Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Micheal feels like he’s in a daze, shaken with pre-interview jitters and wearing a blazer jacket that makes him sweat. He doesn’t just want this job, he needs this job. At least, he thinks he does. 

He’s aimless, a wanderer with roughly 250 pounds of guilt weighing on his chest and perpetual shadows under his eyes. All he has left is his father and his dreadful legacy; and an urge to bring it all to light. He has to do something, even if that something is only small acts of justice or apology that lift the sandbags off of his chest one by one. 

His sweaty hand grips the stainless steel handle as he pulls the glass door open. As promised, a bored looking manager is snacking on a piece of flat-looking pizza in a brightly colored booth while staring soullessly at the animatronic show immediately across from her. He forces himself to follow her gaze. 

They’re just robots, Mike.

Sometimes he thinks in his father’s voice. He tries not to think about that too hard. 

After a few seconds, he tears his eyes away from the purple rabbit singing jazz and focuses on the task at hand. He approaches the table confidently, sticking out his hand when the woman turns her dull gaze to him.

She takes it, raising her eyebrows.

“Hi, I’m Mike? Mike Schmidt. I’m here for the interview.”

She nods, releasing him to regard her clipboard. Her voice is as flat and grey as the rest of her. “You’re applying for the night guard position?”

She sounds somewhat surprised, as if she didn’t read the paper before her until now. 

“Yes. I am. Yes,” Micheal inhales, cutting himself off before he rambles. 

“Interesting.” She mutters. “How old are you, son?”

“22.”

“Ah, I see,” Her eyes are sharp when she looks back up at him, “I strongly advise you to reconsider.” 

“What? Aren’t you going to- like- interview me?” Mike asks, a little taken off guard. He looks down at his outfit and back up to her. He thought that a blazer and jeans were formal enough for a security job but-

“Hold on-“ She smiles slightly with the interruption, the blankness in her features betraying its sincerity, “I didn’t say you didn’t have the job. You do. But I would like to make sure you’ve considered the risks.”

“I already have the job?”

“Of course you do. Who else would be stupid enough to take it?” She bites her lip “Not that you’re- Well. Just- take into consideration that the last seven night guards have either quit or disappeared within the week.”

“What?” Micheal should have known that this wasn’t going to be normal. Answers don’t come easy, especially with his dad.

He was always so...cryptic. Like an enigma. He’d go to his friends houses and see their father’s joke around, and laugh, and be affectionate with their kids. His dad only ever made him cry.

That isn’t entirely fair. He also made Micheal smart, made him think before he spoke in fear of being called dense or stupid. He made him find new and inventive ways to sneak out of the house, until he installed cameras pointing at his bed. He helped him learn by example how to have multiple personalities for different people, easy to wear like masks. The personality he had with Michael was dismissive, with his mother commandeering but faithful, with his younger siblings the loving father that Micheal could never dream of. With everyone else? Jovial and friendly, a Santa Claus-esqe presence. He imagines that there’s more, but he didn’t encounter them before he left. That’s why Micheal is now able to be a shapeshifter; like father like son.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you looked for work somewhere else,” The woman intones her voice very strongly, warning him against this.

This may be the only way to get closer to the truth of what happened leading up to his father’s disappearance. He knows some things, like how he’s probably was behind the disappearances of the children in his restaurant, and Charlie Emily’s murder. He looked through all of his father’s old plans and writings, but there was nothing there. For a long time, Micheal had tried to stay away from coming back here, but his dry quest for knowledge always ended up at these doors, and he’d decided to bite the bullet. If he doesn’t try then he might just waste away forever, unable to move on from the pain in his past.

“I’m happy to give it a try.”

The woman looks mad, upset, and then indifferent all in an exhale, “Suit yourself.”

She slides the clipboard over to him, handing him a pen, “Enjoy signing your life away, Mikey.”

He grins at her, shrugging, “Oh, I will.”

Chapter Text

Micheal has already shed the blazer by the time he opens the front door of his apartment, where it assumes its usual position; slung over his shoulder like an empty potato sack. He calls into the darkish space to signify his arrival home. He receives no answer so he assumes his partner is still at work, as he usually is at this point. Micheal chucks the jacket across the room and it hits the wall hard and crumples to the ground. He’ll pick it up later.

Now that the initial anxiety of getting the job is gone, he feels infinitely better in his skin... like he’s one step closer to where he’s been destined to be for his whole life. 

Where or what that is? Well.. he doesn’t know. 

But in part it’s this- emptiness inside him that he’s seeking to fill that pushes him back to his Dad.

Don’t get him wrong. His dad is/was the epitome of human shit, but it’s the only thing he has left. 

Just as he sits down on the couch the door opens again behind him. It’s Jacob. He doesn’t realize that Micheal is there, he can tell, because all he does is sigh heavily and flick the light switch that Micheal had neglected. He’s dressed even more formally than Micheal was, which is customary for his line of work. Business, law, something or other. Mike always zones out when he talks about his work, anyway. 

He watches mildly as Jacob meanders into the kitchen; and when he gets out of sight Micheal fills in the gaps. He assumes from the coinciding thumps that he sets his briefcase on the kitchen table, and that he slams his palm down next to it shortly after. He must be upset for some reason. He hears him hook his ankle around the chair leg and pull it out with an annoying shriek. 

He sighs again.

And then he assumes that he catches a glimpse of Micheal’s abused jacket and connects the dots, because he hesitantly calls out- “Mike?” 

“Hey.”

“What the hell?” He mutters, standing up to peer over the couch. “You saw me come in, didn’t you?”

“I was taking a nap.” Micheal lies easily, feigning a sleepy smile.

“Oh.” He shakes his head, leaning to cup Micheals cheek. “Don’t scare me like that.”

“I’m sorry, Honey.” Micheal places his hand on top of Jacob’s. “Come here.” 

Jacob circles the couch, and kneels to be face to face with Micheal,”How did the interview go?”

Micheal grabs Jacob’s tie, purple and gold, looking at it instead of him. “I got the job.”

“Wow! Really?” He beams, his dark features lighting up for Michael's accomplishment. Micheal feels a pang of horrid guilt in his chest, which he stifles by tugging on Jacob’s tie, bringing their mouths together. 

Jacob enthusiastically returns the kiss, another way of telling Micheal that he’s proud of him. God. Mike does not deserve a man like him.

Jacob tries to pull back a few times but Micheal chases his mouth and pulls him back every time. Eventually he escapes, laughing slightly. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Thank you.” Micheal grins half-heartedly, “I start next week…”

It’s a night shift. He’ll barely see Jacob at all anymore, except for on the weekends when they both have days off. Hopefully that won’t make Jacob get bored enough to break up with him.

Or maybe hopefully it will. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen, and getting bored seems like the least horrible on the spectrum of extremes that would lead to a break up. Even though he doesn’t love Jacob, he loves having someone to go home to that he really likes as a person. It’s not Jacob’s fault that Micheal never fell in love with him. He’s romantic, caring, understanding- an all around great guy.But Micheal knows that he’s too soft, that if he showed him the inner workings of his mind and the deepest depths of his past that Jacob would never see him the same. He’d be a monster to him, politely asked to leave immediately and sent off with some ice cream and a hug goodbye. No, it’s not Jacob’s fault. Micheal will never be fit to be anyone’s partner, unless they're just as messed up as him. 

He realizes too late that Jacob’s looking at him expectedly, and that he had said something. “Sorry, what?”

“Are you okay?” He seemingly repeats and Micheal nods.

“You really don’t seem like you are.”

“I’m nervous.” Micheal admits, scooching into a sitting position so Jacob can share the couch with him. When he says it, he realizes that he actually is. Even though his anxiety about wasting his life has lessened slightly, the reality of spending the night in a place so similar to where his siblings had died is tortuous. He has to remind himself that he’s doing this all in part for them, for justice. He knows his father loved his siblings more than any living things in the world, but it was still partly due to his actions that they died. 

Even if Micheal will never shake his poor brother’s soul off of his back.

“I imagine it won’t be that strenuous, right? Except for the hours.” Jacob pulls Micheal into his side, “That will definitely take some adjustment.”

“Ah.” He shrugs, “You know. New things are kind of scary.”

“Yeah.” The silence stretches thin. Micheal scrambles for a topic.

“Umm...how was your day?”

Jacob brightens and starts talking. Micheal zones out 3 sentences in. 

Chapter Text

It’s Micheal’s first night. With a sleepy kiss and a piece of good luck cake in his stomach, he climbs into his trashy car at 11:30. Stalling before starting the engine, he resists the urge to let out a scream. 

“This is for them, Micheal Afton.” He mutters to himself. “For the ones you couldn’t save.”

You didn’t save any of them , his father reminds him as he starts the car and backs out of the driveway. He only made his brother’s life a living hell before he surely went to heaven.

Micheal imagines how he must have felt, sometimes. It was only a few months after his sister’s ‘death by robot’ and Joey was crying everyday at the littlest things, like stepping on a bug or getting surprised by Mike’s cruel pranks. Mike was so mad that his parents didn’t love him that he took it out on Joey, and Elizabeth dying really broke something in his head. He loved his brother, most of the time. His light teasing had evolved into something more vicious over time and he could say that he didn’t notice, but he’d be lying. He really ripped into him, anticipating his tears. It was a habit, reinforced by his father’s praise whenever he did something to scare his little brother away from the animatronics.

He imagines the betrayal that Joey must have felt when it was his own brother lifting him to one of his worst fears, putting him in real danger. The immense pressure behind his eyes before his skull cracked under blunt teeth. His last waking thoughts.

Micheal doesn’t even remember what was going through his own head at that point.

He drives without music. He rarely drives with music. It distracts him. It also feels irreverent. 

He didn’t move so close to Freddy’s on purpose. This is just where Jacob lives, about 15 minutes away. He finds it awfully convenient now.  He pulls into the parking lot and the restaurant lights are still all on; illuminating the emptiness that’s left there when all the children have gone home. He focuses on his steps one by one, right foot left foot, all the way to the door. Otherwise he might have run the other way. 

When he pushes the translucent door open the chime rings. A girl who is mopping the floor startles and looks up at him, and then relaxes at the sight of his uniform(he'd gotten it at orientation. He looks good in it). “You’re the new guy? What time is it?”

Mike glances at his wrist watch. “Uh, 11:56?”

She flushes and jumps into action, shoving the mop in the pail and hightailing it into a closet and back out. She pauses on her way past him to put her hand on his shoulder.

“Peace out, mister. Good luck. “

“Wait-”

She laughs uncomfortably, walking backwards now so she can still face him. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

She pushes the door open with her back, smiling apologetically before flipping a master switch and plunging him into darkness. He barely sees her shadow jog to her car. Micheal wonders what’s gotten her so freaked. His head immediately snaps towards pirates cove (he still remembers the layout, somehow), but he forces that thought down. He regards his paper. He'd gotten to look at his office the day before when it was still light out, it is small and sequestered away at the end of two long hallways. He follows the small map in the corner of his instructions, because the building feels different in the dark; he whips out the flashlight latched onto his belt to see where the moon doesn't touch.

He finds it. It looks even smaller with the oppressing darkness surrounding it. The gaping doors look like huge and hungry mouths on either side of him, and they awaken a feeling of dread deep in his stomach, one he hasn't felt since he saw his dad last.

He decides to take that as a good sign.

He'd just sunk into the swivel chair when the phone rings. It feels way too loud in the silence so Mike scrambles to pick it up, to delay the awakening of anything that might be sleeping.

He holds the red phone to his ear, whispering a hoarse- "Hello?"

A jovial voice interrupts him, nearly overrun with static. “Hello? Hello, hello!”

“Um.”

“Uh, I wanted to record a message for you, to help you get settled in on your first night.”

“Oh.” This is a pre-recorded thing. Must be a customary listen for new hires. Mike relaxes. He’s not one for phone conversations, or real conversations, or human contact… though someone on the other side of the line would probably be comforting right now. He wedges the phone between his ear and his shoulder to inspect the tablet that controls the cameras. The phone guy rambles on.

 “Um, I actually worked in that office before you. I’m...finishing up my last week now as a matter of fact so...I know it can be a little overwhelming, but i’m here to tell you: there’s nothing to worry about, uhh, you’ll do fine! So...let’s just focus on getting you through your first week. Ok? Uh...let’s see. First there’s an introductory greeting from the company I'm supposed to read. Eeh it’s kind of a legal thing, you know. ‘Welcome to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza: a magical place for kids and grown-ups alike, where fantasy and fun come to life. Fazbear entertainment is not responsible for damage to property or person. Upon the discovery of the damage or death has occurred, a missing person’s report will be filed within ninety days or as soon as property and premise have been thoroughly cleaned and bleached and the carpets have been replaced. Blah, blah, blah.”

Mike does a double take, putting down the tablet. He knows that people have been disappearing, but dying? He probably should have known. The lady’s half hearted attempts to stop him should have been enough to alert him. Since when did management try to stop people from filling their positions?

The phone guy is quick to amend. “ Now that might sound bad, I know, but there’s really nothing to worry about! Uhh, the animatronic characters here do get a bit quirky at night, but do I blame them? No! If I were forced to sing...those same stupid songs for twenty years and I never got a bath? I’d probably be a bit irritable at night too. So remember: these characters hold a special place in the hearts of children and you need to show them a little respect. Right? Ok.”

Mike knows that animatronics are dangerous, he’s seen it first hand. But the ones that had killed his siblings were just malfunctioning. They’d been situational things, tragedies. Animatronics can’t kill you unless you get too close. Right?

“So just be aware: the characters do tend to wander a bit. Uhh, they’re left with some kind of ‘free-roaming mode’ at night. Uhhh...something about their servos locking up if they get turned off for too long? Uhh...they used to wander during the day too, but then there was the bite of '87. Yeah... it’s amazing that the human body can live without the frontal lobe, ya know?”

“Oh my fucking god.” They come to you ? Goddamn! 

Mike opens the cameras again, just to check that the animatronics are still on their stage. They are. This has to be a joke. This has to be a joke. 

“Now concerning your safety: the only real risk to you as the night watchmen here, if any, is the fact that these characters...uhh, if they happen to see you after hours probably won’t recognize you as a person. They'll p-most likely see you as a metal endoskeleton without it's costume on. Now since that's against the rules here at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, they'll probably try to...forcefully stuff you inside a Freddy Fazbear suit.”

Not a joke. Mike almost whimpers, biting his lip. “Dad, you fucking maniac.”

This had to be, in some part, his fault. They realistically shouldn’t be able to leave their stage at all. They should be bolted down. They should have predestined movements, programmed to dance and sing with prerecorded music. Machines. Robots. 

They aren't AIs .

“Um, Now that wouldn't be so bad if the suits themselves weren't filled with crossbeams, wires and animatronic devices especially around the facial area. So, you could imagine having your head forcefully pressed inside one of those could cause a bit of discomfort... and death. Uh, the only parts of you that would likely see the light of day again would be your eyeballs and teeth when the pop out the front of the mask, heh. Y-yeah they don't tell you these things when you sign up. But hey, first day should be a breeze. I'll chat with you tomorrow. Uh, check those cameras, remember to close the doors only if absolutely necessary. Gotta conserve power. Alright, goodnight.”

Mike whispers goodnight back, even though the person on the other side of the phone might never hear him. 

Mike is going to die here, if he doesn’t find the answers he needs quickly. Otherwise, he might as well. 

He puts down the phone, picking up the tablet again with shaking hands. “God.” He flicks through the cameras, and nothing seems to be happening out of the ordinary. Mike doesn’t dare to hope. He sees the battery in the lower corner of the screen going down steadily. He turns off the screen, and it goes black. 

He can only hear the occelating of the fan and his own ragged breaths. He unplugs the fan in the hope that it would save some power. It’s nearly two. His shift ends at six. 

He checks the cameras again and jumps when he realizes that Bonnie isn’t on the stage anymore. Desperately, he searches through each camera view to find where he’s gone. He sighs when he sees that he’s only gone as far as the dining room. 

“Fuck.” He mutters under his breath. “So they do move.” 

He turns off the tablet again. He doesn’t want to die tonight, and he has a feeling that he will if he loses power. He reasons that he would hear the footsteps outside of his door if they got too close.  While he waits, he rustles through the filing cabinets at his feet, checking the camera every few seconds. Chica joins Bonnie in the dining room. 

He pulls out a stack of newspapers and slams it down on the desk, opening the camera again. Bonnie is gone from the dining room, he finds him walking down the hallway. Mike squeaks, and he pokes his head out of the door on his left slowly. Sure enough, there’s a silhouette of a 7 foot tall rabbit there, 12 feet away. It jerks to a reluctant halt and unblinkingly returns Michael’s gaze. He pulls his head back into the door in a panic.

“Fuck, shit, fuck.” When should he close the doors? Why do the doors use power? Why can’t they just be normal doors?

Mike decides to wait. If the thing came sprinting towards him, he’d surely hear it in time. He stuffs the newspapers in the canvas bag he had brought. 

Chica is gone from the dining room, and from the sounds of cookware clashing together she’s in the kitchen. He glances out of the door to see Bonnie still standing there, motionless. Freddy is still on his stage. The cove’s curtains are drawn. 

He checks the clock. 4. 

He doesn’t dare occupy his mind with anything else, sitting tensely in his chair, checking the cameras periodically. 

"Chica you fucker, where are you?"

On instinct, Mike checks the lights on both sides, only to see Chica grinning at him through the window.

Mike freezes for a second- "Shit!"- before slamming the door closed.

"Leave- fucking- just-" Mike flips through the camera feeds until he finds her again back in the dining room. He punches the door button. 

"Goddamn." Mike drags his fingernails down his face, surely leaving angry red marks there, but the pain helps ground him.

"It’s okay... I just need to get through this."  Mike pats the newspapers at his feet reassuringly, as if someone other than himself needed to be comforted. 

The rest of his shift is spent tensely, swiveling back and forth with restless energy and sharp eyes. No one really bothers him, and 6 hits uneventfully. Micheal stands up, staring at the clock.

“What now?”

How could he possibly leave? Those robots will kill him. 

He peers out of the left door and Bonnie’s still standing there, motionless. Mike grabs the canvas bag, slinging it over his shoulder. This passageway would lead him out closer to the front doors than the other one, and he doesn’t know where Chica is and god this is terrifying maybe he should just stay here until it gets light outside.

Mike, with one foot outside of the door, waits for Bonnie to lunge. 

Instead, he tilts his head slightly, making eye contact, and then turns on his heel and starts walking away.

“Good. Awesome.”

He slips past the rabbit once they make it out of the hallway and sprints for the glass door, and slams it shut behind him. He can see all 3 animatronics staring at him, but he doesn’t care.

He can finally breathe.

Chapter Text

The second night was (somehow) easy, they barely moved. Mike let himself roam the office a bit, but there wasn’t much to see except for oodles of old name tags lined up neatly on a shelf (creepy, given the context), and old pop cups chucked into a corner. Yesterday while Jacob was at work he had poured over the newspapers. Micheal is unsure as to who had started collecting them, because they seem….specific.

Some of them were simply containing Freddy ads that spanned a whole spread, and honestly they were pretty impressive.

Others were more of the strain Micheal was banking on. Missing children, last seen here. 

Interviews with William Afton or Henry Emily.

"These horrible tragedies will not be forgotten."- Dad

"I can't imagine losing my little girl to somewhere I trusted. We will be taking every precaution to keep your children safe" -Henry. (The other co-owner of the chain)

Charlie Emily's death, her broken body found in the dumpster behind a location.

Henry's breakdown, documented. William Afton sadly looking on, until ownership got handed over to him 'in pursuit of what we stood for before the tragedy'. Henry's disappearance.

Announcement for Circus World.

Liz's death.

Breaking story about a restaurant who killed someone the first day it was open. Interview with William Afton, in which he was noticeably distraught. 

Joseph Afton dies from internal bleeding after 7 day coma.

William Afton disappears, leaving behind recently motherless Micheal Afton.

The chain gets repossessed.

Micheal Afton commits suicide.

Hey look at this neat ad!

It’s all stuff Mike already knew. The stories themselves were little columns, hidden away. Sometimes they were in 3rd party newspapers, sometimes directly contradicted days later. (Gas leak? Ha.) It's a wonder this place is still open, and despite the new management models being supposedly safer in different locations, the animatronics here are the original ones.

The third day is proving to be a bit more of a problem. Mike sips flat pop through a crazy straw, flicking through camera views. The phone guy's voice crackles through the answering machine, and to Mike that's still a mystery. Someone must be calling him and playing the message over because it feels more like an echo than a conversation.

"Things start getting real tonight."

Bonnie's in the supply closet already. Fuck him.

"Uh...hey, listen. I've got an idea. If you happen to get caught and don't want to be shoved inside a Freddy suit, uh, try playing dead! You know, go limp!"

"Oh. Great idea." Mike shuts the door in Bonnie's face, waiting exactly 11 seconds before opening it back up to an empty hallway. It's almost like they teleport to and from places just to mess with Mike's mind.

"Then there's a chance they might think you're an empty costume instead….then again if they think you're an empty costume they might try to shove a metal endoskeleton inside you. I wonder how that would work."

Chica rattles some pots in the kitchen. Mike pities the custodial staff.

"Yeah, it's just best to not get caught."

Foxy's peeking out of his cove, his hook drawing back the curtain, his eyepatch flipped upwards so he can stare at Mike through the camera with both eyes. Phone guy signs off and plunges Mike's world into a sweaty silent hell.

"Foxy, darling, you've been so good to me, can you please just stay there?"

Foxy's head moves a bit to the side as if he heard him.

Mike clicks away.

Spooked, he distracts himself by sipping his pop until it's drained and the straw gurgles it's last, and then chucks the cup out the right door. It bounces off something and rolls back into the room.

Mike trails his eyes upward.

Freddy.

Mike slams the door button, heart beating in his throat and in his brain and in his feet.  

An agonizingly smug laugh echoes through the whole restaurant, dark and dumb-sounding. 

"Check." Mike laughs shakily, scanning every camera angle until he finds Freddy back in the dining room." And here I was thinking you might be a pacifist."

He opens the door again, the darkness on either side of him setting his nerves on fire. The brightness of the screen casts floaters in the blackness, squirming through his vision and setting him off when he tries to look for any signs of killer robots. That's how he hadn't noticed Freddy, on top of the fact that he hadn't even shown signs of moving until now, so it caught him off guard.

He checks back on Foxy, who somewhat sheepishly turns to look at the camera as if caught with his hand in the cookie jar; or maybe with his finger on the trigger. He's kind of halfway in, halfway out of the cove. "Please just- stay there."

It's 5:46. Bonnie is getting to be a bit too close, Chica is God knows where and Mike is pretty sure Freddy is in the bathroom. Foxy seems to be slowly creeping towards the left door. Hopefully he truly moves at a snail's pace.

He closes the door on Freddy again, a bit premature, possibly, but the bear terrifies him for some reason.

5:56. "Come on, baby." 12 percent left. Mike cautiously opens the right door. Four minutes left. He checks back on foxy.

"Dammit."

Mike has the sense to close the door on his left, but still jumps when it's pounded on. His lungs stop working, his heart skips two beats. Everything stops.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

His power drains down to zero like it was at 1 and not 10.

The sound of whirring machinery stops. Everything goes completely dark. As the clock digits flicker,  he watches the numbers five five nine fade into nothing. 

One minute. One minute to stall, assuming the bots follow their own rules. The doors rise like they're going to swallow him or even take a bite and Mike wouldn't be surprised. He tries to quiet his frantic breaths but it feels like it only makes everything worse. It's all bad. He's gonna die. That's the long and short of it. He's going to die, and no one will notice or care.

Well. There's Jacob.

But how much did Jacob even care in the first place? Enough. More than Mike cares about him .

God.

God .

If he wasn't going to hell before, then he is now. He can hear heavy metallic footsteps getting closer. Too late, Micheal thinks about writing a note for the cleaning crew or next night guard to find.

What would he even write?

Goodbye cruel world-  Micheal Afton.

There isn't much else to say. If he dies now then he'd have failed, no justice, no peace. If he dies now his father wins. Otherwise he'd welcome it, because being alive and Micheal Afton is horrible.

The footsteps stop, and Micheal doesn't dare to look, only screwing his eyes shut tight.  Music sputters and dies before it can really start. Mike opens his eyes to see two glowing pinpricks surveying him. Eyes. The thing doesn't move, even when Mike stands up, even when he realizes 'oh shit it's Freddy', or when the power blinks back on displaying 6:01 on the monitor. He doesn't move when Mike backs out the other door and books it to the exit. Or at least, he hopes he didn't. He slams the glass door behind him so violently that it vibrates in place for a few seconds after the impact.

Mike slides down it, catching the breath he held for a minute straight. He can't stay long because he never plans on meeting the cleaning crew alive, but he needs to breathe and process his thoughts before he gets behind the wheel.

Bzzt.

A zapping sound makes Mike's eyes leave his knees. 

Bzzt.

Mike's head snaps up to seek the source of the sound. On an open tailgate of a jacked up ford sits a figure with a long baton resting on their temple.

A familiar fear settles over Micheal like a circlet of laurels, a reminder of what his nights have been like recently. Long sustained hours of terror. He suddenly feels vulnerable just sitting on the pavement, so he scrambles to his feet, the fear that was subsiding at least a little bit coming back in full force.

Bzzt.

The figure lights up the parking lot with the baton, a *tazer*.

Bzzt.

It briefly illuminates the person's face in the early dawn, but the pre-sunrise light casts only more shadows across their features.

Bzzt.

Micheal will have to pass the figure to get to his car. Does he fight or run? He doesn't dare go back inside, even if it's, in theory, safer.

Bzzt.

"Aren't you going to say anything?" The figure calls, sounding amused. Their voice is a rumbly tenor, booming out of the small little body it lives in. Mike straightens out of his pre-sprint position.

"Um. Hi?"

A laugh, long and low, reaches out to Micheal with phantom fingers, drawing him closer. He takes a step forward out of twisted curiosity and bad eyesight.

"Hey." Bzzt. "What's a pretty face like yours doing in a dump like this?"

Is this some sort of fucked up catcall? Mike's face burns. "Excuse me?"

"Sorry, thought you knew." Bzzt. Mike takes another step, just to see the other's face properly.

"Knew what?"

Another laugh, lilting higher in pitch, like a teenager's giggle. "That you're pretty? I've been watching you, you know."

"The hell?"

The man shrugs like he has never cared about anything, crossing his legs and dangling the tazer lazily over the edge of the tailgate.

Bzzt.

"Not in a weird way, only in and out of Fazfucks. Making sure you haven't died. I brought this-"

Bzzt, bzzt, bzzt.

He waves it around like he's fencing.

"To come save you if you hadn't come out yet at 6:05."

"Oh." Um. "Why?"

"I mean-" Bzzt. The stranger waves the thing dangerously close to his own face, "I don't really like watching people die. And- I was in the neighborhood, I guess. The tazer stops them. It*hurts*them, and I love hurting them."

Or maybe he's sadistic. But then again, maybe he was hurt by them first. That's the only way he would even know about any of this. Even Mike hadn't known this went on during the night and he literally watched the birth of the industry.

"You worked here."

The sun is peeking out from below the hills on the horizon, and Mike welcomes the light that comes with it, be it minimal.

"Not here, specifically." He counters, "but close enough."

"Who are you?"

"Jeremy Fitzgerald, nice to meet you." The man shifts grips and holds out a hand to shake, even though Micheal is at least 6 feet away.

Micheal realizes that this could be dangerous, that if he got close the man could taze him in the neck and kill him or human traffick him or whatever.

But honestly, Micheal's self preservation instincts are shockingly low, so he takes the chance, closing the gap between the two of them and gripping the man's hand. They shake once.

"Micheal- Schmidt."

"Charmed." The man flashes Micheal a smile, and Micheal effectively jumps back 3 feet.

"Holy shit! What happened to your face?"

The man's- Jeremy's- smile falters pathetically. He pulls down his baseball cap and crosses his arms over his chest, compacting himself to look smaller. When Micheal had been close, he could finally see his features.  One eye is higher than the other, squinted shut as if it had been pulled tight, his eyebrows are faint and patchy,  extensions of jagged peach colored scars barely hidden beneath his hairline. He seemed to be baby faced at some point, but not anymore.

Mike realizes too late how rude that was. "I'm sorry- goddamn, it just surprised me."

"It's- alright. Um. I was bitten." The man is worlds more subdued and Micheal chastises himself. 

"By*what*?"

"Metal fucker." Jeremy says,  "thing sliced off the front of my brain and now I have cognitive disabilities."

It dawns on him-"The bite -"

"Of 87,” Jeremy choruses with Mike, boredly twirling the tazer again. “Right.”

"You don't seem-"

"What, retarded?"

Mike shakes his head rapidly, "I- I'm not trying to insult you but I keep doing it! I- I'm sorry."

"Not a big deal." Jeremy shrugs. "You should go and get some sleep. I'll see you tomorrow, assuming you're coming back?"

"Yeah. Of course."

"I'd say you're crazy but-" he shrugs, "I'm actually fuckin' insane. I'm sure you have your reasons."

"I-yes. I do."

"It was nice to meet you, Micheal." 

Mike is glad that Jeremy isn't planning on killing him even after he was like the rudest person ever in the world. Wow.

"Um, yeah." Is all he can say, which is lame. He hits his leg when he hears Jeremy's high pitched peal on the way back to his car.

Chapter Text

The next day after his shift, Jeremy's waiting.

"Hey man." Mike says, completely exhausted but feeling more confident after figuring out the patterns of Foxy and Freddy and managing his time more efficiently.

Jeremy waves the tazer at him in greeting. "Have a seat, buddy."

Mike nods, not questioning him, because he's stupid and now would be a good time to tie him up with duct tape and sell him the the illuminati...but, he trusts this kid? He isn't sure why, or if he really does or not, but he's intrigued and wants to know more .

Maybe Jeremy can see that in him. Mike lifts himself to sit beside the other man on the edge of the truck bed.

"How was it tonight?" He asks with a certain distance, fiddling with the tazer by switching it off and on obsessively. Mike wants to take it away before the other man hurts himself.

But he doesn't. Obviously.

"I'm getting the hang of it, actually."

Jeremy hums. Mike notices that he's wearing his hair down today, letting blond strands fall down to mask his face instead of wearing it in a tight bun as he was yesterday. Mike feels a twinge of guilt again, but he has the sense not to bring it up.

"Yeah. I got their patterns down, I think. smooth sailing from now on." Micheal boasts, feeling entirely too good about himself.

"Don't get too confident, they might bite your face off."

"He'll bite your face off, Joey. "

"No she won't! She's my friend. She- she- she promised-"

"Fredbear's obviously a boy, dipshit. He wears a bowtie."

"No! Inside."

"Inside what? What the hell do you mean?"

"Give your girlfriend a kiss, JoJo, go on…"

Micheal shivers, and Jeremy takes it as disgust.

"Ha. Don't want a face like mine? It's not a real winner with the ladies."

Micheal should say something consoling, or funny, or self deprecating, but all he can think to say is-

"I'm gay."

Jeremy pauses, turning his head so his good eye locks with Micheal's. For a second, Micheal thinks he might be chatting with a tazer wielding homophobe and he'll wake up dead in a ditch.  The next, he's met with an absolute cackle , bubbling over and spilling out of the boy; doubling him over at the stomach. 

"Are you not chill with it?" Mike asks, hesitantly laughing a few times just out of pure shock.

"No, totally." He wheezes. "I'm gay as fuck. Its just- I'm usually the one who busts out with it the second time I talk to someone, not the other way around."

Mike internally slaps himself. He isn't usually this socially inept. It must be something about his lack of sleep, or the boy he's talking to.

"Oh."

"Don't worry about it. I say unprecedented shit all of the time." Jeremy waves a hand, laughter fading out, leaving a more relaxed, more welcoming person behind it.

"Cause of your brain?"

"I used to be shy, and I would never swear, but now I say everything that comes to the front of my mind. It's like my filter's broken. My shrink says I can try to fix it but I've been trying and- nope. I cant hold a job anymore. I live in my truck, and I drove here one day and now I'm living in parking lots."

Jeremy blinks as if he was acclimating to waking up. "That was too much. I'm sorry."

"Homeless?" Mike bites his lip. "I'm sorry, I wish I could help."

"You don't need to feel like you need to help me. You don't really know me, and I don't really know you."

"Well." Mike says, unable to read the other, due to the hair curtain shielding his face and expression. "Would you like to?"

Jeremy stiffens for a second before giggling again. "Sure."

Smooth.

"Were you just trying to scare me yesterday? " Mike asks suddenly, "The first time you laughed it was like- all Dracula. Now-"

"I sound like a girl, I know. I don't really like my laugh, so- I try to change it. Sometimes I change the way I act too but- I usually forget or can't keep it up."

"Nah. I just thought it was cute."

Jeremy huffs. "Thanks, I guess."

"What, did I bruise your ego?" Mike teases lightly, gazing at the new light rising.

"No." Jeremy replies, completely seriously, and it makes Mike want to hug him.

Which is totally out of left field woah .

"Good." Mike murmurs, holding his elbows in the morning chill. "You know, you don't have to hide your face from me."

Jeremy inhales sharply.

"I'm serious. If we're going to be friends, I don't want you to-"

"It's okay, Micheal. Really." Jeremy says somewhat loudly, bowing his head down lower. "I'm okay with it if you don't want to see my face, I don't want to see my face either-"

"Stop-"

"I sometimes wish that the mangle wouldn't have missed."

"The mangle? I- Jeremy , I'm not just saying that… I really mean-"

"Shut up!" He screeches, swiping his hand and hitting Micheal on the forearm, " you're lying!"

Taking a gamble (because honestly what else has he been doing lately?), Mike grabs Jeremy's shoulder and turns him so they're face to face.

Slowly, Jeremy locks gazes with him, allowing Mike to fully see his features again. It takes a lot of willpower to not flinch or draw back or to look away, but he has a lot of willpower so he sticks it out. He brushes Jeremy's hair back behind his ears.

"You look better with your hair back."

"Stop."

"And your eyes are stunning."

"Micheal-"

"And your nose is cute."

Jeremy has to look away. Mike can't entirely tell but he thinks he's blushing.

"And though I haven't seen it much, I really like your smile."

It slowly spreads across the smaller man's face like a time lapse of a flower blooming. 

"I- thank you."

Mike coughs, ears warming. He lets go of Jeremy's shoulder. "Totally. No prob. Bob."

Smooth.

Jeremy giggles, freely looking up at the purple clouds, no longer hiding his face. "Why are you so nice?"

"I'm not."

"To me you are." He counters, grinning.

"Shut up."

"What. Am I special?"

"No! I mean...I just think you deserve it. Shut up."

"Ok." He relents, elbowing Micheal in the side." But you deserve it too."

Chapter Text

Night 5.

Mike's feeling good despite Phone Guy's untimely end.

It did sober him a bit, but the night before went so well that he hardly let it get him down. Also Jeremy's waiting for him outside and he's not going to die on him cause the kid really needs a friend. (He's 19. Still a kid.)

He's nearing 6 o'clock and he's doing hecking well, Freddy's just hanging out, Foxy hasn't so much as peeked out of the curtain, Bonnie's being annoying but he's always  annoying and Chica's never really been a problem…

So he's set, really.

Well, he's 'set' until he runs out of power an hour early. He hadn't even noticed until it was too late and Bonnie was at the door. He waves awkwardly.

"Hey, you. How have you been?"

Bonnie screeches, and Mike didn't know they could do that, and then he reaches out into the office, fingers outstretched as if he was reaching to palm Mike's head like a basketball. He ducks, blindly throwing the desk chair at him and scrambling backwards.

His mind is filled with awayawayawaygetaway, as he hits the back of his head on the ledge of the desk before he can manage to hole away under it. Bonnie stumbles back at the impact, grabbing the chair with a roar and throwing it violently against the back wall. The upright lockers wobble and fall, falling straight down onto the desk and  effectively creating a tent, a barrier, a few seconds of life. Bonnie kicks at the mass of metal, the artifacts of night guards past rattling from within as Mike skitters farther back into the corner.

He isn't religious. His father claimed to be a catholic, deeming himself the patriarch of the family. When he hit Mike for being his gay, bastard son...or mom for being unfaithful (even for years and years after the 'event' happened) he would say he was cleansing them of their sins. Micheal wonders what he was thinking when he kidnapped and murdered those children all those years ago, if he was 'cleansing' them too. Micheal Afton isn't religious but he wouldn't mind being proven wrong. He says a prayer.

Bonnie kicks the lockers again, and when it doesn't budge, starts to kneel down.

"Stop that. No. Stop that." Mike hisses, lodging the trash can in the triangular gap on Bonnie's side, leaving Chica's side, God forbid, wide open. Bonnie places his palms flat on the floor, glimpses of his majesty seen through the cracks between the locker, floor, and trash can.

"Shoulda just took the taser with me." Mike grunts, struck dumb by his lack of foresight "Shit."

Bonnie grabs the aluminum bin in his monstrous hands and crushes it like a pop can. 

"Shit! Fuck you!" Mike is now in the fetal position. Out of options. Out of time. Bonnie reaches his fat fingers below the desk and shitshitfuck-

Fuck it. There might be one more option.

Mike slides out of the right gap, trying not to have a fucking stroke when one of Bonnie's fingers brush his ankle.

He slips a few times on the greasy checkered floor before he straightens up and swings through the open door, sprinting down the hallway.

He laughs, as he runs, because it feels good, and because he's probably in hysterics. The hallway feels eons long. He doesn't know where Chica is.

Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrkkk.

Well, he thinks as he stares up into Chica's hellhole of a beak, he does now. Chica grabs Mike by the throat, whining happily (or angrily. Do they have emotions?). And slowly, agonizingly, she begins to squeeze.

This.

This is it. The end. No more options. You're going to die.

You're going to hell. And you'll deserve every second that you burn for what you've done.

Can't- can't breathe-

Mike can minutely register that he's being lifted into the air, like some sort of trophy kill. He doesn't see a light at the end of any tunnel.

All he sees is dark.

"Ah!" He's dropped rather unceremoniously, and he lands on his ankle strangely, causing pain to shoot through his leg. "Fuck."

Is it 6?

Even if he wanted to run, he couldn't. He can barely breathe, he can't see, and now he can't walk. Fuck.

Micheal closes his eyes, resigned. 

"Open your eyes." A voice echoes through the building, reverberating, large but small. Mike's eye's snap open. In front of him, slumped and dejected, sits an empty golden bear costume, stationed between him and Chica, who is just staring blankly down at him. He snaps his head back to where he ran from to see Bonnie mirroring her in the doorway of the office. Is this how he gets stuffed? A weird sort of ceremony? False peace?

"Who are you?"

"It's me." It says simply.

It's enough. This is a Fr edbear .

"Joey?! Is that- are you in there ?"

"Hush, it's of no matter. They hate you, Micheal, almost as much as him. You must leave this place and run. Don't look back."

"Joey, I'm here to avenge you and everyone else he's hurt. I need to know what he's done. I need to- stop it from happening again. Ever."

"Take the tape Micheal." There's a VHS in the bear's hand. "It’s all I can offer. It might answer some questions for you. But I warn you- I will not step in again. They will only be more agitated, and they will kill you… you can't feel responsible for things you didn't do. Go. Live. For me ."

"But-" Michel grabs the tape, hugs it to his chest.

 The bear lifts its slumped head, eyes lighted red. "Run."

He does. 

He squeezes past Chica and absolutely sprints past pirates cove, exhilarated by yet another near death experience. He can’t promise that he won't come back, but he will be more careful.

Jeremy looks concerned when Mike emerges wildly, almost forgetting about him entirely and running past him.

"Hey there, you alright?!"

"Oh- Jemmy- Goddamn you have no idea." Mike backtracks, catching his breath on the flanks of Jeremy's ford.

"Fancy telling me what the fuck that means?"

"Fredbear, my brother- gave me this and - said not to come back here." He thrusts the tape in his face for emphasis. Jeremy lowers it with two fingers, smirking with that lopsided mouth.

"They don't talk. Sure you didn't go delusional?" His eyes sparkle with a mischief that Mike doesn't have the patience for right now.

" Yes . It saved me. He saved me-stopped them from killing me. The bird had her hand around my throat and I was sure that I was dead, but then she dropped me and fuck my ankle hurts but-"

"Slow down. I'd call bull but you're out here at 5:24 so I don't know how you would be out here otherwise. What happened, exactly? What do you mean your brother ?"

"Sorry Jere but I really wanna watch this tape like- now. Gotta go."

"Wait-" Jeremy reaches out a hand, and Mike stalls for a second, barely containing the patience to do even that. "I mean-"

Jeremy snatches his hand back, seemingly embarrassed. "Let's go out tomorrow. To the park. Take a walk. You can tell me all about everything."

Mike's heart stops for a second (for probably the 7th time that night) and he grins before his mind catches up to him. 

And then it does. His smile slips down and off of his face easier than it sprang up onto it.  "Yeah, totally. I'm pretty sure my boyfriend has a fancy promotion presentation tomorrow. What time were you thinking?"

Jeremy's resolve seems to drain out of him, a dullness behind his eyes as he raises his head to look Micheal over. "Boyfriend?"

Micheal twinges uncomfortably. Jeremy seems to swallow further words, picking at his cuticles.

"Yeah. His name's Jacob, he's a-stomhemm" he mumbles to be intentionally intelligible because Mike legitimately has no idea what Jacob's profession is. "But I should be free around 9 on Sunday, so you can maybe sleep through the night, huh?"

"9. Okay." Jeremy confirms, nodding to himself. He clicks on and off the taser a few times, illuminating the vicinity.Mike tries to grab a glimpse of his face for the road. He's been up when he's been supposed to have been catching up on sleep just thinking about it, trying to map it out and remember each curve and pathway, but he can't ever completely recall it. He's thought about trailing his pinkie over his eyelids, pushing his bangs up to see the carnage under them. He's fantasized about feeling the scarred tissue with the sensitive skin on his lips. He's dreamt of that hopeful, spunky openness of his smile greeting him everyday whenever he called out for it.

"What are you waiting for, stupid? Mush!" Jeremy points the taser at him and Mike shakes his head to clear it, before grinning and running off, throwing a quick 'see ya!' for Jeremy to catch behind him.

He'll be a good friend.

He will.

Chapter Text

Mike speeds home, climbing the complex steps in record time, ripping open the door. Jacob might still be asleep, so instead of slamming the door behind him he closes it gingerly. Kicking off his shoes, he traverses the small distance between the entryway and the living room, sitting down in front of the tv with his face only six inches away from the display. Micheal turns down the volume to 5, and inserts the VHS into the player. The screen spits static.

"What are you doing?"

Jacob's voice startles him, Mike jabs the off button on the tv, only realizing after the fact that may look highly suspicious.

"Oh. Um. The player wasn't working the other day and I was trying to fix it. I rented a movie for us to watch after your presentation." Mike turns to look at him, his toothbrush is hanging out of his mouth and his face is unshaven. "You're up early."

Jacob nods, running a hand over his face and Micheal catches a glimpse of his exhausted eyes. " 'm nervous. This could be big for us. You could quit your job and maybe go job hunting for something with normal hours."

"I- I mean it's not a bad job. " Mike shrugs, itching for Jacob to leave, but realizing that he's probably gonna be here for at least another two hours. "I like it enough."

 "It takes so much out of you though." He waves his toothbrush around before stuffing it back in his mouth " you're always so tired."

"Yeah." Mike stands up, dusting off his knees and shuffling over to lean on the back of the couch, arms crossed.

"I miss waking up beside you, too." Jacob simpers, and Mike barely stops himself from rolling his eyes. Instead he adopts an easy smile, launches himself off of his perch, and kisses his shoulder in passing.

 "Where are you going?"

"I'm gonna take a nap, wake me up before you leave so I can wish you luck."

He passes out the moment he hits their unmade bed. He's shaken awake what feels like 2 seconds later, but the clock flashes 8:45.

"Morning." Micheal murmurs, voice scratchy from his catnap. "You heading out?"

Jacob says something, holding up two ties. Micheal rubs sleep out of his eyes, trying not to fall asleep on the spot.

Mike points to the argyle one. Jacob picks the opposite.

"Wow." Micheal sniggers, stretching.

"Sorry hon, you're shit at fashion."

Mike stands up, and Jacob hands him the tie so he can tie it for him. Mike can feel the nervous energy radiating off of him in waves, so he switches on his comforting voice, peeking up at his boyfriend through his lashes. "You're gonna totally kill this. Okay?"

Jacob shrugs, uneasy. Mike finishes tying the necktie with a flourish.

"Hey. You're the smartest person I know." Mike tugs on the tie, kissing Jacob quickly (because now all he can think of now is kissing Jeremy and it's a bit of a problem ), and then patting him on the chest. "You'll run away with it for sure."

Jacob kisses him again. "Thanks, honey. Thank you."

Micheal thinks about making him a cake. It's what Jacob always does for him. He might . Or maybe he'll buy one because he would probably burn everything but the sprinkles. He needs to rent a movie now, anyway, a stop at the bakery is not that out of the way.

"No problem. I'm going to go back to bed." Mike says, flopping backwards again. He hears Jacob mutter a goodbye with a quiet chuckle. Mike waits until he hears the door slam behind his boyfriend before hopping out of the room and back to the TV. Chest clenching with nerves, he turns on the display once again.

He presses play on the VCR.

Static fills the room, logically louder than it really should be, but Micheal's nose is nearly pressed up against the glass so that might be a factor.

A date flashes in the corner. July 7th, 1982. The static slowly fades away to reveal what looks like an animatronics storage room. There are endoskeletons and costumes, heads and random cosmetics flung around. It almost sets off Micheal's fight and flight just looking at it. It's dark, a Fredbear sits in the corner, one of the alternates that would spring into place around the Fredbear endoskeleton when the other was being cleaned. Micheal ignores it. He can't think about it.

"I think I saw your puppy in here! Do you wanna see him?" It's a man's voice, gruff but lighthearted...pandering. Goofy. Its telltale lilt of British intonation is muted, worn away with the years.

Micheal sits up straighter. "Dad?"

A little girl's voice follows, a small squeal of excitement that pushes needles into Micheal's spine and the back of his neck

"No. Please." Mike murmurs to the screen, hoping to hell this isn't what he thinks it is. 

"Come on in!" His father's voice flies even higher in pitch, and Micheal watches in horror as Spring Bonnie walks into the slim light cast by the now open door. Micheal knew the skins doubled as suits.

But this- is this how he did it?

The girl, small and blond and almost Lizzie like, disturbingly , pauses in the doorway, Her small blue eyes flick around the dark room, and Micheal can see that it registers with her that it isn't right. She takes a step back.

"Where's Roger?" She asks, and Mike watches his father turn slowly to face her again. The rabbit's head tilts to the side, the lifeless eyes flash in the light before turning away from the camera's view.

"He must be hiding from us. Help me look for him?" 

The girl shakes her head, smoothing down her buttercup yellow dress in distress. "Roger's afraid of the dark."

"Exactly. He needs your help, Suzie. He's scared and he needs you." Spring Bonnie lowers himself, slowly, onto his haunches and reaches out his hand to Suzie. She falters, her tough exterior failing her for a moment. She steps forward, into the room.

Dad laughs. 

Suzie takes in the parts and half assembled characters that in her eyes, were real. Should be real. One's right in front of her, right?

While she's staring in shock, William slips behind her and closes the door. She hears it slam and spins around, too young to know what to be afraid of but old enough to be afraid.

"What's going on? Where's my dog?"

William drops the act, pointing lazily at a box shoved in the corner, "In there."

Suzie doesn't turn her back to William, instead shuffling sideways over to the indicated box, radiating suspicion.

Micheal's heart pangs. She's so aware and smart . She's a person . She was going to grow up into an adult, be loved, love, pursue her passions and do good things in the world. But because of his father, she won't do any of that.

William stands, motionless. Waiting.

When Suzie gets to the box, she stares at the man behind the mask smolderingly before finally flicking her eyes down to the box.

"NO!" She screams, jumping back 4 feet and into the table behind her, bumping her head on the sharp corner of it. She crumples, crying loudly. "What happened to him?"

William laughs lowly."I ran him over with my car."

Suzie begins to hyperventilate.

"I like dogs," William says offhandedly. "It was an accident. What people really need to realize is that people make mistakes sometimes. Forgiveness is important, dear one."

"Bullshit!" Micheal almost punches the tv. Even behind the mask, Micheal can virtually see the condescending, holier than thou smile that's dripping from his stupid words.

"You- you- what are you going to do to me?"

William stalks forward and Suzie clutches the back of her head, staring at what must be her mutilated dog in terror.

"You're so pure." He says, instead of answering, getting so close to her that Micheal wants to jump through time and tear him away. "So young. You look a little like my daughter."

He brushes a lock of hair out of her face, and she slaps him away. "Hey. Don't you want to go to heaven?"

"Not today." She whispers so faintly it's barely there.

"Another thing that people need to realize?" Micheal's father matches her in volume. Mike leans even farther in to hear him. "It's not up to them."

With that he lunges at her, wrapping those yellow, fat, pizza-stained fingers around her throat. She can't even scream.

She dies silently and quickly, with a hand around her throat. Mike watches her struggle,  watches her head loll to the side. For the first time, Micheal has witnessed a death.  

"Fuck you." Mike whispers, staring at the screen with his palm flat on the display. He feels tears falling down his cheeks. He wont stop them.

She deserves his tears, especially his tears , because his father never cried for anyone.

His father makes a disappointed sound in the back of his throat, disappointed in the lack of theatrics.

Bang bang bang - 

"Afton? What are you doing in there?"

"I'll be out in a second, Lionel!"

He picks up Suzie's corpse, stuffs her unceremoniously inside a Chica suit, tilting it onto its side in case someone curious wants to peer in.

The footage cuts out.

The corner's date doesn't change. Suzie's dog is still in a box. Suzie's still in the chica suit. It must be the same day.

He lures the next kid in with a promise of Foxy's special show that he only performs for his special friends. He called him by name, once again. Fritz.

He was small, with brown hair that stuck up in cowlicks. He wore an eyepatch and a plastic hook. He was younger than Suzie, maybe 4 or 5 instead of her 7 or 8.

The moment he saw that instead of performing, Foxy was lying dead on the ground, Fritz screamed and tried to run. He almost made it too. He almost made it. he was outside the door, almost home free, when William risked the spring locks and bounded forward-grabbing the boy around his middle and knocking the air out of him.

He sat there crying until William dropped a heavy metal block on his head.

Still unsatisfied, William snorted before stuffing him into Foxy.

Next a blonde boy named Jeremy, held by the wrist, trailed in after William, who closed the door immediately.

"What are you doing? There's no Ice Cream in here." The boys voice is flat, with an underlying edge to it that Mike didn't know a likely 10 year old could possess.

"I still need to make it." William sounds strained, less into playing a character and more desperate - but for what Mike has no idea .

"You're lying." Jeremy wrenches himself out of the rabbit's grasp. "You're going to hurt me. I learned about people like you in school. Perverts."

"Little brat." William snarls, turning to face the boy"I'm not a pervert."

Instead of answering, Jeremy grabs a wrench that was carelessly thrown to the ground, pointing it at William threateningly,  before trying the door. Like he had with Fritz, William lunged forward and grabbed the boy's waist before flinging him to the ground. Jeremy takes the fall like a champ, easily scrambling up and hitting William's knees and feet with the wrench.

"Son of a bitch!" William howls. It seems that Jeremy set off the spinglocks from the knees down, and William fell, taking the boy down with him. William clubs the boy to death with the wrench he took from his hands. The both of them wail in pain until the smallest voice dies away completely. Mike has to look away. The footage cuts off.

Mike can't… doesn't want to watch anymore.

But he has to .

There can't be much more than this. There can’t be.

The date flashes July 12 1982, 5 days later. His dad, sans suit, limps in on crutches, legs clad in Jeans. Mike remembers when his dad's legs got hurt but at the time he believed it was from a nasty fall. The kids didn't ask questions of him, it just never ended well. There was a point where they would do whatever he asked, blindly. Whatever consequences the action brought upon them couldn't be worse than the ones they would get for not doing it.

In tow is a confused looking kid with a birthday boy hat on. "What are we doing?"

William grunts, sallow skinned and tired. The child hovers, as if to catch him if he tilted and fell. 

"If this is where you needed to go, I'm happy to have helped but- I would really like to go back to my party now-"

"No." William says gruffly, snatching the boy's wrist, closing the door behind him with difficulty. 

Micheal, overwhelmed and panicked, closes his eyes.

All he saw of the murder was his father putting the small corpse into an empty Freddy costume, and his father looking frustrated afterward.

But he heard everything.

When he hears the telltale static again, he pries open his eyes.

The next date reads June 16th 1983.

"Three days after Liz-"

His father's telltale bark sounds at the door, so jumbled that Mike cant make out the words.

It checks out. After his perfect angel child died because of him , he went batshit for a few weeks before becoming crueler than he'd ever been.

Micheal was the same.

Hell. He hates himself.

"You will sit in here and think about what you let happen." William screams, throwing a boy into the room, "What might happen to you if you aren't careful."

"Joey." Mike mutters, stroking the screen, the 3 inches of pixels that represent a living, breathing version of his brother. 

He's shaking. Crying. He saw what happened to Liz. Watched it happen. Mike only saw the aftermath. Shit. Micheal is a piece of shit. He could have been there for him, they could have supported each other and ditched the deadbeat dad.

Instead he just went ahead and fucking murdered him.

Joey has a panic attack for a half an hour before his dad comes and fishes him out. Hugging him. Apologizing. Mike has to stop himself from punching the screen for the millionth time. And then himself.

September 21st 1985.

That's around the time he-

William tears into the room like he was running from something, closing the door behind him and yelping at nothing.

He backs into a corner, brandishing a baseball bat at nothing.

"Don't come any closer. Don't you dare come any closer! I ended you."

He throws the wooden bat at his hallucinations, looking around the moment the bat left his fingers for something else to throw.

His eyes land on the spring lock suit.

"Haha! You little demons, stay back. Stay back!"

He throws a screw driver. It clatters quite uselessly to the ground as he hurriedly suppresses the spring locks with the hand crank and scrambles inside of the suit.

There wasn't a click.

Once, when job hunting at 14 years old, his dad showed him how to work the spring lock suits. The hand crank retracts from the back of the suit, and it suppresses the spinglocks that keep the suit on the endoskeleton in the right places. He repeatedly bashed into his mind to hear the click before getting in.

"No click, you'll lose your dick." He'd said, and when Micheal laughed, he added "and all the functions of your organs. You'll bleed out and die."

That shut him up. His father smiled at him(a rare occurrence), clapped him on the back (even rarer), and said "But the first parts more catchy, eh?"

He only wore the suit once. it was far too big and uncomfortable and Micheal didn't want to lose his dick. Or organs. Or blood.

His father said nothing when he didn't show up the next day. That was one of the literal few interactions that he and his father had that weren't riddled with toxicity.

"You filthy children can't hurt me. I destroyed you. Go to hell. "

Mike watches in horror as he laughs in complete derangement, as the suit shakes, his movements and breaths loosening the already loose spring locks surrounding his body.

Dad's about to lose his dick.

Micheal has to close his eyes again when the screaming starts.

It goes on for far too long. The whole suit must have gone off, pushing metal poles through his skull, feet, hand, arms, chest, throat, heart. Little javelins of death.

The screaming finally stops. Micheal's dad is dead, in a rabbit costume, in a pool of blood. Ironic. Good to know he's dead. Good. Good that he's dead. He deserved it.

Micheal stands up. 

He should kill himself too.

He should die, now that he knows that There's no one left to hunt down and kill. Justice has been served and Micheal will have played a small part in it. He can go to hell in peace.

September 26th 1985

"What the fuck is it now?"

His dad is still lying on the ground.

And then.

He moves.

Micheal plops back down.

"Holy shit . Holy shit. Holy fucking shit ."

The corpse sits up, slowly, flexing each limb as it awakens. It tries to take off it's mask.

It's too pixelated to really see it, but the sound of flesh tearing makes Micheal want to puke. What used to be William let's the mask fall back down. He paces.

September 29th 1985

The door opens. William runs forward, the fear of spring locks no longer relevant. the man who opened the door closed it with a yelp. William gurgles.

March 15th 1989

"That was yesterday."

Pound pound pound .

"MICHEAL!" It's barely his father's voice, barely a voice at all, but he knows that it's him.

Micheal scrambles away from the tv, looking at the apartment door for good measure.

"I FEEL YOU HERE, MICHEAL! LET ME OUT!!!! LET ME OUT OF HERE I'M DYING . I CAN'T BREATHE! YOU LITTLE BASTARD I FEEL YOU HERE! MICHAEL I WILL KILL-"

Micheal ejects the tape, numbly staring down at it.

He's still alive, even if he's dead.

Mike bites his lip.

"I'm going to do something stupid." He says out loud.

No one responds.

He takes that as an invitation to go ahead and do it.

Chapter Text

He pulls into Fazfucks (Jeremy's a fucking genius) at 10:30, an hour and a half after opening. It's not quite lunch yet so there aren't many kids, but there are a few cars in the closest spots. Some teens come early in the day to play the arcade. That's what Micheal used to do.

He slams the car door behind him, placing his keys in between his fingers like metal claws. His mom used to do that in dark parking lots or around Dad's strange business partners. Mike picks up the pace when he passes Jeremy's truck

"Woah there, hot rod."

Jeremy's voice doesn't stop him, he continues to walk by him at a steady pace, throwing a biting remark over his shoulder. 

 "Do you ever leave here?"

"No."

Mike spins around. "Look, I really respect you but I need to do something."

"Is it going to traumatize the children?"

Micheal pauses. The children. Right. Even if they're only nerdy arcade dwellers, they could still be hurt if he unleashed his undead father upon them.

"It might actually kill them. " Despite his words, Mike takes another step towards the glass double doors.

"Come here please." Jeremy has a tone of voice that both sounds urgent and bored and it's proven hard to read so far.

"It might not." Mike offers. it sounds weak in his own ears.

"If you need to do this so bad, at least wait 'til closing."

"I don't think. I can? Like. This is all I amount to and I've finally got a lead -"

"The fuck? No it isn't." Jeremy sounds nonplussed. "Fazfucks ain't worth it."

"No...you dont- god." Mike doesn't want to explain. He never has before. Usually, if you know you know if you don't you don't. "Listen. Have you- do you know about the Aftons?"

Jeremy's face contorts in a sort of sympathy. "I met the other founder of Fazbears, Henry Emily. He told me most of it was urban legend, but the whole family disappearing off the edge of the earth is kind of horrible."

"Okay, so. Not every Afton was...murdered."

"Yeah. William went missing and that one son killed himself."

Mike flinches. "Ok, no he didn't. The second one."

"What do you mean?"

"It's. He's me alright?" Micheal grits out, burning holes in cracked asphalt beneath his converse with his eyes. "I'm Micheal Afton . And my dad is a horrible person, and his reanimated corpse is somewhere in there and-"

" What?! "

"It’s okay. I wanna kill him for good."

"No it's not okay. What? What?! "

"I don't want to get into it." Micheal just short of pouts, crossing his arms. "It’s all too much to think about."

"No. Yeah...Holy shit. I-Lets go for a walk now okay?"

"Didn't you hear me? I'm going to find him and pound him into the ground."

"And you will. We will. Tonight, or tomorrow or- whatever...ok? Not now."

"I'm not crazy."

"And I am, so please bear with me here? Get into the passenger seat. Let's go somewhere, um, far away."

Mike stares at the smaller-statured man in front of him, his thinness making him look almost frail despite him truly being the opposite.

He sighs, then tilts his head ever so slightly and if Mike didn't know any better he would think Jeremy was giving him puppy dog eyes , and it comes as an even bigger surprise that it works.

"Fine." he grumbles, glancing at the restaurant before turning his back to it and climbing into Jeremy’s Ford. His feet tramp down McDonalds bags and napkins in an attempt to find a position as Jeremy closes the tailgate and then climbs into the driver's seat.

“I’m sorry for the mess. I didn’t- I don’t know.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“I’m trying to find a job,” He continues, “Though it would make me feel better if you quit Fazbears after you- do what you need to do. I dunno.”

“Why do you care?” Micheal asks darkly, turning to pull his seatbelt on. Jeremy shrugs, grinning.

“I like you.” He says simply, and when Micheal’s face ignites Jeremy doesn’t even notice, just continuing with his thought as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “And I’ll buy a place once I’m well established. I have some money left in my college savings account that my parents forgot about-”

“Did you go to college?” 

“Hah- no.” Jeremy rubs the steering wheel absentmindedly, “I can’t- do anything that takes a lot of focus or math, or discipline. Speaking of, while I’m driving it’s best if you don’t talk to me?”

“Oh my god. Are you like okay to drive ?”

“Bitch, please , I drove to suburban Ohio from Chicago. I’ll be okay to get to the park. Just, seriously don’t talk or touch the radio or anything.”

Micheal laughs, at the absurdity of it, at the fact that he doesn’t exactly mind that he’s in the car with someone who doesn’t have half of his brain, at the cute little nonsensical quirks in the boy’s voice, because he’s somehow not thinking about the thing he’s been thinking about for four years just because of someone he barely knows or (should realistically) cares about told him not to. 

“Did you graduate High school? How old were you when-”

“What did I say?” Jeremy jokes, and then he kind of melts a little bit. “I- did. But I think it was more out of pity than anything. I was-- I was 16. But- it’s alright. I’m fine.”

“I- I’m sorry dude.”

“Don’t pity me, please?” Jeremy snaps, throwing the car into drive. “And I won’t pity you.”

It’s a shitty feeling. After Liz died, everyone around him had a near constant fear of setting Mike off. After Joey died, Micheal lost most of his friends, and then when his mom died, he had to drop out of school. “Deal.”

As promised, they take the drive in complete silence. Jeremy is a cautious driver, maybe too cautious, but it does make him feel a bit better that Jeremy isn’t some sort of speed demon that will kill the both of them with one wrong move.

They get to the park, and it's too early for families, but there are plenty of thin women jogging in their gym shorts. He looks a little bit too long at a pair of them that pass by as they climb out of the car and Jeremy stares him down.

"I thought you were gay."

Micheal shrugs. " I am, but I find women pretty too."

"You're a fucking enigma." Jeremy shakes his head as he walks away. Mike has to jog to catch up.

"What does that mean?"

"Shit, man..my troubles are like nothing compared to yours, and I'm like the most fucked up person I've ever met."

"Wow. Thanks?"

"Metal fucker filleted my brain. Full stop. And you ? You're an Afton? That's literally insane. And you came running through the damn parking lot at 10:30 in the morning talking about undead fathers slaughtering children, just a few hours after you ran through a parking lot talking about your brother giving you a VHS. And even though it's completely nonsensical I believe you, so that's fucked. And-”

“Hey- I know. I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I just need to- fix it? You know?” Micheal shifts uncomfortably as they walk side by side. “I caused all of this so-”

“Hold on a second buddy, it sounds like your father did, not you.”

“By extension .” Micheal huffs. “I had everything to do with everything. I lived, they died. I could have-”

“Sounds like you have a little thing called Survivor's Guilt, bucko.” Jeremy says entirely too loudly, “I don’t know what happened but I doubt you had as much of a hand in it as you think you do.”

“You’re right. You don’t know what happened.” Micheal snaps rather cruelly, and Jeremy closes his mouth with a frown. 

They walk for a few minutes in silence. Micheal notices that Jeremy keeps his baseball cap brim pulled down, and despite what Micheal said before, his hair is hanging down limply again. Hiding from the world. It makes Micheal mad tha t he feels like he has to. Jeremy’s hand is swinging at his side, every so often brushing Micheal’s own. Before Micheal can think, he’d grabbed it. Jeremy looks at him strangely.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry. Do you want-” Micheal tries to pull away but Jeremy doesn’t let him.

“No don’t stop.” Jeremy blushes, “I was just making sure you meant to.”

“I- yeah.” Micheal sniffs. 

“You could tell me, you know?”

Micheal’s heart stops. I mean, he was being pretty obvious that he’s kinda fallen for him (and fast) but he- he can’t . He has a boyfriend that he’s supposed to see in a few hours.

“What happened to you. I promise I won’t judge you. I’ll tell you about my thing, too.”

Oh. Of course. Micheal burns scarlet. What did he just admit to himself?

“I-” Micheal coughs, hyper aware of the other’s hand in his. “I’ll tell you once. And then never again. Just so you know, you know?”

“Alright.” Jeremy agrees. “Shall we sit?”

They find a shaded bench near the river away from any other possible ears. Micheal takes a shuddering breath. “Okay. Abridged version? I was supposed to watch my sister on the opening day of one of my dad’s restaurants, but I went out with my friends instead, so my dad just had my brother and sister stick together. My sister got too close to one of the...things. And it ate her.”

“Ate-?”

“Like- it grabbed her and pulled her in and-” Micheal can’t force out the rest, Jeremy squeezes his hand. “I saw it after. Dad called me in and made me watch them-- scrape her out. He made sure to tell me everyday that it was directly my fault -- and it kinda was.”

“Micheal, I don’t-”

“So I was angry, I had a lot of rage inside of me that I couldn’t direct at my father because he’d just hurt me. So I- I just harassed my brother whenever I felt bad about myself. That is what I regret the absolute most….and I- he was just terrified all the time , and it was because of me . Just a month later, my dad told me to scare him straight so he’d stay away from the robots. On his birthday I-”

Micheal starts crying, and he doesn’t know if he can finish. He inflicted on his brother something so similar to what Jeremy went through, he’s sure to hate him if he tells him.

Then again, it would keep him safe. Associating with Micheal will probably get anyone killed.

That’s why he doesn’t ever stay. That’s why his exes never see him again after Micheal says the final goodbye. That’s why he doesn’t have friends.

It’s just for the best.  

“I pretended to make Fredbear like kiss him? So I lifted him up there and it- crushed his head. I killed him. I absolutely killed him, there’s no question on that one.”

Jeremy makes a noise that Micheal really can’t decipher. 

“So it was barely even safe to sleep at home anymore, but at that point I just- thought I deserved it. Soon after my mom-- and then-”

“It’s okay. I understand.” Jeremy cuts him off, and Micheals somewhat grateful. His voice was shrill in where it had started hushed and even “I’ll talk now.”

“I needed money so I could move out by the time I graduated, but no one was hiring except for...one place. It was run by Henry Emily and he was insistent that it was totally safe. And...honestly it wasn’t bad , really. I just never told him what went on at night. I was the first one in the position… when he’d asked if anything strange ever happened at night I thought he was teasing me. I never told him anything in fear that I was actually hallucinating. I have a family history of hallucinations? So it wasn’t that far out of left field.”

“How the hell-”

“So-- I assume it’s kinda like, y’know, your job. There’s patterns and stuff and they’re all easy to deal with. I’m not even sure what they would have done with me if they caught me anyway? Except for the old ones, they would definitely tear me apart. And the puppet? I don’t know what the puppet’s deal was.”

“The what .”

“You know, it hung out in the prize corner and shit. Anyway, there was one wild card that I never knew how to deal with, it was stealthy and silent, and completely unpredictable. It was called the Mangle. I think it was supposed to be like, a cute version of foxy? But totally failed, because it was easy to take apart and the kids would mess with it and it turned out to be this total mutation, and it seemed to be mad about it. I closed my eyes for a split second, and bam-”

He gestures in a wide, clawed motion that makes Micheal jump. “Snagged me! Totally thought I was dead. Custodial found me, also thought I was dead, but then when they realized I wasn’t I was in a hospital the next time I woke up. Had 4 surgeries in 3 days. Took me almost a year to function again, and had a whole bunch of surgeries during then. Better now, though, just messed up.”

“Wow. I’m so sorry.”

“My whole family didn’t vanish off the face of the planet, Mike. I’m fine. An eye for an eye is all this is.” 

Mike really really wants to take his hat off, and see the scar.

But of course he wouldn’t actually do that.

“You want to see don’t you?” Jeremy seems to have read his mind. Mike winces.

“Umm.”

“Nah it’s okay, everyone I meet who knows wants to see.” He rips his hat off, leaning down so Mike can see the crown of his head. Before Mike can even open his mouth, Jeremy continues. “You can touch it, too. Everyone wants to.”

Mike runs his pointer finger along the surgery scar that forges a path of flesh through Jeremy’s hairline, a rare moment of silence falling between the two abrasive men. It’s almost reverent. Mike has to stop himself from kissing Jeremy right then and there, because that would be cheating(even if Micheal’s an ass, he isn’t a cheating ass) and probably taking advantage of the other. 

“How did they-” Mike hates to break the moment, but he knows he has to. Jeremy hurriedly stuffs his hat back onto his head.

“It was bad.” He states loudly, making joggers on the trail nearby turn their heads. “Like, fucking, migrane central, they had to take some of my brain out because it was bleeding. You knew that.”

Mike nods. 

He shrugs. “But I’ve got some of it left. They didn’t have to take the entire frontal lobe out, and they put plastic in there so my head wouldn’t heal flat.” He raps his knuckles on his head over his hat. 

Micheal laughs slightly, even if it isn’t funny. “Ouch.”

“It’s okay.” He shrugs, “It could have been worse. I could have died, or lost all of my dignity and self control. I lost most of it.” He stares intensely at Micheal, which almost makes him blush, “But not all.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t look so scared, shithead, I’m not gonna murder you.”

“I didn’t-” Micheal laughs in a short burst, butterflies coming back in full force. He’s so unpredictable! Micheal finds that exhilarating. It makes him think about the bad things less, and the spontaneity of the future more. “I’m not .”

“Let’s go eat something.” Jeremy shouts suddenly, scaring away all of the crows in a 12 foot radius.

“Food?”

“Of course, idiot.” Jeremy stands and links arms with Micheal.

Mike thought that he would never find someone who he could truly fall in love with, but Jeremy has gone through the same things that he has, has about the same amount or more trauma than he does. He’d be a challenge to deal with, but so is Micheal, if he’s really being himself . Dark humor and self depreciating and painful memories. Not pleasant and compliant like he’s been with Jacob. Playing house. 

But he-

He can’t leave him like this . For someone else. Poor Jacob.

Maybe it would hurt him more to know how much he really really wants to. 

“Okay, food, and then we’ll buy a cake and a movie, okay?”

“Deal"

Chapter Text

When Micheal finally gets home after his not-date (totally not), he hesitates before opening the door. He should break it off with Jacob. He shouldn’t lie to him anymore. Even if this thing that’s happening with Jeremy doesn’t go anywhere-

Micheal should let Jacob find a man or woman that will be a good partner who really really loves him, who will look at him like he hung the stars up in the sky, who won’t lie to him just as much as they tell the truth. Who will look at him how Micheal is sure he looks at Jeremy. 

He deserves that much, and so much more. 

He twists the doorknob. It’s that dead space between when Jacob gets home and when Micheal goes to work. Mike opens the door to see that Jacob’s watching tv, sprawled across the couch. He looks very attractive in the moment(in a oh so delectably tight tee shirt and jeans) and Micheal almost sets back the whole ‘break up with Jacob’ plan so he can make out with him.

But only almost. 

Jacob looks over at Micheal when the door squeaks, smiling sadly as if he knows what’s coming. 

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“Did you get your promotion?”

“Ha. I won’t know for a few days.” Mike nods, and goes to set the cake down on the table. Jacob looks at it but doesn’t seem to be focused on the sugar. Only on Micheal. Which is stressful. He sets the rented movie on the coffee table. Jaws. The two thought it was kinda ironic.

Mike shuffles to sit next to him, and lets Jacob pull him against his chest. It's a familiar motion that sometimes made him feel small, but mostly made him feel safe. They watch the sitcom that’s on together, in silence. Everything’s different than it was when he left this morning. He doesn’t want to do this anymore, pretend that he’s happy living like this everyday. 

After a while, Micheal is surprised to feel tears running down his face. He hurries to wipe them away, but Jacob notices. 

“I know something’s wrong.”

It’s not a question, it’s a gentle understanding. He’s always been so good with trying to understand. He just never… never could. Even if he wanted to.

That just makes Micheal cry harder.

“Honey.” Jacob sounds slightly exasperated, “You need to talk to me. Please.”

Micheal sits up to face him, taking his hands. “I’m sorry- I’m so sorry.”

“For what?” That gentleness in his face hardens a bit. “Have you been cheating?”

“No. No. No- I promise I haven’t.” Mike isn't  that kind of bad. He can’t be. He can't be. “But I’ve met someone.”

He whispers the last bit, and Jacob pulls his hands out of Mike’s grip. It isn’t quite a sharp movement, but it’s a sure one.

“That sounds like cheating to me.”

“Nothing happened.” Mike reinforces, “I’m not- I’m not a cheater , okay?”

“Then why are you telling me this?”

“I just- you deserve better than me.”

“Where is this coming from?”

“You do deserve better than me. Like, a million times better than me.”

“Why?” He looks truly mad for the first time since they got together. He has a smoldering type of anger that lives behind his eyes. He doesn’t lash out, he keeps it in. The opposite of his dad. “I love you , Micheal. No one else.”

“You do?” Micheal sobs, hugging himself. “Why?”

“Because you’re wonderful.” Jacob tries to wipe Micheals tears away, but it’s like Micheal had opened floodgates. He didn’t know that this would hurt so much, that he actually cared so much. Even though he knew somewhere inside of him that Jacob was probably in it for the long haul, but he'd tried to convince himself that Jacob was just invested in this as he was. Halfway. “And you’re this upset about not cheating, which is kind of cute.”

“No.” Micheal mutters, “You don’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me, please.” He brings Micheal close to his chest, enveloping him in warmth and love again. He doesn’t deserve it from someone whole and unbroken. 

“I’m-don’t you get it? I’m broken . And so is he. You aren’t. I don’t want you to be.”

“You aren’t broken.”

“I am, I am .”

“Why do you think that? You’re lovely.” He tilts Micheals chin up, about to kiss his nose or forehead or something, and Micheal can’t hold it in any longer.

“I killed my fucking brother.”

“What?” Jacob lets go like Micheal had just become burning hot and if he kept holding on he would scald his fingertips. 

“I killed him. He’s dead because of me.”

“Did you mean to?”

“Of course I didn’t! I loved him- I- “ Micheal has to stop, suck in a breath. “My dad hit me.”

“What?”

“He hated me because he wasn’t my biological father, because my mom cheated on him.”

“Mikey.” Jacob whines, sadness filling his eyes.

“He hated me so much, but he loved my siblings. I was mean to them, sometimes, but I- of course I loved them. They were the sweetest kids ever.”

Jacob bites his lip to stop himself from interrupting.

“Then my sister died, and I think I went a little crazy. I picked on my brother so much that he’d cry. I didn’t- I didn’t stop. And Dad would encourage me because he thought that if I scared him he’d be safe- but then me and my friends- caused his death. We didn’t think- we never thought-”

“It’s not your fault-” Jacob gets out haltingly, looking uncomfortable.

“Yes it is! Even if I didn’t mean it-” Micheal stops again, moving on. “Then my mother died in a car crash.”

“Oh my god.”

“And my dad just- left.”

“Micheal.”

“So ever since I’ve been looking for him. I can’t stop looking until I find him.”

“He sounds like a piece of shit, Mike! Why didn’t you- tell me any of this?”

“Because it’s horrible! My life's one big tragedy and it’s going to end in one too. Okay? I can’t drag you down with me.”

“I want to help. I want to help .” He’s on the edge of pleading.

Micheal stands up. Jacob is still sitting at the edge of the couch. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Micheal.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-”

“Ok I get it, you’re breaking up with me.” Jacob snaps, his voice sharpening uncharacteristically “I get it. But, please listen to me this one time.”

Michael flinches. His actions thrown back at him like a dart.

“Say you will.”

“I will.”

“Don’t follow your father anymore, okay? You’re more than your past, even if you don’t believe it. If this- person is the one that is going to help you, then fine...but let them in. Let them help you move on- don’t stew in this forever. Don’t run back to the person who hurt you just because- you think you’re broken and not good enough. I’m not asking you to forget, alright? I’m just asking you to try and move on. You’ll self-destruct otherwise.”

Micheal lets out another broken sob. “No one has ever cared like you.”

“I love you, Honey.” He smiles sadly, “You’re so great. I hope everyone else can see it.”

“How can you even say that after-”

“I know you.” He doesn’t. He really really doesn’t, but Micheal hugs him anyway. He squeezes him hard.

“Thank you for everything.”

“Mhm.” Jacob pats his back. “You can stay here as long as you need to.”

Micheal nods, knowing full well that he’s going to leave tonight without saying goodbye.

“Okay.”

They stay there like that until Micheal falls asleep.

Chapter Text

That night, Micheal left Jacob asleep on the couch and hurriedly stuffed all of his minimal belongings into Jacob’s travel bag. He left behind 80 dollars to pay for it because Micheal’s not a thief either.

However he is homeless, which would usually be a problem, but he’s not thinking that far ahead at the moment. After Jeremy convinced him to wait, all he’s been doing is scheming, and he’s decided that tomorrow (today?) (It’s like 12:40) (Sunday) (The lord’s day) (All businesses are closed because they live in ‘Christianville’, so to speak), is his time to strike.

But first, Jeremy. He pulls into the Fazbears parking lot around 1:00. Jeremy’s truck is here, a beacon the color of blood or a particularly angry dumpster fire. He looks at it from his spot, drained, emotionally exhausted, but ready for this business to be over. Maybe he can jump off a building or something. He doesn’t want to think anymore, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone else ever again, see the betrayal written on their features as once more, he’d let them down.

Joey, Lizzie, Mom, Jacob, countless others. 

It’s that moment when they realize that Micheal is a piece of shit and nothing else.  They saw something that wasn’t there. They put their faith into nothing, no one. 

No one of importance anyway. 

He’s thought a lot about what he should do about Jeremy, a friendless loner just like him. He doesn’t want to leave him behind.

But, if he gets too attached, if he becomes vulnerable and falls in love, there will be that inevitable moment with Jeremy where he realizes that he’s bad. Might as well get that out of the way sooner than later. 

He takes a deep breath, opens the door, locks it closed behind him.

When he opens the passenger side to Jeremy’s truck, Jeremy himself is already wide awake and looking at him.

“Hey.” Mike says quietly, hoping his eyes aren’t still red from crying on the way over. “Have you slept at all?”

“No. You?”

“Only a little.”

The silence is tense, stretched taut like a trampoline. Jeremy’s fingers drum on the dash, and his hair is pulled back from his face in a loose ponytail. Micheal marvels at him in the rearview mirror (to not be obvious), playing with a rip in his own jeans. 

“Do you have a plan?” Jeremy asks after a while of this. He must be tired because he’s quiet and that shouldn't be strange but it is.

“Do you have the taser?”

Jeremy nods, jabbing a thumb toward the back. “I thought that whoever didn’t have the taser could have the ax.”

“Oh, nice!” Micheal says, a bit too excitedly, but it just makes Jeremy grin. 

“Yeah, I thought so.” Jeremy giggles, rubbing his palms up and down his jeans. “When do you wanna go in? Do you think they’re--active?”

Mike doesn’t know. There are no security guards stationed on the weekends, but that isn’t to assume that they don’t still have the same nightly rituals as usual. Micheal doesn’t really want to wait 5 hours and risk running into custodial, but he also doesn’t want to be dismembered. 

Mike twirls the keys around his fingers. “You wanna check?”

Jeremy nods once, like he was waiting for Micheal to ask, launching himself out of the truck and around to the bed. He rustles through the shit in the back loudly until Micheal follows suit, joining him at the boot. “Here.” 

He says, thrusting the ax at Micheal, who tests its weight in his hand. It’s top heavy and Micheal isn’t a fighter but he wouldn’t hate the feeling of swinging this at one of the bots.

He reconsiders this urge though, it wouldn’t really do that much, would it? He imagines himself standing over a helpless Jeremy and swinging the ax at Freddy or someone, and it zinging off and flying across the ground. Not a great ‘knight in shining armor’ moment for him.

Not that Jeremy isn’t capable (he’s kind of absolutely definitely more capable than Mike is). But. Mike likes to fantasize sometimes, is all. 

Jeremy twirls his stun baton, flexing his wrist, a deranged kind of excitement in his eyes.

“Ready, kid?” Mike asks, elbowing him when he comes to stand at his side, looking at the darkened glass ceiling to floor windows that are trademark of his dad’s restaurants. 

“Yeah.” Jeremy says, grinning lopsidedly at Micheal, grabbing his hand. “Let’s do this.”

Micheal should be thinking about cutting down his father, but all he can think about is the steady presence of the taller man’s hand in his. 

When they get to the doors, Micheal disattaches himself from his companion to peer into the window. It’s around 1:30 maybe, probably closer to one. They would have moved, by now, on a normal day. He can see three distinct silhouettes on the stage. The Cove’s back is to them so he can’t tell if it’s closed or open. Jeremy takes the keys from Micheal’s slack fingers, fumbles with the lock.

The night is nice and quiet. Micheal presses his palm to the dirty pane of glass, savoring the chill of the surface against his skin. The wind ruffles his hair, cools the sweat on his neck and forehead. He can faintly hear the buzz of cicadas from the woods a little down the road.

This is the outside world.

“Ha!” Jeremy exclaims, finally figuring out how to unlock the door, and pushing it open.

And in there? It’s hell.

Micheal follows his friend into the flames.

He’s never been in the main part of the restaurant at night, not really. His journeys through the dining room have been frenzied sprints, injected with adrenaline and heart-stopping fear. Now, ambling in with company and a weapon, it feels almost like a dream.

They both jump when the door slams closed behind them, and Micheal throws his arm out in front of Jeremy as a sort of shield. Against nothing of course, but they hold that position for a few seconds before Micheal embarrassedly draws his arm back and stuffs his free hand into his pocket. 

They stare at each other, Micheal’s back to the mainstage, Jeremy’s to the cove. The dining room feels like simply a room. It’s unnerving. 

“So?” Jeremy says eventually, eyes pointedly set on the closed pirates cove over Micheal’s shoulder. “Where is he?”

“I-” Micheal closes his eyes, trusting that Jeremy is aware of his surroundings as he tries to remember. “It has to be in this hallway-”

He points to the hallway to the left of the dining room. “There was a room-”

Micheal starts over to the hallway and Jeremy stays at his back, switching on and off the taser obsessively. Mike can see it’s glow illuminate the room all around him and hear each electric buzz, but his eyes are set on the walls. He doesn’t remember seeing the room on the cameras, at all. He must have overlooked something. He knows he’s in here. He has to be. 

He paces the hallway a few times as Jeremy stands guard at the end, almost daring them to come alive. 

“This doesn’t make sense.” Micheal hisses, “It’s supposed to be here!”

Jeremy tenses. Micheal tries his best not to panic.

“Look harder.” He says back finally, not looking away from the main stage for a second. 

Micheal tries. He squints in the darkness, wishing he had brought a flashlight. He backtracks to the office, peeks in, and pushes the door light. It illuminates the hallway and Micheal trails his fingers over the peeling paint until-

Bang!

Micheal draws his fingers back in alarm, confused. 

Bangbangbang-

“MICHEAL!!”

Both men jump, Jeremy’s attention turned away from the stage for only a split second, before he turns back, compulsively shooting bewildered looks over his shoulder. 

Micheal can see it in his barely illuminated eyes. He didn’t believe him.

Until now. 

Bang bang “MICHEAL! I CAN HEAR YOU BREATHING!”  bang bang bang bang-

“Dad.” Micheal says flatly.

A crackly sound overwhelms his mind, like wet coughs, like sandpaper on a chalkboard.

“ That’s right, son.” The voice, horrible and inhuman, somehow attempting to be pleasant .

“How are you--”

“Let me out, Micheal. I want to see how you’ve grown.” The monster says. Micheal blinks violently to prevent tears.

“No you don’t.”

“My son- my only remaining son-- ”

“You never loved me.” Micheal whispers, not even knowing if he’s loud enough to be heard. He raises his voice. “What do you expect me to do now? Let you out? Let you terrorize more people? More children?”

“No, Micheal. I simply want to be put out of my misery. Please. I’ve been here for so long.”

Micheal pauses. He’s crying, to his disgust. He’s crying. 

Bang!

“Are you still there?!!!”

In response, Mike strikes the wall with his ax. It slices through the newer drywall like butter, fine powder drifting around and dispersing in the still buzzing hall light. Again, and again, and again.

He tears at the wall and his father laughs that hacking laugh and Micheal imagines that there’s no wall between them, that he’s hacking at him instead. He needs to do it. He needs to . It terrifies him. 

Finally his nonsensical swinging reveals a door, a doorknob. He pulls at the edges of the drywall where the door’s supposed to open. Jeremy’s turned around now, feet shifting in nervous energy. Mike attempts to open the door, and it’s locked.

“Oh, smart boy, beautiful boy, you can do this-”

Mike pounds on the wood with his fist. “Shut UP!!”

His voice cracks humiliatingly.

"Don't you have questions, Micheal? Burning questions you’ve been dying to get answers for?”

“Why. Dad.” Micheal shifts his grip on his ax, overwhelmed. He didn’t think this would happen, there’s nothing he could ever do to prepare for this. He should have a million questions, a million things to yell in his face. This man killed his siblings, his mother, innocent children but all Micheal’s numb lips can utter is-

“Why?” He whispers, forehead pressed against the locked door. “Why would you do this to us?”

“I didn’t, Micheal.” 

“Yes. You did . You fucking did , dad, you made these goddamn robots! You killed those...those children for no reason! You did this . ”

“ You killed your siblings, your mom died in a- ”

Micheal lashes out and hits the door handle, trying to break the lock, wanting to bury the ax in his father’s neck instead, hit him until he’s not even undead anymore. Just...gone. 

“I see you’re angry-”

“It’s time for you to go. It’s fucking time.” 

Micheal kicks in the door.

And.

And.

It’s one fucking thing seeing it on a security camera. It’s another when he’s towering over you. 

Disgusting, yellow-brown fuzz covering each limb, wires, bits of metal, and dust hanging off and around every joint. Barely-there flesh can be seen between each piece of the costume. He looks up. Two rabbit ears, flopping and inconspicuous, droop down over a horrific mess of rotted flesh and felt. And the smell the smell - rancid decomposing meat . Micheal has to swallow and look away.

“My son.”

Is the only greeting he gets before his father lunges for his throat. He can only get out a strangled- “Jeremy!” before he’s again held by the neck. Pinned against the wall, he struggles against the (almost, nearly) hands that hold him there. He scrabbles with one hand, his fingers slipping on felt, as he tries to get in a hit with the ax with the other. 

“Get offa him!” Jeremy squeaks, lunging. He sticks the taser into the gap where the head meets the shoulder and-

Bzzt

Micheal is dropped to the ground, a sharp shock pulsing through his system where the metal of the endoskeleton was touching the already bruised skin around his neck. He clutches it, gasping, and his father slams into the wall across from them. Jeremy grabs Micheal’s hand.

“You need to run.”

“We need to kill him.” Micheal gasps, eyes streaming in pain.  

"That isn't an option!" Jeremy says loudly, pulling Mike to his feet, dragging him.

"We just- We need -" he shouts as he's pulled along. "Oh, SHIT!"

He tugs Jeremy closer to his side in reaction to seeing all three main bots closing in on their side. The door is ahead, the bots are on either side, and his dad is-

A hand encloses Micheal's bicep, drags him back, and his father attempts to reclaim his throat.

"Run! Get out of here!"

Jeremy only stands still, shell-shocked and terrified, surrounded. He still has time, goddamnit.

"Jeremy!" He tries again, fighting against the insistent tug of his father, “Get the fuck out of here!”

He shakes his head, once, twice. Tears prick the corner of his eyes as he takes a step toward Micheal’s tussle. He’s holding both of his Father’s hands away from his tender neck. 

Bonnie winds up to take a swipe and Mike yells “Duck!!” Before his father forces him down to his knees, nearly on top of him.

Jeremy does, and Bonnie sweeps his arm where his head was a second ago. Jeremy hits William with the taser again, and Mike jolts with the energy, falling to the ground when his father draws back, hitting his back on one of the tables with a clang .

“Come on, Micheal.” Jeremy whines, reaching out “We need to get out!”

Mike only trembles, trying to crawl forward, toward the outstretched hand. He lost his weapon a while ago, he can’t remember when or how. 

Jeremy grasps his wrist and starts trying to pull him, but they’re still effectively surrounded. Jeremy hits at the bot’s feet with the taser, and they move away, as if in annoyance. Mike is almost ready for his head to be smashed in by a simple step on one of their parts. In his panic he can’t understand why he isn’t already dead.

Then.

The telltale footfalls of Foxy overtake his ears, the screech already condensing in the fox’s throat. He’s going to die. They’re going to die .

Micheal reaches, touches Jeremy’s face like he’d wanted to before. He’s so selfish, until the very end, he’s so goddamn selfish. “I’m so so sorry.”

He mutters this as the footsteps seem to be right on top of them, and to Micheal’s dismay, he feels his ankle be grabbed, he feels himself get dragged away from his friend.

But then he’s released?

He sits up, confused, to see Foxy launch himself right over Micheal’s head and onto his father, tearing at the rabbit-suited dead man with his hook. His father groans, trying to throw the thing off of him. 

Bonnie’s next, grabbing one of the man’s hands, slamming him back onto the table, foxy still gripping his torso with all three non-slashing limbs. 

Each of the remaining bots step carefully around the boys, shaking on the ground. They watch in bewilderment and amazement as each of their previous enemies contributes to the beat down. 

“They-”

“Micheal we need to go.” Jeremy says urgently, pulling Micheal along by the sleeve of his Jacket. “Now. Come on. Now.”

They both scramble to their feet with difficulty, staggering to the door as quickly as possible.

“MICHEAL AFTON COME BACK HERE!”

Mike winces, pausing. Jeremy tugs him more insistently. 

“ SELFISH LITTLE BASTARD!! SAVE ME, MICHEAL! DON’T LET THEM DO THIS TO ME-”

Jeremy nearly pushes him out of the door, locking it behind him with much more ease than he’d unlocked it. He rips the keys out of the keyhole and ushers Micheal to his truck. 

He can still hear the muted pleads of his father.

Micheal is numb, not even believing that he’s alive. He doesn’t question it when Jeremy piles him into the passenger seat and drives away, leaving Micheal’s car in the parking lot. He doesn’t question it when they stop in a Walmart parking lot in a spot under the trees.

Jeremy doesn’t react when Mike starts crying, screaming, hitting the dash. Jeremy smiles sadly when Micheal swears him out, begging him to bring him back. 

Jeremy puts his jacket over Micheal’s sleeping form when he gets too worked up and passes out. 

Jeremy doesn’t sleep. His head hurts too much. 

Chapter Text

Micheal wakes up confused. He isn’t home. His head hurts, his throat hurts, his back hurts, but that’s more of an ache from sitting semi- upright while asleep than a pain. 

His eyes adjust to the sun as he shifts, a jacket falling off of his shoulders and onto his lap. Everything is dead quiet except for the roar of cars passing by periodically.

Oh.

He looks over to his left, and Jeremy is passed out, in a completely outlandish stretched out position, reminding Micheal abstractly of a cat. His lips flirt with a smile but he can’t quite get there, cracking his back and letting himself remember what happened the night before. He can’t quite grasp the details, separate what really happened from what his mind tried to make up and compensate.

The bots wouldn’t have helped him, surely. He must have passed out and Jeremy dragged him here. 

He’s nearly numb, unfeeling. Is this shock? Apathy?

He needs to go back, he needs to see. He let something out that may still be at large. And if he isn’t, then great but he really needs to know. Now.

The guilt in his chest is an overbearing weight, or a pillow being held over his face and smothering him, the perpetrator whispering that he can only breathe when he fixes this fix this Micheal you need to fix everything-

He looks over at Jeremy again, barely restraining himself from shaking him. Instead he turns on the radio. 

Micheal’s life is horribly ironic, unhelpfully convenient, and nearly implausible. So of course when he switches to the local news channel-

“ -at a family eatery last night. Nothing was stolen but vandalism was rampant, none of the beloved animatronic characters were spared. Some of them have minimal damage but some of them were completely dismantled and spread around the street outside. Minimal damage was done to the restaurant itself but there appears to have been a tussle-”

Jeremy snorts, stretching, and Micheal’s weird tunnel vision tunes out the radio and hones onto the man next to him instead.  “A tussle -”

“ Jeremy we need to go back -”

Jeremy rolls his eyes, reaching out to turn the news back off “Cool your jets, tiger. I’m going to take you home and have a talk with your boyfriend-”

“Jeremy-”

“About letting you go out at night. Specifically not letting you go out at night.”

“ Jeremy -”

“Because- I’m really worried about you, Micheal. You’re absolutely self-destructive and without me you would be dead right now-”

Micheal interrupts, not wanting to listen. “We need to find him, we need to stop him, you see what he’s capable of!”

“You don’t need to do anything, you don’t need to do anything -”

“Yes I do, I just fucked up, really fucking bad- ”

Jeremy grips his head, turning away to rest his forehead against the glass of the window. Micheal suddenly feels twenty times more guilty. 

“Oh my god, I’m sorry--- are you ok?”

“Goddamnit, Micheal.” Jeremy whines, “Don’t you get it? You need to worry about yourself. ”

“I don’t fucking matter.” Micheal mutters, picking ruthlessly at his cuticles, “Not until I-”

“Yes you do-”

“I’m homeless now, I- I’ve lost my job, they’ll figure out eventually that it was me who broke in they have cameras-”

“Wait-”

“I have no one, Jeremy, no one but him.” Mike looks out the window, a deathly calm, still as a lake in his cold anger. But a sniff throws a pebble into his lake, inciting ripples of unease, and Micheal’s attention snaps back to his companion and to his terror he sees tears on his cheeks.

Jeremy’s crying. Fuck. Fuck. 

“Wait why are you crying? I’m sorry-”

“You have me .” He chokes out, reaching blindly, grabbing Micheal’s forearm with both hands and bringing his hand close to his chest. “You have me. Please, please. I’ve never had a friend since my accident. I don’t know what will happen to me if I’m alone again.”

Micheal is blindsided when Jeremy shifts Micheal’s hand so it’s cupping his face. “If you won’t be careful for yourself, please try to for me. You do care about me. I can tell. Let yourself be selfish for two seconds.”

Micheal wishes they weren’t in the front seat of a car. He wants to hug him. He wants to go to sleep. He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to exist. 

Jeremy closes his eyes, squeezing out a few stray tears. “Say something.”

“I-” Micheal nearly chokes, holding his face gently despite feeling unworthy of it. “I. You should stay away from me.”

“I don’t want to .” Jeremy says. 

“You’ll get hurt.” Micheal says despite only wanting to draw him nearer, closer, forever. “That’s all that’ll happen, that’s all that ever happens.”

Jeremy sobs. It breaks whatever’s left of Micheal’s heart “Bullshit. That’s bullshit.”

“You know it isn’t.” Micheal says, and in any other circumstance the words would have held a bite, but he tries to keep his words and movements soft. “You know what’s happened. You- I need to fix this and I don’t think I’ll ever-”

“I’ll help you find him, it’s clear that you feel the need to..” Jeremy says, pulling away, “but only if you promise me something.”

Micheal doesn’t answer. Promises are dangerous.

“Five months. Give it five months, and then drop it. You’re young….we’re young. This isn’t-”

“Normal?” Micheal asks, careful not to sound too bitter.

“It isn’t fucking right , Micheal. It isn’t fair! We should be in college or golfing or something!”

“Golfing?” Micheal releases Jeremy in surprise.”Why golfing?”

“Fuck. Whatever. What do you have against golfing?”

“I- don’t? I just. Do you like golfing? Is golfing… a secret passion of yours?”

“Shut up, Micheal!!!” Jeremy screeches, his hands lashing out to strike Mike like twin vipers. Mike flinches slightly despite him obviously not intending to hurt him. Jeremy sobs soundlessly, reassigning his restless hands to the steering wheel, which he clutches so hard that his knuckles turn white.

“Do you want me to go?” Micheal asks quietly, “I can go in and call a cab, do you have quarters?”

“No!!!” Jeremy says loudly, not unlike a child throwing a tantrum (only twenty million times more heartbreaking), “You don’t get it. You don’t fucking--”

He hits the steering wheel, biting his bottom lip viciously. 

“No, I don’t. I’m sorry.”

“I like you .” Jeremy hisses. “I like you and I want you to like me. I don’t want you to go.”

“I-”

“I know you have a boyfriend, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“I broke up with him.”

“What?”

“I told you. I’m homeless, I left him. I thought I was going to die.”

Jeremy blinks, visually retaining this new information. “Oh?”

Micheal smiles grimly. “Oh.”

Jeremy blindly gropes until he finds Micheal’s fingers, holding on tight. 

Micheal wishes he could enjoy it, wishes that Jeremy was more important than chasing forgiveness, wishes that he was normal; at least a little bit. 



But he isn't.

They hold hands over the dash, neither daring to speak. It isn’t a promise or a condemnation, it’s an in-between. A compromise.  That’s enough for now.

Chapter Text

The first thing they do is scope out the restaurant, because Micheal wants to change his clothes and his suitcase is in his car that he would also like to keep if at all possible. It was expensive. 

They drive by it 3 times the afternoon after the incident, but it’s no good. There are cops and media vehicles surrounding Micheal’s. They then went to Dennys, which felt like high-end five-star food after their ordeal. The worse news came after they ate and got back into the car. Mike is now on the missing person’s registry, which is just lovely. Mostly because if his car kinda just disappears tomorrow or the next day, that will be pretty sketchy, and they have his plates, but he DOES want his car.

However, he DOESN’T want to be ‘returned' to Jacob, assuming Jacob’s the one who called and it wasn’t the police running his plate and looking at his records and job history and whatever cops do. He can imagine his face, stressed and worried about the man who broke his heart. He needs to stop caring, he needs to stop. 

Jeremy, after yesterday’s freak out, has been nothing but unsettlingly calm, which is concerning to say the least. Jeremy being calm is an absolute rarity, as far as Micheal knows. Even when quiet, before, he was restless. Now his hands are still and his movements are languid and he smiles when Micheal looks over at him like he was delivering the best news of his life. Something must be up. 

“Are you okay?” Mike asks, after a while. They’re driving again, Micheal behind the wheel now, down back roads near Lake Erie. It’s peaceful and sunny out, the beaches look enticing, and so do the idyllic ice cream stands in the pretty parks. Jeremy has the window open and the lake air hits his nose in conjunction with the squawk of the seagulls and the purr of the motor. It’s home, it’s childhood, it’s horrible. 

Jeremy smiles, playing with his fingers. “Oh. I’m alright.” 

“Looks like you won the goddamn lottery or something.” Micheal grunts bitterly. What the hell does he have to smile about? Micheal’s life is stretched thin over a metal frame, a trampoline for giants and monsters. It’s not going to be long before one punches a hole in it. It might have already happened.

“I think--” He bites his lip, “Maybe I did.”

“What the hell?”

“You.” He says simply, “You’re still here.”

Micheal almost laughs. The only lottery that Jeremy’s won is Shirley Jackson’s.

“Don’t,” Jeremy says preemptively, throwing out a dramatic hand in a way that only he can. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Micheal stifles a fond smile. He’s in serious mode right now.

“We just...need to find him.” Mike says, a weak change of subject, but a diversion anyway.  “We’ll keep looking until later tonight and then maybe we can get my clothes.”

“What about your car?”

“Might just have to leave it. They might give it to Jacob and I can ask him to give it to me like three years from now.”

“Micheal-- that isn’t realistic. This isn’t realistic, he’s gone .”

He’s not he’s never fucking gone he lives in your head . Micheal takes a deep breath, and it takes everything in him, but says very calmly , “Not yet.”

“Ugh, fine.” Jeremy says, pouting. Micheal takes another random turn, away from the lake again, down a residential street. Jeremy looks out the window, but he’s still smiling. Whatever, he can be in a good mood if he really wants to be. Doesn’t bother Mike at all, nope. 

His life is only falling apart. He’s one of Joey’s stuffed dolls that Mike had taken the seam ripper to one night after he was beatenbeatenbeaten, that night he thought over and over and over you deserve it too . He ripped the dolls apart stitch by stitch, laying each panel out on the floor, assembling a salad of skin that he garnished with the strung out intestines of fluff. One two three four all dead all killed by him . Joey wouldn’t talk to him for a week after that. 

He feels as if his dad’s snapped every fragile stitch holding his pathetic life together. But yeah, Jeremy humming off tune because he thinks that someone as horrible as Micheal is a goddamn prize, is totally fine and great and awesome.

Micheal finds his way out of the neighborhood, decides to leave lake Erie behind him. Too much good. That isn’t what his dad likes. He merges onto the highway, heading back to the restaurant to maybe(hopefully) pick up his clothes so the two of them can rent a shitty motel room and grab a shower. (Jeremy’s been showering at the YMCA which isn’t ideal).

“Ouch, Traffic’s bad.” Jeremy says when they start slowing down, integrating into the sea of red brake lights. “There must have been an accident.”

“Mhm.” Mike assents distantly, a feeling of badness in his chest. Just vague, but there. “Keep your eye out.”

“For what?” He asks brightly, and then- “Shit, Micheal. You can’t be serious.”

“I dunno.” Micheal grumbles, “I don’t know. Just in case.”

Jeremy nods, straightening, and Mike can nearly envision his ears twitching like a cat’s. God above(if one exists), Micheal does NOT deserve him. 

They crawl at a tortoise’s pace, and the closer they get to the accident the more on edge Micheal is. He doesn’t exactly think his dad will just...be there, but at the same time he absolutely does. He doesn’t know why. 

When they actually get there, however, Jeremy opens the window and squints at the wreckage. “Micheal, it’s just a wreck.”

His sense of anticipation pops like a balloon, making Micheal angry. What the hell was he thinking? He’s so goddamn stupid, his father is right, he’s always been the fucking dumb one.

“Of fucking course it is,” Micheal growls, hitting the dash. Jeremy jumps. 

Micheal is only half-conscious. He’s so mad at himself. He should be the dead one.

Elizabeth was pretty and succinct and smart and fantastic. She was great at math and her voice was beautiful. She deserved to live. 

Joseph was sweet and happy (until Micheal ruined him), he was so young but was already showing signs of being a good writer, his stories well thought out and creative. His smile could light up a whole room. He was kind but so so so fragile and Micheal should have protected him . But he didn’t.

He deserved to live.

Micheal? He’d fail two classes a year, skateboard behind the school, smoke cigarettes to fit in with those sort of people, and get high or wasted with his bandmates in the basement. He graduated, barely, and went to the two-year community college he got into for around 3 months before dropping out. He’s a failure. He’s nothing.

“Micheal?” Jeremy sounds frightened, “We should just get changed and get some rest in a real bed. You’re hungry and tired, and- it will be a lot better after we take a break okay?”

“I couldn’t even kill him, Jeremy.” Micheal says quietly, “That’s all I needed to do and I couldn’t.”

“Neither could the killer robots.” Jeremy says petulantly, gazing out the window as they get back up to speed “Look at this with a bit of perspective, Micheal. He’s-- ungodly strong. We needed to run to fight another day.”

“I guess.”

“And like, he’s a zombie or something. I don’t really know what’s going on with that.”

“Me either.”

It’s silent for a few minutes, and they’re approaching the exit for the restaurant.

“Go back to the restaurant, Micheal.”

“What if we miss him?”

“We need to go back to the restaurant and get your clothes and your wallet. You know that. Now go please.”

Micheal rolls his eyes but he can’t say no to that face. “Fine.”

Around 15 minutes later, they pull into the lot, and it’s a lot more dead than it had been all day, a single officer with a magazine sits on the hood of the car in the summer air. He looks at the two of them with suspicion, especially as Micheal says ‘screw it’ and climbs out of the truck and heads towards his car. 

“Excuse me!” The cop calls out to him as he approaches the car, and Micheal turns on his heel with his keys dangling from his fist.

“Yes?” Micheal asks, apathetic. He doesn’t want to be arrested but he doesn’t necessarily care at this point if he is. Jeremy’s probably really mad at him. 

“Are you the owner of this vehicle?” The man asks, he’s slim and attractive, but he looks exhausted. He must have been here for a long time, okay, good. Tired people are pliable. 

“Yes.” Micheal shakes the keys in front of him, before gesturing over his shoulder “I was carpooling with my friend “

“You can’t take this vehicle right now, this is a crime scene.” Mike glances around the parking lot, and cringes a little at the wrecked animatronic body parts. Eesh.

“Huh, well,” Micheal says, slowly, figuring out a game plan. “Can I grab my stuff out of the back, then?”

“No, it’s a part of the crime scene.”

Micheal huffs, shaking out his hands...he knows what he has to do. He hasn’t done this in a while, and he isn’t sure if it’s going to work. Oh god. He casts Jeremy out of his mind for a second, not really excited for him to see him do this. 

“Uh, well--” He gets closer, nearly into the man’s personal space, he steps back, but only an inch or two “ I know you’re very good at your job, and I don’t want to screw anything up for you, so I’ll completely cooperate.” 

Micheal grabs the man’s wrist, the one that’s holding the magazine, and pulls him closer. This time he doesn’t back away. “Can I borrow a page of this to write my number on?”

“Uhh.” The man looks confused, flustered even. Perfect.  “I- uh-”

“So you can call me when I can pick up my car. Sir, I’ll even leave the keys in your capable hands. All I want is my suitcase. You can even search it if you want, sir. And my wallet’s in the front seat.”

Micheal keeps eye contact with the man as he slowly rips a page out of his magazine. The officer’s eyes watch it and not him. 

“Pen?”

The man blinks and nods, patting his pockets before handing him a ballpoint. Micheal releases the man and he exhales, finally. Micheal was somewhat worried that he’d pass out from holding his breath. 

“W-what was your car doing here overnight?”  The man still valiantly tries to do his job.

“I work here,” Micheal says offhandedly, playing dumb, playing around with the truth. “What exactly happened?”

“You work here?” 

“I’m a night guard on the weekdays, and my friend came and picked me up after I picked up something from inside that I’d left there, and then we left.”

“You were inside the establishment at what time?”

“Round 10:30. You could check the cameras if you want.” Fake it til you make it. Hopefully they’ll believe him and not check the cameras until after he’s gone.

“The footage has been deemed irrecoverable by the company but- um- Why were you carpooling at 10:30 at night?”

Micheal just laughs his ‘you’re so funny , but only because I’m single’ laugh, and winks, pressing the paper into his chest near his heart. He grabs it with both hands, pressing it there for a few seconds. Micheal walks past him and unlocks his car while the man is still taking in the xo ;) that Micheal put after his name. 

“Micheal? Are you Mike Schmidt?”

“Awe, darling, you make me feel like I’m famous.”

“No, no- your-uh- partner issued a missing person’s alert, did you hear?”

“Oh, he does stuff like that. He’s just upset that I broke up with him.” Micheal hates how easy lying is, how easily he slips into sin. “I’m sure you can let them know that I’m okay, right?”

“I mean,” The guy turns around to watch Micheal root around in his backseat and drag out Jacob’s duffel bag. He looks like he wants to stop him but now Micheal’s number (not really, because he doesn’t have one) is crumpled in his fist as he bites his lip, unsure. “That’s not really how it works.”

“Hey, you have my number now, and my car, so it’s not like I’ll run off or anything. Just ring me up if you or the boys have to contact me further.” Mike says, leaning over the seat to grab his wallet, pocketing it. “Or...like if you just want to...talk?”

Micheal stews in shameful delight when the man’s face flushes a little bit and he steps back, definitively this time. “That’s inappropriate sir. I really must--”

“What? Making friends is my favorite thing to do.” Micheal says, turning to leave, but the man coughs a few times, holding out a hand like ‘stop!’.

“Hey- the keys, please, sir.”

“Of course! I’m so forgetful when I’m around pretty people, here.”  he turns on his heel and presses a ring of keys into his hand, and then winking, ‘Remember to call.”

He climbs into Jeremy’s car as fast as he can without looking suspicious, and once the door closes behind him, he throws the truck into drive and guns it out of the parking lot.

“Fucking- Mike did you just give that guy your keys?!?!” Jeremy hisses as he goes 50 down a 35, “Micheal what the fuck are you doing, what was that?”

Mike, grinning, tosses his car keys into Jeremy’s lap. The whole escapade kind of cleared his mind a little bit. He does need to shower and eat, and he has to think about Jeremy too. It is his car. “The only thing he’ll be able to open with the shit I gave him is that goddamn restaurant. Not that we’re going back anytime soon. We are heading to Mansfield and checking into Motel 6. I don’t know about you but I want to make them run out of hot water.”

“Micheal!!!!” Jeremy hits him, but he’s grinning with bright eyes“You’re- a criminal!”

“Yeah? Always have been.”

“I mean- that was- wow . I mean-” And his eyes close off a bit, turning away with a plastic grin  “You’re- you’re a total flirt, dude. Didn’t think you- could do that.”

Micheal winces, hitting the gas even harder, until they get stuck behind a law abiding citizen. Sucks.

“Listen. I- I know that looked bad. It wasn't great of me to- I mean. Shit.” Micheal says gruffly, “I mean-”

“Nah it’s okay, you don’t- you got us out of a tough situation-”

Micheal passes the person and starts going like 25 over again. “ I mean I- I’m never single for more than a few weeks. I would probably be dead otherwise. Even if I- I don’t really love them, I got good at finding people to make sure I’m alive when I wake up. But-- you are different. Just-”

“Micheal. It’s okay, I know.” Jeremy says(somewhat resignedly), starting to giggle again. “But that was shameless ”

“Okay, Mr. Jeremy “what's a pretty face like yours doing in a dump like this”? Fitzgerald.” 

“Hey!! You know how I can’t stop myself!!” Jeremy lightly hits Mike’s arm again. Micheal has been getting used to it.  “I like you.”

“Mmm. Yeah. Like you too, dumbass.”

They pull into the parking lot something like 20 minutes later due to Micheals excessive speeding, and he’s already starting to feel a little better. This place is a piece of shit, but it’s cheap, and that’s what’s on the table right now. Micheal isn’t really a fan of sleeping in cars, although the prospect of bedbugs is real too. He’s stayed here before, only 3 or 4 nights, but it pushed him to stop smoking after he saw the state of all the crack addicts. He’s been more or less clean since. 

“Here?” Jeremy doesn't labor to hide the disgust on his face as he climbs out of the passenger side. “It looks- really- scary.”

He side-eyes a guy who’s starting to walk over to them, clutching Micheal's arm when he gets close enough to, and a rush of protectiveness makes Micheal draw up and glare the guy down. 

He smiles unnervingly and walks past them, brushing Jeremy slightly as he passes.

“Ew.” Jeremy says, and though it’s rude, Micheals inclined to agree.

“Sorry buddy, we’re totally broke,” Micheal says, locking Jeremy’s car and handing him his keys. “Otherwise I’d love to put you up in a nice 5- star.”

“How romantic,” Jeremy says sarcastically, blinking rapidly. Micheal thinks it’s one of his tics. “Take me away, prince charming.”

Micheal flushes, pulling him into the check-in office. Just as dusty as he remembers.

“Cheapest room please,” Micheal tells the woman at the counter. She gives him a look.

“That would be one bed. Smoking room.”

“Fine,” Micheal says shortly, sliding his card to her. She rolls her eyes and takes it. Jeremy wanders to the coffee bar, and Micheal doesn’t have the heart to tell him that it’s probably moldy. 

“I swear.” The woman scoffs, flicking his card back to him, “I know you’re trying to be subtle but at least take him to a nicer place.”

“What?”

“You’re- queer? Right? Trying to stay under the radar?”

“No. We’re homeless, fuck off.” Micheal spits, and she just rolls her eyes, unperturbed.

“We welcome queers, drunks, crackheads, homeless, all types. It’s almost the nineties, we’re all open-minded here. Don’t worry.” She gives him one of those fancy key cards, and Micheal makes sure to snatch it somewhat viciously. “Thanks for staying with us~”

“There was mold in the coffee,” Jeremy says disgruntledly when they reunite in the cold air outside, looking for their room. “I didn’t drink it, don’t worry.”

I know you’re trying to be subtle but at least take him to a nicer place .

Micheal shudders, and Jeremy bumps shoulders with him. “What’s wrong?”

Is Micheal taking advantage of Jeremy? Is that what’s happening right now? Jeremy surely only likes him because he was kind to him. He’d never pick him otherwise. Is it fair to pursue anything with him?

“...Micheal?”

“What?”

“You look like you’re going to cry?”

“No, I don’t.”

Micheal finds the room and walks fast to it, fiddling with the key card thingie and failing many times. Jeremy shrugs when he looks at him like ‘dude I couldn’t do it.’

Eventually, he figures it out, and the light blinks green. He opens the door to a well made up but obviously dirty room. Jeremy coughs, likely at the heavy smoke smell. 

“Sorry.” Micheal grimaces, as Jeremy looks around “I’ll try to get another job asap and- we can get out of here.” 

“It’s okay, don’t worry about me,” Jeremy says, looking small and larger than life all at the same time. This is the first time Micheal’s really had time to look at him outside of a car or a life or death sort of deal. He’s just as fascinating if not more the longer he looks at him. 

He spins around in the center of the room. “I can sleep on the floor in my sleeping bag.”

“Don’t be stupid.” Micheal scoffs, “If we don’t share, then I’ll take the floor.”

“Share?” Jeremy asks, the grin on his face displacing the innocence in his tone.

“If that’s okay.” 

“Hah, yeah. Totally okay.” He says, visibly giddy. Micheal’s stabbed with another sense of foreboding. Has the kid even ever been in a relationship? That would explain his excitement as they’re on the edge of something here, but even more tellingly, it would explain why he would settle for anyone who took interest in him. Enter stage right, Micheal fuckin’ Afton. 

“I’m going to- take a shower.” Micheal says, pointing over his shoulder and hefting his whole duffel bag in with him after. He shuts the door, trying to calm his racing heart. 

Maybe Micheal should just leave Jeremy the rest of his money to do with what he needs. Maybe he can anonymously send him money every month so he can get a place and rebuild his life. He’d need to call a cab and leave while Jeremy was sleeping. He’d also have to write a note so he wouldn’t come after him. Micheal turns on the shower, his eyebrows furrowed at the clump of long hair circled around the train. 

He could leave.

But.

He doesn’t want to. 

He takes off his sweaty clothes and steps under the hot water. It feels like heaven. 

He likes Jeremy. He likes Jeremy far too much . He’ll ruin him. He’ll be ruined without him. 

Micheal is a goddamn selfish bitch. 

He tries to weigh his pros and cons.

Pros to staying:

He’ll have a funny, sweet, smart (boy)friend for an amount of time

Jeremy won’t be alone, so Mike can help him get back on his feet

He’ll have someone who understands the deepest crevices of his life, and will love him despite it

Cons:

It’ll end

It will end badly

He’ll hurt Jeremy, ultimately leaving him worse off than he was before

Micheal slams his fist into the wall, frustrated. He doesn’t want to leave, but he feels like he needs to. 

After a few minutes, he turns off the water and gets dressed in fresh clothes. 

When Jeremy switches places with him Micheal sits cross legged on one side of the bed. Everyone he touches turns sour, and dies. Why should Jeremy be any different?

He doesn’t deserve that. He doesn’t deserve him . Micheal is a curse. For the third time in the last three days, Micheal thinks about finding a high building and jumping off of it. 

He quickly dismisses the thought. He has a responsibility now. 

Jeremy emerges from the bathroom, clean and happy-looking. “Hi!”

He chirps at Micheal when they make eye contact.

“Hi, bud,” Micheal says tiredly, smiling a little bit at him regardless. 

“Can I hug you?” Jeremy asks shyly, “I’ve wanted to since I met you.”

Micheal actually smiles, now. “You’re crazy.”

“I know.” He beams, and finally, finally falls into Micheal’s arms. His back hits the mattress with a thump, and Jeremy’s uncovered face finds itself in the seam between Micheal’s neck and his jaw. Butterflies, actual nerves from actual feelings, flutter through Micheal’s whole being. Jeremy’s wet hair tickles him, makes him smile and hug his friend tighter. 

“Are we just gonna cuddle all night?” Micheal asks lightly, cautiously letting his fingers span Jeremy’s narrow shoulders and back. “Cause I’m not opposed. I’m dead tired.” 

Instead of answering, Jeremy shifts and ghosts his lips against Micheal’s jaw.

Micheal’s hands tighten in Jeremy’s shirt, his heart beating so fast that he can feel it in his head and his ears. 

“Sorry.” Jeremy mumbles against his skin. He doesn’t sound sorry.“Can I kiss you-?”

“Yes.” Micheal says ahead of his own brain, breathless already, “ Yes .”

Jeremy laughs that unnerving child-like peal, but it’s soft and excited. It’s soon stifled by another kiss on Micheal’s jaw, and then up to his cheek, nose, eyelids. Micheal can barely breathe. 

Jeremy plants a closed mouth kiss on Micheal’s mouth, and then draws back before going for it. It’s overwhelming and beautiful and perfect and messy. 

At least take him to a nicer place-

Jeremy swings his leg over Micheals’ torso so he’s straddling him, both hands flat on Micheal’s chest, smoothing his gross t-shirt down with so much care.

You’ll break him, Micheal.

He grins at Mike before kissing him again. He’s obviously not kissed anyone before, but he isn’t hesitant about it. 

He’s so much younger than you, you’re corrupting him. You’re a creep. You’re a fucking creep.

Jeremy holds his face like it’s something special, something good. Micheal shivers at the realization. Jeremy laughs into his mouth. 

You’re using him. He’s doing this so you won’t kick him out. He needs you.

Micheal panics, pushes him off.

“What?” He looks more annoyed than anything, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand.

“Are you sure you- want me?” Micheal says, and it sounds so stupid that he has to sit up against the headboard to collect his thoughts. “I mean- I- I’m not going to leave. Even if you don’t-”

“Don’t be stupid.” Jeremy says, eyes sparkling. “I told you. I like you.”

“I’m broken.”

“That isn’t going to work on me,” Jeremy says, crawling over to sit next to him against the headboard, and then leaning into Micheal’s side. “I’m broken too, remember? We’ll be broken, together.”

The voice in his head(that again, sounds suspiciously like his father) goes silent. 

“I-you- you .”

“Me?” Jeremy asks, amused.

“You’re so amazing,” Micheal says sincerely, leaning up to kiss his blond head. “You’re fantastic.”

Jeremy leans down to catch Micheal’s lips in a nervous kiss. It’s still awkward but it’s so sweet and Micheal is just so happy even though he shouldn’t be. He tries to kiss him again but Jeremy pushes him away.

“We have plenty of time. Let's sleep.”

They have plenty of time.

Micheal repeats this in his head like a mantra until they fall asleep in the gross hotel bed. 

We have plenty of time.

------ end of part 1

Chapter Text

Interlude I: Joey

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

The heart monitor is a steady beat, a metronome to the symphony of grief playing through Micheal's head. He's not alone in the sterile room. At his father's request, there's an uncomfortable looking nurse in the corner who fiddles with the hem of her apron. Her eyes haven't left him since he'd walked through the door. It takes literally every drop of the dregs of his self restraint not to glare back at her...she's just doing her job, you know? He can imagine the conversation between the doctors and nurses and his father. He's pos itive that he really pushed to ban Micheal from visiting Joey in the first place, throwing around the phrases 'delinquent' or 'danger to society' or maybe even 'brother killer', a personal favorite.

Mike settles down in the chair next to his bed. Joey looks so small , even for his age. He was always so sheltered, so weak. His bones snapped like toothpicks, so William kept him inside most of the time. Safe. Submissive. Scared.

That's probably why his skull was crushed like a wasp nest.

Mike reaches out towards him, blindly, eyes blurred with tears.

The nurse clears her throat sharply, and Mike's head snaps up. She looks stern, about to say something, but Mike intercepts "I don't know what he told you but I fucking love my brother."

She rolls her eyes. "You can hold his hand, but don't touch anything near his head or face."

A pause, in which she is seemingly x-raying Micheal with her stunning blue eyes that pop against the sterile whiteness of everything else around her.

She clears her throat again, looking down at her knees. "I believe you."

Micheal chooses not to answer her, just smiling grimly down at his brother, taking his hand and squeezing it. He hasn't looked above the neck yet. It's too hard to think about it, what he's done, what might happen. What's coming next, for him, if Joey dies.

If Joey dies Micheal knows he won't ever be able to forgive himself. He might as well let his father kill him.

But that would leave his mother alone with the madman. He can't do that either.

He squeezes Joey's hand again, gazing at the steady beat on the monitor. He doesn't want to be a murderer. He wants to hear Joey's sweet laugh again. He wants his siblings to be ok, and both he and his father to go to hell.

Micheal takes a deep breath, finally steeling himself to look at his little face. 

"Hey buddy." 

It's too clean. He looks too okay. He could be taking a nap, if you tune out the thin circlet of white bandage wrapped around his head like a halo, his oxygen mask, and the huge drainage pipe near his temple. 

"I'm so sorry I hurt you." Micheal whispers, rubbing circles onto the top of the small boy's hand. "Not just the brain thing, either. I'm sorry I... you know. You're so much stronger than I ever have been, and you had to pay for my own shit, and Dad's shit, and it was never fair. I'm sorry."

Micheal knows the nurse is listening. He doesn't even care anymore. He feels the tears come back in full force, fat and wet.

"You better wake up Jo." Micheal sobs, "You better come back. I've got money. If mom won't take us, I'll get us out. When you get better, we can move to like- Florida or Idaho or something and- it will be great. You can write your stories and win essay contests and I can clean pools or work at the library or- I don't know but it will be better than here.  I'll keep you safe. you'll never be hurt again."

Joey won't wake up, Micheal knows it in his head, but his heart doesn’t stop hoping until he gets the news.

And when he does, his heart leaps out of his chest and stops doing anything more than pump blood. 

……

Interlude II: Jeremy and Mike

“We’re pretty fucked up.” Jeremy says out of nowhere one day. They’re in a public diner(not that one, they’d be kicked out regardless of Mike’s former job position. No ‘unaccompanied adults’ over 18). Micheal has been perfecting the art of misdirecting Jeremy from sensitive topics in public, because he talks very loudly and without a filter.  

“Yes, “ Mike nods, his eyes desperately searching for an obscure menu item. “Hey babe, have you ever had poutine?”

He ignores him, as if he hadn’t heard. He may have not, but it’s more likely that he needs to finish his thought.

“Like, half of the time we spend together we’re looking for your dead dad.”

“That's exaggerating, and you don’t have to come with me anymore if you don’t want to.” Mike grumbles, his face heating. He’s aware that now that he can talk about his dad that he does. Alot. Ever since he let him get away, the guilt has been eroding his reasoning. He’s released something into the world the world wouldn’t ever be prepared for. The months allotted by Jeremy originally are almost up anyway, and Micheal is sure that Jeremy will hold him to it. 

“Oh, you make it fun, honeypie.” He chuckles, and then thinks. “Forgive me, I don’t know where that came from.”

“It’s okay.” Micheal laughs, glancing back at the menu- thinking that maybe this individual train of thought is broken. 

It isn’t.

“Do you only like me because I’m as messed up as you are?” Jeremy always speaks in this stilted way that makes it hard to interpret the intent or emotion behind it.

“No, I like you because you’re interesting and incredible.” Mike smiles, reaching for the other man’s hand across the table, but Jeremy jerks away. A flash of weariness jolts through Mike’s body, and he thinks that maybe they should go home now before he inevitably blows up.

“Do you only like me because I’m the only one more messed up than you?”

“Jer. You don’t actually think that.” Mike isn’t overly hurt, but the sting is still there. He knows that the both of them are messed up, but he doesn’t like thinking about it. When he’s with Jeremy he feels almost normal. 

“Has it always been a dream of yours? To take care of someone that’s more pathetic than you? An invalid?” His voice has been steadily rising as his stream of consciousness needs to get out of his brain as fast as possible. 

“Okay, we’re leaving.” Micheal whispers, “Let’s go home.”

Micheal leaves a 20 on the table and gets up. Jeremy stares at his fingernails. “Come on.”  

“I’m not stupid.” He mutters.

“You’re one of the smartest people I know.” Mike offers a hand to the other and it takes Jeremy a while to take it, but eventually he does, muttering obscenities under his breath. 

They walk hand in hand out the front door, and Jeremy screams into his palms the moment they’re sitting in the front seat of Micheal’s truck. 

A passerby looks at them curiously, and Micheal wiggles his fingers at them. They wave back awkwardly and avert their eyes. 

Jeremy quiets down and then starts biting his fingernails. 

“Are you alright?”

“Yes. Sorry.” He says quickly. “Just intrusive thoughts.”

“I mean, would you like to talk about it?”

“Since when are you my therapist?”

“Closest you’re gonna get, nowadays.”

“Touché.” He grins, opening and closing the glove compartment. “Alright, I’ll play along.”

Micheal breathes in and out deeply, then turns to face his boyfriend. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”

“I know you don’t, but most people do.” He shrugs. “I feel stupid sometimes, I hate it when I can’t stop dumb things from coming out of my mouth… I don’t think you’re pathetic, Mike.”

“I definitely don’t think you are either.”

He smiles crookedly. “I just need to accept that we’re freaks.”

Those words linger in the air all around them, fogging up the truck’s windows. It’s what they’ve built their lives on, the fact that they’re unequivocally different, strange, unloveable. Micheal doesn’t know who Jeremy was before (he won’t talk about it), but Micheal at least feels that his own repulsiveness is a part of his identity and it has been ever since he was born; you’re an unwanted, tainted, person . 

He hasn’t let anyone normal (sans Jacob, somehow) get too close to that stubborn part of him that will always believe that he is at his core, a curse to everyone who’s been exposed to him. He’s probably slowly chipping away at Jeremy too, corrupting him, but just this once Micheal is going to be selfish and keep him near. He can’t stand the thought of ever letting him go.

He grasps Jeremy’s hand almost absentmindedly, only realizing he’d done so when the other squeezes his hand in response. 

“I really love you,” Micheal breathes, trying to ignore nagging tears building up under the surface. “More than I’ve ever loved anyone before.”

“Ditto.” Jeremy grins, “I’m gonna kiss you now, okay?”

Micheal nods unnecessarily, because they already are. Micheal is suddenly being pressed up against the window on the drivers side as Jeremy practically lunges over the divider in the middle to pin him there. Micheal raises his hand to take off Jeremy’s hat, and Jeremy has him by the shirt collar. 

Nothing is ever done halfway with the two of them. 

Just as they’re getting into it, someone bangs on the hood of the car. A disgruntled looking woman peers in at them with utter disapproval on her face, before shaking her head and moving on.

Micheal wipes his mouth, the moment broken.

“Nothing we can’t continue at home, mm?” Jeremy raises his eyebrows. 

Micheal throws the car into reverse, ready to set a world record time en route to the apartment.

Chapter Text

Act II, Five years later. 

Micheal isn’t stupid, he knows this is a bad idea. He took the job without telling Jeremy, because even with this shit being the reason they met and the reason they’d bonded; he’d been firm lately in not talking about any of it. Jeremy’s reasoning is that everything happens for a reason; that his brain being bitten off and Micheal’s family troubles(both due to the company) were catalysts to push them to each other...and now that they’ve found each other they’ve fulfilled their purpose. 

He’d said “No need to tempt the fates.”

Micheal never thought that the bitter and brash Jeremy would be one to believe in fate, destiny, and soulmates. It’s honestly adorable, even if slightly out of character. It might be a remnant of the mystery man Jeremy, who existed before ‘the bite’. 

Either way, Jeremy doesn’t want to think about it anymore, and ‘it’ includes Micheal’s elusive father, so unfortunately he can’t follow his boyfriend’s wishes. Of course, when almost caught while doing research, Micheal denies it, but of course he had been lying.

Again.

Micheal acknowledges more and more everyday that he’s the human equivalent of poison.

But when he had started- started talking to him like he’d been living in his head all along...he couldn’t just ignore it.

So that’s his excuse.

Jeremy sleeps soundly, so if he can get out around midnight and back by 6:30 then he should be alright, granted he ‘starts jogging’.

He also knows that Jeremy won’t ask to come with him because he hates exercise (and doesn’t need it because of his freaky metabolism), and he hates losing sleep. 

He should be okay.

The hard part is this.

He’s lying, wide awake, facing the clock. It’s 11:24. He’s being spooned. 

Micheal doesn’t consider himself a small person, but he’s definitely a small man . Checking in at 5’6, he’s been shorter than all of his partners and Jeremy is no exception. Where Micheal is somewhat heavy-set, Jeremy has long limbs that seem to dangle from something, like a marionette on a string. He’s not muscular or toned, but he's tall and pretty and that makes up for it. 

Micheal is, well, kind of cute maybe. At best.

He's boring. Not slender but not overweight either, neither handsome or ugly. He has brown hair and brown eyes and frown lines. He has perpetual bags under his eyes and faint traces of stubble. He used to tan but now he doesn't go outside so he's just that caucasian-pale color all of the time. He's painfully average.

His blonde partner isn’t, at least in Mike’s eyes. His face is thin and clean shaven and sort of disproportionate, but it makes him look interesting. His stature is- well- boyish may be the word, like a teen that hit his growth spurt and just didn’t stop gro wing. It may be a bias, but Mike sees Jeremy as one of the most beautiful people ever. One of the strongest. He fights every day, every moment, to function. One day he compared it to drowning.

It wasn’t a good day.

Jeremy had shut himself in his bedroom, and it had taken Mike a while to find that he was under the bed. 

...

“The light hurts.” He groans, shielding his face.

“How do you fit under there?” Mike laughs, but not really. He rushes to turn the overhead light off. “Can you come out?”

“I don’t think- I can.” 

“That’s okay.” Mike maneuvers himself so he’s laying flat against the floor, cheek pressed against the tile. “What’s up?”

His eyes are screwed shut to block out the tiniest streams of sun that  peek through the blinds. “Everything-everything hurts.”

“Migraine?”

“Every-everything!!”

Mike almost jumps back at the outburst, Jeremy thrusts his hand down onto the floor and it makes a pathetic slap sound. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop- stop apologizing.” Jeremy murmurs. “How would this be your fault? It’s my stupid brain, Micheal.”

“I-” Mike bites his tongue, Jeremy barks out a laugh. 

“Did you ever go swimming as a kid?” Jeremy asks, closing his eyes again, placing the crook of his elbow over them. 

Micheal feels as if he has whiplash, but he shrugs, knowing by now that he should just play along. “Yeah, sure. Mom would take us to the pool sometimes.”

“Do you remember when you learned to swim? When you had to hold yourself up for the first time?”

Micheal thinks back. He remembers that they would go to the YMCA as a family so he and his siblings could take lessons. Joey and Liz were young, so they sat in the shallow end splashing together while Micheal was guided by a pretty woman in a bathing suit; learning how to float on his back and doggy paddle to the nearest wall. He found it to be torture, a waste of time, but for some reason, his parents were adamant that he learned. It's even more confusing in hindsight.

“Yeah, I think.”

“Then you remember the time you couldn’t, too? When you thought you had it, but then you breathe in water and it fills you up so you sink?”

“I mean-”

“Do you?” He sounds harsh now, instead of reminiscent.

“Yes.” He doesn’t remember a specific time or event, but he remembers the feeling. The searing taste of chlorine on your tongue, the burning behind your eyes and in the back of your nose, the dragging panic that follows you long after you regain your breath, hacking that wet and unforgiving cough to get the water out. 

“I feel like that all the time Mike, I’m always fighting to find the surface and I can- never break it. I’m always breathing in water instead of air. I might have a headache, but that’s not the worst part…. I- I’m drowning in myself Micheal! I can never be fixed, I’ll always be this half-formed human person who doesn’t pick up on social cues or- or knows when to stop- or believes his boyfriend when he says that he loves me… I-”

“I do.”

“I know!! I-”

“Jeremy-”

“Shut up! Shutupshutupshutup-”

….
He did.

Now he needs to wriggle out of Jeremy’s grasp and not wake him, which is going to be a depressing task; more so than a difficult one. Eventually, he replaces himself with his pillow, and shuffles to his feet, not daring to even touch the sleeping man.

He closes the bedroom door softly after slipping into ‘work out’ clothes. 

It’s vital that Jeremy doesn’t find out, so no corners will be cut. In the car, Mi cheal slips into his new guard jacket in the front seat. He tries to push down the dread, once more. 

He almost feels like it’s 5 years ago and he was starting his first job with that cursed restaurant.

But this time, he doesn’t think that anything good is going to come out of this. No beautiful men with tasers offering to defend him. 

He’s following the will of his father, and of course this will end badly because of it, but he can’t help himself. It’s like this whole pile of shit is a magnet, and Mike is magnetic as hell.

This job should be- different.

Nothing has changed.

Or maybe not different at all. 

He pulls into the unassuming warehouse’s parking lot, double checks the taser on his hip, and heads into the building. He’d technically found the job listing in the paper but only because he’d been told to look for it. He had called the number there and a technician answered, promptly warned him against it, and then told him he had the job. 

It almost felt like deja vu. 

Now, he’s not really a security guard this time, he’s more of a maintenance man. That means he has to get close to them.

To the left of him immediately is a freight elevator, and he presses the button next to the door. The whole contraption screams at him before the mesh double doors open their maw to a rounded room, a screen waiting in the center. The check-in port, the man had called it. It has a piece of tape with his name etched onto it, which he finds sort of strange.

‘Enter your name’ 

A voice echoes through the capsule as the doors close behind him. The keypad is on the touchscreen and he tries to type but the letters at the top come out all jumbled. 

‘ Welcome, Eggs Benedict’

“What? No.” Mike mutters, trying to retype his name, but the computer beeps away the keyboard, leaving behind a blank screen. All these weird high tech-y computers just mess with Michaels brain.

‘Name cannot be changed. Please take your ID card, an employee will register it for you at their earliest convenience’ 

An ID card comes out of the machine like a printed receipt. He takes it and clutches it in his sweaty hands. The ride feels far too long, and Mike breathes out a sigh of relief when the lift comes to a shaky stop, as he must be at least 3 stories underground. 

So he couldn’t run even if he wanted to. 

The lift doors open to a breakroom of sorts, where a man is lounging across a green leather couch with a book. He was already looking at him before Mike’d even noticed he was there. 

“Hi?” Mike utters, waving with a wiggle of his fingers. He didn’t expect to see another human, but his presence is strangely more unnerving than comforting. This world should only really exist in Mike’s nightmares, when he’s reminded otherwise it weirds him out. 

“Hey!” He smiles, straightening up. “Is that your I.D.? I’m here to register you into the system.”

“Um.” Mike nods, but doesn’t move.

“Are you okay?” His face morphs from cheerful to concerned far too fast, “Are you nervous?”

“I- I’m fine, really.” Mike will do anything to stop him from looking at him like that. He hands over his card. The man sniggers at it. “Is your name really Eggs Benedict?”

“No. The keyboard is busted.” 

“Well, Eggs, it’s fingerprinted you and it won’t let you change it so you should embrace your new identity.”

“Oh. Great.”

He sticks the card into what looks like a credit card reader, and it glows green. “Here you go! I’m out. Good luck, uh-”

He prompts Mike for his name with his eyes. Micheal relents,  “Mike.”

“Mike. Ha, that’s funny… that’s what we’ve always called the voice.”

“The voice?”

He shrugs, “He tells us what to do. It’s taped on the monitors. Good luck!!” He pats Mike on the shoulder on his way to the elevator but Mike grabs his arm to stop him. 

It’s been a while since he’d interacted with anyone but Jeremy, so he keeps forgetting touching people that he doesn’t know is inappropriate. He releases him immediately.

“Um… wait a second.” He tries to regain a bit of his suaveness that he used to possess in excess. He’d pick up partners left and right to fill that weird void, but now that it’s been years without worrying about how he came off, he’s become the same awkward boy from his teens again. "So, what should I expect from tonight?”

The man’s eyes flash in the overhead fluorescents before settling back into their smile. “Um, you have to crawl into the maintenance area through that vent there.” He points at a menacing looking ground level vent with glow tape surrounding it’s entrance. “And you can swipe your card at each Animatronic’s station for Mike, well, the voice , to tell you what needs to be done. It’s all very simple. No worries.”

“Sure.” Micheal doesn’t believe him, but the guy seems to want out so Micheal lets him leave. WIth a salute and a half smile, the guy is gone. 

When he kneels at the base of the vent, a card reader lights up, flashing ‘swipe me!’ in an excessively garish manner. 

Mike does. 

‘Welcome, Eggs Benedict! Please commence your journey through the vent as I inform you about your first night.’

Mike does. He barely fits, and he realizes that maybe he should start actually working out or something. Maybe after this shit is done. 

‘Unlike many robotic entertainment locations, we bring the fun to the customer with rentable animatronics. Your job is to keep them functional and fix any problems that might arise so they are ready to perform by the next morning!’

Mike emerges into a room with a window on either side; too dark to see through. There’s another vent in front of him, along with a large fan and animatronic masks and heads. He tries to tune the humanoid features out to locate the next card swiper, which he finds at the center of the room on a pedestal. 

‘You are now in the primary control module! It’s actually a crawl space between the two main showrooms… now let’s get started with your tasks! Do you see the control port on your left?’

Mike nods, remembering only after he did so that the thing can’t see him. 

‘The room it controls is called the Ballora Gallery, press the light to see if Ballora is on her stage.’

Mike presses the light button. It illuminates an empty stage. “She isn’t. Is that bad?”

‘Bummer, it looks like Ballora doesn’t feel like dancing. Press the red button to administer a controlled shock.’

“What?!” That seems like a very bad idea. Mike waits for any further prompting, but when none is given, he reluctantly taps the button. The whole gallery is filled with a horrible white light and then it’s gone. Mike turns the light on to see a monstrously large plastic woman ballet dancing on the stage. 

‘Excellent. It appears that Ballora is back to feeling her old self, and will be ready to perform tomorrow! Now approach the control port on your right, it controls the Funtime Auditorium. Let’s see if Funtime Foxy is on her stage.’

Suprise suprise, she’s not. Mike delivers the shock, and Foxy doesn’t come back to the stage until he zaps the room 3 times. He almost feels bad when he sees the mass of pink and white slink dejectedly onto her stage. 

‘ Excellent. Now enter the vent directly in front of you to access the circus gallery control module.’

Micheal really likes the fact that there are walls between him and the ‘tronics. He almost feels safe...like maybe this is just a job. When he emerges from the vent, however, he takes it back. It’s tight and cramped and the lights are flickering… and he’s face to face with his sister’s killer. He swipes his card quickly and glances away from the poster. He knew this was coming. He knew this was coming. 

Get a hold of yourself, pup. 

‘This is Circus Baby’s Gallery. Let’s check the light to see what she’s up to. Not there? Bummer. Lets cheer her up with a controlled shock.’

“Gladly.” Micheal sneers, hitting the button almost too forcefully.

Nothing.

‘Again.’

Nothing.

‘Again.’

Bzzt.

‘Again.’

No dice.

‘Good job Baby, we knew we could count on you.’

“No. No she isn’t there .”

‘Go home and get a good night’s rest. We hope to see you again tomorrow!!’

Mike doesn’t sleep at all that night. 

Chapter Text

“Mmph!” Mike exclaims, his vision suddenly obscured when his partner swoops in for a kiss. It’s quick, and Jeremy falls on top of him, basically, crushing him in a hug. This is an improvement over pretending to read a newspaper so he wouldn’t fall asleep, but it’s still unexpected(in a good way). “What’s this about?”

“I love you!!” He exclaims into Mike's skin, tickling him. 

Micheal laughs, tracing Jeremy’s scar with his pinky finger. “I love you too.”

“I have a day off tomorrow and you aren’t working right now so I planned a picnic! Um, you’re going to like it I think.”

Mike inwardly groans, both because he definitely is working right now and because he is lying to the most important person in the world.

Bad Habits are hard to break, huh?

“I’ll make all of the food, you don’t have to worry! I know you don’t always like doing stuff like that, but I’ve really wanted to do this for a while and-”

He physically stops himself from speaking by burying his face in Mike’s shoulder. It’s just so- so cute and Mike almost wants to forget about all of the bad stuff he has been chasing so he can encircle this beautiful creature in his arms forever. He laughs, exceptionally fond. “Do what?”

He lifts his face again, grinning. There’s this wonderful glint in his eyes. “I guess you’re just gonna have to wait!”

Mike drags him in for another kiss.

He’d never thought the term ‘fireworks’ or ‘butterflies’ applied to kisses or intimacy. He would have applied the term ‘distraction’ more. Or even ‘stop talking please, we’re getting too close to something I don’t want to ever talk about, especially with you’. 

But with Jeremy it’s different. It feels like a first kiss every time. They barely breathe, because that’s the alternative to being as close as possible to each other- and they’ll pick the latter every time.

Jeremy gasps for air and Mike turns his head and breathes in deeply through his nose. His partner starts kissing at his neck, making Micheal shiver.

“I can help cook, or make like finger sandwiches or something. I know it's hard for you to cook on your own-"

Jeremy stops sucking on his jawline to shake his head. “I want to do this for you.”

This is backwards, Micheal realizes. He’s the ‘unemployed’ one. He's the one with the intact brain. He’s the one that should be doing something to provide in some way. A special date, cooking dinner, going out of his way to tell him that he loves him. Anything.

Anything. 

But instead he sulks and thinks about things that his boyfriend tells him not to. 

...

“Micheal, listen to yourself!” Jeremy screams, his voice so shrill that Micheal’s convinced it could break glass. “You’re just on a path of self destruction! There’s literally no reason for you to think about all of this anymore!’

“I need to, Jeremy! Okay? He made me the way that I am, I need to listen!”

“He made you paranoid and depressed!” He shrieks, “He killed your family, he hated you! Why should you listen to that piece of shit?? Why won’t you listen to me? ”

“I am listening!! But I need- I  need to fix this. ”

“ Fix WHAT?” He has his fists clenched at his sides, shaking as if he wants to punch something, but he won’t because he knows it might trigger Mike. (As if the yelling doesn’t). “Fix the things that he did? Ask for forgiveness? Forgiveness for what? You haven’t done anything wrong!”

“I was a horrible person. I bullied my brother to death. I did do things wrong, and you can’t pretend otherwise.”

“You were a kid! A kid! Kids do stupid things!”

“I was 16.”

“Even worse.” He mutters, turning away, hitting his valley. Mike should be prepared for the silent treatment. 

“Listen, J. Maybe Joey could forgive me if I set some things straight. I need to- I need to make it up to him.”

Jeremy’s left arm sweeps in an arc, knocking a lamp off a side table. Micheal watches it fall, and flinches at the subsequent crash.

“You. Didn’t. Kill. Him.” He hisses. “Your dad encouraged you, remember? And no normal Pizza Band Animatronic should be able to do this-”

He waves his hands in front of his forehead and MIcheal cringes. When his bangs are pushed back, Mike always finds himself staring at the neat row of raised scars where the Mangle bit into him. They’re round, as if someone had just repeatedly stabbed just above his browline with a 10 gauge knitting needle.

“He made them like that on purpose. He did, and you had no way of knowing that!”

“Yes I did!! I saw what happened to my sister! They had to scrape her out of the inside of that- that thing . It blended her up like- like some sort of smoothie… There was- There was nothing left , Jeremy. I should have known that they were dangerous, but I still did stupid shit anyway.”

“So the remedy for stupid shit is more stupid shit? Listen, Mike, we found each other. We understand each other, and we are both in a lot of pain. But we are each other’s chance to...to move on. I want to move on.”

“I do too.” Mike whispers. “But-”

“Promise me. Promise me you won’t do anything that will put you in danger again. Don’t chase someone who’s only ever hurt you.”

Mike can't meet Jeremy's eyes. He's in pain. He's in pain because of  him. Micheal could listen, stop running, stop chasing, fall into his arms and stay there. 

But then he thinks of everything that he's done.

And he knows what he has to do. 

"Promise me, Micheal. Please."


"I promise."

...

He’d been lying. 

“I’ll make something . Oh-” Jeremy had started working on a spot under his left ear, he tries not to sound too breathless. “You like strawberries?”

He almost regrets asking the question when Jeremy's head pops up from its position, but then again he gets to see his face. "Uh. Duh."

"Chocolate?"

"Any day."

"Have I got a snack for you." Mike presents sarcastically, patting his hair down. 

Jeremy swats Micheals arm, resting on his chest with his eyes closed as if he were gonna take a nap.

Mike definitely wouldn't protest that. Sleep during the day would replace the sleep he won't get at night for an unknown amount of time. But the moment didn’t last for long, as he suddenly uses Mike’s chest as a launchpad, hopping away with the explanation that he had to get ready for work. Soon he was gone, off to his warehouse job. He’d tried customer service, but he’d regularly yell at customers or tell them that their clothes were ugly. If they were rude to him first? Well, there were a few complaints to the manager about a violent man claiming to have been through hell and back so he’s not going to take any shit from them until they had too.

Mike had thought it was funny but Jer’s bosses definitely didn’t. They didn’t take any action due to his past , but each time Jeremy screwed up astronomically he would be job hunting by his own choice the next day. He’s held this job for almost a year, and that’s great for him. It’s normal and not dangerous and his coworkers know how to deal with his outbursts. They’ve actually been really good friends to him, and have been hanging out with him outside of work. Micheal is happy for him, even if Jeremy has actively hidden Micheal from them because he’s afraid they’ll think less of him for having a boyfriend. 

Mike doesn’t have friends.

Well sometimes he does, but he doesn’t have buddies to have beers with, or long time friends that he met in college and high school.

At least...not anymore.

Hours after Jeremy’s departure to work, and after a nap, Mike gets off the couch to go to the store to get some goodies for their picnic thing tomorrow. He isn’t sure why Jeremy was so adamant about it, but he should at least try to make it special. Sometimes, Jeremy just has ideas and if he doesn’t follow through with them he can’t sleep. Or he starts tearing his cuticles open or scratching the length of his arms with his fingernails.

So he just lets him do whatever he needs, within reason. Most of the time it’s incredibly endearing anyway. Mike loves most everything about his boy. 

The welcome bell chimes as Mike pushes the local corner store’s door open. He’s immediately greeted by the hawkeyed butcher, with a wave of a knife and a shit eating grin. 

“Hey Mikey!”

“Hello, George.” Mike exhales through his nose, annoyed that he has to deal with human interaction, especially with an unpleasant man like George. His former coworker is one of the reasons he quit in the first place.

“I knew you’d be back eventually, we have the best deals around!”

“Yeah.” Absolutely not. 

“What’s with the glum face?”

He’s basically yelling across the store. It’s a fairly small place, so he isn’t really that far away from him, but the people caught in the crossfire still glance at Micheal curiously.

“I’m not glum.”

“You are-- ooh. Did you have a rough break up?” Micheal ignores him, grabbing the premade chocolate covered strawberries from a cooler. That’s the only reason he came here, not because of any deals or shit. He’d hoped that no one he knew would be working, but hey. He worked here for a year and in this town no one ever changes. 

“Did you?”

Mike stays silent. 

“So you’re still sleeping with that psychopath then.”

Kill him.

Micheal shakes his head hard to get rid of the voice in his head. He can’t just kill people he disagrees with. 

Even if it’s tempting. 

“I'm- He isn’t a psychopath.”

If anything, Micheal is. 

The woman next to him gives him a sympathetic look, patting his shoulder as she heads over to the cold cuts.

“Dog, I know you’re in love but I know crazy when I see it.”

Mike’s eyes dart to the knife in the man’s hand and back to his face. 

“I dated this chick a while back, and EESH was she clinically insane.”

Slice his throat with his own hand holding the knife. Let him scream, first. It’s more fun that way. 

“She’d call me, like all the time, and freak the fuck out when I didn’t pick up- like- Jesus woman, get a life.”

Carve out his heart, serve it to your lover.

“And then she had the nerve to break up with me just because I would work out with this other chick at the gym? Jesus Christ.”

Don’t let people hurt the people you love, Micheal. And if they do, hurt them back.

Micheal approaches the cashier's counter, slamming the strawberries down a bit too violently.

"But you should just be able to tell by the screaming fit he had the last time you two came in here. Batshit."

Go for the throat.

Mike does.

"Excuse me, but do you realize who you’re talking about? When Jeremy was 16 his brain was bitten in half, he needed to have 12 surgeries to get it fixed. It’s a wonder that he’s still thinking, much less functioning the way he does now. So, if you would think for two goddamn moments, instead of being an intolerable asshole you might realize it was your fault that he was having a screaming fit- because you were harassing us and he realized that I was getting mad? The thing about Jeremy is that he can’t control his anger like I can.”

“I-” He looks somewhat uncomfortable, twirling the knife between his fingers, but not breaking eye contact. 

“So I’ll have you know that he was speaking for both of us when he called you a motherfucking bastard.” 

“Excuse me?”

“You heard what I said.” Mike states grimly, and then points out a flower arrangement from behind the counter. The cashier nearly throws it at him, snatching his hand back in fear. Mike bares his bloody teeth in a polite smile and throws down the money, stalking out of the store. 

He can't figure out if this is a victory, or the beginning of the end. It feels absolutely exhilarating to be angry, to push people away, to yell and scream.

But God, when is he not angry?

When he closes his eyes, he can almost feel William's fingers around his throat, lightly resting, a threat, a treat. A squeeze of the shoulders.  A praise, so rare, and so deadly. 

Good boy. 

Micheal stops for cigarettes on the way home and hides the box.

Chapter Text

Sneaking away is easier the second time. He’d lightened his conscience a little bit a few hours earlier by cooking his friend dinner( it didn't burn!!!) and giving him extra attention before bedtime, giving him the flowers he’d bought and nearly crying when Jeremy proudly arranged them on their little dining room table.  Jeremy went to sleep glowing, and Micheal barely went to sleep at all. Jeremy’s hand was spread out on his chest, as it is often. Micheal likes to watch it rise and fall with his breaths. As he lifted Jeremy’s hand off him this time, a pang of something sad went through his whole body.

He, of course, could do nothing but brush it off. It’s guilt, most likely. The ever-present gnawing guilt inside of him is only growing and taking up more space the more he thinks about it. He tries not to think about it. 

The night starts more or less the same as the night before, with shocking the animatronics into submission. It’s a little more nerve wracking, though. The voice that tells him what to do keeps malfunctioning and making weird noises and saying weird things and Micheal is glad he grabbed the taser before he left. The heavy weight at his hip is so distant and familiar all at the same time.

When all of that is done, Mike prepares for the final event. He stares down at the tiny vent at his feet, trying to psych himself up.

He hates crawling through the vents. He barely fits, he’s out of shape, so if he was in a situation where he had to run away from someone, or something - he’d be trapped. It feels like willingly marching into the mouth of a beast and crawling down it’s windpipe, knowing that you’re surely going to die as it squeezes you tighter. He’s already done so tonight, but as he kneels at the metal lip now, it feels all the more deadly. He doesn’t quite know what’s meeting him on the other side this time.

The voice pipes up cheerfully, ‘Please proceed through the-’

“Jesus christ, fine-”

He squeezes into the metal opening, army crawling through the vent and trying not to flinch every time his work boots scuff the walls or floors and send a metallic tang through the entire passageway. 

He physically forces himself up and out, sitting cross legged on the floor of the circus gallery control panel space.

The voice echoes through the tiny room. It’s time to check on Baby again. Micheal kind of hopes she isn’t there again, because he cannot fathom seeing her face to face after all these years. At the voice’s prompting, Mike crawls forward and pulls himself up on the pedestal with the buttons. He presses the light. 

Nothing.

‘Oh Circus baby, we’re not here to play hide and seek-’

“She can stay as hidden as long as she wants to.” Mike grunts, clutching the pedestal for support.

‘Why don’t we try a controlled shock?’

He shocks the room 5 times and she doesn’t turn up. Mike hopes desperately that she is rented out or something.

On the other hand-

He needs to speak with his sister. It’s a double-edged sword. She might know where he is. She might know something . Assuming that his sister is here, which at this point seems plausible.

‘There seems to be a power malfunction that is affecting our ability to properly motivate Baby. Please stand by, while I reboot the system. I will be offline momentarily during this process. Various other systems may be offline as well, such as security doors, vent locks and oxygen. Commencing system restart.’

“Fucking pardon ?!”

With a whimper, all of the lights go out, only pinpricks of red left in the sea of black, like little glowing spider eyes. Mike clutches the pedestal with one hand and the heavy taser wand with his other. 

A cool female voice glides through the speakers, reciting each door and vent that was keeping Micheal safe from everything, and monotonously informing him that they are open, inviting anyone or anything to crawl it’s way to Micheal and bite his face off. Fantastic. Exquisite.

It’s silent for a good 3 or so minutes after that. Micheal barely breathes, but- he can feel something there. Someone. 

He’s right. Of course.

They start to speak. Their voice is different than the other one’s he’s heard so far, despite coming out of the same intercom system. 

“I don’t recognize you. You are-- new? I remember this scenario however.”

“Fuck this.” Micheal hisses, back hitting the metal desk leg. This is not okay. Micheal is not okay. “Fuck-”

The thing giggles. She. Micheal is almost positive that it’s Her. Her. Not his sister but something worse. 

“Language.”

“You can fucking hear me?!” Micheal is going through his midlife crisis. Micheal is astral projecting into the void of despair.

“Of course I can. Oh, It’s such a strange thing to want to do. To come here. Especially since you seem to know what comes next-”

“What comes next ?!”

“There’s a space under the desk; someone before you crafted it into a hiding place and it worked for him.”

Micheal’s head turns 180 degrees in under a second, taking in the alcove he was sitting beside and cautiously peering inside.

“Oh, you’re very funny, but I recommend that you hurry. You WILL be safe in there.” The voice seems to pour from the walls like tar, immobilizing Micheal in fear before he can process just how afraid he is.

“Why should I trust you?”

“I don’t know, Micheal. Why should you?” 

At the mention of his name, Micheal’s heart, what’s left of it anyway, drops. Fuck. Along with his deepened despair, Micheal starts to hear voices, whispers, pattering, clanging of vents. He thrusts himself under the desk, not sure how it’s really going to help him.

“Pull the screen.” Her voice instructs him, “And stay completely quiet.”

To Mike’s left, there's some sort of rusted metal screen, attached to a track on the underside of the table. He pulls on it, and his muscles strain against the grime and rust, screeching to a close, effectively trapping him. This is how he dies. She’s under the desk with him or something and is gonna eat him too, just like she ate Liz.

Well, no She couldn’t really fit under here, She’s 8 feet tall. Micheal almost laughs at the terrifying hilarity of it, before he hears them.

“Someone’s in there.” A child’s whisper, “I can feel their heartbeat.”

Mike’s heart is already going too fast, but it somehow picks up double time. He was never this afraid before. Or maybe he has been. Maybe he’s just forgotten how it feels. 

“Is it him ?”

“Hello! Knock Knock- ”

Micheal is staring at his knees. Why is he here? He could be in bed with Jeremy right now. He could be asleep right now. 

CLANG CLANG CLANG -

Something begins to pound on the thin metal, hard. Between the occasional holes and gaps in it, Micheal can see eyes and teeth and little tiny fists. If anything, the ' tronics seem small and maybe Mike could punt them away. Well. No. That would hurt his feet. Maybe he should buy steel toed boots or something?

Letting himself get lost in thought again(why does this keep happening?), he barely notices when the screen starts to inch back to the left, having already made it a few inches before Micheal could register the tiny fingers curled around the metal. With a yelp, Micheal kicks at them until they release it and pulls the screen back with all of his might, throwing his body weight against it until they release and it crashes closed. 

“Oh.” The little voice speaks again, any frustration it might have, unvoiced. “She’s watching.”

“She’s protecting him?”

“We have to leave now.”

“See you again soon~”

“The fuck you won’t.” Micheal breathes, only slightly relaxing when he hears a few pairs of footsteps retreat back into a vent. He keeps the metal sheet secured tight regardless. He lets out a breath, collapsing against one of the table legs, his fingers still white-knuckled and shaking.

“They’re gone, Micheal.”

The voice isn’t quite mature, but it’s not youthful either. It’s stuck in between the two, a ghoulish, uncanny valley limbo that makes Micheal’s skin crawl. 

“It’s best to move quickly.” She continues grimly, “When your guide comes back online, he will tell you he was unsuccessful and that you’ll have to restart the system manually. He’ll tell you to crawl through Ballora Gallery as fast as you can to reach the breaker room. If you follow his instructions, you will die.”

“What if you’re trying to kill me? What if you’re lying?! ”

“I wasn’t the first time, was I?” She sounds smug. Micheal releases his death grip on the metal, just starting to feel the sting of it against his raw fingers. He doesn’t answer her, so she continues. “The power will be restored shortly, when you crawl through Ballora Gallery, go slowly. She cannot see you, but she can hear you. Do you understand?”

Micheal nods, and he assumes she registers this because she doesn’t speak again, there’s some mechanical ticking all around him, everything seems to be moving. He keeps himself encased in metal, just in case. 

'Thank you for your patience,' The normal voice says cheerfully, 'It seems like the power system cannot be restarted automatically.'

“Oh no . No.”

The voice prompts him to return to the central console area, which he does, and then to crawl through the Ballora Gallery like Circus Baby(?) told him. Awesome. Radical. Fan-fucking-tastic. 

The guide did indeed tell him to like, sprint through the gallery. Micheal decides he’s going to listen to Her, because if she did want him dead, she seems to be playing some sort of long game, so he makes the executive decision to ultimately trust her word, just tonight, as he gets his bearings on this all. Because he’s assuming it can only get worse from here. 

'I will deactivate myself momentarily, to not create an auditory disturbance,' The voice finishes helpfully, deactivating itself with cheerful eagerness.

Micheal turns to stare down the Ballora Gallery vent. He doesn’t want to do this.

He can turn around right now. He can leave. But if he turns his back and runs– will someone chase him?

Will he be able to come back?

Micheal falls to his knees in front of it, feeling the smooth sharp edges of the vent cover with the pads of his fingers.

He doesn’t want to do this. 

He has to.

Elizabeth…

Elizabeth’s life is worth at least his own. 

He opens the vent cover and slips into the gallery. There isn’t a long, winding vent for this one, it just deposits him straight into the dark, dark room. There’s a faint music box chime that fills the whole room, natural background music. Ballora’s sad, lonely song. 

Micheal fumbles with his flashlight, turning it on the lowest setting just so he can see where to go, flashing it up at the opposite wall, confirming where the breaker room is so he can turn it off and follow the lines on the floor. It’s directly across from him, luckily, so just as quickly as the light turned on it was snuffed. Trying to ignore the panic in his chest, he starts his slow trek across the room on his hands and knees. 

The cold tiles below his palms are a plain white, a quick and cheap replacement for the checkered black and white of the real old restaurant. Just as much as he hates it, Micheal spent a lot of time at Circus Baby’s while it was being built and furnished and ready to be presented to the public. It gave him a sort of street cred. There were just as many people who thought he was cool because of his father’s legacy as people who thought he was lame and asked him if he was indeed a robot. He snuck his friends into the site and they ate Domino's pizza on the sparkly-new floors when his dad was out.

If he was in , Micheal’s ass would have been beat. Micheal lived in stolen moments that his father didn’t know about. 

Ballora’s music gets suddenly louder and Micheal drifts out of his own head, dropping flat against the floor in hopes she doesn’t see/hear him. She floats past him, a mass of metal he can barely make out in the dark, and when she is reasonably far away he starts moving again, painstakingly slow. 

"IT SEEMS YOU ARE TAKING A LONG TIME-' The voice booms through the room out of nowhere, nearly startling a noise out of Mike’s mouth. He claps a hand over it. 'PLEASE PROCEED AS QUICKLY AND QUIETLY AS POSSIBLE.'

He sits on his heels as he regains his breath and stature, the voice seemingly not affecting Ballora that much, despite it nearly giving Micheal a heart attack. Regardless, he pushes on, crawling as quick-slow-quiet as he can until he reaches the door, easing it open carefully and closing it behind him. He throws his face into his hands, back to the door. He’s too old for this. 

He takes a few seconds, in the absolute opposite mood to be doing any of this, before he sits up, shuffling further into the pitch darkness.

His movement triggers an automatic light sensor, turning the lights on in the small closet. Mike’s blinded for a second, only a blissful second, before what remains of his ‘calm’ is shattered.

Funtime Freddy and the devilish little bunny puppet are staring down at him. Holy. Fuck. She is trying to kill him.

'Welcome to the breaker room, now you can interact with the breaker panel and reset any issues.'

Funtime Freddy is motionless, stuck in an exaggerated lunge, teeth as shiny as his empty eye sockets. Why are they all blinded? Assuming of course they can see out of those things. That they even think at all. 

Mike shakes his head free of his tangent, cautiously getting to his feet and leaning on the breaker panel for support. One hand rests on the taser, and while Mike believes Jeremy when he says it can hurt them, he’s cautious as to how much it would actually help him. He’s in a room with one ‘tronic and on the other side of the door is another one that he couldn’t even run from without making her angry, dragging him out of the vent by his Nike’s and eating him, probably. 

The circus world animatronics were supposed to be more appealing to girls, disgustingly enough. Dad said that while Chica was the first attempt to appeal to the female demographic, it clearly wasn’t enough. 80 percent of birthday parties at the 5 or so original locations were for boys. So. Circus baby. Circus world. Baby Herself was her own entity, but the others were reimagined to be bubblegum pink and white. And then there was Ballora, another nightmarish human-esque 8 foot tall 'tronic, meant to look like a ballerina. Mike doesn’t quite understand how this was supposed to attract girls because they look horrifying, but apparently it worked for Elizabeth. 

The three of them- they were always a little weird. A touch off . A universe to the left, maybe. One where their little quirks borne from trauma would only be normal. Liz loved barbies and pretty things but she also loved zombie movies and when Dad would go 30 or 40 or 50 over the speed limit on backroads and drive with his knees. She was every bit the sweet little angel they lit candles for on a Tuesday night, but she was also 100 percent the clever wordsmith that could tear you down with a few well placed quips, even at her age. 

She was incredible. He needs to find her. 

Micheal stares down at the breaker panel, at all the red flashing lights. Cautiously he holds down one of the buttons next to the first circuit. It of course emits a loud buzzing sound and Micheal jerks back. 

'Just a warning, using the interface may- disrupt nearby electronics. If you feel as if you’re in danger, feel free to disengage from the interface.'

“Thanks.”

Freddy hasn’t moved, but the bunny puppet’s neck pivots to stare at Micheal. Great.

“I see you.” Micheal says, shakily. “I fucking see you so stay there.” 

He pulls out the taser, pointing it threateningly at the rabbit. It rotates back, as if sheepish.

Micheal presses the button down again, and the amazing sound drones out once again. The Freddy 'tronic starts to quiver.

“Literally fuck you.”

One of the servers goes back online and Micheal starts on the second. The lights flicker far too bright, trying to burn Micheal’s eyeballs out. Simultaneously, the tronic’s mangled and waterlogged (at least by the sound of it) voicebox starts laughing and Micheal jabs the taser in its general direction, not lifting his finger off the button. He’s getting this done goddamnit!!

The second server comes online. Micheal begins the third. The lights stabilize and Freddy is definitely closer to him than he was before, his position shoved against the wall forgoed for a far more lively position. 

“Hello.” The bear says, turning to Micheal. He’s sure that he just wants to chat. As a sign of good will Micheal zaps the taser at it. Freddy recoils a little, all the while laughing. Maniacally.
“Do you really think-”

The third server goes up and Micheal takes a breather. Freddy chills mid-sentence. The rules that Mike can quickly categorize and add to the list of guidelines he has to follow for survival are staggering, and strange, and if he were to write them down he’d maybe be sent to an asylum if they were found. 

Maybe hospitalization would be a good move, now that he thinks about it.  

He presses the next button and Freddy shudders to life again. “That you could get away this time?”

“I’m not dying here if that’s what you’re asking.”

The bear takes a staggering step forward and Mike takes an approximate step back, with his finger still firm on the button. The server goes up and Mike tries to push the bear back again with the taser but it doesn’t move. It’s far too heavy, obviously. Damn. There’s still like six to go. 

Another server-

“YOu musT bE thE BIrTHdaY BoY-”

“No.”

And another-

“Does little Micheal want a kiss ?”

“Fuck. Off.”

And another- 

“Ready or not, here I come-!”

Freddy’s basically within grabbing distance at this point, his small steps and taunting words continuing despite his ability to fuckin kill him if he wanted to. Micheal isn’t smart, but he isn’t dumb, and he’s been through this enough to know that they like to play with their food a little. However, he can tell his time is running short here. He needs to do something. 

Something Jeremy would probably kill him for. Rather Jeremy kill him than Mr. Crazypantspinkbear though. It would certainly be hotter.

Jesus. Micheal told himself that he wouldn’t think about Jeremy when he was here cause it would only make him feel sad and get distracted. Jeremy is a walking distraction. He’s so lovely. And sexy. And funny. And cute. 

But he’s not here right now. Freddy is. 

He presses on the next button and the bot laughs again, louder. It takes another step. Micheal lets it.

“Why are you so slow?” Micheal taunts, leering at the bear. It seems to make it mad, at least a little bit. It growls and lurches forward again. Not enough. The server goes up. Only two more to go.

He starts another one and the bear finally lunges, with a horrible scream. Just as it’s fingers are near enough to snatch him, as it’s on it’s toes, about to take another leaping step– Micheal lifts his finger off the button. He loses his progress and the Bear loses it’s balance and falls to the ground with a crash . Mike sidesteps just in time not to be crushed by the huge hunk of metal. With a foot on it’s shoulder, Mike shoves the taser between the plastic plates, into its vulnerable joints and zap .

It jolts, screeches. 

Zap.

It screams. 

Zap.Zap.Zap. 

It whines.

“I’ll do it again.” Mike whispers, vindicated. “And again . You won’t escape okay? So stay down until I’m done with this, and I’m gone.”

Brutal. I didn't think you had it in you.

Mike leaves his foot on his shoulder and the taser in it’s inner wires as he reboots the remaining servers, still reeling from his victory. Freddy doesn’t even attempt to move, but the bunny puppet zips around in a circle on the end of Freddy’s wrist even after the last server is rebooted and everything comes back online.

'Great work!' The voice says, again unnecessarily loud, 'That completes your tasks for the night. Please proceed through the Ballora Gallery with care and we’ll see you back tomorrow!!'

Mike slowly lifts his foot off of Freddy, who stays laying there like a very sharp and shiny slug. Without turning away from the tronic on the ground, Mike slowly makes his way to the door and opens it gently, only exhaling when it’s closed behind him. He- he just did that. Holy shit. He just had his badass movie protagonist moment!! He-

He wishes he could tell someone about it. 

Micheal’s stealthy crawl through Ballora’s room is almost mindless for him, barely thinking at all, just excited to go home and see his boyfriend again, and oh Jeremy can’t you just support Mike’s bad decisions? It would feel a lot less bad. It would be alot easier.

“Is someone there?”

“ Mom?!”

The word came out of his mouth before he even thought about it, because without a doubt that was his mother’s fucking voice -


What the hell?


He has no time to think about this, about anything because in a second he hears her, quick rhythmic taps of plexiglass against shiny tile floor, and Micheal launches himself in an indiscriminate direction as soundlessly as possible.

“I heard you.” She says smoothly, missing him by a few inches and tapping away past him.

His mom wasn’t much of a performer but she did like to dance. Holy fucking shit what in his life is left untouched?!

What is this?

Mike now doesn’t know where he is, his relation to the vent totally skewed, and Ballora’s on a sort of en pointe rampage and–

Oh my god Mike wants to go back to sleep. 

“Who is in here? Please.” She says, narrowly missing Micheal again, near his feet this time. Micheal drags himself across the floor a little further. 

He needs to use his flashlight. He fumbles for it, and turns it on. He doesn’t really want to see Ballora. He doesn’t know if she has any light sensors. He wiggles it around to find the vent and then starts power crawling to it, turning the flashlight off. Ballora is bouncing off the walls, hopefully not literally, but Micheal really couldn’t tell you. It sounds like she’s manic, desperately trying to find him.

Thankfully, Micheal fumbles enough to find the vent opening, and he thinks he hears his name echoing in the room as he leaves.

It echoes in his head, all the way home. 

Chapter Text

“Where did you go?”

That is not what Micheal wanted to hear when he opened the front door. His heart drops into his stomach.

Regardless, he raises his water bottle and wipes his brow. He prepared for this. He’s a piece of shit. 

“I went for a run-”

If Jeremy comes close, he’ll smell the sour sweat borne from fear, not exercise. Hopefully he won’t know the difference.

“How long?” Jeremy steps into the light, and Micheal is relieved that he doesn’t look upset, only inquisitive. “You look tired.”

“2 miles.” Micheal says, waving it off nonchalantly. Jeremy grins.

“Trying to slim down for me?” He runs his hands over Micheal’s torso, a teasing lilt in his voice, “You know I love you the way you are~”

Micheal’s hit with a pang of insecurity. Jeremy didn’t mean it that way, but Micheal is not as pretty or fit as he was when they met. At all. 

He takes a step back, the stimulation proving to be too much with Micheal’s guilty mind.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

Micheal shrugs, unable to meet his good eye. “I’m not- I’m not a good boyfriend Jer. I’m not working-”

“Your co-workers were dicks-”

“I’m not- I’m not attractive anymore-”

“Are you fucking kidding me-?”

“And-” Micheal can’t get it out. He can’t tell him. He can’t, he can’t-

“Shut up.” Jeremy says, “I’m telling the truth.” 

Micheal shuts his mouth, knowing that he’s far too close to just giving in and giving himself away. 

“You’re beautiful, Micheal.” He grins, bringing up his hand to brush the stubble on his cheek. “I’ll find you beautiful no matter what. Just like you do for me.”

“You are beautiful.” Micheal says, scornfully, letting Jeremy catch him, snatch him out of his mental free fall for just a second as their foreheads touch. “Jesus.”

“To you .”

“Everyone who doesn’t think so are idiots. And boring as shit.”

He cackles, leaning in to kiss Micheal’s neck.

“Ew I’m all sweaty, weirdo.”

“Yum.” He says, but he doesn’t linger. Fair. “Take a shower, then, I’m assuming you’re not going back to bed.”

Oh how he WISHES he could. They have that- picnic thing today. So Mike has to feign his morning inactivity until Jeremy decides that he’s ready to leave. 

“Nah.” Mike makes to shoulder away from him, but Jeremy catches his arm.

“I’m serious, you know?”

“About-”

“You’re all I ever want. You are- everything. And- um- I mean you’ll hear that plenty today-”

“What’s so special about today?” Micheal laughs slightly, not expecting Jeremy’s face to go white, for his hand to drop down, off of his boyfriend’s arm.

“Nothing! Normal day, completely normal and-- ordinary. I’m going to-”

He runs away and sits down on the couch a few feet away from him, staring at the tv that is not on. 

“You okay?” Mike calls, not overly concerned, slowly walking to stand behind him and gaze at the blank television. “This show’s my favorite.”

“Mine too.” He says tightly, and Micheal rubs his shoulders until they’re down from around his ears. “And to answer your question I’m fine but- you know it’s hard for me to keep secrets Mike don’t make me ruin it now .”

“Good secret, then?”

Jeremy nods, earnest.

“Alright.” Mike says, gently. Jeremy’s too good for this multiverse, much less Micheal Afton but- he loves him. So much. When he kisses Jeremy’s bedhead, he lingers a bit longer than normal, trying not to cry. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Jeremy sings, blushing and throwing himself away, stifling his face in one of the geometric throw pillows that Micheal had bought in his interior design phase. (Listen. He gets bored sometimes and they bought this house so fuck you).

“Do you want cereal or anything?” Anything= toast or a bagel. Micheal’s scrambled eggs are sort of gross, Jeremy has told him.

“Oh!” Jeremy shoots up, grinning, “My friends asked me to brunch, is it okay if I go?” 

Jeremy had this habit early on in their relationship, where he would ask Micheal for permission every time he wanted to do something. He definitely doesn’t need to ask Micheal for shit like that, and he had assumed that it was an aftermath of his weird elusive family situation that he doesn’t really like to talk about. When asked, he defaults to telling Micheal the good things, and never the bad, never the things that got him kicked out or in Fazbears in the first place. It's also a side effect of his brain injury. He often needs help decision making or being steady in what he needs to do without asking for help. Either way, he’d patiently tried to train it out of him, but it still comes out sometimes. Jeremy said that he asks as a form of telling him where he’s going to be in a way that’s not ‘rude’. His words. 

“Of course.” Mike smiles fondly, heading away to get himself his own cereal.

“You could come if you wanted. They know that we’re- roommates so it wouldn’t be weird-” Jeremy’s brought this up so many times and Mike always says the same thing.

“No.”

“Mike, seriously I don’t care if they know about us-”

“ I care.”

Jeremy makes a hurt noise, “If we’re-if you’re in this for the long haul-”

Micheal is too exhausted for this conversation.

“Of course I’m in this for the ‘long haul’,” Micheal traces Jeremy’s words with air quotes “but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to jeopardize your friendships just so we can hold hands while you’re with your buddies.”

“I’m sure they-”

“Do they know you’re gay?” Micheal asks, yanking the cereal box out of the cabinet, maybe a little bit too forcefully.

“Well- no . It just- hasn’t come up. But they’re good people.”

“I don’t doubt that. That’s why I want to make sure they stay in your life.”

The unspoken implications of that sentence aren’t lost on Mike but they get churned and pulverized by Jeremy’s continued frustration. He knows homophobes are rampant, its not like the climate for gays has gotten better since he’d left his parent’s house (which is what Micheal has inferred as the instigator of his and his parent’s fight). But he’s so-

“They wouldn’t hurt me.”

He’s just so trusting .

“Why do you think the best of people?” Micheal asks grumpily, grabbing the milk out of the fridge and watching it slosh into the bowl they got at a garage sale a few years ago.

“Why do you think the worst ?!”

“I don’t .”

He snarls as he pours the cereal into the milk, but he’s again too aggressive, so the cocoa pebbles fall in a clump and splash the milk onto his hand.

“Fuck.” Mike turns away in frustration just to see Jeremy giving him the eyes. Micheal melts.

“Maybe you should stop working out.” Jeremy mutters, hugging the pillow with his knees drawn to his chest. “It makes you mean.”

“I-god. I’m sorry, Jem. I-”

He shrugs, looking down.

“I just want you to be happy, and to keep these friends. They’re really good for you. And- hey, if I went with you when you hung out with them, you’d get tired of me.”

He shakes his head very hard, “I could never get tired of you!!”

“I’m just saying. I don’t want to ruin anything” else “for you.” 

“If they don’t accept you, then they don’t accept me and they’re all shitheads and I hate them.”

Mike can’t help but laugh, despite thinking the sentiment is a little misconstrued. “They’re your friends .”

Jeremy stands up, walking over to the kitchen to join Micheal, leaning against the counter beside him. “You’re my boyfriend and the love of my life.”

Goddamnit.

“Listen. You go to your brunch today cause I’m smelly and tired, and then next time you guys want to invite me, I’ll go. Okay?”

Jeremy lays his head on Micheal's shoulder.

“Is that a yes?”

“Thank you for reaching a compromise with me.”

“So yes.”

“Yes.” He sighs. “You’re not- you’re not bad, Micheal.”

“What?”

Yes you are yes you are yes you are you’re rotten you’re rotten you’re rotten sinner hide yourself away from the world sinner sinner sinner why would you do that to this poor boy why would you corrupt him like this why would you make him as rotten as rotten as rotten as you????

“I think-” He starts delicately, “I know that sometimes you blame yourself for things that aren’t your fault. At all.”

It’s all your fault you killed them you killed them you killed them and now all you want to do is kill me what a little cunt what a little worm what a little fucking fag. You’re a faggot. You killed them and now you’re going to ruin this boy’s life why would you do that? Why would you be such a piece of garbage?

“And if my friends were homophobic, that’s not your fault.” 

How sweet. He cares enough to lie to your face. Squash that. 

“I love you Micheal. I don’t want to exist without you here.”

Wow, look at you go, you did exactly what you said you wouldn’t. You broke him. You made him love you. You. Rotten. Stupid. Corrupt. Poison. 

“I-”

Micheal doesn’t realize he’s crying until Jeremy kisses the tears away, hands on his neck.

“I love you very much.” He says again, “I really do. I’m not ashamed of you please don’t be ashamed of yourself.” 

If anyone deserved to be ashamed it’s you.

“Shut up.”

“No. I know you’ve been having a rough time for the past few months but I’ll say it as much as I need to.”

Micheal lets Jeremy surround his body, silencing Micheal’s father’s voice with his own, mumbling words of love and care. Micheal can’t help but believe him.

Eventually, after what feels like forever, Jeremy draws back, a hand on each shoulder.

“Do you want me to stay here with you?” 

Micheal shakes his head, still a little raw.

“If you’re sure.” He scans Micheals face. It apparently doesn’t yield any disturbing results because he squeezes his shoulders and walks away, humming, happy again. A little dumbstruck, he dumps out his cereal and shuts himself in the bathroom, notorious for long showers, he’s sure Jeremy won’t notice that he’s in there up until he needs to get ready for brunch. He doesn’t. Micheal resurfaces just in time to trade off the bathroom, and he’s the picture of a good boyfriend when he kisses Jeremy and straightens his collar when he’s on his way out the door. And then they kiss again.

And another time for good measure.

And then he’s gone. 

And Micheal sleeps.

He dreams about ballerinas and car crashes and vampires and the tantalizing swirl of a whiskey glass. 

……… 

Micheal wakes up to someone kissing his eyelids.

“Morning stupidhead.” Jeremy says fondly, ruffling Micheal’s hair down over his eyes and walking past him before Mike’s eyes can even open and focus on him. Micheal blows his slept on bangs out of his eyes. He really needs to cut it. 

“...how was brunch?”

“Great!!” Jeremy says, spinning around the counter to focus on Micheal, simply beaming sunshine. Micheal is blinded for a few seconds by his radiance. 

“--that’s- that’s great honey, I’m glad.” 

“Next time will be even better!” He chirps, rearranging the flowers that Micheal got him the other day.

“Yeah?”

“Cause you’ll be there.” He clarifies helpfully, floating away from the flowers and back into the living room. Micheal’s face burns, caught off guard once again how much Jeremy actually likes him. 

(It’s been 5 years, Jesus Christ)

“You’re in a really good mood.”

“Yeah!!” He shouts, close to Micheal’s ear now. Mike flinches. “Are you ready for our picnic?!”

“Oh yeah! Totally.” Mike sits up, still bleary “Um, now?”

“No, I need to get ready, give me 20ish minutes.” He glances at his comically large digital watch. “You should fix your hair. It’s sticking up.”

And with that he disappears into their bedroom. Mike retreats to the bathroom.

He kinda has a habit of not looking at himself in the mirror too closely because he always hates what he sees, but Jeremy’s excited for this whole thing so he should probably look at least decent.

Mike lifts his eyes to the mirror, almost immediately looking away. It didn’t bother him until he really thought about it. He always looked like his father.

The fact that he beat his mother near to death because he thought that Micheal wasn’t his is all the more sickening now that Micheal is almost 100 percent sure that he has to be.

He looks at himself again, despising each crease on his face and bend in his lips and vein in his eyes. Everything. Sometimes he resents himself for drawing breath. He rubs his hand down his unshaven face, practicing his smile in the mirror. It looks sad. He looks sad. Damn.

Mike pinches himself, closing his eyes. None of that right now. It’s going to be a nice afternoon and he’s going to laugh and it’s going to be real and he’s just going to forget about everything else. He’s an only child. He’s a normal guy. He works at Dennys(not a bad idea actually). He has an amazing boyfriend who planned something nice for the two of them and neither of them have life shattering emotional baggage. 

Mike jumps into a quick cold shower to lock in his afternoon resolution and perk himself up. It works, five minutes later he hops out of the shower in a considerably better mood and a lot less languid. It’s all about mindset. Mike wraps a towel around himself and hops out of the bathroom to check on Jeremy, he knocks on the open doorframe of their bedroom before walking in.

“So is this more of a casual thing or like business casual-”

Jeremy turns around, absolutely glowing. He’s wearing nice slacks with a button up shirt with little tiny rabbits on it. He gelled his hair to fall in sweet waves around his face and around his neck is-

“Oh my god when did you get a bowtie?!”

“A few days ago. Do you like it?” Mike giggles a little, nodding enthusiastically.

“You’re so cute. Jesus.” Micheal gasps, “How am I going to match up to you?”

“Hm.” Jeremy makes a sly noise, getting close and tugging lightly at the towel around Micheal’s waist. “I like you like this.”

“Oh my god you perver-” Jeremy cuts him off by kissing him, pulling him in with a hand against his bare back, injecting his spinal cord with electricity. His pulse is more pronounced all the sudden, but before he can reciprocate as enthusiastically as he wants to, Jeremy draws back and pats his cheek.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be wearing less later, but for dinner you’re a little underdressed.” He says because he knows what the fuck he’s doing, and then brushes the exposed skin on his hip with trailing fingers as he traipses to the bathroom because he’s a fucking tease. A beautiful and incredible amazing person but a fucking tease . 

“Uh–”

“You’ll look great in whatever you wear, babe! Just get dressed okay?!” He slams the door behind him and Mike scrambles to look presentable, pulling on dark jeans and a nice-ish polo shirt. His hair is limp and wet but it should dry okay. 

Everything is a blur when Jeremy emerges from the bathroom, because his enthusiasm is a sort of drug, elevating Micheal into the atmosphere and away with giggles and touches and suddenly, Jeremy behind the steering wheel of the car for the first time in a while. They drive towards the lake in silence as Mike tries to figure out what’s different about today, why Jeremy would be so happy. Their relationship is pretty steady, never boring, but usually dates don’t garner this much effort or excitement. If Jeremy found out about his job then it would definitely be the opposite reaction to this so it can’t be that-

“We are here.” Jeremy says, grinning at him as he cuts the ignition. “Grab the blanket.”

Mike grabs the blanket and follows Jeremy like a lost puppy to a grassy patch under the trees, mere feet away from the rocky-sand of the beach. Jeremy watches critically as Micheal lays it down, nodding approval before setting the basket down carefully. 

Micheal falls to his knees across from his boyfriend. “This is beautiful, Jere.”

“I know.” He smiles, reaching out to touch Micheal’s cheek. “So are you.”

“Ugh, no. Look at yourself.”

Jeremy laughs and hits his knuckles lightly against Micheal’s face. “Take a compliment, dickhead.”

“No.” Micheal snaps at Jeremy’s fingers playfully and Jeremy rolls his eyes, sitting back on his heels.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.” Micheal replies automatically, starting to dig into the basket, pulling out a bottle of white wine. “Is this the good stuff?”

He examines the label for a little bit, expecting Jeremy to answer. When he doesn’t, he looks back at him to see if he’s okay. He’s not. He’s crying.

“Oh my god. Um?” Micheal gasps, unsure what just happened, only registering his boyfriend shuffling forward on his knees and falling into Micheal’s open arms. “Are you okay? What happened?!”

Jeremy laughs through his tears, wiping his eyes on Mike’s nice-ish shirt and wrinkling it in his closed fists “I just love you so much.”

“Oh?” Micheal says, softly, patting down the long blonde hair of his sobbing partner, “I love you more.” 

“No!” Jeremy sits up, eyes wild and captivating  “You don’t understand.”

“I- No, I mean you were so happy a few seconds ago-”

“I still am!!” Jeremy wails, grabbing both of Micheal’s hands, “I’m so happy. That’s why I’m crying! I fuck everything up I’m sorry-”

“No you don’t. You set up this beautiful picnic, and we just got here. It’s normal to cry at picnics.” Mike says, with an air of faux authority, rubbing up and down Jeremy’s arm.

“What?” Jeremy gazes at him like he’s some sort of beam of light, and Jeremy’s a moth. Bad analogy. Whatever.

Mike sweeps the bangs out his eyes and nods solemnly.

“It’s actually really weird if no one cries at a picnic, very awkward, so thank you for taking one for the team this time.” 

A laugh bursts out of Jeremy through his tears, bubbling over and eventually overtaking him, cackling explosively into Mike’s chest. Micheal holds him close, letting him. There’s no one around, luckily, but Micheal would just flip them off if they were.

“I- I was gonna wait until after we eat, but I have something to tell you.”

Micheal’s chest clenches as he involuntarily draws Jeremy closer and into his lap. Is he breaking up with him?! That wouldn’t make much sense really but maybe it’s true, his mood only because he was soon going to get rid of him. His renewed enthusiasm for prolonged contact and teasing just because he wanted to mess around for the last time before he left, his crying while professing love because he feels bad that they’re going to be separated before long. What will they do with the house?! Jesus it took forever to actually call it their own. They were going to buy a dog together who buys a dog with someone that they-

Jeremy pecks Micheal gently on the lips. “No.”

“What?”

“I’m obviously not breaking up with you.”

“Did I-”

“No, I just know you.”

Oh, right, because that’s exactly what Micheal does. He’s the one who does all of that shit. Jeremy is not Micheal, and he’d never even dream of having (amazing) sex with someone just to tire them out so he can get up and leave in the middle of the night never to be seen again like a badass ninja sheriff who also happens to be a massive dick. 

And Micheal’s finally found someone who he’d never dream of leaving.

“So um.” Micheal’s thoughts are drawn back to Jeremy, who is still crying a little and looks very nervous, “I- I had something written down sorry I-”

He sits up and scoots backward so only their knees are touching, pulling a heavily creased piece of notebook paper out of his pocket.

“What is this?” Micheal asks, a bit brokenly. This can’t be what he thinks it is. 

Jeremy doesn’t answer him, reading from the little slip of paper. “When I met you I was living in my car, completely alone. I was lonely, and exhausted. I was scared that I’d just drive myself into the lake or something because I didn’t have anything to live for.”

“Jeremy-”

“But then you walked into my life and everything became a whirlwind. At first I didn’t know if it was good, because it was a little bit life threatening, but every moment with you was so exciting and new and I found myself laughing. It only got better the moment I realized we were safe, together. I knew it wasn’t just the adrenaline. It was you.”

Micheal’s hand is clapped over his mouth, the other one clenching the blanket below them with an iron grip.

“Micheal Afton, you are a light in this world. You’re a fucking meteor. You crash landed right next to me and made everything come alive. You’re very kind and caring, selfless and loving. I really don’t know what I’d do without you. I love you very much.”

This isn’t real, this isn’t possible.

“So um.” Jeremy looks up from his paper, dropping it from his fingers, while digging back into his pocket. He fishes out a ziplock bag and empties its contents onto his palm. He takes a shuddering breath before holding up an ornate black ring up to the light. “Marry me?”

“Holy fucking shit dude!” Micheal bursts out, uncovering his mouth. He has many emotions inside of him and has no other way to communicate them.

“Is that a yes?” Jeremy asks, genuinely nervous, shaking. Micheal nods, once, twice, a million times. 

Jeremy shoves the ring onto his finger, and Micheal catches his hand, pulling him down on top of him, awash in love and giddiness. Jeremy yelps but follows suit, catching him in a searing kiss that makes Micheal forget his last name.


It’s a good half hour before they remember to eat.

Chapter Text

Micheal traces the ring around his finger in the parking lot of the warehouse. Tonight, he won’t be a pushover. Tonight he’s going to get what he needs and then leave and never ever ever come back. He thought about calling upper management and quitting dramatically, but it felt almost–

Too late.

Yeah. Too late. Like, he’s come this far, right? He’ll be okay. 

He needs to be okay. He can’t not be okay. Leaving Jeremy alone in bed after he’d fucking proposed to him was literal torture.

Of course Micheal knew that they’d like, live together forever as boyfriends and shit but it never crossed his mind that they’d get married. Well, for one thing, it’s not even legal. For another, Micheal isn’t that thoughtful. And even though Micheal sees Jeremy in his future forever doesn’t mean JEREMY sees Micheal in his so he wouldn’t be that presumptuous and put him in an awkward position. 

It’s such a beautiful ring, woven out of threads of ashy iron, swirling around his finger like smoke. He’s been staring at it since Jeremy had shoved it onto his finger, of course excluding when Jeremy was on top of him. 

Does he really have to go in there-?

Yes, of course you do, stupid.

But he doesn’t really want to anymore.

You have to.

He barely dragged himself here. He can go back. He can go back he doesn’t need to go in there there’s nothing in there for him. 

There’s everything in there for you. There’s nothing for you anywhere else because you are nothing without me. 

But he doesn’t-

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

But-

Nothingnothingnothingnothingnothingnothingnothingnothingnothingnothingnothing-

“Shut up.” Micheal breathes, hitting his head with the palm of his hand. “ Please ”

Say it Micheal. Say that you’re nothing.

“I- No -” He gasps, suddenly overwhelmed, trying to breathe, trying to think over the sudden barrage on his senses. “Stop it, shut up-”

Say it!

“FINE!” Micheal screams, slamming his fist down on the steering wheel. The car honks in alarm.  “I’M NOTHING!”


“Dad! No, please I need to see him I need-”

“You aren’t my son.”

William Afton, 6 foot 3, taller than I would ever grow to be, threw me to the ground easily. At this point, his hair was long and unwashed, framing his face harshly and making each feature appear sharper and meaner. He was shaking out of anger. I was shaking out of fear. 

I was never ever more afraid in my whole life than I was in that moment. I was always the most afraid when he was paying attention to me. Usually I was in the background, awkward and angry and pale, and they would forget to set a place at the table for me so I would just eat after they were done (or I wouldn’t at all). Sometimes he’d glance at me, usually when other people were around, and smile and that would be amazing and I’d glow for the rest of the day because hey maybe he secretly loved me. Maybe there’s a government conspiracy, a secret mission that he was on and he couldn’t- couldn’t outwardly tell me that he loved me maybe it's not his fault and maybe it’s not my fault it’s just– out of our hands. 

But then, when every fiber of his being was focused on me? It was never good, even when nothing bad happened. Because at the back of my mind I could feel his knuckles across my face or his hands around my neck and I knew that one wrong word would send him over the edge and he would kill me too. 

“But he’s my brother! I need to be there for his fucking funeral, I-”

“You should be in fucking prison. You should be the one who’s dead, not him! You’re a waste of space!”

“NO I’M NOT!!”

A boot against my jaw. I feel it crunch. I feel him twist his heel, I watch myself scream, and cry and beg even as he pushes harder, because I’m floating through the air above the both of us and watch him lift his foot again and bring it down like a sledgehammer.

“Dad please stop it please stop” Gurgling blood, bubbling blood, fountain down my chin.

“You’re not my son!” Again. Crunch.

“Please!” Muffled, half awake.

“You’re just a fucking-”

Crunch. Squish. 

“Stop!” Pretty crimson on the hardwood. Pretty pretty pain. Pretty painted teeth. Pretty pouting girl on the stage, 3, 2, 1.

“Good for nothing!”

Grind.

“...”

“ Nobody .”

…

….

……

“I’m…nothing.”  Micheal whispers to his shaking hands, unsure if he’s telling the truth.

Good boy. 

It takes 5 minutes to rip the metaphorical fishhooks out of his throat, swallow down all of the blood, stop shaking, stop crying when did he start crying ?

With desperate fingers, Micheal crashes open the glove compartment and fumbles for his stupid cigarette box, but it’s empty and he bites his lip so hard that it draws blood. 

Smoking again? You don’t even need me to make bad decisions.

He opens the car door, nearly throws up, sobbing and dry heaving at the same time with a taser in one fist and the door handle in the other. 

The voice tells him that he’s a valued employee. The elevator rattles down. The voice tells him that he deserves a gift, that he should pick something as compensation for the high stress levels on the job. He doesn’t move, staring blankly at the Baby poster as they rattle down together. It picks for him and tells him what his gift will be but he’s not listening.

Something is off tonight. He’s off his game. Stupid, perfect, Jeremy. Waiting at home. Sleeping. Unaware.

Every step he takes towards the vent screams at him to turn around, leave now. He tells himself this is stupid, that he’s lived through so much shit and this is nothing.

But it feels like everything. 

“Hey, Micheal, honey?”

Melody Afton. When I reach back into my memory to remember what she looks like, I can only conjure a sort of warm honey blob of mothering. I remember the dark bruises on her arms more than I remember her face. I hated her, I hated what he did to her and what she let him do to us, I hated everything. 

Mostly, though, I resented her because she didn’t try to save us. She said she loved us. She made our lunches and kissed us goodnight, kissed the bandaids on our knees when we fell or when he hit me. She said sorry instead of goodnight when she tucked us in. 

She knew how much pain we waded through just to exist, but never did anything about it. Maybe she knew we wouldn’t get very far if we tried. She would have been right.

That didn’t stop me from feeling alone in all of this, though, didn’t stop me from becoming an impenetrable fortress of hate and pain. 

“What.” I was sharp then. I cut through any kind words that anyone dared spare me. I let them die and combust on the floor, and then I would disperse their ashes to make sure they stayed that way. 

“Could you please take Joey and Liz to the opening? I really don’t want them to be alone.”

She knew that Dad either would ignore them or forget about them, and that they’d be basically on their own in a sea of sweaty people and unyielding metal.

I twirled my keys around my fingers, and I knew I really couldn’t say no. So they got into my backseat, bouncing around like the little idiot kids that they were. Perfect, little idiots.

I hated them too. I hated them because Dad loved them.

Maybe it’s because I hated them that I dropped them off at the new restaurant instead of going in with them. More likely, I didn’t really fathom that anything bad was going to happen. I didn’t know. Please believe me I didn’t know. I just wanted to get high, I just wanted to get laid, I wanted to forget everything.


I didn’t ever think I’d lose them.

Micheal tries to be horrified when he registers the corpse of the man who checked him in that first day hanging from a noose center stage. He tries to muster the strength to cry, but all he can do is press a kiss to his fingertips and then to the glass in between him and the showroom. 

“I’m sorry.” He whispers, trailing his fingers down the glass and letting them flop back to his side. With a deep breath, Micheal gets back onto his hands and knees, trying to ignore the eyes all around him, animatronic heads and masks all staring at him and waiting for him to fuck up. As he’s crawling into the vent he feels a sharp sting across his calf. He can’t crawl backwards to inspect it, only drag himself forward through the constricting intestinal sheet metal. When he plops out on the other side, he touches the stinging cut on his leg, fingers coming back thick with blood.

“Fuck. Fuck .” Micheal mutters, again on the edge of tears. He just doesn’t want to be here. This is just an off-day for near-death.

“ Mikey -” An exasperated voice comes over the speakers, Baby’s, maybe. It sounds a bit different. “Stop saying fuck.”

“You just said fuck, you little shit.” Micheal grits, glancing around before starting to unbutton his shirt, sliding it off into a puddle behind him. 

“Oh my god , gross!” The thing squeals as he starts to worm out of his undershirt, and Micheal looks down at his chest. He needs to go to the gym. Maybe he can bring Jeremy with him. Maybe Jeremy would wear cute shorts. And get all sweaty.

“You’re in no position to body shame me, you’re 8 feet tall and a clown murderer.” Micheal mutters, re-buttoning his guard/maintenance shirt over his bare chest.

“I’m not -”

“If you want me to believe you don’t want to kill me, you’d shut up.” 

She complies, not speaking as Micheal tears the thin undershirt into a few rough strips, tying it around the bleeding slice on his leg. It hurts, but he almost feels like he’s floating outside his body, holding on to his physical form with bleeding, weakening, fingertips. 

“Why are you back here?” Baby asks quietly as he’s checking the knots, “You barely escaped last time.”

“ No , actually. I was a badass and I totally owned that dumbfuck bear.” On his haunches,  attempt to put some weight onto his foot, hissing when it sends a shooting bolt of discomfort through his lower leg. “ Fuck .”

“Stop.” She says again, a foreign pain in her voice.