Is this repetitive in the sea of post-Tahoe fics? Probably. But I needed a break from "Burned," so hopefully you'll still enjoy it.
Side note: I finally got around to bingeing "Stranger Things" on Netflix and it's awesome. The kids on that show are excellent, I highly recommend checking it out!
The universe was against him.
That was a preposterous thought, obviously. The universe had no stake in his relationship with Paige. But every time he'd tried to get a moment alone with her on this case, they'd been shot at, driven off the road, and nearly blown up. Two days since she returned from Lake Tahoe and he had barely gotten fifteen words in, and certainly not the three he needed to say. It wasn't hard to believe that a force greater than himself was rooting for Tim.
And now they were back in Los Angeles and Walter was so exhausted he thought he might not wake up tomorrow, but it was oddly quiet when he came back out of the kitchen, and the sudden realization that he and Paige were finally alone stopped him in his tracks.
She was sitting at her desk, looking drained but still better than him, nose buried in a mountain of paperwork. This is a bad time. I shouldn't. Walter kicked himself for the thought. If he waited any longer, he was going to lose his chance entirely. He wasn't so foolish as to think that Paige would hold out forever. She was, clearly and rightfully, already tired of waiting for him.
"Paige?" He sounded awkward and uncertain, like a nervous high schooler about to ask her to a dance. Presumably. He'd already graduated high school before he developed any interest in women. "I was wondering if you had a few minutes to, uh, discuss something."
The liaison didn't look up at him until the last word, blinking as if he'd drawn her out of her thoughts. She brushed her hair lazily away from her face before turning her attention back to the document in her hand. "Can we handle it tomorrow? I want to finish these and get out of here."
"Of course," he answered reluctantly, and although Paige looked relieved, Walter felt a surge of panic. It couldn't wait. He couldn't put this off again, or one day he'd be eighty years old, standing in this garage and still trying to get her attention. "A-actually, I'd really prefer to address it now. Please."
Paige sighed, and although Walter understood that she was irritated with him, he couldn't help but find the sound endearing. After a few seconds, the genius realized that he was simply staring at her, suppressing a small smile, while she watched him expectantly. "What?" she finally asked. "Are you worried about Toby and Happy? Because they seem to be working it out."
Walter furrowed his eyebrows, thrown by the mention of his heartbroken friends. Seeing their courtship implode had been one motivating factor in his decision to let Paige leave for Lake Tahoe, only serving to fortify his conviction that workplace romances were unsustainable. But she wasn't wrong. Although the first day was tense, working together on a high-stakes mission appeared to have given Happy and Toby a starting point through which to reestablish open communication. Perhaps they weren't quite as doomed as he predicted.
"N-no," Walter fumbled, suddenly even less sure of what he planned to say than before. "I mean, yes. I am worried," he added, knowing that Paige would appreciate some display of concern toward their colleagues, "but that's not what I meant. I'd like to talk about…you."
Paige sat up straighter in her chair, crossing her legs in front of her. Walter was temporarily distracted by the movement until she said, "Did I do something wrong on the case?"
"What? No." She thought he was upset with her? He was bungling this impressively. Just spit it out. "Not just you. Um, you a-and me." For a man with a 197 IQ, his vocabulary was sorely lacking at the moment. But he'd already stepped over the line and had no choice but to continue tripping through the rest of his speech as Paige sat there, looking confused. "When I called you to come back to the garage, I wasn't here. I was…I was eighty-six miles from your hotel. I needed to talk to you then, but we were interrupted."
"Oh," she said after a second, leaning forward in her chair and resting her elbows on the desk in front of her. "What was so important that you would drive all the way out there? I didn't even want to drive there."
Neither had he, after being awake for thirty-six hours straight, after dealing with the emotional fallout of Collins and Toby's proposal and Happy leaving—in hindsight, it was remarkably dangerous for him to have been behind the wheel at all—but at the time, he'd felt nothing but adrenaline in his system. "Before you left, uh, you asked if…if I thought you should stay. And I realized that I should have said yes."
"To help Happy and Toby."
"No," Walter said again. He was starting to sound like a broken record. If efficient communication was so important to him, why was it this difficult to get to the point? "Partially. But mostly because I…" Say it before she cuts you off and leaves again. "I didn't want you to go. Uh, with Tim. I didn't want you to go with Tim. I'd planned to use the tickets for you and me, if you wanted to come, but I talked myself out of it." Paige's eyes widened, and Walter rushed out his next words in one long breath. "Toby yelled at me, which was justified. It was a mistake to tell you to leave. I should have told you the truth, t-that I wanted to be with you, but I…"
Paige shook her head, and Walter trailed off, his already weak voice evaporating into the air. "Whatever you were going to say, just…don't," she murmured, running her hands lightly over her face. "I don't know where this is coming from, but I can't deal with it tonight. Okay? I think we both just need some sleep, and then we can come in tomorrow and forget about…whatever's happening right now."
Walter frowned. That wasn't the reaction he expected. "Paige, I know I don't express myself well. Perhaps you don't understand what I'm trying to—."
"Trust me, Walter, I understand." She pushed herself away from her desk and stood up in one quick motion, seeming a little less tired and a lot more aggravated now. "Seeing me with Tim bothers you. You haven't wanted me this whole time, but now this situation has activated your jealousy, and you want to step in." Paige glanced up at the ceiling, huffing out a breath. "This is so typical. I never said anything while you were dating Linda. I respected your decision. But you can't respect mine?"
Well, he'd really done it now.
"Of course I respect your decision, Paige. I always respect your decisions." That wasn't strictly true, but he respected her, and he had gotten better about not interfering with her personal life. Well, present circumstances excluded. "Would you just let me—."
"You don't get to keep me from moving on," she snapped, the quiet contempt in her voice a thousand times worse than if she had just screamed at him. "You don't own me, Walter. You can't just come in here and try to manipulate me every time you feel threatened."
He had honestly planned to approach this calmly, rationally, but they were both running on a lack of sleep and two years' worth of buried emotions, so it wasn't exactly surprising when his rebuttal was less than eloquent. "What do you want me to say, Paige?" He raked his fingers through his hair, gripping it tightly. "That seeing you together is a nightmare? That I hate knowing Tim can give you everything I can't? All true. I've pretended it doesn't bother me, I've told myself it doesn't bother me, but it does. It bothers me so much that I wish I could shut everything out and go back to the person I was before I met you. But I can't." Taking a shaky step back, Walter began to pace near her desk, unable to make eye contact with her. "Now I'm stuck between being the person that I should be, the man who would know what to do, and the person I used to be, who didn't care. So if you know what I'm supposed to do right now, Paige, please tell me. Because I have no idea."
Startled by his own outburst, Walter gradually slowed to a stop, keeping his gaze locked on the floor. For a long time—he couldn't think over the sound of blood rushing in his ears—neither of them moved, or spoke, or reacted in any way. The genius had a pretty good idea what Paige might do, though, and the silence was infinitely preferable.
"I'm sorry," she said eventually, her words almost too faint to hear. Walter glanced over at her impulsively, but she was focused intently on the top of her desk, her hands gripping the edge. She cleared her throat and continued more loudly, "I want the record to state that I'm still mad at you. But you were trying to open up to me and I laid into you. That's not fair, not after I've pushed you to grow emotionally. So I'm sorry."
Walter stayed silent, giving himself a moment to process this new shift in the conversation. Nothing was working out the way he imagined, although if he'd learned anything from Paige, it was that life typically didn't, and such unpredictability was not always negative. "I'm sorry too," he said when he could speak again. "I shouldn't have dropped this on you all at once. I just didn't know how to say it. I never want you to feel as if I'm attempting to control you, or…"
"I know that's not what you meant," Paige reassured him, finally tilting up her head to look at him. "Sometimes I forget that you're not Drew. He wanted us when he wanted us, and then he didn't. He always showed up just when I was done. And it's, uh…it's hard to separate the past and the present, occasionally."
Walter chafed at the comparison, but he'd brought it on himself, so the only thing he could do now was what Drew never managed to: act like an adult. "Paige, I know I never should have let things get this far. If you've moved on with Tim, then that's fair, I guess. But I couldn't let you go without t-trying."
Another heavy silence filled the garage until Paige circled around her desk, maintaining a few feet of distance from Walter. But he supposed it was a good sign that she'd removed one barrier between them. "Tim and I aren't dating. We weren't even dating when we left for Tahoe."
The air rushed out of his lungs and Walter lost confidence in his ability to stand for a moment. Oh, thank God. "Why didn't you just tell me?"
"Because it was none of your business," she said bluntly, crossing her arms over her chest. The gesture was meant to look intimidating, but he sensed that she was subconsciously attempting to protect herself. Walter found the idea that she needed to protect herself from him unpalatable. "Does that change things?"
What did Paige expect that would change, aside from his level of anxiety? "I don't understand."
"If you knew that you weren't in immediate danger of losing me to Tim, would you still have told me that you wanted to be with me?" She was watching him closely now, and Walter grew nervous again, wondering if she might see something in his expression that would dissuade her from listening to him. "Or would you have insisted that we needed to bury our feelings forever?"
Our feelings. That had to mean she was still experiencing them too, didn't it? He decided it was better to seek clarification later. Right now, she'd asked him a question, and he was scrambling to find the right answer.
"I'll admit that Tim's arrival was…a catalyst, of sorts." He shifted his weight, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. "I can't adequately predict what would have happened if he hadn't joined the team. But I can unequivocally say that my feelings for you existed long before that happened. You already knew that, perhaps better than I did."
Was that the right thing to say? He couldn't tell by looking at her. Walter knew his declaration thus far had been pretty short of romantic, but if there were any words that conveyed the extent to which she changed everything, he'd never heard them. There were some that came close, though.
"I always knew t-that I was attracted to you, that I enjoyed spending time with you, that I felt comfortable when you touched me…" he continued, not waiting for her response just yet, "but it wasn't until recently that I understood the larger picture. I didn't realize that those elements of our relationship—and uh, the depth of them—were what constituted the emotion of love. All this time, I was…I was in l-love with you and I didn't know."
The overwhelming relief of that admission, combined with Paige's breathy recitation of his name, nearly pulled him under. He half-expected her to slap him, but whatever happened now, at least he'd gotten to say it once. Once would have to be enough.
"Are you okay?" Paige asked, mercifully coming closer and resting her hand on his upper arm, rubbing small circles with her thumb. He nodded. "You waited a long time to tell me that."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"You can stop apologizing, Walter."
He didn't feel like he apologized nearly enough. For denying the existence of something that was important to her. For lashing out at her because he couldn't address his jealousy. For getting close and disappearing instead of taking care of her like he'd really wanted to. But if she gave him the chance, he would remedy that. "Okay."
Paige dropped her hand, to his disappointment, but she didn't move away. He figured there was still some semblance of hope. He had to, because waiting for her response was agonizing, and the ghost of a smile on her face had started to fade. "I believe you, Walter, but after everything that's happened with us, I just…" she exhaled, briefly closing her eyes. "I wonder if you'll still feel this way tomorrow. Or next week, or next year. If you'll still want this. Want me."
There wasn't a day since they met that he hadn't wanted her. But he didn't say that. Walter was well aware that he'd let her down before, and even though he had plenty of justifications for his actions, Paige didn't want to hear them.
"I'm not saying no," she clarified, sensing his insecurity. It was a start. "But you had this major realization, and you want everything to change right away. It's too much. Just take some time, okay? Take time to process all of this, and make sure that acting on it is really what you want. I need to know that you're going to stick around this time, because if you aren't, Walter, then I'm just going to end up hurt and I don't think I can go through that again."
The last thing Walter wanted was more time apart. But the past two years had been on his terms, and he nearly ruined any chance he had with her. Perhaps operating on her terms would produce better results.
"Okay." He leaned toward her, and her eyebrows raised slightly, her breathing becoming faster and shallower. If he closed the distance between them and kissed her right now, there was a chance she wouldn't push him away. As tempted as he was to test his theory, though, Walter knew he had a long way to go before he earned that right. "I know what I want, Paige. But if you need me to prove it to you, then I will."
As he signed the last form and looked up to an empty garage, Walter nearly regretted agreeing to finish the paperwork from their case and sending Paige home to Ralph. But he knew he'd done the right thing. The first of many right things he would need to do if he wanted to win Paige over.
He wasn't going anywhere. She didn't have to worry about that. But considering his extensive track record of self-sabotage, Walter knew he would need some assistance. Toby was a serious romantic—much more so than a woman like Happy required—but he was going through enough already, and he was bound to embarrass Walter somehow. Cabe and Sylvester hadn't quite moved on from their past experiences with love, and he felt uncomfortable tapping them for help. So Walter grabbed his cell phone from the desk and hesitantly pressed the number for the only person that was left.
"Dad? Hey. I'm sorry to call so late, but, uh…I need your advice."