Work Text:
A present fundamental truth of Chell’s life is that she knows how to get what she wants.
Over the course of the time that she’s known GLaDOS, Chell has found that getting what she wants has become a progressively easier endeavor than it once was.
To be fair, when what you initially want is to kill an essentially immortal AI who’s hell-bent on killing you, you can’t really get much harder than that.
Now, things are easy, and Chell finds that getting what she wants is about as simple as solving a button-cube test.
It’s a nice feeling.
If she wants a cake baked and she’s too lazy to make her one herself, a hand placed just so over her belly – accompanied by a familiar glean of puppy dog eyes that she knows her partner can read like binary – will have an exasperated GLaDOS assembling ingredients and preheating the oven within seconds.
If she wants to give her beloved Companion Cube a well-deserved polishing, GLaDOS will give her what she needs, though demanding she get the same treatment once Chell is done.
And if she wants to relax atop GLaDOS as she works, then GLaDOS – not without more than a fair amount of grumbling – lays herself out so Chell can get on her.
It’s good getting what she wants.
A familiar dull hum greets Chell as she stirs from a slumber that she just barely recalls falling into. It’s a hum that speaks of the sterility of Aperture as a whole, it’s relatively unyielding life in the face of countless years of inevitable change meters upon meters above it.
Chell opens her eyes.
Well, to be more precise, she opens up one of her eyes, as the other is closed and snugly pressed against a slightly curved piece of metal that she’s more than well-acquainted with by now.
Immediately, her sense of time is thrown off base. Aperture has never really been known for its windows. Hell, even the curtains that once brought it renown were explicitly only for showers. Signs of the passage of time do exist in the facility, but they’re ones that she has to search for herself.
Still, sense of time or no sense of time, Chell’s not worried.
Her schedule is wide open, only at the mercy of hers and her lover’s whims.
There’s also no cause for worry on her part for her location.
Chell might not have been able to identify her location right off the bat, but the warm chassis radiating under the right edge of her back and alongside its accompanying arm gives her all the assurance that she needs for her state of safety.
Chell’s face is tilted to her right – just close enough to the edge of GLaDOS’ chassis that she can get a non-strenuous view of the floor. Without moving her head, she looks down.
As it turns out, there’s an awful lot of down for her to look at.
Before Chell fell asleep, GLaDOS was checking on the cube production line. It was a simple job – one that required no coordination with an external monitor – which made it easy for Chell to hop onto her back.
Now, it looks like she’s checking on the PH of the lab’s acid pools. That particular monitor is roughly six or so feet up in the air. The groove of GLaDOS’ chassis prevents Chell from any threat of losing her balance, even if she were to sit up at this moment.
She doesn’t.
GLaDOS’ chassis is comfortable, warm to the touch and a salve of pure coziness to her right side.
Chell wants to enjoy it for a bit longer, before their unique brand of conversation, and the expectations that accompany it, come once more into play.
It’s not that Chell doesn’t love GLaDOS – she just knows the importance of taking advantage of a quiet conscious moment with her when such an opportunity presents itself.
When the two of them are together, enjoying GLaDOS in a quieter state of being is an especially rare treat.
As her head is still tilted to the side, Chell is only partially able to see GLaDOS as she works.
Though GLaDOS’ optic doesn’t move in the conventional sense, Chell’s familiar enough with her body to be able to hear it move through certain subtle sounds that stem from underneath her hull. The ones she hears as GLaDOS wordlessly shifts across countless lines of data tells Chell that she is generally enjoying her maintenance’s monotony in all its simplicity. GLaDOS would never admit it out loud, but Chell knows that her presence plays a not at all insignificant part in that.
For a computer, GLaDOS is a terribly bad liar.
Chell can’t help but feel a little smug about that fact, a fact she’ll be sure to point out when GLaDOS tries to whine about how Chell basically trapped her via her lazy human body into conducting unnecessary extended maintenance when there were so many other things she could’ve been doing instead.
She can practically hear it already, but she’s prepared to argue her case if and when it comes up.
However, that won’t be for a bit longer if she can help it, and until then, Chell wants to rest and relish in the presence of her quiet and hard, yet simultaneously snuggly computer in all her glory.
The ear that’s to GLaDOS’ chassis can hear whirring motions. She remembers paying attention to them before she fell asleep, comforted by the lullaby played to the percussion of gears, brass of bolts, and strings of wires.
This isn’t the first time such noises have sung her to sleep and Chell knows it won’t be the last time either. She prefers it that way. It’s comforting – a calming, rhythmic pattern as well as a consistent sign of GLaDOS’ life force. Even though they’ve been outside of the realm of danger for so long now, that latter sensation is one Chell never ceases to derive solace from.
It’s hard for Chell to keep her eyes pulled to look at GLaDOS and her work so as to not give herself away – an invisible nagging sensation pulling her toward a less straining view instead – so she turns her attention elsewhere, looking to the floor, and letting herself take in the view of the chamber from her airborne point-of-view.
The chamber’s clean, recently the subject of a bout of maintenance itself, one done earlier in the week. It’s so much so that the floor reflects a blur of hers and GLaDOS’ image as the two of them are suspended in the air.
Chell had seen the chamber clean before, but from this height, it’s really something special – ethereal, yet not bereft of commonness in that ethereality altogether.
She notices as she gazes upon it that in its clean state, the floor matches her eyes – a lighter, yet steel-like gray. Chell doesn’t believe in fate, but coincidences like this tickle the notion of fate in a way she can appreciate all the same.
Really, what are the odds?!
GLaDOS can no doubt tell her, right down to the seventieth decimal place if she so desires.
Once she’s had her fill of rest, Chell reminds herself to ask her.
Hell, as thanks for hosting her impromptu nap and snuggle session, Chell will actually ask GLaDOS to list out as many of the extra decimal places as she wants, or however many might exist – whichever comes first.
Still, Chell doesn’t feel like she’s had her fill of awakened rest yet, so the question remains suspended in her head, just as she and GLaDOS remain suspended above the chamber’s floor.
From up here, solidly on top of GLaDOS, yet not completely on her, Chell feels gravity at work, trying and failing to pull her right leg down to the chamber’s base.
She knows she’s up high, but her foot’s tug drives the point home so much stronger.
It’s been some time since she was last up this high in the chamber. Everything was different back then, from the floor to the ceiling to the walls to herself, and GLaDOS for that matter, too.
Frankly, it feels like an eternity ago.
Back then, hanging at a height like this via-GLaDOS brought about feelings of near-helplessness and fear.
Now, it brings no such thing.
Instead, it brings a relaxed sort of comfort that Chell wouldn’t forgo for anything.
So she lets her leg dangle, as gravity continues its doomed attempt to entice it downwards from GLaDOS’ airborne chassis.
Minutes pass in Chell’s self-imposed silent bliss. Her mind is lulled by GLaDOS’ warmth.
A lot can be said for the faults of Aperture – Chell certainly has a laundry list of her own – but damn, can they flawlessly regulate a temperature on their hardware.
One would think that a power-heavy machine like GLaDOS would be uncomfortably hot and have at least several dozen warning labels to not even graze her chassis, but GLaDOS has never felt anything but perfect to the touch. Chell can hold her for as long as she wants and never come away with so much as a blister or painfully balmy feeling on her body.
Her lover is an impressive marvel of science, that’s for sure.
Between the all but white noise of GLaDOS’ body at work and the warmth of the chassis she’s laying upon, Chell feels like a newly-hatched chick resting in its incubator.
In that moment, reminded of chicks, Chell makes another note – check on the ‘little killing machines’ later on, and bring them a snack while she’s at it.
GLaDOS might chide her for spoiling her – as she calls them – ‘weapons in the making,’ but honestly, there’s no way she can expect Chell to see baby birds and not want to feed them.
Chell appreciates and respects GLaDOS’ work – though she admittedly finds the particular prospect of her training chicks to be murdersome sources of terror to be silly at best – but she’s feeding the damn birds.
Eh, call it human nature.
Suddenly, GLaDOS moves. She slowly moves to look at Chell, though Chell quickly closes her eyes as to keep her awakened state a secret. GLaDOS’ movement is gentle, one that wouldn’t have been enough to wake Chell were she still asleep, but there’s a sense of unmistakable impatience to it.
GLaDOS must be done with her acid pool maintenance.
It’s just as well.
While Chell dabbles with the idea of falling back asleep – she’s still a little tired and GLaDOS certainly has other maintenance tasks she can do for as long as Chell wants to sleep on her – Chell thinks she’s had enough rest. If she doesn’t stretch soon – or at least do something to counteract the stiff feelings spending hours on her right side has given her – she swears she’s going to go mad.
Besides, though she appreciates this rare moment of cozy silence from GLaDOS, she misses hearing her voice, holding her with both arms, and kissing her smooth surface.
Yes, it’s definitely time to move.
Following a single, fluid motion, Chell’s sitting up on GLaDOS’ extended chassis. Chell’s sure it probably looks like she’s riding GLaDOS the same way one would ride a horse or mechanical bull. The image in Chell’s head of that is a funny one.
GLaDOS wastes no time before acknowledging her – in her typical, GLaDOS-like fashion.
“You fell asleep on me. Again.”
Her tone fights the Sahara itself in dryness.
Chell shoots her a somewhat-silly look, a dare for her to say that she has a problem with her doing so.
GLaDOS doesn’t take that dare – not that Chell would ever expect her to.
One thing that Chell knows about GLaDOS is that with the rarest of rare exceptions, she only does what she wants to do.
Fortunately, for both of them, what she wants is Chell.
By now, Chell is more than aware of GLaDOS’ desire to do different things outside of maintenance. She knows that just yesterday, GLaDOS finished a fresh new batch of tests for her bots, and GLaDOS was only too excited to use them as soon as possible.
However, a sudden new, yet not entirely unfamiliar desire of her own takes over Chell.
Her more upright view has made her see that perhaps she’s not done sleeping, but rather…she just needs to shift positions.
GLaDOS might have had enough of Chell resting on her…but Chell realizes that she hasn’t.
Chell slides onto her stomach and down GLaDOS, her chin pressing against the back of GLaDOS’ core and arms wrapping around the last bit of metal and wires that connect GLaDOS’ core to the rest of her chassis.
God, it feels good on her body, cracking her back in a couple of hard-to-reach places while also warming her belly.
GLaDOS’s reaction is instant.
“Are you really about to fall asleep on me again, right after you just woke up?”
Her tone isn’t outraged. It’s deadpan – almost whine-like at the same time, but in a cute way. She goes on to mutter under her synthetic breath how humans are supposed to sleep less than cats, but that Chell of course is the one exception, and then goes on to list all of the things that she could be doing right now, but can’t thanks to her present role as a hammock.
Chell answers GLaDOS’ question by pressing her lips to GLaDOS and letting them linger amidst the familiar pool of ivory. The warm metal on her face lets loose a silent sigh that borders on a silent moan.
“You’re lucky you don’t drool.”
GLaDOS must feel Chell smirk against her because she doesn’t just leave it at that.
“Doing that won’t always get you what you want, you know?”
Does she really want to bet that?
Because Chell sure wants to.
Another kiss, a cheeky peck, is placed, now closer to her core’s side.
Chell knows how GLaDOS’ nerve receptors work, how the more sensitive to touch they get as the object of impact gets closer to the core.
Going right for her core itself assures Chell victory in a battle that GLaDOS never had so much as a chance to win.
GLaDOS doesn’t speak, though it sounds like something tries to escape from her speakers.
Yes, Chell has a feeling that some kisses will, in fact, always get her what she wants.
However, Chell reasons that that’s not at all an issue, because while they might differ from time to time, what she and GLaDOS want are ultimately one and the same.