Chapter 5
Authors Note:
Thank you for all the reviews - I am always grateful for your feedback.
So - we have one reunion done - but there is still another one due and of course someone needs to get what they deserve - but both of these things might take a few more chapters.
Chapter 5
"I don't want to go downstairs." Paige whined. "I want to stay like this. Preferably forever!"
"Me too, but we can't."
"I know!" Paige still sounded a bit petulant at the prospect of having to get up and face the others, "But I don't want to stop cuddling with you and I don't want to see the others and have them tell me how stupid I've been for going out with Chad."
After Paige had told Walter what had happened, she had been afraid he would get angry at her for dating someone else, or think her stupid, but he had just held her and told her that it wasn't her fault.
He had even offered to go online and delete the guy's identity, but she wasn't quite sure she really wanted that.
If he had no identity, he could not be prosecuted for what he had done to her - or would do to someone else. He had tried it with her, Paige was sure he would try violating a woman again. If she even was his first victim.
She was not going to complain if additionally to having charges pressed against him for assaulting her, Chad would mysteriously find himself on the IRA's list for a particularly extensive tax audit.
"They won't do that!" Walter shook his head slightly. "Happy will most likely offer to hit him repeatedly with her sledgehammer and Sylvester will offer you his services as an attorney. If there still needs to be a trial after Cabe gets his hands on the guy and Toby has called in some favours with his former gambling contacts."
Paige chuckled. "Okay, I admit I know they wouldn't tell me I'm stupid, but it felt good to hear you point it out. I'll need a moment to get ready mentally, though. How about you get ready first, then I'll take a shower and head downstairs a bit later."
"You can't…" Walter started, then noticed Paige's quizzical look. "Take a shower I mean. If you want to press charges, you need to be processed for evidence."
Paige's face darkened for a moment.
"As much as I just want to just forget about this, I don't want him to get away with it and do it to someone else. Can I at least wash my face? I look horrible! I am amazed you've taken me back, looking like that."
Walter chuckled, recognising Paige's attempt at lightening the mood.
"If he didn't touch your face, then you should be okay to wash it, but not the parts of your body he touched." It was Walter's turn to wear a sour expression at the thought of someone touching Paige against her will.
"I'll call Cabe and ask him if he wants to handle this as a Homeland matter or if he wants to involve LAPD. He's been long enough in Los Angeles to form connections there."
Paige nodded her agreement.
"If it's okay for you, I'll take the bathroom first." Walter suggested. "I have to admit I have been having the urge to go for a while now."
Paige's eyes grew wide. "Why didn't you say anything?"
"I didn't want to get up either." Walter admitted as he got up and walked toward the bathroom.
As he looked back, he saw Paige sink back into the mattress with a soft smile on her face.
Paige waited until Walter had closed the door behind him before she buried her face in his pillow and inhaled his lingering scent deeply.
Even though she felt anxious at the prospect of being processed for evidence within the next few hours, she also felt content at being back where she felt she belonged.
xxxXXXxxx
Paige heard Walter talking on the phone outside the bathroom. He was giving Cabe a rough run down of what had happened, but seemed to be hovering near the door.
Paige had just finished scrubbing her face clean of the previous night's makeup and was reaching for the little basket Walter had used to collect all the make-up products she had left behind when she had walked out of the garage several weeks ago.
She hadn't been able to bring herself to go to the garage and collect her products, as well as the change of clothes she had had in Walter's closet.
Now she was thankful for the items.
Walter had given her a clean paper bag to put last night's clothes into so the traces Chad had left on them could be preserved - if there still was anything left after she had slept in them.
A soft knock made her jump slightly.
She opened the door and looked expectantly at Walter.
"Cabe is going to be here any minute. He has a friend with the Special Crimes Unit at LAPD he's going to contact. Since you are currently not a member of Scorpion he can't handle it as a Homeland matter."
Paige nodded her understanding, trying not to show the small stab at the mention of her current status of not being a member of Scorpion. In her happiness of being back with Walter, she had completely blocked that fact out of her mind.
"I'll be ready in a bit, how about you go on downstairs and I'll follow in a few?"
"I can wait for you." Walter offered.
"No, I need a moment alone to collect myself before I face everyone."
"I could go and prepare some coffee for you. I'm sure the others will also appreciate a mug."
Paige chuckled. "With cinnamon? I'm pretty sure they won't." She paused for a moment. "But don't let that stop you from putting cinnamon in my coffee."
"Knowing Toby he probably already raided my fridge and the coffee machine."
"I'm pretty sure he did!" Paige agreed. "They'll probably ask you what happened to me when you get down there…"
"You want me to stall them?" Walter asked.
Paige shook her head. "No, actually I would be grateful if you would give them a shortened version of what I told you? They don't need to know more than that and it's bad enough I will have to recount everything to LADP…" Paige shuddered.
Chad hadn't been able to go through with his intentions, but the thought of how close she had come to being raped brought a new wave of nausea. If she hadn't been able to kick him at the last moment… Her mind brought up the memory of how his hands had felt on her body and she felt the sudden urge to scrub herself raw under the shower.
Walter picked up on Paige's distress.
"Paige, are you… what can I do?" Worry was written all over his face.
Paige snapped out of her memory at Walter's words.
"I'm… I'll be fine." She swallowed. "Once the LAPD has taken my statement and I can take a shower I will feel better." She paused for a moment then grinned as she stepped towards Walter "Especially when everyone else is gone and my boyfriend kisses me better!"
She quickly stole a kiss from Walter's lips, then pushed him away from her before she could give in to her urge to pull Walter into the bathroom and have him touch her where Chad had touched so she could overwrite the memory of his touch with Walter's.
She knew that wouldn't be fair to Walter and it would most likely not erase what had happened from her memory. It would be a temporary fix that would fade all too quickly.
"And now I need a moment to myself and you will fulfil your boyfriend duties and play buffer between myself and the bunch of worried geniuses downstairs."
xxxXXXxxx
The sound of a hammer hitting metal became louder as Walter walked towards the door to the loft and the volume increased again as he opened the door and stood at the top of the stairs for a second.
It was fascinating how Happy's hammering could indicate her emotional state. And right now she was pissed off. Worried and pissed off to be exact.
The sound suddenly cut off as the former Scorpion members noticed Walter coming down the stairs.
As if summoned by a silent call, they assembled in the middle of the garage, looking at Walter expectantly as soon as it was clear he was descending the stairs alone.
"Where's Paige?" Happy asked, worry written on her face.
She normally wasn't very expressive about it, but she did care a lot about her friend.
"Paige is still upstairs. She said she needed a moment to compose herself." Walter looked at none of them in general. "She also asked me to brief you on what has happened last night, so she won't have to recount it over and over again."
The little group of geniuses looked at him expectantly, not making any move to let Walter walk away from the stairs before he had informed them.
Walter swallowed. "I'd like to wait for Cabe, though, he's on his way."
"I'm already here, kid!" Cabe slowly strode out of the kitchen area, holding his mug in his hand. "I made some coffee for everyone and put on a fresh pot with cinnamon for Paige."
Walter smiled. "Thank you, Cabe, I was actually planning on doing just that. Did you get in touch with your LAPD friend yet?"
"She'll be over with a CSI in about an hour." Cabe took a sip of his coffee. "Now tell us what happened to our girl!"
Walter ran a hand though his hair, then gave them a shortened rundown of what Paige had told him about the previous nights events.
Happy grinned with satisfaction as Walter came to the point where Paige had managed to knee her attacker in the groin, then punch him.
"No wonder she doesn't want to have to repeat that over and over again." Sylvester looked like he was about to cry.
"I am thankful she managed to fend that bastard off!" Toby said, his usual flippant comments gone for the moment, replaced by an uncharacteristically somber behaviour. "Even though he has not been able to go through with raping her, having come that close can still have a huge emotional impact on her. That is also the reason why she sought out the one place she had always felt safest at."
"I would have thought that would be her home?" Sylvester scrunched up his face in confusion.
Toby shook his head. "While she normally feels safe in her own home, there is one place and one person she will always feel safest with." His eyes wandered to Walter. "You may have messed up big time when you withheld going to that stupid lecture with Florence, but deep down Paige knows that you will always do everything to keep her safe. That's what you have repeatedly told her and more importantly, shown her several times - actions speak louder than words, even if it takes something bad happening to remind us."
Cabe nodded his agreement as he took another sip of his coffee.
Before Walter could respond to Toby's assessment, the door to the loft opened and Paige stepped out.
All eyes were on her as she descended the stairs, her eyes cast down, not looking at any of them as she felt uncomfortably self-conscious with all their eyes on her.
Just as she reached the stairs, Sylvester surged forward and took Paige into a bear hug.
"I'm so sorry, Paige!" He said gently.
Paige leaned into Sylvester's embrace, then was surprised when the human calculator stepped back and one by one Happy, Toby and Cabe each stepped up to hug her silently.
The former waitress smiled thankfully into the round, then smiled even wider as Ralph hugged her as well. It was something her son hadn't done since he had learned about the breakup and the way she had lashed out at Walter.
Her son had been beyond furious when he head learned that she wanted to go out with someone new instead of talking to Walter like he had been hoping for the past weeks.
Once Ralph let go of her, Paige stepped forward and sought out Walter, who quickly laid an arm around her and hugged her to his side.
The room filled with awkward silence for a moment. The team wasn't sure on how to address the elephant in the room and Paige didn't feel like touching the topic before she had to either.
Ralph quickly walked into the kitchen, then returned with a mug of coffee for his mother.
Paige thankfully accepted the mug, then smiled as the scent of cinnamon tickled her nose.
"Thank you, Ralph!" She looked at Walter. "Do you have anything we can have for breakfast down here?"
"There's only a carton of milk and some weird leftovers in the fridge!" Toby announced.
Paige and Walter looked at each other and grinned.
Cabe screwed up his face. "That's Florence's preservative experiment. I let her have the leftovers from Allie's last tofu pasta to use it on. It's been sitting for the past three weeks. She said it's not ready for consumption yet, but I'm sure she's interested to know if it affects the taste."
"Didn't you hear of labelling experiments?" Toby started to gag and ran to the bathroom. A few seconds later they heard retching.
A satisfied grin spread across Cabe's face at the sound.
"There is no preservative experiment, is there?" Happy asked amused.
Cabe only grinned wider.
"Serves the idiot right!" Happy shook her head. "Perhaps he finally learns not to steal other people's food."
"We got breakfast on the way over - even if you would have anything remotely decent for breakfast, we figured you wouldn't have enough for all of us." Sylvester motioned towards the kitchen, barely containing his glee at Toby's predicament.
The behaviourist had made a sport out of stealing Sylvester's lunches from the office fridge, leaving Sylvester satisfied that karma finally had run it's course.
"Great!" Paige exclaimed, then turned and hurried into the kitchen area where she immediately busied herself going through the bags sitting on the table, fixing plates for everyone.
Toby, freshly emerged from the bathroom, watched her for a few seconds as she pored over her task with unnecessary intensity, brusquely waving away Happy as she tried to help her.
"Walter, I hope you have something you can keep her busy with until Cabe's acquaintance and their CSI entourage arrives or she'll be either rearranging the garage or scale the walls until they are here."
Walter looked at him quizzically, then barely managed to take hold of the plate Paige pushed at him before she breezed back into the kitchen to get the next set of plates.
Toby waited until she was out of earshot before he added. "She's trying to keep her mind off of last nights events by concentrating on manual tasks."
Once she had distributed the food the others had brought, she sat back down on the couch and looked at Walter expectantly.
Walter quickly sat down next to her before anyone else could claim the space. A moment later Ralph plopped down on Walter's other side and dug into his breakfast.
Toby sat down on the armchair next to the couch as Cabe sat down at the table in the center of the room, with Happy and Sylvester joining him.
They ate for a while in silence, until Paige suddenly frowned.
"How did you know I was here, anyway?" She asked, then her eyes narrowed and she glared at Ralph. "Did you trace my phone?"
"I didn't have to. Walter sent me a text last night that you were at the garage and we don't have to worry." Ralph informed her.
"Thank you, Walter." Paige smiled softly at him. "I was so out of it last night I completely forgot that I should let anyone know where I was."
"Yes, you should have!" Toby said sternly. "You could have been lying dead in a ditch and we wouldn't have known it."
Ralph raised his eyebrow. "YOU didn't know anything anyway until this morning!" He turned to his mother. "My oh so wonderful babysitters were both out cold at 10 last night - they didn't even hear my phone when Walter sent his message. Since I knew you were safe and I thought it can only be good that you are at the garage, I've let them sleep until this morning."
"We were worried when we woke up and discovered you hadn't come home!" Toby said defensively. "Because Ralph didn't tell us until he himself got up and we could ask him."
"You worried for all of two minutes, dufus!" Happy growled. "Ralph would have woken us up if it had been necessary."
Toby huffed dramatically.
"See it as practice for your own kids." Cabe aimed a grin at Toby. "No matter how young you adopt, they will eventually become a teenager, hit puberty and you might be in for a few worrisome nights while they break curfew without calling you."
A low growl escaped Happy's throat.
"I already feel sorry for that poor kid." Sylvester eyed Happy carefully.
He wouldn't want to be a defiant teenager facing Happy's motherly wrath.
Walter watched his former team silently. He hadn't thought he would ever admit such a thing, even to himself, but he had missed their banter and bickering.