A/N: Hi everyone, I'll just like to say thank you Rhinokitty for following and favoriting this fic. And Thank you OpticalBudgerigar for favoriting. I hope you enjoy this chapter.
To say that the morning started awkwardly would be an understatement. Amora left her bedroom to see Wheatley eating a bowl of cereal. He looked up at her and opened his mouth as if to speak but shut it quickly. Amora was not as angry as she was the night before, but she didn't want to apologize. She thought that Wheatley should be the one to do it and she could be stubborn enough to make him. Amora went to her cabinet and pulled out her favorite cereal; hopefully the amount of sugar in it would cheer her up.
The two Aperture employees sat there in tense silence eating their cereal before leaving at the same time. They didn't speak to each other on the bus ride to the Aperture Labs. Amora left quickly to her office to keep from talking to the other. After an hour of phone calls, she decided to go visit Andre's lab. Amora entered the elevator and pushed the button to the appropriate floor. "Wait. Hold the door," Curra's voice shouted. Amora listened to the call for help and Curra zipped into the lift. "Whew, that was a close one."
"Did someone get hurt already?" Amora asked as Curra settled into the elevator.
"No, I just want to see my Cuddly Bear," the nurse said.
"Your..Cuddly Bear?" Amora repeated slowly, feeling confused.
Curra nodded enthusiastic, "Andre. He and I have been dating for the last six months."
The doors to the elevator opened. Curra bounced out with Amora following behind her. Amora was a little jealous of how happy the other woman looked to be seeing her boyfriend. Curra swung the door to the lab open and Amora tried to catch it so it wouldn't hit the wall.
A loud crash that didn't come from the door caught Amora's attention. "What's this?" Andre's voice shouted loudly. Amora watched as the taller man threw a beaker of blue goo. The blue material painted other beakers and glassware. When covered with the blue goo, the glassware started to bounce about and shattering. "How can we build anything out of this?" Andre continued to shout at the other members of the lab.
Amora took a step back a little frightened by Andre's anger. Curra, on the other hand, held her head up high. "Andre," the nurse said calmly. The man lowered his fists and noticeable became calmer. "Now, remember. Just breath," Curra said taking a couple of breaths followed by Andre taking calming breaths.
The taller man exhaled one more time before turning his attention to the blue goo. "I'm sure we can find some use for this," he said as he motioned for one of the other scientists to clean up the mess.
"That's the spirit," Curra said pumping her fist. "I'm sure you can use that pudding-stuff. Oh, which reminds me. Paisley is baking cake for lunch today at the cafeteria. So we should eat there. What's that over there?" Curra rambled pulling Andre after her asking questions about everything in the lab. Amora just stood back for a moment before climbing the staircase to reach the robotics floor.
She walked down the hall silently while she searched for Dr. Rattmann's office. "Amora," Cici called out as she opened the door before the woman could open it. The blonde gave her a smile, "You came. Doug is out right now and won't be back till after lunch."
Amora returned the smile, "I could come back after lunch… Do you want to eat lunch with me? I was just going down to the cafeteria."
"Thank you. I think I will like that," Cici said and the two women went down the stairs to the ground floor. Amora quickly got her food and found a table. Cici sat down across from her. "I'm so glad that Mr. Johnson built this cafeteria. It's a lot easier to eat here and get back to work."
Amora nodded her agreement, "How did your meeting with Mr. Johnson go?"
"Perfect, he gave us the go ahead for human trials," Cici said almost dropping her fork in her excitement.
"Hello, ladies," Rick said plopping himself next to Cici. "I see that both of you have a sweet tooth." The man pointed to the two slices of cake. Whatever pickup line the adventurer was going to start was interrupted when Neil sat down next to Amora with his space helmet on.
"Hi Amora, Cici, Rick. I decided that I should try out this new cafeteria before I go into space," the astronaut said his visor down which blocked his face.
Amora reached over and pulled the visor up, "you're not going to be able to eat if you have your helmet on."
"I'm practicing for when I go into space," Neil said closing the visor again. Amora shrugged and watched as he tried to figure out how to eat around the helmet.
"Have I ever told you ladies of the time I went hunting for jaguars in the jungle?" Rick asked the two women. They both shook their head in a negative response. This lead Rick to tell a tale of danger and intrigue. Amora was pretty sure that half of it was fiction.
"Space!" Neil shouted randomly jolting up indicating that he fell asleep during Rick's story. Amora and Cici started laughing at the expense of the men.
"Neil, you ruined the perfect story. And how could you fall asleep?" Rick said upset crossing his arms.
Neil shrugged and apologized for ignoring the other man's story. "I think I heard this story before," Neil said, "And it isn't about space." Amora looked down at her food snickering at the two men.
Rick grumbled something that the woman couldn't hear. "Neil, you must be pretty excited to be leaving for space tomorrow," Amora said trying to distract the two men.
Neil nodded his head. "It's going to be amazing. It's space how can it not be amazing?"
"What's your favorite thing about space?" Cici asked.
"Mine is space," Neil said taking a forkful of his meal and stuffing in under his helmet. The other three gave each other a concerned look as the astronaut dissolved into meaningless phases about space.
….
Amora sat back as Neil's party was in full swing. She watched as each of her co-workers drank various alcoholic beverages. She personally didn't understand why any reasonable person would want to lose control over their actions, but she did find it amusing to watch said people. Amora watched as Caroline and Cave disappeared into some office. She didn't have to be a genius to know what the two were doing.
Amora caught sight of the scientist she met the other day. His name was Craig if she remembered correctly. The woman snuck up to the man as he was taking a drink. "Hi, Craig," Amora said quickly.
The man lowered his cup; he looked at her confused. "My name's Amora," she introduced herself again.
Craig looked uninterested. Amora looked around awkwardly trying to think of something to talk about. "Craig is a very interesting name," Amora began mentally screaming at the ridiculous sentence.
"According to most advanced algorithms, the world's best name is Craig," the scientist said matter-of-factly.
"That's..very…interesting," Amora said slowly unsure what to say to that. "So there's lab downstairs?" she asked randomly.
"Yes, that's where all the human testing is going on," Criag said bringing his drink to his mouth again.
"Like Cici's stasis cube?" Amora asked excited that she figured out what the scientist was saying.
"Later yes, but currently my project is ongoing," Craig said.
"What is it about?" Amora asked leaning forward interested in what the scientist was going to say.
"I'm studying how mantis DNA…"
There was a large crash and Amora turned to see that the refreshments on the table were scattered with their platters on the ground with Wheatley in the center of the mess. There were a couple of chuckles from the other guests.
Leaving her informant behind, Amora hurried to Wheatley's side. "Are you okay? You didn't hurt yourself when you fell, did you?" she asked concerned. The man's blue eyes looked up at her. She could tell that he was expecting her to shout at him.
"No, luv. I'm doing fine. Mostly fine. Maybe slight bruising where I fell. Hopefully there is nothing broken. That would be pretty embarrassing. To have broken bones by falling on the floor," Wheatley rambled. Amora chuckled, but didn't say anything as she begun to pick up the food that laid on the floor.
"I doubt you could break any bones from that fall Wheatley," Amora said chuckling. She almost wanted to remind herself that she was mad at the man, but gave up on that task because it seemed impossible. She couldn't stay mad at him long.
"You never know I could have weak bones," Wheatley paused and then gasped, "What if I'm bleeding internally? I do feel something wet on my stomach." Amora looked at his shirt which was soaked with what appeared to be the punch.
Amora would have told him such but she started to laugh. It wasn't just a chuckle but a full laugh that had her sides aching. "It's not nice to make fun of someone who's dying, Amora," Wheatley said a little upset. Amora sat herself down beside him slowly catching her breath. After several minutes, Amora finally convinced Wheatley that he wasn't going to die.
"Wheatley, I thought you were going to be careful," a stern voice said. Amora looked up to see a platinum blonde woman with bright blue eyes.
"Oh hi Paisley. Amora, this is Paisley. She's the person who is in charge of the cafeteria," Wheatley said getting to his feet. Amora gave the other woman a smile as she too got up from the floor.
"Wheatley, we are still on for dinner, right?" Paisley asked flipping her perfect hair off her perfect face. Amora wasn't grumbling under her breath.
"Yes, I made reservations at that fancy restaurant that you said you wanted to try. I heard that it has very good food. It was very difficult to even make the reservations. I had to call multiple times and the person on the other side finally got annoyed enough to let us in. I know that the last place we went to wasn't up to your liking. I liked the place before but I did have to agree that the people do over salt their food. They did serve really good burgers though, but you're a vegetarian so you didn't get to eat them."
"They shouldn't be cooking. They disgrace the culinary profession. They didn't have a single rhubarb," Paisley said with a scoff, interrupting Wheatley. Amora thought to herself that she would never interrupt the man; it was plain rude and bad manners.
"So you two have been seeing each other a lot then?" Amora asked cautiously.
"Yes, or no. We've been eating dinner together since Paisley came. Which hasn't been that long. We've been to nearly every food place in this small town and now we're expanding our reach. That's not saying much since there is only a handful of restaurants here," Wheatley started and was beginning to list the places where they ate.
"I still insist that we go to my place and I would cook us a meal," Paisley said.
"That sounds…nice," Amora choked out with a fake smile, "You two have…fun. I'm going to talk to Neil. It was…nice to meet you, Paisley." The woman left quickly walking through the cafeteria to where Neil sat in a chair.
"Good evening, Amora," Neil said looking up from the star map she had given him.
"Hi Neil. Do you like your gift? I'm sorry it isn't much," she said clasping her hands together.
The red-head looked up, "I love it. Look there's Centaurus, Canis major, Draco, and Orion." He pointed to the stars.
"I've never been good at seeing the constellations. To me they always look like a bunch of dots," Amora admitted.
Neil looked up at her in horror. He seemed to calm enough to say, "It's just a matter of connecting the dots. Come on, I'll show you." He looped on of his arms around her and led her outside of the office building.
Being in such a small town, the night sky was glittering with stars without the interference of lights. Neil let go of her arm and looked around. He turned her slightly and pointed above. "You see the Big Dipper, right?" he asked.
"That's the only thing I see," she said. Neil guided her gaze to trace out Ursa Major. For an hour, Neil traced constellation after constellation while Amora looked on amazed. Amora then thanked him and wished him luck on his trip.