Chapter Text
Gregory awoke from his long, glorified nap. It was probably some of the best sleep he’s ever gotten. That was probably an exaggeration, but he was so tired from last night that it felt so true. He looked over to Freddy. Still asleep… He really wanted to find a way to wake him up. All the charging stations were still at the Pizzaplex and he never wanted to go back there. There had to be some alternative. Gregory looked over at a lamp and turned it on, since he was running around all night, he had slept throughout the entire day. Now that he had a proper light source, Gregory took in the surroundings of the room so graciously lent to him.
The floors were shaggy rugs, which were very very comfortable. His bed was a bit big for him, housing a bed frame made of a really smooth wood, which was painted grey. His mattress was made of memory foam, and covered with a white sheet. The nightstand matched the bedframe, made of the same wooden material, and covered with the same paint. Next to his bed with a little closet, it was also very empty. The only other thing that occupied this empty room, was a dresser drawer which was also empty. Gregory overall thought the room was very cozy, and could very much get used to the idea of living here.
After taking in the room, he heard the rustling of papers, and Vanessa moving around outside of his room. Once Gregory got out of bed he turned his attention towards Freddy.
“I’ll be right back!”
It was hopeless to talk to Freddy seeing as he was still dead, but for some reason it still made Gregory kind of happy to talk to one of his only friends. As he went to exit the room, he felt his grip pull down on the handle, and watched how it barely went down. He tried again, Gregory was panicking, why the hell was the door not opening?
Once he gave about five seconds of investigation, Gregory noticed that the door had been locked on the inside. Obviously. Now he was almost kind of happy Freddy wasn’t awake to see this embarrassing moment. Almost. Once he unlocked the door, Gregory came out to a hardworking Vanessa who was clearing up all the papers left on the coffee table. She had changed into an outfit that looked more comfortable. She had put on cloth sweatpants, along with a red-ish jacket and an oversized band tee. Her hair was put in a ponytail, which was soaking wet. Probably from a very much needed shower. Gregory came out into the room, and walked up behind Vanessa.
“What are those papers you’re messing with?”
Vanessa shot up and gave a tiny yelp. Once she saw looked back at Gregory she relaxed a little bit,
“Oh, Gregory… It’s just you.. You scared me.”
For some reason he noticed she became a little bit more, well jumpy after the whole night. She still also seemed to feel really guilty trying to murder him and disassembling the only animatronic that didn’t want to smash his face in. It doesn’t matter Gregory’s over it, he just…thinks about it a lot, and gets frustrated when he does. Whatever, Freddy would be fine.
“Yeah it’s me, so are you gonna tell me what you're doing, throwing away all these papers.” He said, grabbing one and trying to examine it. Before taking any info in, Vanessa swiftly, (and rudely) snatched it out of his hand.
“Sorry, it’s personal…more or less, anyway, how’d you sleep?”
“Oh, yeah the room is really nice, thanks for letting me use it. But you might wanna get your door looked at, It locked me in this morning.”
“Oh no, that was me.” Vanessa, without moving her head, had confessed casually.
“What?!” Why would she do that?! Why would she do that and not tell him? Or even ask him?!
“Well…I know it’s kind of awkward to be rooming with the person who literally was milliseconds from killing you, multiple times last night. I just didn't want you worrying about me sneaking in and…ya know?” She spoke with more uneasiness in her voice. Gregory didn’t really like that answer, he didn’t understand the logic behind it, but for now he was just going to accept it.
“Why didn’t you ask me if I wanted that?!”
“Well, I’m sorry! I guess, I just put myself in your shoes and asked what I would want if I was rooming with my, uh…uhm, soon to be murderer.” She spoke more sheepishly, Gregory could tell she was still very much ashamed of her alter ego. But something about it didn’t make sense to him, Gregory was still frustrated with answers and actions of Vanessa.
“Well, next time don’t!” He spoke a bit more frustrated than angered.
“Why was it so stressful? You had complete control over the lock.” Vanessa asked out of curiosity.
“It’s personal okay, just, don’t lock me in like that. Please.” He spoke quickly and purposefully, because truthfully he did not feel like talking about why he hates doors randomly locking. But obviously Vanessa could tell how much it bothered him, because she dropped it.
“Well, okay then, I won’t lock a room with you in it.” She took a little pause. “So…um, Freddy? He still asleep?" Vanessa picked up the conversation.
“Yeah, but I’m sure I can find a way to get him up and running.”
“Well…I could help you, ya know, I used to dabble in Parts in Service from time to time.”
“No, I got it, It can’t be that hard to find an alternative power source.” Gregory shot her down. He could do this alone, he really likes being independent…all the time.
Vanessa gave a weak smile before tying the bag of papers, and setting it down by the island table. She then walked over to and opened the pantry. Gregory followed suit, only to be met with disappointment. As like almost everything else in this big apartment, this pantry was very empty. The only thing in there was expired food, and even that was few and far inbetween. Vanessa closed the door rapidly, she seemed to be a bit embarrassed about her lack of food. She then turned to the fridge with what little hope she seemed to have left, only to be met with disappointment a second time. When Vanessa closed the door to the fridge, she rested her head against the handles.
“Of couse…no one’s been here for months.” Vanessa spoke in a voice which almost went unheard. As if on cue Gregory’s stomach rumbled, he was starting to get really really hungry. This made her feel even worse. Vanessa gave a heavy sigh before psyching herself up. She then stood there for about 5 more seconds before popping back up.
“Okay, there's a gas station about 15 minutes away from here, if memory serves me correctly. I’m going to go there, what do you want?” She spoke with a bit of uncertainty and the tiniest bit of anxiety in her voice.
Gregory didn’t know what he wanted. Which was stupid. Gregory had spent a night making life or death decisions, after months of not even being allowed to think for himself. It was very hard to readjust, he must’ve stood there for a good five painstakingly long minutes. Vanessa was visibly getting a little worried, she didn’t think a question like this would stump him so much.
“Uhm.. just, like chicken I guess? I really don’t care as long as it’s not pizza.”
Gregory was pathetic. Sure he may have come to a decision but he wasn’t very confident in it. Not to mention the amount of time it took. He sighed and looked back at the woman in front of him. Vanessa nodded, seemingly unaware of Gregory’s current internal conflict. She went and grabbed both her wallet and keys, as she started to step out of the apartment.
“Okay, don’t answer the door, please, and please don’t break anything. I’ll be back in about thirty minutes.”
Vanessa took her leave and left Gregory in the crippling silence. He sighed, Gregory didn’t enjoy being alone. But, it’s not like he’s scared or anything. He’s dealt with worse than this, Gregory doesn’t care. He’s twelve! Twelve year olds are left alone at home all the time. It’s not like anyone knew he was here, or there was anything that wanted to kill him in the apartment, or- yikes Gregory needed something to busy himself with. He walked to the couch and tried relaxing, but that was becoming less likely to happen as the minutes ticked. Gregory kept moving positions on the couch, switching the way he sat multiple times over. He cycled through most positions, until his rowdiness caused Gregory to fall face first onto the ground.
After he picked his face off the rug that, thankfully, cushioned his fall, he saw something under the couch. Curiosity more or so got the better of him, as Gregory reached to grab what he saw and examine it. It looked like it could be one of the papers Vanessa was cleaning off the coffee table. The paper itself had crease marks in it, and was accompanied by a stamp of the Fazbear company logo in the bottom right corner, for some reason. Gregory took some time to read through the letter.
Dear Ms.Vanessa Andrews,
We at Fazbear are very grateful to have you on our team. Your resume is amazing and your references make you a bit overqualified for this job. Not to mention the amazing work we hear you’ve been doing down at Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex! However, while you’ve been doing great, we do have some troublesome worries. We’ve been hearing about your suspicious internet activity, and have troubles understanding the things you’ve been searching up on work accounts. We’ve been getting certain notifications from the system itself, and we just don’t think we can let searches like this go unnoticed. However, Fazbear ent. Doesn’t want to give up such a hard-working employee as yourself up just because of your morbid curiosity, so we’ve come up with a solution! We’ve decided you should see our friend Mary Schneider. She is a very hardworking, efficient therapist, and you will have the choice to get very close to her in your mandatory sessions with Mrs. Schneider! Do not worry, she is a very nice lady! According to the multiple kids she sees in-school, she is easy to talk to, very understanding, and quick to get results. Well we hope your meetings with Mrs. Schneider will make you become a better version of yourself, and more importantly, a better worker than before only time will tell, and we look forward to seeing your speedy recovery!
Yours truly,
Fazbear ent.
…Mrs. Schneider? He knew Mrs. Schneider, she used to come to his school. Just like her, he was also forced to take counseling sessions with her. Then, one day she just disappeared. Well, to everybody else she just “disappeared”. Gregory knew, because he was the reason she just conveniently “went missing”. If Vanessa had Mrs. Schneider, did she also see any of the other therapists he saw? His eyes flew over to the trash bag which held many of the documents, and photos left on the coffee table he was now sitting in front of. Gregory wondered if there were other letters like this in that trash bag. He got up, and walked to the tied up bag. Looking through it was the only way to get answers to the multiple questions that started popping up in his mind.
There was some part of him that was practically begging him to look through and snoop further. The only problem was Vanessa would probably notice the disappearance, Gregory had to come up with a solution. Only about ten minutes had passed since his little discovery, so if she took fifteen minutes to go to the gas station, and fifteen on the way back, he currently had a minimum of twenty minutes to find a replacement, and hide the other bag someplace. Gregory hopped on his feet, and quickly looked through every crook and nanny in the kitchen to see if he could find the box of disposable trash bags, he tried to keep most things untouched so as to not raise Vanessa’s suspicion.Thankfully most cleaning supplies wasn’t stocked, making it easier to look through all the cabinets. Then, he finally found it, now Gregory had to find something to fill the bag with.
He wandered to his room, but nothing in there had the right weight to replicate the original. There were only three rooms in the hallway left to explore. One was Vanessa’s room, one was a bathroom, and the last, was frankly a mystery to Gregory. He doubted he could find anything in the bathroom, and Gregory already felt bad enough poking into her private mail and documents, that he didn’t dare think to even peek into her room. That only left the one room Gregory had no idea what it was, let alone the contents of the room.
Firstly Gregory grabbed the handle and jiggled it a little bit to test the waters. If Vanessa desperately wanted to keep Gregory out of this room she would’ve locked the door, but she didn’t. Once he stepped inside, Gregory noticed how dark it was in here, he started feeling the wall next to him for a switch, and thankfully he found it. This room seemed to have been a home office of sorts, there was a black metal desk, along with a shelf which housed multiple documents along with cute little figurines on it. Right next to Vaness’s desk there was a paper shredder with bunches of shredded paper in it.
Suddenly, Gregory was struck with an idea. He quickly walked over to the paper shredder and took the lid off. He grabbed the empty trash bag, and started shoveling the paper inside. He thought about picking the shredder up and dumping it out, but he hadn’t accounted for the fact his arms weren’t strong enough to hold it. This unfortunately took more time, time Gregory didn’t have. His hands started shaking.
While shoveling the paper inside, he wondered what Vanessa would think? How mad would she be? This may or may not have been crossing a boundary, but this was also important to Gregory. He may have been indecisive, but this was something he was confident in, and something he would see all the way through.
After he finished emptying out the shredder, Gregory tied the garbage bag, in the same way he saw Vanessa tie the other bag. He went back to the important bag. He did a little test, holding one bag in his right hand, and the other in his left. He suddenly let out a pent-up breath of relief when he realized they both felt about the same weight. Relieved, he quickly put the shredded bag back in the spot of the original one. Now he had to find a hiding spot for the bag.
Gregory thought about it. He knew the living room, kitchen, and Vanessa’s bedroom were most obviously ruled out. The bathroom just seemed plain impractical, given its small space and even smaller storage spaces. Vanessa’s office was also eliminated from the list of hiding spots. Vanessa had used it before, and it seems to be very likely she will use it again sometime soon. That only left Gregory’s room. He walked inside, and immediately found the perfect hiding spot. Inside his closet.Plus Vanessa seemed to be very respectful of Gregory’s boundaries, which made him feel a little worse about what he was currently doing.
After carefully placing the bag inside of his closet, he walked back inside the living room and sat back down on the couch. He hoped that doing something would’ve calmed his body down, and made himself stop moving but it didn’t. He was so worried, and his body kept reminding him of it. His foot tapped rapidly on the floor, along with his fingers doing the same on the arm of the couch. Not to mention, his body was demanding to be fed. Gregory kept trying to ignore that feeling until Vanessa came home. He kept waiting like this for a bit, until, by some saving grace, Vanessa suddenly burst in through the door.
There was a bag hanging off the wrist that opened the door, and in the other, one of those cardboard drink-holders. She stepped in, placing everything on the table.
“I’m home, nice to see the house is still standing.”
She said Gregory could practically smell the grease from whatever Vanessa brought home, and it just reminded him how famished he was. He got up off the couch, and met Vanessa in the kitchen.
“Yeah, it was just really quiet tonight.”
“Did you just stay sitting on the couch, all alone in silence?” Vanessa inquired.
“Yeah, it was really lonely here.”
“Well, you could have put on the TV or something, to at least have some background noise. I wouldn’t have gotten mad or anything.”
Vanessa said, as she dug into one of her cabinets, pulling out two plates. Then she started to unpack, and plate everything. It seemed, for herself, Vanessa had gotten a regular cold cut sandwich, which she unwrapped and placed onto her plate. Afterwards, Vanessa pulled out Gregory’s chicken and put them on the separate plate. She then pulled out a bag of chex mix, and began to dump some of the bag out onto her plate. She looked at Gregory.
“Want some?”
Gregory nodded, as Vanessa dumped a bit more of the bag onto his plate. After that, Gregory’s eyes drifted over to the cardboard drink-holder, which housed two slushies. One was a deep red, while the other was a bright blue. Gregory wanted to ask Vanessa for one of the slushies, but he also didn’t want to seem entitled for thinking she got something like that just for him . However Vanessa must’ve noticed, because she went over to address them.
“Oh yeah, I really wanted to get a slushie, but I didn’t know if you wanted one. It seemed pretty rude to just get one for me. So I just got both flavors the gas station had so you could pick whichever you wanted.” Vanessa then held out the container to him, and let Gregory choose. Gregory stood there for a second, he thought about it for a second, before just asking Vanessa.
“Well, which one do you want?” Gregory asked as Vanessa paused.
“Well in that case.” She gave a really genuine smile, before taking her pick. Vanessa grabbed the red, cherry-flavored slushie, leaving Gregory the blue raspberry-flavored one. They both took a sip, before Vanessa grabbed her plate and went to the living room. Gregory nervously followed suit, he sat on the rug, and placed his food on the coffee table. Vanessa grabbed the remote and flicked something on to save the both of them from the awkward silence they comfortably fell into most of the time. Gregory didn’t even notice what was playing as he started scarfing down his food.
“Geez, are you even tasting it?” Vanessa asked, half-jokingly and half-serious. Gregory gave a big gulp before answering back.
“Yeah, it’s really good, thanks.”
“Of course, no problem, just please don’t choke or anything. I don’t wanna break one of your ribs with the heimlich.” That got a little chuckle out of Gregory, as a wry smile crept on Vanessa’s face.
The rest of dinner went nice, and quiet. Gregory sat on the floor, half-watching the movie, half-zoning out, while Vanessa was busy finishing up her dinner. She ate her food, slower than Gregory had. She was actually savoring everything, instead of shoving it in her mouth and swallowing. Once she was done, she got up to throw her trash in, and kindly asked Gregory if she was okay to throw away his trash. He just replied with a single nod, as Vanessa crossed over to the kitchen. When she put everything up, Vanessa grabbed the bag with all the old shredded papers in it.
Shit.
Gregory knew this was the moment of truth, if she realized something was wrong, he’d be the only suspect. His heart started imploding in on itself as he saw from the corner of her eye picking up the trash bag. He gulped. What was going to happen? Was she gonna see right through his plan? Was she gonna throw him out onto the streets? At this point he was sweating a lot, as his hands started shaking.
“Hey Gregory.”
Vanessa called. He was caught for sure, he was going to have to sleep on the streets again. He was going to have to rummage inside trash for food instead of having nice meals like the ones he just ate. He was going to-
“I’m gonna take this down, if I’m not back in like, 15 minutes call the police.”
Gregory didn’t know if that was a joke or not, but didn’t care, seeing as he somehow pulled his little switcheroo off. Once she exited, Gregory eventually went to his room. He held Freddy 's head in his hands, sighing. Since the little scare was over, he started looking to the bear for comfort. Still, it would be more effective if Freddy was actually able to talk and address Gregory. Wanting to fix his best friend up, Gregory started brainstorming alternative power sources to charge Freddy up.
Gregory knew what area he was in, even before he was orphaned, he loved to explore the town. One thing he knew was that there’s a humongous junk yard in walking distance from here. It was always a hit or miss with what you found there, but Gregory thought he could find something there to fix Freddy up.And If there was nothing useful in the junkyard, well… Gregory wasn’t above stealing. Before he could indulge that though anymore Vanessa came back. Gregory came out of the guest room, to meet her.
“There you are, so, uhm… Have you thought about taking a bath? Because not to be mean or anything, but you smell pretty bad.”
A bath didn’t seem like a bad idea,and Gregory liked the idea of cleaning up.
“I don’t have any clothes that’ll fit you, can you handle one more day in those ones?”
“Yeah, I don’t really care, I could handle one more week in these clothes.”
“Hopfully it won’t come to that, I guarantee half the horrible things I’m smelling are coming from those clothes alone… Just, let me show you to the bathroom.”
Once Gregory was led inside, Vanessa started showing him the inside of the bathroom and explaining where and what everything was. To which was promptly met with,
“I’m not stupid I know what body wash looks like.”
“Well okay smart-ass, then I guess I’ll leave you to it.”
Gregory saw her close the door, and started to get ready for his shower. Firstly, he adjusted the nozzle, placing it all the way to the left. Gregory then stepped inside and for the first time since his stay here, completely relaxed. The steam had amply relaxed his aching body. He stepped out refreshed, which didn’t last long as Gregory placed the gross sweaty clothes back on. Once he came out, he met a sleeping Vanessa forcing herself awake. Both of them seemed to have the most screwed up sleeping schedule due to all the things that had happened last night. However Gregory wasn’t tired, and he didn’t want to sit next to Vanessa when she’s just snoring.
“VANESSA!” She jolted up, sighing.
“What the hell?! “ Vanessa said as she jumped up.
“Gregory please don’t do that, like ever again please.”
“Are you still sleepy even after sleeping through the entire day?” Vanessa nodded.
“Yes, so if you don’t mind I’m going to go to sleep, thank you, and goodnight.” She got up and trudged along to her room.
After Gregory saw her go and lay down, he decided that would be the best course of action. As he went and lay down in the bed Gregory realized this was gonna be harder than he thought. Not only was he jolted up because of the shower, he had also downed an entire slushie before bed. Meaning his body was going to be especially antsy tonight. That, as well as the way his dirtied clothes felt in the huge bed. He sighed, forcing himself to keep his eyes close, and just letting his mind tire itself out, before he went to bed.