Work Text:
Time passes at a crawl, and while you know that constantly glancing at your watch will only make it pass slower, the anxiety of what the next two hours will become if you don’t step away screams at you to check again and again.
It has to go by faster. For the love of everything holy, it must if you want to keep your job.
Working at the Mega Pizzaplex is by no means a dream job, because you are ninety-nine percent certain that there is no such thing as a dream job. A job, by definition, requires work, and no one in their right mind likes working to make a living.
However, as far as establishments go, the Pizzaplex isn’t the worst. They pay above minimum wage, the benefits are barebones, but fuck knows that’s more than most places nowadays, and they’re pretty decent at staying on top of breaks and schedules. Which, again, is a rarity given the state of the job market.
The one downside (out of the many more glaring ones) is that management are a bunch of hardasses who think they’re the stars of the show. Sure there’s sick pay, but calling out when Josh is already pissed because one side of his toast came out two shades darker than he’d wanted was a guaranteed termination of employment. It’s right there in the contract too. Can’t get sued if they’re being upfront about their practices and you sign on anyway. It’s predatory as fuck, but, yeah; even their part-time employees get partial health insurance.
The background checks are rigorous, both for criminal and health records and, again, can’t get sued for violating HIPAA when employees are willingly signing on. You’re sure that kind of dodgy behavior has got to go beyond the usual means of legal enforcement, and the idea of Fazbear Entertainment buying off someone in some sort of bigshot government office is horrific.
Anyway, this swings back to the issue at hand. It’s one hour until close, two until your shift ends, and there are bright specks of light dancing in your vision that are unrelated to all the neon signage surrounding you.
Okay, they’re not entirely unrelated. Being a part of Monty Gator’s handlers meant that wearing sunglasses indoors was part of the uniform, and that works wonders for someone prone to earth-shattering migraines predominantly triggered by light sensitivity. The problem? The Pizzaplex’s star bassist has been out of commission for the past two days due to—according to the memo—personal reasons.
It smarts, to be honest. That an animatronic with hyper-intelligent AI can take a couple of days off from posing with his adoring fans, yet the human employee with a chronic illness has to gamble with their livelihood.
That’s how you end up manning the queues on Rockstar Row.
Not only is it bright as all hell and louder than band practice, but you’re denied your request to wear sunglasses and earplugs. Not part of the uniform , they’d said, and that was the end of that.
“How many in your party? Videos are allowed but please refrain from any flash photography,” you say for the umpteenth time that day. They never answer. “Don’t forget to be respectful of our performers by setting your phones to silent mode and remember to have a Faz-tastic day.”
The door to Roxy’s green room slides open, a group of four teenagers hesitantly stepping inside to be greeted with faux enthusiasm.
It’s usually little kids and their parents who wait in line for meet and greets, with the occasional ‘Fazbear Adult’ rocking a month’s paycheck worth of merch. Teenagers are rare, mostly due to the brand falling out of style while they were still kids. They’d much rather spend their rare amount of free time at the state of the art arcade and VR domes, as they should, but it’s always nice to see a little less angst amongst the youth.
Desperate to keep your mind off your impending doom, you throw yourself into your work. You engage in conversation, which gets harder to do when squatting down to chat with little ones begins to make your skull throb. You pair up your Faz-Watch with some of the more enthused parents, swapping tokens for complimentary drinks (those actually come with their day passes, but no one ever redeems those because they’re not openly advertised). This makes your eyeballs pulsate inside their sockets.
At some point, you give up altogether. You stand perfectly still and hope that will ease the nausea and the searing pain radiating along the right side of your head, pressing the button to open the green room door with a smile you hope comes off as pleasant. Another thirty minutes. Just another thirty and maybe, hopefully, one of your co-workers can cover your closing duties. You don’t want to think about the drive home just yet.
A little kid darts out of Roxy's room screaming to the top of their lungs, and while you would never in a million years hurt a child…well. You are not to be held responsible for your actions when every sensory input possible becomes hostile. If you run after them, you’re going to dry-heave yourself into oblivion. Luckily, their mother rushes out a couple of seconds later.
This, too, is fairly common. Regardless of how sleek and charismatic they are—the animatronics are still hulking pieces of metal and plastic. You work with them long enough and you eventually grow desensitized to the fact, but you remember the first time you ever stood in front of one. The unease, that surge of uncanny valley. Hardware shouldn’t emote like that. It’s a wonder more kids don’t run away screaming.
You could use some water.
You could use not having neon lights stab your eyes, or the cacophony of hundreds of people rising to a crescendo, or—
“Thank you all for coming and have a Faz-tastic evening!”
“Thank fuck,” you mutter, garnering a nasty look from the gentleman at the head of the queue. He shouldn’t have been there anyway. You don’t bother telling him to leave; it’s protocol at this point given how nasty guests can be, so one of the security guards will swing by to get his ass kicked out shortly.
“You okay there? You’re looking a little pale,” says one of Roxy’s usual team members, her foot lodged between door and frame.
“My head’s going to freaking pop,” you say, shutting your eyes for a couple of seconds while massaging your temples. “Nothing laying down in a cool, dark room for like six hours can’t fix.”
“That sounds rough.”
“You have no idea.”
The girl looks over her shoulder, then back at you. “I’ll take care of winding Roxy down if you want to organize the back room until clock-out. There’s chairs and a water fountain in case you need to hydrate.”
You want to ask if you absolutely have to stay, but what’s one more hour? Working the back room is way easier than wind-down, if your experience handling Monty is anything to go by. The gator might be temperamental, but Roxy is on a whole other level of needy.
“I can do that, yeah. Thanks.”
As guests get herded out the exits like cattle, you slip out back through Roxy’s green room. She ignores you in favor of sitting in front of her mirror to get her makeup removed. You’ve been told she’s decently nice towards her team, and her giving you the cold shoulder would make sense. You’re pretty sure you heard her call you an ‘industry plant’ at some point.
The back room, it turns out, is as organized as it can possibly be for the exception of a scattering of sticky notes that you should pick up.
You could even sweep them up and dump them out with minimal effort.
All you need to sweep them up is grab the broom, the dustpan and—you really, really need to sit down or else it’s going to be more than just nonsensical logistics all over the floor.
“Fucking hell.” Turns out there’s no place to sit back here after all, so you lean back against the storage shelves and breathe in deep, counting to ten. Each new movement sends a fresh wave of heavy pain thrumming along your synapses, the glimmer in your eyes turning into full waves of color, and there’s no way you’ll be able to drive. You’re not even sure you can make it to the exit without keeling over.
The space being small, dark, quiet, and cool sure helps, but being vertical takes up enough energy for it to be useless.
The sound of muted clanking comes out of nowhere, accompanied by a rhythmic whirr you try to block out. It isn’t until it’s right by you that you recognize it as the sound of footsteps—very heavy, very specific footsteps.
Freddy speaks before you can open your eyes, scaring the ever-loving-shit out of you.
“Whoa there! I didn’t mean to startle you.” He’s holding out a cautionary hand as if to steady you. “Is everything alright?”
You open your mouth, then close it. “I just needed to rest my eyes for a moment,” and then, more pressingly, “what are you doing back here?”
The light behind Freddy’s eyes makes them difficult to look at, so you discreetly face the other way as to not offend him.
“My system pinged an unidentified individual in the back rooms. I was worried it might have been another lost child.”
Right. “It’s just me. I forgot to verify my keycard before coming back here.” Fishing for the card at the end of your lanyard, you hold it up for Freddy to scan. He does so, and even with your eyes closed you can register how much brighter the room gets for a couple of seconds.
“There you are,” he says. “No crises for the evening, which is very good.” He pauses for long enough that you crack open an eye and stiffly turn your head towards him.
Out of all the animatronics (excluding DJ Music Man), Freddy is the most intimidating. It has nothing to do with his status as leading man since he’s very good at keeping it humble, but something about the way he holds himself. He’s, somehow, more human than the rest, and that’s saying a lot when Roxy can sometimes be heard crying for unknown reasons.
It always boils down to that uncanniness.
Who would program an AI to cry? To hunger? To lash out for feeling trapped? And who would program Freddy to be so eerily well-rounded?
You don’t interact with him much, but from your limited experiences, Freddy expresses more emotional maturity than most of the people in your life. “So… you work here.” He’s also a bit of an idiot.
“Monty’s entourage—can I help you with something? You can go back to your room now that you know I’m not a wandering guest.”
“According to your Faz-Watch, your heart rate is extremely elevated. That is not good for your health, and judging by the way you are holding onto very fragile and haphazardly organized shelves, it would seem your health is not currently optimal.”
You glare at him. His eyebrows swivel upward to express concern.
“I have a migraine.”
Freddy takes ten seconds to answer. “Have you access to your medication?”
No, because you grabbed the wrong backpack before rushing out in a hurry. “I just… I just need to sit for a sec.”
More whirring and you don’t mean to flinch, but you’ve been briefed so many times on how the animatronics should never be touched. It seems like such an arbitrary rule now that you think about it, because kids hold their hands and arms all the time. Seeing Freddy extend his hand to you is strange, about as strange as being offered help by one of the star performers, but oh well.
If you don’t hold onto something while trying to move, it’s game over. At least you know there’s no way to take him down should your body decide to call it quits.
You wrap an arm around his and rest most of your weight against his side. You don’t know what you were expecting him to feel like, but ‘pleasantly cool’ was nowhere on your potential list of things.
“I could carry you back to my green room—”
“Absolutely not,” you quip, feeling your face flush.
You’ve worked at the Pizzaplex for long enough to know about the fifth kind of person that tends to stop by for meet and greets. The number of weekly memos walking you through how to answer the embarrassingly common request for an adults only afterhours event is staggering. And as funny as it would be to get to live out the fantasy that some of these folks harbor? Well.
Frankly, that’s how you unwittingly learn things about yourself that are better left buried.
Freddy escorts you to his room, and you sigh in relief when the lights dim enough to not feel like they’re stabbing your brain through your eye sockets. He hovers by the couch as you sit on it, and then, once deeming it suitable, you tilt over to lay on your side.
The motion kicks up a wave of pounding pain, forcing your eyes shut as you curl into yourself and wish you could just carve open your skull and pluck out your brain for a little while.
You briefly wonder where Freddy’s team is, but given that the room looked fairly organized, you take it they must have been quick about it. Which means that Freddy should be in his charging station until tomorrow. Which makes you wonder if ‘rule breaker’ is something that should even be coded into a program.
But—
“Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable? I’m afraid I can’t administer any sort of medical treatment as I am not programmed to do so, but I could provide hot and cold compresses.” He doesn’t whisper per se, but his tone is quieter. “I could… also sing you a song.”
You hum, partly amused. “Noise tends to make migraines worse.”
“That is correct, but they are also triggered by high levels of stress, anxiety, and improper sleep hygiene. I figured that a song might help calm your nerves. I don’t expect you to sleep, of course, but perhaps your favorite song could be beneficial to at least bring down your heart rate.”
“Did you read that off Web MD?”
“No. I just assumed.”
You open your eyes, but you hurt too much to ponder the implications of the statement.
Grabbing a nearby plush, you hold it to your chest. It helps with having to figure out what to do with your hands. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Do you know any non-Fazbear Entertainment patented songs?”
Freddy laughs. “I know a fair share that will not get me in trouble. Although, it is after closing, and I’m sure management won’t mind.”
It’s more than a little weird to lie there as the star attraction sings you a song from the decade you were born, an old rock ballad you only learned to appreciate as you got older. Weirder still is how much emotion Freddy can pour into it, tugging at heartstrings that make you melt into the couch (for purely wholesome reasons). Pleasant shivers pick along the back of your neck and down your arms, his voice oddly soothing. No wonder he's the lead singer.
It doesn’t help with the migraine but neither does it make it worse, though you tense when a mechanical claw nudges your hand away from where you’ve been trying to apply pressure to your temple. Too worried to resist, you allow it to be moved.
Freddy’s hand takes up the space your own hand was requested to abandon, gently cradling your head, a thumb stroking your temple. You’re confused by the gesture until the surface begins to cool to the temperature of a cold compress.
“I didn’t know you guys could do that,” you murmur.
“It is a feature designed to keep icing from melting when a birthday cake is stored inside my chest hatch. It would be incredibly sad to deliver little Jimmy a puddle of sugar rather than the double fudge, cookies and cream ice cream cake his mother requested.”
“Rockstar and walking refrigerator.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “I suppose I’m one very versatile refrigerator.”
It’s your turn to laugh, even though it morphs into a groan. “I bet crawling inside that chest hatch of yours would help a lot.”
“Hmm. Even if it would, I am afraid you are far too big to fit. It is also an extremely unsafe area for humans to be in, and it is my intention to ease your discomfort rather than add to it.”
“Why?”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
“Why are you helping me?”
Freddy makes a whirring sound that sounds suspiciously like a thoughtful hum. With your eyes closed, it’s easy to forget you’re talking to a massive chunk of metal—even with the hand (paw?) holding your head. But, truth be told, the thought feels a little unfair to him.
“I… want to,” he says, and the way the pads of his fingers twitch against your hair feels almost absentminded. “I recognize you as an integral part of the Pizzaplex. You have helped Monty and Roxy, and likely Chica as well. And by making sure everything runs smoothly for them, you have inadvertently helped me as well. Hm. You are a member of the Fazbear family, and it would be wrong to not extend my help to the best of my capabilities.”
Goddammit .
You bite your bottom lip because, okay, being called part of a family is such an overused phrase when it comes to corporate bullshit that all it ever does is get an eyeroll out of you. But when Freddy says it, and he sounds so damn sincere about it?
“I’m sorry management does not appreciate its workers enough to take their health into consideration.”
Okay. That’s it.
The damn anthropomorphic glam rock bear does not get to make you emotional. You blame it on the migraine, the fatigue, the very comfortable couch and equally soft plush toy that is possibly teeming with little kid germs, and the comforting weight of his chilled hand.
“Thanks,” you mumble despite yourself.
“Of course. Would you like me to leave you alone to rest? I fear the Pizzaplex closes its doors in less than two hours.”
If you don’t get out by then, you’re locked in until 6AM. It’s not like anything happens during those six hours. The animatronics go into standby mode to charge, the prototype S.T.A.F.F. Bots begin their nightly programming loops, and the security guards waste away the hours playing sudoku. Not even the technicians stick around.
However, you would like a shower and something to eat that isn’t recycled mascot-themed food. It would definitely be weird if management caught you walking the Pizzaplex’s hallways after hours.
“Could you hang around? Just in case?”
“I’ll wake you thirty minutes before the front doors close,” Freddy says, a hint of amusement in his tone.
You don’t intend to sleep, you really don’t. In fact, you’re certain it’s impossible for you to let down your guard enough to do so. But as it stands, amidst the mental fog and excruciating physical discomfort, you can spare the energy to think, and think you do.
This isn’t half bad.
In fact, it’s actually kind of nice.
Even when Freddy shuffles and you crack an eye to watch him sit beside the couch, readjusting his arm to keep it serving the purpose of a high-tech cold compress. You let go of the plush toy and curl around his arm instead, the appendage’s surface a lot warmer than his hand. And that is dangerous. Not due to nefarious reasons, but because it makes you yawn.
"Rest well, superstar."