A/N: The last while has been sort of rough on me. First, some dickwad on the street got the brilliant idea to try to steal my money from me. Probably because I look short and fat and sort of slow and dim-witted (well, all of these are true, to some extent) and he sort of underestimated me when I fought him off with a pencil. I didn't lose my money though it disappeared into the black hole known as the power bill. The last month's been rough. I've been skipping meals and rationing the last month and haven't eaten at all in the last three days (well, there's those breadcrumb things you put on chicken, but they're not really that edible). Also, some extended relatives who look down on me for being the stupid one in the family dropped in, deciding to grace me with their presence ... because they had some old documents to scan and none of them knew how to use a scanner. Also, when I say old, I mean old; most of them were so fragile I had to use latex gloves to handle them. Also, they expected me to do them all in two days, so I lost a full night's sleep to that. I got the last laugh there, though: I charged them for the services. (Of course, that money also disappeared to the power bill.)
Although I can be sort of stupid, you don't want to mess with me.
On a more positive note, I got Garry's Mod to start up again without insta-crashing. So that's something positive. Sort of like a drop of positive in an ocean of negative, I guess. God, I'm being pessimistic again.
Anyways, about the story, there's not much to say about it, other than this email I sent a friend a few days ago:
From: my email
To: my friend's email
Subject: 100 theme challenge thingy that I'm doing
why am i doing chellmann how did this story turn into chellmann am i even spelling that right
i do not know. i just wanted to try something different
24. Apple
Summary: Chell brings home a basket of apples.
Genre: Friendship
Characters: Chell, Doug Rattmann
Warnings: Chellmann?
Together, the dangerous, mute lunatic and the lab rat made a team.
Together, they had escaped Aperture. Together, they had made a life for themselves in the post-Combine world.
They settled comfortably into friendship; it was a long time before either of them admitted that it could be something more.
Still, from the day they had first stumbled upon each other in the remains of the old Enrichment Center, both of them relieved and elated to find a human - an actual human, not a crazed AI, but a living, breathing, organic human - her trying to escape, him with a badly wounded leg, both of them wary of Her - Chell had not said a word.
Even with that impediment, she had somehow gotten a job picking fruit in a nearby orchard. Without saying a single word. She was a determined woman, and Doug liked that about her.
On her second day home from work, she brought home a big basket of apples; apples the orchard owner had deemed imperfect and thus unsaleable. He was a bit of a perfectionist, but also a fairly decent guy (Chell often compared him to a lighthouse, standing solid in the middle of a storm, guiding ships safely away from the rocks), and he let Chell bring home the apples for no cost.
The apples were an unexpected treat for Doug. The combined income from their jobs provided few luxuries, and an entire basket of apples - some of them bruised and dented, but still edible - was definitely one of those luxuries.
Chell picked up one of the apples; bright blood-red, no invisible imperfectations except for a tiny brown spot near the bottom. She furrowed her brows and took a deep breath. "Ahhh..."
Doug, befuddled, looked at her.
"Ahhh...p-puh -"
"Apple," he said, very quietly.
"A-pple."
They both smiled.