Chapter Text
You didn't sleep well, again, opting instead to binge the rest of the series Devine had started you on. It was trashy tv, nothing special, and you ate it up like a feast, anything to keep yourself from thinking. Besides that, you didn't have an alarm clock, and without your phone, you didn't trust yourself to wake up on time.
Of course, eventually your exhaustion-addled brain meanders its way to the subject of the Daycare attendants, and stays there. You wonder what they think about reality tv. Have they seen it? What does a robot know, exactly? How to take care of children, sure, but what about the internet, things outside of child-friendly media, outside of the Fazbear Entertainment circle of influence.
Are they really sentient? You've seen animatronics before, even Fazbear ones, when you were a kid, and they never seemed more than kind of creepy robots. Their eyes were blank and lifeless, they moved jerkily to preprogrammed shows and definitely did not respond to people talking to them.
And the way they moved ! the Pizzaplex animatronics walked around, sun cartwheeled! It's not like you were some sort of engineer, but the typical robot cant do that. It fascinated you, and was probably the reason they were so popular. It was like cartoon characters come to life. Your thought process continues like that, getting hazier until noises outside your room snap you back into reality.
You had work today, early in the morning, so you weren't able to stop by the Pizzaplex until after. You just hope nothing bad happened until then.
You step into the common room and the whole house is already awake. Devine sits with a cup of coffee at the dining table and Malachi tries to wrangle Natalie, who absolutely does NOT want to go to her daycare.
“Auntie y/n!!! SAVEE ME!” she runs and hides behind your legs, and you grin, patting her head.
“What's goin on, Nat?”
“y/n, please. She needs to get ready or i'll be late for work.'' Malachi looks at you with exhaustion in his eyes, pleading.
You smirk, mischievously, and pick up Natalie, who whoops.
“Miss Natalie, what say you to going on an ADVENTURE!” she squeals with delight as you carry her all the way to her bedroom. You tell her that the two of you have to play a game. Your adventurers, studying the elusive and rare “human bean.” she's been sent to the wild planet of Daycarelandia, and she needs to come back and report on what she finds at the end of the day to her parents, the “Head Explorers”. The game works, and she gets dressed without fuss, running around and squealing about the “bean aminals”.
You find Malachi and Devine nuzzling on the couch, and let them know that Natalie is ready, the two of them are Important Explorers and should act as such, and that you will not have your phone on you today. Your cousin raises an eyebrow, but does not comment.
~~~
Work is the same as every day, clock in, deal with annoying customers in the best way you know how (malicious compliance), fuck around in the break room, come back and clean. You were on a long shift, and there were a few times your exhaustion caught up with you and you found yourself dozing off, but a quick pinch to your arm and you were back awake. It was honestly easier to stay busy when you were tired, just so you didn't get the chance to fall asleep, but luck did not smile on you, and there were several breaks in which you and your coworker had nothing to do but sit and twiddle your thumbs. Not that you haven't tried, sweeping and mopping and sweeping again, wiping down all the counters, all the tables. There just wasn't anybody in.
The clock creeped slowly towards your freedom, and it felt even longer since you couldn't mess around on your phone to pass the time. It was a small restaurant, and though you were hired to be a dishwasher, you usually ended up running orders and working the grill anyway. The work sucked, but your manager was really chill whenever you needed a day off.
—----------
Finally, after an agonizingly slow day, you were free. You popped your work shirt off and your hoodie on, and drove in the general direction of the Pizzaplex. It wasn't that you didn't know where it was, but not having the added security of the GPS was kind of a bitch.
After only 2 U-turns, the giant Freddy Fazbear sign comes into view, and you park at the very back of the parking lot. It seemed like the place was busy and only getting more so, as streams of families walked through the entrance. You followed suit, stopping first at the lost and found.
“And where’d you say you left it again?” the attendant was rummaging through a large pile of phones, sounding nervous. You were most likely not the first person he had tried to find a phone for today.
“Uh, the daycare, I think?’
he nods, abandoning the box and straightening up. His name tag read “Daniel”, and he looked no older than 16.
“Ah, well! They have a lost and found over there if you wanna check? Otherwise I'm really sorry, this building is just too big to keep track of things….” Daniel trailed off, mentally preparing for you to yell at him, but you've already headed off in the direction of the daycare.
Poor kid. Hopefully people are nice to him.
You come into the daycare around the same time you did yesterday, so you aren't surprised to see it empty of children. There's no-one at the check in desk, however, and you wander over to the railing that leads to the main part of the daycare.
No-one down there either. Huh. Was the daycare closed?
You turn around and promptly scream, as there is a tall yellow clown right in front of you. He's smiling down at you, hands splayed in greeting, and makes no show of being surprised when you scream.
“Hello again!” he says pleasantly, hands folded in front of himself. It takes you a second to respond, but you do, hand clutching your chest.
“Where'd you come from?!”
“The daycare, silly! What are you doing here again so soon?” always moving, sun bounces back and forth on his heels, punctuating the ‘you’ with a finger in your direction.
“I uhm, lost my phone. Where's everyone?”
“Oh! Well all of our little friends went home for the day, and my lovely little assistant is taking his lunch break!'' Despite only saying nice things, he manages to make *lovely* sound like a curse. He begins wandering around the lobby, finding messes and picking them up. The place wasn't even that messy, you aren't sure how he found what he did. “You lost your phone, mm? Did you check the lost and found?”
“Yea, but it wasn't there. They said there was one here too? I just wanted to check….” he looks at you, crouched on the ground, holding
“Welllll, typically only the human staff have access to the lost and found…..” he tapped his foot and you bit your lip nervously. Were you going to have to wait for someone to come back?
Buuuut!” and he holds a finger up. “For such a special friend, I suppose we can make an exception!” you let out a breath. He skips his way over to a staff door, and you follow him, hanging out a few feet behind, wary of being in a restricted area.
“We usually only get little one’s things in here, shoes and toys and whatnot,,,,” he continues rambling, making pointed comments about clumsy people. “Ahah! Here it is!” he turns around in one smooth motion, holding out your phone. You take it, inspecting it for-what? Damage? It turns on as normal, your lockscreen a picture of your niece with a turtle she saw at the zoo.
“Uh…thanks.” you aren't really paying attention to him as you scroll through notifications, but he taps your shoulder after a moment, prompting you to look up. When you do, he's humming, hands behind his back in a show of innocence. You tilt your head at him. “What is it?’
“Ohh…nothing, it's just…” he sighs loud and artificial sounding considering he doesn't have anything approximating lungs. That you can see at least. “Wellllll, since i was sooo nice in helping you, the least you could do is to……” he tilts his head to match yours, grin growing wider, mischievous. “Play a game with me?’
You're quiet for a moment, and his face wilts, rays tilting downward like the ears of a cat, backing up several paces. “If you want to! Heheh, im sure you must be busy, and i have my, uh, cleaning, you know!” Sun begins to pantomime sweeping, and the whole thing is just over-the-top enough to make you giggle.
“What did you have in mind?”
“OHHH! Well there's so many things we could do, i prefer running around games like tag! Or hide and seek but we could also do crafts or a puzzle or-!” he stops. “Do you want to play hide and seek? I could hide!”
“Uh, hol-just hold on a minute.”
You mentally take a step back and assess what the hell is going on so far. You got your phone back, which was good, but now the Sunny side of the daycare animatronic wanted to play a game with you. Could there be any downsides to this?
For one, you werent entirely sure that you were even supposed to be *in here*, kids or no kids. And second, you haven't slept in a day and just got off an almost ten hour shift. You yawned reflexively at the thought. Well, it wasn't like you needed to do anything else today, and you were curious about the animatronic. He was just quietly bouncing side to side, waiting for you to make your decision.
Fuck it.
You sigh and nod. “Ok, so hide and seek right? What are the rules.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The rules were:
You would count, and Sunny would hide. You would count for 20 seconds, and then go seek. Sunny could ONLY hide in the lower portion of the daycare, and if you didn't find him after five minutes he won.
You asked him how they would keep track of the time, and he just pointed to himself. Oh, right. He's a robot, they probably have internal clocks. He walked you down into the daycare proper, made sure you closed your eyes, and went off to go hide.
Faithfully, you counted to twenty before opening your eyes, but instead of going to find him, you found yourself amazed by the sheer size of the playground around you. Everything was scaled to an adult size,probably so the daycare attendant could fit on them comfortably, so what would normally be little slides and climbing structures were massive, full of twisting tubes and stairs and slides that curved around and under and through each other. Besides the play structures was a ball pit the size of a small lake, complete with little islands and giant play blocks to climb around on. Child you would have lost their mind seeing this place. Honestly, adult you still is.
Focus, though, you have a task to complete. You make your way around the playground area, ducking into and under tubes and tunnels as you go, thinking out loud.
“Sunny? I think you have a home court advantage here, bud. This place is gigantic!” nothing. You round a corner and peek into a tunnel, hope to see him crawling away or something. You hear a soft jingling coming from the opposite play structure, the smaller one, and pivot towards the sound.
“Sunny…..I can hearrr you~” this is feeling less childish and more fun the longer you play. Three minutes remaining, and it feels like your getting closer. You hear jingling again, further away and you follow it, but ducking underneath the slide where the noise came from reveals nothing. Honestly, how is he so good at this?? You'd think an animatronic his size would make some sort of noise as it moved around.
times almost up and you're getting a little antsy, every time you think you're getting closer you hear jingling from further away, or a place you just checked. You could swear he was messing with you. A thumping noise comes from a tunnel above your head, and you race to find the opening, giggling like an idiot when you see Sun, curled up like a pretzel inside of the tunnel.
“You found me!!!” sun drops down from the platform above you, hanging on by his legs like if he was on the monkey bars. You jump, opening your mouth to respond when you yawn for the second time. Suns flips to the ground, landing on his feet on what would be an exaggerated show of athleticism on a human person, much less a robot. A feat of mechanical skill.
“Gosh, you seem really tired…” sun mentions, concerned. His hands wring together, what a silly thing to worry about. you wave it off.
“What? yea, I just didn't really sleep last night.” it's a casual statement, punctuated by another yawn. Yea, the crash was approaching fast, you should probably get home before your too tired to drive. You tell the Sunny animatronic just that, but he shakes his head.
“Nonsense! Its not safe to operate heavy machinery while under the influence of anything, including sleepiness!” he wags his finger at you, tapping a foot on the ground like the mascot in a safety psa, which he might as well have been. As with most things the animatronic did, you felt like there was something he wasn't saying behind his cheerful demeanor.
“Why don't you just take a rest here? Like last time! Just for a minute, just till you feel better.”
At first you outright deny him, but you can't deny that his attempt at a puppy eyed stare is charming-lacking any real pupils it's merely a pantomime, but it gets the point across. Not only that, but you *are* *exhausted*.
“I really shouldn't…plus, aren't there going to be kids coming around soon?” your eyes flicked to the clock hanging over a ‘security desk’. It was ten minutes to six, and the lack of life in the daycare kind of concerned you. This place was supposed to be open all day, where were the people?
Sun hums, walking across the daycare floor and you follow, having no reason to stay down there alone. “Yea, of course!” he goes on to explain that the daycare has a short break in the middle of the day, both for the sake of the human workers and so the daycare attendant can make appearances at parties or events. “They'll be back soon though,” sun continues, something that's confirmed when you see a short line of children with parents outside the doors to the Daycare. A older, slightly balding man comes out of a door labeled ‘staff’ behind the main desk at around the same time, and sun skips over to him, smiled stretched wide over his faceplate.
“Arthur! You actually came back!" Sun speaks cheerfully as always, but directed at this older gentleman, Arthur, it carries a bite that you are now recognizing as passive aggression. The man grunts in response, simply sitting down and pulling out a “stopwatch monthly” magazine, the sort of magazine that knows its clientele is typically older men and advertises accordingly.
Sun stares at Arthur for a moment more, and then claps his hands together, clearly annoyed. “Al righty then! Like I said, we’re about to open, but let me take you somewhere quieter first?” you nod, but he seems to be waiting for someone else's approval.
“Arthur?” he prompts, and the man looks up from his magazine.
“Huh? What is it?”
“I said, we are going to help with our guest, we will be back shortly for opening. Alright?” Sun enunciates every word, like this was not the first time he had to repeat himself for lack of the older man paying attention. Arthur grunts in response, and Sun lays a gentle hand on your shoulder, leading you past the party rooms and muttering.
“He always does that, y'know i tell him, ‘ a bright disposition helps the kids feel more welcome’ but he never listens!” Sun gestures as the two of you walk, and you find yourself smiling. It seems poor coworkers are a constant for everyone, not just humans.
“And he said, “well if they get hurt that's their own fault, Which *first of all*, she was three years old, and second-hey, what are you smiling for? This isn't funny!”
“Oh no, no, I just…there's this guy at my work, Gerald, he does all the same stuff.” You tell him about your own experience with horrible coworkers, and soon enough, he stops you in front of a door labeled “supplies”.
“What is this?”
Sun explains that in the past, this room was used as a sort of “quiet area”, back when the daycare had a lot more time and funding put into it. You struggle to comprehend how the place could receive more funding than it does *now*, as huge as the place is, but the Sun would definitely know best. There's yet again an undercurrent of bitterness that disappears when he flings the door open to show off…well, a supply closet, albeit one with a couch.
It is small and cramped with wire shelving bolted to three out of four walls, the fourth containing a dusty orange couch. The shelves are overflowing with badly organized craft supplies, and there's a small, celestial themed lamp on the floor next to the couch, clearly a personal touch since it isn't branded.
You had never agreed to actually sleep, you realize, but seeing the couch makes you realize you need it.
“It's not much, i know, but it'll be quiet, and you can rest up some before heading home!!” you thank him, but he continues lingering at the door, bouncing and fidgeting. He's watching you as you get yourself settled, which causes you to get anxious and fidget right back. If you stopped to think about it for a second, it was incredibly strange! Coming to a daycare center in a giant shopping mall, playing *hide and seek* with the robotic daycare attendant, taking a nap in a storage closet! Sun himself was strange, his concern and frustration far too genuine to be *just an animatronic*. You had fun with him, and the strangest part-to you, at least- was that it *didn't* feel weird, or uncomfortable at all. Maybe it was just because caretaking was its literal job, but the Daycare attendant made you feel welcome, and safe. You were embarrassed to say it, but you kind of wanted to hang out with them more, as a friend.
After making sure you don't need anything, sun skipped off to go help Arthur open up the daycare for the evening, which as he so bitterly stated before he left, “really just mean doing everything since that poor soul just couldn't handle it by himself.”
The couch was old but incredibly comfortable, and the soft blue blanket draped across the back was perfect for curling up with. You do just that, wrapping yourself up and falling asleep almost immediately, which isn't surprising. It was funny, it seemed the only way you could get to sleep was with the Daycare Attendants help. You have to make sure to thank them, once you wake up.