A/N: Alternatively titled: "Shoes in the Ball Pit" or "Everyone's Trying Their Best"
Morning came early and softly; William didn't remember the last time he had slept so well.
He wondered if he had transformed last night the way Henry said he would. To be honest, he couldn't remember most of the night. He remembered saying goodnight to Lizzie and Nick but after that…nothing. Also, he felt like he had fought with Henry at one point, but that wasn't an odd occurrence and he was sure Henry would fill him in on the details if it was bad. He yawned and twisted his head to the side, earning some pleasant pops from his neck and shoulders but when he opened his eyes, he jerked backward and he felt his heart stop.
He was naked and bloody and because of that he knew immediately he had, indeed, changed into the rabbit again. But that wasn't what had made him jump; he jumped because lying beside him on the floor, tucked snugly under his arm, looking like a sleeping forest creature in her fuzzy fleece PJs, was Elizabeth. William examined her for scratches or bite marks, but thankfully, she looked unharmed and the only blood on her was from him.
He glared up at the basement door, anger boiling at Henry for letting her get all the way down. She must have come down in the morning after he had changed back or she wouldn't have made it to the bottom of the stairs. If she had come down here when he was still transformed…he chased the bloody image out of his mind.
William carefully disentangled himself from her and, using the stuffed animals he had been sleeping on as an unsuccessful covering, he lurched over to the desk and fished his jeans out from where they had gotten kicked underneath.
"Daddy?" Elizabeth's groggy voice floated up from the floor.
William quickly zipped his pants and pulled his shirt on. Don't panic, he told himself. Whatever you do, you can't panic in front of her.
He spun around with a disbelieving smile pasted on his face, as though he hadn't just been spooning his own daughter nude. "Lizzie!" he said too loudly with a nervous laugh. "What are you doing down here so early?"
Elizabeth hopped up from the floor, beaming. "I saw you when you were a rabbit!" she squealed. "You were big and yellow and you growled at me, but I let you borrow my stuffed animals and then you let me snuggle with you!"
William stood staring at her in silence, hands clenching the desk behind him so hard his fingernails hurt. His ears started to burn and then the blush spread to his cheeks. She was still smiling at him, bouncing in place like a toddler, too excited to notice how uncomfortable he was, too enthralled to stand still. William didn't know what to say. Elizabeth came skipping over to him and he bent to her height.
"That's…impossible," he said quietly, praying that she would agree and admit that she was teasing him and she had snuck into the basement just an hour or so ago.
"Nuh-uh," she insisted. She smiled, raised her hand, and stroked it once over his messy hair, as though she were petting a dog.
When her hand made contact, fragments of memories and sensations sparked behind his eyes. An abandoned attack, wide eyes in the dead of night, the smell of Lizzie on a Bonnie plush, a hand touching his head smoothing all his worries away.
William jerked upward out of her reach, nearly colliding with her nose. Elizabeth looked just as confused as he was but he didn't offer any explanations. Instead, he inched sideways along his desk, as though squeezing out from under her gaze, and shakily climbed the stairs without another word. The door was unlocked and when he opened it, he saw Henry asleep at his desk, face buried in his arms, the chair slowly sliding away. William clenched his jaw and kicked the chair out from under him.
Henry hit his face on the desk and fell to the floor with a surprised shout and William resisted the urge to kick the shit out of him. He couldn't tell whether it was fully his anger or if some of the rabbit's aggression was still in him, but he didn't care. The fact still remained that Elizabeth could have died and it was Henry's fault. Henry picked himself off the floor and rubbed his forehead. "Will," he said surprised, looking up at him. "You're awake and dressed already." Will did kick him then, though not as hard as he wanted to. "Ouch, hey!" Henry clutched his throbbing shin. "What'd I do?" He paused and recognition seeped into his eyes. "How did you get through the door?"
"Elizabeth was down there with it," said William, his fists shaking at his sides. Henry was supposed to be the reliable one. William knew he left the oven on sometimes and forgot to order supplies for Freddy's and didn't always wear latex gloves when handling the animatronics' circuit boards, but he knew, whenever he did something careless, Henry would be there to fix it and make sure no one got hurt. William trusted him with his family, and he didn't trust anyone with his family.
William grabbed fistfuls of Henry's shirt and pulled him closer. "Elizabeth was down there with it!" He lifted him and pinned him against the desk. He wanted to bash Henry's head against the wall until he understood. "No ropes! No muzzle! Nothing but a couple horse pills preventing it from—"
Henry's eyes widened in horror. He pulled out of William's grip and William let him go. He stumbled down the stairs and called desperately for Elizabeth. He got a cheerful, "Morning, Uncle Henry!" in response. He said something else unintelligible to Elizabeth and she responded. Staggering to the entrance to the second basement, William sat on the top step and watched them talk, legs shaking too much to stand anymore, head so heavy, he scooted to the side so he could lean it against the doorframe. He couldn't imagine what he would have done if the rabbit had gotten Lizzie. He probably would have exploded like dynamite on the spot and taken half the house with him.
"You can't ever do that again," Henry was saying, as Elizabeth crossed her arms defiantly. "You need to say sorry to your dad and promise you'll never do it again. Go on."
Elizabeth dragged her feet up the stairs and stood in front of William. She smelled like the Cotton Candy Crush lip gloss she had begged him to get her the last time they were at the grocery store together. The scent was strong, much stronger than Will remembered it being, and it mingled with another scent he knew was uniquely Elizabeth's, as well as the scent of something he knew was rabbit. He covered his nose and looked at his feet, trying and failing to stop the feral part of his brain from making connections. He didn't want to get information from smell; that's what logic and reasoning were for.
Elizabeth rocked back and forth on the stair, making it creak loudly each time. "Sorry," she mumbled. She glanced back at Henry who was hauling the rope, muzzle and blanket to the back of the room. He wasn't watching her to make sure she finished her apology, so she bailed early and started to sneak upstairs. Will caught her hand as she passed.
"You could have gotten hurt," William said under his breath. "Really hurt, Lizzie, do you understand?"
"But you liked it," she protested. "You lowered your ears and got all relaxed."
"That…thing…wasn't me," said William. His heart raced just talking about it. "It's a wild animal. It's rabid. Remember Old Yeller?"
Elizabeth gave a pained look. "I hate that movie."
"Well," said William, "it's like that. And it'll kill you and Nicky and Mike and Charlie and anyone else without a second thought." He squeezed her hand, partially to comfort her and partially to comfort himself. "Don't come down here at night ever again, okay?" Elizabeth was quiet. He gave her hand a shake. "Okay?" he pressed.
"Okay, Daddy." Her lip quivered and she wiped her eye. "I just didn't want you to be lonely," she sniffled.
William sighed a "C'mere" and pulled her into his lap. "You're very thoughtful," he said, gently stroking her shoulder. "But let's save your kindness for the daytime when I can enjoy it. The rabbit doesn't deserve it."
"You looked so sad—"
"It wasn't," insisted William. "Because it doesn't feel or think. Now run along upstairs. Uncle Henry and I will be up soon to make breakfast." Elizabeth slowly got up and disappeared into the kitchen. William watched her go and vowed to watch her more closely from now on.
"That's not entirely true," said Henry from below. "The rabbit appears to feel quite a few emotions. Fear, curiosity, anger—"
"Shut up." William whipped around to glare at him. "I don't want to hear another word unless it's about how you're going to fix all of this."
"Don't take your anger out on me," said Henry. "I'm just trying to help. Sorry Lizzie got past me last night, but we'll get a padlock for the door and it won't happen again. I'm going to start looking for a way to reverse this. If there's a cure, we'll find it."
William gripped his knees tighter, relishing the pain from his fingernails. "I told you to stop playing with that godforsaken battery acid—"
Henry threw his hands up in exasperation. "And I told you not to eat the damn pizza!"
William scowled and looked away. There was a long moment when neither of them talked. They listened to the sound of Elizabeth's sock-clad footsteps above their heads as she walked around the living room. Henry sighed and lumbered up the stairs. Even though William was still fuming, he scooted over to make room for Henry to sit next to him.
"We need to work together to solve this problem, not point fingers," said Henry. "We can't let this thing separate us."
"What if it isn't solvable?" William asked, staring into the ransacked basement.
Henry leaned his elbows on his own knees and stared into the basement as well. "Everything's solvable," he replied. He glanced at William and gave him a wan smile. "For the Freddy-Bonnie dream team."
William didn't respond and they stared into the gloomy basement together. Back when they first opened Freddy's, William had truly believed that. Inventing and building their own robot animals by hand and teaching them to sing and dance? Can do. It didn't matter if it hadn't been done before, because with Will and Henry working together, they always figured it out. A house where there were twice as many kids as adults? No problem. It never occurred to William that they could fail at anything. Every loss they'd had since starting the restaurant was just the prelude to hard-won success. But now, their current situation might truly be unwinnable, even for the dream team.
"Are you hungry?" Henry asked.
William was about to deny it when his stomach growled, loud and long. "A little," he admitted. His hunger alarmed him because he wanted more than anything to plunge his teeth into some giant mass of meat like a turkey leg or a pork loin. Rabbits weren't even supposed to eat meat; shouldn't he be craving carrots or tulip bulbs?
Henry pushed up from the stairs. "I'll make some eggs," he said as he left.
William sat alone, fingers working at the seam in his jeans, gears in his brain working at the hellish puzzle. He stared down at the piled-up blanket, now stained with his blood. The change last night had happened too suddenly and forcefully for Henry to get the ropes and muzzle on. The infection was fully spread through him and, after two transformations, William feared whatever was causing it had already fused permanently with him. Henry talked as though he thought it might be reversible, but William wasn't so sure. At the same time, William couldn't bring himself to accept he would be living this way for the rest of his life. His stomach hurt. Hesitantly, he smoothed his hands over his hair and closed his eyes, trying to draw up the feeling of security he'd gotten when Elizabeth did it; all it did was make him terrified that one day the rabbit would kill her, and then the boys.
He went upstairs, careful not to make eye contact with Lizzie or Henry as he passed, and took a shower to wash off the dirt and blood from last night. Slowly, in the heat of the shower, his panic melted away with the grime. The steam from the shower smelled like flowery soap, the hot water felt like a massage on his knotted muscles, and the coolness on his scalp when he stepped out to dry himself off made him feel alive in a way he hadn't felt for years. There was still happiness to be found, even in terrible situations, he thought, like grass growing up through pavement. The thought crossed his mind that this sudden change in mood might be a rabbit symptom but he welcomed the lifting of the raincloud, regardless.
When he came back down to the kitchen wearing a clean polo and jeans and feeling like maybe his world hadn't fully imploded, the other three kids were staggering downstairs. Henry was eating breakfast with Elizabeth at the table and he looked up and smiled.
"You're looking better," he said, dishing a pile of steaming, cheese-and-spinach scrambled eggs onto a clean plate.
William sat beside Elizabeth and poured himself some orange juice. "I'm feeling a little better," he said. He put a forkful of eggs into his mouth. "Though those pills aren't sitting well."
Henry shrugged, getting up to put bread in the toaster. "They're not really made for human consumption, I suppose."
William cracked a weak smile, thinking that the Freddy-Bonnie dream team was still intact, against all odds, and how glad he was that he didn't have to figure this out alone. He took a drink to hide it. "I guess not." Elizabeth silently took the apple slice from her plate and set it on William's like an apology. William smiled and put the whole thing into his mouth, making her giggle, their fight forgotten.
The Afton boys came wandering into the kitchen in their pajamas, blinking and tired and searching for food. Charlie came in after them, fully dressed in shorts, boots, and an old band tee.
"Morning, Dad," she said as she squeezed past Henry and took a piece of toast half-cooked from the toaster.
"Morning, Charlotte," said Henry. "Where are you off to so early on a Saturday?"
"Jess, Marla, the guys and I are going hiking today," she said, drizzling honey on the bread, folding it over and taking a bite.
"Where?"
"Memorial State Park. We'll be back before dark."
"If you aren't, I'll be calling Jessica's mom," warned Henry.
"I know, I know," said Charlie. There was the squealing of truck breaks and a honk from the driveway. "That's them." Charlie shoved the rest of the toast into her mouth. "Bye, Dad." She gave him a toast-filled kiss on the cheek and waved at the table as she left. "Bye, Uncle Will." William waved back.
The front door opened and before it closed, the sound of "Bro, you excited?" and Charlie replying, "Hells yeah! Gonna own this mountain, Johnny boy!" floated through the living room and into the kitchen.
Michael sat unhappily at the table. "John's so freaking annoying," he complained. "I don't know why Charlie hangs out with him."
William dished up a second serving of eggs with a glance at Henry to see if he was listening. Will didn't like John, either; the boy was too nice, too polite, and would rather eat a dinner roll dry than ask someone to pass the butter. "Why aren't you going hiking with them, Michael?" he asked.
"Because…" Michael scooted a fork across the table. "The rabbit thing, and they're her friends anyway, so—"
"Go," said William. "I'm all right today."
"They're already leaving—"
"Lizzie, could you tell them to wait and that Mike's coming along?"
Elizabeth jumped up from the table and threw open the front door. Nicholas followed her out, excited by the activity.
Michael watched in horror as she delivered the news. He face-planted on the table, making the cutlery shake. "I hate you, Dad," he muttered through clenched teeth.
"It's too late to back out now," said William.
Mike, red-faced and angry, pushed up from the table and ran upstairs to get dressed.
Henry had watched the whole scene unfold from his spot by the toaster. He heard Michael's door slam upstairs. "You can't force people to have fun," he said, shaking his head.
William chuckled. "That's our job, isn't it? Otherwise we wouldn't throw so many birthday parties. Besides, he needs to get out more. Spend time with kids his age. I don't want him to end up weird and antisocial." William wiped his mouth on his shirt, dished himself a third serving, and chugged another glass of orange juice.
Henry paused, watching the display, then brought the toast to the table and sat down. They talked about Freddy's and the parties that had been lined up that weekend and how it was time to trim the tree in the backyard, and William said he wanted to add hamburger pizza to the Freddy's menu, which Henry didn't seem to approve of. "It's a pizza with tomato, onion, hamburger and barbecue sauce. Two perfect foods combined, Henry, what don't you like?" he said, but Henry didn't budge. They talked about everything except the rabbit. A couple minutes later, they watched Michael tumble down the stairs with his shirt on backward, then run out the door and greet Charlie's friends with a nervous laugh and apology. He shooed his siblings back inside and closed the door. Even if it was with John, William hoped Mike would let himself have fun.
Elizabeth and Nicky wandered back into the kitchen, clearly upset that they weren't allowed to go hiking with the big kids. William turned in his chair to face them.
"How would you two like to come to Freddy's with Uncle Henry and me?" he asked. Their frowns softened into smiles.
"Can I play in the arcade for free?" asked Elizabeth.
"I wanna go in the ball pit!" cheered Nicholas.
"I'll give you tokens, Lizzie. And Nick, the ball pit is always waiting for you," said William, standing. "Now run along and get ready! We'll be leaving as soon as everyone is dressed." His children cheered again and ran upstairs. William smiled smugly to himself and watched them go. That disgruntled mother last week was wrong; he was incredibly good with children.
"I didn't know you were planning on coming in today," said Henry.
William turned around with a wide smile. "Of course I'm coming in," he said. "We can't close the pizzeria on a Saturday, Henry, come on."
Henry scratched his beard. "I don't know. We need to be careful."
William piled the dirty dishes and took them to the sink. "As long as we leave before sunset, I'll be fine," he said. The words came so smoothly, but he still felt a jab of adrenaline deep in his spine. He rubbed his eyes and smoothed out the wrinkles to make sure he wasn't making a strange face before turning around again.
Henry stared up at him, swirling his coffee in thought. "No Springbonnie today," he said. "I don't want you straining yourself."
"Gotcha."
"And try to limit your interactions with the customers," added Henry. "You seem better, but you're still in no condition to be working today."
William laughed but the smile didn't reach his eyes. "Give me some credit." He felt Henry's eyes boring into him, judging. "What do you think is going to happen? I'm going to flip and bite someone?" Henry visibly jolted and William's smile dropped. "The rabbit comes out at night, Henry. I'm fine during the day. Just a little sore."
Henry rubbed the back of his neck. "Better safe than sorry, Will."
William wanted to give him a piece of his mind, but he took a deep breath and the urge subsided. "Fine," he relented, shutting the fridge a little too forcefully. "I'll work in the back today. Maybe I'll find the cure without you."
"I hope you do," said Henry as he left to change into clothes that didn't look like he had slept in them.
William grumbled irritably to himself and went to the back door, wanting to sit out there while everyone finished getting ready, but then he remembered that Nicholas didn't really know how to dress himself and Elizabeth would definitely forget her jacket. So, with a last wistful glance outside at the porch swing, he turned around and went upstairs to supervise.
When they got to Freddy's, there were already a couple cars in the parking lot waiting. This wasn't uncommon on a warm summer Saturday morning since some customers had gotten it into their heads that they opened at nine instead of ten due to a typo in a flier a while back, but these parents really picked a rotten day to misremember. It gave William and Henry absolutely no time to prepare for the day and got on William's nerves even when he was feeling great. As the parents and kids began to emerge from their cars, Elizabeth helped Nicholas squirm out of his booster seat, and William, the jab of adrenaline still sticking his spine, wondered if he should have stayed home after all.
"You gonna be okay?" Henry asked under his breath.
William looked at the children running to the front glass doors and peering excitedly into the dark restaurant. He glanced over all the cheerful posters in the windows: Freddy singing, Chica eating pizza, Bonnie strumming his guitar, and Fredbear and Springbonnie dancing surrounded by happy children. A lump settled in William's throat; he loved this place, even if it had poisoned him. He took off his own seatbelt and turned around to warn his kids not to run in the parking lot. They promised not to and got out of the car. William moved to get out, too, but Henry lay his hand on his arm. He looked into his eyes, brows knit in concern.
"I'm fine," William said, pulling his arm free. He opened the passenger side door and got out without another word. Immediately, he transformed from "worried Will" to "Mr. Afton." He held his head high and strutted to the customers with confidence, a wide, carefree smile on his scarred face. "Welcome, folks!" he greeted, shaking hands with all the parents. "Glad to have you here. And what a fine morning!"
The parents, who had previously looked a little peeved at having to wait, were quickly infected by his charisma and shook his hand back with gusto. "Sorry we're a bit early," said a father in a neon windbreaker. "Hope we didn't inconvenience you."
"Not at all," said William, and he said it so earnestly, he almost believed it, himself. "Well, let's not waste any more time standing out here. Let's have some fun!" Glancing back, he saw Henry following quietly from a distance, his hands in his jacket pockets. The windbreaker dad asked what happened to William's face, and William, only half paying attention, replied he didn't know.
When they went inside, Henry got the parents set up with a round of fountain drinks and tater tots, and William got the stage animatronics up and running. There were only Freddy and Chica up on stage since Bonnie's insides and fur were still stained and corroded from the goop. William sat crouched in the little control room under the stage, booting up the robots and selecting the programmed song and dance. From that room, he could see camera feed as well and on the camera showing the costume and spare parts room, he could see Bonnie crumpled up in the corner, chest open and endoskeleton exposed, looking as worn out and broken as William felt. He looked into Bonnie's eyes in the camera for a while longer and he imagined they were looking back at him.
"Everything okay in there?"
Will jumped at the sound of Henry's voice and hit his elbow on the control panel, causing Freddy and Chica to jolt unnaturally in the middle of their introduction. Rubbing a new sore place, William glanced back at Henry.
"I'm fine," he said, a little sharper than he meant to. Quit checking up on me, he wanted to add, but when Henry smiled compassionately at him in response, he couldn't.
"Okay," said Henry. "The sample is in the top drawer of my desk, if you wanted to do any analyzing today."
"Thanks." William continued to rub his arm.
Henry went to duck back out of the control room and paused. "If you need anything, give me a holler, okay?" He flashed another pitying smile, then left to attend to the customers.
For another minute, William watched the animatronics on stage, making sure they were following their programming and playing the right song. Then, after another glance at gutted Bonnie in the corner, he left to check on his kids, who he could see imperfectly through the monitors. As they had announced at the breakfast table, Elizabeth was in the arcade room, having already grabbed a pocketful of tokens from William's desk, and Nicky had gone straight to the ball pit. He hadn't taken his shoes off before he jumped in. Though William appreciated his carefree attitude, those plastic balls were torture to clean. He'd better tell him to remove his shoes. At least it would give Will something to do.
As William walked through the main party room and toward the ball pit room, he found himself cringing at the high notes in Freddy and Chica's song, and the high pitch of child voices. He felt like his head was full of cotton and those high pitched tones set that cotton on fire. He looked at his feet as he walked and angled his face away from the room, so that, if Henry was looking, he wouldn't be able to see that the noise was bothering him so much.
William hurried across the sticky confetti carpet overdue for shampooing, and ducked into the ball pit room. The ball pit was set into the floor like a swimming pool, surrounded with mesh netting and had big red and blue plastic slides twisting above and around it like giant hamster tunnels. There was a mat in front that said: "Please remove your shoes" and a wooden cubby shelf with spaces for said shoes. While there were three children in the pit beside Nicholas, there were no shoes in the cubbies.
"Nicky?" William called, standing on the edge of the ball pit. He scanned the children, searching for his son's fluffy mop of brown hair. "You in there?"
The children stopped yelling for a bit, but when they realized William wasn't calling for any of them, they went back to giggling and playing, dunking each other under the balls and climbing through the tubes. William cringed as their voices pierced behind his eyes like a migraine. Nick popped his head out of the top of the red slide.
"Hi, Daddy," he greeted, smiling so big and bright that William found his own lips turning up at the corners.
William lifted one foot and pointed. "Shoes," he said, then addressed the other children. "All of you, shoes off. No shoes allowed in the ball pit."
Nick was about to unvelcro his shoes when a girl in overalls threw a ball at him. He looked shocked at first, but when she laughed and crawled away, he floundered after her. William clenched his teeth together. "Nick!" he called again. Nick didn't answer. The screaming continued bouncing off the bare walls. William wanted to press his hands to his ears and back out of the room, or fish the little brats out of the pit and wring their noisy little necks. The fire in his head began to seep down into his lungs and he had trouble breathing. He clenched his hands tight, fists shaking; the anger had a coppery taste to it and while he knew it wasn't normal, he couldn't make himself calm down.
"Nicholas William Afton!" Will shouted. "You come out here and remove your shoes this instant!" He glared at all the children in turn; he smelled their sweat, their tater tot breath, their fear. If they didn't remove their shoes in the next five seconds, he would rip them off.
Nicholas was still poking his head out of the top tube, but now he looked frightened, too frightened to come down. When William stalked to the other side of the ball pit to get closer, the other children snuck out the front and ran out of the room. Elizabeth barely dodged them when she came in.
"Daddy, I'm out of tokens," she said, "can I…" Her question died when she saw her little brother's face.
William whipped around to face her and, for some reason, he hated her deep in his soul. Even though he never wanted to hurt her, part of him deep down wanted to bite a chunk out of her neck. He had been angry before, but never like this; it was as if he had gone over a drop in a roller coaster and he was going too fast to catch himself. He covered his ears with shaking hands, trying to drown out the child voices from the other room long enough so he could think. He closed his eyes and held his breath, anything to block the stimuli that were driving him crazy. He backed away from the ball pit, away from Nick and Lizzie, until he hit the wall.
Sliding to the floor, he buried his head in his knees and wrapped his arms around them tight, waiting for the anger to pass like a wave of nausea. He was nauseated; he felt the way he had that first night he changed. But how could that be? It was daytime! He shouldn't be changing! He felt his heart beating behind his eyelids. His ribs, arms and legs ached as if getting ready to break and grow. He didn't trust his voice, so he didn't say anything, just squeezed his arms tighter and tighter, hoping his kids would get to safety on their own. He heard Nicky crying.
"Go find Uncle Henry," said Elizabeth.
"What's wrong with Daddy's eyes?" blubbered Nicholas.
"Go to Uncle Henry," Elizabeth repeated more sternly and close by. "I know what to do." Nicholas obeyed and William heard his tiny shoes running out of the room.
William lowered his head further into his lap. "No, Lizzie," he said, his voice strained and muffled. It sounded like a sob, and maybe it was. "Go with your brother." He couldn't get anything else out, afraid that if he let up on his restraints, he'd hurt her.
By his right ear, he heard her get onto her knees. And then he felt her hand, small and soft and gentle, petting the top of his head. A chill ran down his spine. Slowly, his bones stopped pulling at each other.
He felt the rabbit sinking inside him like sediment. For now, it was losing its grip on him, its claws relaxing as it went back to sleep, its rampage postponed for another day. The rabbit was always there, he realized, observing even during the day, waiting for circumstances to put just the right kind of pressure on him that would allow it to surface fully; apparently, one of those circumstances was children.
He squeezed his arms tighter and buried his head further, not because he was afraid of hurting Lizzie anymore, but because he wanted to shrink away into nothingness. If his condition meant he couldn't handle being around children, what was he as a father and a kids-restaurant owner supposed to do? Without realizing it was happening, he began to cry, even though he had vowed never to do so in front of his children. Black tears soaked and stained his polo shirt. Maybe, with his head buried, Lizzie wouldn't notice.
But she did. She draped her other arm over his shaking shoulders. "Shh," she said as she continued to pet his head. "You're a good bunny, Daddy. You're a good bunny."
But he wasn't. He had been seconds away from obliterating those kids. He wanted to believe that he would have stopped himself in time but he worried that, if Elizabeth hadn't come in when she did, he might not have. He might have literally killed them for not taking off their shoes. And worse, he wasn't sure he could blame all of it on the rabbit.
A/N: Even as awkward teens in a completely different reality, somehow CharliexMichael is sneaking its way into my story. Though, maybe just on Michael's end, and if you asked him about it, he'd deny it. And just for the record, I like John. I think he's a great character. Mike's grumping about him does not reflect the opinions of the writer.
And what will William do now that his outbursts have consequences? He's not off the hook during the day like he originally thought. Gotta find some holistic, long term solutions and fast, just in case there isn't a cure.
