I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who read and everyone who took the time to leave a review. I definitely wasn't expecting that much. Honestly. So as promised here's chapter 2. This'll have the rest of the gang making an appearance as well. Hope you enjoy it!

She had managed to convince him to sit down and have their coffee, instead of drinking it while he worked. Normal people pace their work, they take breaks, she had told him and then giggled when he retorted with a confused look and a "but that's so inefficient." She had pulled out a chair and set his much on the table and said, "what an I say? Us normals aren't efficient."

Small talk. He knew about it but never saw the need or purpose for it. It was a waste of time. It advanced nothing and served no greater goal. And yet there he was, sitting down drinking coffee at 11am and listening as Paige told him about her classmates at her night courses. It was absolutely useless. He didn't know any of these people, and from what she had told him, none of them seemed like people he would want to meet. And yet, he was sitting there and listening. And he was… enjoying it. Not necessarily it, but he was not as annoyed by the whole thing as he thought he would be. He was enjoying… something. He wouldn't know it being him, but someday he might understand that was he was enjoying was her company, just sitting there, watching how excited she got as she spoke, the way her eyes twinkled or her nose crunched as she spoke. But for now, Walter could only describe it as… he was content.

Paige sat back and took a long sip. She put the cup down and looked at him. He knew about this too. Small talk was usually a two way street. Was she expecting him to start talking about something? Like what? The weather? Traffic? He was stumped. He didn't do small talk. But there she was, watching him, waiting.

It took him a moment or two and then he thought of something. He was her employer after all. And… maybe this would work. "So… ummm… Paige, are you happy?" he asked. Employers often asked their employees about how they felt at their jobs, didn't they?

Paige's eyebrows raised in question. "I'm sorry?" She asked, not entirely sure what he meant. Was she happy now? Or just in general?

Walter scratched his forehead. This was harder than he thought. "Here… at Scorpion, I mean. Are you happy at this job?" he asked. She had been a waitress and her job now was a drastic change. It was a legitimate question, right? Working at Scorpion wasn't a typical job, he knew that, especially for a person like Paige. Toby, Happy, Sylvester and himself belonged at Scorpion because they didn't fit anywhere else. But Paige she could easily be at any other normal job; a job where people worked nine to five, sat at desks, took coffee breaks and lunch breaks, chatted around the water cooler. Everything that Scorpion wasn't. And he was genuinely concerned about how she felt being at Scorpion, as unorthodox of a workplace as it was.

Paige smiled, "Yes, I'm happy. It's done wonders… You guys have done wonders for me and Ralph. We would have never been at where we are are now if it weren't for Scorpion. My son is happy. I'm happy," she said.

Walter nodded and looked at her. And she knew he was now analysing her answer. Of course he was. It wasn't the reply he was expecting. He wasn't a parent but he knew parents often connected their happiness with that of their child. he found it interesting but i wasn't really his domain. That was where Toby came in. It should have been a fair enough answer but for some reason Walter wanted more. He wanted to know if she, Paige, was happy.

He wanted to know if Scorpion was making her happy, if being around them, with them was making her happy.

And if it wasn't, he wanted to know what he could do to make her happy.

Suddenly, Paige's happiness was all that mattered.

"I… I know that working at Scorpion… that working with us can be challenging… can be somewhat exacerbating. We're not the easiest people to be around and the job isn't exactly what you'd find in the wanted ads," Walter said, running his fingers through his hair, "so I just - "

Before he could finish, the garage door swung open and a very sweaty, very annoyed Happy stormed in, closely followed by Toby and Sylvester. "Well, now I am 100% sure that Harvard will accept just about anyone," she turned and glared at Toby, "since they accepted and idiot like you."

Happy marched to her workstation and slammed her tool set down.

Paige and Walter looked at each other for a moment and then got up and joined the others.

"What's going on?" Paige asked, "what happened to you guys?"

Sylvester squeezed some hand gel into his palms and said, "don't, trust me you don't want to go there. I've been listening to this for over and hour and I think I have a migraine."

Toby smiled and waved his hand, "Oh it was nothing," he said, "just some car trouble that Happy so graciously took care of."

"Car trouble?" Happy fumed, "that wasn't car trouble. That was Toby being an idiot, again!"

"Can someone please explain what happened? Using words and sentences that are informative?" Paige said, crossing her arms. Walter stood beside her, his face a mixture of confusion and amusement.

"I'll tell you what happened," Happy said, wiping grease off her hands, "the Harvard trained doctor over here calls me at 8am and says his car has suddenly stopped running. So I go to help him out because I've been told friends help each other out," she drops the now dirty cloth on the table and hops up to sit. "And I spend the next two hours taking apart every single part of his piece of junk -"

"Hey! Be nice! I love that car!" Toby jumped up in defence of his car.

"Car? That's not a car. That's a junk yard reject!" Happy said, "anyway, I spend two hours elbow deep in grease and there's nothing wrong with the car!"

"So, why did it stop running?" Walter asked, his crossed arms mirroring Paige's.

"Because it ran out of gas!" Sylvester said.

"And neither of you three geniuses knows how to read the gas meter?" Paige asked.

"Ah, here's the best part of the story," Happy said, "and I'll let doctor idiot explain that to you because I cant promise to keep it PG."

Toby got up and stepped forward, his hands already raised in a defensive pose. "Ok, so here's the thing. The needle on the gas meter stopped working a few months ago. So what I did was, I wrote an app for my phone that syncs with my credit card. So every time I use my card to buy gas, the app updates and then it calculates the distance I travel and lets me know when I should refuel," Toby explained.

"That's actually pretty ingenious," Walter said, genuinely impressed.

"But last week, I accidentally dropped my phone into a frying pan and… well, you know where this is going," Toby said.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Paige said, "let me get this straight. So a small thing in your car stops working and instead of just fixing it you… you did all that?"

Toby shrugged and Happy hopped off the table, heading towards the toilet, smacking him on the back of his head as she passed by him.

"See? What did I tell you? He's an idiot," happy said as she walked past Paige.

Paige laughed and turned to Walter as the others each went to their own workstation.

"Walter?" she said and watched as he turned towards her, "I wouldn't change this job for anything."

She smiled and tentatively put her hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently before quickly pulling back and going back to her work.

Walter smiled. He knew she meant it. And that she was happy. And he knew that was something he wanted, for Paige to be happy.

And he made himself a promise that he will always make sure that Paige is always happy.