AN: So, Scorpion has kind of taken over my life. I didn't intend for it to happen! I'm very glad that there's a fanfic community for it already, though! Please note that I have only seen up to True Colours. (No spoilers, please!)

It doesn't really take all that long for her to come to appreciate them. To see beyond what almost everyone else saw. To see the people they were behind the astronomically high IQs and the arrogance, the cynicism, the bluster, the anxiety-ridden dorkiness.

They were good people.

They were kind. Regardless of the whole high IQ/low EQ thing, they were. Maybe they couldn't process it, couldn't acknowledge it, but there were the kindest people she'd ever met. They cared, they really did.

It was obvious, even for a normal like her.

They took in her son. They took in her precious little boy. He was a stranger to them (and they were not good with strangers, outsiders- it to them long enough for them to accept her) but they'd taken him in instantly.

Sylvester never coped well with strangers- but there he was, playing chess with Ralph the very first time they'd met. Happy was all hard edges, cool and strong like the metal she loved to have in her hands- but Paige had never seen her softer or gentler than with her son. Toby was reckless and irresponsible- but he was careful with Ralph. Walter was an arrogant know-it-all, and supposedly emotionless, but there he was, holding Ralph's hand, running his hands through his hair, explaining things she would never understand to him, hell, wearing a Halloween costume (however similar to his normal attire) for his Halloween party. Being...well, the closest thing Ralph had ever had to a father. Telling him that they were a cyclone. A family.

They'd reached out to him (to her) because they wanted Ralph to have what they never had. A family. A place to call home. A place to belong. A place where he was accepted and loved and appreciated for what he was. The real deal. The genuine article. Not the patchwork, cobbled-together little family of misfits they'd created for themselves (as wonderful as that was) but a genuine family, a genuine home, from childhood.

They wanted to help. They really did. Regardless of the condescension and the disasters and the rants and raves, the criticisms and the complaints, they really did want to help people. To save them, to fix their problems, to make their lives better.

She'd known that, right from the moment he told her that she had to help Ralph. She'd known that, right from the instant he started shutting down, just like Ralph, because he was scared because people were going to die. She'd known from that look in his eyes when he told Cabe that he did not know how to solve the problem, and that he'd have to activate the fourth option. She'd known from the way he'd yelled at her don't lecture me about how people dying will make me feel. I already know.

And every day she spent with them, the more and more evidence she saw of their desire to make good.

Offering her a job. Saving her from a bullet. Making Ralph a Halloween costume. Chasing bad guys, regardless of their ineptitude in that division. Touching a germ-ridden door handle.

Sure, they had some...interesting...ways of expressing and executing their desire to help (slashing a supposedly valuable painting, streaky nail polish, anaemia, bags under her eyes, getting a man fired because of his small hands...then trying to help him set up a scone business) but it was there.

And, in some ways, they were just like normals. There were moments when they were just like everybody else. (Even if they'd never realize it...or admit it.)

Cooking chicken piccata. Barbecues on the roof. Letting loose in Vegas. Happy and Toby's bickering/flirting. Sylvester's adoration of Super Fun Guy. Walter's love for his sister, his rage at the man who'd sent the virus to the Governor's daughter's computer, his not quite knowing where to put his hands, like a nervous teenage boy dancing with a pretty girl for the first time...

And there were moments where they far exceeded what most normals would ever be, or ever do. (And not in the IQ department.)

For a man who could not be helped by pep talks, Walter was pretty good at them. I won't let anything happen to you...Everyone fits in eventually...You are one of us. We can't do this without you.

What they'd do for each other, for their cyclone, was nothing short of amazing. (And brave. And courageous. And indicative of feelings they definitely felt, even if they couldn't quite understand or process them. Regardless of the logic, the calculations of probabilities and potentialities that she knew ran through their minds.)

Crawling through air ducts. Taking a zip line ten storeys up. Driving a car for the first time. Drawing guards away. Staying behind alone to deal with a bomb. Force feeding a friend, in a valiant attempt to save them from themselves.

Their willingness to try something new, to move out of that little sphere they were comfortable in.

Chasing bad guys. Eating her, no, their chicken piccata, despite their lack of a chicken thermometer. Inviting her into their little group, irrevocably changing the dynamic, because they (well, at least Walter) knew they needed to, well, not change, but to grow. Trying Halloween costumes. Dancing. Attempting to learn to appreciate art (however dismal the attempt).

They are good.

They are crazy and unreasonable, arrogant and insufferable, downright rude at times, and almost always bizarre.

(So are a lot of normal people.)

But they are also kind and caring and sweet and moral and heroic and brave.

(And quite a few normal people are not.)