Chapter Text
“Ness!” A man says, opening the door to a child’s room, “Breakfast!” The room is painted blue with board games and books scattered around. The man stands in the door, waiting for the small boy to wake up. He looked no older than 30, seeming too young to have 2 kids. Ness squints his eyes and rolls over. “One second..” he grumbles, rubbing his eyes and sitting up. The man nods and turns on the light before leaving the room.
Ness sits on his bed for a few seconds before getting up and walking down the hall to the kitchen. His brother, Daniel, was already devouring his toast. Ness’ dad turns around from buttering some more toast. “Hey kid!” He says with a smile, “How’d you sleep?” Ness pulls out a chair and sits down, his dad walked over and places a plate of toast in-front of him.
“I slept okay,” Ness answers before picking up a piece of toast and beginning to eat it. The dad nods while brushing the crumbs off his hands.
“Anyways, kids we’re going to FredBears today! We’re going to leave in an hour or two, alright?” Both kids nod.
Ness finishes his toast before jumping down from the table and hurrying back into his room. He loves FredBears family diner. He had his 9th birthday party there recently and he’s memorised many of the arcade game strategies. He goes there with his brother every so often as a treat for them both behaving well at school, they’re not the richest family so small things like eating out is the big thing of the week.
Ness looks though his clothes, wondering what to wear. He always likes to dress nicer when going to FredBears, maybe he’d make some new friends for the day, or see someone from school. He refreshes himself on the arcade strategies while choosing something to wear. If he asks his dad for a-bit of money he knows exactly which machines he can use to make that into more money, and then into tickets.
Ness has always been on the smarter side, with strategy based things at least. He’s not the best at school when it comes to Foreign Languages or Literature. He’s okay at maths and science is a 50/50 but he’s always been good at strategy. Working out how to beat almost every arcade game he’s seen. With a few try’s he’d work out how to get the jackpot.
He finally picks out his outfit and sits down at one of his board games that are set up. He has many scattered around, across the floor and on his little desk. He likes games of all kinds, some are strategy games which he’s cracked and others are luck. He’s not much of a fan of luck based games as, well, their luck based. He prefers ones he can learn the strategies to and beat others.
A while later the dad walks into his room with Daniel at his legs. “Come on kid, we’re leaving now,” he nudges, “Get your shoes on and wait by the door I’ll be there in a second!” He smiles before walking away.
“Okay dad!” Ness says cheerfully, guiding his 6 year old brother to the door and tying his shoes for him before putting his own shoes on. He stands next to his brother and waits for his dad who unlocks the door. Both kids hurry to the car, and buckle up.
The man chuckles at how excited they are to go to FredBears. He locks up the house and gets in the car.
“Did you hear that FredBears getting a new restaurant?” He says, pulling out of the driveway. “With new characters.”
“And new arcade machines?” Ness asks, excited to maybe have a new challenge to crack.
“Maybe! Dan, what do you think of a new restaurant?” He asks, looking though the rear view mirror at him.
“Excited!!” Daniel reply’s with a big smile, before going back to his toys he brought.
The journey isn’t too long so they arrive quickly. Ness’ dad parks the car and they all head inside. The smell of pizza and kids fills their noses as they open the door. “Hello, Welcome to FredBears family diner!” A hostess greets them, “Table for three?” Ness nods excitedly and they’re guided to a table. The dad is handed an adults menu and two children’s menus.
Ness picks out what he wants from the menu, “I want the kids cheese pizza!” He tells his dad, excitedly. “Dad, can I have a-bit of money for the arcade?” His dad rolls his eyes before looking into his wallet, he hands him abit of change for the arcade. “Wait til your brothers chosen some food then you can go, alright?” Ness nods excitedly waiting for his brother to choose.
“Chicken.” Daniel says finally. Pointing at the picture of chicken nuggets.
“You want chicken nuggets?” Ness asks and Daniel nods. Their dad takes the menus and urges them to go play.
“Keep an eye on your brother, alright Ness?” He reminds him.
Ness runs off, closely followed by Daniel. He heads straight to the arcade machines, he goes with the one he’s most comfortable getting the jackpot in first, to get himself back into the mindset of beating them. His brother stands behind him while he plays for a-bit before getting bored and running off to play. Ness gets his first jackpot quickly before moving onto a slightly harder game with a slightly bigger jackpot. He gathers enough jackpots that he’s satisfied with to go and test his luck on a pac-man machine. He’s never beaten in, but he’s also not sure if there’s an ending. He’s asked and said there was an ending but he’d spent almost half an hour on it once before ultimately giving up.
He heads over to the machine and inserts a bit of money into the machine. And begins to play, after a few minutes of playing his brother returns to watch him play, followed by another boy. Slightly shorter than Daniel. He’s wearing a dark bluey grey shirt with two lighter grey stripes across the chest. The shorter kid is clutching a plush, which looks about half the size of him, of one of the two mascots of the restaurant. Fredbear.
“Ness-Ness?” The younger brother nudges.
“One seconded Dan! Im trying to beat this game!” Ness responds slowly, trying to focus as hard as he can on Pac-Man. His pile of tickets on the floor at his feet, like a bird protecting its nest.
“Did.. did you win- win all them?” The shorter boy asks, nervously.
“Yep! Took me around 20 minutes of beating the games here!” He says, taking his eyes off the screen for a split second. The Pac-Man death sound plays and Ness quickly looks at the machine realising he’d lost his last life. “Damn it!” He curses angrily before crouching down to talk to the two kids. It was apparent that the shorter one had been crying and Ness’ protective instincts kicked in.
“Are you okay kid?” He says, concerned and the kid nods.
“This is my new friend!!” Ness’ brother announces proudly, with a big grin.
“That’s nice! What’s your name?” Ness asks his brothers new friend.
“I’m.. CC-“ He mumbles quietly, and Ness smiles.
“That’s a pretty name!”
“Thank you..” CC whispers, looking at the ground. A man calls from the tables, beckoning Ness and Daniel over to eat, their food has been served.
“Sorry we have to go our foods here, we’ll be back I promise!” Ness grabs his tickets and left over money and runs over to the table with his brother, leaving CC at the arcade.
“Woah!” Their dad says as they arrive, “did you get them all yourself?” And Ness nods. Putting them all in the spot next to him in the booth before digging into his pizza.
“Who’s that little one you were talking to a second ago?” The dad asks before eating a slice of pizza.
“My new friend.” Daniel says proudly, mouth full of chicken nugget, Their dad chuckles and carries on eating his pizza.
“What’s his name?” He asks, looking at Daniel but receives a shrug. “You don’t know your friends name?” Daniel shakes his head in response.
“His names CC!” Ness chirps in, “I think he’s sad though, he looked like he’s been crying..”
“Oh, did you make sure he was okay Ness?”
“Yeah! He nodded but I’m not sure he is..” Ness admits sadly, Daniel not seeming to notice.
They finish their pizza, “Ness, are you going to spend your tickets or save them up? Not that you can’t buy most things at the prize counter anyways.” His dad looks over at the pizza counter, squinting to see what the big prize is. “The biggest prize by the look of it is a whole gum ball machine!”
“I don’t want a gum all machine.” Ness says, not liking gum. “I’m going to buy a toy!”
Ness gets up with his tickets and goes over to the prize counter, he queues up, looking at all the prizes. Daniel runs over to join him in the queue. He points at something eagerly. “I want that!” He says excitedly.
“Huh? What is it?” Ness asks, trying to figure out what his brothers pointing at. “A plush?”
Daniel nods “Bunny!”
When they get to the front, ness hands the lady at the counter his tickets and she takes a while to count them.
“What do you want?” She says sarcastically.
“Can I have one of the bunny plushies and one of those puzzle things.” Ness asks pointing behind her to a pile of Rubik’s cubes and she grumpily walks over and gets one before slamming it on the glass counter in-front of them both. She grabs one of the Bonnie The Bunny plushies and puts that in the counter. “Next!” She says, telling the two boys to move over for the next people.
Ness hands his brother the yellow bunny plush and he runs off to go find his friend from earlier and it clicks in his brain, Daniel wanted the plush to match with CC who has the FredBear plush. He smiles and walks back to the table.
“Got something for Daniel then?” His dad smiles, proud of Ness for sharing his tickets, he knew when he was a child he would never share anything with his siblings.
“Yeah he got a Bonnie plush, to match with CC I think.” Ness says, sitting down, “I got a puzzle thing!” He shows his dad the cube. Ness isn’t sure what it is or how to do it but it’s a 1 person puzzle, his favourite.
Ness messes the puzzle up and begins trying to solve it. He gets the green cross done but begins to struggle. Ness likes a good challenge but as soon as he doesn’t understand he gets annoyed with himself, he’s meant to be good at puzzles, they’re his thing. His dad notices him struggling and tensing up. “That seems hard? Don’t stress yourself if you can’t solve it instantly.” He reminds Ness, and Ness puts the cube down.
“Should we leave soon?” The dad asks, looking to the arcade where Daniel and CC are playing together with their plushies. Ness nods, also looking at his brother and his brothers friend.
“I’ll get the bill, you get your brother, alright?” His dad says getting up and walking over to the lady at the front. Ness puts the Rubik’s cube in his pocket and hurries over to his brother.
“We’re leaving now Daniel,” He pokes his brother gently on the shoulder, Daniel gets up and waves goodbye to CC and CC waves back. “Bye-bye CC, see you again hopefully!” Ness says, taking Daniels hand and walking him to their Dad and out the door.
When they get home Ness heads into his room with his new puzzle. His dad sighs and puts the keys to the house on the table, “That puzzles going to keep him occupied for a while, eh?” He says to Daniel who’s sat in the corner of the kitchen playing with his new Plush. “Who’ve you got there?” His dad walks over and crouching down to Daniels eye level. He has a look at the yellow bunny, “Is that the one from FredBears?” He asks, smiling and Daniel nods.
Daniels never been much of a talker, not since their mum left them all when he was younger but he’s learnt other ways of communicating, both ness and his had have started to learn sign language which they hope could help Daniel communicate easier on the harder days.
His dad lets him carry on playing, on the floor and goes to check on Ness, he’s in his room at the back of the house on the floor. He’s heavily concentrated on the new Rubik’s cube he got, turning it, messing it up and trying to fix it. “How’s it going kid?” The dad asks, leaning on the door frame, watching Ness with the cube.
Ness turns around to look at his dad, “Not good. I’m stuck.” He admits, lowering his head in embarrassment. He doesn’t like not being able to understand a puzzle, but this is one of the hardest ones he’s ever done. His dad comes and sits down next to him, putting his hand out to take the cube. Ness passes the cube and sits in a sulk.
“Don’t feel bad Ness, you won’t always get a puzzle first try!” He encourages, whilst pointlessly turning the sides of the Rubik’s cube.
“I’ve got no idea- sorry kid..” he says after a few more turns, handing the cube back to Ness who stares at it for a while, no emotion on his face. “Don’t beat yourself up,” the dad continues, standing up. He looks at Ness and gives him an encouraging smile before leaving the room to go see what the 6 year old was doing. Daniel was sat under the table in the kitchen, muttering to himself whilst playing with the new plush.
“You want your other toys Dan?” His dad says, crouching down again to see under the table, the kid looks up and the back at the plush before nodding quietly. The man stands up and goes back down the hall to Daniels room, he grabs Daniels 3 favourite plushies gently and carries them into the kitchen, handing them the Daniel who is still under the table.
Daniel takes the plushies and sits them neatly in a row against the legs of the chairs and carries on playing. His dad rummaged through the cupboards and gets out some ingredients for dinner, which he uses to start preparing food.
A while later, the food is ready. “Ness! Food!” He calls down the hall, before putting out the bowls of homemade Mac’n’Cheese on the table. The pasta was store bought but the sauce was homemade because Daniel wasn’t the biggest fan of the store bought sauce because of the flavour of the cheese so his dad makes his own which isn’t to strong. He helps Daniel into his chair and pulls out a chair for Ness to sit in and then sits himself down.
“So you two,” He says, after swallowing some Mac’n’Cheese, “What do you think about, next weekend, going to the new Pizzeria?” Ness looks up from his food,
“New pizzeria? Like FredBears?” He asks, curiously before taking a mouthful of his food. His dad nods happily,
“It’s owned by the same company but with new animatronics and a new building.” Ness thinks about it for a minute, he likes going to FredBears but it would be nice to see a new one.
“Okay!” He says finally, before looking over to Daniel, “What do you think Bud?” Daniel looks up and nods, mouth full of pasta and cheese sauce.
“Alright! We’ll go next weekend.” Their dad says, “It’s called Freddy Fazbears Pizzeria, Freddy’s the mascot of this restaurant instead of FredBear.” He rambles to the kids, “There’s also another Bunny, his blue this time I’m pretty sure, and there’s two new characters! A Chicken and a Pirate Fox! How cools that?”
They finish their food a while later and Ness goes into the front room and turns the television on. Daniel soon follows, holding four of his plushies. He sits on the floor in-front of the couch and plays silently with his toys. Ness sits down on the couch and begins to watch the TV, their dad soon comes in after cleaning up the kitchen. He sits next to Ness.
“Come one you two,” Their dad says after watching TV for a while together, “It’s late and you both have school in the morning!” He nudges Ness who’s slowly gets up, they both look down to see Daniel asleep on the floor. “You go get yourself ready for bed, I’ll get little one into his room, okay?”
Ness nods and leaves the room.
Daniel is peacefully sleeping on the floor, cuddling his new yellow bunny plush. His dad quietly gets up off the couch and kneels down on the floor, he gently strokes Daniels hair but he doesn’t move, “Poor guy’s fast asleep,” he whispers quietly, sliding his hands under the sleeping child, gently picking him up.
Daniels eyes open sleepily but he soon falls back to sleep, his dad carries him out of the front room, down the hall and into his bedroom. He places Daniel down on his bed and gets his PJs from under his pillow. He slowly changed Daniel into his pyjamas and tucks him into bed.
Ness peaks in though the door, watching his dad put his brother to sleep. “Night dad..” he whispers and his dad turns around,
“You going to bed already?” He whispers back, “I just told you to get ready kid,” he walks over to ness and scruffs up his hair.
“Oh- I’m tired though,” Ness says, rubbing his eyes and yawning.
“Alrighty bud, night night!” His dad kisses his forehead goodnight and takes him to bed. Ness quickly runs over and snuggles up in bed, “Night kid!” His dad says, turning off the light, “Sleep well.”
The daylight streams though the cracks in the curtains the next morning, gently waking Ness up. He opens his eyes and lies their, no thoughts though his head. Waiting for his dad to come in and wake him. He lies there for what feels like days before a soft knock comes from the other side of his door before it slowly opens.
His dad sees him awake and comes in, “Good morning!” He says, approaching Ness.
“Morning,” Ness grumbles in a very sleepy voice as he sits up and stretches his arms. He turns to sit on the side of the bed next to his dad who stands up and leaves to go wake his little brother,
“Don’t take too long getting changed alright?” He says before closing the door to Ness’ room.
Ness quickly got changed into some clothes and grabbed his backpack, he takes a glance at his Rubik’s cube, wondering if he should bring it to school with him or not. He decides to, incase someone at school knows how to solve it and can help him, he puts it in his bag with the rest of his stuff and runs down the hall to the bathroom on the other side of the house, he brushes his teeth quickly as Daniel and his dad walk in the room.
Ness weaves his way around his brother and dad to get into the kitchen where he sits down on his seat and waits patiently for his dad to make some toast.
His dad comes out of the bathroom with Daniel a few minutes later and begins to prepare toast for the both of them, they quickly scoff it down and wait by the door. Their father opens the door and lets them get in the car while he grabs his things and locks up the house.
Once in class, Ness sat there fiddling with his Rubik’s cube under the desk, trying to figure out which turns did what, “Ness?” A voice announced, checking who was in class and who wasn’t, “Ness? Is Ness here?” She repeated.
“Oh! Yeah sorry Miss!” Ness stammered, snapping back to reality.
“Alright. Pay attention to class.”
Ness put the cube in his bag and propped his head against his hands, he tried to focus on class but since he was up late last night with his dad he was overly tired.
Ness wasn’t to interested in school, he was more focused on practical things. He didn’t want to go into education or research or anything you’d need to study most of the things they did in school, he would much rather learn about how to be a good hostess or how to work in a restaurant. At least that’s what Ness wanted to do, he wanted to work at FreeBears Family Diner. He’d been obsessed with it since he was a kid, going almost every weekend for lunch or dinner, learning the arcade of by heart and winning the jackpots.
Ness knew that the others probably wanted other jobs but he was still bored and wanted to do something more practical. He sits there in silence with his head on the desk, listening to the teacher. He may not be interested in anything he’s being taught but the last thing he wants is to get told off, or worst yelled at. That’s the last thing he wants his dad to deal with, a complaint about Ness’ behaviour.
“Ness?” His teacher taps him gently on the shoulder, “What did you do over the weekend?” She asks sweetly as the other kids chat amongst themselves about their weekend.
“I went to FredBears!” He answered happily, lifting his head up from the desk to look at his teacher, who playfully rolls her eyes and smiles.
“Again?” She giggles, “Didn’t you go there last weekend, and the weekend before that, and the weekend before that?” Ness looks at her confused, do people not do the same thing almost every weekend? Schools the same every day?
“Next weekend we’re going to Freddy Faz..Bears?” He says, ignoring her question, “I think it’s called anyways.”
“The new restaurant from the same company, right?” She added and Ness nods, “That’s exciting! Somewhere new, eh?” She playfully nudges his shoulder as she leaves to go talk to other kids and Ness sits there confused, why is going somewhere new exciting? Ness was scared of going to Freddy Fazbears, he likes going to FredBears every weekend but he said he’d go because his dad looked excited to go.
He came up with the conclusion that his teacher was weird, both him and his brother felt scared to go to a new place so that’s 2 vs 1. She’s the weird one.
School was just as usual, sitting towards the back of most classes, silently doodling and listening to the lesson, then sitting with the other quieter kids at lunch to talk about whatever they did at the weekend. Ness enjoyed the familiarity of doing the same thing most days, he doesn’t like change, especially not without warning.
After school Ness sits on the floor and waits outside of the school with Daniel, a few kids from the secondary school next door walk past and snicker at them both. Daniel shuffles closer to Ness and whispers something quietly under his breath, “Pardon?” Ness asks Daniel but he’s faced away.
Soon enough their dad pulls up near by and they both get up and rush over, “How was school?” He asked as they got in the car.
“It was good!” Ness answered while putting on his seatbelt before helping his brother, who reaches down and grabs his bag and takes out his new Yellow Bonnie plush from the arcade the day before. Ness grinned widely at this as he bought the plush for Daniel. It’s not like ness ever had a shortage of tickets anyways, he often didn’t know what to get from the prize counter as he’d had most of the things he wanted from it anyways. His dad was always confused but proud of how he often got something worth more from the prize counter than what he originally gave Ness.
Before they knew it, it was already the weekend again, Ness woke up to his father gently calling his name from just down the hall, he slowly got himself up, still sleepy and trundled into the kitchen where his brother and dad sat eating cereal, “Good Morning Bud!” His dad said as he sat down in his seat, “How did you sleep?”
“I slept okay,” Ness grumbled sleepily, “Still tired.” He continued as he got some breakfast and began to eat. “We’re going to Freddy’s tomorrow.. right?” Ness asked breaking the silence after having a few bites of food, his dad nods.
“Yeah, It’s a slightly longer drive there but it won’t be too long hopefully.”
After breakfast Ness heads into his room, gets changed and takes the Rubik’s cube out of his school bag and stares at it for a while before taking it into the kitchen where his dads reading a book while sat at the table, which Daniel is sat on top of, playing with his toys. “Hey kid,” His dad murmured, not looking up from his book.
“Hey dad,” Ness reply’s, sitting down in his seat at the table, now not being able to see his dad over his brother being on the table. “What are you reading?” Ness asks and his dad leans to the side to look at him,
“Oh, just this,” he holds his book out so Ness can see. It’s the same book he’s read many times before, “What are you doing?”
“Just attempting the cube thing I got from the arcade last week.” Ness says, starting to turn the cube to the cross pattern on the blue face. From there he pointlessly turns it and messes it up again, “It’s so hard..”
“You’ll get it someday if you keep trying,” His dad encourages, “The guy who made it did it so you still have a chance! I wonder how many possible patterns can happen on the cube.” He ponders to himself before going back to his book and Ness sighs.
He makes the cross again, lining them up with the other side colours, then try’s to work on the corners. For a while he just looks at it, rotating it in his hand, unsure on what to do. He starts making turns again, and works out a pattern which seems to work the corners into their correct places, and if it doesn’t work first try he just repeated it till it worked. By the time he figured this out, Daniel was already back in his room playing and his dad had almost finished his book.
“Dad!” Ness said excitedly, he slid his cube across the table towards his dad and quietly clapping excitedly. His dad folds the page to his book and puts it down quickly to see what Ness had done. The entire blue face was done, with the correct colours around the edge.
“Woah! Well done bud!” He says, very proudly with a big grin, “That’s amazing!” He looks at the cube in awe, he was so proud of Ness for working it out so quickly. “I could never, how did you do it?” He asked, handing the cube back to Ness, who’s leg was bouncing excitedly.
“Don’t know,” Ness said, taking the cube back and attempting to spin it on his fingers, “I just worked out a little pattern that does the corners!” He turns the cube, taking one of the blue corner pieces to the top layer, showing his dad, then returning it quickly. His dad watches, proudly.
“That’s so cool! Well done kid!” He gets up, taking his book with him, he scruffs up Ness’ hair as he leaves to go check on the youngster who’s in his own room.
Ness sits there for a while, fidgeting with the cube, turning it and turning it. Ultimately leading him to messing the cube up and then going back to one side being finished and then repeating. His dad re-enters the room, after playing with Daniel for abit, to cook dinner for them all.
“You made any progress Ness?” His dad asks, turning around. Ness shakes his head and puts the cube on the table and looks at his dad.
“It’s so hard,” He sulks and his dad puts down the pan and gives him a quick hug.
“You said that last week and now look at you!” He says, scruffing his hair up again, “And like I said last week, don’t beat yourself up!”
Ness leans back in his chair and sighs dramatically and giggles a little bit.
Daniel comes into the kitchen holding his new bunny plush and sits in his seat, “Hey Daniel!” Their dad says, returning to his cooking, “Foods not ready yet if that’s what you’re here for, If not we’re just talking about the puzzle Ness is doing right now.” Daniel looks at his brother from across the table, big brown eyes staring into his soul.
Ness shuffles in his seat uncomfortably until Daniel looks away before looking down at his Bonnie toy and getting of his chair. He runs off into his room again and reruns a few seconds later with his favourite plushies. He sits back down and places them, sitting up in a row on the table in-front of him.
Ness picks the cube up and begins to turn it again, not making much progress before dinner is served. “Who’s excited to go to the new Freddy Fazbears tomorrow?” He asks, putting down the plates on the table in-front of the two kids and his seat.
Daniel pulls a face at him for accidentally knocking over a toy of his when putting the plate down, “Sorry Daniel, sorry Mr Snuggles!” He stammers, practically bowing down to the plush bear when apologising. Daniel grins smugly at this before quickly eating the food he had been given.
“I’m excited dad!” Ness lied, “I can’t wait to go tomorrow!” Ness was always a good actor, and his dad wasn’t always the best at deciphering the tone off someone’s voice so pretending to be excited to go somewhere he was actually terrified to go was easy but Ness could tell that his brother probably knew he was lying, from the look he was being given.
“Anyways, you two should head to bed early today,” their dad calls to them as he cleans up, “We’re going to head off early as we’ve never been before, okay?” Ness comes back into the kitchen.
“Okay dad! What time will we be leaving?” He asks, picking up the Rubik’s cube, he left on the table, up and begins to fidget with it.
“Around 10am? How’s that sound?” His dad responds, turning around.
“Okay dad! I’m going to get changed and I’ll be back!”
Ness, Daniel and Their dad sit in the front room and watch a bit of television together before their dad puts them both to bed, Daniel then Ness a few minutes later.
“Night kid, see you tomorrow.” He says, closing the door softly to Ness’ room.