple in the sink behind Walter.
"You don't drink coffee" Walter added.
Sylvester hunched his shoulders. "You try telling Happy that"
"It's alright, pal" Toby added as he slid his free arm across Walter's shoulders "we've all had a crush on a coffee shop barista"
"What coffee shop barista?" Cabe asked. The homeland agent had arrived at just the perfect time to also eavesdrop on a conversation that should have never happened in the first place.
Walter visualized slapping himself hard in the face.
"The one this emotional dumpster fire is crushing on, of course" the behaviorist said, tightening his leverage on his shoulders.
"I don't have a crush on Paige" he snapped.
Oh boy.
While he listened to Toby and Cabe's frantic bursts of laughter, Walter finally said his goodbyes to a peaceful day at Scorpion's headquarters. There was no possible way that either of them would let go of that. Paige's name slipping from his lips had officially sealed his coffin.
"Did Paige put that cinnamon in your coffee as well?" Toby asked mockingly as he finally released Walter's shoulders and walked away in the direction of his desk.
A particularly loud thunder pulled Walter out of his reverie, his eyes falling to the empty cup atop the coffee table in front of him. The sight of his own name on it seemed foreign to him, as if he had somehow misspelled it his entire life. A ridiculous musing, if he actually put some thought to it, but the truth was that he found Paige's handwriting aesthetically beautiful, even when he had her write those absurd nicknames he'd come up for Toby.
Her little burst of laughter was worth the embarrassment, he thought.
Before this moment, Walter hadn't paid much attention to her handwriting, but he had indeed been observant of other things about her in the sporadic ─also uncomfortable─ events in which they had interacted. And so he had come to associate the barista's light temper, energetic personality ─surely a suitable behavior for someone who served at least a hundred customers per day─ and overall appearance with a very neutral handwriting elaborated but neat and pretty much basic.
On the contrary, Paige did have a very nice and elaborated cursive handwriting.
The genius was a lot of things but a Harvard trained psychologist. Of course, he'd been wrong all along. But how in the world, ─and taking in consideration his close to non-existent social skills─ would he be able to decode a woman if he hadn't even talked to her?
Well, he had actuallytalked to her, once. A very short, very uncomfortable conversation with his usual unfiltered self and a poorly delivered diagnosis of anemia that went just about as good as anyone would expect. Of course, not even a clinically addicted gambler like Toby would bet on the odds of him getting the chance to engage into yet another disastrous conversation with her. Walter wouldn't have blamed him either.
Walter shook his head in annoyance. He was definitely not happy with the turn his thoughts were taking. Especially since he was still incapable of figuring out what was that he found so intriguing about this woman. The genius might have been as equally upset about the fact that he could only make assumptions as petty as the way she wrote his name on a paper container. Besides, by being a regular customer for almost two weeks, Walter couldn't act like he actually knew this woman. The barista represented 15 minutes of a 24-hour day in his life, not even a 2 percent of it, if put in perspective.
Walter sighed and risked a quick glance in Paige's direction. She had abandoned her place behind the bar and was trying to offer some kind of pastry to the fidgety kid sitting two tables ahead of him. He vaguely reminded him of a younger version of Sylvester, his feet tapping nervously on the floor as he examined a particular set of equations on the board of the garage. If the kid was anything like him, Walter doubted she'd make much progress in easing his anxiety.
But there she was, a couple of minutes later, handing him a freshly-baked chocolate muffin like a champion.
Walter avoided visiting Kovelsky's for pretty much the entirety of the following week, something that did not go unnoticed by Toby, of course. He was fast to voice his utter disappointment regarding Walter's sudden interest in Chai tea instead of the usual order at his former trademark coffee place.
Still, he couldn't bring himself to buy a new coffee pot. Not out of sentimentalism, of course, but good old pride. Buying a new pot out of the blue would mean something for Toby, and he was definitely not backing up the shrink's theories on Walter's alleged emotions being awakened by the waitress.
The weather was nice the day of his return to the coffee shop and the streets had been unusually packed resulting in Walter arriving much later than expected. There was a relatively short line of customers, ─probably because six forty-five was not quite the busy hour─ which meant he could possibly shorten his visit and return to the garage to finish the tedious task of testing governmental software security for the hundredth time. With the deadline approaching at a seemingly faster pace, Walter and Sylvester's progress turned out slower than anticipated and the genius had been forced to rely on Toby and Happy's coding skills to get the last patches revised so they'd finally be able to deliver the results through Cabe to a very irritable Deputy Director Cooper, who had not only called for updates once, but twice in a manner of twenty minutes.
As of now, the team had worked tirelessly throughout the entire night with pre-scheduled 10-minute lunch breaks to increase efficiency, but as the morning hours approached, Walter and Toby had surprisingly agreed that they could definitely use a large order of egg bagels and coffee to get through the last couple of hours before the deadline was officially up.
Walter was functioning on auto-pilot by now, which is why he took no notice of the familiar voice that greeted him and was already getting his wallet out of his back pocket and blurting out his coffee order before he even got to the end of the line.
"Good morning to you too, Walter" a familiar voice said back, laughing softly
Walter could almost feel the color running up his face, because damn it he knew that voice too well. He scratched the back of his head nervously, his eyes rising from the brown tiles to the delicately written 'Paige' on the name tag of the woman in front of him.
"I'm-m sorry," he stuttered back, feeling utterly ridiculous "good morning, Paige"
Walter had only pronounced her name out loud a couple times before, and so it felt kind of awkward coming out of his mouth. When he finally got himself together and looked at her, she seemed like she was holding back a grin.
Paige settled for a wide smile and proceeded to tap the screen of the monitor in front of her. Walter was sort of happy to find out she hadn't changed much since the last time he saw her. Her hair was pulled up in a high pony tail and her bangs looked slightly longer, almost reaching her eyelids now. The early morning light brought out a nice sun-kissed tone on her skin and made her eyes shine a warm hazelnut color too. Sun bathing, maybe? And hadn't the bags under her eyes lessened a little bit? Moderate sun exposure increases levels of vitamin D and may help increase overall sleep quality…
She looked quite stunning, actually.
"…than usual, today"
Walter shook his head, eyebrows scrunched up together "I'm sorry, what?"
Paige flashed him another gentle smile rendering him slightly dazed "I said you look a little more tired than usual today. Walter, are you okay?"
Apparently he was also slower than usual because it took him a whole three-seconds' time to process that question "Yes, yes, I'm fine" he said, before he resumed to the suddenly difficult task of getting the right amount of money from his wallet.
She raised an eyebrow at him, seemingly dissatisfied with his rushed answer.
He frowned, evidently confused, as he quickly went over the whole exchange before it finally downed on him. "I'm fine, thank you" he added.
"You're getting so much better…I'm actually proud!" she admitted, handing him the printed receipt. "You know the drill: I'll call your name when the order is ready, shouldn't take long"
Walter was about to deliver what was most likely a completely unnecessary scientific fact when his phone buzzed inside his pocket snapping him back to reality. The security software, he thought, alarmed, as he swiped left below Toby's 'Know-it-all' caller ID on the screen.
"I hope you're all done with the flirting and driving your ass back with our coffees right now" he said.
"Almost there" the genius replied, cursing out loud at the time on his wristwatch. "Has Cooper showed up yet?"
"No, but it shouldn't take her more than five minutes. I don't think that woman has ever been late to something, not even her birth"
Walter rolled his eyes and looked at his wristwatch once again. Even if he sped, he'd never make it to the garage in time if he waited for his order to be ready "See you there" he said, then hung up and put his phone back in his pocket.
"Is everything alright?" Paige asked from behind the bar, a couple feet apart from him.
"Actually…no" he replied, a silent apology drawn all over his face "I have to go"
Paige blinked, puzzled "What?"
"I'm sorry!" he shouted as he dashed through the doors and towards the parking lot.
"Walter, wait!" she shouted back, a cup holder in her hand
He was not able to see the noticeable disappointment in Paige's face.
Walter didn't know why he was so unusually tired.
His eyelids felt heavier by the second as he braved through the ton of out-dated paperwork he –and the team for that matter—had purposefully neglected since last week and yet he couldn't recall when was the last time he'd had a good night's sleep.
He'd always thought he was one to get things done without complaint. He could take on time-sensitive and dangerous missions every day, but it had always been the ensuing paperwork that got the best of him. He was vaguely aware of the few perks of working for the government, but having to write reports and fill out endless forms every time they worked on something was far away from being considered among them. Especially because no matter how many times he reviewed the documents, they always made sure to comment on virtually anything about them: the language used, the length, the blank space on the comments section…
Walter would've given anything to ditch that insufferable task and take a look at the equations Sylvester was working on the board or see what was going on with that faint smell of smoke coming from Happy's workplace… even take a look at the book Toby was reading at the living room with his feet over the coffee table. But he was well aware that the paperwork wouldn't do itself over the night and if he neglected to work on it for another day, he might as well never do it at all.
He sighed and frowned at the insurmountable pile of paperwork before his eyes wishing he'd have some sort of supernatural ability to make it disappear. At this point he thought anything would do, though he'd like to admit that laser-like vision was one of his favorites. Walter rolled his eyes at this ridiculous trail of thought. He had to be very desperate to bring up his sparse knowledge on sci-fi material to occupy his mind.
In fact, Walter was so engrossed in the many uses he could think of for laser-like vision that he initially missed the knock on the door. At first, it seemed like nobody else noticed, but Toby ended up being the one to answer it, not after shooting the rest of the team a skeptical look. Cabe had left thirty minutes before, so it was rather unlikely that it'd be him, at least not with L.A. traffic this late in the afternoon. Could be another lost delivery guy…
Except that it was neither Cabe nor the disoriented delivery guy from the recently open restaurant two blocks away.
"Hi—uh, I'm sorry," she stuttered "my name is—"
"Paige" Toby interrupted her, obviously amused. Walter's eyes widened. "What a pleasant surprise…"
"Yes, uh, how did you—"she snapped her fingers "the name tag, of course— uh, anyway I'm looking for Walter O'Brien?" she added, doubtful.
Three pairs of eyes turned in his direction, Toby's exceedingly amused, of course, as of Happy and Sylvester's…well, they looked mostly confused, although he doubted the mechanic's grin and raised eyebrow could be classified under confused. Walter had never stood up so fast in his life.
Keep it casual, he reminded himself.
The behaviorist seemed like he was about to deliver what was most likely a very embarrassing remark, but luckily, Walter's own curiosity beat him to it. A bright smile appeared on Paige's face as soon as he caught sight of him by his desk and left him momentarily dumbfounded —for the second time in that day, he recalled.
"Paige?" he asked, evidently confused as he rounded his desk awkwardly "W-what are you doing here?"
Walter could almost feel everyone's eyes on him, even Toby's as he politely invited the barista in and rekindled his place at the couch. The 197 genius would've swore he heard kissing sounds as he walked past him, but was happy to see Paige didn't seem to notice when he finally approached her.
She looked the same way she did in the morning, except she had replaced the dark blue apron and white t-shirt underneath, for a loose pink camisole and a denim jacket.
"I'm so glad I found you" she said, her hazelnut eyes were beaming with excitement "you're a very difficult man to find"
"I am?" Walter shook his head "How did you know where I—"
Paige held her finger up in the air as she started rummaging inside her handbag "Hold on"
He bit his tongue.
"You dropped your wallet at the coffee shop this morning" she said, finally fishing the item from her bag "—when you… ran away"
It was indeed his wallet what Paige was holding in front of him. It looked foreign in her hand though, had he not patted his back pocket, apparently empty, he would've probably contemplated she was mistaken just like the lost delivery guy. It had been more than twelve hours since he'd been at the coffee shop, how could he have possibly missed that?
"It is, yes"
"I hope you don't mind me looking inside for some kind of information…" she trailed off "promise I didn't take anything"
"No, no, of course not" Walter added, "I-I would've never thought—"
Paige's eyes looked warm, she smiled at him shyly.
"Thank you" he said after a short pause, bowing his head a little bit.
"No problem" she said, hunching her shoulders "you still owe big time, though"
They stood there for about half a minute looking anywhere but each other, until Walter had the common sense to take the damned wallet from her hand and put it in the back pocket of his pants. What was so intriguing about the stray lock of hair that escaped her pony tail, anyway?
"Well...It was nice seeing you again, Walter" she said, offering him a smile before she turned on her heel and headed for the door.
Walter sort of…panicked. He stretched his arm, not quite sure about what he was actually doing, and was just in time to grab the strap of her handbag as she pulled the heavy door open. The cool autumn breeze did nothing to clarify his thoughts, but for once his familiar unfiltered self served him right by blurting out the words: "Is—uh, is there any way I could…repay you?
The barista stood there, halfway in halfway out, for a terrifyingly long second that got Walter thinking about all the ways he could apologize to her, before she finally turned on her heel and faced him again, a wide grin on her face.
Paige fetched a pen from her bag and stuck it between her teeth as she said "You can always try" She then grabbed his arm, rolled his sleeve and retrieved the pen to scribble down a series of numbers on his forearm.
Walter looked to his forearm, incredulous. Was that…?
"I like Italian food, by the way" the barista said as she exited the garage.
A/N: Thank you for making it this far :)
I'll admit I've been cooking this thing for an embarrassingly long time but my excitement over finally letting it out of my computer (and mind for that matter) is infinitely bigger (and taking in consideration the difficult time Waige is getting through, my guess is that some good ol' fluff is very much needed...) I may have promised this coffee shop au to many people in the past (sorry about that), but if you've read the author's notes on other things I've wrote, there's a chance you know I'm pretty insecure about my writing as a whole so... there's that. I dedicate this to webuiltthepyramids, from whom I got the inspiration (as far as I can remember), thank you, btw! And I hope you enjoyed this story as much as I did writing it, please feel free to leave your thoughts with a review or a PM (I'd be delighted to know what YOU think of this!)