Mix and Match pt. 2

11. Jealous

Wheatley would have liked to think he kept a lot of his emotions in check. His co-workers on the other hand would laugh out loud and then say "oh wait, you're serious." Okay, so he was a man who let his emotions drive him rather than his head (which could explain why so many things that seemed like a good idea at the time caught fire...), but he was okay with that. There wasn't anything wrong with feeling like singing whenever you saw the woman he loved or dancing down the halls after she kissed him on the lips. Nope, nothing wrong with that at all (unless your name happened to be Galanos Atlas, who saw Wheatley's emotionally driven nature to be incredibly naïve).

The Bristolian was walking down one of the halls that lead from the main office, one of the interns had asked him to deliver something to the Technology department since he was going in that direction anyway (his and Chell's relationship was pretty common knowledge by this point)

"So anyway beautiful, I was just wonderin' that maaaaaybe if you have the time, you can show me 'round here. This place is ridiculously big, after all." Wheatley blinked in attention at the new voice. Ah, it was that sleezy new intern who seemed to be under the impression that every woman in this facility was in love with him (although with the way most of them seemed to swoon over any sort of accent...) and- just what was he doing being so close to Chell? Wheatley grit his teeth behind his lips and gripped the small stack of papers he held in his hands.

"I would, but I've been really busy. AI business and all that. Sorry, you'll have to ask someone else." Chell said calmly, ducking under the interns arm (where did he get off? Pinning her to the wall like that?), he sounded collected, but Wheatley could tell that she was either irritated or feeling awkward about being very blatantly flirted with by an intern.

"C'mon, you bein' gone for a little bit isn't gonna make the facility explode." He replied, sliding to the left and cutting off Chell's escape with an arm. "You can show me what goes on behind the scenes."

Deciding enough was enough, and figuring that if his teeth clenched any tighter they would crack, the ginger took a deep breath, fiddled with the frames of his glasses and strode forward.

"Chell, I've got something for you," he said as he approached the pair, who turned their heads towards him at the sound of his voice.

"Do you? Oh, good, wonderful." Chell replied, ducking under the interns arm and fast-walking over to the Englishman. She mouthed "thank you" to Wheatley before taking the stack of papers, smoothing them out. For the sake of politeness, she looked over her shoulder towards the other man in the hall. "Sorry Rick but this is urgent. You'll just have to ask Craig or someone else for a tour."

"That know-it-all?" Rick snorted, "I'd rather listen in on Neil and Zoe's Q and A session about Space." Rick replied, crossing his arms over his chest, glaring lightly at the red-head.

"Sorry. Oh, by the way Wheatley, mind walking with me for a while? I've got something to talk to you about." She hardly even regarded Rick even further, quickly turning her attention back to the bespectacled man in front of her. Wheatley smiled lightly, grabbing one of Chell's hands and kissing the knuckles lightly.

"I'd be happy to luv," he enunciated, a small spark of triumph going through him when he saw Rick's expression turn into one of pure disbelief, mouth gaping over and arms dangling limply at his sides (did a woman rejecting him really shock him that badly? It certainly seemed so).
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12. Snow

Wheatley blinked and looked up when something soft and cold landed on his nose, smiling widely when he saw tiny white flakes drifting down from the sky. "Chell, look! It's snowing!" He said excitedly, pointing a finger up at the sky.

"So it is," Chell noted, putting her hands in her coat pocket and looked towards the sky. "At least it's not hail."

"Oh, this is much better than hail! Or sleet, or rain, or any of those things!" Wheatley exclaimed, lowering his face to look at Chell's profile, who looked back up at him with a small smile.

"You're so excited, it's only snow."

"Well, yeah," he rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "But I've only seen snow a few times in my life. Bristol isn't exactly known for its snowy winters." From what Wheatley had told her, his home city was known for being wet. Very, very wet; but that was how all of England was to her limited understanding of the country. Watching her lover marvel at the snow, cupping the flakes in his gloved hands until they melted, Chell got a mischievous idea, she smirked and knelt down, gathering some of the ground snow that had fallen earlier that morning and packed it in a ball.

"You know Wheats, there is one thing that everyone does when it snows."

"What's that? Snowmen building? Snow angels?" Chell laughed lightly, oh how naive her little Wheatley was~

"No-no-no. None of that." Her smirk spread to a full-out Cheshire grin as she took a few steps back tilted her arm . "Snowballs!" She exclaimed, throwing the snow at Wheatley's back before running past him, laughing like she had just heard the funniest joke in the world. The Englishman on the other hand stood shocked for a moment before giving chase to his rather mischievous girlfriend. Their little chase ending with his arms wrapped around her and the two lying in a mound of snow chuckling like a couple of madmen.
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13. Crossword

Wheatley licked the end of his pen in preparation and pressed it against the innocent piece of newsprint, crossing his legs together in order to get comfortable.

"Okay crossword, prepare to be solved by me. Stephen-Micheal Wheatley. Starting... now." and with that the ginger led the tip of his pen to the list of clues at the bottom of the page. "a eight letter word for a person whose mental acumen is well below par... what's 'acumen' even mean? You know what, forget it, I'll get to it later.

"Later" turned out to be at least two hours, and Wheatley had long since fallen asleep, the quarter-completed crossword still open in his his lap, a few random doodles scattered around in the blank pages. One column in particular would interest anyone who bothered to look, which was no one seeing as how Wheatley had been attempting the crossword in his flat.

"Regarded with pleasure, wonder, and approval." His answer? Chell (who cared if it was one letter off?).
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14. Hair

It was an odd thing to be attracted to, Chell could fully admit. Wheatley's hair was far from being the best looking she had ever seen (he seemed to put minimum effort in brushing it in the morning); maybe it was the color that attracted her so. A dull orange tone that was either flaming red or a light auburn depending on how the light hit it; it was certainly more... interesting than her own hair: run-of-the mill blackish-brown.

Contrary-wise, Wheatley adored her hair, always played with the dark strands in his fingers whenever he could, gently raking his fingers through the mane after a night of passion; similar to the situation they were in now. Chell ran a hand through her lovers sweat-dampened hair, brushing the bangs away from his still lightly flushed cheeks, his only response being a small sound of pleasure as he snuggled into Chell's chest, arms tightening around her nude form lightly.

The dark haired woman shook her head, twirling a lock of ginger hair around her finger with a small smile. Hair was such an odd thing to contemplate in the afterglow of sex, but she still had a little energy left before she came down from the high; why not dedicate it to something she loved?
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15. Wrong Impression

Chell had been worked to death lately concerning the whole brain-scan to AI theory, along with the other employees who had been assigned to the project. So far they had kind of, sort of succeeded in creating a successful scan of some of the rats that hadn't died of asbestos. The problem was finding willing humans to volunteer (since brain-scanning had the possibility of leaving to a very minor case of serious brain damage), although Mr. Johnson had just said they should scan the minds of the poor homeless souls they had dragged into Aperture to be the test subjects.

His bosses' dwindling sanity aside, Wheatley was more concerned with the fact that Chell was literally falling asleep at their table during their break, making a barely audible plead to Wheatley for a cup of coffee, extra bitter. Wheatley, being the kind and loving soul that he was, complied to his lover's request and rushed off get her some. His quest would have gone swimmingly... if he didn't run into Atlas.

"So Ginger..." Atlas began sliding next to the taller man with a huge smirk on his face. "I noticed that Chell seems a little out of it."

"She had a busy night last night." Wheatley replied half-automatically, only giving the other man a brief glance before turning his attention back to the coffee machine.

"It sure seems like it. I guess I should congratulate you: it looks like you finally managed to be the dominant one in sex. And here I thought she wore the pants."

The ginger would have responded, but he was far too busy tending to his coffee-burned hand.
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16. Burns

As much as Wheatley would have protested to the otherwise, the fact of the matter was that he had horrible luck with anything that was hotter than a bag of popcorn. Somehow he managed to burn himself on almost every appliance that Chell owned at least one. The oven, the stove, even the coffee burner of all things. At the moment Chell was tending to a new burn on the palm of her lover's hand, frowning as she rubbed ointment on the skin.

"So let me get this straight: you put your hand on a hot burner on the stove when you were trying to reach something on one of the shelves above the stove."

"In my defense, I could have sworn I turned it off." Wheatley defended himself, wincing in pain when the woman applied a little more pressure than needed to the sensitive skin.

"You have to let it cool down before you touch it." Chell said as a matter of factly, examining the burn more closely. "Huh... it's almost a complete half circle."

"As much as I'm sure you're enjoying finding shapes in my injuries, how am I going to hold anything now? I'm left handed; I can't do a bloody thing with my right!"

"Now's always a good time to learn." Chell shrugged, wrapping a length of gauze around Wheatley's hand and securing it. "Speaking of learning: learn to leave the very hot cooking appliances to me from now on, would you?"

"I'll master it one day luv, just you watch." Wheatley claimed, taking his hand back and flexing the fingers of his newly injured hand experimentally.