Butterfly Kisses

Indiana

Characters: Wheatley, GLaDOS (humanised) [WheatDOS]

Setting: Post Portal 2

Synopsis: Wheatley asks GLaDOS if he can kiss her, but she says no.

He watches her.

He does this a lot; he has discovered an advantage to being quiet for a while. It's hard for him, and sometimes he feels as though all the thoughts and words spinning around inside his head will burst out of him in one tangled, indecipherable wave of stuttering, but he manages to contain them. Most of the time he lets them spill out just to relieve the pressure, but now is not a good time. If he does it now, she will give him That Look and he will have to leave. And he doesn't want to leave.

Usually he just watches her in general, but today he has a particular focus. He's not sure why, and chalks it up to just being 'one of those days', and decides not to question it. When he questions himself, things go wrong. Even more wrong than usual, that is. But his focus of the day makes him nervous, because he knows exactly what it means, and he's not sure he's ready for that.

Through some circumstance or another, he has touched many parts of her. Obviously some of them are off-limits, but the ones that aren't, well, he's gone through them, so to speak. He carries her to bed when she falls asleep in front of the computer. He wraps her in his arms when her past becomes too much, and he carefully wipes the tears off her face with the edges of his thumbs when some attack of conscience leaves her petrified and helpless. He even cuts her hair every now and then, when it gets too long for her to manage easily, though he privately wishes she would just let it grow out so he could plait it for her. As she comments every time this happens, Wheatley is surprisingly and remarkably proficient with hair – as long as it is not his own. When the tangled mop on top of his head becomes too much for him to handle, he sheepishly goes to her and asks for help, and she rolls her eyes and mutters something about Science, but tells him to sit down. She lectures him about brushing his hair every once in a blue moon, for God's sake, and if he'd properly rinse his hair out it wouldn't be matted together with shampoo all the time, but he only smiles to himself and stares at the floor without quite seeing it, enjoying the electric tingling of her fingertips across his scalp. For all her behaviour, he never doubts that she really does care, but it's times such as those that make it easier to see. Times where he's upset and she puts one hand firmly on his knee or wraps one arm loosely around his shoulders. Where she sits quietly and lets him go on for hours about whatever he happens to feel he urgently needs to say, and then wraps his fingers in her own and looks at him seriously and says exactly what he needs to hear but wasn't aware of himself. When she does things just because they take her fancy; sometimes she'll give his upper arm a squeeze or lean up on him a bit more than is necessary to look over his shoulder. She has a certain predilection for poking him in the back of the neck, something he never fails to react to. He's not a fan of being poked in the back of the neck, but he lets her do it because it makes her laugh, and that makes the unpleasant tingling down his spine well worth it. And they've done all of these things, made these tiny little explorations that all add up into one wonderful expedition, but there's still a few places of uncharted territory, one of which Wheatley is staring at right now. He knows she hasn't noticed, because if she had he wouldn't be here right now.

Today's unexplored avenue happens to be her lips.

He's never gotten quite close enough to them to do anything, even if he'd not been too nervous to try. But he loves the way they thin out when she's stuck on something, and he loves it when she figures it out because then they are full again. He loves her black lipstick, which she emphatically proclaims is lip gloss every time he brings it up, because it contrasts so well with the colourlessness of her hair. Once he asked why she never wears pinks or reds like humans do, because on occasion she sees fit to wear purple or dark yellow or even blue, but she only smiled and said he should know the answer to that by now. He'd not much liked the purple, and had said so offhand, but thinking of it reminded him that she'd not worn it since. He smiles at the thought that she hadn't done so just because he'd said that.

But there are, of course, other uses for lips than to put lip gloss on (which he'd let her do to him once or twice when it was particularly cold and windy outside; clear stuff only, thanks very much, though she'd kept going on about it being balm), and Wheatley has one in particular in mind. They'd been together a while, he tries to convince himself. Surely they'd gotten to that stage by now. Didn't have to be a production or a huge thing. Just for a second or two. He'd settle for that. He just wanted to know what it felt like. Then he'd stop. Maybe.

"GLaDOS," he says, and thankfully his voice is clear and strong and does not bely the fluttering in his stomach or the tangling together of his fingers in his lap. She jolts a little and turns her head to face him, brow creasing the barest fraction.

"What."

He twines together his third and index fingers and asks, "Can I kiss you?"

Her voice is flat and controlled as she answers, "No."

He feels as though he's been dropped off a terribly high building with no hope of rescue. "No?" he says, a little helplessly.

"No."

"Uh… can… could I ask why not?"

"No."

He leaves soon after that, something in his heart twisting painfully. He'd never thought she would refuse. He had thought she would make up excuses why she shouldn't, and then let him do it anyway as she usually did, and yet she'd just flat-out refused.

He sulks over this for much the rest of the day. Some days he genuinely does not understand what he sees in her, and this is one of them. He rarely thinks that she is toying with him, but he thinks so now. Why else had she said no? Unless… unless it's about the whole touching thing. Or the part about it being disgusting. Wheatley had decided it wasn't a while back, since he'd also thought being human was disgusting a long time ago but since he'd gotten used to it, it really wasn't so bad. As it turns out, there's more than one way a human can be smelly, and he's never been able to find the shampoo she uses but GLaDOS always has some lovely scent to her hair. It reminds him of flowers, though he can't say why. Perhaps that's just something humans can identify. But he loves it and buries his nose in the top of her head as much as possible, just so he can fully appreciate it.

He shakes his head to get him back on track, thinking hard. So… he has to come up with some way of kissing her that isn't disgusting. That… is that even possible? After a little bit of digging in the database, he discovers that it in fact is possible. He studies what he's found with uncharacteristic focus, frowning at the letters on the screen. He's pretty sure it's not quite the same, but perhaps after he does this they can move on to the real thing.

He takes a breath and goes back to her chosen place of work for the day, where she's still going at it with the same intensity as before. He sits down on his chair again, scooting it forwards so that he's as close to hers as possible, and takes off his glasses. Happily he's farsighted, which he likes because he can still see her when she lets him sleep next to her. This has been happening more and more often, which is good because the more often she lets him do it, the more often he can slowly curl his arm around her waist and fit her body into his. That part he hasn't quite achieved, but he's getting there. He was so close last night that he'd almost been able to press his face into her hair, but she had ended that rather abruptly. He would have been discouraged had she not left his arm where it was.

"What," she says flatly, snapping him back to the present. He blinks rapidly, mentally berating himself for losing his grasp on what was going on, and leans towards her face. Before she can react enough to get out of his reach, he has fluttered his eyelashes against her cheek. His heart is in his throat and he is shaking a little when he backs away, but she only looks at him with a curious tilt to her eyebrows.

"Been doing some research, I see." Her voice is dry but pleased, and though her face is a bit fuzzy 'round the edges he can still see that she liked it. He nods and prays that she'll return it because he wants to know what it feels like too, and everything except his pounding heart goes inexplicably still when he feels the whisper of her lashes against his face. It creates a pleasant electric tingling, something so unexpected from so small a gesture, and when she sits back to look at him amusedly he can hardly think. What he says makes him cringe.

"Your… they're black. Shouldn't uh, shouldn't they be white?"

"As usual, your powers of observation are top-notch," she remarks. "Yes. They are. When there isn't any mascara on them. Why? Do you want some?"

"No," he says hurriedly, lip-whatever being the extent of his makeup-wearing adventures. "No, I was uh, was just um, just wond'ring, y'know, why that… why that was." He looks down at the blurry hands in his lap, which are twisting together almost helplessly, and mumbles, "I've… I've got another one."

"Have you," she says, still sounding amused. He lifts his head and brings his face to hers again, gently brushing his nose against hers, and she laughs a little and smiles.

"What would happen if you applied yourself to real research, I wonder?"

He laughs nervously and looks down at his hands again, but she pushes his face up with the pressure of her index finger against his chin and returns it, sending another wave of tingling down his body. He's actually wishing he'd never done any of this. If eyelashes and noses felt this good, then what heaven must lips be?

She nuzzles the side of his face with hers, something left over from before that she usually only does when she's particularly tired or painfully lonely, and before he's quite gotten over that she's tangling her fingers in his hair and touching those lips to his in tiny little intervals, and he can no longer breathe. It has nothing to do with the fact that his mouth is now busy or that his chest is now against hers with a force it never has been before now, and everything to do with the fact that his brain has gone offline for the moment and all he's really aware of is that amazing tingly feeling that is now rushing through every part of him. Before he knows what he's doing he's fitting his hand around the back of her head beneath her hair, and oh God it fits perfectly, and he forgoes the whole gentle part and presses his face into hers, hard. Hers had been butterfly kisses borne upon her wonderful blackened lips, but he is not content with that. He presses harder because he needs a little more than that, and to his disbelief she gives it to him.

In her fashion she pulls away before he's finished, and as he looks at her with a wounded expression she smiles a little and meets his eyes with her own. "Never ask me again," she tells him, unable to keep the smile from growing, and she licks her lips with the tip of her tongue.

So he doesn't.