#and chell just stays alive out of sheer spite

[keroa]

I think chell would somehow live to 100+ years old because she would be too stubborn to die

[sarcasticgaypotato]

(( For @bondibee‘s ‘Love as a Construct’ AU. )) Lipstick. Chell hadn’t really paid it any mind at first. Frankly, when kissing a former arch enemy, the sheer strangeness of the situation was usually the first thing on her mind, followed by a close second of surprise that an AI who had just recently inhabited a human body caught on to being a good kisser so quickly. Needless to say, Chell’s mind hadn’t really been focused on much besides the act itself, focusing on finding every last bit of enjoyment in every moment that could be their last, considering they could end up blown to pieces before they even had the time to pull apart. It really only was when she happened be passing by a pane of glass that she caught sight of her own reflection, and realized a little something. They were both covered in a mixture of scrapes and bruises, dried blood, dirt and smudges of oil. Neither of them really looked particularly clean.  GLaDOS, for example, still had the remains of a bloody nose, with bits of dried blood on her upper lip and chin.  She also had smudges of black around her lips, which Chell knew to be lipstick that was no doubt once pristine, but now had either been rubbed off, or smeared. Only thing was, Chell now had a pretty good idea where most of those traces of lipstick had ended up. On herself.  The corners of her lips, along her jaw, on her neck, and even a few smaller ones along her collarbone.  To be fair, she remembered pretty well how she got the ones on her face, she just hadn’t put two and two together at the time. However, the rest of them were a bit different. Chell had stopped paying attention to much of what GLaDOS did in her arms if she was in the middle of a potentially dangerous puzzle, but she still found herself somewhat bemused to think that she hadn’t noticed the smaller, sneakier kisses being pressed against her skin.  Sure, light amounts of pressure on her skin were nothing compared to nearly being grazed by a bullet, or feeling the heat of a laser so uncomfortably close she could’ve sworn it burned the hair off her arms, but really? She looked down to the former core in her arms for an explanation, and found GLaDOS conveniently asleep. For a moment, Chell considered waking her- if she even was truly asleep, Chell wouldn’t put it past the core to fake it- but decided against it, knowing that GLaDOS would no doubt avoid the question in favor of chastising Chell for focusing on something so frivolous when they needed to be focusing on stopping Aperture from exploding. Still, as Chell set back off through the facility, she found her mind lingering on the subject, as the recently discovered marks somehow seemed to burn against her skin the more she tried to ignore them. This wasn’t exactly unlike GLaDOS.  If there was one thing that Chell was made completely certain of- judging by how much the Aperture logo littered everything that Chell wore- GLaDOS liked to leave her mark on things. Things that were hers. Her facility, her testing apparatuses, and apparently, her test subjects. If Chell had made this connection earlier, she might’ve taken a minute to see if she could burn the logo off everything she wore, or scratch it out with dirt or blood, just to spite the facility that she loathed and the creature at the head of it.  Now this, on the other hand, was a little different. Rather than refuse her travelling companion of something that clearly kept her happy and relatively quiet, Chell decided on simply getting even.

--------- She waited patiently until their next real break.  They couldn’t take many, and they had to be brief, but Chell was only human, and while she might’ve been able to jump through test chambers all day long, that didn’t account for carrying around a fully grown human- or AI in a human body- almost the entire time.  If she didn’t take a few minutes to catch her breath, she’d end up dead. Either by exhaustion alone, or making a careless mistake. GLaDOS didn’t seem to mind, both getting the chance to stretch her limbs, and for the two of them to take their minds off things.  Perhaps it was a bad idea, to pretend for a couple minutes that they weren’t in a life or death situation. Perhaps zeroing in on the fear of death would give them the extra push they needed to move a little faster, and increase their chances of survival. But Chell didn’t want to die miserable. If she was going to die- and she had confronted that possibility several times over the course of her stay in Aperture- she either wanted to die victorious, or die happy. And if that meant using her last moments alive to think back to just how it felt to have human contact again?  Chell was going to take the risk of a five minute break, it was worth it. Besides, she didn’t hear any complaints from GLaDOS’s end-disregarding the fact that Chell’s mouth on hers gave the core very little chances to complain- and instead, only heard soft hums of approval as she cautiously pulled away, turning her focus to a new target. She didn’t have the advantage of lipstick to smear, and unless she managed to find a permanent marker with which to scrawl her name all over GLaDOS’s forehead while she slept, Chell only saw one, acceptable option of making things even. To add some new bruises, albeit far more comfortably gained ones, to the space where GLaDOS’s neck met her shoulder, the soft expanse of skin, fair, and mostly unmarred- side from the cuts and scrapes that Chell was mindful to ignore.   She found herself wondering, as she pressed her lips against the crook of the core’s neck and began carefully attempting to leave a mark, if GLaDOS would say something. Object to Chell’s actions, or at least question them.   For a moment, it seemed like she would. GLaDOS’s lips parted, and an exhale left them with the faint sound of a question that died on her tongue moments before she would’ve said it.  Instead, GLaDOS simply tilted her head to the side, giving Chell better access. Chell couldn’t have said how much time passed. How long they stood there, with GLaDOS’s back to the wall, and Chell leaned down in front of her.  But Chell knew that, by the time the next big tremor shook the facility and brought them back to the moment, she had left at least four solid bruises along GLaDOS’s neck, starkly standing out against her pale complexion. It brought her an odd sense of satisfaction to see it- to the point where she almost understood why GLaDOS was so fond of tagging everything she possibly could- and even more so to think that GLaDOS might not have even been aware of the extent of what now stood out like a sore thumb on her form.  Surely, the former Queen of Aperture would object to having difficult to hide love-bites being paraded around so openly, and that was part of what made it so enjoyable to look at. “If...if you’re quite finished assaulting my neck with your mouth like some kind of failed vampire, we really should be getting a move on. We’re close to the central chamber, and frankly I’d like a chance to get my hands on that little moron before the facility caves in on us both.” GLaDOS’s voice held a bit of a stammer in it as she carefully brushed herself off, pushing Chell back and shooting her a look that desperately tried to hold an ounce of contempt in it. However, despite her suddenly sour disposition, Chell knew what GLaDOS truly looked like when she was unhappy, and this wasn’t it. In a swift, now quite practiced motion, Chell scooped the core up, unable to keep a small smile off her face upon seeing how GLaDOS reflexively wrapped her arms around Chell’s neck for support, seemingly without needing to think about it. They could die today. It was a rather large possibility, in fact. But if they did, Chell certainly didn’t mind this being the last memory she had of Aperture.