PROCREATION SCIENCE -

A Misconception

Chapter 4

AN: Hang onto your hats. This chapter is suggestive and risqué. If that's not your thing, I won't be mad if you skip it. For those of you wanting full frontal smut, sorry. I don't go all the way. You'd have to buy me dinner first. ;-) I leave that to the experts in the fandom. Hope you aren't too disappointed and you enjoy the chapter anyway.

Walter O'Brien was asleep in her bed. And he wasn't wearing a stitch.

Okay, so that happened.

Paige needed a minute or twenty to catch up. She was in the shower early on Sunday morning looking back over the phenomenon of a very peculiar and incredible and eventful weekend. One could even say extremely 'busy' even though they never left her condo.

It started off a little awkward. Of course it did. It was a strange set of circumstances. And it was… Walter.

After the man poured water down her back and she had the bright idea to rip her shirt off in front of him, he froze. Like a genius version of Michelangelo's David. Only with clothes. He stared at her so long, she worried an aneurism had exploded in that great, big brain of his or a circuit blew or something.

When she started to feel a little cold and exposed, she pressed her shirt against her chest and asked, "Hey, Walter? Are you okay?"

Eyes wide, he shook his head as if coming out of a trance and pivoted around, turning his back to her. Then the stuttering started. "I'm sorry. I-I didn't mean… I mean, I did mean… I was assuming… but of course you'd need to-to change. Your-your shirt is, uh, w-wet." He said all of that in half a second, max.

Trying to be patient, she stated, "If we're going to do this, you're eventually going to have to get comfortable with me undressing in front of you." Paige wasn't sure if she was capable of towing him out of another nervous wreck, so she hoped her boldness hadn't driven him all the way back to square one. If anything she had more reasons to be fearful than he did. She knew exactly what being a parent entailed, after all. Not to mention, she was about to get naked in front of her boss.

His back still toward her but sounding a little less jumpy, he answered, "I wasn't sure if-if you were taking off your sweater for my benefit or if you were just uncomfortably wet."

Oh, she was uncomfortably wet alright, but it had nothing to do with the water he spilled on her shirt. She wisely chose not to share that fact. Instead she asked, "You wanna know what I think?"

Glancing over his shoulder but keeping his eyes firmly locked on her face, he nodded.

"I think we need to rip this bandage off. Just get it over with. The first time is going to be the weirdest, right? After that, we can work on things. Continue to get better. But I really think we just need to get this first one out of the way as soon as possible, so we can stop worrying about it."

Walter turned all the way around to face her then. "You mean you could critique my performance? Give me notes on how to improve? Then each time after that would be better. Hmm. Building my practical knowledge as well as work on my muscle memory. Logical. I like it." His demeanor lightened up considerably now that he had a plan and he began scanning all the horizontal surfaces in her living and dining room as if evaluating their stability.

Paige compressed her lips to keep from laughing at his hopeful expression. She responded with, "Something like that, I guess. But before you get any bright ideas about my dining room table or the kitchen counters, we will be taking this conversation to my bedroom. As soon as you turn off the stove. We'll have dinner later. Right now we have unfinished business." Still clutching her shirt over her breasts with one hand, she pointed toward the kitchen with the other and Walter obediently turned the heat off under the chili, stirred it and replaced the lid.

He was very efficient. Uh, oh.

She shook her head to clear out all mental images of stop watches and she proceeded down the hall toward her bedroom. She could feel his eyes on her as he trailed behind.

Once inside, Paige shut the door. She had no idea why. No one else was there to walk in. It just felt more private. More intimate somehow.

She dropped her shirt to the floor and the genius' eyes dropped to her cleavage before he flushed and his gaze snapped back to meet her amused one. "It's okay to look. That's why we're here. Now it's your turn."

Paige closed the distance between them and immediately began unbuttoning his shirt while he watched her, hands at his sides, his breath coming out in short, staccato bursts. She smoothed her hands inside at his waist and glided them up and over his warm, solid chest. His involuntary little shudder made her feel confident and sexy. She pushed the garment off his shoulders and down his arms and… discovered she hadn't unbuttoned the cuffs. His shirt was turned wrong-side out and his hands were effectively trapped inside the sleeves. The more they tugged at them, the more they tightened. Just like a noose.

When he started to use his teeth, she started giggling.

"No, Walter. Stop. Just a minute," Paige said, grabbing his wrist.

The two of them wrestled his shirt back on. When she finally got the cuffs unbuttoned, he quickly flung the shirt off and away. And for a second her mouth went dry and she turned into a non-genius version of Venus de Milo. Only with arms. She put them to good use once she sufficiently recovered her wits.

In hindsight, Paige thought she probably should have seated herself on the bed to remove her half boots, but with the shirtless genius in her personal space she couldn't be blamed for being more than a bit idiotic. She hopped around in a circle on one foot then the other while unzipping and yanking off her footwear. For once, Walter wasn't compelled to correct the flaws in her methodology. His eyes were riveted on the parts of her that were bouncing and jiggling with each hop.

Before she could lose her nerve, she undid her pants, pushed them to her ankles and stepped out of them. She actually heard him swallow.

Paige looked up at Walter with a challenge in her eyes. Jerking a chin at his waistband, she said, "Your turn."

Nothing.

He just stood there blinking.

"Go on," she urged.

Blushing a fierce red, he replied with a note of a whine, "No?"

"I'm not going to stand here in my underwear all by myself. It's not fair."

All she got was an emphatic shake of his head.

With a determined look, she got to him in one stride and lowered her hands to the fastening of his pants. His eyes wide, his hands came down and covered hers and he whispered, "I can't."

Paige tsked, equal parts curious and annoyed with him. "Walter, it will be much easier to get to 'the main event' if we're both down to the bare essentials before we lay down." When he didn't budge, she rolled her eyes and added, "It's more efficient."

Cutting his eyes to one side, he mumbled something through his teeth that sounded like, "…not wearing any…"

Frowning as much from confusion as barely contained aggravation, she pinched the bridge of her nose and prompted, "You aren't wearing…?"

The word 'underwear' burst out of his mouth as if she pulled it out by force. Walter rubbed a hand down his face then explained, "My research shows it increases the, uh, sperm count if-if you go…without. I haven't worn any for more than two weeks. Ever since we decided on a date to-to, um, move forward."

Well.

What could she say to that? They looked at each other and grinned. Then Paige started snickering and before long the two of them were laughing themselves stupid.

Holding Walter's shoulder, she finally got ahold of herself and teased, "Well, nude up, genius boy! Let's get this party started."

He still refused to take his pants off at that time, but the two of them did manage to crawl onto the bed together after a tad more wrangling.

And, holy crap!

The man was both literally and metaphorically a genius in bed. Laser focus all on her, he seemed fascinated by her responses, mentally cataloging and collating each bit of experimental data, often repeating maneuvers to see if he got similar results. Although she both saw and felt the hard evidence he was eager for his own release, he appeared to be more interested in driving her to the brink of sanity first.

Once, he nearly killed the mood when he asked if she'd liked being 'orally stimulated'. But when he proceeded without her express consent, Paige found she didn't give two shits what he called it as long as he didn't stop.

He was surprisingly very sweet afterward. Walter rolled off to the side almost immediately to keep from crushing her. While her eyes were still shut and she was still trying to catch her breath, he trailed his fingertips softly over her arm and the curves of her waist and hip as if trying to memorize her shape and all her angles. She thought there might be some residual strangeness after the first time, but there wasn't. Instead of backing way off and retreating like she thought he might, he smiled shyly at her and stayed right next to her.

As the evening progressed into night, he often touched her without prompting. He would even kiss her tenderly on a shoulder or on the temple when she was doing ordinary things like serving up dinner or when she was helping him wash the dishes. It was like… he might… but he couldn't. Could he?

They made love, at least that's the way she began to view it, several more times throughout the night in between talking and making plans. They tried to watch a movie at one point, but ended up kissing through most of it. Just like a couple in love. Except he didn't believe in love.

Now she was physically sore in all the right places. Paige let the hot spray from the shower soothe away the aches in the muscles she hadn't worked out in ages, but no amount of hot water could soothe the ache in her heart.

How could she have been so stupid? How could she open herself up like this? Be vulnerable this way? She should have known sleeping with Walter would make her feelings for him rise to the surface. Become even stronger. She wasn't a genius. And being a normal like she was, Paige couldn't separate the science of trying to conceive a child from the emotions of being intimate. There was no denying it any more. Paige was deeply in love. What the hell was she supposed to do about it?

P.S. Yes, of course I stole 'Nude up, genius boy' from Ice Ca-Cabes. I couldn't resist. It had to be done by someone. And 'Logical. I like it.' Is a modified version of the conversation at the end of Sharknerdo.

P.S.S. Again, thank you SO much for all the lovely reviews. Probably just one or two more chapters left. I won't be able to update until next week, but it's gonna be a long two week hiatus, so hopefully it'll give you something to look forward to?