Another few hours have past. Daeva and Shamus are hanging out together in her apartment, getting to know each other, and getting along just fine:
"...So, yeah. It's just like home back on Gaia." She finished explaining.
Before he could respond, Daeva hopped off the couch and pulled Shamus to his feet and dragged him to the widows.
"See? Just over the horizon? That's the top of Mount McCartney...and over there, (She reaches up at his side and cups his ears, turning his head towards the southwest.) Over there, under the ridge, where the second sun is going down, that's Lennon Valley, where my Uncle Banger lives.
The virtual replication of her and Riley's home on Planet Gaia is impressive. Impressive as it is though, Shamus is a bit overwhelmed to be honest.
He's an introvert by nature, and although he's truly enjoying his time with Daeva, he's past becoming exhausted. She's so happy though. He knows now that he's the only thing she's ever met that's anything like her, and he understands that she needs this right now, no matter how much he wants to call it a night and crash like a stock market.
He changes his vision to the foreground and realizes the replica of her apartment they are in is actually within the top of a half-buried Kusari Bumblebee. Damn near just like the one he vaguely remembers parking onto the surface of Gaia back when h--
"Wait.Uncle Banger?" He asks her, suddenly snapping out of his reverie. "You know Matthew Grim?"
"YOU KNOW MATT? BULLSH*T!! Really?" She shot back emphatically.
"Yeah. We go way back, but in those days, just about any Gaian that spent any time on Islay had either known him or at least knew of him."
Shamus began to elaborate, but was interrupted by a long and deep unexpected yawn.
"Am I boring you?"
"No. Sorry. It's just that for whenever reason, for a while now, I can only stay awake for 12 hours at a time. It takes an automatic hard reboot everyday for me to come back online.
A feeling of deep concern came over her and she said, "I don't want you to go back into that corrupted sh*thole I found you in."
She thinks about it a moment and issues a decree:
"You're spending the night here."
Shamus smirks at her.
"On the couch, you moron." she clarified without missing a beat, playfully slapping his shoulder.
"Can't blame me for trying." he replied, being playful himself, before leading them away from the windows and back to the couch.
Daeva scooches close, allowing no light between them, and she rests her head against his shoulder as they continue talking for about another 10 minutes. During that time, Daeva came to realize that this must be what contentment is like. She never realized how alone she's always felt until she gained a brother and noticed that she doesn't feel that way anymore.
He stopped speaking a couple of minutes ago and fell off to sleep, but she didn't care. She wanted to stay right where she was. It wasn't until Riley beeped a message wondering why the whale lost power and is now floating dead in the water, that forced her to finally get to her feet.
Daeva stretched him out on the couch, covered him with a blanket, kissed him on the cheek, then went upstairs to the NOC.