Two

xxx

Mike Schmidt took the paper route despite the funny look he got from the teenage boy who trained him. At the ripe-old age of twenty seven, he had reached the glorious part of his life during which he didn't give a fuck what anyone thought of him. Stocking at the grocery store meant being cooped up all day in a tiny building with low ceilings for four days out of the week, and driving a delivery truck to and from a local warehouse meant sitting on his butt until it went numb for the rest of them. Mike wanted to walk, and he wanted open air. He wanted them, so he got them.

It was two weeks into the paper route when it happened. A brisk, overcast day, spattering tiny droplets of water into his face as he plodded down Main Street. He had just chucked one of the paper-filled baggies onto an old lady's porch, gawking when the cat he hadn't meant to hit screeched and zoomed into the bushes, when a voice rang out that made his heart leap into his throat.

"Hey! Uh, hello! What can I do for ya?"

Mike's head swung around, his eyes going wide. The door of a small house down the street was open, an elderly woman on the doorstep. "My granddaughter is selling magazines," she explained, extending a hand holding a pamphlet. The man in the house nodded.

"All right, then. I'll look these over!"

The woman thanked him and left, leaving the man standing in his doorway, flipping through the pamphlet. He suddenly looked up, eyes locking with Mike's, and everything came to a screeching halt.

Blue; iridescent blue. Slim and small with deep lines carved beneath his eyes and at the edges of his mouth.

It was him.

Catching himself, Mike closed his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut.

He had to be imagining things.

That voice - he had died.

The screaming, the crashing, the tune echoing through the halls as the power kicked off-

Mike opened his eyes once more to find the door shut. Leaves rustled; a car honked as it careened through a stop sign.

He couldn't be alive.

Running a hand over his face, Mike Schmidt collected his nerves. It could wait.

It had to.

He grabbed another newspaper out of his bag and moved on.

xxx

Mike Schmidt drove a minimum of twenty miles over the speed limit for the entirety of his shift, getting stunned looks from the crew at one of the home improvement stores when he arrived with their delivery an hour early.

When he got home, he took a brisk shower, ate a TV dinner, and sat down to think.

The snippet of conversation he'd heard played over and over in his head, painfully clear.

Hey! Uh, hello! What can I do for ya?

He had encountered several people in his life who had sounded nearly identical in pronunciation, word choice, and pitch. But the voice of the man as he greeted the old woman on his doorstep…

It wasn't a coincidence.

The idea that the man who had recorded messages for him, who had kept him calm and urged him onward through what was undoubtedly the most deadly experience of his life was alive was completely and utterly incomprehensible. Schmidt sighed heavily and scrubbed his hands over his face.

He knew nothing - no phone number, no name.

Only an address.

As he walked down the street in the inky, spreading twilight, the terror he'd felt every night at the pizzeria licked at the back of his mind once more.

xxx

The house seemed shabbier in the creeping darkness. He stepped up to the door and stared, unseeing, at the brassy plate engraved with the house number. The bushes out front were small and thistly and light seeped out through the venetian blinds.

Mike knocked and waited.

"Yes?" came a muffled voice that had Mike breaking out in goosebumps. "Who is it?"

The door was opened by a pale, gaunt man with brownish hair that hung over his wide eyes. The creases at the edges of his lips and between his brows put him in his late thirties. Mike knew his jaw had dropped, and when not a single word came out, the guy in the house gave a crooked smile that was startlingly attractive and said, "Hello! What can I do for ya?"

"I'm-" He swallowed and tried again. "I worked at the - at Freddy Fazbear's. Night shift. You left messages for me."

A flicker of something - either horror or realization - passed through his eyes, and the Phone Guy opened the door a little further. "Oh! What a great surprise! You're the one that made it through the whole week, aren'tcha? I mean - ahem. Y-you know what I mean."

Fighting his stomach's writhing urge to empty itself on his feet, Mike laughed almost hysterically and nodded. "I don't - anymore. I stock shelves and drive truck now."

The man from the messages grinned again and threw out his arms. "Hey, that's good to hear. Freddy's is kind of an … entry-level job … I'm glad ya moved on to bigger and better things. Would you like to come in?"

Everything in him was screaming at Mike to turn around and walk straight home, to get as far away as possible from the individual whose life was forever unraveled like his own. To escape the chance that those long nights weren't the nightmarish imaginings he could almost believe they were now.

The desperation to know was stronger.

"Uh, sure," he replied, and Phone Guy shut the door behind him, ushering him into a cluttered living room occupied by a few chairs and half a dozen dim lamps. He sat down across from the couch that still had a divot from the last time its owner had used it, working his hands together furiously until his knuckles went white. There were papers scattered everywhere - forms, newspapers, some covered in blocks of tiny font that looked like pieces of a novel. The smaller man took a seat across from him, picking up an open beer that had left a ring of condensation on the papers beneath it.

"So." He crossed his long legs, fixing Mike in his brilliant, penetrating stare. "What brings you here? I never really got to meet any of my coworkers. The management really stretched their hours thin."

Mike swallowed thickly and pushed down another swell of panic that tried to rise in his gut. "I, uh, thought I recognized you a couple days ago from the - job. I did my interview over the phone. The other guy was already gone by the time I got there at night." His eyes darted to the floor, seeking relief from the other's gaze. "I never saw anybody. I never talked to anybody. My check was in the mail when I got home Saturday morning."

"Teamwork is a large part of any business," Phone Guy murmured thoughtfully, as if this had never occurred to him before this moment. "Not having other … humans … to interact with, it's hard." He paused for a moment, and when Mike looked up at him, his face matching to his words gave his visitor a sudden feeling of vertigo. "I really am glad you stopped by. It's good to connect with people who share the same experience."

Nodding numbly, Mike made himself breathe.

He hadn't known what to expect, but he certainly hadn't expected to react like this.

That voice. Clear and crisp and strangely, shallowly throaty, unhindered by static and the buzz of a tiny fan and the tight strain of mortal terror.

Seeing lips forming the sounds that he'd clung to, that had kept him alive night after night after the janitors had left and the sun had begun to sink and he'd remembered all over again that whether or not he was insane, this was real, real enough to fucking end his life - it made a cold sweat sweep over his skin all over again and made his heart squirm and flutter rapidly in his throat.

Mike swallowed hard and looked at the grungy rug between them. Phone Guy sighed softly and took another swig of his beer.

"Oh. Sorry. I-I didn't even think to offer ya one." The six-pack sat on the table between them, half-drained. "Do you-?"

He lifted up a bottle and sloshed it around a little with his pale, slender fingers, and Mike gladly accepted it.

They spoke between sharp, awkward silences, Mike asking the questions that he managed to force past his lips and the man responding with vague, sheepish answers as he shrugged his shoulders and crossed and uncrossed his legs. How long did you work? How many others didn't make it as long as us? When was the pizzeria established and by who? How did you get away?

The man gave a twitch that was almost a smile, shrugging his narrow shoulders. "I got lucky. Once you're around them enough, you begin to see opportunities you might not have before."

Staring down at the circle of liquid lining the bottom of his bottle, Mike clenched and unclenched his jaw. "I thought you were dead."

"Hey, surprise, surprise." Phone Guy grinned, flashing white teeth. Mike stared at him, tired, dazed, and astounded beyond words at how the man could make such a meaningless reply seem good enough. Blindingly blue eyes held his, too calm and too anxious, and Mike Schmidt reached for another beer.

He didn't speak again until he drank half the bottle, then huffed out a breath, running a hand through his short hair to quell the creeping goosebumps prickling up and down his spine.

"Those last two nights were pretty rough - if you couldn't make it, how the fuck was I supposed to?"

When he turned his gaze back to the slim figure across from him, the man from the answering machine blinked owlishly. "It goes to show you: you can accomplish a lot more than you think when you just stay calm and do what ya know."

He realized then that the man's eyes were as much a part of it as his voice. They were half-present and half-filled with a blackness that was brilliantly close to the brink of insanity. Those eyes weren't in a cluttered house upon an unexpected guest. They were in the dark, aided only by the dull flicker of fluorescent lights that would only stay on when you held down the button.

The man must have seen how Mike was looking at him, because his expression changed, pinching fleetingly before morphing into something more pensive, more open. "You'll have to excuse me - I-I'm not used to visitors."

"It's okay," Mike uttered softly.

"Is there anything else I can get you? I have-"

"No."

Phone Guy's mouth closed. He looked over Mike's tired face thoughtfully.

"There's a possibility I'm misinterpreting something here…"

"You aren't."

The man was still for a moment before setting his unfinished beer on the coffee table. Mike chose to finish his own, gulping it down and setting it beside the other empty bottle on the floor. He stood up and wondered idly how the room could be spinning lazily when he could typically handle twice as much alcohol before feeling any effects.

The gaunt figure rose from his place on the couch, slowly smoothing the creases from his shirt with both hands. The look on his face was somewhere in the gap between resigned and antsy with anticipation - like everything else, Mike couldn't read him at all.

He took a step forward, coming to stand at least three inches taller than the man whose words had kept him alive in a tomb that reeked of blood and bleach. He had no idea what he was thinking. He also knew that he had never needed anything like he needed this.

He captured the man's face between his hands and crushed their mouths together, and when they bumped into an end table and ended up against the wall, a small sound came from the smaller figure's throat and his hands came to fist in Mike's shirt. He tasted unimaginably good, and when Mike split the man's bottom lip between his teeth, he realized that nothing would make him feel alive like blood would ever, ever again. The Phone Guy only moaned softly, tugging him toward a tiny, cluttered bedroom, and when he'd ripped the man's clothes off and buried himself between his legs, his high, breathy cries made the echoes of terror and insanity rattling in Mike's head go quiet, if only for a few hours.

They lay in silence, the man gazing up at the ceiling and Mike's eyes wandering across the stacks of newspapers and books that littered a desk pushed against the far wall. He had been dozing when the man let out a long sigh, drawing him back to the present. He rolled over and looked Phone Guy up and down, still amazed that he was alive. Stretching, his limbs twitching as he balled his slim fingers into fists, the man turned his head to meet Mike's stare. There was a squished cigarette in an ashtray he hadn't noticed before, a thing that was a strikingly hideous shade of purple. "Can I ask you a question?"

After barraging the man with a myriad of questions and receiving virtually nothing in the way of answers, Mike was almost annoyed that he had the gall to ask. He was sleepy though, and for once he didn't ache all over.

"I suppose so."

"Do ya ever hear … voices? Anything strange that would remind you of your old job?"

He found himself thinking hard about it, trying to remember. Everything was a blur, marked by crisp, horrifyingly vivid swatches of clarity.

"No. I have nightmares, but things when I'm awake … they're quiet."

"Hmmm. That's pretty remarkable." His brows lifted and the man gave a genuine smile. "You seem like you were quite the professional."

Mike snorted. "I think anybody would become a professional when fucking monsters want to stuff you into a suit that will slowly bleed you to death."

At this, Phone Guy rolled over to face him, and Mike's eyes were again drawn to that narrow waist, mottled with still-darkening bruises in the shapes of his fingertips. "Oh, don't be so harsh. They're really not all that bad…"

"How can you say that? They almost killed me. They almost killed you. And for every almost, God knows how many successes there were."

"Well … yes, but does that really negate all the happiness they brought to so many more?"

Mike blinked. "Absolutely."

"Awww, come on." The slim man gazed at him lazily, propping himself up on an elbow. "Those characters have made so many children's special days unforgettable. Yes, they're a little bit glitchy at times, but so many people have a common bond - they loved Freddy and his friends as kids. How many people wanted to be Freddy or Foxy or Chica when they grew up? How many would've given anything to see through those eyes?"

Mike's mouth opened and closed and he felt his heart stutter. "Are-" His voice cracked. He swallowed and tried again. "Are you saying you-"

"Would I like to be one of the characters? Absolutely. To be immortal in the hearts and minds of children … I can't think of anything more special." He sighed forlornly, rolling back to gaze toward the ceiling as Mike glanced around the room and tried to calculate how quickly he could get to the front door. Heartbeat leaping to scream through his ears, he made himself sit up slowly and stretch. "But the kids come first … that little boy fit inside the Foxy suit far better than I would've anyway."

Mike felt his throat go dry. He stared at the floor and tried to remember how to speak.

"I think I should go."

"You don't have to," came the uncanny voice from behind him, soft and childlike. "I don't mind sharing the bed. I-I do have a problem with talking in my sleep, though."

"No." He was pulling his pants on. When he found his shirt, he stared at a stray thread where one of the buttons used to be, hands shaking. "It's late. I should be getting home."

When Phone Guy was silent behind him, Mike moved faster, grabbing his jacket out of the doorway and shoving his feet into his shoes. He kicked over an empty beer bottle on the way through the living room, considered righting it, then moved faster. The man's eyes bore into his back.

"Don't be a stranger," said Phone Guy cheerily as Mike's fingers reached the doorknob.

"I won't."

Mike Schmidt stepped outside, closing the door carefully behind him, and ran.

Wherein Phone Guy is Purple Guy from the second game. I hope he isn't, but this theory is a pretty huge one.

Can also be titled "Mike Needs To Keep It In His Pants."

:y