Part 111. The Beach

When Wheatley woke up he was a little confused. He wasn't next to GLaDOS as usual, and he wasn't attached to the control arm, either. He was on the floor, in fact, inside of Claptrap's elbow, and when he looked up he saw that Claptrap had his other arm raised up in front of GLaDOS's optic. He seemed to be watching the way the flickering played over his hand. That was nice, Wheatley thought. He didn't terribly want to disturb him, but Wheatley did need to know what was going on just then. "Uh… why'm I down here?" he asked, and Claptrap immediately brought his arm back down.

"You fell asleep," he said. "I thought it might wake you up if I tried to put you back on the ceiling. So I just kept you down here. Sorry."

"'s alright," Wheatley told him. He hadn't been worried, just curious. "Don't you um, d'you do this often?"

"Do what?"

"That… that thing you were just doing. With your hand."

"Uh," Claptrap said, and Wheatley got the impression he hadn't really wanted to be seen doing it. "Sometimes."

"Don't you sleep?"

"Well, yeah. But not as much as you guys. Usually I only do it because there's no one else around. I get lonely."

Wheatley suddenly understood why he was really on the floor. He didn't know if Claptrap knew that, but it didn't matter. He was going to stay down here tonight.

"Are you alright, mate?" he asked, as gently as he could.

"I'm doing a little better," Claptrap answered. "I might have a handle on it now."

"A handle on… on what's been bothering you?"

"Yeah." Abruptly he pushed himself to standing and reached down to retrieve Wheatley. "You can go back up there now."

"Ahh," Wheatley told him, trying to stabilise himself, "I can stay down here tonight. Y'know. For a change, and all that."

"Oh," Claptrap said, sounding a little confused. "Well, okay." And he put Wheatley back down and lay on his side again, though he did not put Wheatley inside of his arm. He was just sort of leant back against the other robot's chassis, below his optic, which was alright but made him a bit nervous, since he was totally round and all that and didn't want to tip over. They just sat there for a bit, watching GLaDOS's optic again, when Claptrap asked suddenly, "Wheatley, do you ever feel lonely?"

"No," he answered. "No, not really."

"I just… I've started feeling lonely all the time! Even when you guys are right there talking to me, sometimes. I mean, I've been lonely before, but not with people right in front of me!" His hand gripped the top of Wheatley's chassis for a minute. "It really sucks."

Wheatley struggled to come up with some sort of… something to say about that, but couldn't. And really, when Claptrap wouldn't tell him what all of this was about, what was there for him to say?

"Maybe I should try sleeping," mused Claptrap. "You can't be lonely and asleep at the same time, right?"

"I dunno," answered Wheatley. GLaDOS probably could, but she - hang on. That gave him an idea. "But y'know, if you're um, if you're just here, sometimes, and you'd rather not sleep, or something, there's something you can still do. And she'll listen."

"What's that?"

"You can sing to her," Wheatley answered. He heard Claptrap's optic move towards him.

"She'll hear me?"

"Kind of. She won't… won't exactly, but she… she doesn't exactly sleep, either. She's always, um, always got to be on because of the things she's got to do for the facility, so she… she's always a little bit here and a little bit not. If that. If that makes any sense, at all."

"I gotcha," Claptrap said, to his relief. "So she likes it when people do that?"

"'s far as I know," Wheatley answered, straightening himself a little with his lower handle against the floor panel. "Uh… neither Carrie nor I can sing, so um, so I've not been able to really test that theory."

"Oh boy! Testing! My new favourite."

It was only after Wheatley stopped laughing that he realised how tired he was and how lovely it would be to go back to sleep, so he closed his optic in order to get on that. By the time Claptrap did start singing, Wheatley was much too suspended to process it, but he was very happy to have gotten him to do it.

When Wheatley woke up Claptrap greeted him cheerfully and put him back up on the ceiling, which he couldn't deny he was relieved about. He trusted Claptrap, of course he did, but being on the floor still unnerved him terribly. Before they'd quite gotten anywhere with their plan to go see Caroline, GLaDOS woke up, so of course they had to stick around and wait a bit for her to come back online properly so they could tell her good morning. She barely seemed to know they were there, though, instead electing to study the wall across from her, and Claptrap and Wheatley exchanged a glance. Had they done something last night to bother her?

"Claptrap," GLaDOS said a little distantly, narrowed optic still scrutinising the wall, "were you singing to me last night?"

"Uhhhh," answered Claptrap, pressing the tops of his hands together. Wheatley honestly wasn't sure confirming it was a good idea. She didn't seem annoyed, not quite, but it still felt a bit risky. "I mean, something coulda slipped out. Maybe. You know how it is."

Wheatley was just as surprised as Claptrap when GLaDOS practically swooped down him, planting her lens into the front left corner of his chassis to give him the longest kiss Wheatley had ever seen out of… well, anyone, actually. Claptrap didn't seem quite able to move for quite a few seconds after, and when he did he just looked up at her a little and that was all.

"So… you're cool with that?"

"I was having a dream I wasn't very fond of," GLaDOS answered. "That happens often, so it was a welcome bit of variety."

"What was it about?" Wheatley asked, hushed. GLaDOS looked back at the wall for a minute.

"During the time that Caroline was teaching me to hear music, she asked me to watch a movie with her. I agreed to, but… I didn't realise I wouldn't be able to do it. She thought that, because I couldn't discuss it with her, I had been lying when I said I would make time for it. Make time for her." She glanced out of the hallway. "I couldn't decide which bothered me more: that I could not do such a stupid and simple thing, or that she thought that I didn't want to."

"You've got a bad memory for everything, don't you!" Claptrap said, and GLaDOS almost laughed.

"Just about," she told him. "Anyway. What you did was nice. That's all."

"Y'know, it was all Wheatley's idea," Claptrap said. "So you should probably kiss him too. You never know. It might inspire him to have more great ideas like that!"

When GLaDOS turned her core to look at him, he was already prepared for the usual. He was so caught up in it that when she asked, "Do you want one?" he sort of didn't understand her for a minute there.

"Do… do I want one?" he stammered, trying to comprehend – ooh. Fancy word, that – the question now that he understood what it was.

"Yes."

"Well… why wouldn't I?" was all he managed to come up with. She gave Claptrap a long look, but he just shrugged.

"You haven't exactly asked before. Or really mentioned whether you like it or not."

"But why wouldn't I like it?" Wheatley asked. Of course he did! He liked everything she –

"I just told you," GLaDOS said, interrupting his thoughts. "You never said anything about it."

"I just… why should I have to? Isn't it, um, it's obvious, isn't it, that I – "

"Dude, it's not that hard!" Claptrap cut in, turning to face him and spreading his hands out. "She wants you to tell her when you like something, so just say 'yes, I like it when you kiss me'. Bam! Done."

"I uh… I like it when… when you kiss me?"

"Are you sure about that? Because you sound hesitant."

"Have you two seriously never talked about this before?" Claptrap asked, directing the question at GLaDOS, and she tilted her core in consideration.

"You know what? No. He usually just goes along with whatever I do."

"Well, yeah," Wheatley said in protest, beginning to feel left behind in this conversation. "'course I do! 'cause then I know what you're alright with! And when!"

"Why wouldn't you just ask?"

"It's not his fault," GLaDOS said, before Wheatley could attempt an answer. "Asking hasn't always worked, historically."

"It does now, though."

"Sometimes," said GLaDOS, and Wheatley couldn't even pretend that wasn't funny. Claptrap threw up his arms and left, telling Wheatley to come get him when he was ready to leave. Which was just about now, really. He needed to talk to Carrie first and then everything would be taken care of.

"Luv," Wheatley said, making a split decision before heading off, "I've got to ask you something."

"What."

"You told Claptrap you'd not leave me."

She hid it very well, but he still saw her freeze up a bit at that. "That isn't a question."

"What if that thing that we um, that we saw in the film were to happen? Then what?"

When she looked over at him she seemed very tired, suddenly, as though she had not actually gone to sleep last night and had instead gone off and done other things in the facility whilst pretending to. "That scenario is not going to happen within my lifetime."

"If it did," Wheatley prompted as gently as he could.

"Then we would talk about it and decide what to do then," she answered, and he couldn't deny that brought up his hopes a bit. "Like you always ask me to do."

Oh. Right. He really needed to work on thinking things over a bit harder when he got upset over them.

"I've been trying to think of how it would go," he said, "and… well, it wouldn't be right of me to tell you not to um, to go hang about loads of other geniuses and do all the, the complicated science stuff you'd like to do."

GLaDOS made a derisive noise. "My lack of Science has nothing to do with that and everything to do with my current responsibilities as Administrator of this facility. Forming a society while attempting to nudge the chaos next door into some semblance of working order consumes a great deal of my time. How am I supposed to do any Science when I have to figure out some way of keeping the human children from shocking themselves on my electric fence out of sheer boredom? And do you have any idea how many adult humans spend all day nosing around my perimeter because they believe there are weaknesses to exploit? They're trying to steal my electricity, Wheatley. If they want power that badly, they can go build their own nuclear reactor. If I see one more person attempt to reroute my fences, they're going to get a lot more than they bargained for."

Wheatley considered pointing out that electrocuting the humans to death was probably not a good idea, even if she did it whilst they were attempting to steal from her, but decided she wasn't being serious. Well, perhaps a little bit. But not enough for him to be concerned about. "Have they tried being nice to you yet?"

"No," she said, leaning towards him, and he almost laughed at how indignant she sounded. "They think that just because I have these things and they don't, I should share."

"But Gladys," he said, trying to sound as serious as possible, "aren't you always going on about how um, how benevolent you are?"

"I am," she answered, "to people who deserve it. Not dirty little thieves who won't even do the bare minimum of asking politely."

Ooh. He had a bit of a window for something clever, here. "D'you know of something benevolent you could do for someone who um, who deserves it right now?"

"Yes, but since you obviously have something in mind I'm not even going to say any of the several thousand answers I thought up to your question."

He went up to her and said, as suavely as he could, "You could kiss me."

"I could," GLaDOS said, trying her hardest not to sound amused and failing horribly, "but I wouldn't want to do something you don't like."

"I s'pose you'll just have to keep doing it until I um, until I make my opinion clear on the matter, then, yeah?"

She laughed and actually did kiss him, which he was very happy about, but he couldn't mention that. Not already.

"I am going to the beach," he announced to Carrie a few minutes later, and oddly she seemed very amused by this news.

"Did you read the story?"

"The… what story?"

"The one about you two going to the beach." She turned around, away from the book she'd been reading, to look up at him. "Did you read it?"

"Uh… no. No, I didn't." Forgotten all about it, actually.

"I guess he'll just have to remember all the stuff he wanted to do, then," said Carrie. "Have - "

"Wait," he said, frowning. "Hang on. D'you mean to say that you've read it?"

"Yeah," Carrie answered. "Momma sent me her favourite ones."

He was a little annoyed that he hadn't been sent them, before remembering that was probably because him reading something all the way through was so rare he couldn't bring to mind a time he ever had. "Were they any good?"

Carrie made sort of an indecisive face. "Uh… they would be, if he put any work into them. He just kinda… puts the first thing that comes to mind and then posts that."

"Oh," said Wheatley, a bit confused. "Why's your mum like them so much then, you s'pose?"

"She likes everything that has to do with people she likes," Caroline said. "Also, she seems to have a problem with the more complicated stories. I think she has trouble understanding them because of the imagination thing. 'Cause she didn't like the one about him being a wizard space ninja but I thought it was pretty good. When he didn't go off on weird tangents, anyway"

"So… so the simple ones aren't, they're not good, exactly," Wheatley said, attempting to hash this out with himself, "but she likes them because they're… they're easier for her to get."

"Yep."

"Are there any about you?" he asked, the idea suddenly occurring to him. Carrie looked back at her drawing.

"A couple. Momma sent them to me. I didn't read them, though."

"Why?"

She didn't answer for a minute.

"The way he writes makes me really uncomfortable," she said finally. "Like you're… his heroes. And the stories are about the times you lower yourselves to put up with him. In some of them he got so self-deprecating it was… kinda scary. 'Cause I don't know if the stories are how he really feels or if he's exaggerating 'cause… well, 'cause he does that."

"A little of both, I'd say," said Wheatley. "But you… you must've noticed he's been a bit off, lately."

"Yeah," she answered. "I'm hoping that's all it is."

"I've been trying to talk to him about it."

"Don't worry about it." She sort of straightened her book, for a reason that wasn't clear to him. "I might be reading them wrong."

"Wrong?" How could anybody read the wrong way? It wasn't as though the words mixed themselves about whilst they were being looked at.

"I mean…" She sighed and looked up the wall a ways. "Some of it reminded me of the things Momma said when you died."

"What things?" Wheatley asked, frowning. "About not wanting to live any longer, you mean?"

The glance Carrie gave him was… odd. It was almost as though she were deciding how much to tell him.

"Not exactly," she said. "There was some other stuff. I'm gonna talk to her about it while you're gone."

"Like what?"

"I'm gonna talk to her about it," Carrie repeated. "Aren't you supposed to be leaving soon anyway?"

"Right now, actually," he answered. "Just wanted to pop in first."

"Don't let him bury you in sand!" she called after him as he left, and he froze right there in the hallway and turned around to stare at her.

"Did he… he didn't write about that, did he?"

She just smiled at him, which cleared up absolutely nothing, and as he set off he did his best to make a note to tell Claptrap he was absolutely not to do anything of the sort.

The beach, Claptrap had said, was part of something called 'Lake Erie', which had about as much importance to him as the word 'beach' did. So he was fairly surprised to find that a beach was actually an expanse of greyish-brown sand that led up to a great body of water that was so wide he couldn't see the end of it no matter how hard he tried. It was a bit jarring, to be honest. "Is it endless?" he asked Claptrap.

"Is what endless?"

"The… the lake, there."

"What? No. Only oceans are. Lakes're just really big ponds."

Wheatley did know that a pond was sort of a really big puddle, so he accepted that as an answer. "Why'd you say I couldn't come here?"

"The sand." He tucked Wheatley under one arm, which he did not like very much but understood the need for when Claptrap opened his storage tray. "When you go to the beach, you usually end up with sand all up in your… everything. All my parts are cheap and disposable, but you're a custom build, so - "

"I'm what?" Wheatley interrupted, wondering how many more things he was going to have to learn today.

"A custom build," Claptrap repeated. "Means they only made one'a you for a specific reason. So if you get busted, that's it. You're done."

"My software is," Wheatley told him. "My chassis is… we've loads of them. All exactly the same. This isn't even the, um, the original one I had."

"Oh," said Claptrap. "Huh."

"Carrie's the only… only 'custom build', as you put it." And GLaDOS, but that went without saying.

"So if sand gets up in your everything, that's not a big deal?"

"Not really," answered Wheatley, who had no idea what that even meant.

"Okay." Returning to his storage, he pulled out a red, green, and brownish plaid blanket and spread it out on the sand in front of them as best he could with one hand. It had quite a few holes and ragged spots all over it, and the edges were sporadically lined with red tassels. Claptrap set Wheatley down on what amounted to the nicest bit and continued rummaging about for other things, which included a set of cracked plastic buckets of various sizes and colours, three hand-sized plastic shovels, a purple-and-white striped umbrella with the handle covered in a liberal amount of grey tape, a ball near the size of Wheatley divided into variously-coloured sections, a -

"How much space d'you have in there, you reckon?" Wheatley asked bemusedly as he produced what seemed to be a pan with holes in it, looked at it sideways, and then put it back. He paused at Wheatley's question.

"Uh… I don't know. All of it, possibly."

"All the… space?"

"Yeah," said Claptrap. "I don't remember what my personal storage limit is, but there was also this like… storage cloud. I'm the only one using it, so… I pretty much have all of it."

"What if," Wheatley thought aloud, "you took the biggest file you had and then copied it over and over until you ran out of storage. Then would you know how much there was?"

"I can't copy stuff," said Claptrap, removing a tiny flag and a cocktail umbrella and putting them in the pile. "I also have a maximum file size limit so that I can't, I dunno, carry around a car, so even if I could it would take forever."

"A car?" asked Wheatley, intrigued by this idea. "That would be handy. Or… or a little house? A shed, maybe?"

"Nope," said Claptrap. "I can do a four-man tent if it's compressed really well."

"How about a tree?"

"If it's a small tree. Like, baby-sized. And it would probably die in the process."

"How about a… a bicycle?"

"I haven't, but I'm pretty sure I could. Not one'a them bikes that fit two people, though. Just the regular kind."

"What about an um… a coat rack? Could you fit that?"

"Why?" Claptrap asked somewhat bemusedly, looking at Wheatley. "You got many coats you need hanging up? Or bicycles you need stored, for that matter?"

"Sorry," said Wheatley, realising how out of hand things had gotten. "Dunno where I was going with that."

"I'm kidding," said Claptrap. "I don't care. If you had any of those things, of course I'd hang onto them for you!"

"Ooh, Claptrap," Wheatley said excitedly, sitting up as best he could, "d'you know what you should do?"

"Enlighten me!"

"You could put an um, a turret in there! And then put it in front of your house!"

"Ooh," said Claptrap. "I should do that. If GLaDOS has any smaller models, anyway. If I try to store anything that big, I'll just crash and corrupt the file. You'll have to help me convince her, though. There's no way she'll do it just for the hell of it."

"Ohhhh yes she will," said Wheatley, already thinking of how to go about it. Claptrap laughed and went back to his tray.

"Okay, what else do I got…" What he pulled out next, Wheatley barely saw, because Claptrap gave a bit of a start and shoved it back in again immediately.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," said Claptrap unconvincingly.

"No, what was it?"

"Well…" he sighed and pressed his hands together. "I'll show you, but you can't make fun of me. Okay?"

"I promise I won't make fun of you," said Wheatley.

What Claptrap set in front of him was so old and ragged and dirty he couldn't tell what it was. It barely even had any of the white filling left inside of it; most of what remained was slowly working its way out through all the rips and tears. He stared at it, struggling to come up with something to say, but… he couldn't.

"It's…" Claptrap picked it up again, turning it around to face him. "It's dumb."

"I just don't know what it is," Wheatley said truthfully.

"You don't?"

"Never seen anything like it before."

"It's a stuffed animal," Claptrap told him. "I uh… I hug it when I get lonely."

That was sad, Wheatley thought. There was also more to this thing that Claptrap was not saying, so he now had to decide what was the best way of handling that. "Well, you can um… can keep it out, if you like. Would probably appreciate some sun, I reckon."

"Probably," said Claptrap, and though Wheatley may have been mistaken he was pretty sure he sounded a bit relieved just then. He set it back down so that the front of it was facing the water, then said, "Hey, you like hats, right?"

"Have you got one?" Wheatley asked, leaning forwards in anticipation.

"Tons." He produced a faded, floppy blue hat with a brim that went all around the outside and carefully put it on top of Wheatley. "Pay attention to whether you feel too hot, though."

"I will," promised Wheatley. He watched as Claptrap opened the umbrella and stabbed it into the sand behind the corner Wheatley was in. It was just as shabby as everything else Claptrap had removed from storage, and some of the holes were patched up with more tape. Once he'd finished that, he shaded his optic with one hand and peered down the beach.

"Ready to go find something dangerous to do?" he asked.

"Absolutely," said Wheatley, and Claptrap picked him up in both hands and they set off.

The beach was littered all about, so much so it rather looked as though some massive number of people had had a tremendous party there after the war with the Combine had been one and then gone home without clearing up any of it. Among the great collapsed alien war machines was all manner of… trash, really. Broken sunglasses, tattered clothes, disintegrating shoes, and loads and loads of different plastic… things. Bottles, there were a lot of bottles. And bags, all full of holes.

"Wheatley," Claptrap said after he'd been navigating this mess for a while, "your beach looks like ass."

"Smells like it too, I imagine," Wheatley said, frowning. "Where'd all this come from?"

"Humans," Claptrap said. "They think if they throw something where they can't see it, it'll just disappear."

"What? Really?"

"No," Claptrap answered. "They think it doesn't matter after that, though." He tentatively moved around what Wheatley thought was the bottom half of a strider's leg. "That's probably why nobody's cleaned any of this up yet."

"Well," allowed Wheatley, "they have got a civilisation to rebuild, and all that."

"Good luck doing that without drinking water," said Claptrap.

"Hm?"

"This lake," Claptrap told him, waving one hand over at it. "It's one of five sitting right around here. They've got the most drinking water in the world in 'em. Most of the other water's got salt in it. Humans can't drink that."

"And… and how d'you know all this?"

"GLaDOS told me when she was telling me where here was."

Wheatley sighed. "Is this doubling as some sort of scouting mission?"

"No," Claptrap said. "I asked her to tell me about it."

"Oh," said Wheatley, surprised. "Didn't know you cared about that sort of thing."

"I don't. But she's cute when she explains stuff."

She really was.

Claptrap decided he wanted to go into the water then, so he manoeuvered around the trash between it and them. When they'd got far enough his wheel was no longer visible, he just sort of stared off into the distance for a very long time. Wheatley attempted and failed to find what it was, exactly, he was looking at.

"Is there… is there something over there?"

"Huh? Oh. No. Sorry. I lost track of… stuff."

That didn't seem like the entire story to Wheatley, but he opted to look into the water instead and see what sort of things were under it. It was very cloudy both inside the water and outside of it, so he couldn't see much of anything. Other than sand, and what might've been a rock. "You wanna touch it?" Claptrap asked, mistaking his purpose entirely, but now that the offer had been made he really sort of did.

"Yeah," said Wheatley. "Yeah, why not?"

So Claptrap held Wheatley out and lowered him with both hands, and he tentatively flicked at the water with his lower handle. As soon as he had, he pulled in his chassis to get away from it, yelling in surprise.

"What?" Claptrap asked, moving him to the side in order to peer down where Wheatley had been.

"It's wet!" Wheatley protested.

"Well, yeah, it's - wait. Did you forget water is wet?"

"I - " Oh. Oh, that was sort of common sense, and he'd... damn it. "Well, I haven't - I've never -"

Before he'd figured out quite where to go with all of that, Claptrap started laughing. Wheatley found himself quite put out by this and frowned even though Claptrap couldn't see him. "'S not funny," he snapped.

"Yes it is," said Claptrap. "It's hilarious. How did you forget that?"

"I'm - robots don't belong near water, anyways, so I don't - 's not important, now, is it?"

"GLaDOS is going to love this."

"Oh, come on," Wheatley pleaded, wishing fervently that Claptrap's tenuous memory would lose this incident before he could tell her. "Don't!"

"How can I not?" He lowered Wheatley a second time. "Here, try it again. And remember: it's gonna be wet!"

It was, in fact, just as wet as before, and cold. And also quite… wiggly. It moved about as though it were actually alive, which it obviously wasn't, but it was the sort of alive that things like rain and the wind had. Where it touched you all over whether you'd given it leave to do such a thing or not. Rude, honestly.

"You done?" Claptrap asked, and Wheatley told him he was. He'd never really wanted to touch water before now, but if he had had a checklist of all the things he'd like to do in his life - which he didn't, but if he did - 'touch water' had now been crossed out of it.

After they'd returned to the sand Claptrap and Wheatley went about looking for useful things hidden amongst all of the rubbish, which they did not find very much of, and then they went back to the blanket where Claptrap used the buckets to build a lopsided castle out of sand with a lot of input from Wheatley. When he went to stick the flag in the highest bit the entire thing crumbled beneath his hand, and it would have been quite funny if Claptrap had not looked so dejected about it. He sighed and threw the flag back down on the blanket, turning himself to face the lake. When Wheatley looked over himself, he saw that the sun was nearabouts where the edge of the water appeared to be. He'd heard that sunsets were supposed to be some sort of spectacular event, but whatever was happening over there seemed just as sickly and grey as the sky had been all afternoon. He glanced over at Claptrap, wishing he could tell if he saw something Wheatley didn't or if he just happened to be daydreaming again, but the staring went on for some minutes after the sun had gone out of sight.

"Claptrap?" he said tentatively. Claptrap immediately turned to look at him, then back at the sky again.

"I'm doing it again, huh."

"What's wrong?" Wheatley asked.

"I just…"

He opted for patient silence.

"I know I shoulda been happier today. But I'm not."

Wait. Wheatley did know what this was about. GLaDOS had told him. He just had to take a minute to remember what it was.

"Is it the unhappiness again?" he asked quietly. It was hard to catch, what with the angle he was at, but Claptrap glanced at him for a second. Either in surprise or while deciding how much to say, he didn't know.

"I think so," Claptrap answered finally. "But it's different this time, so… I'm not sure." He abruptly busied himself with putting all of the stuff back into storage.

"D'you want to talk about it?"

"No." He half-heartedly emptied the sand out of the buckets. "Talking doesn't do anything."

Wheatley really, really wanted to argue, but the plain fact was… he had no idea. Perhaps Claptrap was just making an excuse, or perhaps it really didn't do anything. This whole thing was totally foreign to him. "What does?"

"That's the thing," Claptrap said. "Nothing does. I just gotta wait it out." He pulled the umbrella out of the sand and folded it back up again. "I had a good time today and I'm really glad you were down for it. I just… if I didn't have anything hanging over me we coulda had more fun. I just couldn't get into it the way I always wanted to."

"We can come back," Wheatley told him. "Doesn't have to be the only time."

"When I get ahold of myself, we will," said Claptrap, and he picked Wheatley up with one hand and the blanket with the other.

"Hey, GLaDOS, have I got something to show you," said Claptrap when they returned to her, and Wheatley groaned.

"Claptrap - "

"What?" GLaDOS asked.

"I'm sending it to you. Hang on."

"Don't look at it," Wheatley pleaded, even though he knew that would make her want to do that more.

"Well, now I have to," said GLaDOS. And then she started laughing. Quite a lot, actually. Wheatley sighed and closed his optic, hoping it would end sooner rather than later.

"I just want to know how," GLaDOS said finally. "How did you forget water is wet?"

"I dunno," said Wheatley irritably. "Never touch the stuff, perhaps? Never think about it? Doesn't have much of an um, a role in my daily life? Honestly, it's a shock that anyone remembers information useless as that."

GLaDOS laughed again, but then she gave him a shove and said, very fondly, "You're so stupid," and quite honestly he wasn't sure how to feel at that point. He wanted to be insulted, but he was finding it very difficult and not really worth the effort.

They played cards for a while until GLaDOS became annoyed with both Wheatley and Claptrap for not paying very much attention, at which time she promptly went right to sleep just to show them how much she disliked that. Claptrap looked up at her and sighed.

"That was my fault, wasn't it," he said.

"No," answered Wheatley. "I was thinking some things over, myself. Had me sort of distracted."

"You really wanna go to the beach with me again?"

"'Course I do." He did his best to sound as reassuring as possible. "And besides. You didn't get to bury me in the um, in the sand."

Claptrap laughed a little. "I did kinda want to do that," he said. "I thought it'd be too mean. Also, the original plan was to find you after with a metal detector, but with all the crap on that beach I don't think I ever would. Maybe after someone cleans up all that garbage."

"There's beaches on Pandora, isn't there? We can always go to one of those."

"There's a lot of places on Pandora we could go," said Claptrap. "Probably a whole lotta places down here, too. Just a matter of getting to 'em."

"I'm sure she's working on it," Wheatley told him. "She's got all sorts of acquisition plans. Going to go off and snatch up things before the humans can get to them."

"She's so smart," said Claptrap fondly, and that made Wheatley feel as though it was alright to leave him alone for a bit. Before he'd quite started going to sleep, though, he realised there was something he needed to clear up with himself.

"Hey," Wheatley said, and Claptrap looked up.

"Yeah?"

"Have you… have you still got that video? From earlier?"

"Yeah," answered Claptrap. "What about it?"

"Could I see it?"

"Uh… sure."

It took Wheatley a minute or so to work out where it had gone, and another to decide if this was truly a good idea, but once he had done those things and played the video to himself, there wasn't really much he could do but laugh about it. How absolutely ridiculous it was to watch! He had actually forgotten water was wet!

"It's funny, right?" said Claptrap.

"Bloody hilarious," Wheatley admitted. "You were right. Dunno why I got so worked up over it."

"So… so when someone makes fun of you, you don't usually get mad or anything, right?"

"I used to," he answered. "I'm over it now. Mostly."

"Did you ever get sad?"

"Sad?" Wheatley repeated. "No, I never got sad. Just angry. Convinced myself I was a bloody genius and that um, that the people who didn't see that were just jealous. Or mean. Or stupid. One of those."

"So when someone told you you were dumb, that just pissed you off? You never thought to yourself, 'Hey, I am pretty dumb, actually.'"

"Oh, no," Wheatley said, laughing. "No, I thought I was a genius for quite a long time. But it's to do with my being a very specific sort of stupid, I s'pose."

"What do you mean?"

"It's… the idea, that can be all sorts of brilliant. What happens after that is um, is where the problems come in. So long's the outcome is the worst possible, I could think up all the clever things I wanted. Not so much anymore since I um, y'know, worked on it and all that. But… we both know when I convince her to give you a turret something horrible is going to happen."

"Then why are you going to do it?" Claptrap asked, sounding confused. "If you know it's dumb and gonna turn out bad, why would you do it anyway?"

Wheatley shrugged.

"'Cause I want to," he said finally.

"So do I," said Claptrap, almost quietly. "Even though I'm probably gonna get myself shot."

"'S a good thing you've got a girlfriend who likes fixing things, then."

"Even if she's gonna be mad and complain the whole time."

"It'll be worth it, though."

"Yeah," said Claptrap, sounding more assured than he had in a long time. "Yeah, it'll be worth it."

Author's note

Today I would like to address a concern that comes up every now and again with regards to Wheatley's role in the story now that Claptrap is part of his relationship with GLaDOS.

Wheatley is not being sidelined for Claptrap. The thing is, there's only so much you can learn about yourself from one other person. Back when I first put Claptrap into the story, I was having a huge problem about what I could even DO with the GLaDOS and Wheatley because they'd pretty much played each other out. They were happy with each other the way they were, so there wasn't really any more development I could get them to bring out of each other. The ONLY way to solve this was to bring in an outside character with outside perspectives and new problems for GLaDOS and Wheatley to work together to solve. Wheatley isn't getting much character development off GLaDOS anymore, that's true. But that's not because of Claptrap. It's because there just wasn't any left to be had. Once a couple is in a happy long term relationship, there isn't much in terms of conflict. Conflict is what keeps a story interesting and compelling. I could create artificial relationship drama, or I could bring in outside conflict instead. I don't want the former so I picked the latter.

I'm aware the addition of Claptrap was not the most popular decision, but there were a few reasons why I decided to go this route.

By watching and helping someone like him through problems similar to the ones he had/has, Wheatley has the chance to examine and learn to correct the parts of himself he could do better on, but that GLaDOS was willing to accept as unchangeable.
As selfishness is one of Wheatley's biggest traits, helping someone when it runs counter to his own benefit teaches him how to handle that even when he doesn't want to.
As Aperture is a very insular society run by someone who hates all outside perspectives and doesn't listen when told she's wrong, Claptrap serves as an outside reminder that perhaps she still has some things to learn even in the face of her literal echo chamber. Carrie does serve this purpose a little bit, but since society outside Aperture doesn't really exist yet, the best she can really do is convince GLaDOS that humans aren't so bad. Claptrap, on the other hand, is a window into a galactic-level system of societies, ideas, and technologies she has no access to without him.
I believe I mentioned this before, but GLaDOS also has certain things Wheatley can't help her with either because he doesn't know how or because he just gave up after her being stubborn about them for so many years.

Could Claptrap have accomplished those things while just being their mutual friend? Not really. Additionally, I couldn't think of a good reason why robots would have to be monogamous. In humans it has an evolutionary purpose, and on top of that we can only handle so many close relationships at a time... but a machine could handle and maintain as many as they wanted. So it didn't make sense to me not to go for it if I'm trying to write about robots in a robot society. They would have different rules and morals and values and I'm in a unique position to be able to work out what those are.

In closing... I ask you to please trust that I know what I'm doing and I'm not jerking you around in any way. Everything I put into this story is there for a specific reason and it isn't there because I don't know what to do next so I threw in some wild plot thread. I understand if you aren't totally happy with certain aspects of the fic... but I promise they are there for the story's benefit.

My only excuse for why this took so long was video games. First it was getting all the achievements for Vampyr (which took me 76 hours), then I played some of The Council because it was free and I decided I hated it and stopped, and then I played Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna). And THEN I played Half-Life Alyx (not finished yet) and Borderlands 3's new DLC. That's a lot of hours of video games and not a lot of writing hours. But we're here now.