Whew a lot has happened since I updated this (again I am sooooo sorry this was supposed to be all up in the same week and then life happened), but how proud are we all of Walter for standing up for himself in 3.15? Daaaaamn I should have given that big ol' speech of Toby's in chapter 3 to Walter instead.

Anyway I kinda recommend re-reading the first three chapters before you read the fourth so you don't get stories confused but if you have a super memory, read on now. : )

"Mom, look what I won!"

Paige looked up from her laptop, glad to get her hands off the hot keyboard. It had to be one hundred and ten degrees out there, and even inside, in a tank top and what her father would have referred to has booty shorts, she was sweltering.. "Is that an iPad?" She looked suspiciously at Sylvester and Walter.

"We went to the arcade," Sylvester said. "It's a million degrees outside. The 'nice day outdoors' that you suggested was not going to happen."

"It is cooling off, though," Toby said as he wandered through the main area. His eyes fell on Paige and his eyebrows shot up. "I must say, Dineen, that is a lovely outfit that you almost have on there."

She rolled her eyes. "Shut up." Looking pointedly back at her son, she cleared her throat. "How did you get the iPad, Ralph?"

"Many of those games can be manipulated to your advantage using probabilities," Walter said. "Between the three of us, he hit dozens of jackpots. Had enough credits for the iPad in just over an hour."

"We could have done it under an hour if we'd worked out the calculations ahead of time," Sylvester said, responding defensively to a comment Paige hadn't even made. "But that added precious minutes to our time."

"We should be able to go much quicker should we return to the establishment," Walter said.

"I get it," Paige said with an amused grin. "When I was a lifeguard, the girl swimmers wouldn't shave their legs for a month prior to their championship meet. Their logic was the hair created just a tiny bit more drag. Then the night before they'd all shave, and they all swore that strategy improved their times."

"That's a weird story, Mom."

"I'm trying to relate to what you guys are doing," Paige said, ruffling his hair. "I figure I always ask Walter and you to try and understand me, so it's only fair that I do the same, right?" She ignored the pointed look Toby was giving her from across the room. "Let me see that iPad, tell me what you're planning to do with it..."

Ralph chattered on excitedly, and Paige did her best to try and understand what he was saying. She'd done a lot of thinking over the past few days, mostly about how her behavior towards Walter was surely affecting her son, who was so much like him. She'd become distraught in her bathroom the previous night, realizing that she'd never be fluent in their language and they'd never be fluent in hers. But one didn't have to be fluent. They just had to be able to communicate.

Eventually, Ralph ran off to find Happy – presumably, Sylvester said, to tell her about all the electrical issues the roller rink attached to the arcade had. "It'd be a great way for her to earn extra money for the wedding," Sylvester commented.

As the mathematician wandered in the direction of the kitchen, Paige bit her lip, looking up at Walter. She'd been rehearsing what to say all morning, and yet, she hesitated.

She'd spent the better part of three days thinking about her argument with Toby. She knew he was wrong about some things. But he was right about a lot more.

Walter was the one who was supposed to be low E.Q., struggling with his emotions, naming them, knowing what to do with them, acting upon them. So why was she such an idiot?

She'd known that he loved her for a long time. And it took a dream – of all things – to make her realize that what she'd told him months ago was actually completely true.

If she was honest with herself, it wasn't just the dream.

"Hey, uh, Walter?"

He smiled pleasantly at her. "Yeah?"

"So the case we worked on last week. Alexa was really friendly with you. It seemed...a little bit...like she was into you. And that bothered me. But it wasn't supposed to bother me. Because I was in a relationship and I knew that you..." Paige cleared her throat. "And so when we got back..."

"You knew that I what?"

"What?"

"You said I knew that you and then you stopped."

"Uh..." Paige wrung her hands. "I knew that you and I had, at one point..." she gestured vaguely between the two of them. "We were maybe working toward something. And so I thought well, okay, it's just strange for me to think about you maybe being interested in someone else just out of habit, but I think my brain was trying to tell me..."

"That makes perfect sense, you know," Walter said quickly. "Oftentimes our subconscious tries to tell us something, but we don't know, not on the outside, and then we're in a less aware state, it becomes clearer because our conscious defenses are down. That's when we admit to things that we may not fully realize when we're awake."

Paige blinked in surprise. "So you know, then."

Walter looked cautiously at her. "Uh...yes."

Her eyes widened slightly. "You remembered." When? And why didn't he say anything to me?

Walter blinked. "What?"

"You're not talking about space?"

"Was I in space in your dream?"

"My..." Paige trailed off just as she saw Walter cock his head, looking at her as if he'd just thought of something. She frowned. "Do you know something?"

"Do you know something?"

"I'm confused."

"So am I."

"Okay." Paige jumped up. "Can we go somewhere to talk?"

Walter looked perplexed. "It seems rather ridiculous to relocate to have a conversation. It'd be much more efficient to just continue as we are, right here."

Just continue as we are. Paige knew he was only talking about the conversation. But somehow, she'd lost her nerve. "Can we drive?" She asked. "Go to...I don't know, the park or the beach or something. It's starting to cool off, and by the time we get there...I don't...I just...I can't do this right here." I'm too far in to back out now, but I need time to rebuild my confidence. That's something I think – I hope – you can understand. Her thoughts were almost immediately countered. He can't read your mind, Paige.

"I...I guess." Walter shrugged. "We can do that. We don't have anything going on."

Stop it, Dineen, Jesus Christ, Paige thought as her brain leapt into overdrive, trying to analyze what he meant by the last sentence. Her palms were starting to sweat, and not from the heat. She couldn't remember the last time she was this nervous about something that wasn't life or death.

Walter watched Paige out of the corner of his eye.

They'd been walking along the beach for the better part of twenty minutes, occasionally making small talk, bringing up the heat six times even though it had dropped significantly, but passing over three quarters of the time in silence. Ordinarily, he wouldn't mind. He loved spending time with her, just the two of them alone, whether it be conversation, working on some project, working a case, or passing time in complete silence. Her presence calmed him, centered him, made him happy.

But not tonight. Not like it usually did. She was distressed, she had been back at the garage, and he didn't know why. She had to have known from their back and forth from an hour ago that he'd witnessed at least something from her dream on the couch the previous week, and yet she was fixating on space. It didn't take someone of his I.Q. to know she was referencing his time in Richard Elia's space capsule, though he still had no real memory of that time. In truth, he hadn't given it much thought. He'd likely just been a bit loopy, or even nonresponsive, for most of the time. But now that Paige brought it up, he wondered if there was more to it.

He wondered if he'd said something nasty to Tim. That would have explained part of her attitude towards him back then. Walter hoped that wasn't it. He hated Tim, hated the way he pressured her into things, hated the way he wanted to hit things – or people – when he got angry. But he also hated how his behavior towards Tim had hurt Paige.

Hurting the woman next to him was the last thing he wanted to do.

"So," Paige said, shoving her hands in the pockets of her shorts – what could fit of her hands in those miniscule pockets, anyway – and glancing at him.

"So." Walter stopped, turning to face her. He accidentally kicked some sand up on her shoes, and they both looked down. Paige dropped to the sand, tugging them off, and he eased down beside her.

"So," she started, seeming uncomfortable. "Those...those feelings...that we had for one another."

He shifted. "Yes."

She drew in a long breath, as if for courage. "I still have them," she blurted. Walter blinked, I know right on his lips. He kept it in as Paige continued. "We kinda drifted apart, and then Tim and Linda...and I thought that they'd fade away, but they...they did the opposite."

Walter could feel his heart beginning to pound. Hard. "Do...d – do you..." he stammered, terrified to get the words out and put her in a position to reject him, hurt him worse than it'd ever hurt in his head.

"It's not that simple. I've been lying to you for a long time."

Walter frowned. "What? What do you mean?"

"Well, not so much lying. But withholding." She looked at him, guilt in her eyes. "Walter...there's something you should know."

He felt a twinge of nerves start, low in his stomach, Megan would have called them butterflies. "O – okay."

"So you, uh..." she toyed with her fingers. "You don't remember anything of when you were hypoxic?"

"No." Walter cocked his head. "I didn't start singing Christmas in Killarney in an Irish accent, did I?"

Paige blinked. "No. But I definitely want to swing back to that at some point." She dug her heels into the sand. "Walter, things got really...intimate...when you were up there."

"Intimate...how?"

"You hallucinated. You thought that I was there too. Up in space with you. We were...rather, you thought we were dancing. And then..." She bit her lip, looking away, and Walter felt his eyes start to widen as he got an idea of how she was going to finish that sentence. Paige looked back at him, her lip only releasing from between her teeth when she spoke again. "And then you told me that you loved me. And I...I said it back."

Walter felt all the color drain from his face – or at least as much of the color that could drain from his face, he thought wryly, remembering a joke his sister had once made. Just seconds before Paige resumed speaking, he'd guessed that he'd somehow confessed his feelings to her. The knowledge that she's reciprocated hit him so hard that if he hadn't already been sitting, he'd have hit the deck. "You..."

"And I didn't...at the time I thought that I was just doing what I had to do. To get you home. No matter what. It's not a lie when I say I'd have said anything to save your life. I'd so recently been angry with you, I wanted to give Tim a fair chance, I...I'd been putting so much energy into convincing myself that I had no feelings for you that I didn't believe it at the time. But..." she suddenly looked at him with widened eyes. "Walter, I wanted to tell you. Just days afterward I wanted to find out if you remembered, and talk about what it all meant. But Toby advised against it. To protect you. And I was with Tim at the time. He was right, it wouldn't have been appropriate given all the circumstances, contexts, you know, but..."

"Paige." He reached out and touched her arm. "You're rambling."

"I know I just don't know how to stop," she said. "How about...how about you say things. Now. Anything. Just don't let me continue. I'm sorry. Please don't hate me."

Walter wasn't used to seeing her this frazzled. "I could never hate you." He swallowed, thinking about what words to use. "I mean, if I didn't already know, I might have been angry at first."

"You..." she cocked her head. "You just said you didn't know."

"Not about this. But I overheard you last week. You were on the couch, dreaming, after that case. You were talking in your sleep, and you said my name, and then you said you loved me. And I didn't know what it meant but you can't lie in dreams. So I figured...but I was too afraid to..." he trailed off, suddenly realizing that maybe he had this all wrong. "I assumed. I assumed it meant you loved me back. But Toby..."

"Toby."

"Toby said it wasn't a good idea to say anything to you. And I think he was right. Dreams should be private. And your dreams aren't mine to share."

Paige sighed. "I guess we both have our secrets."

Walter looked towards the ocean. He wasn't angry with her. But it was a lot to process...she'd known, all this time, how his heart pounded when she was close to him? How much he longed for those all – to – brief moments whenever she'd gently touch his back, or his elbow, or his chest? How badly he longed to hold her and kiss her and bury his face in her neck?

If he hadn't overheard her nightmare, he'd be horrified and upset. But if she did mean it...

"Walter," Paige said softly. "Walter, do you still love me?"

He continued to stare at the water, lapping gently against the shore, about thirty feet in front of them. He sighed. "I'm never going to stop loving you."

He heard her draw in a breath, and he glanced to the side. The sun was setting rapidly now, and she looked stunning in the evening light. The way she was looking at him now told him that in his attempt to be blatantly honest, state facts as he was comfortable with doing, he'd somehow said the absolute right thing. Her lips parted, her tongue wetting them, and then his name escaping from between them. They stared at each other for what felt like forever. Then Walter cleared his throat. "Paige, I do want to be with you," he said. "Now, I know that I'm not entitled. To your heart. This isn't the store at the arcade and there's no algorithm to figuring out humans. But...but I want you to know that you have mine if you want it, and I hope you know that I would never do anything to intentionally hurt yours. I do care about things like that. I'm just as human as you are."

She reached out, putting a hand on his knee. "I know."

He smiled hesitantly.

Paige scooted closer. "Walter..."

"Hmmm?"

"You do have it. My heart. I love you."

A moment of silence passed between them, and then Walter let out a breath through his nose, his nostrils starting to burn as his eyes...they didn't well up, but they certainly were doing something. "Good," he said, "good."

She scooted closer again, slinging an arm around his neck and smiling at him. "You know I was afraid that I might lose you forever?"

And I, you. They still had things to talk about, to work through. But they didn't have to do those things apart. He leaned over, brushing his lips lightly against hers. "Impossible."