Bonnie wasn't sure if the reality he was living in was real at all. The guy who he'd had a mega crush on since he'd gotten the job was now gone. And they were changing policy to where he was just working a standard job. Where was he supposed to go? More importantly, where was Madelyn going to go?

She was someone who'd come out of an orphanage she'd been ostracised in. She did her damnedest to get out of there, too. No one in her fourteen years of being there had wanted her, and that was discouraging.

It then clicked to Bonnie why they worked so well together.

But that was beside the point. He had no fucking clue what to do. He couldn't go back to his parents, because he'd be turned around at the door. He was nineteen, no high school diploma, no GED, no nothing. He was fucked beyond belief.

Madelyn shifted under his arm, as he was brought out of his mind and back to the real world. She murmured something in her sleep, something that would normally put a grin on his face. But he couldn't stop wondering what was going to happen to them.

He hated when things like this haunted him into the night and kept him from sleeping. He shifted, holding tight to Madelyn, hoping he'd wake up to everything going back to normal. He'd be sixteen again. Single, but he'd still have everyone, and not have to worry about not having a place to go. He'd still have problems with depression, but he wouldn't worry so much. It wouldn't matter.

But that wasn't the case. He'd probably wake up into a worse hell, knowing his life. Back with his parents, with them fighting and completely not giving a shit about his existence. Never having met Madelyn to begin with, never having dropped out, nothing. He knew that definitely wasn't favourable.

He had a rude awakening the next morning, having forgotten to turn his alarm off. He groaned, cursing quietly as he reached over to turn the thing off. He laid back down to fall back asleep, but soon found himself falling over the end of the bed.

"Get up, Bonnie," Madelyn said, giggling.

He sat up, rubbing his side. He glared at her as he stood, using the bed as a support as he got to his feet. His hair was a mess, there were dark circles under his eyes, and he wasn't feeling particularly well.

"Is it not Sunday?" he grumbled.

"It is, but we need to be looking into what we can do given the policy change," Madelyn reminded him.

"Oh yeah. That. I wanted to like… not think about it and hope it'd go away."

"That ain't how life goes, sorry to say. Now put some clothes on, dork. Can't go searching around town with your boxers on."

"I mean I could, you won't let me."

"Because I don't want you getting the both of us arrested. Now shut up and get dressed already!"

"Alright, alright," Bonnie chuckled. "By the way, just so you know, if you decide you wanna sleep in next week, I'm pushing you off the bed instead."

"No you won't."

"You're right, I won't. I'll be too lazy to even get up myself, much less force you to get up. Also, I'm not fucking satan about getting out of bed."

"Shoosh you."

Madelyn smirked, trying to keep herself from laughing. Bonnie got dressed and the two headed out to the main room, where they were stopped by a redheaded man standing at the door. They looked at each other, contemplating if they should let him in. Madelyn shrugged and opened the door, and he stepped inside. His hair was laid lazily over his right eye, parted on the left, and tied up in a short ponytail on the back, as it wasn't that long.

"Why, don't you two look familiar?" he asked. "Remember me?"

Madelyn stared blankly at him for a second, before he face lit up as she said, "Oh yeah, you were that waiter who served us three years ago. How do you still remember our faces?"

"The same way you remember him, I imagine," Bonnie jabbed sarcastically.

"What're you doing here?" Madelyn asked, ignoring Bonnie.

"I'm here for you, Madelyn. It's time for you to come home."

"Wait, what? What do you mean by "come home?" And how the hell did you wind up here, of all places?"

"I forgot, you were too young to remember me. I'm your brother, Francis. I know that it seems weird, but ever since I noticed you that one night, I couldn't help but think that your face was familiar. I didn't really know how, until I actually was able to pull up the bill, and I knew it was you. "

"I have to question how the hell you found where we were," Bonnie said flippantly.

"Simple. The restaurant doesn't keep billing information the biggest secret. I just had to ask a few friends on the further inside to find out. Wasn't hard to find."

"Goddammit. Anyways, Madelyn, I'll be right back. I just realised how awful I smell."

As Bonnie walked out of the room, disappearing into the back, Madelyn was left alone with her supposed 'brother,' Francis.

"How can you prove that you're my brother?" she asked

"Madelyn Cecil Foxx, born 10th of November, 1998. Orphaned at age two, natural ginger.

"How in the fuck?"

"And since you never knew your parents, I can tell you a lot about them and explain why they couldn't keep you. You just have to trust me. Are you ready to trust me, yet?"

"I'm not totally sure. Given you admitted that you have insider friends at that restaurant, I'm curious to know if you have insider friends anywhere else. It's been forever since I've said my middle or last name, that not even Bonnie knows at this point."

"I wouldn't have any reason to stalk and lie to you. It took me so long just to figure out where I could find you, to deliver this information and extend my hand to help you. My boyfriend says he knows the owner, and that the place is going to end up shutting down soon. And on top of just being able to help you, I can tell you anything you ever wanted to know about your parents. Where you came from, why things had to be the way they are."

"See, even if I did trust you, I can't leave Bonnie. I love him too much."

"Do you really have another choice at this point? It's not like you can stay here."

"If I go with you, Bonnie comes with me. Otherwise, no deal."

Francis sighed. "Fine then. He can tag along, since you're so adamant about it. But if he causes too much of a problem, I'm gonna have no choice but to kick him out."

"He's too quiet to cause much of a problem. I'll go get him."

Madelyn was just about to turn on her heel and leave as Bonnie walked back through the door, with his hair still damp.

"So what're you two up to now?" he asked.

Francis gave an unimpressed look to Madelyn, who gave a sheepish grin. She grabbed Bonnie by the hand, taking him back to the employee hallway and leading him back to his room.

"Pack your shit, we're going to live with my brother."

"That's your— but you called him—"

"Shut the fuck up, I didn't know who he was then. We're going to live with him. We needed to find a place anyways, so this works out amazingly."

"But what about Chica? Shouldn't we at least tell her?"

"She'll be fine. She can probably go crash with Freddy until things turn out better for her, or maybe even permanently since they have a thing."

"I guess you're right…. Still, I'm worried. I don't know how things are about to play out, and if we'll still be able to stay together at the end of it all."

"Things will be fine, trust me. I promise you that I won't allow anything to separate us. Just trust me."

"A-alright…."

Upon arrival to the place they would be staying, Madelyn's eyes immediately went to the steep set of steps leading both up and down directly in front of her. Then to the island in the untidy kitchen to her right, and the couch and TV to her left. The open floor plan made sense for such a small, vertical house.

Bonnie stepped in behind her, sticking close. He didn't know what this so-called "Francis" was capable of, or what he planned to do. His anxiety was getting the best of him.

"Alright, Madelyn. Your room will be upstairs on the left, and yours is straight back, Bonnie. Mine is downstairs, bathroom is upstairs on the right, anything else you need to know?" Francis asked quickly. "Alright, great, I'm gonna head downstairs for a bit; I'm expecting someone soon."

Francis quickly descended the stairs before the couple could get a word out. Madelyn turned and glanced up at Bonnie's eyes, and he met hers. He sighed as she smiled, and they each ascended the stairs in front of them.

Madelyn stepped into her room, and was immediately underwhelmed. Everything was in drab colours; there was no personality. It was the most lifeless she'd ever seen a room be. And to think the walls were the same beige that the excess rooms in the pizzeria had been made her want to gag.

She knew the best thing was to just leave the thing, try to get some better matching colours later. But that didn't keep her from hating it.

Bonnie flicked on the light to his room, and it was almost as if nothing had changed at all. The floors were still wooden, the desk was still in the back corner, and the bed in the middle. It was only slightly bigger, and the closet and entrance had switched places, as the closet was now off to the right with the door opposing the bed. Of course, the door was slightly to the right side of the room, but that wasn't that big of a thing to him..

The walls were also a new colour that he preferred. A light grey-blue instead of that old beige he never got around to painting over.

He set his backpack on the bed, and his guitar bag on the floor at the foot. He began to dig for the notebook he'd held onto so closely for years that was slowly running out of pages. The one his brother had given him for his thirteenth birthday.

"The year before he left…." he thought aloud, pulling the notebook out and holding it firmly in his hand. "Where are you now, Benjamin? When are you coming back? When will this nightmare of a life end, and we can go back to before you left?"

He sighed, tossing the notebook off on the desk. It landed with a firm thud. He took his backpack off the bed, and set it by his guitar bag, stepping out of the room. He went off to help Madelyn unpack her things, but by the time he got there she'd already unpacked.

"So how's your room?" she asked him as he stepped in.

"You gonna let me collect my thoughts, first?" he asked in return.

"Nope," she replied with a grin.

"It's the same… but better, I suppose. It's not the same beige I left the other room. It's a nice blue-grey that really cools off the feeling."

"Well that's good to hear. I'm probably gonna have to paint this room and re-decorate it in its entirety. I don't imagine that you would want to do that with yours, since it seems more like a guest room."

"It's so weird to think… so little but so much has changed, and will still continue to do so."

"Bit of a mindfuck, ain't it?"

"Yeah. Just… hard to wrap my head around."

"Hopefully in time we'll adjust to things. But this whole situation got me thinking, we each need to work towards getting a GED, and getting a proper job."

Bonnie sighed. "I'm not sure I'm ready to grow up yet. In my mind, I'm still sixteen, we're still sixteen. We're still figuring shit out. Being ostracised in what would be considered to be our homes, only to end up in a place that would simply just let us survive. And plus, didn't the owners say that we'd just be getting normal paychecks now? Who's to say we have to find different jobs?"

"I just feel it's childish to continue working this way. I wanna get a real job, I'm ready to grow up."

"I'm not ready. I need more time. I need more time to get my headspace clear, to not have to rely on you so much to keep me sane. 'Cause god knows that if our relationship fell out, I'd be a dysfunctional mess. I need to see a therapist."

"Priorities. Let's get moved in before we start worrying about what we need to ready ourselves to be adults."

"But you just said—"

"I just said don't worry about it. I'm just saying keep it all in mind as we move forward, but don't overwhelm yourself."

"I dunno, I just feel like even if I was able to get control of my emotions, I wouldn't be able to grow up. I can't be an adult. My mind just doesn't work that way. I'm not ready, I'm not ever going to be ready. I'm still missing so much. So many lessons my brother promised to teach me that he never got to."

"All in due time. We'll get to it."

That night, Bonnie laid awake, his mind racing at lightning speeds. He had so many questions ranging from, "What am I going to do when I can grow up?" to, "Why are Madelyn and I in separate beds tonight?"

He couldn't figure out how to answer a single one of them. He guessed that he'd just have to find out when it came time to being an adult. Growing up didn't seem all that appealing to him, but he was nineteen. He had to grow up at some point. As for why they were in separate rooms, he didn't know. He supposed it was because Francis didn't like them being together, but that was his only guess and it was a shot in the dark.

He wanted to hold her to him, be assured that things were going to be okay just be her presence. All because she would be there, he would've been able to fall asleep properly. He would've been able to feel his eyes growing heavy as he drifted off into the unconscious world that lived in his mind. But alas, he was plagued with unrest and anxiety. Too many blank spaces to fill, a form left without anything filled in. The job application that he dreaded one day having to properly fill out ran through his mind. What would he say? He dropped out of high school. He ruined his own life.

But he just couldn't have taken anymore of it.

The anxiety that everyone around you is eyeing you, hating every second you remain there longer. Hating you just for existing. Just being spiteful. The loneliness he felt, being totally out of place in his computer sciences classes. He was a musician, not a software engineer.

He never understood the classes. He always ended up with awful or straight up failing grades. And year after year, his parents stripped him of the freedom of choice, stripped him of the ability to maybe finally make some fucking friends, find some people who thought similarly to him. He never got to have the positive experience he heard about and envied. He didn't want to deal with that anymore. He wasn't going to take it anymore. He dropped out because he didn't need that shit anymore.

But nonetheless, whether or not you dropped out because your mental health was fucked, or because you weren't going to pass anyways, it was a stigma if you didn't have a goddamn piece of signed paper.

He sighed, turning over. He didn't think that getting a GED would help him. He was a guitar-obsessed, blue-haired nineteen-year-old who had no control over his emotions. That would already set off multiple red flags from his employers. To hear the part about being a dropout would likely be the last straw.

He tempted the thought of getting up and slipping into bed with Madelyn to let her scent calm his nerves, but looking over at the clock gave him second thoughts. It was almost 2AM. He knew she was asleep, and he didn't have it in him to wake her. It wasn't worth it to maybe get a couple hours of sleep. He could only hope that he would eventually fall asleep and not have to deal with his mind asking so many questions he didn't know the answers to.

He awoke the next morning at noon, sitting up with a massive headache. He pushed his palm to his forehead, hoping to ease the pounding pain he felt. He couldn't place his finger on exactly how the feeling came about. There was no particular reason for it to be there.

He sighed and attempted to stand without too much issue, and wandered out towards Madelyn's room. He wanted to see what she was up to, since he wasn't sure how things were supposed to work moving forward. Did they ignore the relationship until they adjusted? Did they still try to manage it through the transition? It all confused him.

"Knock knock," he said, the door standing wide open.

"Oh hey, what's up?"

"I just wanted to drop in and pester you, since it's all I have left to do for now."

"Fast unpacker?"

"Didn't bring much to start with. And weren't you finished yesterday? Anyways— it doesn't matter. The thing I was wondering about is… us. I have several questions about the future."

"Fire away."

"Well, I'm not sure what to do during this transitional period. Do I ignore my desires to just hold you, or do we just let things stay the same? Secondly, are we gonna go back to sharing the same bed after awhile, or are we just gonna stay in separate places for the most part? I missed you last night, had a bit of a hard time sleeping."

"Well I figured for now that we could just sort of try to say out of each other's way. Not forever, but I have to completely redo this room, and I figured you'd maybe have to end up doing the same with yours."

"Even if he wanted to, I wouldn't let him," Francis chimed in, leaning on the wall just outside of the door. "That's meant to be a guest room, and I'm letting him stay here since he is a guest, after all."

"I dunno, I consider him a part of all of this," Madelyn returned. "I mean, he'll be in this for just as long as I will be."

"We didn't agree to that much," Francis warned.

"It was implied. He's my boyfriend, we've been together for about three years. I figured I didn't have to say it aloud that he'd be in it with me for the long haul."

Francis sighed. "Alright then," before promptly taking his leave.

"I can try to find somewhere else to go if it really matters," Bonnie offered just as Francis got out of earshot. He didn't particularly want to go.

"No, don't feel obligated to. He's just being a bit of an ass, and I can't work out why. Why in hell would he ever think that you staying here is just a temporary thing anymore than me staying here being temporary?"

"I don't know. But back to what we were talking about: I get that you may want time away from it. And that's fine, I just need like a timeframe on when maybe we can start doing this whole thing again. I don't want to be laying there every night wondering that maybe now we'll be able to do this together again."

"I honestly don't know what to tell you. I have no clue when I'm gonna be able to get all of this."

"Well why don't I help?"

"I mean, I am going to ask for your help, but I just sort of want to get used to things at the moment, you understand? Maybe at the end of this week we can get back to it?"

"Alright. I can do that without going fucking insane, heh."

"If something goes wrong, you know you can come talk to me."

"And you know that I'm not gonna think about that. Just like when you were going out with Freddy, I'm not going to think about it."

"I guess that's fair. But, just write yourself a note or something. I won't be upset if you come pester me at four in the morning if you really need it. I understand how anxieties can take over, I lived in an orphanage, in and out of foster homes for sixteen years. I understand how it can be."

"I know you do, I'm very aware of such, but I'm always so afraid of just being too annoying with it. That's just how I am. I mean, every time I would ever come to see you after those first three months where we became friends, remember how I would always ask if I woke you up?"

"Yep. You asked every single time, and I always gave you the same answer."

"I know, but it's just— I don't want to end up feeling like I'm a burden. I don't want to put that on myself, so for some reason I just avoid it entirely. I need to learn to help myself anyways."

"Do you think that everyone just helps themselves, and doesn't rely on anyone else? Because if that's the case, you haven't been paying attention. Whenever I have a problem, I ask you what to do, and you help me."

"I know, I know, it's just— whenever you're right there, I don't feel as bad. Because you're already there, and you're just there for me to ask. But anyways, I think I'll be fine. I don't think that there's much that'll happen within that time frame. I'll be fine, hopefully."

"Hey, before you go, I want you to know that this isn't because I don't want to be with you, but I just want to get used to the surroundings. I still love you, and don't think that I'm trying to avoid you. I still appreciate you and your company, and I know your worries and where you think things could be going. I promise you that things won't turn out that way, and even if they did I'd be up-front with you."

"That's good to know, I suppose. Anyways, I'll probably be hanging out in my room for the most part."

"Alright, I won't have to wonder where the sobbing sounds come from."

Bonnie laughed before leaving. He wasn't sure if this whole experience was something he was ready for. He was starting to feel like the relationship was shaky, and he didn't want things to crumble under his feet. But he didn't know any other way he could try to fix it, other than spending more time together. And he had to respect that she didn't want that right now.

She assured him that things were going to turn out okay, but he still couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of dread in the pit of his stomach. Something was brewing under the surface that he could feel but couldn't be sure of. He wanted to press her more, ask what he could do to help her out just so he could be there. But he knew that intruding would speed up the process if she was considering taking a break.

4,041 words.