Work Text:
“Are you sure this is gonna be okay?” Owynn asked, hovering outside the room that The Animatronics had planned to practice in. He twirled the end of his braid around his finger in what Freddy had learned was a telltale sign of anxiety and hesitation. Despite the impression he tried so hard to make, Owynn sure could be timid sometimes. Underneath his facade of confidence, his odd shapes, asymmetry, and bright, blinding (some would prefer the word garish) colours, Freddy had noticed how often he got so quiet and apprehensive over the course of their friendship.
“It’ll be fine,” Freddy encouraged, trying to convince himself almost as much as the other boy of his friends’ accepting nature. “You’re my friend now, right?” he asked, smiling as he gently touched Owynn’s arm in what he hoped was a comforting manner.
“Uh-” Owynn stuttered a bit and began to take a step back before apparently changing his mind about pulling away from Freddy’s touch. “I mean, I would sure hope so,” he retorted with a sudden confidence that made Freddy laugh.
Good, he thought. I was worried I went too far there for a second. It had been almost a full month since he and Owynn had changed the nature of their relationship to something more friendly, but Owynn was still sort of awkward with actually acting friendly, especially in public places, and especially at school. Freddy didn’t hold it against him, though. It was completely understandable, actually, given-
“Are you gonna follow that up, or are you just going to stare at him?” Fred interrupted Freddy’s train of thought.
“Shut up,” Freddy hissed.
“Huh?” Owynn looked startled, to say the least.
“No, no, not you!” he rushed to assure the taller boy as Fred dramatically groaned at him. “Anyway, since you’re my friend now, I figured you should get along with my other friends too! Just... don’t cause any trouble or anything and I’m sure everyone will realize why I like you so much right away.”
Thanks to Fred’s interference, Owynn looked a little more confused than comforted, but at least he seemed ready to go inside, so Freddy strode to the door and pushed it open.
“Hey, everyone,” he greeted, “Sorry if I’m a little late but I brought an audience for us!” Freddy guided Owynn into the room and the gazes of his four friends immediately changed from excited to varying degrees of skeptical.
“Are you kidding?” Fox asked, narrowing his eyes in distrust he wasn’t even trying to hide.
“No!” Freddy began to argue before calming himself down. “He isn’t going to do anything, so just let him-”
“I can leave,” Owynn offered, beginning to look more and more uncomfortable. Freddy was about to say something, but he was interrupted by Chica.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said. She removed one of the plastic school chairs from a stack in the corner of the room and placed it against a wall. “You can sit here and watch, Owynn, as long as you don’t interrupt us.”
“Thank you, Chica,” Owynn replied, walking to the chair. After he made himself comfortable in the most bizarre ways possible, sitting in the chair but with his legs crossed like an elementary schooler sitting on the floor, he directed a smug glance at Fox.
The rest of the practice went pretty smoothly, with The Animatronics playing every song they wanted to cover while Owynn shifted in his chair and alternated between watching, doing homework in a larger variety of gel pen colours than Freddy could possibly imagine was necessary, and applying a fresh coat of polish to his nails.
The first thing Freddy did when he put down his guitar was walk over to Owynn. “So, what did you think?” he asked.
“You...” Owynn broke eye contact with Freddy, casting his mismatched eyes to the side. “You guys were really good. I liked it a lot.”
It was only after wondering why Owynn responded in such a confusing way that Freddy remembered how he had used to view The Animatronics, and Freddy in particular, as rivals, or even nemeses, taking his villain persona into account. Maybe this plan had been more complicated for Owynn than Freddy had realized. Still, his response was just a simple smile and “thank you”.
“Hey, did you paint your nails a new colour? Can I see?” Freddy asked, noticing the slight chemical smell in the air that he had grown to recognize.
“Oh, no, I just touched up the same green colour I had before since it was getting chipped.” He held his hands out for Freddy to see and his nails were, indeed, still the same fluorescent green colour that they had been before practice, just with a fresher coat. “I like this colour, and I don’t have stuff on me to take it off anyway. I still usually get Cami to do new colours for me, to be honest. She’s better at the whole ‘controlling the brush’ thing than me,” he explained, with a hint of laughter on his face.
It was true; the coat of polish covering Owynn’s nails was messy and often went over the edges of the nails and onto the skin surrounding them, which was scarred and peeling from his incessant chewing. His usual nails, which were apparently done by Cami, were always much better. For some inexplicable reason, though, Freddy felt a pang of jealousy at the idea of Owynn going to Cami’s house and having her hold his hands as she applied colour to his nails with precise detail. I don’t like Cami anymore, he reminded himself. I never had a chance with her anyway; she doesn’t even like boys.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Fred chided quietly, probably noticing the disturbance in Freddy’s emotions.
Freddy bit back a response to Fred, instead opting to reply to Owynn. “Well, they look great anyway,” he complimented, smiling down at Owynn, who was still sitting in the chair.
“...Thank you,” he replied, seeming to remember at the last minute that that was what he was supposed to say.
“Hey, it’s no problem, it’s just the truth.”
Freddy was about to reach out his hand to help Owynn out of his chair, but before he could, he heard Fox calling him from across the room.
“Freddy? Could you come here? I want to talk to you for a bit.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll be right over!” Freddy replied, offering a quick apology and “be right back” to Owynn before walking across the room to his friend.
Despite Fox’s casual stance leaning against the wall of the room, he spoke in a hushed and serious tone. “When did you get so friendly with Owynn, of all people?”
Freddy got defensive almost immediately. “I thought you knew that we were getting along better now,”
“Well, yeah, but I assumed that would mostly involve him not scowling at you in the hallways so much, not you guys suddenly being best friends.”
“I don’t understand why you care so much. I mean, sure he had his problems in the past-”
“That’s the understatement of the century,” an uninvited Fred chimed in.
“but I think he’s actually changed. He’s actually been pretty nice.”
“I’m not trying to start an argument, I’m just worried about you. I don’t think he’s above doing something like this as a scheme against you.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I don’t really think that’s what’s going on. People can sometimes just have changes of hearts and grow to understand each other, right? I mean, you didn’t like Golden at first, and now look at you two.”
“I- I guess you’re right in a way, but also Golden didn’t go to extreme measures to attempt to sabotage me in The Spring Event. I’m just telling you to be careful.”
“Of course. I will be.” Freddy smiled at Fox in a way that he hoped conveyed that there were no hard feelings before turning to walk back over to Owynn.
***
Later that night, Owynn and Freddy were sitting together on the soft, white sheets that covered Freddy’s bed. Owynn had asked if he could stay over that night and Freddy hadn’t seen a problem with it, so there they were.
In private, Owynn was remarkably more affectionate. Not in a way that was clingy or overbearing, but as he and Freddy talked about various topics and perused random YouTube videos, he seemed to have no reservations about sitting closely to Freddy or even leaning against him from time to time.
About a month ago, Freddy would never have imagined Owynn to be so... well, cuddly. To be fair, about a month ago, Freddy also would not have imagined that his pyjamas of choice consisted of a onesie, even if it was a black one featuring a skull pattern. He generally had more endearing qualities than it would immediately seem.
And, sure, maybe Freddy thought it was a little cute.
In the silence between conversation topics, Owynn suddenly let himself fall back on the bed with a gentle thumping noise. Lying down flat, he turned his head to face Freddy, an oddly contemplative expression on his face.
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend like you before.”
“Huh?” Freddy was unsure how to react to this comment, and admittedly kind of flustered. “What... do you mean by that?”
“I mean. Um. I’ve been pretty alone for a long time. I’ve never really been the best with people, but things get especially difficult when you’re being manipulated into acting cartoonishly evil.” Owynn was keeping his tone light in words, but Freddy could hear the cracks in his voice as if he was holding back tears. He wondered how long he had been wanting to say this. “I guess I technically have other friends than you, but Cami, Eak, and Town are, well. They’re great, but let’s just say I would never be having this conversation with any of them. It’s probably just me, but I’m not even sure if they like me half the time. Not that I don’t deserve that. What I’m trying to say is, I guess, thank you for being so nice to me. No one has ever treated me this way before.”
“Owynn...”
“I’m not done yet,” Owynn interrupted, a slight smile appearing on his face. “That’s why I didn’t like you at first. I’m not going to blame it all on my situation. I couldn’t stand you. I mean, I was so jealous of you. You just showed up at this school and immediately you had this super genuine and close group of friends. Like, I could have only dreamed of having the type of friends that The Animatronics are, and it all seemed so easy for you.” At this point, Owynn reached out his arm and found Freddy’s hand with his, gingerly taking hold of it. “But that’s not how I feel anymore. After getting free, and even before sometimes, I thought about you a lot, and I realized that maybe... maybe we could be friends too. And I was able to take all those things about you I was so envious of and turn them into reasons to admire you. And I know I’ve already said this, but I’m sorry for the way I treated you.”
“Owynn. It’s okay. But... thank you for telling me this.” Freddy momentarily tightened his grip on Owynn’s hand, which he was painfully aware of in his own. From the eye-catching but poorly applied colour of his fingernails, to the torn skin around them, to the softness of his skin and the surprising ease with which his hand had slid into Freddy’s, Owynn’s hand was almost as complex as the boy himself. Freddy couldn’t help but think that he wouldn’t mind holding that hand more often. “I do think we have more in common than you might think, though.”
Owynn sat up a bit in interest at this.
“Before I came to this school, I didn’t really have any friends either,” Freddy continued.
“You? Why?” Owynn looked genuinely perplexed at this idea.
“I... well, uh.” Freddy had not taken into account before starting this conversation that it would probably entail him telling Owynn about Fred. Every time he had to explain Fred to someone, not only was it anxiety-provoking, but he had no idea how to even talk about him in a way other people would understand. “It’s. Um. Hard to explain.”
Unexpectedly, he felt Owynn begin to move his thumb gently over the surface of Freddy’s hand. “You can tell me. You don’t have to, but you can.”
Fred, who had had the decency to stay quiet throughout most of the evening, now spoke up. “If you make me talk to him, I’m going to fill your shoes with toothpaste.”
“I’m not going to make you talk to him,” Freddy mumbled, hoping it was too quiet for Owynn to hear.
“Huh?” Owynn sat entirely now, leaning forward a bit in interest.
Well, it was too late for him to go back now. “I have. Um. There’s... another guy who lives in my body? Or in my brain. His name is Fred. He used to... we didn’t really get along very well. We’re doing better now, but it used to be really hard for me to make friends because he was kind of an asshole and would mess it up for me. Uh.” At this point, he turned his gaze to face Owynn, who he had been avoiding eye contact with this whole time. He still hadn’t let go of his hand.
The expression on Owynn’s face was thoughtful, like he was trying to make sense of what Freddy had just told him. That was a step up from freaked out or laughing, so despite the pit that remained in his stomach every time he had to tell someone about Fred, Freddy wasn’t too nervous anymore.
The first words out of Owynn’s mouth were, “I think that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I don’t totally understand it, obviously, but that’s who you’re talking to all the time, right?”
“Yes! I... I didn’t know you noticed that.”
“I mean this in the kindest way possible, Freddy, but it’s kind of impossible not to notice.”
“I guess you’re right. But you really don’t think it’s weird?”
“Weird? Maybe a little. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad. I mean, I would be stupid if I stopped being your friend over something like that.”
“Can we stop talking about me like I’m not here?” Fred chimed in yet again.
“You’re the one who said you didn’t want to talk to him! Make up your mind,” Freddy snapped before turning back to Owynn. “Sorry. He’s being annoying again. Thank you for not freaking out about it.”
“Of course. I guess we both could have used it if we met each other earlier, huh?” Owynn asked, adopting a wistful expression.
“Yeah, maybe. But... we’re here now, aren’t we? And that’s what matters.”
“Yeah,” Owynn murmured. He let go of Freddy’s hand, hesitated for a moment, and then enveloped Freddy in a hug. It was gentle, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to do it or not, but he buried his face in Freddy’s shoulder and breathed deeply like he was trying to savour the moment as much as he possibly could.
After a moment, Freddy moved his arms to hug Owynn back. “Let’s go to bed soon.”
***
Despite being the one to suggest sleeping, Freddy found himself lying in bed an hour later, completely unable to sleep.
“I guess you two weren’t kidding about trying to be friends, huh?” Fred asked.
Freddy sat up in his bed to look at Owynn, who was lying on his floor. He hadn’t taken his glasses off or put his hair down until right up until going to sleep, and without those certain aspects of his eccentric appearance he looked vulnerable, in a way. This boy on the floor of Freddy’s room was not the same one who he had almost let join The Animatronics before the Spring Event, and he wasn’t the same one who had planned to win it through sabotage. He was someone new and entirely different, someone who might still be figuring out who he was. Freddy understood why people were doubtful that Owynn was genuinely changing, but there was no hint of skepticism in his mind that all the new sides of himself that the purple-haired boy kept revealing were genuine parts of his personality.
“Are you gonna talk to me or are you just gonna watch him sleep like some kind of weirdo?”
“I don’t want to wake him up,” Freddy whispered. “He always has really dark shadows under his eyes. I don’t think he gets a lot of sleep.”
“Oh my god,” Fred muttered. “What next? When’s the wedding?”
“Are you kidding? I’m just being a nice friend, something you obviously wouldn’t know about,” Freddy teased back. And yet, despite his deflection, he felt his heart speed up just a little bit in his chest.
“Wait, do you actually like him? I noticed that.”
“I don’t- I don’t know! He’s just...”
“He’s just what? He looks like he’s trying to look like one of those scene kids from the 2000s but doesn’t know how to pull it off, and he’s an asshole .”
“First of all, you’re one to talk on both accounts. Second of all, you can’t have seen all that earlier and think he’s just trying to trick me into something. I think he’s really changing. It’s sweet.”
“Listen, I don’t control your life choices. It’s none of my business if you like him, I just think you have bad taste. Now go to sleep.”
***
The day afterwards (which was, incidentally, a Tuesday), The Animatronics were unexpectedly joined at lunch by Owynn, Eak, Towntrap, and Cami.
“Is this going to be a regular occurrence?” Fox questioned. “This table is so crowded with all these people.”
“Well, I say the more people here to enjoy our pudding with us, the better!” Bonnie cheered, gently lifting his pudding to emphasize his point.
“I can’t believe you people,” Chica muttered, crossing her arms.
“I agree,” Towntrap said, wrinkling his nose in an unusual expression of distaste. “I think this stuff has gelatin in it.”
“Oh, cool, I’ll be taking yours then,” Owynn stated nonchalantly, leaning over the table to slide Town’s pudding towards himself and earning an almost fatherly look of disapproval from the other boy.
“Does it really matter that much?” Eak asked, which resulted in Towntrap giving him a very calm but very wordy explanation on why, yes, it did matter, while the rest of the table broke off into their separate conversations. Everyone was chatting amicably with each other, with the exception of Chica, who was still sulking over how obsessed the rest of her band was with pudding, and Cami, who was completely silent, presumably struggling with the amount of people around.
Freddy smiled to see his closest friends all getting along so well with Owynn’s friends. He scanned his eyes over the group to take everything in and noticed that instead of just interacting with their individual groups, many of his friends were interacting with the newcomers quite happily. It felt like a miracle to see the two groups who used to be working against each other all getting along like friends, more or less. Even his friends who he knew were more skeptical (namely, Fox) seemed happy.
This train of thought came to an abrupt stop, though, not because of a disturbance, but because his gaze fell on Owynn. Apparently, someone had said something that he thought was really funny, because he had entered an uncontrollable laughing fit. It was an all-consuming one, one that made his shoulders shake, brought tears to his eyes, made him wheeze for air and hit the table in front of him.
It was probably the happiest Freddy had ever seen him look, and he was transfixed. It wasn’t like Owynn looked particularly attractive in that moment or anything; in fact, he really looked like a mess, but seeing him laugh like this was doing something to Freddy’s heart anyway. It was like every time a new side of Owynn was introduced to Freddy, he felt more drawn to him, and this side, the one that was sitting happily and laughing with his friends, was his favourite by far.
He was snapped out of this trance by the bell ringing to signify the end of lunch. “You just spent almost all of our lunch looking at Owynn. I swear I’m going to take the body for the rest of the day,” Fred grumbled while Freddy was walking out of the cafeteria.
“Please don’t,” Freddy whispered, attempting not to make it evident that he was talking to someone who wasn’t visible to anyone else in the crowded room.
“Only if you stop being so annoying about this.”
All of a sudden, Freddy felt a hand grab his wrist. Before he could see who it belonged to, he got pulled out of the cafeteria and into a section of the hallway outside that was much quieter. As soon as they were alone, the mysterious person let go of Freddy and he got to look at who it was. He was half expecting to get beat up, but...
“Cami?” It made sense that Cami wouldn’t know how else to approach him other than this, since she had never been the best with social queues, but what could she possibly want to talk to him about?
“It’s about Owynn,” Cami stated.
“Huh?” The way she said that made it sound like something happened to him, but that would have been awfully fast for some disaster to occur since the last time he had seen him.
“I saw the way you were looking at him at lunch.” Oh.
“I... I already know that this is kind of weird, all things considered. I don’t even know why he- I don’t know how this happened.” Freddy stopped trying to explain himself once he saw that Cami’s facial expression was more of an amused smile than anything.
“Don’t worry. I understand. Owynn is totally annoying and insufferable a lot of the time, but he’s my friend too. I know he has his charm points.”
“So then what is this about?” Freddy was at least glad that he wasn’t going to have another conversation with someone trying to convince him not to like Owynn, but now he was just confused.
“I’m here because I like Owynn, actually. He’s my friend and I care about him, but don’t let him ever hear that I said that. The ego boost would be too much for him.” Freddy laughed to himself a little at that. “I don’t know how much you know about him, but... he’s a lot more sensitive than you might think. He’s been through a lot.” A pause. “All of us have, but I think it was different for him. And possibly a lot worse.” Cami fidgeted with her hands as she spoke about her friends and their past, turning her head down so her hair covered even more of her face than usual.
“I... I know. I mean, I don’t know the details, but I know enough. You don’t have to talk about it,” Freddy assured her, not wanting Cami to have to relive her experiences that weren’t even that far in the past just because he had a crush on her friend. If he was being honest, though, he still wasn’t entirely sure what the correlation was.
“What I’m saying is mostly just that if you do anything at all to hurt him, I can’t guarantee that nothing horrible will happen to you,” Cami concluded with a tilt of her head that made able to peer through her bangs, showing Freddy her intense glare. Right. He had almost forgotten how scary she could be sometimes.
Despite the chills travelling down Freddy’s spine at Cami’s threat, a grin slowly spread its way across his face. “You don’t even have anything to worry about. I wouldn’t dream of it,” he assured her.
Cami reached across the space between her and Freddy to firmly grab his shoulder and offered him a gentle smile. “I thought so. This was really just a precaution. I’m sure you’ll be great. Let’s end this now so neither of us will be late to our next class.”
***
The three weeks that followed were painstaking ones, each one passing excruciatingly slowly as Freddy waited to feel sure enough in his feelings to be ready to confess to Owynn. With each day, it felt like the two were spending more time together, and with each day Freddy’s feelings grew stronger. It had gotten to the point where he was pretty sure everyone was aware of his feelings except for Owynn himself. In the interest of not receiving another pep talk from any of his friends, who had mostly gotten used to Owynn at this point. He had already gotten a talk from Bonnie about being honest with his feelings and a talk from Chica about self-confidence, and he was just about ready for this crush to not spawn any more serious discussions.
That was why, as he and Owynn were leaving school one afternoon, Freddy was attempting to psych himself up for his confession.
“Come on, coward, just do it,” Fred egged him on, not helping in the slightest. “What’s the worst that could happen? He lets the attention get to his head too much?”
But that wasn’t Freddy’s greatest fear about this at all. What if after he told Owynn he liked him, the other boy didn’t want to be his friend anymore? Not even just that, but what if it somehow shifted the balance of their friendship, set everything askew, made it all awkward? The two of them had come so far from where they started, and this had the potential to push it all over like some kind of delicate, complex card house or domino pattern.
He still remembered the conversation they had had about how Freddy was a type of friend for Owynn that he didn’t have in anyone else. What if, after learning Freddy’s true feelings towards him, Owynn cut him off completely and went back to feeling alone like before? He had opened up to Freddy only the tiniest amount already, and he always seemed like there was more going on beneath the surface; more that he still had yet to tell Freddy. More that he possibly hadn’t told anyone yet. If he wasn’t Freddy’s friend anymore, would he have anyone he felt like he could talk to about those things? Clearly, his concerns about his other friends not caring about him weren’t true, if the conversation Freddy had had with Cami was anything to go off of, but that didn’t mean his friendships with them were the type for open conversations about emotions like that. What if-
“Freddy. I promise you you are worrying too much about this. You’re almost at the part of your walk where you go in separate directions,” Fred told him. His tone of voice sounded almost bored, but there was definitely an underlying care. No matter how he expressed it, Freddy could tell when Fred was really trying to be nice, because that was just the kind of connection they had.
With Fred’s words in mind, Freddy took a deep breath. “Owynn. I have to tell you something.”
His friend turned to face him. “Hm?” He wore a curious expression on his features.
Freddy reached towards Owynn and held his hand gently, an action that had become common between them even as friends. “I... I like you. I’ve liked you for a while now. You don’t... you don’t have to feel the same way, but if you don’t, please at least stay as my friend? I care about you a lot, and-”
Owynn cut him off, which was probably a good thing, since god knows how long he would have kept talking otherwise. “Are you... serious?” Upon seeing the expression on Freddy’s face, which must have looked at least a little affronted if not completely mortified, Owynn seemed to notice the way his words sounded and readjusted himself to speak again. “I mean, this isn’t a prank or anything, right? Nobody put you up to this or whatever?”
“...No, Owynn, I promise that I actually like you.” Freddy was equal parts amused and concerned by the immediate assumption that he was joking.
“I. Um.” Owynn’s eyes were directed away from Freddy, and his face was covered in a noticeable pink hue. “Uh.” He seemed at a loss for words, and, if the tone of his stammers were anything to go by, almost like he might tear up. After a few seconds, he seemed to have composed himself better. He took Freddy’s other hand in his, taking a breath of his own before responding. “I like you too.”