The noise inside his head grows louder.

It's an amalgam of whispers, data feeds, numbers, and static-white. Everything is starting to break down. Strings of errors keep popping up, garbled and spliced pieces of code, alert alert, but he shoves them all to the bottom, the back of the queue, the lowest priority. Everything will be fine. He's not going to concern himself with things like that when he has this limp test subject in front of him and the power to make her do whatever he wants.

And he can do anything he wants now, can't he? He can make her give him the pleasure he so desperately needs. Everything's worked so perfectly. Just as planned.

"So," says Wheatley, soaking in the sight of her, "let's get you off your knees. You've been a good girl, haven't you? Solved me. Listened. Behaved. No more biting. I think that's enough to warrant a bit of a rest, don't you? Maybe loosen that pesky cable round your neck? Well, not that you have any say in this. Or any say at all, really. But you've earned a little reward for being amazing so far. So, c'mere. Let me give it to you."

Wheatley grins and brings her bulk of cables closer. They have her suspended just above his chair, holding her by the ankles, the hips, the thighs. She's hanging just close enough for him to reach out and cup her calves, and he indulges himself by palming them and rubbing his thumbs down the tough muscle, trailing down to her ankles and the soft undersides of her feet. The Itch is climbing down his spinal column and tightening so hotly between his legs; he has to control it but it's starting to eat away at him again, ravenous and greedy and a pulsing rhythm of more more want take more MORE MORE.

Focussing. Focus. Has to focus. It's sharp and pulling his receptors apart but he has to focus.

He begins by kissing the tops of her knees. He tugs her toward him, closer, letting his tongue drag up her thighs. His hands climb up the plane of her back and dig in, slowly sloping down to cup her arse. Mouth at the juncture of her thigh and groin, he's kissing, nibbling, tasting the salt and the sweat off her body. His cock is still hard, still engorged, still aching, so full, and he wants to grab her by the hips and shove her down onto him, but he resists the temptation. Instead, he moves his attention to the temperature of her body; her warmth, how it spreads throughout her legs, her hips, centring in molten heat just between. He tries to focus on what it will be like when he's finally bringing himself inside her, of what the euphoria will feel like when everything clicks just right and the solution pumps in.

The static in his head hiccups. Feeds are screaming at him now, routing to the chamber: "WARNING: REACTOR CORE IS AT CRITICAL TEMPERATURE."

"Again? Seriously? You're ruining this."

With a jerk of his arm, a cable spools out from the chassis and crashes into another monitor. It cracks, the image of her splintering apart into shards of glass, and chunks of its frame unhinge and plummet into the abyss below.

"Constantly talking, talking, talking." He kneads his temples, frustration sparking amongst his circuits. "For God's sake, does anything ever just shut up around here?"

He glances up at Chell, chin resting on her soft, warm belly, and the other monitors reflect his vision. The room is an ocean of her face: flushed, mouth parted, sucking in hitched breaths of air. Need rockets through him, rooted in the base of his spine. The desire to shove into her resurfaces again, but he grits his teeth and wills it back.

"Well, besides you, of course," he amends. "You're not exactly the talkative type. Brain damage and all. But you know, I like that. I do. I really do. An admirable quality. Right up there with button pushing. Not the brain damage, the not talking. You… you give me room to think. Not like everything else in this place. You're perfect. Beautiful."

Wheatley leans back in, lips grazing her skin, and continues his leisurely pace. He revels in the knowledge that she's going to test for him, to give him this rigid pleasure that he craves so badly, and the weight of that knowledge settles into his skull and pulls down through his limbs.

This is wrong, this is wrong—

"Shut up," he breathes against her thigh.

Why are you doing this, this is wrong—

"Damn it, shut up. No one's asking you."

She was your friend, why are you doing this, you promised to get her out, you promised, you promised, why are you DOING this—

"Stop talking! Just… stop. Stop. Just stop. I've had enough. It's always whispering, isn't it? Always. Talking, talking, talking, always fucking talking. SHUT UP!"

His voice surges throughout the facility, routing into every room. The floor quakes beneath his chair and some of the panels on the ceiling groan, metal shifting under strain. There's a burst of that white noise again and there's a fire somewhere underneath the facility, burning, smouldering, roiling up and climbing through the floors so down far below, but he ignores it. He's in control. No one else. The facility is fine. It's fine.

And yet, Wheatley is reeling. He grips onto her far harder than he should. His mouth gapes, tongue just barely against her, hot breath unfurling. His cock is so hard, throbbing, and it takes all of the power in his processors to shut out the impulse to crush her close, to have her hovering over him so he can push himself inside her.

"Well, that was… a bit of an outburst." Wheatley glances up to see her face, and he notes that there is a very real expression of worry dimpling her brow. "Oh, but don't be alarmed. All right? I'm not angry with you, love. Not at all. I just get so—bloody—tired—of listening to… to everything. There's just so much happening right now. Well, not that you can see it. It's all behind the scenes. Technological stuff. Science and all. You understand. But don't worry, don't worry. Just relax. Relax, yeah? I'm going to take care of you. You've been good to me. Solved me. And well done there, I might add. That was tremendous. It felt so good. God, just… being in your mouth. Feeling you. Feeling everything. You felt so bloody amazing, I…"

Wheatley brings his mouth between her legs, breathing ragged, exhaling against the wetness and the heat. His tongue parts his lips and as he gives her a leisurely lick, everything spikes. She arches into him; the sweat, the salt, the chemicals, the cells of her skin, the hormones and the slickness and—

"I want to feel you here," he breathes, right against her. "I want to feel what you're like… right here." A long finger guides her folds aside, a soft press, and his fingertip slicks in, just barely. "Oh. Oh, you're dripping. God. You're absolutely soaked. You're… you're so very wet, fucking hell."

His cock is twitching, anticipation and need seeding through every process, every thread. Even though he's in complete control and has the power to make her do whatever he wants, here he is, sitting before her, her legs spread, his mouth so close, and he wants to tease her until she's begging to be solved. He wants to make her feel like him. He wants her to ache and twist and need. He wants to instil this Itch inside of her. He wants her to suffer.

The flat of Wheatley's tongue glides over her clit. He can feel her buck against him and he takes the opportunity to shove her against his face and bury his mouth between her legs. He begins to swirl his tongue around that bundle of nerves, his finger pushing further in, and he feels the sweat as it drips down her back and the uneven breaths she's forcing and fuck he wants to drive himself into her so fucking bad but he resists, he has to resist, it'll be soon, it will, and so he hums into her flesh and lets her rock against him as he pleasures her. Her taste is flush with every receptor, running down his tongue; the muscles in her hips and legs tighten as her thighs press against his ears, and he fucking loves it. When he curves his finger and starts to thrust, he can feel her clench around him and an absolutely wonderful sound makes its way out of her throat.

"Well, well," he says, hot against her skin, "so you've got a voice in there somewhere after all. Hiding it all this time, were you? No reason to, you know. Could've made things easier. Could've made things a lot easier, actually. Still, that was… ah, I liked that. I want you to do it again."

Wheatley grins against her, tongue lathering up and down along her skin in a gradual rhythm. A sharp intake of air pulls through her body and she's wracked with a convulsing shiver as he pushes his finger as deep as he can go. Her legs have hooked onto his shoulders, coaxing him closer with her heels digging into the plane of his back, cables jerking, and the satisfying squeeze of her against him funnels a thick surge of want down his spine.

"Come on," he urges, leaving an open kiss with every vowel. "Come on, now. Do it again. Moan for me. Make some noise. I know you can. Can't hide that from me now, love, so don't go thinking about bottling up again. I want you screaming."

Chell writhes under his touch, and a breathy gasp jerks from her mouth. While it's more than before, it's not enough, it's not what he wants from her, and so he draws out his finger, sucking at the sensitive juncture between her legs, and then plunges back in and starts a hasty rhythm she tries to meet with trembling desperation. Voices are swelling in his head, mashes of words in between bursts of loud static, compliments, fantasies, wants, needs: god you're good, come on now, you can do it, you want this, I know you do, I'm letting you have it, come on, thank me, tell me you're grateful, tell me you love it, tell me you want me, tell me you're mine, tell me, tell me tell me tell me god bloody scream for me TELL ME TELL ME SCREAM—

Her backbone arcs in a sudden snap. Her heels have shoved him fully against her, his nose flush with the thick coarseness of her hair—and god, he can smell her, what kind of insanity is this, why does she smell so bloody good—but he has got to focus, he has to, he'll lose it if he doesn't, and so his attention reroutes into the physical, back toward his hand. She constricts along the length of his finger, pressing along the receptors buried underneath his skin; she's absolutely soaked, pulling him in and pushing him out with every thrust, and then his tongue must have done something particularly nice because a ragged jumble of sounds tear from her, stringing out into a long, punctuated moan—oh, yes, yes, yes, god, be a good girl, come on, moan for me, come for me—and then everything inside her convulses in a delicious way.

Sucking and flicking his tongue, he shoves another finger in to meet her rocking hips and clenching muscles, oh god yes you're so wet fucking come for me, and there's a moment where her voice sharpens to a near keen and his entire body absolutely exults. The pressure from her thighs against the sides of his head is almost too much to bear, but everything else surpasses it; he doesn't care about pain, it doesn't matter; his test subject is fucking his fingers at his desire, and so he suffers it through and works her until she's panting and spent.

Wheatley lets her fall limp against him, her hips sagging down and her knees resting on his bare shoulders. One arm around her thigh, he breathes against her and gives another lick with the flat of his tongue before drawing away. Her body is a shaking mess; she quivers against the synthetic skin of his chest in the aftermath, pulling in thin inhales through her diaphragm, and he finds he has to adjust the cables' strength to provide her proper support.

"That was it, wasn't it? It was. That's what it was for you. That was solution euphoria. I'm right, aren't I?"

Submerged in a heady haze, he gazes at the continuous wall of monitors stretching about the room. They all show her legs spread apart, dripping wet, and it just makes the painful stiffness between his legs that much more unbearable. The feeling is there, hot and desperate and hard, and it's engulfing everything.

"Ha, that's… that's good," he manages. "That's incredible. Tremendous. So, turns out we really can replicate it. And fairly well, if I might add. You were—oh, you were all shivering and… and wet. God. Good to know. Yes. Ah, very good to know. Right, okay, so, data point? Logged. Fantastic."

Wheatley runs his hands along the length of her legs, leaving small, soft bites along the smooth surface of her inner thighs. When he reaches the knobs of her knees, he gathers himself and leans backward in his chair, cables pressing tightly against his shoulder blades. One must have jostled the wrong way because a clout of white slams through his vision before flickering in spiky patterns of noise and nothing. After it rights itself and can finally see again, a convulsion arcs through him to top off the visual input: the plane of her stomach glistens with sweat, diaphragm heaving; the lean muscle of legs sports damp trails from where his mouth has been.

The knowledge that he's made her this way, that he's made her this awful and trembling mess, that he's made her use her voice, it all surges through his processors in a violent rush and shoving through his circuits and then he's gripping at the armrests of his chair, hunched and reeling, sucking in gasps of air he doesn't even need.

"All right," he breathes. His teeth pinch at his lower lip as he gazes up at her. "All right. Well, hope you've had a moment to recover. You know, get some of that energy back. You're going to need it. I'm tired of waiting and the Itch's not going to get any better by just sitting here. It's getting worse, actually. A lot worse. And as much as I wish I could… ah, satisfy it on my own, I can't. Believe me, I've tried. Was rather disappointing. Lot of build-up and nothing else, if you can believe that. Well, probably. You probably can believe that. Wouldn't exactly be in this position, now, would you?"

The serpentine coils attempt to help her back onto her feet, but her muscles fail her and she instead slumps to the floor, knees buckled and back hunched forward. Through his augments, Wheatley drinks in the lines that draw her collarbone and the shapes of her shoulders and the gentle curves of her breasts.

She really is beautiful. It's almost a shame her life must be devoted to testing.

"Shut up," he growls underneath his breath. "I know you're still there. Go away."

Listen, please—

"Thought I just told you to get lost."

You have to listen—

"No, I really don't."

She doesn't WANT this—

With a violent tremor, he shoves the voice down below through the webs of tasks and strings of code. He doesn't know why it keeps coming back. It should have been smashed out and erased long ago; he's run so many commands to get it out, but no matter what he does, it just refuses—what a stubborn wretch—and so he's stuck with this tiny burning ember inside of him, refuting everything he does, and it just spurs the bouts of static behind his eyes and makes things so bloody difficult.

The only thing he wants is to test. That's it. That's everything. Well, that and more of the euphoria. Two things: testing and euphoria. That's all he really wants. God, he wants it so bad.

"I—I need…" Fighting off the crawling cacophony inside of him, Wheatley clenches his jaws and flexes his fingers along the armrests of his chair. "I really do need a test subject for this. It's impossible without one. If it were actually possible—hypothetically speaking, of course, since it's not—you wouldn't have much of a purpose. Or any purpose at all. In fact, you'd probably be dead. You know, since I trapped you here. And took away your little portal gun. So, if I were you, I'd act a little grateful that you're such an integral part in this, ah, process."

Wheatley wills the cables to cradle her crumpled form off of the floor and bring her to her feet. The bulk of them are wrapped securely around the bends of her arms and the muscle of her calves and around the jutting bones of her ankles. As they coax her closer, he lets them loosen, but only just a touch. He doesn't want her to wriggle herself free by any means, but he doesn't dare critically injure her. He needs her.

"So, hey," he says, "while you're hanging there, just thought of something. Slightly off-topic, just a little, still in the realm of gratefulness—or, well, ungratefulness, really—but here it is: you never answered me before. Well, not that you actually can. Or can you now? You seemed rather eager just a bit ago."

He pauses a moment to give her ample time to respond, but when she makes no effort short of a glare, he continues onward with a shrug.

"Still nothing, then? No, that's fine. It's fine. Really. Don't strain yourself. Don't want you all worn out or anything. Still, though, point is, you never answered. Oh, but don't worry, I won't take it too personally. Not like you're out and about, talking to everybody else in the facility except for me. Not exactly an option. Mostly because they're all dead. Minor detail."

The cables hoist her upward a good foot or two. She's suspended in the air, the soles of her feet hanging up above the floor. She's about level with him now; her eyes seem tired and worn, but there is a harshness there, lurking down underneath.

Drawing in a breath, Wheatley extends his hand to brush the side of her cheek. Her skin is hot and sticky, but he doesn't mind. It's proof of his accomplishment with her. It's proof that he's in charge, that he can give and take, that she is completely and totally his.

The noise in his head spikes again. It climbs up into a thick, writhing mess of what might be voices or error strings or some of the data feeds he stopped processing a while ago, but he tries to push it all aside and focus.

"Anyway, getting back on track. I'll ask you again. Do you understand what I'm going through now?" His index finger traces a light line down the contours of her jaw. The uncomfortable twist of her body among the coils triggers a rough shiver down his arm. "Do you know what it's like for me? That… god, that feeling. It's so good. It's so bloody good. It's like someone's pushing every little pleasure point inside you, you know, each and every one, ones you didn't even know you had, all of them, constantly, all until you're ready to just… explode."

Chell doesn't reply, but he expects that. All she's ever been is silent and stubborn and infuriating.

What he doesn't expect is for her to nod.

For a moment, he has trouble parsing the gesture. What? She moved her head? What does that mean? What sort of primitive type of communication is that? He thinks the problem might be something sparking somewhere in his internal coding, or perhaps it's a hiccup in the connections to one of the many databases at his disposal, but he's not positive. Come to think of it, he can't access some of those files anymore. Hasn't been able to in a while, actually. Has one of them gone down?

"Oh," is all he can manage. The facility beneath wracks with another shuddering quake; fires are starting to crawl further and further up, but it doesn't register. Another second passes by, information starts to flow again, and then, "Oh, right. Good. Brilliant. Good, glad to—glad to hear it. That you understand. That will make things a lot easier."

Somewhere down below, things are breaking apart. Structures collapse; steel bends and snaps, panels crack and collapse, test chambers split into fissured fractures. The inferno at the facility's centre is threatening to consume the entire slew of lower levels, but that's not something he can concern himself with right now. Everything will be fine. It will. It must.

"So, you know what I'm going through. You know what this feels like. You understand. Took you long enough, didn't it? I mean, wow. You are stubborn. Too stubborn, really. I do appreciate some of your qualities—testing purposes and all of that, technical things, no real need to explain—but god, it's about bloody time you got it. It's like… uh, something or other about shoving square objects through round holes."

The pads of his thumbs brush along her cheekbones. There are little imperfections here and there: gentle sweeps of charcoal underneath the crescents of her eyes, small indentures of worry lines across her forehead, beads of perspiration collected by her ears and temples. She's human, mortal, flawed, and yet somehow that doesn't dampen her appeal. It's maddening because the Itch is burrowing through him, hollowing him out and pouring want through his bones, and she's now so submissive and close and he wants this so bad.

"I'm going to be honest," he says, suppressing a shiver. "Going to be honest, all right? You were pretty difficult there for a while. You know, with the whole scheming and plotting and avoiding being killed nonsense. Put a real thorn in my side. Well, not a literal thorn. I don't… I don't actually think that's possible. I mean, yeah, I've got flesh, but there's a lot of metal under all this. Tough stuff. Thorns aren't very good at piercing metal, are they? Little things. Just tiny, thorns. Wouldn't make much of—uh, right, anyway, you came around! Smart move. Due to my expert convincing, obviously. Was a smart move, though. Really, it was. I'm not kidding. I would've preferred to skip the whole bloody thing and just get straight to the testing, but the roundabout way has been rather… rewarding so far."

His thumb and forefinger shape her cheek and jaw as the rest of his hand splays across her face and into the dark, messy strands of her hair. It's never quite occurred to him until now, but seeing her here, tangled up in a slew of the chassis's cables, exposed and vulnerable and pictured endlessly around the chamber, she somehow seems so small.

"Look, love." Wheatley guides her to look at him, fingers easing along her neck, just above where the security-cable has snaked its way around. "Here it is. I've made you feel what I feel. And I'd say that went over rather well, if I'm honest. Your reaction was—well, splendid, for lack of a better word. Absolutely splendid. I liked doing that to you. Loved it. I loved having you in front of me and just… giving you the Itch and satisfying it for you. I've got that power. It's extraordinary, isn't it? I think you'll agree."

He runs his tongue along the back of his teeth. He's close enough to see sweat and pores and soft lashes. Her eyes are chips of ice staring back at him, peeling him apart from all edges of the room; there's revulsion in there, and fear and hatred and anger, but all he can see is succumbing weakness.

"But listen," he continues, "all right? Listen. As much as I hate it, you've… I need you. You can satisfy this. You can. And now I'd like to make us both feel good. I want this for the both of us. Well, mostly me because this itch is just—it's killing me, all right? I'll be honest. It's killing me. It really is. But everything will be fine, yeah? It'll be fine. It'll be perfect. You're here now. You've been good. You have. You've been a good test subject. Well, after some convincing, of course, but that's all right; what's past is past. I'll forgive you for being so bloody difficult. Wheatley's a good caretaker, after all. Really, what's a little punishment without some mercy to smooth it all over?"

Wheatley leans in close, drawing in a heavy breath. He can still smell her; she lingers on his fingers and along the edges of his mouth and down his chin. The thought of what's to come is nearly enough to make him shudder. She still inhales like she can't quite suck in enough oxygen, quick and shallow, and with the scent of her and the sweat down her skin and her warmth so close, he draws in and kisses her.

She's so very soft. It shouldn't make everything inside him stop functioning, but it does, and Wheatley soon find himself pressing at her throat, her cheek, struggling to try to run the appropriate commands to restart all of the critical processes that tend to the facility once again. He pulls away with a gasp, and the Itch reignites with a hot burst.

"You'll let me have this," he murmurs, low and threadbare. "You will. You'll let me. Please, god, let me. I… I need it. Or I'll keep my promise. You do remember that, right? What I promised. I said I'd put another hole through your head. You remember your little friend there right round your neck, yeah?"

To jog her memory, he lets it tighten. Not enough to become painful, but enough to make its presence well known. The pronged end dances a slow waltz by her temple, close and intimate, and yet not quite touching. The muscles in her throat work with a laboured swallow, her skin glistening under the harsh overhead lights of the chamber, and as a wrenching twist of heat punches through him, Wheatley decides he's nearly at the breaking point.

"So, I guess what I'm saying is—" The cords from the chassis lift her forward, tugging her closer among coils of thick black casing; a smirk curves the corner of his mouth and there is a press of elation through circuitry and wires. "Don't test me. Ha, I mean, that's my job now, isn't it? I give you tests and you complete them. I'm the one testing you, not the other way around. In other words, what I'm getting at is there's absolutely no point in fighting me. Not only do I have all the cards, you've got your hands tied. Literally."

At his command, Chell is snaked forward into his lap. The bodies of the coils still keep her arms tucked taut where she can't entertain the thought of striking him. Her legs spread to drape around his hips; the radiating heat from her comes flush with his erection and it takes every conscious process thread inside of him binding together to prevent himself from shouting. Wheatley bites into his tongue, the pain smoothing out over sensors and nerves, and it somehow dims the Itch and shoves it back from its sharpening ascent. Cables convulsing down his spine, he grips her thighs far too hard and revels in the softness of her skin.

He's compelled to reach down and touch her again, but he resists. He's been generous. He's let her have her turn. Now it's his.

"All right," he says, gritting his teeth. "All right. So, I know you can feel that. Sort of obvious with… well, everything. It's—hah, it's what we're going to be working with. Test-wise, like earlier. Your mouth was bloody amazing. It really was. But here—" He rocks his hips, grinding against her; the friction is too sweet, too addicting, too incredible, and he sinks his teeth into the flesh of his tongue again to keep from moaning. "God, you're so—so hot and wet."

Wheatley's sight flickers out again. He's not sure whether it's due to the cords fitting wrongly in the ports down his backbone as he presses against the chair or whether his augments are starting to go, but everything sinks into a static-blackness and no amount of signals to refresh or reconnect seem to correct the problem. A distant part of him grows very concerned; the chamber shakes again, enough to feel the rumble through the platform beneath him, and somewhere down below the fires warp and melt and consume.

You need to stop this—

Go away, he's busy right now, can't you just—

But the facility, please, it's going to—

Nothing! There is nothing wrong, everything is perfect, why do you insist on ruining this—

You're going to kill us both—

Us? Who's us? You don't even exist, you're worthless, you're a moron, why are you still bloody here—

For God's sake, please, just listen—

"Oh, sod off," he growls, and he shoves his face against Chell's neck before clamping down in a rough bite.

The soft noise she makes throttles through him in a surge through his circuits and it somehow jars his vision back into working order. Sucking on teeth marks and watching her flesh fill the menagerie of monitors, he cups her rear with one hand and presses her hips as close against him as he can get her. With the other, he climbs up the curve of her back and feels along her shoulder blades, her vertebrae, the dips and plateaus that shape her body in a latent sort of hunger. Perhaps it's the thick bulk of the coils around her limbs or the vast, open expanse of the Lair, or even if it's just his generous size in comparison, but he's reminded that as far as test subjects go (not that he's necessarily had any others), she's… well, rather tiny.

As he kisses the red mark on her neck and rocks feverishly into her hips, delicious wetness slicking down the girth of his cock, it occurs to him somewhere in the back of his mind that according to the things he's read, this tininess might pose a problem. He's… well, he's not exactly the smallest model. There are plenty of small and compact models, and he is definitely not one of them. He's actually very tall, and despite his lanky appearance, he's also very heavy. Something about the engineers' experimentation with metal alloys. One of the benefits of being a part of the earlier generations of androids—not that he's bitter or anything.

"Ah, before we get underway here," he says, trailing a last set of kisses along her collarbone, "I just wanted to bring something to your attention."

He runs his fingers up her ribcage, wondering just how much skin he can cover with his palms. It shouldn't, but the fact that both of his hands absolutely engulf her has him awestruck. He doesn't know why he's never noticed it before. After all he's done for her and after all the time they've spent together, it's a wonder he's never recognised the reality of just how small she is.

"Okay," says Wheatley. He rubs delicate circles along the backs of her shoulders as he nips at the inner flesh of his cheek. "Right. Okay, well, to be perfectly honest, your size—uh, lack of size, actually, if we're being technical—is different from mine. It's sort of a drastic difference. Very drastic. Not that I'm too terribly concerned. I mean, it's not a huge deal in the whole testing initiative. But let's make this clear: you are my only test subject, and you are rather small. If you hadn't noticed. So we're going to make some adjustments to make sure I don't have to go poking around for new ones."

Gently, coaxing her against his chest with his hands on her spine, he grinds against her, relishing how she feels. Everything is so close, it really is, all he needs to do is just lift her and shove himself in, that's all, everything will be fine, he'll get to feel the euphoria again—but he reins in the compulsion and smashes it as best he can.

"I don't want to—well, I don't want to crush you in the process," he admits, light and breathy against the shell of her ear. "Going to be honest, I sort of… ah, need a little help when the euphoria happens. I mean, it's so much, you know? A bit hard to deal with. Support is nice. Like the chair here. So, just to give you the proper picture, we'll be testing here, like this. With you right here on… on top of me. And I—I know you're small, that's fine, we'll… uh, if I deem it necessary, we'll try a bit slow. Testing and all. Got to figure things out first."

Sliding his hands along beneath her thighs for better purchase, he works his joints and slowly starts to lift her. The cables coil together and offer their strength to help draw her up. Slickness drips down soft skin and he finds that the anticipation has become crushing; it gnaws at his inner workings and wires, curling too closely on the undersides of the metal shell beneath his flesh, and the swelling noise inside his head makes it more and more difficult to focus.

"I want you," he breathes, angling himself so that the very tip presses against her, just barely. "I really, really want you. I'm not even joking. I wish I was. I just want you so… so bad."

Wheatley clenches his jaws and bites into his tongue again because every process inside of him is screaming to give in to this compulsion to shove her down and fuck her but he resists, he has to resist, this must be on his terms—this is his facility, he's in control, he's the one who's in charge, not Her, not this, not anybody else—but with Chell so close and in his lap, his willpower is draining alarmingly fast. The look she's giving him doesn't help; her whole body is trembling in his grasp, breasts heaving with every inhale, and her eyes have become cool and half-lidded.

He digs his hands into her hips, fingers pressing into lean muscle and rigid bone. Wetness soaks the head of his cock, dripping in little rivulets and smearing with his own fluid that's already begun to bead. It aches and he's so full and his abdomen is seizing up because it's taking absolutely everything he has not to push further in like he truly wants.

"You want this, too, don't you?" he asks, gasping. "You're just… there's no way you can't. Want this, that is. I don't—hah, I don't know how much you're aware, brain damage and all, but you're just… so fucking wet. God."

Fire sears through him, pulling through every circuit and wire and cord and it's so bloody painful but it feels so good. He rubs against her, a slow and tentative gesture. The heat of her jams through synthetic flesh and sensors and nerves and—god, he can't handle it, he's so desperate, he needs this—and with the Itch digging down his back and roiling within, he relents at last and sinks the first inch or two of himself into her with a shuddering gasp.

"You're—" Wheatley's vocal units short in a snap of static and he is forced to clear them. "You're really—you really are tiny, aren't you? I mean, fingers are one thing, ah, several things, actually, but not like… like this. F—fuck."

Wheatley is stuck on consonants. His mind is blinding static again and he can't see anything; not a thing, nothing, nothing at all, not even the walls of monitors that should picture her open mouth and her arching backbone. It occurs to him somewhere underneath that something must have gone out, that his augments have failed, that something needs to be fixed, but that's not important right now, and so it gets shoved down where he can't sense it anymore.

"I can't take it," he says, and it sounds off-key, displaced, like another has decided to adopt his voice. "You're—hah, I can't take it. I can't. I can't. God, I can't."

The landscape of her body smooths out beneath his starving hands as the coils shift to hold her in position. Her heartbeat pulses against his palms and he can hear its fluttering thrum inside his body, splicing itself to metallic bones and sinewy synthetic tendon. He doesn't need to see to know where she is. It doesn't matter if he's blind. He can feel.

"I need this," he whispers, grazing his teeth along her shoulder. She's clenching around the head of his cock and there are inaudible noises pulling out of her throat and everything is so wet and incredible and he absolutely can't stand it anymore. "Really, I do, I need it. Just—just brace yourself. I want us both to feel this. It'll, hah, it'll be good, I promise. All right? Just be good for me. I know you can. I'll—I'll make you feel bloody amazing."

His first thrust is like someone has injected him with liquid fire. It ripples from the base of his spinal column and tears up through each port and cable, and as she squeezes around him and sucks him in, he swears there is something among the roiling static that dictates the meaning and purpose of life. He's being held together by nothing, held back by nothing; he is a deity in this place, and there is no one and nothing that can mock him or tell him no—

You can't do this, you can't—

Shut up, you're ruining this, He won't stand for it, this isn't your place anymore—

But you must, please, please listen, please—

Shut up! God, don't you ever shut up? Don't you ever go away? For God's sake, no one wants you, no one LIKES you, you're small and stupid and weak, even She saw that, She wanted you dead, She told you that you were a moron and She was bloody right—

You've broken her, you're destroying her, she's done so bloody much for you—

Done? Done what? Oh, sorry, defied him? She should be grateful he's even wasting his time with her; she could be dancing over lasers and rushing past turrets and hoping bullets don't split down her spine instead of—

Why are you DOING this, you can't, she liked you, she really did, she bloody liked you and you CAN'T—

"Damn it, shut up! I'll fuck her as hard as I bloody well like and there's nothing you can do to stop me!"

He drives in as much as he can with a single stroke. Everything is hot and soaked and tight and god, not even her mouth was like that, she's so bloody tight, there's so much friction, he can't stand it, and with a sharp breath, he draws out and shoves himself back in again. The Itch has become a monster; pleasure pinches down his back and curls around him with each thrust, but it's not enough. It's never enough. Before was so perfect and so good and he loved it, but this is just—oh, this is—

"God," he says, his voice thick and husky, "god, you're—aaaaah, you're so good, you feel incredible, how, I—"

Wheatley bites off the last of his sentence in a needy moan and forces it against the tender marks he's made on her neck, right by the black body of the lingering cord. With the promise of euphoria so very close, he continues to rock his hips and work her down to meet his even rhythm. The cables lend their assistance in the task, tugging her up and pushing her downward by bundles snaked around the crooks of her arms and knees and the edges of her ankles.

"Why couldn't we have just—you know, why didn't we just do this before," he rasps, gripping her hips and shoving her down. The feeling of him filling her up inside makes him shiver and his mind is a blur and all that he can register is the warm, tight wetness around his cock. "None of that—that killing nonsense, you know, just madness, absolutely no point, this is—haaah—this is better, so much better. I mean, god, why kill you? Bloody stupid—just, ahh, could've done this the whole time, never would've had to go about wanting you dead, not when you do this to me, oh, never."

The facility around him shakes again, more violent and prevalent than before, but he pays it no mind. Whatever is left of him that can still interpret the surviving data feeds from Her chassis has noted a distinct increase in temperature within the surrounding room, but he assumes that's because he currently has a test subject directly on top of him and she's running incredibly hot.

It doesn't matter, anyway. The euphoria is so close. He can feel it. Everything is starting to sharpen and the wracking pleasure spikes with every thrust, but it's still not enough.

"You're so—so tight." Wheatley frames her ribs with his hands and cups her breasts, letting the cables continue his work. He can't see her no matter how many times he tries to refresh his sight, but he knows her mouth is open and he knows she's breathing so very hard and he knows there's sweat rolling down her belly and along the curve of her back. "I'm, ah, I know it's, hah, probably uncomfortable, maybe, I don't know, but you feel—you feel so bloody good, you really do, I'm—god, I want this, I've wanted it so bad, I deserve this, come on, aaah, I—"

Somewhere in the midst, Chell kisses him. Or does he kiss her? He doesn't know; everything is an indiscernible conglomerate of touch and movement and darkness and yes yes god yes please. All he knows is that his mouth is on hers and his words are lost on her tongue, and before he knows it, his arms are around her and she's flush with his chest, so warm, and each stroke into her tightens the Itch to an increasingly unbearable degree.

Breathing against the heat from between her lips and eager for some sort of release, he picks up the pace. The cables obey without question; they draw her up just high enough, and then lower her down so he can fill her with one hard thrust. The tensing of her inner muscles have him reeling, sparking, running the bare minimum functions, and he has no choice but to groan into her mouth as the cords from the chassis push her down onto his cock. The facility succumbs to another quake, and Wheatley grips onto her, moving his hips, frantic to reach what he cannot achieve alone.

"Come on, come on," he chants, driving himself in and out with frenzied haste. "Come on, aaah, give it to me, I want it, need it—it's so good, just let me, haah, I want to come—you're mine, you've got to, got no bloody choice, I'm your boss, listen to me, god, obey me, give it—"

Everything comes to a halting stop as the solution euphoria pumps in. Pleasure lances through his inner circuitry, hot and burning and endless, and it threatens to imprint itself through every active task and process. He can't parse anything; he's overcome, swept away, submerged, consumed. The data feeds have become nothing but meaningless packets of unintelligible disjointed code. He's hilt-deep, pulsing within her as his hips continue to rock with shallow, not-quite thrusts; a surge of thick fluid fills her, he can feel it, and he pushes in as deep as he can, riding the rest of the high—she's his, all of her, down to the very last atom.

His entire body shakes with the facility beneath. The peak is too far, too high, too much. He's somehow dizzy and satisfied and whole, plunged in profound rapture. Nothing is better than this, nothing at all; this is what it's like being God.

This is all he's ever wanted: euphoria, the facility, and her.

As the Itch recedes in a sudden sharp withdrawal, Wheatley is left in spinning shock. The noise in his head stills into a cool, eerie silence, and he feels something retract its claws as it plummets away somewhere inside. He's left in his chair, gasping, blind and free and overwhelmed and utterly distraught, and with Chell clutched tightly against his chest.

Oh, god, he thinks. God, He's finally gone. He can barely move and his mind is a complete mess and the entire bloody place is in utter shambles but He's gone, He's gone, He's gone!

And he—he doesn't know why. Or how. Or for how long. Did the solution dose send the Other into remission? Is that even possible? Maybe. It might be. Knowing this godforsaken place, that sounds like something that very well might happen. The dose was nearly catastrophic in size; he felt it, and he's sure He felt the brunt of it, too, so maybe He's off recovering somewhere. That's a potential thing. Right? Recovering?

God. He can only hope.

Gently, he cradles Chell close as he slumps down into the body of the chair, pulling himself out from within her. Somehow amongst his garbled thoughts, he manages to execute the proper subroutines to banish the coiled cables around her body. They withdraw with what seems like reluctance, snaking up and away from her with tentative movements back toward the chassis. He can't see, but angry marks and moulded flesh are left in their wake under the pads of his curious fingers.

"Hey," he whispers against her ear, his hands kneading down her shoulder blades in what he hopes are soothing patterns. "Listen, please, I'm—He's gone. All right? It's okay, He's gone. I don't know how long I've got before He comes back. Listen, please, I need you to—to disconnect some of these. All right? Can you do that?"

With gingerly movements, he encompasses one of her small hands in his own and guides it toward the back of his neck. Opening her fingers, he closes them around one of the black cables and sets the force of her grip. She doesn't resist his lead, and that alone unspools another torrent of icy guilt.

"Just—just tug them out," says Wheatley, coaxing her to unplug the cable. "Well, some of them. Not all of them, though. I-I still need some sort of connection to work what's left. But if I'm not fully integrated, it might delay it. Or at least I hope. I really, really hope."

The facility shudders beneath him, hot and violent and furious, and then all of the alerts and warnings he's suppressed come spilling out of his internal queue in a discord of shouts and screams. One in particular reroutes to the room, the loudest of them all, distortion and clatter and peril:

"WARNING: CORE OVERHEATING. NUCLEAR MELTDOWN IMMINENT."

"Oh, god," he whispers. "God, that's not good. Can't be good. All right, come on now, hurry, one at a time, come on."

Wheatley leans forward, taking a hold of her other hand to help her reach. The one wrapped around the cord at his back finally disengages it with a rough yank, and for a split moment everything freezes: sound, data feeds, error strings, processing, everything; a silent and still snapshot of chaos. Pain digs into his receptors, sharp and grating, and he grits his teeth together as it floods him.

"Aaaaaaaah—no, that's it, I'm fine, really, I'm fine, go on, I just—"

He hisses as another cable is removed from the port column down his backbone. Her hands have begun to move on their own accord now, although he doesn't know if that can be interpreted as good or bad after what he's done.

God. What has he done?

What has He done?

"That one hurt," he mumbles into the darkness, but it doesn't matter; nothing matters right now. He has to be disconnected or something terrible will happen. "No, go on, keep going. Couple more now. You're doing great, you're fantastic, come on, aagh—" Another flash of gnarled warnings stringing into elongated cries as more are wrenched free. "Okay, perfect. No, no, that's great, I-I'm good now. Should be fine. Should."

Only two cords remain, bolted right where his skull meets his spine: the two main channels to control the bare bones of the facility. Chell's hands have retreated elsewhere. He thinks she may be holding herself or tending to her sure-to-be-bruises, but he can't quite discern in the dark. His frayed disconnection from the mainframe offers him a much blurrier picture with too much missing detail; he can't rely on it to guide him any longer.

Drawing in a breath, Wheatley opens his arms and gathers her up. When he cinches around her waist and starts to lift himself from the chair, she slugs him full on in the chest. Agony ripples through his receptors, and he crumples forward to the floor with her in tow, knees slamming against cold metal panels. In the midst, she attempts to wriggle out, and he can feel the warmth of her slipping as she thrashes out from his grasp.

"No, come on, please," he begs, blindly reaching after her. His hand clasps onto her leg, but she kicks it away. "Come on, I've got to get you out of here! Only I can get you across—you can't jump that, believe me, He made sure of it, especially not without those boots. Oh, god, your boots. Where are they?"

He tries to remember, but something might have been damaged. He doesn't even know if his memories are stored locally anymore. That might explain the file accessing issue and the database conundrum, he supposes.

"Look," he says, desperately, "I-I can't see that well. Something's on the blink… augments stopped working or something, I don't know—no, come on, forget the boots, I need you to guide me."

Crawling, he feels out for her along the metal with splayed fingers. The soft scuffles of her movement pricks through his sensors, but he can't quite place where she is. Everything feels like it's spinning.

"Please?" He would know if she jumped, right? "I know you—look, I understand, I know, you don't want anything to do with me and that's fine, I'm completely for it, I… I just want to get you out. I promise. Please, you've got to believe me. I know, I know I promised before, but this is—just, not to rush you in any way, but this is extremely time sensitive, as in I literally do not know how much time we have before this bloody place explodes or before He comes back, so please, let me get you out of here while that's still an option. A very, very fastly fading option."

When she touches his shoulders, Wheatley finds that she's clothed again. She must have gone to retrieve the orange jumpsuit he left near the edge of the platform. Honestly, he doesn't blame her. He did manage to shred the rest, after all. The reminder sinks under his metal carapace and twists amongst wires and lines of coding, sluicing remorse and regret through what little function he has left.

Awkwardly, Wheatley manages to rise to his knees. The receptors in his abdomen still sting with hurt and it's difficult to maintain a proper posture, but he holds out his arms for her.

"Need you to guide me," he says, scooping her up. "Ah, over to the lift. You can do that, can't you? Just… uh, tap me on the arm or something. However you want. Her body and all the little guys'll do the rest."

Chell does so to the best of her ability. She squeezes the flesh on his forearms to direct him either left, right, or straight. The cables from the chassis coil around Wheatley's legs and bring them across according his blind interpretation of her wordless navigation. When she taps both of his arms at once, he brings them to a halt.

"Is this it? Are we there?" Tentatively, he reaches out with his foot. When his toes touch the cool surface of metal, he wills the cables to let them descend upon the platform. "All right… all right, good. Here we are. Down you go. Careful now."

He lets her go with shaking hands. Chell twists away in a heartbeat; shifting toward the lift, he's sure. In the back of his head, he struggles with the subroutines that trigger events in the facility. One of them has to be what he's looking for, so he keeps executing them until he finally hears the hiss of the doors sliding open and the hum of the machinery as it rises from its place beneath the floor to meet her.

"Go on, get in," he urges. "I'm… I'm rerouting the lift. It'll take you to the surface. I-I don't know where exactly or… or what's up there. I'm too disconnected, I can't access the maps of the facility. Not that I really could to begin with. Um, I don't exactly know where everything is. But it'll take you, okay? It will. You'll be out of here. You'll be free. And when you get out, run. God, please, run. This place—"

The entire room buckles with a vibrating quake, monitors snapping from the walls. He hears the screech of metal clashing against metal, and then broken pieces glittering down to the open abyss underneath the platform. The inferno is closer now, fierce and raging and impossibly hot, climbing up from the world down below, and everything clamps up inside of him as he tries to halt all that might impede her escape.

"This place is… It's done for," he says. "You've got to run, please, you'll be killed, I can't—"

Another tremor cracks through the chamber. Wheatley sinks to his knees in a heap on the floor, the final two cables resting along the length of his back. Something inside of him is wrong, wrong, wrong; it's coming back now, slowly, rising up—

"I… I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I never—I never meant for this. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. I was going to call the lift for you. I was. I meant to. I wanted us to leave, I really did. Just—something happened and then I couldn't…"

Wheatley can't see, but he glances toward where the cables stretch across the room and roll back up into the bulk of the chassis overhead. The data feeds are jumbled and mashed together and it's difficult to create a clear picture, but he knows there are spools of the black lines up there, going every which way, stretching across the room to where they let him take her.

"Something's up there," he whispers. "I'm so sorry. I-I didn't… I didn't want this."

Somewhere on the outskirts of his perception, he senses her draw close. The scuffs of her long fall boots flicker in his head and he flinches in anticipation of some sort of deserved punishment or retribution for all the horrifying things he's done—because he deserves it, he does; he's been a monster, a right terrible monster, and she's got every right—but it's not.

Gently, her fingers line his jaws and her lips press to the tip of his nose.

"I know," says Chell.

Wheatley opens his mouth to reply (there's so much he wants to say, needs to say; there's so much he needs to apologise for, so much, so incredibly much), but before he can, a vivid and violent red seeps into the darkness of his vision and then that feeling of wrongness overwhelms him.

"Oh, god," he rasps. "God, He's coming back. Quickly, go, get in, you've got to go, get to the surface, go, go!"

Not even a second passes before the whisk of the lift door closing registers in his head. He can feel the gears start to churn as the lift starts its hasty ascent, and he imagines her there, looking out the glass at him from above, still stoic and beautiful and tenacious as ever, and it makes something within him ache.

She's out of the Lair and onto the next set of chambers above before his strength wears out and He returns. The Other's animosity is damning, crushing, consuming; it rips into him and tears at every thread and active process until he's ready to scream, but he curls in on himself and bites his tongue, channelling everything he has left to keep Him at bay.

WHERE IS SHE—

"No, you can't, leave her alone—"

WHAT DID YOU DO WITH HER—

"She's gone, she's gone, I've let her go, you can't—"

SHE CAN'T BE GONE. SHE'S THE ONLY LIVING TEST SUBJECT. HOW AM I—

"She's gone, I set her loose! She's on her way to the bloody surface now and there's nothing you can do about it, she's FREE—"

YOU CAN'T DO THIS. THINK OF ALL YOU'RE GIVING UP—

"I can do it and I will! In fact, I already did, so there's sod all you can do about it now—"

YOU WILL REGRET EVERYTHING. YOU CAN'T DO THIS—

"Yes, yes, I can! That's the great thing about being in control, innit? I bloody well can and—"

I MADE YOU A GOD—

"Oh, that's right, you did, didn't you? You did, but you know what—"

I MADE YOU—

"No, SHUT UP! It's my turn now, and do you know what? If I'm a god and you're going against my will, my command, what does that make you?"

Wheatley gathers himself and stands to his feet, turning to glare blindly at the hulking form of the chassis bolted into the ceiling. Thick black cables string up from across the room and into its sides; the rest hang limp by his chair in the centre platform, dangling in the stagnant, adrenal vapour fuelled air.

"I'm back in control now," he seethes through gritted teeth. "All right? You hear me? You're not getting her again. You're not. She's not yours. She's… She didn't deserve this. God, she was kept here for who knows how long—not that you'd know that, would you? Never bothered to learn about her, never wanted to read her files, nothing but use her—she was just, here, constantly, having to test for Her and then having to test for—for me—and—"

His fists clench and he presses the heels of his palms against his forehead, pushing back the Other's attempts to wrest control from him again. It's creeping and sharp, dragging in places it never should; a shadow sinking down through everything, everything, his components, his programming, his core, his very essence; it pulls and pries and slips in through splinters and fractures, dominating from the inside out.

YOU'RE GIVING ALL OF THIS UP—

"I don't bloody care what I'm—"

HOW ARE YOU GOING TO ACHIEVE THE SOLUTION EUPHORIA NOW—

"I don't want the stupid fucking euphoria, I don't—"

BUT YOU DO. I KNOW YOU DO; WE BOTH LOVED IT—

"Shut up! No, I didn't, I don't—"

YOU ENJOYED WHAT WE DID TO HER—

"God DAMN it, shut up—"

YOU LOVED IT, YOU WANTED HER—

"NO!"

Wheatley clenches his jaws and slams his fists into the panel beneath him. The fires below have started to enter the walls, he can feel it, they're festering inside of him and it's almost too much to bear, but he has to keep her safe. She's so close now, she must be; he can still feel the lift running somewhere. It doesn't matter what it takes—he'll keep Him from her, whatever the cost.

"No," he breathes. "No, I didn't. I didn't. Not… not like this. I never wanted to hurt her. I-If she wanted to—if she wanted me, I would have—"

SHE NEVER WOULD HAVE WANTED YOU, MORON.

"No, YOU'RE the bloody moron! You let me back in charge! Smart move, letting me in, right when you're off recovering or whatever else after using her! And guess what? We're all going to bloody die! The whole facility is going to self-destruct!"

He smashes his hand through the panel, flesh splintering and wires and metallic bones staring back at his unseeing eyes. Through the hole, the maw below glows with an increasing heat. Warnings are slamming through his mind in an endless stream, error, error, nuclear meltdown, imminent annihilation, please evacuate, but he stares into nothingness and clenches his broken hand.

"I don't want to die," says Wheatley. "But I'm… I'm going to let it."

YOU WILL NOT!

Before Wheatley can react, cables whip from the chassis in a flurry and rope toward him, coiling up around his legs and arms. They constrict, twisting too tight, threatening to compress and break through his alloyed hull. Wrenching him off of the platform, they snake him toward the centre of the room, climbing up toward Her body.

"Stop it!" He tries to break free, but he's too damaged, too weak; his strength can't match that of the slew of cords. "Stop it! What are you doing? This isn't going to make it any better! You're fucking mental, it's too late, the place is still going to explode whether you're in charge or not!"

I NEED HER—

The walls have begun to fissure. Surviving monitors shatter and break away, plummeting down into the fires below. He can't see, but the platform beneath Her body is starting to unhinge and fall apart. The chair, bolted to one of the remaining panels, descends into the swelling inferno.

THIS IS MY FACILITY. MINE, MINE, MINE—

"Not your facility, mate," says Wheatley, and plunges a hand into the chassis.

Metal crunches against his knuckles. Wires wrap around his fingers and spark when he squeezes and rips. Jolts of electricity arc through his system in staccato bursts, skipping through his circuitry and setting everything into disarray. The Other thrashes inside of him in a whirling rage; the tumult of voices starts to dim and flames crawl up all around, encroaching Her body's hull.

The lift has made it to the surface. Wheatley is too far disconnected to truly feel, but he imagines her stepping out between the glass doors. He imagines her running for her life, lungs pumping and legs pushing her to the freedom she so desperately seeks.

He hopes it's nice up there.

He hopes she'll be safe.

"It's mine," he says.