Portal: Love as a Construct

Part Seventeen. The First Step

Part Seventeen. The First Step

The next morning GLaDOS had asked Wheatley about his conversation with the human, and to the surprise of both of them GLaDOS knew exactly who the human was.

"Are you sure?" she kept asking.

"Yeah," Wheatley would answer, shrugging. "Scruffy little guy with black hair, right? And a Companion Cube."

"God," she would say, shaking her core, "what a stupid, stupid misunderstanding."

After she'd said that a few times, Wheatley had asked, "What d'you mean, luv? D'you know who that is?"

"Yes," she'd answered, shifting a little. "He's... an acquaintance. He wouldn't have survived had I released him to the surface, so I suggested he stay here. He volunteered to do a little maintenance for me."

Wheatley had smiled.

"That's very nice of you," he'd said encouragingly. He'd been pretty happy to hear she did try to help people out every now and again, when the mood struck her.

"He did me a favour, so I returned it. That's all it was."

But Wheatley had known well enough to read into that a little deeper.

She'd been a little put out and quiet for most of the remainder of the day, and Wheatley spent a while trying to think of how to cheer her up. After half an hour or so he'd thought of something she might go for, and said, "Oi, GLaDOS, I think I should clean your chassis off, again."

"If you want to," GLaDOS answered.

"Can I do it now?"

"Now?" GLaDOS asked, and Wheatley thought she sounded a little confused.

"Yeah. Right now."

"Can't it wait?"

"It could," Wheatley said, and he came up real close to her, "but I wanna do it now."

"Why?"

"'cause you're awake," Wheatley answered. "I think you'd like it, if I did it now."

"I don't think I would."

"Oh, come on. I'm not gonna, not gonna break anything. I'll be gentle. Luv, I'm not gonna hurt you," he said softly, and he went 'round so she could see him. "I'm not gonna do anything. I know you, you're thinking 'bout when the scientists would touch you, but I'm me, remember? I'll be nice. You'll like it, if you let me."

"Why do you say that?" she asked, looking away again.

"I know you like it when I touch you," he said in a whisper, though all he really knew for sure was that he was going out on a limb.

"Now you're just being stupid," she said, pushing him backwards.

"Please, can I?"

She was twisting her chassis a little bit, just her body and not her core, and he wondered what she was doing. "You okay, luv?"

Her core snapped over to look at him, and she stopped a second later. "I'm fine."

"Just this one time? If you don't like it, I'll stop. And I'll never do it again. Never even bring it up. Promise."

GLaDOS looked at the floor for a long, long time. He really wanted to do it, because he knew for sure that she would like it, but she was taking so long to decide. "Y'know what? Never mind. It's okay. I won't, I won't uh – "

"All right," GLaDOS said.

"All right what?" Wheatley said, confused.

"All right, you can... go ahead."