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“You’re, erm, perturbed?” Said Walter.
He moved towards Paige’s desk. Today had been very awkward. He wasn’t sure how to explain the video from the hospital. He knew exactly what it looked like, what it implied. But it really had just been a simple gathering of the facts. Or at least, an attempted gathering of the facts. Walter wasn’t sure how he felt about Paige kissing him, and he’d been studying the video, studying how he felt about it, her lips on his. On a technical level it didn’t make sense. Why should there be any importance placed on contact between mouths? But then there was the more symbolic level. A kiss meant something. He just couldn’t work out if the flutter of feelings he felt when she told him she’d kissed him was because he liked that that represented a potential romantic connection, or if he was excited to be participating in that kind of human interaction.
“My new business plan for Scorpion. Wondering if it'll ever work,” she said.
“Well, your plan is just a theory. Its basis and assumptions need to be tested to prove its validity. Like the microwave EMP. That was just a theoretical solution until we tested it.”
“I guess.”
Walter paused. There was another theory he needed to test, but he wasn’t particularly sure how.
“Or like you and me.” He paused. “You know, we, um, we assume that our perplexing, uh, feelings… will interfere with Scorpion. So our theory dictates that we avoid anything unprofessional.”
He looked at Paige, wondering if she would agree with his conclusion. It would be much easier if they just moved on from this. It would be easier to just not sort all of this out. His stomach dropped at the thought of accidentally leading her on. He didn’t want her to get hurt just because he couldn’t work out his own feelings.
“Right.”
“Yep. Right.” He said softly. Well that was that. It had been nice thinking about him and Paige, but if he wasn’t really committed to it then he shouldn’t take this any further.
“Except, you know, um…”
She stood up and paused, looking at him. He had a sense of where this might be going.
“we never really tested our assumption.” She said.
This was true. Maybe this would be a good opportunity to gather more facts, then he could decide how to proceed based on any conclusions he was able to draw.
“Yeah, I mean, the one our theory's based on, that we couldn't work together if we acted on our… attraction.”
Walter wasn’t sure if attraction was the right word. But he couldn’t think of a better one. He watched, half frozen, as her eyes darted from his eyes to his mouth and she slowly started to lean in. Well, here goes nothing, he thought, and leaned in too.
Her mouth was very warm, and moist. Her face was close to his so he could feel her breath on his cheek. That was warm too. She reached her hands up to his neck, pulling him towards her, he felt her tongue slide into his mouth, it was textured, sort of like some kind of sea creature. He decided that that was quite enough data to be getting on with and pulled away.
“Okay, yeah, good. Well, we tested that theory.” He stammered awkwardly. He wasn’t really sure how you’re supposed to interact with someone when you’ve just kissed them.
“Honestly, I felt nothing.” Said Paige. “You?”
“Same. I'm starting to believe that my attraction to you is based on the symmetry of your face, which is a vestigial affectation from cavemen. It meant that you were free from genetic malfunctions.” He rambled.
He really just wanted her to leave so he could sit down and try to work this out. It would make logical sense for him to have formed an attraction based on reproductive potential, it was just biology, but then why had he pulled away? That wouldn’t make sense as a reproductive instinct.
“I guess the assumption of our intense chemistry was... off.” said Paige.
She was probably right. And it would be good if they concurred on the matter.
“It can happen with any hypothesis.” Said Walter. “But just to be safe, we should prob…”
“Oh yes, professional colleagues. See you tomorrow.” She brushed past him as they said goodnight.
Walter sunk down into Paige’s chair. If he was being honest, the experiment had insufficient grounds for any conclusion. He liked the idea of him and Paige together, but he also didn’t. And he wasn’t sure if he only liked it because it made him feel like he was being a human more successfully, or if he only didn’t like it because it might mess with Scorpion. As much as he disparaged the influence emotions had on most people, he was jealous. He was jealous of people who could understand their emotions well enough to base decisions on them. The truth was he wasn’t sure if he’d ever felt properly attracted to anyone, or if it had always been wishful thinking. Every previous relationship had failed because he lost interest, or rather, gave up pretending to be interested. And every relationship had caused emotional pain to some poor girl, or boy, he’d decided to experiment with. Well that was it, he wasn’t scared that acting on feelings would jeopardise Scorpion, he was scared that acting on non-existent feelings would lead to Paige being hurt, and that would jeopardise Scorpion. Paige was too important to be an experiment. But what if this time it worked?
Oh, boy.