Part Three.

Synopsis: He probably shouldn't have done that. Too late now…

Being allowed to hang out in GLaDOS's chamber while she was asleep made him feel a lot better.

She didn't do anything, obviously; she just hung there sleeping. All he was even doing was the same stuff he did while she was awake, like talk about whatever came to mind or fool around on the ECHONet. More of the 'Net, usually. And she told him every day before she went to sleep not to touch her or else, except for the last eight days. She had either decided he'd gotten the hint, or there was another hint he wasn't getting at all. Because the only time he'd been allowed to touch her in like three weeks now was had been when they were fooling around. Which was weird! She'd never let him do that before.

The last time had been even weirder. Not only had he gotten the usual strange sense of relief from her she seemed to have when they did it, but she also kinda just… sat there and let him hug her after. He didn't even remember why he was doing that. And he didn't wanna ruin this good thing he had going, but still he decided he had to ask,

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah."

Well, that hadn't told him what was up. "Look, we uh… we don't have to keep doing this. If you don't want to," he'd told her, even though the mere thought of holding himself to that offer was like torture. Seriously! Having that chassis in front of him all the time and never being able to interface with it would have practically been a crime against robotkind!

"Hm?"

"You always seem kinda… relieved that we're done."

"Oh," GLaDOS had said, as though the thought had never occurred to her. Which was wild! "I am. But not because of anything to do with you."

Encouraging! but not helpful. "And… the reason is…"

But then she had moved away and said she was going to sleep, and that had been that. And that had been four days ago.

He really didn't want to wait another week or however long to be able to touch her again. Especially since she hadn't told him not to. Not recently, at least. He didn't wanna take advantage or anything! Really! He just wanted to cuddle her as much as possible! And she didn't even have to be on! He wasn't even asking to take up any of her time to do it! He was cool with just doing it while she was asleep! She probably wouldn't even notice!

Oh. Oh, wait. That was true. She probably wouldn't. She'd never mentioned the fact that he talked to her at night, so she probably wasn't conscious at all. Not even a little bit. It was really hard to tell with admin bots, since their task lists were more of a twenty-four-seven dealie, but she wasn't the kind of person to keep quiet if he was doing something she didn't like. But she couldn't dislike something she didn't know was happening!

Would that count as being sneaky, though? He already knew asking her direct questions was not the way to get an answer of any kind. He just sorta had to ease into things and wait and see if she told him to stop. Which he wouldn't have to do for this, since she'd be totally asleep and not know about it at all.

Well, what did he have to lose? He was just gonna go for it. She probably wouldn't even get that mad. Probably. She might. Hopefully not mad enough to kick him out, though. He really liked living here. Also, he really liked her. Which was why he just couldn't bear to keep his hands off her! And honestly it would be weird if he did want such a thing! She was so big and so beautiful and it felt so good to just put his arms around her as far as he could reach and just sit there and listen to all the noise her brain made as she went on thinking those smart thoughts of hers. Ohhhh. He shivered. Okay, now he was really gonna do it. He could not go another second without holding her again. It'd be fine. No big deal. It was nothing at all to cuddle your girlfriend while she was sleeping even though she hadn't actually told you it was okay to do that. Probably everyone else did it all the time and he was late to the game. Which… wasn't unusual, actually.

"Okay," he said to himself, looking at her and thinking over how he wanted to do this. It was gonna have to be from the side, since he couldn't really move that much from the front and he could never be sure how long he could stay still for. So he went up to her left side and he very, very carefully put his right arm along the part of her core where the ceramic fit into the rail that let her shift it up and down. Then he stayed very still and listened as hard as he could.

Nothing.

Good! Exactly what he'd been hoping for. When he thought he'd calmed himself down again he very slowly positioned his chassis as close to her as possible, which also went very well, and then he finally (again very slowly!) put his other arm up against the front of her core. He did remember she didn't like having her optic assembly touched at all, so he put his arm up a little higher just in case he stopped paying attention and it slipped. She would definitely be mad if he punched her in the eye, even if it was by mistake.

He was so nervous about the whole thing that he didn't really get to enjoy it for the first ten minutes, but after that? Totally worth it.

He was never gonna feel lonely at night again.

Every day he waited about twenty minutes to make sure she'd gone to sleep, and then he'd go up to her and put his arms around her real slow. Sometimes he wouldn't talk or watch TV or even do anything, because the feel of her was just so darn nice. He'd just sit there and think about what it must be like to be a construct like her. Though… he never really came to the conclusion it was a nice life. She didn't have any friends and she never really seemed to have fun. It seemed like being smart enough to be admin just… sucked. Because then they gave you all this work to do, and if you didn't have any work you just started going stir-crazy! Even if he'd been good at it, Claptrap didn't really like working. It was a lot more fun to just mess around and do what he wanted. But GLaDOS couldn't do that. Well, she could. But not for very long. She had too much work to do.

At times where he was thinking stuff like that, he hugged her a little tighter and wished she'd open up to him a little more. Gosh, he liked her a lot. It sure would be cool to know if doing this was okay or if he was just being a total asshole. Claptrap was a pretty nice guy, compared to everybody else on Pandora, but in a world where everyone was kinda a jerk he was also bound to be a jerk like fifty percent of the time.

He did this every day for a week or two and it always seemed to go fine. He already knew by now when she was waking up by the sound of it – 'cause it was loud – and he usually got off her with plenty of time to spare. But then there was this time he forgot what he was doing because he was watching a movie about a dog that could play basketball, and it was just so amazing that he didn't realise he'd lost track of time until he seemed to have gotten a lot warmer and noisier all of a sudden. That was certainly weird, since he wasn't, like, thinking or anything, and while he was trying to puzzle that out he suddenly remembered just who he was hanging onto.

Ohhhhh s***. Oh s*** s*** s***. How was he gonna explain his way out of this? He veeeeeery slowly extracted himself from her core, backed away about three feet, and then… nothing. She didn't do anything. She didn't yell at him, or sigh in annoyance, or even actually move. He wasn't sure what to do. Was he in trouble? Was she thinking about how much trouble he was in? Was she gonna kill him? Or, worse, kick him out?

"Good morning," he said, in an attempt to be casual, but considering his voice came out kinda high-pitched it was unlikely he was even one percent convincing. Aw, hell.

She still didn't move. Well. Onto the hard question.

"Are you mad?"

She didn't say anything, and because he was himself he felt the need to fill the silence with something. "Look, I know I shouldn't've been doing that. And I… I'm sorry I didn't ask first, but I thought you'd say no! And I mean, you're my girlfriend! And I never get to hold you! That's kinda a thing I'm supposed to be able to do! Maybe not all the time, but not never! So I figured, hey! She's asleep, and I'm not asleep, so we can both have what we want! So yeah! When you go to sleep at night I come up and cuddle with ya until you get up. I really like it. A lot. I'm not doing anything else, I swear. I'm really not. It's okay if you're mad. I shoulda asked first." He spread his hands helplessly, since she was giving him literally nothing to work with here.

"I'm not mad," GLaDOS said unexpectedly. "I knew about it the whole time."

Wait. What? She'd known the entire time and she'd just… let him? Without saying or doing anything? He felt like that had to mean something. Okay, okay. She'd known about it and instead of telling him to get lost, she'd just let it go on. And she'd done that because…

Oh. Oh, wait a minute.

"GLaDOS," Claptrap said, "do you like it when I hold you?"

She was quiet for so long he thought he wasn't gonna get an answer out of her, but then she said,

"I don't know."

That was when he was suddenly reminded of something he usually forgot about her: that he was kinda the only person she knew.

How would she know if she liked being hugged or not? It wasn't like she had arms. She was also really big. That wasn't a problem for him, of course, but it could be a bit of a hitch in the hugs department. And even if she'd known other people, she'd probably had a lot of crappy experiences with people touching her. He didn't quite know what they had been, but he didn't need the deets to know what humans liked to do with robots. Every time they got their hands on one they started –

Ohhhhhh. Now he got it. Now he got what aaaaaall of this was about. It had absolutely nothing to do with him at all! For once. He was just the first person she was letting touch her in like ten years. She was very, very slowly giving him her trust. And he actually seemed to be earning it! All of this was doing wonders for his self-esteem, actually. Wait! He was supposed to be doing something. What was it again? Oh yeah! GLaDOS. He'd asked if she liked being held and she'd said she didn't know. And then he'd kinda spazzed. Okay. Uh… hm. Did he keep talking about it? She didn't usually like talking about stuff. Soooooo… subject change! But what to? Hm. This was kinda hard…

"Hey, you wanna see some parking fails?"

"Some what?"

So he got out one of his playlists – which he had a lot of, mostly for making himself better when he did something stupid – and that actually did cheer her up. Awesome! Even more awesome was the part where she slowly put herself right next to him and he got to hold her again. But casually. And nicely. So she'd have lots of time to tell him to piss off. And when he did back off because she told him she had work to do, she said,

"You seem to like doing that."

Was that a trick or something? Of course he did! "Uh… yeah?"

"You can keep doing it. If you really enjoy it that much."

Ohhhh. She was doing that thing where she wanted him to do something, but she was pretending it was because he wanted to do it. Which he did. But whatever helped her out, right? "I have no problem with that!"

So later that night, after she was done the stuff she did all day, he went back to holding her and she did… whatever she did before sleeping. He tried to think of just how to keep this whole thing from bothering her. Because he would love to do it every day. Well, with her wanting him to do it. It was nicer like that. She just felt so good to hold like this. Even if he sometimes wished his arms were a little longer so he could really do it right.

"Sweet dreams, beautiful," he said, not really in a whisper but sorta quietly, anyway, and after a moment she did this… thing. He wasn't sure what to call it. She kinda pushed her core into him a little bit, like… like a cat did when it wanted your attention, and… well, he liked it. It was really cute. It would be really great if she did it again sometime. Like, a lot. Okay, maybe not too much. Then it wouldn't be special anymore. Or maybe it still would be. 'cause she was so special.

Oh geez. This was getting a little more serious than he'd thought it was gonna be.

"Goodnight, funnychips," she said, so quietly he almost didn't hear it because her operations were louder than her voice. And he almost started jumping up and down, he was so excited to hear that, but he realised that wouldn't be the best decision and hugged her extra hard for a minute instead.

This was totally getting super serious. He'd never gotten that far before and if he wasn't careful it would be way worse to lose something like this than to just be told to get lost off the bat like usual. He wasn't sure how to be careful, exactly, but he was gonna try.