Prompt 001: "How was the first time Wheatley had to sleep?"
"Wait, wait. Hang on a minute. Let me get this straight. You mean you just… lie there—and wait to turn off? There's no button or anything? Just waiting? You can't be serious. Now, really, how is that good design? Seems sort of, you know, wasteful, waiting like that."
Wheatley is sitting in the middle of the bed, legs bowed out, sheets bunched beneath, staring absently at his hands. He's still getting used to the idea of hands. Well, and of appendages in general, honestly.
Chell picks up her pen again and scribbles on the notepad in her lap. "Yes, you wait," she writes, like that's supposed to explain everything.
"I don't like it," says Wheatley. "And this is required every night? You're sure?"
She underlines the yes on the page twice.
Wheatley flops down on his back, head upon the pillow. His too-short plaid pajamas ride up his skinny body and he folds his arms behind his head.
"But it's so unnecessary," he argues. "I mean, come on, I could just reboot or plug into a maintenance port before and it would be all done in two minutes, five at the most. Maybe six. Okay, no, six minutes. Definitely six. But this is supposed to take hours? God's sake, how do you lot ever get anything done?"
He hears her sigh; a short, punctuated puff of air. The weight lifts off the edge of the mattress and he glances down his long nose to see her pacing toward the light switch.
"What're you doing?"
She flips it. Darkness shrouds the bedroom and Wheatley can see nothing but black. Before he can shout, the heat of her fingers finds his face and the soft pads cross his eyelids, gently pushing them closed.
"I don't understand," says Wheatley. "You wait like this?"
Her thumb strokes upward along his cheek, a yes.
"That just seems so bor—" He pauses as warm weight sinks in beside him. "Bor… boring. Sorry, a-are you going to wait with me? Um, not that that's bad or anything, mind. Not at all. I just don't want you to, you know, get bored. Lying here. With me. Doing nothing."
Wheatley feels her arm move. A fingertip sketches an upward line along his jaw, another affirmative.
"All right," he says. "All right, fine, you win. But I warned you! And don't say I didn't, because I did. Warn you. Just now. So you can't spring this on me later."
The rhythm of her even breaths lulls him, and they both wait in silence.