Work Text:
Sidewalks, turned a dank grey from the dirt of the city, were turned an even darker shade by the falling rain. The rain puddled in the streets, occasionally encouraged by a passing car to lash out at a passer by. Tourists, people dressed in business attire, and citizens who had forgetting to check the weather forecast that day dashed through the rain in an attempt to avoid getting wet. Yet among the dashing people and those prepared with an umbrella or some sort of other rain-defending device were those who had accepted their fate. And, having forgotten their umbrella, trudged slowly through the rain their hair and clothes bogged down by the excess of water.
Chell, luckily, happened to have remembered her umbrella for the day. She clasped its black handle in her hand, mindful of every car that zoomed passed her hands at the ready to redirect her umbrella should a wave of water come her way. In her other hand, she held a paper cup filled with coffee as dark as her boss’s soul. Her steps were filled with purpose, eyes focused slightly downward so she could avoid staining her heels with water. Chell had a meeting to get to. She planned to make it to that meeting, but considering the unavoidability of the situation at hand she had a feeling that Caroline would be able to convince Glados to have mercy on her should she be late. How the two of them were sisters, Chell would never know.
She glanced at her arm for the first time and sucked in a hasty breath. It wasn’t her coffee that she was interested in, but the electric blue numbers slowly ticking down on her wrist. The clock was getting closer to zero. She had been watching it for the past month, watching the days tick away with wary interest. When the counter finally reached zero, she would find herself face to face with her new soulmate. She knew the first words having memorized the words tattooed on her torso long ago. Well, actually, she knew the first part of what would most likely be a long paragraph. Most people’s first words ended neatly with a period. Chell’s, on the other hand, ended with an ellipsis that promised a lot more words would be said than the simple “It’s alright” etched in black on her skin.
For most of her life, she wondered about that “It’s alright.” A large part of Chell’s childhood was spent worrying about those very words. Such words could be said on a number of occasions, but the brain of a child feared only death. She worried that she would meet her soulmate on the day of a funeral or some other depressing occasion. As the child turned into a woman, however, she stopped worrying. Chell expressed much less interest on the words and counter than the rest of her family in friends. In fact, her mother had been so concerned about her lack of interest that she took her daughter to a psychiatrist hoping for some sort of answer. Needless to say, the psychiatrist confirmed what Chell already knew – there was nothing to worry about. Chell could hardly blame her mother for worrying about her daughter’s wellbeing and so chose not to be angry with her about the trip to the psychiatrist. Eventually she would meet the person who’s messy, impossible to read signature was scrawled across her right hipbone.
A glance at the counter at her wrist informed her that she had approximately sixty seconds before the fateful meeting. Chell sucked in a breath of air, listening to the sound of rain on her umbrella. Unfortunately, she found herself so focused on the rain that she didn’t see the person in front of her and soon found herself crashing into someone. Everything seemed to turn, for a moment, into slow motion. She watched the man in front of her drop his iPhone into a puddle on the rain soaked sidewalk while his umbrella flew from his hand to the sidewalk beside his iPhone. And she could only continue to watch as the lid of coffee cup fell off and, perhaps in an attempt by the universe to add to her mistake, sent the contents of her coffee cup flying onto the man’s suit. A light brown stain bloomed like some spring flower across the man’s white shirt, turning a section of his navy suit and blue tie a muddy shade of blue.
“I am so sorry!” Chell said, looking up into eyes that rivaled the electric blue of the counter on her wrist.
“It’s alright. I should have been looking where I was going, but I’ve got this big meeting I’m supposed to go to. Of course, I haven’t exactly been focused lately since my counter is almost at zero. Oh, looks like I dropped my phone,” the man bent over to pick his phone out of the puddle, “I got myself one of those waterproof cases after I dropped my last one in the bathtub. I got to know one of the techs at store rather well. A bloke by the name of . . . Well, it hardly matters! Any who, he told me to get one of these cases and I listened to him. Looks like it came in handy! See it still works just fine!”
The man presented Chell with the screen of his still working phone. He looked from his phone to Chell’s wide-eyed expression and misinterpreted her body’s attempts to show that she was trying to run through everything he had just said to her as the need for more information.
“Don’t worry about the suit by the way. I don’t think the boss is expecting me to make that meeting today probably why he sent Doug and I. Doug will be fine! He knows that presentation inside and out. I’m Wheatley, by the way!”
“Chell,” Chell answered, somehow managing to catch up in a number of seconds with everything Wheatley had said to her.
Wheatley’s eyes widened and a blush began to spread onto his face, turning his cheeks a rather endearing shade of red.
“Chell? You wouldn’t happen to be the Chell, would you? See I’ve got this name tattooed on my neck and it’s supposed to be the name of my soulmate and everything. And I know most people sign with their last name, but Chell only signs with Chell and I don’t know if you’re Chell. It’s not exactly a common name, but I don’t want to trouble you if you aren’t the Chell I’m looking for. You said the same first words as the Chell I’m looking for, but you never know, right? So, um, could you take a look?” Wheatley asked, pushing a hand nervously through his rain soaked blond hair.
He reached up a hand to pull at the collar of his dress shirt and bent down closer to Chell, revealing a name signed in neat precise handwriting on the skin of his neck. Chell’s eyes grew wide at seeing her familiar signature on another person’s skin; she reached a hand up to place a finger on that name and hesitated when Wheatley shivered.
By now, Chell had forgotten the coffee leaking its contents onto the sidewalk. She glanced from that signature to the counter on her wrist and remembered the words scrawled on her torso.
“That’s my signature,” she confirmed.
“Oh, really? That’s excellent. Cool. So, that would make us soulmates then. Unless you don’t have my name which would be fine. A bit awkward though, but things like that tend to happen to me,” Wheatley said, a flicker of sadness passing through his blue eyes even as he offered Chell a comforting smile.
“Could you sign your name?” Chell asked.
“Yeah, let me grab a piece of paper,” Wheatley opened his now water stained leather satchel to pull out a manila folder.
He dug around for a pen and, upon finding one, signed his pen on the front of the folder.
“Sorry, it’s a bit messy. The blokes at work say I’ve got the worst signature in the office. Wheatley, the guy with the worst signature in the office. That’s me. People say I should have been a doctor with a signature like mine,” Wheatley said, but he stopped talking upon noticing Chell’s expression, “Are you okay?”
Chell stared up at the man dripping wet with rain in front of her. Chell wasn’t exactly the one for sudden bursts of emotion or really anything overly emotional at all. In fact, if you told her friends and family that she kissed a man in the middle of a crowded sidewalk. Well, they never would have believed you. That is, however, just what she did.
“Well, that was rather unexpected. Not going to say I didn’t like it, of course. Um, might I ask why you did that though?”
“You’re my soulmate,” Chell stated rather matter-of-factly.
“Really? Well, that’s awesome!” Wheatley stuttered and he seemed, for a moment, to be at a loss for any other words at all.
“Wheatley, would you like to get lunch with me?” Chell inquired.
“Sure,” Wheatley answered, a blush decorating his cheeks as Chell bent to pick up his fallen umbrella and hand it to him.
As they walked through the busy sidewalks, Chell could feel Wheatley occasionally glancing at her only to look away. He probably didn’t even know she could tell he was looking at her.
“Um, Chell. Would you,” Wheatley hesitated, glancing away from Chell again to look awkwardly at the sidewalk, “would you mind if I held your hand?”
Chell smiled and offered her hand to her soulmate. The two walked hand in hand through the city toward a bakery Chell knew that made excellent sandwiches and even better chocolate cake.