Chapter 7 - Preserving Homeostasis

Nathan was deeply asleep in the Airstream when the sounds of unfamiliar voices speaking to each other drifted into his subconscious mind, waking him with a start. In the darkness, he panicked for a moment, uncertain where he was, but then he heard the familiar sound of Toby's laughter and he remembered he was living in the camper inside Walter's Garage as his eyes adjusted to the dim light and the familiar surroundings.

With a mixture of relief and irritation at the interrupted sleep, Nathan climbed out of the trailer and found Toby on the sofa, a bowl of popcorn resting next to him. A black and white movie flickering on Walter's old TV, the volume set on low, Toby was reciting the dialog right along with the actors and didn't even notice Nathan's sudden appearance. Nathan blinked blearily at the figures on the screen, it seemed just about everyone on the team was a movie buff of one stripe or another.

Nathan was physically and emotionally drained after a mission involving a school bus full of elementary students that had been dangling off the side of a bridge the previous day. He had been called upon to extricate more than thirty frightened children before the bus plummeted into rushing river waters below. Toby had used his skills as a behaviorist to keep the children and their frightened parents calm and though his work hadn't been physically taxing as Nathan's had been, it had been an emotional roller coaster ride all its own, especially when the team learned that two of the children had nearly succumbed to their injuries after being taken to the hospital. Toby had been reluctant to leave the Garage that evening and no doubt had come back to find solace in the familiar surroundings, possibly looking for a little company in the form of a familiar film.

Nathan understood the feeling completely. Though he was still exhausted and felt like he could still use ten more hours of sleep, he wasn't certain that he was interested in the dreams that might find him. Instead, he joined Toby on the sofa and grabbed a handful of popcorn. "Three Stooges?"

Toby nodded, "Men in Black."

Nathan chuckled, "Why am I not surprised you're watching the trio in a medical parody?"

"You know the Stooges?" Toby asked excitedly.

Nathan looked slightly insulted, "Of course, 'For duty…'"

"'...and humanity!" Toby finished.

They watched the action on the screen for a moment before Nathan continued. "There's a lot of downtime on a submarine. We watch a lot of movies, old movies are great, especially Stooges short films. I got my taste of old-time comedies on my first posting, I'm more of a Charlie Chaplin fan when it comes to that genre. But either way, give me a terrible monster movie any day if I'm choosing."

"Ah, Swamp Lord, again, I see. I'm sure I could delve into your psyche over that one, especially since it matches up with the lovely Miss Dineen so well, but I'm too tired for all that stuff tonight. Tonight I want to do the impossible for a genius, and just turn my brain off. Old slapstick comedies do it for me, hence my time with Larry, Moe and Curly."

"Sounds like an excellent plan to me," Nathan agreed. "How about a Doctor Shaz to go with the popcorn?"

"Perfect!"

Nathan disappeared into the kitchen and returned moments later with two cans of soda. The two men watched the movie in silence punctuated by laughter for a few minutes. "Doesn't this bother Walter? You over here at three in the morning, watching movies on his TV? The acoustics in this place must make it sound like a stampede upstairs," Nathan mused.

Toby clutched at his chest, feigning shock. "You must still be new around here, roommate. Walter only sleeps three, four hours a night, tops. In fact, I'm sure he's awake right now up there in his loft.. No doubt coding to his little heart's content or scribbling on his whiteboard and inventing some new branch of calculus or time travel or something. If I'm watching TV or listening to music or whatever, it normally doesn't bother him, but if it does, he just slips on his noise-canceling headphones, and voila! He's all alone once again with everything Walter needs to be entertained for the rest of his life, the thoughts inside his own 197 IQ genius head." Toby cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, "Hey, Walt, are we bothering you? Or are you still managing to solve the mysteries of the universe despite my tomfoolery?"

Walter didn't reply, but they did hear his desk chair scrape across the loft floor.

"That was him reaching for the headphones. He keeps them in a very specific box on top of his filing cabinet. It irritates him when I call him on his superiority complex. He's more than happy to have it. He just doesn't enjoy anyone noticing." Nathan and Toby exchanged glances and did their best to hold in their laughter at Walter acting exactly as the behaviorist had predicted he would.

"Good to know," Nathan marveled, not for the first time, at the multitude of idiosyncrasies that everyone on Team Scorpion displayed.

Toby shifted his attention from Walter to the temporary Homeland agent. He hadn't had a chance yet to delve deep into the other man's psyche and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. "So, Nathan, you seem to be fitting in with the team well. I heard about your Fantasies and Frolics date with Sly. He was over the moon about that for days. You really touched his geeky little heart. And even Happy doesn't think you're completely useless with a screwdriver."

Nathan shrugged. "Sly's a good kid. And you have to know how to repair just about any component in a pinch on a sub. So yeah, even though I'm not a maintenance tech, I know my way around a toolbox."

Toby continued watching Nathan carefully, he wasn't giving the behaviorist a lot to work with, being so surprisingly well-adjusted for a genius and all, but Toby was nothing if not persistent. "Walter is letting you crash in his 'guest house', so he must find you tolerable. I'll bet he nearly had a meltdown when he found out you were a worthy chess opponent and he couldn't measure the size of his… umm… brain against yours. Too bad I missed that."

Nathan felt himself grow slightly irritated at Toby's innuendo. "I've noticed you're kind of hard on Walter. Any particular reason for that?"

"You mean other than the enormous ego and the narcissistic tendencies?"

"There you go again."

Toby smirked, "Yeah, you caught me. He just makes it so easy."

Nathan wasn't impressed by Toby's attempt at humor and let it fall flat. "Try again."

"Wow, who's the shrink here?" An uncomfortable silence between the two men stretched out for a few moments. "Wow, tough crowd. Okay, okay," Toby sighed, this guy was good, and when he spoke again, his tone was serious. "When you were the smartest person in the room in every room you'd ever been in for your entire life and then everything changes and suddenly every time you turn around you're in the room with Walter freakin' O'Brien, who not only has the fourth highest IQ in the world but uses his brain power at a level you can only dream of… it's… humbling. And I don't do humble, in case you hadn't noticed."

"It had crossed my mind." Nathan wasn't quite ready to let Toby off the hook yet, though he did see his point.

"Paige is always trying to get me to go easy on him too, I guess it must be an EQ thing."

"Yeah, probably. I can see how much she cares about everyone on the team." Nathan found his irritation with Toby softening at the mention of the team's liaison.

"Including you, Ensign Hall. After all, what red-blooded, American girl can resist a man in uniform?"

Nathan tried and failed to keep his pleasure at that bit of information to himself, a small smile flitted across his features, despite his best efforts to hide it. "I'm sure she's not interested in me. I've seen the way she looks at Walter and more importantly, the way he looks at her. Walter is my friend and I have no desire to get in the middle of their relationship."

Toby saw his opportunity to move the spotlight off himself and his own insecurities and gladly took it. "But that's just the point, isn't it? Walter and Paige are deliberately not having a relationship, beyond friends and colleagues, that is. So as far as anyone should be concerned, if you have an eye for her, she's fair game."

"Well, why the hell aren't they having a relationship? What is the deal with the two of them?"

Toby chuckled. "How long do you have? Between the two of them, the Daddy issues alone could take all night."

Nathan narrowed his eyes and folded his arms across his chest in frustration at Toby's flippant answer."

Toby put up his hands in a gesture of mock surrender. "Okay, okay. I won't get into the pathology. To keep it short and sweet, when Walter gets an idea in his head, sometimes it's next to impossible to shake it loose. He can be quite stubborn. Team Scorpion is just about the most important thing in the world to him because it's the home he has created for wayward geniuses. And anything that threatens Scorpion's homeostasis, threatens the possibility of its very survival and the loss of Scorpion would cut Walter to the core. So keeping Scorpion exactly as it is, even if its members want to grow and change feels safer to Walter, even if it makes the members of the team unhappy, even if it makes him unhappy. It's all very Evolutionary Biology 101.

"The trouble is, the way he's running the team by not allowing relationships to grow and evolve, is a perfect recipe for failing Intro to Psychology. So, while Paige is currently happy cooling her heels with longing glances and accidental, on-purpose physical contact with our fearless leader, eventually, she is going to go looking for another good-looking alpha male with superior intelligence, a hero complex, and is good with kids, more specifically her kid. Walter knows this as well as Paige does and when the inevitable occurs it will simply be another confirmation to Walter that he isn't capable of real human connection and that will break both their hearts. So they continue on in their freaky game of psychological chicken and it's really me and Happy who are the big losers because while Walter can't work his own relationship stuff out, he keeps throwing roadblocks up to wreck my chance as happiness with my Spicy Asian Noodle."

Toby stood and walked over to his desk and started rummaging around inside it. "Wonder where she could find another guy like that around here?" Finding what he had been looking for, he pulled out a half-empty bottle of tequila and brought it back to the sofa, where he stretched out, effectively pushing Nathan onto the floor. "Now if you'll excuse me. I have some intoxicated self-loathing to do before the workday starts."

Nathan stared at Toby for a few seconds, uncertain what had just happened. "Sure, no problem." Nathan walked back to the Airstream, certain he wouldn't be sleeping anymore tonight. He had a lot to think about. Toby's unconventional analysis aside, it only served as a confirmation of what Nathan had suspected about the team's dynamics and gave him greater insight into the relationship between Walter and Paige. Paige. Obviously, she was beautiful, but there was so much more to her and he was drawn to her, but he had wondered if there was even any point in attempting to pursue her when she was so thoroughly in love with Walter. And he had no interest in jeopardizing his friendship with Walter. And yet…

Patience, Nathan told himself. If there was one thing that life on a submarine had taught him it was patience, to wait, to watch, and the right moment would reveal itself… eventually… Then he would make his move, once he figured out what that was.