Ralph Dineen had everything, all the way up until 2 weeks ago. His parents were together, even though Scorpion was a family, he had an actual family together. He always saw Walter as a father figure to him, honestly when he'd talk about Walter to others he'd refer to him as "my dad".

The first night that he and his mom had to sleep back at the condo, it felt foreign. Just a week before the fall out had happened, his mom had brought up the topic of potentially moving in with Walter. They basically had stayed there every other night anyways, Ralph was just waiting for it to become official. Now it looks like that day will never come.
His mom was a hot mess. He watched as she pulled herself together for Happy, Toby and Sylvester. At the end of the day, when she thinks Ralph is asleep, she lets herself fall apart. He'd seen his mother deal with heart break before, but he'd never seen her like this. She had to make Ralph swear up and down that he'd never communicate with Walter again, and he meant it the time he had said it.

He was mad at Walter. He understood that it was Walter's actions that had broken his family apart, that had hurt his mom. However, after a couple of days the rage he felt turned into yearning for Walter. Sure, he had Happy, Toby and Sylvester that he could connect to for his genius things, even his mom was always up to listen to anything he was saying whether she understood it or not, she was willing to listen.

"How are you doing, Buddy?" Walter asked.

Ralph nervously tapped his fingers on the table, he knew what he was doing was wrong. But he had to see Walter. Everything that he wanted to tell Walter kind of all came out at once. How his high school black listed him from the Mathletes and the Debate club(he really only wanted to join the teams anyway to keep his mind busy and not focus on what was going on with his home life). How he corrected his college professor in the middle of his lecture, and now that professor has it out for him since the last two assignments he had he was given a C+.

Walter scoffed at the last thing. Even though he had an IQ higher than Walter's he had never shown any jealousy over it. In fact, tied with his mom, Walter still remains Ralph's biggest fan. Ralph could swear that Walter took pride in him having a higher IQ.

"You could be teaching that class." He told him.

He had recently been thinking, since Scorpion broke up, that he'd like to be a Physics Professor. After a while of them just talking, and some reminiscing, he finally looked at his watch.

"Well, I should be going." He sighed. He grabbed his bag. "The bus will be here soon."

"You're not going to take the bus." Walter said hastily. "I'll take you home."

He wanted to object. He wanted to let Walter know that his mother would ground him for the end of days if she saw him with Walter.

But he didn't. He just nodded. He wasn't too sure when he'd be able to sneak out again and see Walter, and he just wanted to spend the most time he could with his dad.


The cases CP got were no matches by any means to the ones Scorpion used to get. They weren't chaotic. And they were safer. The pay on the other hand, wasn't as nice as Scorpion's was, but still a livable income. Paige threw her bag down on her desk as they just got back from a client's lab. She was exhausted and all she wanted was a nice warm cup of coffee to help keep her awake while she filled out the report, and go over the pay for everyone. But of course, she couldn't have any coffee.

"Hey Paige." Toby said as he sat on her desk. "How're you feeling?"

She sat down in her chair and turned on her monitor.

"How are you feeling, Toby?" She asked him.

Nobody really talked about the fall out at the garage, they just kind of went with the motions. Nobody talks about Florence, they barely bring up Cabe, and Walter was a forbidden topic. Paige was okay with that, she would actually prefer to work like that.

"Ya know today's case would've gone a lot smoother if we had you-know-who with us." Toby said as he had monkeyed with the highlighters on her desk. "Have you spoken to him at all?"

"You know I haven't." She said abruptly.

"And how are you feeling about that?" He asked.

"Fine."

Maybe it was the tone of her voice, but he did a very un-Toby-like thing and backed off.

"Alright, just checking in." And he hopped off her desk.

After several attempts to start the case report, she banged on her keyboard frustrated and announced to everyone that she was going to finish it at home. On her entire drive to the condo, she failed at keeping her thoughts at bay with loud music. As always, her mind keeps drifting to Walter.

She hadn't talked to him since they saw him a couple of days ago at a Client's building. Even finding out she was pregnant hadn't really increased her wanting to see him. Every night she cried for him. She thought that he was the only person in the world who would never hurt her, even with his EQ issues, he always seemed to put her(and Ralph) before anything else. So when he lied to her about everything, she broke and she went into defensive mode. She wasn't even sure if she meant the things she told him that day, but she wanted to hurt him like the way he hurt her.

And now she was pregnant, pregnant with Walter's child. Now she had to decide whether she was going to tell him or not. She could do the single mom thing again, this time she was making more than what she did when she had Ralph, so she knows she could do it. But the question isn't whether she could be a single mother again, but rather if she should.

As she had pulled into the parking lot of her condo building, she saw a very familiar Black Chevy Malibu her son got out of. Sitting in the driver's seat was none other than Walter O'Brien.


I apologize if the story is going slow, I promise it should pick up in the next couple of chapters or so. I just love Walter and Ralphs relationship and I had to write how this is affecting Ralph, as it will be a major part later in the story. Thank you all for the positive feedback so far! It is such a big motivator for me! Hopefully in the next week or so I can update to the more action-packed, more Scorpion-like chapters.