Work Text:
Peter Kennedy could remember how it felt to be wanted.
Scott Cawthon (don't forget the name! He works here!) could still remember his birthday – August 26th, today’s date circled in red – as clear as day. Part of his brain insisted that he wasn’t supposed to remember that day, that his birthday was another day that he couldn’t remember. After all, he lived for his work in Bakersfield, so for what purpose would he need to celebrate a birthday? The only holiday of consequence to him should’ve been the day Fazbender’s was founded. And any day that the restaurant made more money than it lost. Those were special days, not the inconsequential date a fast food restaurant manager came into the world. Especially not a date that he was only half-sure he’d been born on. Had he ever even been born?
(It doesn’t matter, Scott. Back to work, Scott.)
But there was another part of the cluster of wires mixed with brain matter, all neatly encased in a plastic rotary phone he’d only thought about ripping off his head a couple of times, that couldn’t help wanting to celebrate. It wouldn’t hurt anyone, would it? Sure, the inner workings of his mind cried out in protest at the idea of anything besides work, but the place didn’t open until tomorrow afternoon. He had just locked up the building, shooing off that orange-painted oddity – what was his name? Eggs Benedict? Old Sport? – to wherever he lived, and there was nobody who could stop him from having a day off. Night off. Semantics.
Who could stop him from having one nice day? Himself. But he’d fought himself before and won enough times to wave off the current screeching of how wrong it felt to be happy for once. If he was happy at the idea of a party. Was he happy?
(Why wasn’t he happy?)
…Scott knew one sure fire way to make himself happy, if nothing else.
The front doors of Fazbender’s shut, scarred fingers (don’t think about where the scars come from, Scott, they’re part of progress, Scott, it’s the Joy of Creation, Scott–) fumbling with the keys for a second before getting them into the lock and hearing the satisfying click. His hand remained there for a moment, his thumb running over the charms attached to the keyring enough for them to softly jingle. A little silicone Foxy head, marred by some child’s teeth marks. An identification card the Factory had left him with whenever they came around. Not often. He preferred it that way and told himself it was solely because it meant he was doing well. A mini-figure of the RAT –
Jerking the keys out of the lock, Scott pocketed them with his optical sensors averted. If he pretended that RAT didn’t exist – easier said than done – then he could pretend that he was here under perfectly normal conditions. He could imagine that he was a normal man with a normal life and a normal birthday. Normal things. He could be normal. So he didn’t give the keys a second thought, ignored the scars on his fingers, and carried on towards his goal.
Navigating Fazbender’s was second nature. He wasn’t too sure if that was built into him (you weren’t built literally, Scott, just built for this metaphorically, stop thinking, Scott!) or if he’d just done enough laps of the restaurant to adapt to its large layout. Regardless, it made silently treading to the security office all the easier, and he soon stood in the dim lighting left from the overhead lights. There was realistically no need to be quiet. Nobody was left. He’d watched one of his springlock suit actors leave, and Dave wouldn’t have stayed any later than 6 P.M unless he was planning a murder. Even then, it wasn’t like he was very quiet. All the other employees seemed to inexplicably demanifest at the end of the day, leaving the Prize Corner and kitchen unattended as though Scott had never hired anyone to be there. Disturbing, maybe, but efficient, and Fazbender’s was all about efficiency before safety!
One creature haunted the back of Scott’s mind, though. That puppet. It was always thinking, and when the music box was left unattended during the day, it could go anywhere. It gave him goosebumps. At the least, it’d never caused an issue at night, but Scott wasn’t trying his chances by making it clear he was active and awake. Especially with what he was planning. He kept his steps feather-light as he headed towards the office chair, hunching down next to it to access the underneath of the security desk. There were a few cabinets along the front that Peter specifically kept employees from accessing during the day. Not that it would be a huge deal if they found what was underneath. He’d blame it on the nightguard that would turn up later in the day, if anyone brought it up. Whatever let him seem normal. Because he was normal.
He pulled the handle and was greeted with the interior contents of the desk – several bottles of whiskey. They were for times of emergency, times of dread, times where he felt like anything except the merciful, optimistic, dutiful Scott that he was made to be. Granted, he’d gotten more and more lenient with what counted as a time of emergency since he’d been left to his own devices in the Bakersfield location… but that didn’t matter. Whatever got him through the days, right? Nobody had to know, and if they did know, they wouldn’t care. No one who worked at Fazbender’s usually had the empathy to do much more than shrug in the face of tragedy. He’d heard the stories. Scott had been one of them.
(Had he? Suddenly, a few memories seemed a bit jumbled up and his wires felt a bit crossed. That was his sign that he was thinking far too hard about the matter.)
Instead of dwelling on whether or not his lungs had been full of metal at any point, Scott reached into the darkness and pulled out a bottle of alcohol by the neck, resisting the urge to break the top off and start downing it right away. Much as the thoughts in his head were growing overwhelming, he wasn’t that irresponsible. Scott was a business owner! A manager! He could practice enough self restraint to wait until he was at the rooftop to get drunk for his birthday-party-slash-coping-mechanism. Pushing himself up to his feet and feeling the soft ache in his back from kneeling over a bit too long, Scott nudged the door shut with the side of his foot, retracing his steps out of the security office. He considered closing the door, but eventually just decided to leave it open. Less noise. Less of a chance of seeing her.
(...It. It was just an animatronic. The animatronics didn’t understand gender! Except for Withered Freddo, who constantly insisted on being called by He/Him due to his ascendence into godhood. Scott was practically looking for an excuse to throw that thing out.)
Ever-careful footsteps made their way to the closet down the hall next, with Scott casting the occasional glance over his shoulder. Had he always been this scared? Some passing thought of you’d only be this scared if you’d done something wrong crossed his mind, but it faded just as quick. He was doing something wrong, after all. Something irresponsible. Something that made him less Scott and less machine, his mind becoming a third thing entirely. The type of mind that would drive someone to drink until they cried, then until they couldn’t cry anymore. The type of mind that was clumsy enough to not follow the rules and get a chest full of metal shards. That would be the only way he’d ever get springlocked, after all.
If he had. Which he hadn’t, because he was Scott, and he was alive. He was a person. He was a person! Just a marketable one who knew plenty of things about Fazbender’s technology, and so there was no reason to worry when he kept remembering how it could feel inside those iron maiden suits. Which he’d never performed in. Phantom memories, maybe? Yes! That was it. He was just filling in gaps that weren’t there to begin with. It was so much easier when he embraced being Scott and let the alcohol act as an intermediary, a pipeline that led him right back into the seat he needed to be in.
The closet door creaked open in a way that was far too loud to be comfortable. Scott’s hand tensed on the doorknob as he listened, still as the dead (he was alive, he was alive, he was alive) as he looked left and right. Nothing. No motion besides the slow tremble of his shoulders. Briefly, he thought that he should have been breathing, but he knocked that idea away. Of course he wasn’t breathing. He would never die. Scott Cawthon would never die.
Which was exactly why it was okay if he had just one day off.
Stepping inside, Scott flicked his sensors around with his head just barely turning – perhaps out of instinct – as he searched for what he needed. It wasn’t too hard to find. Folded against the wall was a tall, extendable step ladder the company had hung onto for maintenance needs, though it’d never been put to good use. If lightbulbs blew out, it was company policy to just light something on fire inside of the light cover until higher-ups could come out and assess costs. They never did. There were several fires burning in the roof of the Bakersfield location, and he’d heard he was actually doing quite well for a Fazbender’s location in its first days. That was scary. At least he could maybe fix those lightbulbs himself, if he remembered to in the midst of his inevitable hangover. Probably not.
(But he had to repent for doing this. He had to make up for all the work he was missing. A bit of extra work while he was spilling bile from the same place he’d drunk down liquor was a small price for redemption. To be Scott.)
He made a mental note to fix the lightbulbs in the morning.
Scott passed the bottle of whiskey into his right hand, then took one side of the ladder in his other. It was fairly lightweight compared to what he expected, and he was soon able to tip it onto his shoulder and drag it out of the door with minimal struggle. While it took a bit of maneuvering to get it at an angle where the closet door wouldn’t bump into it while shutting, given the hallway wasn’t the most spacious area, he eventually shifted around enough and shut the door as loudly as it had opened. Which wasn’t very loud, but it was loud enough to get his gaze swiveling around again. Almost instinctively, he hid the bottle of whiskey partway under his button up, already anticipating what he’d do if anyone showed up.
Employee? What are you doing here? We locked up a while ago. You can go home now. …Oh, this? I, er… keep this between you and me, employee, but the night guard was caught drinking on the job. Don’t worry about him. I’ll talk with him and – do what I have to do. He’s a wonderful employee otherwise. We all have our off days. Just… go home, okay? I don’t want you wrapped up in anyone else’s business. Good night, employee.
Unnecessary words. Nothing came out of the darkness. Nothing moved.
Reluctantly, Scott carried on throughout the restaurant. He passed through the main dining area, which always felt particularly eerie after closing. The bit of light from outside still seeped through the windows, but it was minimal, and frankly, the soft orange glow only unnerved him more. All the more reason to carry on and get this celebration (in heavy quotation marks, followed by several question marks) over with. Dodging the Prize Counter and giving the music box in particular a wide berth, Scott trudged what felt like miles but was realistically only a few yards towards the front door.
Right. He had to grab the keys again. Bono damn it all to heck.
His hand shuddered as it set the alcohol down on the edge of the nearby stage. Whether he was shaking from anticipation or terror didn’t matter, because Scott wasn’t supposed to feel either unless it was eager anxiousness for a new company breakthrough. He wasn’t supposed to be almost foaming at the non-existent mouth in hopes of getting wasted. He didn’t need to get drunk to remember to be himself. But, then again, the phone-head that was fumbling through his pockets to grab his keys and not touch the RAT hanging from them was Scott. Maybe he was redefining what it meant to be Scott? He didn’t particularly like the definition he was creating.
Click. The keys twisted in the lock of the door and, with a gentle tug to remove them, it swung open. For a second, the RAT figurine bumped against Scott’s knuckle, but he shoved the keyring into his back pocket before he could think too hard about it. It was fine. He was normal and not terrified of a suit he’d clearly never gotten into, because he was alive, he had a family that he missed, and he was Scott. Everyone loved Scott. Why couldn’t he love himself without a drink to make the love burn? Trying not to dwell – it’d all be okay soon, he knew it – Scott took the bottle in his hand again and stepped outside.
The frigid night air touched his skin, but the feeling hardly touched his dull senses. Telling himself that he was just resilient to the cold, that there was nothing to think too hard about, Scott stepped away from the door and put down the ladder. The Fazbender’s roof wasn’t too high up, now that he was looking at the restaurant from the front. He rarely went outside the building besides to quickly usher off employees with a friendly wave, so staring up at the bear sign underneath a bubble-text FREDDY FAZBENDER’S PEPPERONERIE felt… unfamiliar. Why didn’t he come out here more often, again?
(You have work to do, Scott. Get in your right head and then get back to work.)
Right.
One foot steadied itself on the lowest step of the ladder, Scott’s free hand bracing him as it slid up the side. His other hand still held the whiskey, which left him a bit at a disadvantage in terms of climbing up, but he refused to let it sway his decision. Scott was nothing if not adaptable. His other foot came up and the ladder shook a bit, though it seemed less out of unsteadiness and more out of adjusting to his weight. He hoped. Hanging on for dear life (he would never die, though), he made his cautious ascent up each step of the ladder, arms tense and fingers clenched tight enough to where they couldn’t shake even if he was sure they would otherwise. He’d never had a fear of heights before – he was pretty sure he hadn’t, anyhow, though he found he couldn’t remember a lot lately – but he could really begin to understand why others did. A stroke of empathy! Scott would be proud.
( You’re Scott.)
… Right.
It felt like hours until Scott was eye level with the rooftop, though judging by the fact the sun had only barely sunk down any lower, it had only been a minute or two at most. Figured. He was never great with time. Relieved, he set the liquor down near the edge of the roof, then hoisted himself up the rest of the way with a soft grunt as he settled down next to the bottle. Up here, the sun was warmer on his skin in a way he could still barely sense. It didn’t really matter, in the grand scheme of things, as long as he got to do what he came here to do. Become Scott again. Be the Scott people wanted to see, and not a jumble of thoughts behind a desperate impersonation. As long as he could be Scott, he could manage this place well, and he’d never die. Scott would never die.
He slid himself down the roof until he sat near the corner, staring out into the open sky. Bono’s sake, he needed to come up here more often. The sunset that was beginning to form was utterly gorgeous. While the sun hadn’t fallen quite low enough yet to turn the sky pure orange, the pale purple-blue was beginning to fade into golden hues, fiery colors surrounding the star so far away from planet Earth. He’d always wondered about space (probably?), how it must’ve felt for astronauts to go up there (but he’d never seen an astronaut in his life, had he?), to be among the endless void and the miles of stars that people gazed on every day (had Scott ever even looked at the sky before?)...
Too many thoughts. Too many ponderings about the world beyond the pizzeria. A good manager did everything for their work, and Scott knew what he had to do so he could work as efficiently as possible. He’d get back into his right mind and things would move on. These things happened sometimes, after all, and people just had to work around those things, those feelings, and keep trying. He did it every day. Embarrassingly.
In one sharp motion, Scott struck the upper neck of the whiskey bottle against the edge of the roof. It cracked open with a shattering noise, and while Scott’s impulses told him to look around and search for any threats, he didn’t listen this time. He reeled his hand up to stop too much of the bottle’s contents from splattering on the ground, though refrained from taking a sip immediately. Something stopped him. He stared at the label, watching the liquid swirl around the bottle from the several harsh movements just a moment before. Why did he feel like he was perpetuating a cycle? Like he’d watched this before, once or thrice or five times, and this was him falling victim to the same routine?
Why did he feel guilty? He was doing what he had to for Fazbender’s. For his life. Scott was going to live forever. And yet, the whiskey drip, drip, dripped off the broken rim, and every drop made his hand twitch.
“Holy shit, Phoney! Ya didn’t tell me you were cool like that! Fuck yeah!”
To say Scott yelled would be an understatement. To say he squealed would be childish – animalistic, even – but more appropriate, and even that would undermine how loudly he crowed as he fumbled to turn around without pitching himself off the roof. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how he looked at it in the jumble of wires that were his mind), one bony hand seized his shoulder and kept him from squirming too much, while another yanked the alcohol from him in his frozen panic. It took quite a few seconds for him to focus back on what exactly had just happened, but the moment he processed the voice and the purple figure in front of him, he could only sigh.
Of. Hecking. Course.
“D – Dave?” Scott would’ve cringed at his own voice if he’d had the blessing of normal eyes, but he had to suffice for frantically searching Dave’s face. He was beaming in a way that always seemed a bit too large for his face, and it was doing absolutely nothing to ease Scott’s nerves in the present moment. Making an attempt to shrug off Dave’s hand (but it was clasped on tight, too tight, why did Scott feel like there were blades penetrating his shoulder?), Scott did his best impression of a responsible manager without the alcohol as a crutch – “Closing time was a long while ago, Dave! Why are you, of all people, still here?”
“Oh, I was gonna raid the dumpster for spare Freddy heads! I like paintin’ ‘em gold and tellin’ kiddins there’s a secret fifth animatronic that’ll eat ‘em alive if they ain’t careful.” Dave’s toothy grin never faltered. If anything, it got wider. “But then I heard ya breakin’ shit up here, and I was thinkin’ – hey, that’s my thing! So I was gonna push whoever was stealin’ my job of fuckin’ over Fazbender’s off the roof.” The fact he didn’t confirm whether that plan was on the table didn’t ease any of Scott’s concerns, but he chose not to mention it. Maybe Dave would forget if Scott didn’t give him a reason to remember? The man had the attention span of a goldfish and the impulse control of a car-chasing dog. Not that Scott “Breaking Liquor Bottles Off the Roof” Cawthon had any room to judge.
Voice still unsteady enough to betray his feigned composure, Scott said, “That’s… please don’t push people off the roof. We have enough news coverage on the restaurant as-is, and none of it is positive. Do you know how many Freddit posts I’ve seen of pictures of the restaurant captioned Blood or Marinara? It’s a trend now! And I’m at least forty-percent sure you’re responsible!” He poked a finger into Dave’s chest, only to remember his priorities. Ugh. Dave was too good at distractions, the loud dastard. His free hand moved to reach for the whiskey bottle, grabbing at it with flexing fingers even as Dave jerked it away. “And give that back! I need that!”
“Only if ya promise to share, Phoney! Or I could take this on down to Fazbender’s HQ…”
Scott paused. His hand stilled. “Do… Do you even know where the main operations of the company happen? Or how to get there, for that matter?”
Dave’s tense expression spoke volumes. Great. He didn’t. Scott had almost been worried.
“Ask me when I’ll give a fuck, Phoney. Are ya gonna let me down bottles –” He looked at the singular bottle that was, distinctly, not the plural, bottles. “-- a bottle with ya, or are ya gonna be a fuckin’ square and pass out on the roof on yer own? ‘Cause ya don’t have th’ look for that to be cool. You’d jus’ look like a loser. ‘N someone would prolly call the police thinkin’ ya died.” A pause. “That’d be real funny, now that I’m thinkin’ it…”
Nope. Scott refused to entertain more Dave-centric ideas. Waving his hands in front of his chest, he huffed, “ Fine, fine! Whatever gets you to stop. I don’t care that much, honestly. Just…” Remembering his lines from earlier, he scraped what was left of Scott as opposed to this terrible mockery of him from the recesses of his phone-head. “...keep this between you and me, alright, employee?”
“Don’t worry yer empty-ass head, old phone!” Dave took a seat next to Scott and swung his legs around to hang off the roof’s edge, downing a large swig of whiskey in the same motion. “If luck’s on our side, I’ll be forgettin’ this whole night anyway.”
Scott didn’t say that was for the better. Instead, he offered out his hand for Dave to put the whiskey bottle in, with his employee soon complying with only a haphazard mumble of eager fuck to accompany it. Scott reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, pulling out a reusable straw and sliding it into the whiskey bottle. He could feel Dave’s eyes on him and didn’t particularly care, too focused on sipping up enough whiskey to make something in his circuitry burn before leaning back and propping himself up with his free hand. The silence that befell the two of them left Scott a bit too much room to think, but it was that or try to make small talk with Dave. Absolutely not. Reluctantly, he focused on the sunset ahead, the orange hues now a bit more obvious than they had been earlier. His fingers tightened around the bottle of whiskey. Bono’s sake, he wasn’t drunk enough.
Dave was the first to interject, inevitably. “So, what, we’re jus’ gonna fuckin’ sit here and stare at th’ sky until yer blacked out? Christ, you really are th’ worst drinkin’ partner on this planet. Should’a figured yer a borin’ drunk.” He crossed his arms, his body tilted forward unnaturally – his waist was almost like a hinge, so instead of his spine curling, he looked like a rigid action figure. Freaky hecker.
“What else would I be doing?” Scott pulled the whiskey from under his phone-head, gesturing with the bottle vaguely. “You drink to get drunk. It…” Ah, heck, he almost spiraled into talking about his inner feelings! Quick, change the subject! “Why do you drink, Dave?”
“For fun? Ta fuck ‘round ‘n find out?” Dave squinted at Scott like he’d asked what Fazbenders’ Yelp rating was. A stupid question. Fazbender’s was banned from Yelp after the Scuttler Yelp Infestation of ‘82. “What else?”
“...You drink for fun?” Scott would’ve squinted back like Dave had asked what the Scuttler Yelp Infestation of ‘82 was. If they talked about it, the scuttlers would know they won. “This is the worst part of my day. Horrendous. But if it makes me a little more Scott… you do what you have to for your job, employee.” A pause, then Scott shook his head. “Not you. Don’t – I’m not encouraging this. But as your manager, of course, I need to stay focused. However possible.” Another sip. Scott barely realized that he was holding the whiskey to his chest like a lifeline. Scott would never die, as long as he had a little help from his poisonous friend.
Dave seemed oddly quiet. Scott looked over for a second in hopes of getting some sign Dave was even listening, but Dave’s expression had hardly shifted from that same baffled squint. Why? This was normal. Scott was so, so normal. He was doing what he had to do. He was becoming a good boss.
“Why th’ hell wouldn’t ya be Scott?” Dave punched Scott in the arm in a way Scott assumed was meant to be friendly. It had a bit too much force, though, and Scott had to rather quickly decipher if Dave was going back to the murder plan. “If ya walk like Scott, talk like Scott, everyone calls ya Scott – ‘cept me, I get ta call ya whatever th’ fuck I please – then yer Scott! I don’t see anyone else truckin’ up ta take yer place at this location.” He leaned back, propping his hands behind his head and crossing his legs. “Ya don’t need ta get drunk ta be a person! I do it to be less ‘a one! ‘s real fun. Maybe you’d loosen up if ya tried it.”
“I’m not gaining a new, unique reason for an alcohol dependency, employee. I have one already.”
“Awww, c’mon! What if th’ existin’ reason gets lonely, though! Ya gotta have a set so yer fun habits don’t get cold in th’ winter! They gotta huddle for warmth!”
“Dave. Employee.” Scott shoved down the small shred of endearment surfacing in his chest. “Please, stop personifying my alcoholic tendencies. It’s… I don’t even have a huge issue with it, it’s just creepy.”
“Fuck, fine, if yer gonna be a pussy,” Dave grumbled, though the fact he’d backed down at all meant something to Scott. He could’ve been far more of a nuisance in far more ways by now, but he hadn’t. It felt off. Maybe Scott had struck a chord with him? The idea of Dave having anything he was particularly sensitive to, much less empathetic about, felt far fetched. But they were here, weren’t they? Both of them, downing a bottle of whiskey just so they could forget themselves tonight in different ways. When the quiet fell this time, it was just a bit less unnerving, and Scott felt a bit less watched.
“...It’s my birthday today, I think.”
He wasn’t sure why he said that outright. He wasn’t even positive if it was today, much less if he should go disclose it to any employee that scurried their way into a drinking session with him. Unfortunately, Dave had been listening more keenly than normal (or maybe Dave just pretended not to listen most other times, which felt rather likely in retrospect), and his head instantly turned at the declaration. When Scott met his gaze, he was beaming.
“What th’ fuck – Phoneys have birthdays?!” He didn’t give Scott even a second to try and answer, treating it like a rhetorical. “Holy shit, why didn’t ya mark it down? I ain’t ever gotten to celebrate a birthday b’fore! An’ ‘specially not a Phoney birthday? What d’ya do, like – put up phone-sized party hats that’re all boxy ‘n shit?”
“We… I don’t think I’m supposed to celebrate it. Holidays are reserved for company milestones. No dead children in the robots, less than five gallons of blood cleaned this month… those events.” Scott shrugged one shoulder and flicked his sensors back to stare at the dimming sky. He moved to take another long sip of liquor only to have the bottle unceremoniously yanked from his hands again. Given Scott already knew exactly who was stealing it now, it came as less of a surprise, though the theft wasn’t any more welcome.
“Employee –”
“No fuckin’ shot I’m lettin’ ya get blackout drunk on yer big day, Phoney! I didn’t get ta go to birthdays – ‘less you count those kiddins’ parties, but those’re always total shit, everythin’ here is –” If he was trying to mumble that, he failed. Terribly. “-- and you haven’t had a birthday! So I’m makin’ this a win-win and lettin’ us have the party of our fuckin’ dreams!” Dave threw one hand up in the air in a silent cheer, taking a huge gulp of whiskey with the other. Oh, so Scott had to be sober, but Dave didn’t? He wasn’t even doing it for a good reason! It wasn’t fair!
…And yet, Scott realized that the thoughts clawing at his skull about work and repentance had quieted down a while ago. His gaze dwelled on Dave for a long moment, fingers tense against the cement rooftop of Fazbender’s. He could feel the warmth of the sun just a little bit more, feel the fabric of his shirt rustling as he sat up, feel his hands against his lap once he shifted them there. Scott felt alive, even if he wouldn’t live forever.
(The temptation to say otherwise didn’t fade.)
Dave outstretched his free hand, grabbing onto Peter’s sleeve. “How about it, ol’ phone? Wanna get a real Dave special for yer party?”
This was going to involve several petty crimes and the desecration of at least one chunk of the building. Scott knew this very well.
…
“Fine.” Scott nodded. “Take me for a ride, employee.”
“Hell yeah! Yer gonna love it, phone-face! Alright, first thing’s first, we’re gonna need a shit ton of firecrackers…”