Prompt 030: "Wheatley struggling a lot with depression and self-hate. Chell holds him through a panic attack."
There are nights when Wheatley can't sleep.
Yellow eyes are always staring at him from the engulfing dark. He's always shoved into Her body, always, and he's always doing horrific things. He doesn't want it, he hates it, he wants it to stop, but something else is guiding him, driving him onward, forcing her to her death, and he can feel the power of the facility and the destruction of the chambers beneath him and the urge to test test test and a voice somewhere over his head whispering that this is all fine, it's okay, he just needs to have one more feel of that euphoria and then it will be over, it will, it will—
But it never is.
Never.
Not even in his nightmares.
It's those nights when he leaves his room. It's those nights when he sees drops of gold lining the hallway, haunting him, laughing, I told you so, you're the tumor, and he struggles to walk. It's those nights when he climbs into her bed, cold and shivering, his breath hitching in hiccupping sobs.
Chell never says anything, but she wakes. She wakes, welcomes him in with warmth in her arms and heat in her fingertips, and she tucks him close and pulls her world over him. His legs poke out from the sheets at the edge of the bed, but his head is nestled in the space by her neck and collarbone and he finds the strength in him to breathe.
It's those nights that he mutters things. He mutters into her skin, her heartbeat, her palms, her lifelines; he mutters into her mouth because he's sorry, he's so sorry, he wishes he could take everything back, he does, but he can't, and he hates it. He mutters things because he hates That Place and he hates Her and he hates the monster in his nightmares (it's me I'm the monster not her she could never be); he hates himself and he hates what he became and he hates that he's so weak.
She presses kisses to his forehead and to his cheeks. She rubs at his back, circling at the tender juncture where his head meets his neck and flowing gently down between his shoulder blades. She entwines a leg with his, the warmth of her seeping into muscle and bone, and she murmurs back against his lips in hushed whispers.
It's in the aftermath of those nights when Wheatley wakes to find himself more rested than usual. Morning breaks, and she's next to him with her nose against his neck and her breath upon his adam's apple, slow and soft. One wiry arm is curled over his middle as if to keep him close. Sunlight soaks through her dark hair and casts hollows in the folds of the blankets down the length of the bed.
The nightmares linger on the outskirts of his consciousness, yellow encroaching close, but she's here, just as she's always been, and he hopes she always will be.