Part Six.
Synopsis: Claptrap knows this relationship is worth it. Now he's just gotta convince her of that.
They had some really good sex after that.
He wasn't sure what had changed, exactly, but if someone had made him guess he would've said she had actually started getting into it. She kinda hadn't, before, as though it was some sort of thing she needed to do but didn't really like doing. She seemed cool with it now, though. It was so good, in fact, that the last time he'd actually had to stop her because he'd thought he was gonna pass out. Both of those things were kinda embarrassing, but he'd had to make a snap decision there and he had really not wanted to crash in front of his girlfriend for a reason like that.
He'd expected her to get mad about it, or annoyed at least, but she was neither! She just asked what was going on, and when he told her she laughed for about three straight minutes.
"You're uh... taking this surprisingly well," said Claptrap, and she tilted her core in a really adorable way and said,
"Aw. Was I too much for you?"
in such a way that it instantly became the sexiest thing he had ever heard. He didn't even realise he'd zoned out there until she said his name a little louder than she usually talked.
"Huh?" he asked, unable to remember what he'd been doing.
"You stopped responding for a minute."
"Oh," he answered. "Yeah, I uh... gotta admit, you've gotten pretty intense."
"Have I?" she asked, sounding amused.
"Ohhh have you ever," said Claptrap. "You went from the bare minimum to the whole nine yards. I'm not complainin', but you are a lot... um... more than me."
"I thought that was part of why you liked me so much."
"It is!" he said insistently, even though she didn't sound bothered in the slightest. "C'mon, babe, we're comparing a windmill to a nuclear power plant here."
"Your power isn't generated by a windmill," she said, laughing.
"And yours isn't generated by a nuclear power plant! It was an – "
"Actually, it is," interrupted GLaDOS. "It is generated by a nuclear power plant."
He stared up at her, dumbfounded. "... well this place has got just about everything, hasn't it."
"Just about," said GLaDOS, as though she'd taken the question very seriously.
"But no mirrors," Claptrap said. "I have not seen myself in weeks."
"Why would you want to?" GLaDOS asked. "You look the same as you did when you first came here."
He shrugged. "'cause I like looking at myself? Don't you?"
"The thought has never crossed my mind."
"To... to look at yourself?"
"Yes," said GLaDOS, nodding. "I have no idea what I look like."
Claptrap wasn't even sure how to process this news. How did someone live their whole life without knowing that? "Really?"
She shook her core. "There isn't really a means for me to do so. I also have no idea where my blueprints are."
"Well... if you want, we could... I could show you. I've got uh... pictures." She probably already knew about that, but he'd heard stories about guys who did that kinda thing without their girl's permission, so he hadn't exactly been motivated to just bring it up. She considered him for a long moment, then shook her head again.
"No. I'd rather not."
"But why?" Ohhhh. Ohhhh, wait. "You're not worried that you're gonna hate what you see, are you? 'Cause it's pretty great, I promise. I tell you you're hot all the time 'cause you really are, not just 'cause I want you to have sex with me."
"Oh, no," GLaDOS said. "I mean, think about it. I'm the best at everything, so logically I must also be the best-looking, too. No, it's because no matter what I do end up seeing, it will never match whatever it is you see."
That sounded all smart and deep and stuff. Must've been why he didn't get it. "Huh?"
She looked off to the side, to give herself a minute to think maybe. "I like having you tell me, without having anything to compare it to. You said I was the most beautiful girl in the universe."
"You are!" She didn't think he'd been lying, did she? But she just nodded once.
"Exactly. That's all I need to know. Seeing what I look like will just ruin it. I'm happy being told what you think without actually knowing what you're talking about."
"Aw, honey-RAM," Claptrap said. "That's –"
"Also, I don't care," interrupted GLaDOS with finality, and then she told him it was time for one of his shows and if he wanted to watch it he had better shut up and pay attention. He did want to do that, but he also really wanted to know how you could just not care what you looked like. He wanted to know so bad that he just could not pay attention and asked, "GLaDOS, why don't you care?"
"Hm?"
"About what you look like? How can you not care?"
"Oh," she answered. "It's not important. That's why I don't care."
"How is it not important if your chassis is the thing that made me want to come here in the first place?" Claptrap asked.
"You are the one who placed value on my appearance," GLaDOS told him. "Not me."
... oh. That did make sense.
"Neither my knowing nor my caring would have changed what you did," she continued.
His next question he wasn't sure if he wanted an answer to, but he said anyway, "Do you... think I'm handsome?"
"Yes," she said without pause, which helped a lot, "but since I can't see you most of the time anyway I'm not sure why that matters."
"It just... makes me feel better about myself," he mumbled to the floor, rubbing the hand he had on her core in a wobbly circle. "But you don't get it 'cause you don't care."
"A fact you should be very glad of," GLaDOS declared, "because I wouldn't be half so attractive to you if I had your non-existent self-esteem."
"So... I don't get it. I'm stupid, I hate myself, and you only know where I am half the time by the sound of my voice, which we both know isn't the most soothing thing in the world. What exactly do you see in me?"
She didn't answer for a long time. Then she turned to look at him and said,
"There are two things in particular: you're extremely patient and you're quite a lot of fun. When spoken out loud, they don't seem like much, but in practise... they're very important traits for you to have."
"Fun's one thing," said Claptrap, "even if no one's ever used that word to describe me before. But patient? Isn't that kinda... boring?"
"I'm sure you've noticed by now," GLaDOS told him, "that I am very stubborn and reluctant to change."
"I noticed that like... the first week," Claptrap said.
"Exactly. Most people would have given up. You didn't. You were willing to wait. And before you tell me you did that because you don't exactly have a lot of options, that doesn't matter. All that matters is that you did make that decision."
He wasn't sure what to do with that. Him? Patient? He'd chalked a lot of this up to 'desperation', himself, but... she'd literally just said that she didn't care about his perception of himself. She didn't even care about his perception of her. She just... made all her decisions without caring about any of that. The only things that mattered were what made sense to her.
That was... kinda a cool way to live. He couldn't even imagine the kind of balls it had to take to not give a damn about what anybody else thought. About anything. It almost seemed like... a superpower. But at the same time, wasn't it... a good thing to care what people thought of you? Just a little bit? Because if you didn't, then weren't you... super biased? He had no problem with GLaDOS being a big fan of herself, but if she cared even a little bit what he thought, then... wouldn't that make her even better? Him caring what she thought had definitely made him a little better, because it made him want to – wait a minute. If she didn't care at all, why had she even brought up that he'd said she was the most beautiful – aha! She totally cared. She just didn't want him to know that. Because... because she was 'very stubborn and reluctant to change', and if he knew he had gotten her to change her mind the tiniest bit, she thought he'd try to make her do it more often.
Maybe it even really did matter that he was handsome, and she just didn't want to admit it. Because that would mean she did care, which she wanted to pretend she didn't do! Yeah. Yeah, that sounded right.
Man, them together were really like... the two extreme opposites of the same person. How long would they have to hang around each other before they kinda... met in that middle she'd talked about way back when? Would he even last that long? Maybe they'd be kinda in sync one day but right now... right now they were still pretty far apart.
Well... he'd been pretty patient so far. He could stick it out for... however long he had to.
"Do you want me to turn this off?" GLaDOS was asking, and he jumped back around so he was facing the monitor and put his hand back where it belonged on the side of her core.
"Nope! I'm watching!"
He had a few shows to catch up on and she usually didn't let him watch them all at once, but when the first one ended she put the next one on without saying anything at all. That was certainly weird, but he decided to just roll with it and not say anything either.
"Claptrap," GLaDOS said very casually after about ten minutes, "suppose I did love you. Just a little bit."
Oh damn.
He really wanted to start telling her how great that was and how much he loved her, but he made himself think about what she'd said when he'd said it: she didn't want it to be a big deal. The way he wanted to react to her saying it was the total opposite of what she wanted him to do. So he wasn't gonna do it. He was just going to... to do what she would have done if she hadn't freaked out. She would've been calm and reasonable and chill about it. So he was gonna be calm and reasonable and chill about it.
"That'd be cool, I guess," Claptrap said, shrugging.
She nodded to herself in what seemed to be satisfaction, and he felt super relieved, as though he'd passed some sort of test. A test he kind of... felt like he didn't want to have passed. Claptrap had a girlfriend that loved him. And instead of being super happy and excited about it like he really, really wanted to be, he had to just... pretend he didn't care.
Well... she had said 'just a little bit', so... so maybe he'd be able to be happy about it later. When she really meant it. By the time she was ready, she'd be cooler with him making a big deal out of stuff. He just had to keep on being patient. He could do that. He knew he could do that.
Trying to keep all those thoughts to himself came back to bite him later, though, because they were just chilling and playing video games when it really got to him just what a great life he was having and how awesome it all was and how he'd never thought he'd have anything like this. One second he was just next to her, trying his darnedest to beat her in the race onscreen even as she taunted him with the fact she could effortlessly hold the perfect line every time, and the next he was crying. Oh, s***. He tried to stop before she noticed, which was pretty gosh darn impossible because as soon as he started she paused the game and just looked at him.
"I'm okay," he said, even though he knew that wasn't gonna fly with her.
"You're... crying."
"Yeah." He put down the controller and did his best to clean out his eye. "I dunno why this happens. It just does, sometimes. It'll go away in a minute." He hoped.
"That's a strange feature."
"Sure is," he said, hoping she would shut up about it because even thinking about crying made it worse.
"Are you sad?"
"No!" he protested, finally looking at her. She didn't think this was her fault, did she? Well, it was. But in the best way ever. "No, babe, I'm crying because I'm happy."
"Why would you cry if you were happy?" she asked, sounding confused, and he really didn't know how to answer that because he didn't get it either. He shrugged and wiped at his eye again, mostly to give his hands something to do.
"I dunno. I've never been this happy before."
"Oh," GLaDOS said, very softly. "Would you... do you want a hug?"
"Really?" he said, hardly able to believe his luck when she nodded, and man it felt so good. But the flip side was that he started crying again, and he didn't wanna cry on her so he was gonna let go, really he was, but then she pressed herself into his chassis really hard and that just made it worse. Now he had to hug her as hard as he could because she was just trying to hard to be nice even though she probably hated this, like, a whole lot, and gosh he just loved her so much and she made him so happy...
He really hoped she would just let him hug her for a while until he'd got a handle on all that stuff. Because it was a lot. Kinda scary, actually, like if he let go of her it would just kinda overwhelm him something awful. He wasn't sure what that would do, but it probably wouldn't be good.
"This won't last forever, you know," GLaDOS murmured.
"What?" Claptrap asked, horrified even though he knew they really couldn't hug forever.
"I've been doing some reading," GLaDOS said. "Relationships start like this. Where everything is perfect and new. But it doesn't last. Things turn sour. Quirks become intolerable. What once was neutral ground becomes a warzone. Even your favourite things about the other person begin to feel insufficient. All honeymoons draw to a close."
What... no. No no no. It sounded like she wanted to break up, but... she couldn't! What was she even talking about!? This was never going to end! She was perfect and he was... well... that wasn't important. He pushed away from her in a panic. "What're you trying to say?" he demanded.
"I'm saying," GLaDOS answered, "that the next stage of this relationship will be hard. Perhaps too hard."
"For... who?" he asked, utterly confused. "You just told me how patient I was! Babe, I've done harder stuff than this! I mean, this has been super hard, but only 'cause I've got so much to lose! I can totally stick it out if you work with me! We're supposed to be a team, right? Isn't that how this kinda thing goes?"
"Yes," answered GLaDOS, "but sometimes the victory is worth less than what was lost in the battle."
... what?
"What battle?" he said in a panic. "We're not fighting, are we? We never fight."
"Not yet."
"Not..." He drew his hands closer, the abject terror coursing through his system making it hard to work out what all her innuendo was supposed to mean this time. Why was she saying things were gonna be hard and they were gonna fight and it wasn't gonna be worth it? Where was this even coming from? What had he done wrong?
Maybe... maybe he hadn't done anything. Maybe it was that thing about them being opposites. He was happy to love her and to be loved by her, but... she wasn't. It bothered her. Maybe... maybe it scared her, even. Because she couldn't control it. It was just a thing that was happening, and she couldn't turn it off or make it go away or turn it into something else.
That was when he got it. She wasn't trying to break up, not really. She was preparing for it. She was asking him to bail now, when it was good, instead of waiting until it got bad and deciding he wanted out then. If it had to end, she wanted it to end now. When it was good, and when it had always been good, and to keep that from ever, ever changing.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he should go, and leave it all like this, and they would both be sad but it would always be perfect, just like it was now. Where he still thought her insults were funny and she still liked the fact that he didn't shut up. The quirks, as she'd put them. They could preserve this forever. Like a treasure. Close it away and keep it safe. It would be over, but it would never be ruined. They would never have the chance to ruin it.
"No," Claptrap said.
"No what?"
"I want you to yell at me," Claptrap said, even though he absolutely didn't. She was scary when she did that. "I want you to get mad at me, and... and tell me bad stuff about myself, and ignore me just to be a dick, and kick me out of the room 'cause I won't shut up. I want you to do all those things."
"Why in the world would you want that?" GLaDOS asked incredulously. "Claptrap, that's – "
"Because I love you," Claptrap cut her off, "and that means all of you."
"But you haven't seen all of me yet."
"I know it's hard to tell, but I've been on my best behaviour," said Claptrap. "So... samesies."
"But what if it turns out not to be worth it?"
Well, of course it was worth it. Even if she dumped him tomorrow – literally dumped him into the incinerator – it had totally been worth it. He couldn't think of a single thing he'd ever done any other time in his life that was more worth it. He shrugged. "I don't really do what-ifs. I just kinda... do."
"And then have regrets after the fact."
That gave him such a bad feeling. "Why would you say that? Do you regret me?"
"Yes," said GLaDOS. "Yes, I do."
Damn it.
"But I also don't, at the exact same time," she continued, which went a long ways to making him feel maybe all wasn't lost. "And I hate it. I hate it a lot."
He folded up his arms and tried to think. The answer was in there, somewhere. His powers of deduction were... flighty at best, but when he managed to wrangle them he usually got it right. Hm.
She did and didn't regret him. She did and didn't know what he was.
She did and didn't want life to take him back.
He had it!
Her problem was not knowing! Not knowing if it was worth it, or how she felt, or what they were! She didn't know and she hated that! As a logic machine who needed to know everything, that would be tough for her. But he didn't need to know anything! It would all just... balance out! Like a... like a thing that balanced! For once he'd figured this out before she had!
"Don't worry about it!" he told her in earnest. "Babe, we are totally different people and I know that. But I also know we make a great team! We're gonna get to know each other better and yeah, it's gonna be messy. But c'mon! Even if it gets super bad real soon, we'll already know we're capable of being super good! We'll just have to stick that s*** out together! That's what love's all about!"
"I don't know if I love you that much," GLaDOS said.
Claptrap's chassis sank, and he looked down at the floor and pressed his hands together very hard, forcing himself not to say anything. He'd had his turn to talk and now he had to respect what she wanted. Even if he didn't want it. It was already killing him a little inside to think that he'd have to leave and he would never see her or talk to her or hold her ever again, but if he loved her – if he really, honestly loved her the way he kept telling her he did – then he would have to do it. He would have to go and not come back.
"That's okay," he said, even though it wasn't. "Look, GLaDOS, I... I don't want to go. But if you... if you really need me to, I will. I'll just... I'll go home and you'll never hear from me again. I won't be that creepy ex who just can't accept that it's over. I'll just go back to Pandora and... and that'll be it. I swear."
"If you did that," said GLaDOS, and he had to turn his optic off in order to keep holding himself together. "... then... I'd never know."
... huh?
"I don't know what it is you're feeling, or if I even have the capacity to get there," she continued, "but I think..."
He looked up at her, just a little bit.
"... I think I'd like to take the chance to find out."
"Really?" he said, before he could stop himself. "You're not dumping me?"
"I'm not dumping you," she said.
"We're staying together?"
"Yes," she said. "We're staying together."
He threw his arms around her and held onto her as hard as he could, and this time he didn't even cry. She was still and quiet, but he could hear her thinking and it scared him a little. If she changed her mind...
... then he would suck it up.
She was rubbing her optic assembly against the side of his chassis just a little bit, but even though it was barely happening it still felt really nice. She'd never done that before, so... so she must've realised how scared he was. And he really was. He was still terrified that telling her he loved her had been some kinda tipping point and it was all downhill from there. But she seemed to want him to feel better, so... so he didn't have anything to worry about. It was all okay. They were okay.
"I lied," GLaDOS said suddenly.
Oh God. Oh God did he ever want her to shut up. Even if her voice was so sexy it almost had the ability to solve his stupid glitch all on its own.
"I love you more than a little bit," she went on, "but I wish I didn't. I wish I'd never done this at all."
It was time for him to shine. And by 'shine', it meant he had to think of that perfect, offhand thing to say that would both reassure her and cheer her up. He furiously ran through all the stuff that'd gone on today, and after a minute he came up with it.
"Time for you to learn a little somethin' from me, babe," he said, letting go of her and lifting his chassis so he could kiss her as high as he could. "No what-ifs and no regrets. Let's just do this thing!"
"If I regularly followed that kind of logic, we'd be living inside of a radioactive crater," said GLaDOS, "but I suppose it can't hurt this once. What the hell. Let's do it."
"That's my girl," Claptrap said, and he was so happy about the fact that he did have a girl, not just for now but possibly forever, that he didn't even care when GLaDOS sniped the hell out of him for an hour and a half in the next game she put on just because she thought it was funny.