Excerpt from a fic that will never be written so don’t ask
Wheatley was engaged in combat, and he was losing.
“Been in a ball for decades and she expects me to figure out how to use these… fiddly diddly wotzits within a week…”
The sharp skulled man muttered ominously at his reflection, trying to fathom which way each finger was headed and attempting to herd them into some semblance of coordination. The thin strip of silk that he was trying to arrange around his neck without strangling himself was hardly helping matters, putting itself in the most unreasonable places which he had most certainly not told it to go, and gathering into such a collection of knots around his trachea that it seemed it was doing its utmost to resemble a noose if little else.
“She doesn’t even have to wear one.” He chuntered darkly at the mirror with the wrinkled nose and pouting lips. “She just has to chuck on one of those long things that doesn’t even have trouser legs.”
Contemplating this grossly unfair situation, and wondering why he wasn’t allowed to wear one of those long, trouser-leg-less things too, he grappled with the memory that had led to this ordeal. ‘It would be a nice way to start off’ she’d explained, with her sunshine face. 'Introduce you, get off to a good start.’
But what was a good start anyway? Did it have to include a dinner? Did it have to include getting dressed for dinner?
'I’m sure you remember how to do it’, she’d smiled, comfortingly, confidently. Of course he did, he’d replied, as he always did when he had no idea what he was getting himself into. How could she even imagine he’d forget something as basic as that? He’d be down before her, just you see, as fine as Fred Astaire and twice as dandy.
But Fred Astaire didn’t look as if he’d been put through a mangle. Fred Astaire didn’t have arguments with his collar, which stood on end as if electrocuted, didn’t have to re-fasten his shirt three times to get the holes and buttons to match up.
“I bet Ginger helped him at any rate…”
This forlorn sigh was accompanied by his eyes wandering to the myriad of confusing items strung up on the wall, as if trying to find anything to look at but the calamity that was unfolding and creasing and falling apart in front of him. He had some idea about them- people used those pokey things with bristles to sort out the sticky-up-stuff on the top of their heads so it didn’t stick up as much as his. Those things that looked like someone’s hands had dried and peeled off went over your hands (perhaps so they didn’t dry and peel off), and that thing there was… well.
The first thing that occurred to him was that it was blue; the very same blue as the new dual optics he had. It was this that led him to the second observation- which was that usually the first thought he had in regards to anything was 'what is that’ and 'how do I use it without dying?’
But he knew what that was. That was a bow tie. More than that he knew how to use it, and he knew how to use the long dangly things that were hanging up next to it.
“Huh.”
Said Wheatley.
“Fancy that.”