Work Text:
The sun was well past setting when he got to the pizzeria. Parents ushered their kids to cars, worn down from hours of parties, obnoxious music and mediocre pizza and the mixed smells of stale sweat and vomit, rubber mats in the play areas and sticky tile floors and everything that made cheap attractions like these... well, cheap.
Not that Fazbear’s was lacking funding in any way. But Michael knew well enough that all their money went to covering up lawsuits and incidents, so it was no surprise.
He hated this pizzeria. This one in particular, for all the reasons that Fazbear’s sucked and more. Namely, this place sucked because it had double the animatronics roaming around. Double the nightmares.
And lucky him, this was the first place he got to work, courtesy of Father. Great.
By the time he forced himself out of his car and over to the building, the lights were out inside, the parking lot was empty, and he was probably late. Another thing he’d be hearing about from Father later, but he didn’t care.
Stepping in through the front doors, Michael nodded to a few of the last employees heading out; clearly he wasn’t the only one getting a summer job here, since he’d been recognizing a few people from his school working shifts. The two girls, Alicia-something-or-other and Rachel, waved before racing out into the parking lot, giggling over something one of them had said and sneaking glances back at him.
He hardly noticed. He was inside now, and even if he’d avoided this horrible restaurant like the plague, instincts still kicked in as the door shut behind him. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he lingered by the front doors for a few moments, staying alert to any noises from deeper into the pizzeria. The current night guard should have been meeting him here before his job started, so Michael could get a look at how the job worked in case he was switched to the night shift.
A good ten minutes passed, and Michael, deciding he couldn’t wait any longer in one place, shoved his hands deeper into his pockets to stop them from shaking and headed across the party hall toward the adjoining hallway in the dark. The security office-- if it could even be called that-- should’ve been just down the other hall, anyways.
All he had to do was get a good look at the place, figure out how work was going to go if he worked a night shift, and get out.
...it didn’t quite work out that way.
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The doors were half-open when Jeremy pulled up on his battered skateboard, and as he propped up the board by the door, the bad feeling he’d gotten only got worse. Whoever was inside wasn’t even waiting, not even inside.
The animatronics were already acting off lately, and he didn’t have time to make sure they were in their proper places; snatching his flashlight out of his bag, he raced into the pizzeria, sweeping the entire front room. Nothing looked out of order, but there was someone here, there had to be.
The next corridor was tricky-- he couldn’t check Parts and Service, because apparently even the security guard couldn’t have access to whatever Mr. Afton wanted to keep confidential. What a weirdo. At least Mr. Emily was nice, if not a little distant. Anyways, the door wasn’t locked, but between the awful rotting stench from the other side and the manager’s secrecy, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
Jeremy swept the bathrooms, the kitchens, and every party room in the building until he found himself standing inevitably outside of Parts and Service. It always smelled like rot over here, with an awful metallic scent lingering in the air. No worse than some of the other smells in the pizzeria, but this one was wrong, for all the wrong reasons.
His hand had just wrapped around the handle when a light flashed down the hall at him. Jeremy paused, turning toward the source as it flickered out.
A moment later, someone’s flashlight beam shot right into his eyes, and he yelped and stumbled back, covering his eyes as someone else, equally surprised, cried out and fell back a few steps down the hall. “Ah, shoot- sorry! Sorry, mate, I didn’t know you were- I mean, I thought you were-”
By the time the spots were clearing from his eyes, Jeremy was faced with the boy who’d accidentally flashed him in the eyes-- tall and handsome with blue eyes narrow, darting around at every second. He looked so much like Mr. Afton that he had to double take to make sure he wasn’t looking at a younger version of his boss.
But no... though he technically was looking at the younger version, Jeremy let himself relax. He didn’t know the guy, but from what he’d heard at school, he wasn’t awful. Pretty much anyone was better than Mr. Afton, anyways. “No worries,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. At least he was alive... “Just- what are you doing here? The place is closed.”
The other boy-- Mike, was it? He hadn’t ever been able to find the opportunity to ask-- rolled his eyes. “Oh, really? Couldn’t tell.” Tossing the flashlight from hand to hand, he added, “I’m just waiting for the night guard. I’m the backup guard, so...”
Jeremy stiffened. “Oh, man. That was tonight?”
“You’re the guard?”
Something crashed to the floor behind them, breaking the silence. Jeremy wasn’t proud of the way he reacted, pulling the other boy back behind him and raising his own flashlight to illuminate the hall with a shaky hand, but it was just a stack of platters someone had left in an open party room earlier, spilled across the floor.
The other boy gulped, pulling free of Jeremy’s death grip on-- oh. Why had he grabbed his hand? “...hate this bloody place,” he mumbled, running a hand through his thick chestnut locks. “Okay, I have to get going, so... you’re the guard I was supposed to meet, right?”
Jeremy nodded, swallowing hard; his palms were sweaty around his flashlight. “Um, yeah, that’s me. Jeremy Fitzgerald.” He tapped his nametag for emphasis, then wished he hadn’t when the other boy raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “You?”
“I’m Michael.” He didn’t stick out a hand to shake-- probably because Jeremy had grabbed his freaking hand. “Look, if this is a bad time, I can come back another night. I’m working here all summer.” Jeremy took note how much more his accent stood out at that moment, replaying the words in his head again and again.
“N- no, me too; it’s fine.” He glanced at his watch. No, it wasn’t fine. It was 11:30, far too close to when everything started acting up around here. Michael needed to leave, this was ridiculous, there wasn’t any time to show the other boy how to survive for six hours-
“Wait, are you- are you sure you even want to be doing this job?” Jeremy added hastily, shifting his weight awkwardly. “It’s pretty dangerous.”
“Who would’ve thought?” Michael smiled wryly, and Jeremy felt his heart skip a beat, a sensation he was familiar with, surviving night after night in this place. This was different, of course, but... “I’m fine to take the job, just as long as I know the ropes.”
His handsome face shouldn’t have to be the one behind that desk at the end of the hall, fending off violent robots until morning. Jeremy had taken on that burden and he wasn’t about to pass it on to Michael.
Michael, who he was finally talking to after all these years of school together, and who he was completely embarrassing himself in front of-
-Jeremy sighed, smiling too, because how could he not? “Okay. I’ll, um, show you how the shift works, and maybe we can talk about it some other day, since we only have a few minutes before you have to leave.” Some other day, maybe at the park across from school, or at the diner down the way from the wealthy neighborhood Michael came from. Some other day, like... hanging out? Hanging out with Michael?
Michael, oblivious to whatever was going on in his head, shrugged. “Sure, mate.”
Jeremy sighed, waving his forward toward the office, silently hoping that he wouldn’t ever have to miss a shift. He’d be too distracted by Michael’s piercing blue gaze to even warn him about the danger.
But hey. If all went well, he was a step closer to spending time with his crush. And it had only taken him two years. A pretty good record, if he did say so himself.
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That Saturday, Jeremy came in to work a day shift, exhausted from the night before. He was hardly able to keep his eyes open as four or five robots roamed the pizzeria during a large birthday party, dangerous, ready to attack the moment he looked away.
And of course, it was then that he spotted Michael, in his dayshift technician’s uniform, standing across the room from him, and couldn’t help but stare. And in staring, he didn’t even notice the amalgamation of an animatronic swinging down from the ceiling toward his head, its metal jaw opening wide to snap shut at any second...
...needless to say, when Jeremy woke from a coma a week later, the only thing that made him feel better about the incident, the jagged scars across his forehead, was the fact that on his bedside table was a drying bouquet of flowers from Michael, with his number scribbled down on the label.
Yep. Still a pretty good record.