Portal: Love as a Construct

Part 110. The Movie

Part 110. The Movie

Pre-note: This contains spoilers for a movie called Her. If you care about that or if you're not old enough to watch R-rated movies but you'd still like to leave that unspoiled for when you are, just skip to 'When Wheatley woke up he was a little confused.'

Claptrap still hadn't returned by the time GLaDOS wanted to go to sleep, so Wheatley volunteered to go and fetch him. A little because, as hard as she was trying, GLaDOS's temper was starting to catch up with her and he wanted to give her a few minutes to calm down, but mostly because he still needed to apologise for what he'd said. If Claptrap wanted to shout at him a bit for it like GLaDOS often did when someone was telling her sorry, he'd rather do it with just the two of them.

"Hey, Claptrap," Wheatley said once he'd got a ways into his room. Claptrap was just lying on the couch with one arm dangling over the side and the other pressed against the rear cushions. That was the hand he used to wave in Wheatley's general direction.

"Yo."

"Are you coming?"

"Coming where?"

"To... bed?" Wheatley asked, unsure whether it was a trick question or not. Claptrap pushed himself to sitting.

"It's that time already?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, sorry. I think my clock's broken again." He hopped off the couch and rolled towards the door, but before he'd quite got there Wheatley said hurriedly,

"But if you're still cross with me and um, and that's why you didn't come 'round, well, that's understandable. And I'm um... I'm sorry about that, by the way."

"Huh?" Claptrap said, stopping and looking up at him. "What're you talking about?"

"What... what I said? Earlier?" Wheatley answered uncertainly, wondering if that had been some sort of daydream or something. "I insulted your age?"

"Ohhhhh." Claptrap continued, forcing Wheatley to follow him. "Nah. I'm over it. I was over it, like, hours ago."

"So... soon's I left, pretty much."

The other robot shrugged. "What can I say? I don't stay mad very long. I think the longest I ever did was like... ten minutes."

"You should teach us how to do that."

Claptrap folded up his arms and said, thoughtfully, "Y'know, I don't think it's teachable. I think you just... got it or you don't."

"Claptrap," GLaDOS said as soon as they were in earshot, or so it seemed to Wheatley, "I have some good news for you."

"That'll be a first," said Claptrap. "What is it?"

"I unlocked that email account. I also went ahead and set up a password manager to automate all of that for you, since your issues with passwords and email addresses seem to be incredibly widespread. I've listed that in the notes section of your scheduler."

"... thanks?" Claptrap said uncertainly, who seemed to be waiting for the other shoe to drop just as much as Wheatley was.

"While I was doing all of that," GLaDOS continued, "you got a very interesting message."

"I got an email that wasn't spam?"

"Yes. It was about one of your fanfictions."

"Spam, then," said Claptrap dejectedly. "The only comments I ever get on those're from bots. I don't know if a real person has ever read one of 'em."