“All right,” she said, poking at him with the maintenance arm.  “The sooner you leave, the sooner you can come back.”
                          
He snuck in a nuzzle before turning and heading out.          
                          

                          
He spent the time reading very carefully about poker in the database.  He’d done this before, many times in fact, but he wanted to make things as easy as possible.  He also wanted to be able to know which hand he had without having to figure out how to trick GLaDOS into telling him.  He felt he had a pretty good grasp on things now, though, and he felt quite optimistic on the trip back.  And even if he was terrible at poker, it didn’t matter, because now she’d be done that damn whatever it was and he wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.
                          
She didn’t look like she was working on it, though; she was lying down and not a monitor in sight.  Wheatley frowned, feeling a little hurt.  She hadn’t lied to get him out of the room… right?  She wouldn’t do that, would she?
                          
“Gladys?” he called out.  “What’re you uh… what’re you doing?”

                          
She snapped upwards, optic flashing as she focused on him.  “I know how this looks,” she said, a little urgently.  “But I… needed a minute to myself.  I needed to focus on my own thoughts.  I really did think finishing up that project would take four hours.  I only closed the program ten minutes ago.  I was just taking a moment’s peace, Wheatley.”
                          
That made sense.  Honestly he didn’t care, now that he knew she hadn’t lied.  “D’you need more time, luv?” he asked softly, so that she would know he wasn’t upset.  She shook her core.
                          
“I’m fine for now.”
                          
The last time they’d played cards, the backs had been adorned with little red diamonds.  These carried the Aperture logo and the same types of numbers used in the test chambers, and instead of red and black they were orange and blue.  They were quite spiffy, and Wheatley told her so admiringly.  
                          
“Aren’t they,” GLaDOS said, obviously pleased with herself, and she thoughtfully inspected the one she was holding.  “I haven’t used these ones in a while.  Well.  Their virtual counterparts, anyway.”
                          
“Hm?” Wheatley asked vaguely, wondering if that was the start of a full house.  He wouldn’t really get that lucky on the first deal, would he?
                          
“For all the decks I have, I have a virtual deck to go along with it.  Sometimes I play solitaire with this deck.”
                          
“Solitaire?”  He looked up from his card rack.  “What’s… what’s that?”
                          
“As the name implies, it’s a game you play by yourself,” GLaDOS answered, giving him a pile of chips.  “You lay the cards out in a certain configuration, and the goal is to sort the cards according to suit.  However, while you’re attempting to do that you must also sort the cards in descending order while still in said configuration.”  She straightened the top of her own stack of chips.  “I don’t play very often.  It’s honestly more effort to set the game up than it is to play it.  Sometimes I still do, but only to see if I got any slower.”
                          
“Slower at what?”
                          
“My processing speed,” she answered.  “Are you betting?”
                          
He decided to match her blind and moved the appropriate amount of chips between them, and when he’d moved the maintenance arm out of the way she dealt the flop.  “Wouldn’t you notice if your uh, if your processing speed dropped?” he asked, disappointed to see that he did not, in fact, have a full house.  
                          
“It depends on how much,” she answered.  “It hasn’t changed too drastically since I first started measuring it, but there are so many variables as to how it could change that it’s conceivable I might not notice for a little while.”  She raised, forcing Wheatley to match her bet or fold, which he didn’t want to do on the very first round.  He didn’t really have anything, but then again she didn’t know that.