Chapter Text
This was quickly becoming a habit of yours—showing up at Michael’s door with a fresh bag of candy tucked neatly under your arm. A bad habit, too. One that always seemed to rear its ugly head whenever the crowd at Bonnie Bowl stretched too thin and the overhead lights started to flicker and dim, marking the end of your shift.
No matter how many quarters he slipped into your apron pocket when you he thought you were too distracted helping Bonnie to notice, there wasn’t a song scratched into your jukebox that made you feel just as much at ease as a trip to the security office did.
The irony of that truth was almost as silly as the act itself—slipping away from the pulsing neon lights of the party floor to seek refuge in the dark and smelly underbelly of the building you were still able to get lost in after months of working there. At least in the dark it was easier to convince yourself that shadows slipping past the corners of your eyes were just that— shadows .
You stopped making excuses for yourself around the same time that you realized Michael wouldn’t accept them. At first he would humor you—let you ramble about how you were having a slow day or how the ice cream counter was overstaffed again. You liked to think that he was just as content soaking up your presence as you were his.
But that wasn’t exactly why you went out of your way to seek him out. Not tonight, at least. Michael’s routine of picking you up from Bonnie Bowl and escorting you out of the building at the end of the night was experiencing an unexpected lapse and you fully intended on discovering why.
The only light in the cramped security office came flooding in from the monochrome screens perched high on the warped wooden desk. Blinking up at them confirmed what you had only feared up until then—that the building was completely and frighteningly empty. The only splotches of movement in a sea of fuzzy black and white feedback were the automated S.T.A.F.F members, fully charged and fresh off of their battery ports for a night of work.
Your candy jar was there too; empty and wedged between two animatronic plushies—the kind with the beady black eyes that seemed to follow you as you shifted your weight from one foot to the other. You stole glances them every time you passed the gift shop and your old childhood collection of them was rotting in a box somewhere in your attic, but damn if those eyes still didn't creep the hell out of you.
“Michael?” you whispered, shattering the protective silence as you stepped over the threshold. He wasn’t where you usually found him, hunched over the monitor with a sucker prodding out from the corner of his lip. He always seemed a little shocked whenever you came to see him even though you had a sneaking suspicion that the cameras mounted in Bonnie Bowl that followed your every move were a little bit more than a coincidence.
You trusted him like you trusted no one else and you knew better than to disobey a direct order, but your heart lurched with every hour he failed to collect you. Nothing kept you hunkered down in the diner well past closing aside from the promise you made to him in the basement that night. His words echoed in your mind all day, beating through your eardrums like a second heartbeat.
“You’re not supposed to be down here.”
“Don’t leave the bowling alley without me.”
"You come get me if he talks to you again.”
He , that’s what Michael said. If he talks to you again. There was something in the way he said that—a sense of familiarity that just didn’t sit right with you. He . There was just an air about him that you couldn’t shake—a sense that he knew more about this place than you could ever hope to understand.
To his credit, Michael didn’t seem all that caught up in the fact that you were hearing voices in the air ducts. You never thought to ask how long he’d worked there before you came along. Then again, you weren’t sure he would even tell you if you did ask.
A distant tapping echoed through your head in a ceaseless rhythm—like a single boney finger drilling impatiently into the back of your skull. Any day now , it seemed to say even without uttering a word.
Michael’s chair was empty, strewn aside and spinning idly just a few short feet from the desk. It only took a minute or so for your eyes to adjust to the semi-dark, but it was another handful of seconds before you registered the figure slumped over against the far wall, almost completely hidden by the shadows cast by the large monitor.
Maybe you saw it there the whole time. Maybe you were just sick of finding bodies everywhere you turned and you were only waiting for it to blend it into the background like the voices always seemed to do when you cranked your jukebox to the highest possible volume. Maybe.
The body resting in an awkward heap was Michael. Or, it wore his face at least. A thatch of hickory hair stirred beneath a plum-colored security cap. The sound of cogs whirring reached your ears mere seconds before Michael’s head rose and you realized that it was him after all.
Your breath hitched as two coal-black eyes darted up to meet yours. His expressionless face refused to acknowledge you aside from a mechanical grunt that seemed to almost echo from a place deep inside of his chest. You dared yourself to call out again, voice trembling as you spoke his name.
“...Michael?”
His shoulder jerked in your direction, then his chin. He had been reduced to a jumble of lurching movements, all of which were accompanied by a metallic sort of ticking, like an animatronic’s joints popping back into place.
Oh.
You licked your lips and shifted the bag of candy so that you were cradling it against your chest like an infant. The white pinpricks swimming in the blacks of Michael’s eyes latched onto it as you cautiously made your way across the office floor.
The thing inside of Michael Afton was hungry— ravenous even. It’s jaw clamped shut around nothing. The sound of teeth meeting teeth, however much it unsettled you, wasn’t enough to turn you away. Not yet, anyway.
You kneeled before him, finding a place for yourself between his parted knees. You smoothed your uniform skirt over your thighs and licked your lips quickly. It studied each and every movement, committing it all to memory. It was the least it could do for its host—the owner of the body it now inhabited.
“Hi,” you whispered, a frail smile tugging its way onto your lips when it finally met your eye. It watched you carefully, like it was trying to guess your next move before you made it. You wondered if it knew that you had no idea what you were doing, or if it could sense the fear rolling off of you in waves. You wondered if it could comprehend fear at all.
“Do you know who I am, Kitty?”
A noise like sparks flying erupted behind its eyes as it struggled to process your words.
If the cat came back, this was that cat. Your cat. Your Kitty. If Michael wasn’t going to claim the mechanical beast welded to his bones then you certainly would. Besides, you figured there should be some distinction between the two.
Michael was Michael, Kitty was Kitty. Simple as that.
It nodded stiffly, glowing pupils glued directly to yours. It seemed to flinch at your widening smile and you adjusted your seat on the tile floor to sit more comfortably on the tops of your knees. “You keep him safe, don’t you?”
There was no nod, but no ardent denial either. You licked your lips and tried again. “You keep me safe?”
Kitty’s chin jolted upward—not exactly a nod but close enough to one that you let it count. You could only guess how much of Michael’s protection had been influenced by the foreign body that occupied him like a vessel. It was near impossible to ignore the violent clock-like ticking that seemed to come from deep within him every time he had to place a hand over his baton in the face of an especially uncooperative guest.
Allowing yourself to believe that Kitty wanted you alive—that something was looking out for you in this place—was a small comfort.
“Thank you,” you chirped, moving to place your hand over its quivering palm when Kitty suddenly jerked back, shielding itself from your touch.
Michael’s mouth twitched, like he was struggling to sound out the words. “He…” it spoke, voice choppy and grated. Its face screwed up in confusion, lips pulled taught by something other than organic muscle. “He…doesn’t want…m-me…to touch…you.”
Did Michael speak with the thing nestled inside of him? You wondered if he even needed to speak to it or if Kitty somehow knew his every thought before he could put his voice to it. You wondered if he was listening right now, beating against the walls of a titanium prison built up all around his insides.
It moved in a way that was scarily similar to a gulp, mechanics shuttering like a camera lens as its eyes focused and unfocused on your nervously wringing hands. Even after you set the candy aside, it seemed deadly focused on your hands alone. “You can touch me, Kitty,” you allowed, dropping them to your lap.
Kitty proccessed your permission over several seconds before his fingers brushed against the sides of your face. Part of you wanted to pity this thing, to treat it with all of the love and gentleness in the world. But you weren’t as much a fool as you were an optimist. Not by half. You knew that animatronics didn’t end up inside of people by chance. You knew that there was a time before Michael’s skin was stained a heavenly lilac, a time before his every breath came strained. You struggled to imagine a time when his eyes were his and his alone.
You wanted to love your Kitty like you loved the boy it inhabited, but you would have to settle for tenderness. Everything deserved that at the very least.
A weak smile worked it way to its lips, lavender dimples pinching at Michael’s cheeks. The sight of such a foreign expression on his face was a grim reminder of what you came there for.
“Where’s Michael?”
“ Michael?...Michael… ” the word rolled over its tongue slowly and you realized this was probably the very first time it had ever referred him by name. “Sleeping.”
You sincerely doubted that. But you nodded nonetheless and let it continue brushing its thumbs gently over your eyelashes and listened as he cooed robotically at their softness. “Did you… put him to sleep?”
Kitty glanced up at you and you could have sworn you could see guilt swimming around in its inky black gaze. “I’m not mad at you,” you assured it, cupping a hand over the cold palm resting on the apple of your cheek.
“I…put Michael to sleep.”
Oh God. You hated this.
“Can you wake him up?”
Kitty blinked once, then twice, then a third time. “He wakes up…when he…wakes up.”
Great. Super.
At a loss for what to do next, you fished into the bag of candy resting beside you and produced a single bubblegum-flavored sucker. Kitty accepted its prize, not putting the candy in its mouth but instead holding it gingerly in its open palm like it would shatter if it so much as wrapped its fingers around the stick.
On that note you moved to stand, unprepared but willing to accept your fate and brave the dark hallways of the Plex all by yourself. Maybe if you were lucky you could catch Vanessa and guilt her into walking you to the employee exit door.
You had just risen to your feet when Kitty lurched forward, lips quivering as it struggled to feed words through the mess of gears churning in Michael’s gut. A single numbingly cold hand slithered out and made purchase on your wrist, tugging you back down to the level of its face. “Wait…for him….”
Your eyes could grow no wider in their sockets. When it didn’t receive an immediate reply, Kitty’s grip on your hand tightened uncomfortably and you let a hiss of shock slip past your lips. Nodding rapidly, you flexed your hand, easing yourself from the wrought-iron bars that had become Michael’s fingers. “Okay— okay! Yes, I’ll stay right here!”
It wasn’t a lie. There was no deception woven into your promise. If Kitty wanted you to stay, you would stay. You owed it that much.
The white needlepoint pupils that you were growing to know so very well flashed red for a startling split second and you inhaled sharply, afraid of what it might do to you now that you’ve pledged yourself to staying by its side. The only move that Kitty made was a weak pawing motion with the hand that wasn’t currently spasming robotically on its lap.
When the clock on the wall struck one in the morning, Michael shifted uncomfortably and rolled his shoulders off of the solid brick wall. His eyes were red and dry and he instantly cussed under his breath, bringing one knee up to his chest—he really needed to teach the thing inside of him how to blink . If it was going to be taking hold of his body more frequently now (like he strongly suspected it would), it might as well start doing its fair share of upkeep.
With an exhausted whine, Michael pressed both palms against his eyes. Fuck . He needed a shower. He needed to get some sleep—or sit in bed and stare at the dark ceiling at the very least. The Plex didn’t open again for a few more hours, he could probably—
Candy.
The thing inside of him gnashed its imaginary teeth with so much vigor that he had to slam a hand against his aching jaw. Awake for two seconds and it was already starving for you. That was a new record.
Michael's entire body went rigid as a foreign weight shifted against him. He could only bear to steal a quick glance from out of the corner of his eye and inspect the strange new thing resting against him.
You were slumped over his lap, hugging a bag of lollipops like it was a stuffed animal. Your diner uniform was wrinkled from the awkward position you struggled not to fall asleep in but did anyway. Long, whistled breaths escaped your nose to accompany the gentle rise and fall of your chest.
The thing inside of him purred— purred —with delight like a cat stepping back, chest puffed with pride after delivering a dead dove to its owner’s porch.
Candy .
Michael’s hand hovered over your shoulder, intent on ignoring the whispered whines and chattering coming from within him. He refused to praise it—God, it was the last thing he could ever think to do. But you were here, not alone inside Bonnie Bowl or dead in a ditch. You hadn’t wandered down the basement stairwell and you hadn’t crept past the door that Vanessa swore to keep locked but never followed through with.
You were here with him. You were safe. Was it possible that you were just as dependant on him as he was on you?
Michael adjusted his weight and a soft crinkling caught his attention. Reaching into his back pocket, he hesitantly fished out a bubblegum-flavored sucker.
Candy is here.
“Yeah,” Michael whispered into the dark, empty room, pinching the wrapper between two fingers and casting it aside. “Nice job, pal.”
You stirred awake not even a full second later. Inhaling deeply, you sat up and surveyed the rooms with eyes still bleary from sleep. Michael watched you wake up with thiny veiled adoration.
“Kitty?” you mumbled, bringing a palm to your eyes to try and rub away the lingering grogginess that still clung to your lashes. The thing inside of him rumbles at the word and Michael’s breath catches in his throat. You named it. Of course you did.
The thought of you recognizing it—reognizing that there was more to him than him—should have made him sick with shame. But when you sat up with a soft yawn and he looked into your eyes, he didn’t see an ounce of disgust or fear. He heard no cries of disgust or frightened sobs. In fact, the only thing on your lips was a gentle smile. It grew with every second you looked at him, taking note of the white stick prodding out from his lips. “Oh. Good morning, Michael.”