Chapter Text
The relationship between the night guard— which would be you— and the daycare attendant is a fascinating one. If you had to describe it in one word, it would be something akin to hate.
At the beginning it was truly baffling how highly the others spoke of the daycare attendant— a bit loud, a bit raucous, but ultimately an enjoyable guy. You never saw that. It took a day off, around three months in, and the need to pick up your cousin from the daycare to truly understand. Sure, fine. Okay. It was a hard admission to make, but Sun was a pleasant experience. He greeted you at the door as if every other time you met he hadn’t threatened to bite your nose clean off, and shook your hand with the resounding sound of what you came to realize was a bell. A bell, the kind you’d strap onto a cat’s collar. But the lights could not stay on all night long, and eventually that little ball of slightly grating sunshine had to disappear.
Without children to soften his hard edges, Moon is a brat of truly epic proportions.
That was where you currently stood. The other animatronics were a nuisance, but nothing a quick button press (or, unnervingly, sometimes an argument would work better. As if they could understand and reason with you) couldn’t fix. Moon drew your ire in a particularly unique way and thus you gave away your shifts for the daycare as often as possible.
Eventually, favors ran out. You could be the best coworker in the world, but eventually people had to tire of your shift-switching shit.
That was exactly why you stood, now, deep into the ballpit at two points of articulation (ankle and elbow), rooting around for some kid’s lost hat.
Just give him another hat from the gift shop. God damn it, this was far below your pay grade.
Another low growl echoed from the far corner of the daycare, reminding you of something else that was far below your paygrade. You’d been ignoring it for a few minutes now, mostly preoccupied with wiggling around the colorful plastic hellscape. The third time, however, piqued your interest.
“Intense fight with the Crayola box?” You called out into the night, not even deigning to look up from the sea of balls. Rough, cloven fabric brushed against the back of your hand and you snatched at it. Triumphantly, you unearthed the tattered little hat from the ballpit, and held it up. Somehow, you’d been expecting Moon to be standing at your shoulder when you did. It was a little like showing off a good catch, the blue sun-and-moon patterned cap in your hand like a bigass salmon.
No Sun, nor Moon. The daycare lay ahead of you, a vast expanse that was only sparsely lit by the stars far above, and completely devoid of towering animatronics.
Instead, from the inky black, he snarled at you again.
“Oh, for fucks—” Your shoulders fell as you hossed the hat onto one of the plastic foam blocks lining the ballpit. It was impossible to move quietly through this place, as you all but swam towards the edge of the pit, the constantly swaying and rattling of balls announced your arrival onto hard ground. “Moon?”
He barked back. Could he bark? He could now, apparently.
The play structure lay ahead, beckoning you forward, and thus you did. No need to call out for Moon again, no need to play a little marco-polo game through the little colourful bars. His growling (and once you got closer, audible struggling sounds), led you through the structure until you came upon a particular sight. Stuck in an odd position, the ass of his ridiculous parachute pants stared you directly in the eyes. It was hard not to laugh, and after a moment, you remembered you didn’t particularly care about his feelings.
So you did laugh. You laughed as you sat down on the nearest bar, elbows on your knees, taking in the sight.
He was stuck. Trapped, like a little cat. Wrapped up in the polyester bands that were meant to form a sort of fun little web for kids to crawl through— the gaps were perfectly sized for children, and apparently slightly too large for ten feet tall animatronics to wiggle around in. Who’d have fuckin’ thought?
“Didn’t they—” You paused, as the sounds of your voice startled him to life again. He barked and snapped and wiggled and did so much that got him absolutely nowhere, and a slow grin spread across your face. “Didn’t they tell you to stop going in the play structure?”
No reply. He adamantly refused. The wiggling simply intensified.
So you continued. “I mean, I could have sworn after the first time you got stuck—”
A bark, clearly intending to shut you up.
It didn’t work. You continued again: “... I mean, you’re just a little too big for stuff like this. And it scares the shit out of the kids when you—”
“You’re a security guard—” He finally hissed out, voice curling at the edges with pure potent rage. Not as if it were so different from his usual voice. You had always questioned the decision to pick a voice box that made him sound like a Disney villain. “Will you do your job and get me out?”
“My job, actually, is to make sure you don’t get into these messes.” You corrected him with a sly grin. “Not get you out of them.”
It prompted some sort of noise out of him. Halfway between another growl, and a cry of rage. Either way, it was satisfying, and you were slightly worried if you let him wiggle any harder he’d bring the entire structure down with him. The bars were starting to click and jostle in a concerning way, honestly.
“Alright, alright— christ, would you stop—”
Your fingers first unhooked the strap that had become wrapped around his upper bicep, uncurling him. For an animatronic so hell-bent on getting help, he seemed to fight you every step of the way— it was a viscous struggle to free him, and once he was free, that arm merely contributed to the unhelpful wiggling and trashing. One by one you picked away at the straps, growing less gentle every time. Your patience, already string thing, was being plucked. Worse enough, the more mobility he regained, the more range he had available. His struggling became less of a slight nuisance and more of a genuine safety hazard, even if he was still pinned directly in half with his face flat to the ropes.
That was when you came to notice the strap wrapped around his neck.
Silly enough, it sent your heart racing for the briefest of moments. It took a stern reminder that he was an animatronic, of all things. A robot. The neck was just a pole that stapled his head to his body. Provided no function outside of that. There was no breath that moved in and out of him, even if they did program his chest to expand and collapse as if it did. He was completely fine.
And yet, if you ignored the big goofy faceplate that they’d grafted onto him, he seemed so starkly human to you at times. You’d never admit it, but you were a little hastier in reaching for the strap around his neck than you’d like.
Upon closer examination, he’d managed to gum up some of the wires around it.
Though his face plate was bright and shiny (and a little unnerving, admittedly, but you weren’t the target audience for it— ) the underside was a jumble of wires and panels and shiny little buttons that you were honestly afraid of even breathing on. The back looked akin to the cockpit of an airplane, so many dials you didn’t know what to do with them. Made all the more difficult, of course, by the fact that he refused to hold still.
Your fingertips hesitated above the metal for a moment, trying to locate exactly what wire was twisted. Try as you might, though, it was nearing impossible.
“Would you— christ—” He jostled once again, and the bands underneath your feet lurched. You steadied yourself by planting a hand on his back, and that only made him angrier. “It’s all wrapped up in your wires. Just sit still. How’d you manage this—”
“My—”
At once, he stilled.
“... my wires?”
“Yes!” You snapped back, and then was awash with a little wave of guilt. Underneath your palm, he was calm. Deadly still, finally. “Thank you. I’m not going to unplug anything, okay? I just need to get a look—”
Foolish assumption, of yours. That the calm that came over him was fear. You’d be scared, too, if your equivalent of a neck wire (maybe an artery) was wrapped up tight. One wrong move, and it’d get unplugged (or in the case of an artery, sliced entirely in two), and he’d shut down, or short circuit, or his memory would be deleted altogether. Just an assumption, and you certainly weren’t afraid to admit that part of your own fear was born out of the fact that you might get fired for such a thing. At least you agreed on one thing: you didn’t want this bot shut down.
“Do you know what this wire does?”
This wire, of course, being the one you loosely circled with your fingertips. With the most gentle touch you could muster, you gave it a little tug to make sure he could feel it.
Underneath your other palm, he did something strange. He almost-- tensed, as if that were a thing he were capable of doing. The metal joints that held him together, the springlocks. They all condensed together, forming something tight and dangerous. You could only imagine you were testing his patience with all of this, and thus you pictured his next reply to be something harsh.
Instead, he all but whispered it.
“I am… unaware of the functions of my wires.”
It was so soft. A tentative little thing, you had to lean forward to hear him. That in itself was daunting. Though Sun was by far the louder one of the duo, Moon was by no means a quiet little thing. He spoke with the same timbre, the same panache-- just a little creepier is all.
Either way, that was wholly unhelpful. You bit your lip.
“You wanna chance it?”
His springs shuddered again, and out came his faint reply: “… what other choice do we have?”
“I suppose none,” you admitted, and a groan emanated from him. “Alright, alright. It doesn’t look important. Let’s just hope you’ve got some good engineers. Hold on.”
Your fingers tightened around the metal band that held the wire in place, and you gave it a sharp twist.
In reply, Moon did something odd.
He had this… funny little function that you could only assume was a fan system.
You’d heard it operate, once or twice before. Once in the middle of the night, which had damn near made you shit yourself and to this day you never understood why it had activated in that moment or what, even, its purpose was at all. The second time had been when you’d picked your cousin up from daycare, and you’d witnessed a child taking a diving leap onto Sun’s chest. With that context, it sounded more akin to a parent wheezing in pain when a child was far too rough with their old, frail bodies and— even though you were almost certain it had hurt the child more to bounce off of this metal animatronic— the notion of teaching empathy came to mind. The child had climbed off. She had apologized in turn, and Sun had scooped her up and they’d moved along as if it were nothing at all. Maybe you were overthinking it, anyway. Maybe it was just a cooling system, and he was like a big dumb computer.
Either way, this was the third time you’d heard it activate.
Fans whirring in a short little burst— and inhale, a gasp if you were to stupidly liken it to a human function— and your fingertips froze on the metal.
“... Moon?”
Images of malfunctioned, dispatched animatronics were dancing around your head. Followed quickly by a pink slip, and maybe an eviction notice. When the animatronic stirred after a moment of terse silence, however, those fears were dashed away entirely. You sighed in relief.
“Don’t scare me like that,” You muttered, and your fingertips went back to twisting. “I thought I’d unplugged something important.”
“I—”
“Just one more twist. You’re almost out.” Unwilling to wait for what you could only assume would be another argument, your fingers dove right back to work. And, within a split second-- “There!”
Your nails brushed against hard metal, and you gave one final tug. And then in the following second, a great multitude of things happened.
First and foremost, a little shock hit the underside of your nails.
That was a good thing. Even if you’d gotten electrocuted in a tiny and rather insignificant way, it was better that you let go and jerked your hand backwards. Mostly because if you hadn’t done it then, by the time the second thing rolled around, your arm might have been taken clean off. Which, that reminds me—
Two: there was a ripping noise. One that was wholly unfamiliar, and far different from the sound of ripping cotton. It was loud, and it was painfully slow— each fiber tearing apart, because polyester rope was simply not made to be ripped clean in half like that. But it did, because god bless his little animatronic soul, Moon was a hulking chunk of metal.
Three: Moon sat up and freed himself. And then he turned to face you.
You scuttled backwards, in one instance your hand missing the ropes and falling clean up to your elbow through a gap— only to take in the heaving animatronic above you.
You did not fear the daycare attendant.
You tried not to, anyway. It was hard not to give in to your most animalistic instincts, which screamed at you to get away from this giant hulking death machine. Your only consolation was that this thing was built for kids, and surely did not have a mean bone in its body. It couldn’t have possibly been programmed to have one, after all. That in itself was a thin veneer, something that provided you little comfort at the best of times--
Especially now.
“Moon,” You protested in a tiny voice, and hated the way it shivered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to--”
“Stop.”
The words died in your mouth, the little corpses lodged somewhere on the back of your tongue. Somewhere above, the air was filled instead with the whirring buzz of LEDs and mechanics as the animatronic drew closer. Below, the straps sagged and protested in a rather alarming way-- clearly, not meant to hold both of your weight at once. You were impressed it held up for this long. It was designed for children. Not for… this.
Whatever this was.
For it wasn’t quite a threat, that you were sure of.
“Do it again.”
The low growl, the low order.Trembling, you peered up at him as if you didn’t understand.
“... again?”
He refused to look your way. The glowing eye merely dodged your line of sight, obsessively avoiding at all costs.
“Don’t make me say please.”
For the first time, you noticed a gap under the chest piece where exposed wires hung. Seemed dangerous for grabbing little children hands, but as you tentatively held out a hand, he arced your way. As if you were doing something right.
Your fingertip met one of the wires that hung a little lower than the rest-- a little safer, and ran along the casing until your nail caught a plug and snagged.
Something within him jolted. The noise that followed was not one of metal calculations, but directly from his voice box-- if you had to call it something, you’d call it a moan.
Immediately, your hand darted back, and another noise followed: a noise of protest, a little whine.
“Please--”
He broke his golden rule, the word barked out as if it physically pained him to do so. Your retreating hand paused, and his chest arced more. Opening up that space below as if it were tempting, and weren’t an OSHA violation of pinched and torn fingers just waiting to happen.
And yet that voice. Oh, god, why the fuck were you doing this?
With the utmost care, your hands snuck up under his chassis and probed at the tangle of wires underneath. He reached in turn, his spine doing something positively filthy as he squirmed-- your fingers curled into the wires, and his back arced more, and it was somewhat embarrassing to admit how stricken you were by it all.
It was hard to imagine a robot could move so fluidly, but his-- arousal? Was it enough to call it that? Whatever it was, it was so easy and smooth and perfect to understand. Something squirmed in your lower gut.
He moved with nowhere to touch, nothing to grab onto. You were hit with a pang of guilt for that-- momentarily at least, it was hard to imagine the sensation of arousal with nowhere to put it. No means to an end. Yet as you watched closer, you were hit by the realization that he seemed to revel in it. There was no hint of discomfort in his knotted shoulders, no sense of urgency-- he had nowhere to go, and that seemingly endless arousal appealed to him.
He could never snap. He could never finish.
Just endless torture, plain and delicious.
You gasped softly as your fingers knotted harder within the wires, probing deeper as they brushed against a hard metal surface. There, the wires plugged in, and you wormed against the sockets there. Twisted at the point of contact, played him as if he were some sort of hulking instrument. The sounds he made were like music, certainly.
“How were you calibrated for this?”
The soft, breathy words escaped you before could stop them. His eyes flickered with recognition, turning up to peer at you. As if this somehow reminded him that it was you, you of all people, his lip curled in reply. You could anticipate the snarl before it even began, and thus it came as no shock.
“Do I look like an engineer to you? Ask stupid questions somewhere el-- hhah--”
Your fingers encircled plug of one of his wires, rolling back and forth as a slow grin spread across your face. He contorted his response, whatever insult he had petering out to a little whine. Now that was delicious. That was rewarding-- the newfound ability to shut this absolute baby up. You anticipated anger from him. Some sort of retaliation. If anything, however, he reveled in the realization as well: his chest bent out at an angle, inviting you in deeper.
Your fingertips hesitated, then.
“Why should I?” You breathed, and his eyes widened in horror.
“You can’t--” First, his lip curled in anger. As your hand pulled back, though, that too died in an instant as a new wave of desperation rolled in instead. ‘No! No-- please--”
“Only if you’re nice.”
“I’ll-- oh, you little--” Inexplicably, a little smile tugged at the corners of his metal mouth, and a soft laugh escaped him. “I will be nice. I’ll be kind. Please.”
Metal wires had never felt no sweet against your fingertips. Nor did the weight of a ten foot animatronic, rutting against your leg.
As if he had anything to rut against at all. You were certain he didn’t. Yet he did so with a renewed sense of desperation as your nails outlined the construct of his endoskeleton, as if some sort of frenzied programming drove him to. His fans worked in overdrive, a near-constant whirring that expelled hot air onto any exposed skin that you let him at. Multiple points of articulation, ones you didn’t even know he had: the wrists, the shoulders.
He was built to be overworked. Built… perhaps not for this, exactly, but he suited it so perfectly.
“Beautiful,” you murmured once more, and a protesting wretch escaped him.
“Don’t--”
Something sharp caught against your fingertips.
You might not have been able to notice it in the daylight, but in the dark? The static, the sharp crack of electricity that volted across his endoskeleton was plainly visible. You could see it best at the exposed points of articulation, but even under the casing it had a sort of glow you couldn’t ignore. He lit up like the Sun, as the Moon had never been able to do before, with a noise that made your ears ring. A choke, perhaps, or another cry that strangled its way out of him as if his very programming protested against it.
It left your hand screaming, as you yanked it from the under the chestplate a second too late. In the dark, you could half make out the scorch marks against your palm. You didn’t need to see in order to feel of the numbness in your fingertips. After a tentative flex or two of your palm, sensation started to creep back in.
Satisfied with that, and-- admittedly, still a little shaken-- you raised your eyes back to the robot you were sure you’d just fried.
And he was indeed a … little bit fried.
The unmistakable sound of whirring fans announced that he was, at least, still alive. In some capacity. He sagged once more against the polyester straps which bowed and protested against his full weight.
For the second time this night, you sat up, and whispered: “… Moon?”
Nothing. Not for a long moment. Your heartbeat quickened, pounding a little bit behind your ribcage. Hesitantly, you tried again.
“Moon? Hey, are you--”
“I’m trying to rest,” he finally mumbled, cutting you off.
Your shoulders sagged with relief. Impressively, his voice box apparently had the appropriate modifications made that allowed him to sound as if his face were pressed into a pillow and blissed out. It reminded you of your, uh, human partners after a good nut, and that realization sent an inexplicable rush of embarrassment through you. As if you were interrupting a private little moment, even though you’d been directly involved in it.
“Do…” you shifted your weight, still crouched on the straps next to him. “Do you want me to, uh--”
“You can stay.”
“Oh! Uh--”
“If you want, I guess.”
A little glowing eye peeked up from the pile of animatronic scrap, curled in on himself. It wasn’t the most, uh, appealing offer admittedly, but--
“Maybe. Yeah. Okay, uh, sure--”
Admittedly, that reply surprised even yourself.
“Hm.” He made a little noise of acknowledgement from the pile, and then slowly stretched out in your direction. The whirring parts opened himself up to you, and after a moment of hesitation, you squirmed closer. His chest slotted up against your back, arms wrapping around you with a weight that was slightly terrifying at first and then as you let it sink in, a bit… comforting?
“This is, uh..”
“Don’t worry,” This close, you could hear the voice box in his chest click on and off for every syllable. “I despise it too.”
“Back to normal in the morning?”
“Oh, yes.”
Your face smushed a little harder into his metal bicep. At your back, his chest was warm. Who knew they’d built these things to be so warm?