Part Eight. The Reassurance

The next morning he woke before she did, because he had carefully set his timer to have that happen, and he watched her. He felt terribly like he needed to protect her, somehow, but she was so big and he was so small. Not just in size, either. Whatever attributes he had, she had them times ten. Or twenty. Yes, probably twenty. How did you protect someone who was so much bigger than you? He knew that Rick was identical in size to Wheatley himself, but Wheatley also knew firsthand just how much of an effect a tiny little core could have on one's mind. Rick would slither his way into her brain, corrupt her, make her want to be Rick's friend instead of Wheatley's… poor GLaDOS. Poor, poor GLaDOS. She was so innocent and unsuspecting, hanging there like that. Vulnerable. Like a butterfly inside a cocoon. Ripe and ready to be plucked from the Tree of… of Innocence, before the butterfly ever broke free… and she would make a lovely butterfly, Wheatley thought. A white and black butterfly, yes, that would be quite nice, it would. She would never fly, because Rick would snatch her in his Net of Lies, wearing the Safari Hat of Injustice, and pull her out and pin her to a board, that was what you did with butterflies, you snatched them up and pinned them to a board so ev'ryone could examine their beautiful, delicate wings and ooh and aah while the poor little creature fluttered helplessly in a vain attempt to break free, like GLaDOS would when she finally figured out Rick's trap…

"What are you doing over there?"

Wheatley jumped, looked around wildly, then realised it was GLaDOS's voice and looked down at her. "I was uh… I was thinking of something."

"Do you want to talk about it?" GLaDOS asked. "It looked… disturbing."

"Oh no," Wheatley exclaimed, shaking his chassis frantically and backing away. He really didn't want to know how GLaDOS would react if he told her he'd been imagining her as a pinned butterfly with Rick in a safari hat waving a net after her. "No, I'm okay, really. I'm over it."

"No, you're not," GLaDOS told him. "Your optic is still constricted. And twitching nervously."

"Don't… don't worry about me!" Wheatley said hurriedly. "I'm fine. I'm all fine. If you ever worried about me. Which you probably don't."

"Sometimes I do."

"Really?"

"I'm actually concerned for your sanity right now. You seem even more unsettled than usual."

Wheatley laughed nervously. "I'm okay, luv. Uh… good morning!"

"Good morning," GLaDOS returned bemusedly. "Although you don't look like you're having one."

"Long's you are, I'm all good."

She regarded him with her core held at an angle for a moment. "That's… interesting."

"It is?"

"Mm. I don't think I recall a time when anyone was so concerned about my well-being." She was looking at him with an air of curiosity. "Are you sure you're feeling all right? I can run a diagnostic if you like."

"No, that's okay," he told her. "I… I'm sure you've got loads of work to do."

"Of course," she agreed, "but… I kind of feel… well, sort of bad, actually."

"'bout what?" he asked in surprise.

"You seemed rather excited to see me yesterday, and then I completely disregarded you. I probably shouldn't have done that, but I was pretty tired."

"It's fine," he reassured her. "Like I said. Do what you need to do. If that means, that means I need to leave you alone even when, if I'd like to see you, well, I'll go and do that."

"That's… very sweet of you. And thoughtful."

He looked at the floor. "Well, you're my friend. I just… want what's best for you, that's all."

She was also looking at the floor. "Do you… want to come here, a minute?"

"What?" he asked, confused. "I'm not allowed to lay rail in here. Am I?" he finished hopefully.

"No, but you could come here without laying rail."

He had a flash of inspiration. "Oh! D'you mean we could, uh, could snuggle for a bit?"

"If you were so inclined."

Oh, excellent! He dropped down beside her, and it was so much better when he was invited than when he was beside a GLaDOS who he wasn't even sure wanted him there.

After a minute or two she shifted, and he backed off of her. "That was nice!" he said cheerfully. "Thanks, luv!"

She nodded. "If it satisfies you, I suppose. You're going to have to leave now. I have to get started on my work for the project."

"'kay," he said, and after a second of debate, he quickly brought his hull to her chassis and rubbed up on her a little. Before she could say anything – no, probably she had just chosen not to say anything – he quickly left the room. He probably shouldn't've done that, but her chassis was just so inviting. It almost asked him to touch it.

Slightly happier than yesterday, Wheatley wound through the facility in search of something to do. It was very hard, mostly because he had a sudden, distracting problem.

All he could think of was her.

She had started off very unusually for her, showing a lot more concern than she usually did, as well as actually inviting him to snuggle. He tried to imagine her doing those things with Rick and shuddered.

It was all too imaginable.

Rick was probably a much better companion than he was. Rick did not stutter, was a lot more knowledgeable than Wheatley in a lot of things, and knew what to say. He even had an American accent like GLaDOS herself did. Wheatley was getting a bit sad, thinking of all the things Rick and GLaDOS had in common.

Well… no reason in shooting himself down. Wheatley frowned as he passed one of the offices, glancing absently at a poster depicting a robot going through a mountain of paperwork. He had lots of things in common with GLaDOS too. Like… like… well, he couldn't think of anything at the moment. But that didn't mean there wasn't anything. It didn't. It just meant he wasn't thinking straight, that was all.

He tried to remember what he'd gleaned from the database about people looking for people who were similar to themselves. An important part of a successful friendship was compromise, he remembered that. He tried to imagine Rick compromising with GLaDOS, somehow, and couldn't. This cheered him up a little. What else was there? Hm.

Well, Rick talked about himself constantly. Nonstop. And everything he said was… he was always bragging. GLaDOS did like to say nice things about herself, but Wheatley already knew that she did it because the scientists had never bothered. And really, they should have, Wheatley mused. She did everything for them, and they never acknowledged her. Rude. No wonder she'd gotten tired of them. Needy little things, humans. Really, if GLaDOS didn't say nice things about herself, who would? Wheatley knew all too well how it felt to need a boost in self-confidence. He decided he should probably do something about that. It was one thing to say something nice about yourself, but it was another whether you believed yourself or not. If GLaDOS was anything like Wheatley – and he hoped she was, so that their friendship would go well – it probably felt a lot better to have something nice said to you by someone else, rather than yourself. It felt good when someone told you how well they thought of you, Wheatley reflected. He would try to work on it.

After a very long day in which he tried to downplay GLaDOS's growing friendship with Rick and instead tried to think of ways to help his own friendship with her along, he again bumped into the Sphere on his way back to her. Rick was puffed up in self-satisfaction.

"I've almost got her now, loser!" he crowed. "She's definitely interested. I can tell."

"That's not true," Wheatley countered. "You've never had a lady in your life!"

"I've had tons of them!" Rick bragged. "Tons of lovely, pretty ladies. Even if I'd only ever had one, well, that'd be one more than you've ever had!"

"You do know I spent a lot of time with that test subject, right?"

"Why? There was no one better hanging around?"

"Well…" Wheatley had to admit that probably did have a lot to do with it. "Not entirely."

"She needed you for something and dropped you when she found something better, didn't she?" Rick shook his core gravely. "I knew it. I knew you were a loser, loser. And although that girl was quite the looker, this ain't about her. This is about the boss lady in there. The one who just keeps on showin' me just how interested she is."

"You're lying," Wheatley ground out. "She doesn't even like you. You're, you're a braggart and a blowhard. She would never want to hang around someone like you."

"She tell you that?" Rick asked boredly.

"Well… no…"

"I'm confident and manly," Rick told him, smirking self-righteously. "Of course she wants me."

"She does not!"

"She doesn't want you," Rick snorted. "You're like a little puppy who won't leave her alone."

"That's not true. She would send me back, she'd put me back in space if it were."

"Careful," Rick smirked, "she's about to crush your dreams, moron. She'll rid herself of you soon enough, don't you worry. She's got someone better to choose from now."

"Don't call me that!" Wheatley snapped.

"I'll call you whatever I want!" Rick snarled. "Don't boss me around, pipsqueak."

"We're the same size!" Wheatley exclaimed, frustrated. "How'm I a pipsqueak and you're not?"

"My personality and talents are far bigger than yours!" Rick retorted. "You're like an ant, compared to me!"

"If you're so great," Wheatley shouted without thinking, "then why'd she corrupt you and not me? You don't corrupt people you like."

Rick frowned. "She's seen the error of her ways."

Wheatley laughed. "GLaDOS is never wrong."

Rick came within three millimetres of Wheatley's chassis and glared at him, optic plates narrowed. "Now listen here, Idiot Sphere," he snarled, "you can stop trying to come up with reasons why she likes you better than me. She doesn't. She might've corrupted me just to get back at the humans back then, but everythin's different now. She can get back to what she really wants. Me."

"Corrupting you doesn't get back at the humans!"

"Sure it does. She was willing to sacrifice me in order to show them that she would give up anything for her freedom."

"You're an idiot," Wheatley muttered. "I never thought I'd meet someone more idiotic than I am, but I have."

Rick snarled and shoved Wheatley backwards with a flick of his upper handle, and Wheatley stopped moving after a metre or so, shaking his chassis to sort himself out. He ground his optic plates shut. So Rick thought he was a pushover, did he? Well, he'd show him… he might not know as much about physical combat as Rick, but he was fully prepared to fight for his friendship with GLaDOS. He would never be able to live with himself, knowing he didn't try his best to keep it.

Hang on there, Wheatley, he told himself. GLaDOS wouldn't want you to fight. And she wouldn't, he realised. GLaDOS didn't use violence. And if she didn't use it, it probably wasn't the best way to go about things. When GLaDOS was fighting someone, she used… she used words, she did. And actually, it was words that'd gotten Rick so worked up in the first place! So he might get a bit roughed up but, in the end, words would be a lot more useful than trying to win a shoving match.

"Go ahead," Wheatley said in a low voice. "Shove me 'round. It doesn't, doesn't prove anything. 'cept that you're a bully. A stupid bully, because if you were smarter you'd've thought of another way to, to make your point. GLaDOS will never fall for anything you say, no matter what it is. She knows. She knows you don't respect her. She knows you never will. She'd never settle for anyone like you. She knows better."

"What a heartfelt speech," Rick said with false sincerity. "Too bad it comes from you. If it came from anyone else it might make sense. But out of you? Ha! It's just you spouting nonsense."

"I don't have to listen to you," Wheatley said quietly, the confidence he'd had in his words quickly fading. Probably Rick was right. Probably all he'd said was nonsense. It wouldn't be the first time he'd been entirely wrong about something.

"Not yet," Rick said, voice suggesting far more than the two words could contain, and then he blew past Wheatley, again brushing roughly against him on the way. Wheatley looked down, optic plates narrowed sadly.

What if… what if Rick wasn't just blowing smoke? What if GLaDOS really did fancy him? Why would she spend all day with him if she didn't like him? Wheatley wished he could ask her, but he didn't think he'd be able to. It was almost killing him inside, not knowing what she thought of Rick and instead struggling to guess based on almost nothing.

Well… if he couldn't ask her directly, maybe… maybe he could kind of ask in a roundabout way. Like she would sometimes, when she asked if he was all right. He doubted it would work, but he needed to try something. Did she like Rick or not? Did she… did she fancy him? He had to know! But how to ask? It was such a difficult subject in the first place…

Wheatley wished GLaDOS had just decided to skip a project, for once. His life'd been a lot easier without another Sphere to contend with.

He went into her chamber, but any hopes he'd had of a serious conversation were dashed. She was already in the default position, mostly. Her faceplate was tilted towards a monitor on the wall in front of her and she seemed to be studying something; what, he couldn't tell. It was going by far too fast for him to read.

"Hullo," he called out. Her core snapped around to look at him, the monitor disappearing a second later. "Hello," she returned.

"Long day?" he asked kindly. She nodded.

"I know you probably want to talk, but I don't have the energy," she told him, and she did sound rather tired. "This is a lot more work than I'd anticipated."

"'s okay," Wheatley said in what he hoped was a reassuring way. "I'll be here tomorrow."

"You'd better be," GLaDOS remarked. "I wouldn't want to have to track you down again."

"I'll always be here," he told her, somewhat shyly. She glanced at him for a moment, but said nothing to that.

"I'm going to shut off now," GLaDOS said finally. "If there's nothing pressing I need to know."

Of course there is! Wheatley wanted to shout at her. Rick thinks you have a crush on him, and he thinks I have a crush on you, and he's gonna come in here and ruin everything because he's a selfish twat, and he's been disrespecting you and pushing me 'round, and, and…

But of course he couldn't say that. "It's fine," he said instead. "Go ahead. Be there in a sec."

"Mm."

He hesitated. He had to say something. Anything. If she… if she really did fancy Rick, well, he should support her. He should be her friend about it and not get in her way. He could warn her, yeah, but she was smart enough to make her own decisions. She knew what she was doing. So he would support her. No matter… even if it hurt. And God he thought it was going to hurt. It hurt already and he hadn't even started yet.

"Hey GLaDOS," Wheatley said slowly, hesitantly, "if there was ever… ever anything you wanted to, to talk about, you know you could tell me, right? And I wouldn't make fun? I'd, I'd just listen? And try to help?"

"Yes, I know," GLaDOS answered. "It's something I've always liked about you."

Wheatley's optic constricted. "What."

But GLaDOS was in full suspension and did not hear him.

"Wow," Wheatley breathed. "She knows… and she likes it."

Maybe… maybe he could save her from Rick, after all. Maybe he could warn her. Maybe he could fix things. Maybe she didn't fancy Rick.

But how was he supposed to do that? He was the biggest idiot ever – no. No, she had said he was the best idiot. What else, what else… she had said successful, yes, successful, and exceptional, she had used that word. He frowned. There was a connection here, one he wasn't quite making, but it was one he needed to find in order to reassure himself that –

Wait.

Hold on.

Best.

Successful.

Exceptional.

Those were all… those were all positive-sounding words, they were. And she had deliberately told him he was not a big idiot, so, so she'd meant them to be positive in some way… come on, Wheatley, think this through! he demanded of himself.

Waiiiit. Hold on, hold on. If he looked at those words from a bit of a sideways angle, well, it looked kind of like… well, like he could be the best and an idiot. As if… as if being an idiot wasn't all he could be. As if he could be something more than his programming, and yet still be himself. It was a bit of a dizzying thought, to think that he could be exceptional as well as an idiot, but GLaDOS herself had said it, so… so it must be true.

He looked down at her, a thrill running through his chassis. He wasn't out of the game yet, oh no! She believed in him! GLaDOS herself, the Central Core, the most powerful, advanced AI ever dreamed of, believed in him! He shivered in excitement. He could best Rick, ohh yes he could. He could best anybody, save GLaDOS herself, because she believed in him, and that was all he needed to know. That was it, that was all. No matter what Rick said in the future, he would know. He would know that it was just bluster and lies and that GLaDOS believed in him. He quickly dropped the control arm so he could nestle against her, suddenly, terribly needing to be by her side.

But what if she'd told Rick something similar? No, she wouldn't've, he realised in relief. She wouldn't need to. Rick already thought that about himself. As a matter of fact… as a matter of fact, Wheatley wasn't sure how she took being in the same room with a nonstop braggart all day long. Couldn't be very well. Couldn't be.

And… and so maybe he did have a crush on her, after all. A little one. So what. She was only the most intelligent, beautiful, amusing, worthwhile person on the planet. Really, it would be silly if he didn't have a crush on someone like that! It was a wonder everyone didn't think of her like he did. Well. It was a good thing they didn't. He didn't know if he could deal with all of the competition if they had. You really had to bring your A-game when you fancied the greatest person there ever was, and Wheatley was honestly not sure if his was better than everyone's, even with his newfound confidence at the discovery of her belief in him.

"What would you say if I told you that?" he whispered, even though she couldn't hear him anyway. "What would you say if I said I had a little bit of a crush on you? Nothing major, really, just a little one. Tiny. Miniscule. You can barely see it. Barely even call it a crush, really. More like… like a… well, I dunno, but a really, really, really itsy bitsy crush."

He decided not to. He wasn't sure what her response would be, and he didn't want to muck up his chances…

"Hullo!"

"Mm," GLaDOS answered noncommittally. After a second her head snapped up, and she turned to look at him. "Hey..."

"What?" Wheatley asked.

"What's going on here?" she asked suspiciously. "This is the second day in a row you were on before me. That defies chance."

"Nothing!" Wheatley protested, and it really was. He'd forgotten to reset his timer to the default setting after the night before.

"Hm," GLaDOS mused, coming close enough that he could feel the heat coming off her and looking him up and down, "I'm not sure I believe you."

"I wouldn't lie," Wheatley told her. "I forgot to fix my timer, that's all. I changed it."

"Why?"

"Well, yesterday, I… I missed you."

She lowered her faceplate without moving her optic. "Oh."

"So I… I s'pose you've got, y'know, work to be doing."

"Yes," she said faintly, moving back. "Yes, I have work to do."

He frowned. She seemed a bit put out this morning. "You're not mad, are you?"

"Hm?" She glanced at him for a second or two. "No. No, it's not that."

"What is it?" Wheatley pressed, deciding to take a chance, here.

"It's going to be a long day," GLaDOS answered. "That's all."

"And I can't… stay, today?" he asked hopefully. She shook her head.

"Unfortunately, no," she told him. "I have to do this myself."

Her choice of words there was a bit odd. She sounded like she really didn't want to do this, whatever it was. "But if I could stay, would you want me to?"

"Well… yes. I thought we went over that already."

Oh. Right. Yes, yes they had. "Sorry," Wheatley said apologetically. "I forgot."

"Try to remember," GLaDOS said flatly, looking up at him. "I don't like repeating myself."

"Sure. I'll, I'll remember."

Wheatley left without being asked.

This third day was even worse than the other two.

Wheatley checked his clock every once in a while, wanting to return to her as soon as possible, but he forced himself to stop when he realised he was checking it in five-second intervals. He couldn't make up his mind. He knew that supporting her was the right thing to do, of course it was, but it wasn't what he wanted to do. Every time he told himself that he would just let her be with Rick, if that was what she wanted, something sank inside of him. He felt terrible. Just thinking about being there every day, watching her spend time with Rick instead of him, hurt him inside for a reason he couldn't explain. And why was this so difficult, anyway? He sort of felt like there was something wrong with him. Why else would he be so conflicted about something that hadn't happened and might never happen?

But the thoughts wouldn't go away.

He couldn't stop imagining her snuggling with him and chatting with him and playing games with him and… and a lot of other things he'd like to do with her, but hadn't yet tried to do because he was too nervous. In his imagination, Rick wasn't too nervous. Rick just went right up to her, wiggling his handles invitingly, and they just went right ahead. It didn't take Rick five minutes to ask her a question and Rick wasn't scared of what she thought of him, and God, Wheatley was scared of that. He wanted so badly for her to think well of him and he felt as though what he did now would decide it all. If he failed now, he would lose everything.

"Oh, GLaDOS," he whispered to himself, leaning against the wall and looking sadly ahead of him, "I don't know what to do."

Maybe… maybe he could just mention it to her. That he didn't like that she was spending so much time with Rick. Sure, her project was probably terribly important, but… surely she missed him, even a little bit. She had said that she would've wanted him to stay, if he could've. Unless she'd only meant that she wanted him to do that so that he could watch what Rick did and learn to be friends properly. He squeezed his shutters closed for a long moment. No, that would… that would just be cruel. Maybe in the past she'd've done something like that, but they were friends now. She'd brought him out of space, given his memories back. If she was just gonna torture him, she would've just left the whole memories thing out of it.

What to do, though? The only thing he really could do was ask her about it. If he kept avoiding asking he was just gonna go on being tortured like this, and he couldn't take it much longer! He felt like something inside him was slowly melting or something. He couldn't keep wondering whether she was going to trade him for Rick! He had to do something!

"Wheatley?"

Wheatley yelled in surprise and jumped, looking around frantically as electricity rushed through his system. "What?" he asked, in that strange breathless way he would when he was frightened. He wasn't sure why he did that, but it must have had something to do with his speech emulator's programming.

"You can come back. If you're not busy. You don't look busy, but one does not operate based on conjecture."

"You're finished?" he asked hopefully. It seemed he'd spent more time in his mental agony than he'd thought.

"Yes, thank God."

"All… all right, I'll be there in a sec."

But he didn't move.

She was finished. Maybe… maybe he was too late. Maybe she'd decided on Rick already. He blinked rapidly, looking at the floor. He was almost afraid to go to her. He was going to have to ask her about it and, if he was honest with himself, he didn't know if he could take it if she had chosen Rick. He was already feeling terrible, as if she had just told him that instead of telling him he could come back. He took a breath and got going. Better get it over with.

She didn't… didn't really have a reason to choose Rick, did she? No, not really, he decided, and by the time he got to her chamber, he'd almost convinced himself that she hadn't. Not one hundred percent, but he was getting there.

"Hey," he said, once he'd headed through the opening and her chassis came into view. "I'm back!"

"I see that," she answered bemusedly, looking him up and down. "Are you still startled from when I called you, or did something else scare you on the way here?"

He hadn't realised he actually looked as nervous as he felt. "Well I uh… I wanted to um… to talk to you 'bout something."

"You look rather like you think I'm going to throw you in the incinerator if you bring it up. I won't. I'd much prefer to crush you. More personal that way."

He knew she wasn't serious because whenever either of them referred to events surrounding The Incident it was always a joke, but he couldn't quite clamp down on his nervousness.

"Well I just… it… is Rick coming back?"

"No," GLaDOS answered, shifting her chassis a little. "I'm finished with that portion of my project. He's never coming back in here, believe me."

All of a sudden the terrible weight lifted from him, though he could feel it resting just above him as if in preparation to come crashing back down heavier than before, and he asked hesitantly, "He's never coming back?"

"No. Never. Ever. In the literal sense of the word. As in, there is a zero percent chance I'm ever talking to him again."

"So you… you don't fancy him?" Wheatley asked, wincing, not really wanting to know the answer. He jumped when GLaDOS's massive optic suddenly appeared two inches from his own.

"What?" GLaDOS asked incredulously.

"You don't… Rick and you… uh…"

"You thought I had… you thought… for Rick?"

"Yeah?" Her reaction was rather odd, Wheatley thought. Maybe she was trying to cover up for something. He hoped not. He really, really hoped not.

"Are we talking about the same Sphere?"

"Rick the Adventure Sphere? The, the… the guy you've had in here for the last three days?"

"You thought I liked spending three days with Rick? The most arrogant, chauvinistic, ignorant, deceitful, disrespectful – "

She went along that bent for quite a long time and Wheatley just sat there, listening. He was awestruck. It seemed like she was going through every derogatory adjective in the English language, as well as in a few he'd never heard of. It was pretty amazing, actually, to hear her go on and on about this Sphere as if he'd practically brought on The Incident itself.

" – talkative, moronic, annoying person I have ever had the displeasure of spending time with! Liked it. God. I like being a potato more than I like talking to Rick, and that is saying something."

"I thought we weren't going to bring that up anymore?" Wheatley said hopefully.

"It slipped out," GLaDOS said. "I was thinking about the Incident again earlier."

"Hey… hey, you said he was the most moronic person you've ever met! So does that mean… that I'm not – "

"Don't be stupid," GLaDOS told him. "Of course you're still a moron. And you're still the most moronic moron on the face of the Earth. Not to mention within the universe itself."

'"But – "

"I was running out of adjectives," GLaDOS interrupted.

"Oh," Wheatley said, disappointed. "D'you… d'you think that might ever change, one day? Maybe? In the future?"

"I highly doubt it," GLaDOS answered. In a much lower voice that he barely heard, and actually wasn't sure he did hear and didn't just make up for some reason, she muttered, "It better not, anyway."

"What was – I didn't quite catch that."

"It wasn't important."

"Well, if you hate him so much, why was he even here?" Wheatley asked, confused. GLaDOS looked at him and answered, "I needed him for my project."

"I don't like him," Wheatley muttered. "He kept calling me a moron."

"What?" GLaDOS said sharply, optic flickering.

"He kept calling me a moron?" Wheatley said, puzzled.

"I'll have to do something about that," GLaDOS muttered. "No one's allowed to call you that but me."

"That's… interesting," Wheatley remarked.

"What is?"

"What you said. 'bout only you being allowed to call me – "

"Of course I would reserve the ultimate insult for myself," GLaDOS snapped. "What, did you think that statement had another meaning?"

Wheatley rather thought it had, something not unlike his dislike of Rick's use of Gladys, but decided not to press the point. It was nice to think about, it was. He wouldn't call her on it because she seemed to be a bit prickly at the moment, but it was rather neat, to think they had special names for each other. He didn't really mind it too much when she called him that anymore, really. It used to bug him quite a bit, but recently… recently, he'd kind of been looking forward to it. To change the subject he asked, "Can I help with your, your project?"

"No."

"You never let me do anything," Wheatley said accusingly. "Well. Anything that matters, anyway."

"We discussed this already," GLaDOS told him. "I don't know what you want if you don't tell me! I'm not omniscient!"

"You're not?" Wheatley gasped. GLaDOS jumped back and looked around for a few moments.

"Well… to some extent, of course, but… no, I can't read your mind."

"Oh, I knew that," Wheatley said breezily. "I really did, actually, no faking."

"Then you should know that I don't automatically know everything you want."

"I would like to… to be able to do more… stuff."

"Like what?" GLaDOS asked kindly, a tone of voice he'd never heard out of her before.

"Well I… I'd… is there another game we can play, besides, uh, instead of checkers? I'm bored of checkers."

"So am I," GLaDOS agreed. "You should have told me. I would have gladly played something different." She fixed him with a stern look. "Isn't it much easier when you just tell me things?"

"Uh… yeah, actually, I think it is!" Wheatley said, surprised. "I'll uh, I'll work on doing that. More often."

"Good," GLaDOS said firmly. "Trying to drag what you want out of you isn't that much fun."

"Why would you care what I want?" Wheatley asked without thinking.

"I… because… you… you're harder to deal with when… when you want something."

Wheatley frowned. That was a bit of an odd sentence. Coming from her. A large portion of his own sentences sounded exactly like that. "Hang on. That doesn't sound right."

"Of course it does."

"No… no, it doesn't. We're friends, right GLaDOS?"

"It seems that way."

"So… so you must be concerned about my well-being, right?"

"That does follow from that conclusion, yes."

"And that means," Wheatley continued, thinking hard, "that you care about what I want!"

"I have no idea how you came up with that."

Wheatley tilted his chassis and looked at her sideways. "GLaDOS."

"What?"

"D'you care about what I want or not? Yes or no."

"Do I really have to answer that? What's the point of all this, anyway? Are you getting some kind of thrill out of –"

"So it's yes, then." Wheatley nodded in satisfaction. "That's what I thought."

"What? I didn't say that!"

"But you didn't say no," Wheatley told her, "and if you'd meant no, well, you'd've laughed at me and said no right from the start."

GLaDOS looked at the floor for a long moment. "Fine. I do. There. I said it. Are you happy now?"

"Yes!" exclaimed Wheatley, and he jumped up to her and pressed his hull on her faceplate. GLaDOS sighed. "I indulge you far too much."

He backed off and smiled at her. "You're really quite nice when you try, you know."

"Don't tell anyone," GLaDOS said, a bit plaintively. "My reputation would be ruined."

"Who're you keeping it up for, exactly? There're no humans about."

"You don't know that."

"GLaDOS, would it kill you to admit you like me? Just once?"

"It might."

Oh well. He'd tried.

"I will admit you're a lot more pleasant than Rick. Which isn't saying very much, considering how irritating that idiot is."

Ohhh, now he wanted to jump on her again. He shivered a little bit, looking at her excitedly. "I like you too, luv."

"Fantastic," GLaDOS remarked dryly. "Just what I've been waiting to hear. Can we get off this subject now?"

"Fair enough," Wheatley agreed. He didn't even have to jump on her because it was time for sleep mode and now they could have their snuggle. He happily leaned up against her, letting her comforting warmth seep through his chassis. She didn't like Rick. She didn't fancy him, didn't even like him. She hated him. She liked Wheatley and she cared about Wheatley, and now Wheatley could have her, all to himself. He wondered if he'd ever pluck up the courage to tell her he fancied her. Not very much. Just a little. Just a tiny little crush, that was all. Nothing to worry about.

"G'night, luv," he said, out of habit.

After a long pause, she answered softly, "Goodnight, Wheatley."

He went to sleep smiling.

Author's note

I accept any and all criticism, good or bad. If something doesn't fit, or if something fits well, please let me know. I don't mind "bad" comments, as long as there's something for me to learn from them.

To begin, if any of you has any ideas as to what GLaDOS and Wheatley could do, or a problem they could face, please let me know. PM or a review, doesn't matter to me. I can't guarantee that your suggestion will make it into the story, just wanted to put it out there that if there's something you'd like to see happen, if I feel it fits I may include it.

This is a very, very long note about personality psychology and how I write for GLaDOS and Wheatley based on it. It's two pages long. Feel free to skip it. If you'd like to learn about personality psychology, read on. I love personality psychology, myself.

Some of you who are more familiar with my writing (and if this is your first of my fics, welcome :)) might know that a large part of what drives me to write for Portal is to explain why things happen the way they do. A huge part of what motivates us is our personality, and what I've mentioned a few times in this story is true: we really do look for people like ourselves. For sure, lots of people marry people unlike themselves, but these marriages are much more likely to end in unhappiness and divorce. You're much better off figuring out your basic personality traits and looking for someone similar to you.

The most generally accepted taxonomy of personality traits was made by Costa and McCrae, and it's called the Big Five: Emotional Instability (Neuroticism), Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience (Intellect) and Extraversion, and five of the characters in Portal fit them pretty well: GLaDOS, Caroline, Chell, Cave Johnson, and Wheatley, respectively. Each of the traits has six facets. Once you've identified the base of someone's personality, you can tell a lot about them, and it's easier to tell what motivates them to do what. For example, GLaDOS is always annoyed with everyone because neurotic people are unstable themselves. She deals with the instability in herself by taking it out on others. I would also argue that she lacks self-confidence, given what I've identified her base trait to be. Yes, she does like to mention how great she is, but on the one hand, she's actually right. On the other hand, unless you're a narcissist (which she is not, because narcissists generally don't give out compliments and rarely acknowledge other people, which she does; I believe Rick qualifies as a narcissist), excessive confidence in yourself is usually an indicator that you're very insecure and you're looking for someone to agree with you in order to boost your low self-esteem, that is to say, it's false and can be destroyed with one snide remark. Wheatley I believe falls under Extraversion because he likes to talk, to anyone and everyone as far as we can tell, he's enthusiastic about everything, he's very friendly (which is why he has so many fangirls: he's endearing), and so on. So if you know someone who can talk nonstop and can't sit still, they're probably an extravert. Extraverts need more stimulation than most people, which is why they do these things, but that's a story for another time.

But Indy, you say. How can you ship these two if one of them is neurotic and the other is extraverted? Well, brave person who read this far, I shall explain. Wheatley also has neurotic traits, such as the low self-esteem and irritability, because as far as I can tell it's very easy to set him off. GLaDOS loves talking, and when she's interested in something, she's very enthusiastic about it. I mentioned this before, but personality is tentatively said to be highly genetic. AI have no genetics, so all of their personality must come from their environment. So based on their personalities, we can maybe begin to imagine how they were treated at the hands of the scientists: GLaDOS was probably stifled, told to stop whatever she wanted to do and do her job. Not only do it, but do it perfectly. And have you ever thought about the types of insults GLaDOS delivers to Chell? She calls her fat, adopted, and implies that she's worthless. It could quite possibly be because she herself is ridiculously huge, she feels abandoned by the people who created her, and most people say nasty things about their computers (this thing is so slow, etc). She does not call Chell ugly, which I would guess she does not do because she probably doesn't know what she looks like (because what reason would anyone have to have shown her? It's not like they would have left her specs lying around for her to peruse). Wheatley, however, was probably encouraged to talk, because he really would have been kind of useless if he didn't talk so much, and his energy is probably cultivated in contrast to GLaDOS's more languid behaviour, which the scientists probably also encouraged of her because you probably don't want your forty-foot, multimillion (multibillion?) dollar supercomputer damaging itself by moving around too much. So I would say that the both of them are high on Neuroticism and Extraversion, with GLaDOS higher on the former and Wheatley on the latter. Wheatley's also pretty high on Openness to Experience, but I'm not going to get into that right now.

A huge part of whether people get along or not is how agreeable they are. If you're not agreeable, you're not going to get very far. Wheatley's generally pretty agreeable, and okay, GLaDOS is not, but really, who does she have to be agreeable with? You can learn to be more agreeable (and the older people get, the more agreeable they become), and I would argue that GLaDOS has the capability to be agreeable, but her neuroticism prevents her from interacting with people in a positive way. So (hopefully, if I've written this right) you can see in the story how GLaDOS becomes less hostile, more willing to take risks with her feelings, and more accepting and less annoyed with things when stuff doesn't happen in precisely the right way (which will still bother her regardless, because she is a computer and she has an inherent need for things to proceed in a logical, predicable way).

So if any of you were wondering why I write characters from Portal the way I do (which I'm sure you all were /sarcasm), that's why. I think that to write good fanfiction, you have to understand why the characters do what they do, which I have a strong desire to know anyway, and a good way of doing that is identifying basic components of their personality. People's personalities are generally stable and can be predicted even almost from birth. No joke. People can tell who you're going to be when you're less than a year old. And if any of you are neurotic, I would suggest trying to change that right away. Neurotic people get the worst of it. They are the most unhappy with their lives, have more health problems, and are far more disagreeable than everyone else. They don't live as long. So if you want to live longer, identify the strongest parts of your neuroticism and change them. I'm not kidding. It's legit science. Aperture Science!

Congrats! You learned something. Now go forth, and be agreeable. And extraverted, if possible. You're far better off that way.