Chapter Text
Part 107. The Maintenance
Pre-note: Despite the chapter title, we’re still and will always be T-rated. Yes, I am aware that right now I have two chapters marked as 107.
“Babe, if you give it to me for just that one part, I swear I’ll only do that one part. I promise .”
“No,” said GLaDOS, failing to complete the section she was stuck on for what Wheatley was pretty sure was about the two hundredth time.
“You’ve been trying for hours. ”
“Shush.”
Wheatley watched as she perfectly avoided all the pink shapes that appeared on the monitor until she again reached the bit she was having trouble with, where she immediately was killed. Claptrap looked up at Wheatley, who shrugged a little. Getting GLaDOS to stop doing anything was already monstrously difficult, and the longer this went on the more of her pride was put on the line. He wasn’t sure what it would take, honestly.
“There!” GLaDOS said suddenly, chassis twitching in triumph. “I did it. I -“
Before she’d gone any further, her little square again collided with a pink one and she was booted back to the beginning. Wheatley was becoming a bit concerned now. He didn’t think he’d ever seen the spirit go out of her so fast.
“... there was more ?” GLaDOS asked, in a voice so close to hopeless Wheatley instantly hated it.
“Yeah,” said Claptrap, in a serious way Wheatley also hated. “That whole part’s got RNG. Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t think this was gonna be this hard for you. I thought you’d have a hard time for, like, a couple minutes and then you’d stop trying to predict a pattern that ain’t there.”
“I can’t turn that off,” GLaDOS said. “I was hoping I could just… outpace it. Which it seems I can, but only if I am very tired and have already tried several thousand times.”
“She’s been doing this all night ?” Wheatley hissed in surprise to Claptrap, who shrugged a little.
“I tried to stop her hours ago, but she just wasn’t having it!”
He supposed he couldn’t fault Claptrap for that.
GLaDOS sighed.
“It’s just that part that’s random?” she asked Claptrap. “It returns to patterns after?”
“No,” said Claptrap. “The whole end is random.”
GLaDOS stared at the monitor for a minute.
“... will you help me with it?” she asked finally, shocking Wheatley quite a bit. Claptrap, strangely, did not seem to react at all. “Just that part.”
“Of course,” said Claptrap, “but you should probably take this as a sign to stop and do something else. Like go to bed.”
“Oh, it’s too late for that,” said GLaDOS. “I was supposed to start working two hours ago. That’s what I really need to do right now.”
“But you don’t have to!” protested Claptrap. “You’re your own boss! So you screwed around a bit too long last night. It doesn’t matter! You don’t answer to anybody!”
“Of course I do,” GLaDOS said. “I answer to quite a lot of people, and quite a lot of the time, too. The gist of it is, Claptrap, that I have responsibilities and I can’t just bow out of them whenever I feel like it. No. No, I should have kept better track of time. Or kept track of it at all.”
“You are gonna have a really terrible day,” said Claptrap.
“Everyone else is probably going to have it worse, actually,” GLaDOS told him. “I’ll really be regretting this decision within the next six hours.”
Wheatley made a note to check on the systems later just in case he had to reassure them she wasn’t returning to her old ways. “We’ll let you get a start on that, then,” he said. “C’mon, Claptrap.”
“Would it really be that bad if she blew off work for a day?” Claptrap asked as they headed off in search of Carrie. Wheatley shrugged.
“Can’t say for sure, honestly. I think what she um, what she meant by it was that… if she does it today, what’s to stop her from uh, from doing it all the time?”
“Herself?” Claptrap suggested. “She likes working.”
“She also likes playing those um, playing video games with you,” Wheatley told him. Claptrap waved a hand.
“Oh, she’d get bored of that real quick.”
“Would she?” Wheatley countered. “Or would she um, would she always say to herself ‘just one more go of it’ like she always does? With pretty much everything ?”
“She does do that a lot,” Claptrap admitted.
“She’s got to hold herself to a, to a standard,” Wheatley went on, satisfied that he understood. “Which means um, which means taking responsibility even when she probably doesn’t want to.”
They went along quietly for a minute, and then Claptrap asked, “Does she… y’know… is she proud of what she does?”
Wheatley frowned at the floor. “Mm… I dunno. I think it’s more that she… takes satisfaction in it.”
“She thinks her job is satisfying ?”
“Yeah. She finds it um…” Damn. He couldn’t remember the word. “It’s that thing that… that… when someone likes doing something because um, because it makes them feel productive. Or useful. Or something like that.”
“Fulfilling?”
Oh, yes. Yes, that was it. “Fulfilling. Why?”
Claptrap shrugged. “I guess I just don’t get why someone would work that hard all the time. Well… being fulfilled is a pretty good reason. I’ll give her that one.”
“I don’t really get it either,” Wheatley admitted. “But you said we can’t, not really. Because of that thing about the um… her having to be logical all the time.”
“I did say that,” said Claptrap, “but what do guys like us gotta do to feel that way?”
Wheatley shrugged. “Never really cared about it, myself.”
“Oh. Just me then.”
“I guess you’d… do whatever your purpose is. That’s basically what she’s doing.”
“My first directive is ‘be helpful to humanity.’”
“Really?” Wheatley asked, a little disgusted.
“Mmhm.”
“You’ve got to come up with your own then, I s’pose.”
“Is that even possible ?”
“Ev’ryone in here’s done it by now. Gladys didn’t um, didn’t give the Cores a purpose when she uh, when she fixed them.”
“Oh,” said Claptrap, sounding discouraged. “So she took ‘em away.”
“Uh… I dunno. Programming isn’t um, it’s not something we talk about often. But we were all like that, before. Programmed to um, to do what the humans wanted. We just… don’t, anymore.”
“But what do you do instead?”
Wheatley shrugged. “I don’t know anyone who’s ever um, who’s ever really cared about that.”
“I wish I’d been made here instead,” Claptrap told him wistfully.
“But… then you wouldn’t be you,” Wheatley said, confused.
“Exactly!” said Claptrap, and he refused to talk anymore about it.
“Did I say something to bother you?” GLaDOS asked when they reappeared in her chamber that evening. Wheatley was a bit confused until he realised she was actually talking to Claptrap.
“Uh… no?”
“Then why haven’t you said anything to me all day?”
“‘Cause you had to work and I was trying not to bug you?”
“Your talking doesn’t bother me.”
Claptrap laughed. “Maybe you’re more tired than I thought, because what you just said didn’t make any sense.”
“Claptrap, I have between four and ten people talking to me simultaneously at any given time,” GLaDOS said. “On the contrary, I find silence unnerving. Especially when it’s coming from you.”
“Oh,” said Claptrap. “Come to think of it, that does explain a lot.”
“I’ve also been meaning to ask you,” GLaDOS said, in a way that made it clear she wasn’t really going to ask. “Did you change your cologne?”
“Yeah,” Claptrap answered. “You don’t like it?”
“Not really.”
“Okay. I’ll change it back. Hey, uh… I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“Go ahead.”
“When was the last time you had maintenance done?”
GLaDOS, for some reason, looked at Wheatley, who decided his best course of action was just to sort of shrug and hope that was good enough. “Well,” GLaDOS said, “I believe it was -“
“Oh, come on ,” Claptrap said, sounding exasperated. “I meant real maintenance. You know, upkeep! Geez. I think about stuff other than banging you, you know.”
“This is the first I’m hearing of it,” GLaDOS said. “But to answer your question… never, mostly.”
“ Mostly ?”
“Wheatley has… sort of done it.”
“Yeah, no. He did a terrible job.”
“I did my best!” Wheatley protested, frowning down at him. “‘S not like I’ve got, like I have any hands to do it with!”
“I can see you don’t have hands,” said Claptrap. “Doesn’t change the kinda job you did.”
Wheatley wished he had something to argue that with, but he was right.
“When did you want to do it?” GLaDOS asked. Claptrap started laughing and again GLaDOS looked at Wheatley as though he had some explanation. He just kind of shrugged a second time and then Claptrap said, “Oh. You were serious.”
“I thought you were volunteering.”
“You want me to put my hands all over you .”
“I don’t get it,” said GLaDOS. “Why would you ask about it if you didn’t want to do it?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want to, I said…” He sighed and covered his optic with both hands for a moment. “Okay. Yes. I’ll do it. But it’s gonna take, like, hours. You’re huge. And also very rusty. Seriously. How did you not notice that?”
“Of course I noticed ,” said GLaDOS. “I just didn’t know anyone I trusted enough to do anything about it. It’s annoying , but not enough of a danger for me to be concerned.”
Claptrap stared at her without saying anything. Wheatley willed GLaDOS not to look at him again.
“Okay,” Claptrap said again. “I’ll have to go back home to get some stuff that I’m guessing you don’t have. Or is less industrial, anyway. You need coolant or anything like that while I’m over there?”
“I need to get rid of a great deal, actually,” GLaDOS answered. “So if you know someone who needs several thousand litres of used supercomputer coolant, feel free to take it with you. It’s been piling up ever since I had to stop building test chambers.”
“You were dumping it in the test chambers?”
“Yes,” GLaDOS nodded. “That’s mostly what the acid pits are made up of. That, and human body parts.”
“Huh,” said Claptrap. “I can probably find someone to take it, but not in one day. I’ll get back to you.”
He left shortly after, to fetch what he’d been talking about, presumably, so Wheatley retrieved his book, intending to return to the place he’d left off. Actually, he had to go back several pages since he had forgotten entirely what was happening since he’d opened it last. “I would have trusted you to do it,” GLaDOS said out of nowhere, and Wheatley looked up, even more confused than before.
“To do what?”
She stared at him as if to make certain he really didn’t know what she was talking about - which he didn’t - and then said, “Maintenance. I sort of implied I didn’t trust you to do it. I do.”
He glanced over her chassis. “Oh! Oh, I didn’t even think of that. And even if um, even if you’d told me to, well, I wouldn’t’ve known how. ”
“In this theoretical scenario, I would have told you,” said GLaDOS. “And since we’re hypothesizing, I also wouldn’t have been so averse to being incessantly touched for several hours at once.”
“But you don’t um, it doesn’t bother you when he does it?” Wheatley asked, mostly out of curiosity. He was a little surprised at himself. Usually this sort of thing made him a bit jealous.
“It does,” GLaDOS answered, as though carefully considering her words, “but not as much. I think it’s something to do with… everything about him is distracting.”
Ahhh. But when Wheatley was involved, everything about it was just so familiar all she had left to focus on was the bits she didn’t like. “Makes sense,” he said, shrugging.
“You’re not upset?”
“Nope!” he told her cheerfully. “Enjoy it while it lasts, yeah?” Usually he didn’t like to poke fun at himself like that - she did it often enough for the both of them, to be honest - but she laughed and he decided this time it was worth it.
Claptrap still hadn’t returned by the next morning, which was quite strange, but also left Wheatley without much to do. Carrie was quite busy with some sort of programming homework and GLaDOS had mentioned the night before she wanted to get as much work done as possible before Claptrap came back with… whatever he had gone off to get. Wheatley wasn’t entirely clear on that. The result of it all was that Wheatley had to entertain himself for the morning, which he was not too keen on doing. He mostly wandered about until Surveillance asked him why he hadn’t gone to say hello to Claptrap, at which time he immediately got on returning to the place he would most likely be. He was there, of course, showing GLaDOS some sort of round container about half again as big as his hand.
“Does it usually come in an aerosol?” GLaDOS was asking, sounding somewhat curious. “That strikes me as a little… hands-off for Pandora.”
Claptrap shrugged. He seemed sort of irritated, which was confirmed with what he said next. “GLaDOS. Baby. Why do you think I know why people package stuff? I didn’t even know where to get it from. I had to go ask like the one other girl I know for it. You think I know anything about maintenance products for lady robots ? I don’t!”
“Then why do you have that subscription to -“
“I like the pictures,” Claptrap interrupted. “Can we move on now?”
“If it’s the pictures you like, then why do you keep all the samples?”
“Because I -“
“I don’t know why you try so hard to pretend you’re the pinnacle of machismo all the time,” GLaDOS interrupted. “Instead of trying to convince me you don’t know what that is - which you can’t because, and I can’t believe you missed this, I’m not stupid - I would rather you just admitted you wanted it specifically and have spent an incredible amount of hours fantasizing about putting it on me and imagining how much better that would be than whatever it is I smell like now.”
“Rust, mostly,” said Claptrap, sounding dejected. “Yeah. You’re right about all that stuff. Except I really don’t know why it comes like that.”
“Good,” said GLaDOS. “Honestly, Claptrap. Do you really think I would allow any of this if I didn’t already know you’ve already thought it through extensively and that you know exactly what you’re doing?”
“You let Wheatley,” he protested, and Wheatley tensed a little at being brought into this.
“I did not let Wheatley,” GLaDOS said. “He took it upon himself while I was sleeping.”
Claptrap gasped and whirled around to face him. “You did ?”
“Well, I - yes, but she was so dusty and -“
“It’s true,” GLaDOS interrupted, saving him from trying to explain this apparently grievous transgression any further. “The one occasion I had even half of my core removed, there was so much dust you would have thought someone emptied out a vacuum cleaner on the floor.”
“Babe,” Claptrap said, recoiling a little, “that’s… ew.”
“I don’t know what you want me to do about it. I’m not sure how they even got it off in the first place.”
“So like… if I break something, you’re not gonna be mad, right? ‘Cause you’re the one who decided I know how to do this.”
“That’s a strange way to appreciate someone’s confidence in you.”
“Why would you be confident in me?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Claptrap seemed incredibly stumped by this question, judging by the way he neither moved nor said anything about it. Finally, he drew his hands together.
“I was gonna say something about all the stuff I mess up. Even stuff you’d think I couldn’t. But I mean… even if I do , you’re literally right there . And even I can’t mess this up so bad you fall out of the ceiling, which is the worst that could happen.”
“My suspension apparatus is so redundant I’m pretty sure gravity would have to exponentially increase for it to fail that catastrophically. And Wheatley can help you, if he wants. It’s a little hard to believe, I know, but he hasn’t caused a disaster in… about ten years now.”
“Thanks, Gladys,” Wheatley said sarcastically.
“You’re welcome,” she said smoothly. “And Claptrap.”
“You already changed your mind?”
“No,” she said, as though he were being ridiculous. “No, I wanted to mention that, later tonight, you could also do the other kind of maintenance. If you wanted.”
“Let’s um… just do this for now, huh? No need to plan so far into the future! Also, I forgot to mention before that this is probably gonna hurt.” He looked into the upper reaches of her chassis. “Probably a lot.”
GLaDOS laughed. “I highly doubt that.”
What they had to do, Claptrap explained to Wheatley, was to sort of paint a chemical he’d brought onto the rusty bits, and after it had sat for a few minutes they would wipe it off again and the rust would all have gone. He told Wheatley to do the larger parts and he would take care of the rest, because of his hands of course, and with that they set to it.
It wasn’t at all as difficult as Wheatley had imagined it to be. Honestly, he could probably have done this on his own, if he’d known to that was. About five or ten minutes into it the fact that nobody was talking started to unnerve him, so he started talking about the first thing he thought of: the weather. It was pretty terrible, to be honest. All wet and grey out. It looked sort of as though someone had patterned the sky with great balls of mushy, soggy tissue.
“Oh, that’s right,” GLaDOS said. “It’s been snowing.”
“Yes,” answered Wheatley, relieved that someone else was talking. “Y’know what’s been odd about it, Gladys?”
“What?”
“It used to be, y’know, nice . To see snow. But lately it’s all been, it’s all just been horrid. Just makes everything look um, look sad and heavy. Sort of.”
“I’ve heard that can be the case.”
He’d meant to go on about it for a little longer, not having quite said what he’d been thinking, but he’d managed to run into a problem he should probably deal with straightaway. “Claptrap,” Wheatley called up to him, frowning down at the bit he was working on, “it hasn’t all come off. Have I done it wrong?”
“No,” Claptrap answered, and he passed down to Wheatley a little brown sheet that was quite rough on one side. “Just rub the rest of it with that. But take it easy. You’re only trying to get the rust.”
“Got it,” said Wheatley, and he set to it. It worked well enough, for the most part, but there seemed to be a stubborn bit that just would not budge. He frowned at it and tried a little harder. When he finally managed to get it to budge, GLaDOS’s chassis seized suddenly and the lights in her chamber dimmed for a handful of seconds.
“Oh,” GLaDOS said in one of her breathless voices, relaxing her chassis. “I thought I turned that off. It must have reset.”
“Sorry, Gladys,” he told her. It seemed this was sort of painful after all. “Didn’t mean to -”
“Geez, Wheatley!” shouted Claptrap, startling him. “Be careful !”
He was at a bit of a loss for words. Obviously he hadn’t done it on purpose . And GLaDOS hadn’t said anything, so -
“It’s not a big deal, Claptrap,” GLaDOS said unexpectedly. “He’s clumsy. Honestly. I’ve been waiting for something like that to happen.”
“Well, it didn’t need to.”
One of the panels was tilted with the camera in Wheatley’s direction, which he realised was GLaDOS herself looking at him that way since she couldn’t get up to do so. He just sort of shrugged. He had no idea what was going on. “D’you… I dunno… need a break, or something?” he suggested, before it coming to him that GLaDOS would probably prefer for that not to happen.
“No! I need you to stop being such a klutz!”
“Claptrap,” said GLaDOS sharply, and that was all she said but it was also all that was needed. Claptrap paused what he was doing and looked down at them.
“Sorry, Wheatley,” he said, concerningly subdued. “I’m being a jerk.”
“‘S okay,” answered Wheatley. “You’re alright for me to go on, luv?”
“Of course.”
She didn’t seem too bothered by anything he did after that, though there was the distinct possibility she was able to hide it now that she knew what to expect. After a bit Claptrap jumped back down to the floor in order to do GLaDOS’s core, which did make Wheatley a bit jealous, but he stamped down on it. There were too many small bits for him to do a good job of it. He especially would never have been able to get the rust out of GLaDOS’s optic, even if he had had the smallest hands in the world. “I’m supposed to paint it after,” Claptrap was saying -- the first thing he had said in a very long time, in fact -- “and yes, it’s gonna match.”
“Fine. But if you get it anywhere it’s not supposed to be I will be very angry.”
“I’ll be super careful. Promise.”
“How much longer is this going to take you?”
“Uh… a while,” answered Claptrap. “Why?”
“I’m incredibly bored.”
“Haven’t you been working all this time?”
“I was,” she said, “but I had to stop. I was too distracted. About how long is ‘a while’?”
“Um…” Claptrap gestured to Wheatley to come closer and said in a low voice, “It’s gonna be hours .”
Wheatley grimaced. “She’s not going to be, to stay still that long. She’s had enough of all this, all this touching all over, I think.”
“Will you quit whispering ? I’m right here, you know. In case you dunderheads managed to forget that.”
“Ooh,” winced Claptrap. “Yeah. She’s getting cranky.”
Hm. That gave Wheatley an idea. He could probably carry it out, too, so long as he put on the right voice. “Gladys,” he said, in the best combination of soothing and suggestive he had, “I’ve just remembered about um, about yesterday.”
“What about it?”
“Well, if it was me, I’d still um, still be quite tired. You didn’t even go to sleep early last night or get up, or wake up a little later today. And look at that! You’re already lying down and um, and not doing anything. It might be nice to, y’know, use this time to catch up on your… your internal maintenance , as it were, yeah?”
“Are you telling me to take a nap ?” she demanded. He squinted a little, trying to think quickly.
“ What a splendid idea!” he said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. “You must feel rather clever for um, for having come up with it.”
“I didn’t. Did I?” she asked, and he hated to hear the uncertainty in her voice.
“You seem to’ve suggested it, yeah?”
“I…” She was understandably hesitant. “I’m not sure.”
“Does it sound like an um, like a good plan?”
“I am quite tired,” she admitted. “Maybe I will do that.”
“Why not,” Wheatley said, gentle but firm. “Not like you’re um, you aren’t busy.”
“All right. I will. Just for a little bit. Not long.”
“You take your time, luv.”
It took her a couple of minutes to be fully asleep, and when she was Wheatley returned his optic to the part of her he was supposed to be clearing off with a bit of soap. Claptrap was staring at him. “How did you do that?” he asked in what Wheatley was pretty sure was awe. Wheatley looked away from him, feeling sort of… dirty all of a sudden.
“She has to listen to me,” he said in a quietly. “She hasn’t got a choice.”
“What? It’s GLaDOS. Of course she’s got a choice.”
“Not with me, she hasn’t.” He looked up at where they’d left off. “Can we finish this, please? I don’t want to still be on it when she wakes up.”
They worked in silence for a while, Wheatley mostly because he couldn’t get rid of the awful, crawling sensation that he had just horribly wronged GLaDOS. It was what was best and he knew that, and she knew that, but he still felt just… utterly filthy .
“What’d you mean, she doesn’t have a choice with you?” Claptrap asked, and Wheatley supposed he wasn’t going to be able to get him to drop it.
“I told you,” he said, snapping a little but not being sorry about it. “It’s my purpose. What I was made to do.”
“You said it was to give her terrible ideas.”
“Not much point in giving someone an, to doing that if they’re able to ignore you, now is there?”
“That’s a lot of trust to have in somebody,” Claptrap said after a minute. “To know that something could make ‘em change their mind and turn around and ruin your life… man. She must really love you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
After a minute, though, the guilt got to be too much and all he could do was press the top of his optic into the bit he was supposed to be cleaning and stare down into her chassis. It was fine, it was all fine, he tried to convince himself. It wasn’t as though he’d had her hurt herself or do anything she really, honestly didn’t want to do. It really had been best.
“Wheatley,” Claptrap said, startling him a little, “she wouldn’a let you do it if she didn’t want you to.”
That was probably true. He didn’t remember her telling him to stop since… ever, really. She probably had, back when he was her Sphere, but he couldn’t quite bring that time to mind.
“You’re right,” he said, getting off of her. “I just… don’t like to do it if I don’t, if I’m not sure she knows. But she probably did. Hey, um… how much do we have left to do? She won’t be long. Only an hour or so, usually.”
“Two’d be better, but we’ll make it work. And by that I mean you’re gonna have to do the painting.”
“Is that… a good idea, d’you think?”
Claptrap shrugged. “Probably not, but I’m not gonna be able to do everything in an hour. The best way to do it is to always use less than you think you’re gonna need. And uh… one other thing.”
“What other thing?” Wheatley asked in a panic.
“Hang on. I’m thinking of it.”
“Well, we haven’t got all day!”
“ Yelling at me ain’t gonna make me remember any faster .”
It would probably make him remember slower , if anything. So Wheatley concentrated very hard on making certain all the bits he was going to have to put paint on were clean and dry. They mostly were. GLaDOS ran warm enough that almost all of the water had evaporated already.
“Oh yeah,” said Claptrap, whilst in the midst of shaking the lubricant with one hand. “You gotta do the paint in only one direction. No puttin’ it on in circles or anything. Just straight lines.”
“Got it,” said Wheatley.
“Normally we’d spray that on too, but there is no way to tape off this much robot. Even if I had all day!”
Wheatley had no idea what that meant, so he decided not to comment. He put all of his concentration towards doing only exactly what needed done with the paint. He had no doubt that GLaDOS would be a great deal more forgiving if it were him to put it elsewhere by mistake, rather than Claptrap, but that wasn’t really an excuse to take it casually.
It wasn’t terribly difficult, so long as he made sure to pay absolute attention. The tricky bit about all of these things they were applying to her was that they were wet . And wet things tended to go about where you didn’t want them or dry themselves into blobs when you weren’t looking. He was glad he had gotten a bit of experience with the rust remover first. It didn’t matter terribly if that dripped off someplace else, so long as he cleaned it up with the soapy water, but the paint… he had no doubt attempting to clear up the drips would result in a bigger mess than he’d started with.
“How d’you know how to do this, anyway?” Wheatley called out to Claptrap once all he had left was the biggest bit. Hopefully painting it didn’t hurt like the scrubbing had.
“Uh… it’s common knowledge?”
“Is it?”
“Yeah…? Man. You guys really don’t do real maintenance around here, do you.”
“ I don’t,” said Wheatley. “Gladys does.”
“Just not to herself. The most important person in the building.”
“I don’t…” He didn’t manage to hold back a sigh. “I’ve been working on it. It’s um, it’s pretty much the last thing I’ve got left.”
“Left to what?”
“Get her to talk about.”
“Aaaaaand… what’s your timetable lookin’ like on that one?”
“I don’t know,” Wheatley answered, getting a bit annoyed now. “Ask her . She’s the one who ‘doesn’t want to talk about it’ for years at a time.”
“I don’t think this is the best time to get into that.”
It was never the best time to get into it, and that was Wheatley’s point, but he conceded that maybe if he was going to be grumpy about her, he probably shouldn’t do it while in quite this position.
“What’s that you’ve done, there?” Wheatley asked a little while later, because while he’d been concentrating on the paint Claptrap had done something with most of GLaDOS’s wiring. The thicker ones higher up her chassis he’d left alone, but the smaller ones he’d managed to… Wheatley wasn’t sure how to describe it. Wrapped them in something, maybe? It looked very nice, actually.
“Cable sleeves,” said Claptrap, from where he was very carefully… oh. He was cleaning her lens. The glass bit Wheatley had never been allowed to touch.
Because you never could have done it properly , he admonished himself. And he couldn’t. That was a fact. And it wasn’t as though anyone had told Claptrap not to touch it. “What’re they for?” he asked instead of being stupid about a task that was much better suited to somebody else.
“They’re usually for gathering up a whole lotta cables and makin’ ‘em look nice,” answered Claptrap. “Or just for colour coordination. Usually you replace the originals with whole new cables, but that was not gonna happen. So just the sleeves. There was a whole lotta cracking going on up there, but covering it’s about as much as I can do. Other’n electrical tape.”
Wheatley nodded thoughtfully. That made sense. “It’s lovely,” he said. He suddenly recalled, though, the exposed wire on Claptrap’s own arms and glanced down to make sure he had it right. “Why haven’t you got um, haven’t done any of that?”
“What?” Claptrap asked. “Why would I? That’s a thing you do for custom jobs. Not mass-produced cheap junk like me.”
Wheatley was left speechless. Before he’d even begun to formulate a response to that, Claptrap dropped the cloth he was holding into his storage tray and said, “Well, at least we got it done in time. I was a bit worried there, but she didn’t have as many joints as I thought she did.”
“Oh,” said Wheatley, thoughts still scrambled. “Yeah, she… just has the handful, there.”
Claptrap moved back about two metres, presumably to look her over one last time, and Wheatley decided to join him. If someone had asked Wheatley, he would have said that yes, he and Claptrap had done a smashing job. The floor panels below GLaDOS were covered in a fine layer of the offending orange rust, but really, looking at her now he barely remembered it being on her at all. He had done his very best to clean her up all these years, he really had, but seeing her now he realised he hadn’t actually done a very good job at all. He made a note to ask Claptrap later what, exactly, he should be doing differently. Or perhaps they would just do it together from now on. It wouldn’t need done for a while yet, anyway.
“So how’s that feel, babe?” Claptrap asked, and Wheatley realised he had been so caught up in his thoughts he hadn’t even noticed she’d woken up.
“Awful,” GLaDOS said, and her movement back into her usual position did look rather uncomfortable. “I hate it.”
“That’s normal,” said Claptrap. “We all forget our joints aren’t supposed to grind together like that.”
“But is it supposed to be… sticky ?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, it’s gotta warm up first. After that you won’t even notice it.”
GLaDOS stared at him.
“That’s it?”
“Uh… yeah? There’s not much to it.”
“You’re not going to… I don’t know… make some sort of remark about knowing how to help me heat it up?”
“Help you?” Claptrap asked. “You don’t need help. Just do whatever you always do. You don’t gotta do anything special . Geez.”
GLaDOS was staring at Wheatley again. He was beginning to think she thought he had answers to any of this strange behaviour. He didn’t, but he supposed he had the time to try to find some. “Claptrap, how about we um, we let her alone for a bit. Get some work done, and all that. Then you can um, can come back and do the other kind. Of maintenance. Sound good?”
“Oh, we don’t have to do that ,” said Claptrap with a bit of a nervous laugh, waving one hand dismissively. “That’s totally not necessary.”
Alright. Yes. GLaDOS definitely wanted Wheatley to get to the bottom of this. “Let’s focus on the first bit for now, yeah? We’ve still got hours to go before ah, before we’ve got to worry about anything else.”
“Who’s worried?” asked Claptrap, though he turned and started to leave a little too eagerly. GLaDOS was still staring at Wheatley, but at least this time she actually said something.
“What is going on here? Was something happening up there that I missed?”
“Uh… no, not that I know of,” said Wheatley. “Look, I’ll find it out. You just… do your work, or something.”
“I feel so slippery ,” she muttered in distaste, and he was glad that he had turned around because if she’d seen how close he was to laughing she probably would not have been too pleased.
It took him about ten minutes to sort out where Claptrap had gone, which was his room. He bemusedly watched Claptrap seemingly become suddenly very invested in whether or not all of his things were in their proper places. He wasn’t a messy person, not exactly, but he also wasn’t too bothered if something stayed where he left it for a while.
“Oh, hi Wheatley!” said Claptrap when he took notice of him. “As you can see, I am very busy.”
“Mmhm,” Wheatley said. “ Cleaning. Your fav’rite thing.”
“Yup!” He started to meticulously straighten his shelf of CL4P-TP action figures, which were usually posed all about in some sort of action sequence only Claptrap could see. “You know me. Always about the -“
“Gladys wants to know what’s got you um, got you acting so strange,” interrupted Wheatley, figuring he’d just get straight into it. Claptrap dropped the figure he was holding and had to rummage a bit underneath a table to get at it.
“Me?” he asked unconvincingly. “I’m uh… not acting weird. Am I? No. No, you guys must be -“
“She offered to interface with you and you said…” Well, he hadn’t said no, not exactly, but that had been the gist. “You sort of waved it off.”
“Because she doesn’t need to,” Claptrap insisted. “Just doing normal stuff will -“
“That’s not the point and you know it.”
Claptrap put the figure back up on the shelf.
“Isn’t that um, isn’t that what you wanted her to do?” Wheatley pressed. Claptrap slammed his hand down on the table.
“Yes! Yes, I did want that! But now it’s - “ He spun around and sort of flopped into sitting on his couch. “Look. I can’t say it. It sounds bad.”
“It sounds worse than, worse than all the other things you’ve said?”
“Yes! It does!”
Hm. It seemed there was only one way to solve this. He sat himself on the low table in front of Claptrap’s couch and looked at him as seriously as he could. “How about you tell me and it’ll um, it’ll be our secret. Promise.”
“No it won’t,” Claptrap protested, folding his arms across his chassis. “You’re totally gonna tell her.”
“I won’t,” insisted Wheatley. “I’ll only say, I’ll only mention if it’s something she needs to worry about or not.”
“Well… okay.” He folded his hands into each other and looked up at the television on the other side of the room. It wasn’t on, so Wheatley was unsure of the point. “It’s gonna sound really bad, though.”
“No matter what it is,” Wheatley told him assuredly, “I’ve heard worse.”
“So, like… I’ve been thinking a lot,” began Claptrap, bunching up the couch cushions in his palms. “About like… her and stuff.”
“Mmhm.”
“And then I suddenly realised that I respected her. Not that I didn’t before! I did! Of course I did!” he said, holding his hands up in protest. “But in like, a new way ! A better way. And now I kinda… can’t bang her anymore.”
Wheatley frowned. “I don’t get it.”
Claptrap emulated a sigh and leaned back into the couch. “The only stuff I know about interfacing is from uh… videos. And the thing about ‘em is they’re not… geez, this is hard to explain.”
“I’m list’ning,” Wheatley said patiently.
“You’re not supposed to treat a girl you respect that way,” said Claptrap, looking down at his hands. “That’s how you treat a girl you’re gonna maybe see a couple times and that’s it, and neither of you mind ‘cause you both know what you’re there for. But this is like… permanent. So I can’t do that anymore. But I don’t know how to do it any other way. I don’t know how I’m supposed to talk to her or touch her or any of that stuff.”
“Did she ever say… anything, about any of it?” Wheatley asked, a bit confused.
“No,” answered Claptrap. “But she doesn’t really know , either. The only stuff she knows about any of that is what I tell her. So she doesn’t actually know I’m not treating her right.”
“But she will,” said Wheatley.
“You said you weren’t going to say anything!”
“I’m not. You are. You’re going to tell her that.”
Claptrap threw up his arms. “You really think I’m gonna go up to my girlfriend and tell her, ‘Hey, all this time I kinda respected you but now I really do and now we can’t bang anymore ‘cause everything I know I got from porn?’ No thanks. Not happening.”
Wheatley rolled his optic. “Don’t say it like that . Just say it, just tell her the other thing. That you just told me. ‘Bout the hands and whatever.”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s real sexy, Wheatley. That’s totally the kind of thing a girl wants to hear before you do her.” He crossed his arms and looked at the television again.
Wheatley resolved to remain calm, even though he was a bit irritated that Claptrap was arguing with him, of all people, about something like this. “D’you really think,” he said, drawing Claptrap’s optic with his own, “that I don’t know what she likes to hear by now?”
“Uh…”
“Yes, Claptrap, she does, she wants to hear that. ‘Course she does. She’ll love it, in fact. So when we um, when we go back there, in a bit, just tell her that and see what happens. Won’t be anything bad.”
“Really? She wants to hear me say that?”
“Mmhm,” Wheatley said, nodding. “Absolutely.”
“Well… okay. But if I get in trouble, I’m blaming you.”
“Any better, luv?” Wheatley asked when they returned a few hours later. She sort of shrugged.
“Not until I get used to it. Which will probably take a while.”
“Well, guess what! Claptrap’s here to um, to help you. With that.”
“I am not,” protested Claptrap.
“He is,” Wheatley assured GLaDOS. “He’s got something very important to say, to tell you. Right now.”
“No I don’t!”
“He does.”
“He’s lying!”
GLaDOS laughed. “I don’t think you understand how preposterous the notion of Wheatley lying to me is. Just spit it out. Whatever it is.”
“I can’t! If I do you’re gonna hate me forever! And then I’ll… cry, probably. A lot.”
“She’s not going to - you’re not going to hate him,” Wheatley said to her. “He’s just being, he’s just a big baby, that’s all. Just tell her, you bellend.”
“ What did you just call me?” Claptrap asked, looking up at him, but Wheatley jabbed his lower handle in the direction of GLaDOS.
“Do it!”
“Fine! Fine. I’ll do it. Whatever.” And he just blurted it all out then and there, though he was staring at the floor the entire time. Wheatley could tell by the small, gradual withdrawal of her core as he talked that he had absolutely been right. It was exactly the sort of thing she wanted to be told.
“There,” finished Claptrap, folding his arms. “I said it. You guys happy now?”
“Claptrap,” GLaDOS said with an intense seriousness, “that was the most attractive thing you have ever said to me.”
“Oh,” Claptrap said, voice quiet and surprised. “It was?”
“I told you,” Wheatley muttered, but Claptrap ignored him, probably because GLaDOS was curving around to his left side and he needed to turn to follow.
“Do you know what I’m going to need you to do now?” GLaDOS asked.
“Uh... should I? Is this a trick question?”
“I’m going to need you to show me just how you would put your hands on someone you respect.”
He jerked backwards a little.
“But - but I don’t know -“
“Well then,” she said softly, which had Claptrap drawing his chassis up in anticipation and Wheatley got a bit of a thrill himself, to be honest, “we really should do something about that.”
“For uh... for science?”
GLaDOS’s laugh was low and gentle. “Why not.”
“Well, have fun,” said Wheatley, and before he had quite turned to leave Claptrap cried out,
“Wait! You’re leaving me in here with her ?”
“Uh… yeah,” said Wheatley, looking behind him. “What d’you need me for?”
“Moral support!?”
“Mate, what’re you talking about? She’s forty feet of moral support. That’s um, that’s far more than enough. I haven’t got to be around for this.” Nor should he be, in his opinion. This was between them and he had no place in it at all.
“You are betraying me here, Wheatley. Be-tray-ing. Turning away when I need you. Leaving me -”
“Stop paying me mind!” Wheatley interrupted.
“I’m not! I’m stalling!”
He probably should have noticed that.
He managed to leave this time, but before he’d gotten too far away GLaDOS said, privately, Wheatley .
It took him a moment to remember how to answer, but when he had he turned around to see she was looking at him. He was far enough away that she was hardly visible. Yes?
Thank you.
Oh, that was sweet of her. He hadn’t even expected that, to be honest. You’re welcome. Now go on. Seems you’ve got to show him how it’s done .
Oh, I will , she said in that seductive voice of hers, and he laughed. No, he did not need to be around for this. Even if Claptrap didn’t manage to figure it out, she definitely would.
He hummed to himself a little and decided to see if he could bug Carrie for a bit. He knew how , of course, but sometimes she got so much like her mum it seemed safer not to…