You know the thing about Portal, other than the fact it's amazing? It sparks my writing muse like whoah, especially after seeing the end to Portal 2. The very, very end after the credits; will anyone hold it against me if I said that that scene made me cry like a baby? Wheatley deserves a happy ending, damn it!
Be warned: This is a /human/ AU. Meaning that yes, Wheatley is human in this story and, for the sake of this tale, the Combine or Aperture incident never happened. That being said, let's get going~
PS. From this point forward, I shall call this pairing "Chelley," for short.
Wheatley sighed and shut yet another handbook, carelessly tossing it onto the collecting pile of handbooks on his bed. Seriously, confessing shouldn't be this hard! All he had to do was walk up to Chell, tell her he loved her, and then if she rejected him go sulk in a corner somewhere. And therein laid the problem, whenever he tried to confess he got nervous, and whenever he got nervous he rambled, and whenever he rambled the topic strayed from what its original intention was entirely (the last time he had tried to confess, somehow the conversation had ended with a theory between the two of them that the Aperture Science-Black Mesa rivalry began when Black Mesa beat Aperture in a softball game). He took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes, exactly how long had he been going at this?
"Well," he thought allowed, replacing his glasses on his face and instead running a hand through perpetually messy hair, "maybe if all these guidebooks didn't spout rubbish I wouldn't be having this problem!" he wasn't kidding when he said that, almost each and every one of those books said the same things, just worded differently.
"Tell the girl you love she's beautiful every day. Give her gifts when you can. Kiss her as often as you can," (Wheatley had turned a rather impressive shade of red at the notion of kissing Chell when he read sentences like this) "some women like men who can sing," is where he stopped and gave up for the night. To be fair he could sing (lead soloist in the church's choir back in Bristol when he was a boy. Thank you very much), but after Chell had walked in on him singing the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" into an empty Styrofoam cup in their facility's break room last week… yeeeeeaah, singing was out.
He frowned when he saw the time that his wristwatch displayed; 2:45 AM. Had he really been going at this for the past four hours? He didn't even focus this hard on his work half the time! Although, again, to be fair, Aperture Science wasn't exactly the best when it came to checking if their employees were really working, you could basically get away with anything so long as you slapped, "for science" at the end or, "I'm using –insert non-work related activity here- for a new experiment" and you were off scott free. The only person in the entirety of the company who actually seemed to care was the supervisor, Caroline Glados.
Ah, there, see? He was rambling, internal as it may have been it was still rambling. Wheatley yawned widely and, giving a half-hearted look at the pile of books on his bed, shrugged and swept them all onto the floor before falling face first onto his pillow. Then remembering that falling face-first into anything with glasses on was rather uncomfortable, sat back up, put them on the nightstand, and then face planted into his pillow.
"Have you tried…poetry?" Gordon Freeman asked the smaller man, idly sliding a hot cup of coffee between one hand and the other on the table. The brunette looked almost pitifully at his near-decade old friend, who currently had his arms splayed over the table like some sort of starfish. "The rare and exotic S.M. Wheatley starfish…" Gordon thought humorously, chucking over the rim of his mug.
"You know I have no literary talents." Wheatley said, lifting his head the bare minimum so he could look at his flat-mate over the rims of his glasses. Did he ever tell Gordon that he looked vaguely like a bear to him when Wheatley wasn't wearing them? "I spent all my time in university learning about biology and physics."
"So did I, pretty much. Was there a point in there somewhere?" Wheatley opened his mouth to rebut his friend's statement, but couldn't find one. Instead he turned his attention back to the table. "Then again, Chell isn't really into poetry, is she?"
"Not particularly…"
"Or material possessions, or stuffed toys, or overly-sappy cards, or jewelry more extravagant than earrings, or-"
"Okay, okay, I get your point mate." The Biologist cut in raising a hand to stop the physicist from reading off his mental list: Things Chell Portell Is Not Interested In, But Other Women Are. "Why are we both in love with women who are so stubborn?" Wheatley asked helplessly, finally lifting his head off the table. Gordon shrugged,
"Maybe it has something to do with women and science. Oh, and for the record: Alyx is just slightly less stubborn than Chell. Just throwing that out there."
"…Thanks. Thanks mate, way to really boost my confidence; really, thank you so much."
"Anytime, Wheat."
Work at Aperture Science wasn't anything extraordinary that day (unless you counted a rather unfortunate incident with Propulsion Gel and a sleeping person that had been mistaken as a crash-test dummy. Tragic that, very tragic), and as expected Wheatley was always glowing when Chell walked over to their table in the lunch room, since the two worked in completely different departments (him working in the Biology department, and her Technology), it also made him feel bloody ecstatic whenever Chell spoke to him; she hardly ever talked to anyone really.
"I'll never understand why they want their turrets to have cute voices." Chell noted dryly as she rubbed at her throat, gladly accepting the cup of water that had been pushed in her direction. "I just got out of recording lines for the stupid things for the past two hours."
"By 'cute voices', what do you mean? Like, sickly sweet 'I'm gonna kill you in your sleep, Mummy!' voices?" Chell nodded before taking a generous gulp of water.
Wheatley's mind wondered back to those stupid guidebooks for a moment, Begin simple; ask what kind of flowers she likes rang in his head. Alright, alright it was true that Chell didn't like things most women did; but it was worth a shot. "I have a question for you. I-it's not about what you think of your department this time. You almost got in trouble when I asked about that last time because Glados chose that exact moment to come in and speak to you, it's a-"
"You're rambling." The dark haired woman said simply, Wheatley blinked and pushed his glasses up nervously.
"Right, right, right. Sorry. So here's my question-and you don't have to answer it if you don't want to-but… what is your… favoritetypeofflower?" Wheatley finished in one breath, holding it as he looked at his co-worker to gauge her reaction. The technician raised a slender brow in questioning, her mind slowing down her friend's rapid question enough to understand what had been asked before speaking.
"One. Breath, Wheatley," He out a long breath, shoulders sagging in effort. "Two. My favorite flowers are lilies, but why are you asking all of a sudden?"
"Now that is a fair question. And it's funny you say 'lilies', because when I was a kid we found out Mum was terribly allergic to lilies. Her respiratory system got quite a nasty infection and I would know, I saw the x-rays. That being said, that's not very funny… is it?"
"Not really, nor is it even a real answer."
"It's not, you are absolutely right. Well, my reason is, a-um…" Wheatley glanced around nervously, drumming his fingers on the plastic tabletop as he did. "What was that, Jer?" He asked over his shoulder, way too loudly to be inconspicuous. "You need my help? Okay, I'll be there in a tick!" The ginger turned back to Chell, pushing his chair our and standing, "I would love to continue this conversation, but duty calls. So, yeah, just forget I asked you in the first place. It was a stupid question and… see you later." He said, taking a few steps back, waving his hands around in circles in the air in front of him, "foooooorrrrgeeeeeeeet. " He said in mock-mystical tone before he turned on his heel and ran off… In the wrong direction before rushing past their table with a sheepish, "my department's this way."
Alright, alright, alright, alright! So Chell liked lilies; that was one mystery solved. Okay, so, step two in this rather impromptu plan was… buy her lilies, he figured. Yes, he was following advice from that rubbish-filled guide book; but what did he have to lose (Other than, you know, his dignity, possibly his friendship will Chell, his job because if this failed he would probably spend the next few weeks in his room… Yeah, best not to think about it.)?
Buying flowers seemed to be the next logical step. However, as usual, he ran into a problem, he didn't want to get her a bouquet that was too extravagant. Chell didn't like extravagant things. Why couldn't this bloody flower shop just sell plain old lilies? Was the mixture of painted daises, artsy curls, cornflowers and the like really needed? He knew it was spring time, but come on now. The sunflowers were alone, only bundled up with other sunflowers; why couldn't the other bouquets be like that? It was pointless, mad!
Ten minutes of looking at all the racks of flowers and finally asking the clerk if they had ordinary lilies later, Wheatley walked out of the shop with a bouquet of the white blossoms.
Why did he have to ask an employee for something like that? It wasn't hard… the ginger shook his head, annoyance aside it was now time to initiate step three… Whatever the bloody hell step three was.
After an hour of a half of deliberation, Wheatley decided that step three was: walk up to Chell's porch, ring the bell, put the lilies on the ground, then run like mad before she opened the door. Now, it wasn't the best plan ever conceived by anyone ever, but it worked for his purposes. So, there he was, standing on Chell's front port, bundle of flowers in one hand and the other finger near the bell. He would ring on three, one… two… thr—wait a minute! Wait, wait, wait, wait! What if she wasn't home? What if some animal or something stole the flowers; what then (well, he would have wasted twelve dollars and fried his nerves for no reason, but that was beside the point)? Wheatley looked at the driveway, Chell's army green jeep standing proudly in front of the garage. "Okay, she's home. Her car is in the car park. That means she's home, okay, take two."
One… two… three! Diing~ with that he set the bouquet on the porch and all but jumped off it, rushing down the path and making a break for the bushes until-
"Wheatley, what are you doing?" Bollocks. Wheatley slowly turned around and there, standing in the door way dressed in the plain white tank-top she wore under her work clothes was Chell. The dark haired woman blinked questionably at the ginger before looking down, her expression turning to one of shock as she knelt down to gather the bundle in her hands.
"Um… I was, um…" Wheatley began, scratching the back of his head awkwardly as he caught sight of a bird sitting on one of the telephone wires. Somehow, that plain old bird was very interesting at the moment.
"You were…?" Chell asked, suddenly in much closer proximity to the taller man. Why did she fast to be so fast? Wheatley jumped back in shock, clutching the area above his heart with one hand and pushing his glasses up with the other.
"You're going to give me a bleedin' heart attack if you sneak up like that! Cough or something next time!"
"Right," Chell replied with a light chuckle, looking back down to the flowers in her arms. "I kind of have a guess as to why you're here, anyway."
"O-oh do you now? Ah, brilliant. S-s-so what's your idea then?"
"Did you plan to confess to me?"
Wheatley's jaw dropped right open, his hands falling limply to his side, the sudden motion of his hand causing his glasses to be jostled, resting on the end of his nose and silently threatening to fall off completely.
"That… depends on what you're definition of 'confess' is, yeah! I could be confessing to a lot of things like 'you're a super person and I've always thought that.' Or-or I could just be confessing that I thought you were a good friend-which you are- and there's also-"
"I love you too, Wheatley." Chell cut in, far too calm to the ginger's currently scrambled mind.
"Augh! I knew it!" Wheatley said despairingly, throwing his arms into the air. "It was a fool's dream, I know, thinking that you would ever feel the same as I do you. And I- …wait a minute, excuse me?"
"I said: I love you too."
"…no joke. There isn't like a camera set up around here or anything is there? Is that bird on the wire a hidden camera?" Instead of an actual answer, Chell just strode over and, very casually, yanked Wheatley's tie down so they were face-to-face and kissed him lightly.
"There's your answer."
For the record: "car park" is the way to say "parking lot" in British-English.
Okay then, you lot are probably wondering what Wheatley looks like in this story, and I didn't want to cram the description at the top. So, here you go~
Human!Wheatley is, in my head, just a few centimeters qshy of being 5'8 and is more lean than he his muscular and has light peach skin tone with slightly longer-than normal arms and legs (perfect for playing European Football, which he did/still does on his free time).
Depending on the lighting that he's in, his hair can either be a vibrant ginger or light auburn; his natural hair color being somewhere in the middle of those two tones. He keeps his hair close-cut and artistically long, the very ends reaching the middle of his neck, try as he might however, he can't keep some bits to lay completely flat, so he always looks like he has a minor case of bedhead; the way he so carelessly wears his bangs doesn't help the overall look much, either.
Behind the lenses of his black-rimmed glasses he has central heterochromia, with his irises going from blue around the pupil to gray, although this isn't really noticeable unless you look him dead in the eye, since there is more blue than gray.
When working he wears a plain pair of black slacks a off-white colored labcoat with the aperture science logo on the left breast and his ID card pinned to the right lapel. Under the coat is a plain white button-up collared shirt with a blue tie. More often than not he'll keep the lab coat closed.