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Michael remembers the exact moment it clicked. The dawning realisation his dad was a monster, like the kind of freak you'd see on the headlines, like John Wayne Gacy and his kid killing clown suit, that nice friendly smile that hides the beast beneath. The dawning realisation it was already too late to turn the trainwreck around.
Liz and Evan were long gone, and none of Dad's mad science experiments could change that, no matter how many drunkenly-scribbled design specs Michael found rambling about eternal life. His friends had left pretty quickly after that, not that he blames them. Hard to keep close after watching one of your best friends accidentally get his little brother killed. Mum had pissed off, too, in an ugly separation -- in retrospect, probably because she realised her husband was a goddamn psycho -- and Uncle Henry had gone no contact after getting into one too many screaming matches with Dad. Everyone kept leaving. Other than Dad, there hadn't been anyone left to talk to. No girlfriend, no best friend, no fucking friendly chats with the postman, nothing. He'd been working the night shift for whatever dead end jobs would hire him, and horribly alone. His American accent kept slipping because he had no one to practice it on. He couldn't bring himself to care, because he'd already blended in. Blended in so well nobody noticed him.
And then Charlie went missing, and five more kids after that. Just… gone. Vanished without a trace like everything else in his life. The last time anyone had seen them, they'd been at Dad's restaurant. They'd thought he'd done it for a while, but the charges got dropped. Michael had stupidly, naïvely figured it was the Afton family curse to have kids die right under their noses, and that some local psycho had snuck in to go on a killing spree.
How could he have been so fucking blind?
A monster should at least be able to recognise a fellow monster, right? Just another failure on the never-ending list of failures.
He'd been shaken out of his pathetic denial on an otherwise unremarkable morning after another soul-destroying night shift. Nothing special about it, just another step in his crushing routine. He'd sat down on the sofa, looked down at the dawn sunlight falling in streams against his hands, blinked until he wasn't fucking hallucinating bloodstains on his fingertips anymore, and wondered why everyone he knew kept leaving him. Dad hadn't been home before 3AM most weeks, and the house was always quiet. He'd figured, maybe this was what he got, after Evan. Divine punishment.
Then Dad had come home. He still doesn't know why he did it, why he didn't just get up and greet Dad like a good son, but he'd pretended to be asleep. Maybe he'd wanted someone to notice him, take the initiative in acknowledging his existence, for once. But Dad had walked past him, oblivious, and Michael had peeked through his eyelashes, longing perhaps for a pat on the head or a hand on his shoulder, and it was then that he'd seen it.
A speck of viscera. It was unmistakable. He'd held Evan in his arms, felt his insides seeping onto Michael's outsides, and since then he'd never been able to forget the sight of them, the smell of them. Bits of human flesh.
The mystery of the missing kids clicked into place with the finality of a judge's gavel. Last known location: Dad's restaurant. No signs of a body.
Suits that had held dead kids before.
He'd swallowed back his own vomit, held still against the threatening tremors, and kept pretending.
That was around two years ago, now.
He's been planning ever since. Trying to work his way out of this living Hell, get a degree and eke out an existence away from the source of his torment. Submit an anonymous tip about his father's murders to the police and leave town like a rat abandoning a sinking ship.
That time can't come fast enough.
Life has been numb. Worse than it's ever been. He feels coldly detached, sometimes. Analytical. Half-way to scribbling his own drunken plans.
It had taken him an hour to figure it had something to do with Dad's drunken blueprints. He'd lived through enough lectures about Turing, how he was an inspiration and a hero, how his work deserved to live on, even if he couldn't. Enough excited walkthroughs about entrepreneurship, about the American dream, about why little Mikey had to worry about green cards and visas so Daddy could pursue artificial intelligence, digitising the human brain. Enough hushed whispers with Uncle Henry at 4AM about robotic endoskeletons and motors that needed to be smoother, simulate more lifelike movements. Enough, enough, enough. Enough to know Dad wanted his own science lab with his own test subjects. Enough to know Dad wanted a bunch of copper circuitboards to get up and start walking and talking like a human. For Pinocchio to cut his strings and be a real boy.
But why kids?
He still doesn't know why kids. Sometimes he thinks it's because Dad likes them young. He'd married Mum when she was barely past worrying about studying for A levels, after all.
Sometimes he thinks he's gonna wake up from a dream, and realise it's not a dream. That suddenly he's going to remember a bunch of things he hid away. The kind of shit those poor bastards on the news say about having a monster for a parent. It all came flashing back one day.
That Daddy's a kiddie killer and a kiddie fiddler, a paedo rapist murderer, and he started his work on his own kids first.
But he doesn't. He hasn't. Dad looks at him weird, like he's a bug under a microscope sometimes and like he's a delicious roast dinner others, but he doesn't touch. He never has.
But really, it's only a matter of time, isn't it? With sick fucks like that? It's what they say about all the serial killers these days. There's a sexual thrill to it. That's what they said was the motive of that guy they arrested a few cities over. Bushell, Biswell? No, Bishop.
Evan had been too busy dying for Michael to pay much attention to the news headlines. Just more background noise adding to the hospital's constant drone.
He's gotta be next. It's not like there's anybody else.
There's no escape. Even if Dad isn't motivated by sex, Michael's still gonna get fucked (literally, Jesus, literally), because Dad's clearly got an eye for targeting victims that won't fight back. Dad knows Michael can easily fight back physically, he's been the problem child, the troubled one, the black sheep, since he was a kid. Dad knows this, has spent many exhausted days on the phone with the principal and the school counsellor going over this. Michael had thought he was the odd one out, the weird, cruel monster in a family of angels. Guess he'd just been taking after his dad the whole time.
No, Dad simply wouldn't threaten violence.
He'd threaten something darker.
God, he needs a better job, he needs to get out quick, before Dad comes into his room at night and holds him down, or slips something into his tea, or threatens to make some story up to the police that the accident with Evan wasn't an accident at all -- it's his fault anyway, his fault his fault his fault-
Maybe he deserves what's coming to him. Maybe he should just lie down and take it.
Dad's the only family he has left, and it's thanks to his own stupid actions. If you make your bed, you should lie in it, right? It's a miracle Dad even tolerates him.
He's the one who killed his own brother. What's bending over for Dad in the grand scheme of things, after that? If it keeps him satisfied? If it keeps him from killing kids?
He still doesn't know if Liz was Dad's fault. Maybe it's not incestuous sexual abuse next on the docket, maybe it's plain old murder. Maybe it's one and then the other. Who the fuck knows?
He misses Mum. He misses Liz and Evan. He misses Charlie. He misses Henry.
He misses the man he thought his dad was. A genius, a driven entrepreneur, the one who stepped up when Mum left, who used to get Liz ice cream every Friday after school, who let Michael and his friends eat pizza for free at his restaurant. The loving father, the generous soul that helped his best mate realise his dream of running a successful entertainment business, despite the competition.
Surely it wasn't Dad or Henry's fault that the suits locked up when they got wet? The first time was all Michael's doing. And when the next guy got his skull crushed, it wasn't even the same issue. Everything was turning to shit while the investigation took its course. How were they to know the electronics would short circuit? They outsourced all their basic maintenance. You have to, after so much death, so many shutdowns and reopenings and re-reopenings. The budget can only stretch so far.
Missing kids? Last seen in this restaurant? Just a coincidence, clearly. A very unfortunate coincidence. The investigation will find that out soon enough.
God, what had he been thinking, who had he been kidding? He'd been a fucking moron.
He should've realised sooner. As soon as Charlie disappeared, probably. Right after another one of Dad and Uncle Henry's blowouts. The timing had been way too good, and Michael hadn't suspected a thing.
Maybe if he wasn't a psycho like his dad who enjoyed making weak people feel small and powerless and then shrugging like nothing happened when they turned up dead. If only his attention hadn't been on tormenting his brother, and then on wallowing in his own guilt. If only he'd been watching his father instead…
Oh, God, he really does deserve this, doesn't he?
Doesn't he?
He's going to Hell, and Dad will be right there with him.
He laughs. Laughs, laughs, laughs. Then, he cries.
Guess that runs in the family, too.
If he can just keep Dad off his back (literally- so very literally-) a little longer, he can get a job, get enough money to move out, to escape his cage and never look back. He's been doing a good job of pretending everything's fine.
He's always been good at that.
He just needs to keep Dad happy. What makes Dad happy?
Murdering kids. Trying to make little baby corpses into abominations of metal and plastic and human flesh. Looking at his son over dinner, with that weird smile on his face.
Hurting people. Winning any and every game he plays. Perfectly obedient children.
A son who makes sure to smile and nod at everything he says.
Dinner tastes like cardboard, as usual. He can't remember the last time he enjoyed anything. Logically, he's aware Dad's a good cook, good enough that his friends had taken notice and gleefully teased him about not living up to the British stereotype of eating shite food.
When did he last see his friends?
They all drifted apart after the Accident, and never really recovered. Hard to get over killing someone, to be fair.
"Something wrong?" Dad asks. It's a facsimile of concern, Michael knows, but part of him shivers and warms at the thought that anyone cares. Even if the only one who does is a psychopath trying to keep up appearances. Touching.
He shrugs, drags his fork through his mashed potatoes and over his peas. "Just tired. I probably shouldn't be working night shifts back-to-back, but they're where the openings are."
"You know I'd be happy to finance university for you. I'm certainly not short on money, not even after all the unfortunate incidents at our locations. It wouldn't be a hardship, Michael."
Unfortunate incidents.
Unfortunate incidents.
Unfortunate incidents.
His grip tightens hard enough to make his knuckles go white. "Thank you, I appreciate it. But I want to be able to pull my own weight. Especially since it's just us now."
"Yes." Dad hums, pleased. "Just us…"
"I've been working on my code in my free time. Once I graduate, I can come work with you on the robots proper."
"Properly, darling."
Can't even use slang in his own home, everything has to be prim and proper and perfect and never reveal the sick shit beneath. All that rot. Whatever. The correction is absent-minded, anyway. Dad's real focus is on staring him down, searching for any hint of deceit. Michael's not a liar, never has been, but Dad's paranoid, especially when it comes to his work. After losing two kids to work accidents, it's what's expected. It's probably because it's expected that Dad puts it on. Michael never knows how much of his emotion is genuine and how much is a mask, to be taken on and off just like that fucking rabbit suit.
Michael swallows. After a moment, Dad seems satisfied with what he sees, because he smiles. "Your technical work has been excellent so far. You have a good grasp on the machines, Michael. Good enough to co-head Afton Robotics with me."
"Thank you, Father. I'm trying my best."
"But you know my company uses its own assembly language, the same one that Henry and I once created, when Fazbear's was just a faraway dream. What your professors teach you won't cover the full picture." Dad's eyes have more grey than blue in this light. They've always been darker than Michael's, but only barely. When Michael holds Dad's old photos next to his own, they look like twins. Within the world of a crappy Polaroid, Michael appears no different to a child murderer. "You'll have to work closely with me for some time. An apprenticeship of sorts."
"Of course." Michael dips his head. "I look forward to it."
"That's what I like to hear," Dad says. "Now, enough shop talk. Tell me about your day."
It's more a demand than a request. He could reply with something vague, brush it off, but Dad's never happy when he thinks Michael is dodging conversations, avoiding his only family. And Dad needs to stay happy. He's rarely in this kind of good mood, actually.
Maybe he's fresh from a kill.
Bile rises. He swallows it down. Focus on your mashed potatoes. This is a normal family having a normal family dinner. "Honestly, it's pretty boring. I sleep or I study. Sometimes I watch reruns. The telly's broken, by the way. Thought I might have a go at fixing it."
"I can do that, my dear. You need your rest, sleep deprivation is hell on your body." He says that last word slower than the rest, with a critical eye over Michael's ratty shirt and pyjama bottoms. It's not lustful, but having the eyes of a predator roving over you feels slimy all the same, really. The parody of a caring parent.
"Thank you, Father. If you're sure it wouldn't be taking away from your work…"
"No, no. It's nice to have a distraction now and then." From the murder? The human experiments? Too much of a good thing, eh? Michael smiles encouragingly. Brokenly. "We could all do with a break, I think. We're a family of overachievers."
There's only two of us left, Dad. Hardly a family. "We do love to fix things."
And put them back together all wrong.
"That's right. It's our gift, Michael." It's said with almost frenzied zeal. Dad sees his work more like a sacred calling than a guy killing dead kids and turning their corpses into toys to entertain babies at birthdays. "I'm glad you can see that, too. You'll make a fine head of company one day."
I'm going to burn it all down, Dad. All of it. Maybe I'll use the leftover money to make AI that can profile psychos like yourself. Stop this from ever happening again.
"Thanks. Didn't think you ever planned on retiring, though."
Dad makes a thoughtful noise around his fork. "Maybe not, no. But the time comes where a son must inherit his father's legacy. I don't think I'll ever stop working, but your position as CEO would allow me more freedom in which projects I choose."
Dad doesn't know it, but Michael can read between the lines just fine. "I'm not ever going to stop killing. I raised you to be a figurehead so I could sit back and pull the strings from afar. After all, I need more breathing room for my busy work schedule of human experimentation."
Can't walk, talk, or even so much as breathe without Dad's permission. He's a puppet. Dad's hand is up his arse. More than metaphorically, soon enough.
Oh, Dad won't do it now, not just yet. He doesn't want to shatter the illusion. But as soon as he clues into the fact that Michael knows -- and he will, the clock is ticking -- all pretense will drop. That's when it'll happen, when Dad no longer has anything to hide. He'll just… let go. Fully embrace the sickness deep within. It's not a stretch, as much as it sounds like one. He'll consider rape as a threat, and then he'll consider rape as another indulgence. Because Dad makes toys, and then he uses them in every way he can. Toys are made for playing. Why should Michael -- his first toy, his most precious toy -- be any different?
Oh, how wonderful it feels to be loved so dearly.
"Just don't work yourself to death, alright?" Please work yourself to death. For those kids' sakes. I'll be sick enough to miss you, but nobody else will. They'll celebrate, all those grieving families you ruined, all those detectives you traumatised, all those souls you reaped with a scythe made out of steel and cheap polyester fur. I'm the only one who cares about you still left alive, and I wish I didn't. Wish I wasn't.
"Oh, Michael, ever the doting son." Is it mocking? It sounds mocking. Or maybe is Michael too tired, too wise to see any semblance of truthfulness or integrity in his father any longer. "I'll be careful."
You're always careful. Too careful.
Always planning, always scheming. Always two steps ahead, with Michael lagging dangerously, foolishly, disastrously behind.
God, how is he possibly going to catch up? Meet Dad blow-for-blow? Pull one over on him?
It's all he can do to keep him placated enough to miss the knowing look in Michael's eyes. How's he supposed to fix this if he can barely keep up one single lie?
He needs to keep Dad happy. He- he doesn't want to die. As much as he misses Evan and Liz, he doesn't want to join them in the afterlife just yet, meet their same terrible fate. Especially now he suspects their blood and guts are in one of Dad's labs.
Plus, it's not like he'd be joining them in Heaven.
Christ, he's gonna be sick. Experimenting on your own kids is so far beyond the realm of sanity it feels like a fucking horror movie. How's he supposed to keep someone that batshit insane placated? Dad's moods are unpredictable at best, and if he suspects anyone of taking advantage of his generosity, he goes cold. There'd be nothing Michael could say or do that would regain his trust after that.
He can't make mistakes, but he's going to.
When Dad finds out, he's the next one on the lab table, with Dad's deft fingers worming around in his insides, trying to find the secret to consciousness like a parasite crawling around in its host.
He has to stop that from happening before he gets a chance to set things right. He needs to find out what really happened to Liz, needs to find out where those poor fucking kids got stashed and give them back to their families. He can't die before he gets justice. He just can't.
If Dad finding out is an inevitability, how does he save his own skin when it happens?
Prostrate himself on the floor like a pious believer at the altar of a deity? Promise he won't tell? No, no, Dad'll drag him kicking and screaming into his lab no matter how many promises Michael makes. His word isn't worth shite anymore. Hasn't been since he let Evan get his skull cracked open like an egg.
Actions speak louder than words.
He nearly snaps his fork.
Actions speak louder than words.
Oh, God.
Fucking Christ. He has to prove he's just as sick, just as fucked in the head as Dad is, it's the only way Dad will ever believe him. He has to express interest in the lab. The experiments. The killing. All of it.
I have to make the first move.
He nearly vomits onto his plate. Sweat beads at his temples, and his vision fuzzes at the edges. I have to be Daddy's Number One Fan. He won't turn on me if I cozy up to him. He won't threaten me with rape if… if I seduce him first.
After all, it's not a threat if you want it, right?
He swallows the vomit back down. Acid burns his throat. He can barely breathe.
Smile, smile, he's watching, he's watching.
"Something wrong?" Dad asks.
"No, no, sorry, I just gave myself a leg cramp." He takes deep breaths, swallows back the tears and the screams and the anguish. His heart still races, but he plasters a pleasant smile onto his face and rubs his thigh sympathetically. "I sat down wrong."
You have to do this. For the sake of those kids. For Liz. For Dad's future victims.
Dad's concern looks real. Feels real. But Michael can never know if it is real. Not ever again. "Mmm, be careful. Perhaps I should be the one telling you not to overwork yourself."
Thank God he buys it. "Hah, yeah. I'm a right mess, aren't I?" He looks at the dregs of food on his plate. "Burning the candle at both ends."
"I admire your work ethic, of course," Dad says, "but you have plenty of time to finish your degree. Stocks are at an all-time high. I can take care of you for as long as you need."
In more ways than one, you mean. Michael fights back a flush. His brain is already giving up and resigning itself to its new reality.
The reality where he's the Bonnie to Dad's Clyde, the partner to his sick crimes… the new, dutiful fucking wife.
Not for the first time, he wishes he had been in Evan's place. Snap, crack, and lights fucking out. No more torment, no more Hell.
Not that he deserves it. No, this is a perfectly fitting punishment for his sins.
Filthy brotherkiller.
He starts slow, for obvious reasons. Dad will notice if he does a rapid 180 on his opinions about first degree murder and having sex with his own father, and he also doesn't have the stomach for grand gestures right now. Perhaps, in time, he'll be able to focus more on the lives of all those kids, on why this is so important, and swallow down his horror and disgust at the prospect of trying to replace Mum as Dad's new trophy wife.
Or perhaps everything will become comfortably numb. One can hope.
He compliments Dad's work more often, asks him more questions about the inner workings of the machines, and praises his ingenuity as he explains. Dad seems right chuffed, but Michael has always been a fan of his work, so it's nothing too out of character.
Had been a fan. Before he found out. It's why he found Evan's fear so hilarious. Every opportunity he found, he'd take the mick, and Evan wouldn't even fight back, he'd just cry and cry and cry. Michael can still feel his damp cheeks, smell the sweat-sweet smell of his tears.
Evan was just a little kid. Michael was a monster.
"Like, what, really? You're afraid of Dad's work? That's stupid, can't you see this is the coolest thing ever? Free pizza, free money! They're just suits, Ev. Nobody else is crying, you're being weird."
"They're not, Mikey. Not just suits. Their eyes follow you around, y'know!"
"Hah. It's just programming. You should come down to the lab sometime, check it out with me. They're made out of ones and zeroes, on and off switches, that's all. C'mon, you're not afraid of a little maths, are you?"
He should've been a better brother. This never would've happened if it weren't for him. Everything about this fucked up family is his fault.
He works hard. When Dad comes home tired, Michael offers to cook dinner. His mind churns out images from old, scrappy copies of Playboy magazine, of cute girls with perky tits reaching for something in the fridge in nothing but an apron. The pornographic parody of a loving wife cooking her husband dinner.
Is that what he is now? A loving wife?
Of course, Michael always wears modest clothes, but he tries to bend over more often, and put on ratty old t-shirts that are just shy of too tight, too short. Clothes that hug him in all the right places. It's not even worthy of calling itself softcore, but he feels naked all the same. On display, draped over furniture like some kind of model. Some kind of escort.
A cheap whore.
When Dad groans and complains about long hours hunched over the machines, Michael offers to rub his back, his feet. Dad sees nothing but innocence in it and accepts every time, stretching out gratefully on the sofa and offering his sore muscles to Michael's obliging hands. The appreciative groans he makes cause something in the pit of Michael's stomach to twist.
He knows he's going to be hearing a lot more of them soon.
He listens to Dad complain about bugs in the code with an open, sympathetic ear, and helps troubleshoot when Dad asks. He feels shy, stupid, but Dad tells him his input is helpful and his top marks in class are more than well-deserved. Approval from a cold-blooded killer shouldn't feel so good.
But he's always been a daddy's boy.
He even cleans the floors and wipes away the dust. Evan and Liz's rooms are untouched, as always, but he makes sure the master bedroom is spotless and the pillows are fluffed. He irons the shirts in the closet. He sorts through the bedside drawer and folds all Dad's boxers and pairs all his socks. When he finds an old, expired box of condoms in the bottom drawer, his cheeks flush and his hands shake.
So, Dad hasn't been using them.
He'll be all pent up. Or so Michael presumes. He doesn't know what Dad does with those robots and he doesn't want to.
He's the perfect little housewife, and the perfect housewife satisfies her husband in bed. No more lonely nights, no more expired condoms. Not that Dad needs any. Michael may plan on lying down like a bitch in heat, but he can't be bred like one.
Maybe it's his pathetic subconscious need for approval, but Dad seems to warm up to him more. Oh, he's always been attentive, but in that concerned, hovering parent way. Because Michael is the problem child, the black sheep. It's expected in the narrative that a father should worry over his troubled son, so Dad puts on that mask so nobody will see the reality underneath.
There's no expected narrative now. Perhaps Dad can sense this.
It's disgusting how much he likes it. He hasn't felt anything in years, and the first time the numbness begins to fade is because he thinks he might successfully be seducing his psychopathic father. Truly, nothing else could be expected from this family. Michael looks in the mirror and sees his father's face and his father's sickness. Where does one begin and the other end? He's just an extension of Dad's narcissism, a pet project to be experimented on like any other pet project Dad's had over the years.
It makes him feel good.
He wants to throw up. He wants to tie a noose around his neck.
He wants more.
He gets more daring, chases the thrill. He dresses more and more provocatively, with eyeliner and dark leather chokers, with tight pants and too many piercings. He hasn't dressed like this -- this hybrid between punk and sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll -- since being a rebellious teenager. None of his piercings have healed. Everything still fits. And if it doesn't, well, the tighter the better.
Sinking back into the role. Maybe this is something like fate.
Dad notices, of course. There's nothing he doesn't notice. At first he gets a few raised eyebrows, a few confused looks. And then Dad starts asking questions. Problem-solving with his programmer's mind.
"Going somewhere?" Dad asks as Michael descends the stairs dressed like a coked out glamrock singer in the throes of a successful after-party for the seventh time in a row.
"Nope." Michael pops the 'p' with a certain determined finality. "Just felt like spicing things up a little. Between uni and constant night shifts, I've been feeling somewhat bland."
"You could never be bland," Dad says instantly. Michael tries not to flush.
"Thank you, Father."
"It's a little early for a mid-life crisis, don't you think?" The tone is teasing, a little amused. "Do I need to reassure you that you don't need fast cars and leather jackets to stand out?"
"N-no, I-"
"You're perfect as you are, Michael. You don't need to look like you're overcompensating, do you?" Dad smirks. "Or do you?"
Michael blinks and stutters some more. "N-no, sir." Shite, he hasn't called Dad sir since he was a little kid. He'd stopped as soon as he'd hit his aforementioned rebellious phase. This is pathetic.
"Good, good. As long as this is a bout of personal expression and not a fit of pique. I would hate to be accused of not giving you enough attention."
Is- is this flirting? Or is his sick mind cutting away at another of the thin threads attaching him to sanity?
"I'm not lashing out because I feel ignored, I promise." But I do want your attention.
Not like a needy child who wants to play with his daddy, but like a wife who worries her husband spends so much time at work because he no longer loves her.
Of course, Dad's spending so much time at work because he has the remnants of his dead victims to be tinkering with, not because he has an insecure wife.
This is the only way. The only way I can save them.
"Glad to hear it, love. In that case, this style has always suited you." Dad sets down his newspaper and beckons him over. "Come here, won't you?"
He ambles awkwardly towards the sofa. Dad encouragingly, as gently as a rider with a spooked horse, pats a spot next to him until Michael hesitantly settles in at his side.
Those hands, so gentle and delicate now, are responsible for the deaths of multiple innocent children. Michael swallows.
"I don't want to be the kind of stuffy, stiff-upper-lip, proper English gentleman my own father was. The kind of father who brought out the cane for any sign of individualism," Dad says. Absent-mindedly, he ruffles Michael's hair, just like he used to when Michael was still a kid. "You're a very unique boy, you know, and I fully intend to support you in your self-discovery, not smother you. I know I encourage making a habit of acting stiff and proper, but only because I want you to have a solid grasp on how to sound professional and reliable. A good first impression is key in the business world, unfortunately. It could make or break a man." He hums, a deep rumble. The sound had been comforting, once. "Of course, you're free to speak and act as you wish. See what feels right." See what feels right. Those words, in any other context… Dad runs a hand down his back. He shivers. "Every young lad needs time to find himself, hmm? I hope you understand I'll always want to see the real you."
"Thank you," Michael says shakily. A curling tendril of relief begins to unfurl in his stomach. He's not being confronted on acting like a desperate housewife. Dad hasn't noticed that particular change. Small mercies. "That means a lot to hear."
"Of course, of course. You know, you remind me a lot of myself at that age," Dad continues. Michael's blood turns to ice. "I know what it feels like to want to… set yourself apart. Prove you're not like everyone else, you're something different." Something sick and twisted? Something wrong, something other? Something that hurts and hunts and kills? The wolf shedding his sheep's clothing? "But you have no need to prove yourself to me, my dear. I know how special you are. How precious."
Michael's cheeks heat without his consent. Maybe it's a flush of shame, of fear. Maybe it's a flush of want. Of need. "F-Father-" He squirms. "I'm- I-"
"I don't mean to embarrass you by getting so sentimental. But life is fleeting. You know that as well as I do. We must cherish the things we love while we still can." Dad runs a hand through his hair, warm fingertips over his scalp. "Anything could happen."
Anything could happen.
Too many things could happen. And yet, not enough.
Dad doesn't say a thing about Michael's shitty attempts at flirting. Probably because they don't register… hopefully not because he's too disgusted.
That would be the perfect slap in the face, wouldn't it? Too disgusting for even a child serial killer?
Not that he should care. But this is the only plan he's got, and he needs it to work.
It's just… he's not ready. Not ready to take that final step, make the first move. After all these years, he's still a coward, still afraid. What does his fear matter, his disgust? When have his morals ever been pure regardless? He's hardly corrupting himself any further, and if it's in service to those poor souls, then he owes them this and more.
But he's so, so scared. All his life he's coveted his father's attention, and now he's going to get it. It's the one way he can. There's a sick little thrill in his stomach at the thought of finally, finally receiving the full weight of his father's gaze. Even if it's out of lust, perversion, it's close enough to the dream.
So he bites his lip pale, bloodless, and sucks it up. If he's wrong enough, miswired enough to find a silver lining to this, that's a good thing, right? He deserves this.
Those kids deserve better.
He chooses the right moment, when Dad isn't too focused on anything else, just content to sit on the sofa and watch telly with a beer in one hand and a fag in the other, blowing smoke in the direction of the backdoor. The shine of the TV screen flickers in a metallic sheen over the purple silk of his robe, over his thighs, and down his legs, highlighting their fine dusting of dark hair. His toes tap impatient rhythms into his socks. Always thinking, never mindless. But as close to it as he'll ever get.
"Father."
It's one word, and he looks up immediately. That mind never stops working. A consistent passive intake of keen observation. He doesn't even have to try. "Yes, Michael?"
"I was thinking about what you said the other day."
Dad raises an eyebrow and pauses the tape he's watching. The screen freezes on Harrison Ford, backlit by neon city streets and enveloped in smoke and grunge. Bladerunner.
Fitting.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Do dead kids dream of their killer's face?
Oh, doesn't it look like mine?
"What I said the other day?"
"About wanting to see the real me."
A second eyebrow joins the first. "Have you had a revelation on that front?"
"Ah, no." His pulse is rabbiting, a drumbeat he can feel in his throat, and sweat is already beginning to bead, cold and dripping down the small of his back. "I- I meant… about you."
"A revelation about me?" Dad asks pleasantly, like he has no idea. Perfect innocence. The liar's mouth that kept a whole police force at bay. The sharp and silver tongue.
Time to see if he's inherited it.
Michael swallows. "I feel the same way." Hah, like a high school romance. What a pathetic parody. "I'll always want to see the real you." And that isn't even a lie. He can't afford to stay two steps behind anymore. Not when lives are at stake. "And I'm an adult now. Close to graduating, to being able to help you work on the code. All of the code."
"You think I've been holding something back?" It's still in that same light tone, but something flashes in Dad's eyes. A warning. Because after this, there's no going back. And they both know it. "Company secrets?"
Like there's ever been a way back. Not since Evan, Michael's biggest regret, his worst mistake. His original sin. What's another apple to bite into?
"Your work on AI. I know you've made some breakthroughs you're not telling me about." He wills his voice not to crack. The world feels fuzzy at the edges, faint. His ears are ringing. "I- I want in."
"Do you?" Dad's smile is gone. His gaze has a blade's edge. "I've made some breakthroughs, have I? And what breakthroughs might those be?"
He wants me to say it. If the words leave my mouth, it's all real.
He's tired of running away. Tired of being a coward.
"You've found some way to transfer consciousness into lines of code. That's why those kids went missing. You needed… subjects."
As soon as the words leave his mouth, he feels a nauseating whirlwind of determination and undiluted terror. He clenches his muscles to stop from shaking. He's the one who took the apple from the Garden, so he's the one who has to face the Snake.
Actions have consequences. He's already learnt that lesson, hasn't he?
"My, my," Dad says, slow. "You really are a clever boy, aren't you? Cleverer than I expected. Well, that was my mistake, and I do apologise. I can only assure you I won't do it again." Suddenly, he's grinning. Grey eyes narrow into crescent moons of… of pleasure. "I should never have underestimated you. You truly, truly are… brilliant."
Michael blinks. The emergency brake is pulled; his mind screeches to a halt. The whining in his ears is the echoing reverb of the wheels against the tracks. "Brilliant?"
"My darling boy," Dad croons. The balance of the world feels as if it's been upset, tilting and wobbling on its axis. "You noticed. Oh, you do see me, don't you? You really do." Michael is yanked closer, nearly falls into Dad's lap. "Of course you'll be allowed in on things, my angel… my observant little angel." Long, calloused fingers stroke down Michael's spine. "I hated to hide things from you, dear. After all, you were the one who led me to my breakthrough! You've been my inspiration all this time, but I wasn't sure you were ready to hear it. It seems I was so very wrong to doubt you, and for that I'm sorry."
"You were the one who led me to this breakthrough."
"You've been my inspiration all this time."
Michael falls to his knees. He thinks the carpet burns his delicate skin, but he can't feel it.
No. No, nononononono-
"How could I have led you to the breakthrough, Father? It's only recently that I can manage a decent programme. Everything was rudimentary before."
Dad cups his face. "Don't undersell yourself. You're my blood, of course you were destined to explore and make discoveries. It's what we do." Michael fights tears. The corners of his eyes sting. He wants to blink, but he can't. He can't get his eyelids to move. "And at such a young age, too. My very own prodigal son."
Young age?
Youngageyoungageyoungageyoungage-
"Young age?"
"All great science stems from tragedy," Dad continues. "War put man on the moon. You never meant to hurt Evan, I know. Well, not physically-speaking, at least. The accident was almost too much for us all, but it's alright. It's alright, Michael. I've preserved Evan's mind, if not his body. That part is more difficult when you're expected to make children's toys." Dad sighs. "I'll admit that the process hasn't been perfected yet, hence the need for more samples. But I'm close. Closer than ever. I know Evan and Elizabeth will have new bodies soon, ones even better than before… because we'll be working on them. Together." Dad rubs a thumb down his cold cheeks, wiping at tears that aren't there, are too scared to fall. "Not to worry, Michael. When you get hurt, your daddy will always be there to put you back together."
It takes every last miserable drop of his willpower not to retch onto the floor right then and there. He grips Dad's knee, pretends his tears are borne of reverence and not the white hot burn of shame, the sheer immolation of self-hatred. "Liz and Ev? They're okay?"
At least this rapture is real. God knows what Dad has done to them, but to see his family again in any state at all is a blessing. Their curse, but… his blessing. He's been so alone, sitting in the shadows of his room staring blankly at the computer screen, wishing to hear another human voice. Dad had made himself his own company in the form of fuzzy, smiling children's mascots. All Michael's created for himself is a legacy of death and a few floppy disks' worth of programmes.
He once made one to remind him to shower. Without it, he'd simply sit and stew in his own sweat and tears, chewing his nails raw as he filled his brain with nothing but code or static. Anything to keep the nightmares away.
"They're alive, in a sense of the word," Dad says. "Alive as a digital consciousness, just as Turing once dreamed. His theories are our reality now, Michael, and it's up to us to perfect them."
"Can I- can I see them?"
"You can." Dad's hand comes down hard on his shoulder. "But you should be warned, the human mind doesn't take well to being separated from an organic body. They have moments of lucidity, yes, but more often moments of madness. It's what I've been working to fix."
More tears well, as hard as he begs them not to. He doesn't know what kind of robotic body Dad's given them, and truthfully he doesn't want to. He's afraid to see them like that, suffering the throes of their own insanity, unable to fully comprehend their new reality. A computer with a mind, a machine with a soul. No more laughter-filled days running around the play park with other children, just looking down and seeing plastic where their skin should be.
"Giving them a new body will help?"
Dad sighs, runs a hand through his hair, brushing past the grey at his temples and down to pinch the bridge of his nose. "In theory it should, but our technology isn't quite there yet. In the meantime, I've been trying to find ways to temper their breakdowns."
"How's the progress?"
"You should really see for yourself," Dad says darkly. "But suffice to say, that young man -- oh, what was his name? Ah, yes. Jeremy Fitzgerald. He was the last person to get close to them during one of their 'episodes'."
Michael's stomach swoops. "I thought that was a- a suit malfunction. In the restaurant."
At this, Dad laughs. "Well, that's certainly one way to put it, I suppose. Is that the story Henry sold them? Hah." He continues to rub at the bridge of his nose with an air of exasperation. His hair falls in brown strands over his eyes, unseated from the usual coif. With only the glow of the television to light his face, Michael can't quite piece together his expression. "Well, he barred me from our- his establishments. I could hardly take them with me to Afton Robotics."
"They were- you had them working in the restaurants?"
Dad sneers. His grip on Michael's shoulder is suddenly bruising. "I didn't 'have them' anything. I would sneak in when I could to see them, run my tests as best as circumstances allowed, and leave before dawn. My time was limited, Michael. I can't afford to arouse suspicion, especially not now there's been an official investigation. It's too much of a risk to steal them." His grip loosens, just slightly, and his mouth returns to its previous pensive moue. "Ah, well. It's much less difficult now. After the shutdown, they got shipped to the warehouse. That's where Elizabeth went after we had to close Circus Baby's Pizza World."
The sour, acid taste of bile fills Michael's mouth. "T-the accident that killed Liz…"
Dad looks away. The guilt looks real, but Michael's never been good at peering underneath Dad's masks. "She slipped out of my sight to go play with toys I designed for other children. Just after Evan, when I first started to realise I'd need other subjects... My poor darling, I never made them for her, but she loved them so much…"
"She- what- she got trapped in one somehow?"
"As I said, it'll be easier to show you. Come with me tomorrow night, and I'll explain my findings once you can see them up close."
Michael quiets. "Yes, Father. Sorry."
"Good boy. Certain conditions have to be met before their consciousness will transfer from an organic medium to a digital one. You'll understand what I mean when you meet them."
Michael nods, but says nothing. He stays at his father's feet for quite some time.
He cries himself to sleep that night. His eyes are sticky, crusted, and aching when he wakes to the stream of morning light beaming through the curtains. His stomach sinks and twists and curls and his heart begins to pitter-patter like a building rainshower.
Dad watches him all throughout breakfast, eyes like a hawk’s as he eats his beans on toast and sips his tea like he hasn’t just dropped the world’s biggest revelation on Michael’s shoulders. But whatever, fuck it, whatever, this is business as usual for him, huh? This is just another day, the same boring routine. Wake up, brush your teeth, eat some food, grab your bag, go to work, and rifle around in the intestines of five-year-olds. It’s not a new reality at all because Dad’s had his fingers in these kinds of pies since Evan first died. Years and years of being trapped in a broken-down, rusted scrapheap, nothing but confusion and terror to eat away at their fragile little minds, and Dad hadn’t mentioned it once. Like it’s some every day thing, the torture of children. Business as usual.
When had things gone so wrong? Is it really his fault Dad got this twisted? Was Michael Patient Zero all those years ago, just biding his time to be Typhoid Mary and infect the rest of the family with his warped fucking sense of morality?
And of course it had already been too fucking late when Michael’s long dormant conscience had decided to wake up.
It’s sick. He’s sick. He wishes he could throw up, purge all the fucking poison that runs through him somehow, but he’s immune to that kind of response now. No gag reflex, oh, Dad’ll just love that. He’s already seen everything horrible there is in the world, so nothing bothers him now. He’ll want to retch, beg for it, but nothing comes. Empty, empty, empty. Just like he is.
He can still cry, though. Maybe that’s the last thing Evan gifted him, before he died.
Once night comes, Dad packs up a suitcase full of tools, puts on his work jacket, and holds out a worn, calloused hand. Michael stares, uncomprehending, at the scars on his palm for a solid thirty seconds before realising he's meant to take it. When he does, Dad's grip on his hand is tight, but not tight enough to cause pain. With a start, Michael realises it's meant to be reassuring. "You need to be prepared to see them like this," Dad says. "It can be very… shocking, for those caught unawares. This is a new form of life, an astonishing breakthrough. This kind of progress isn't for the faint of heart."
"When have I ever been faint of heart?" For better or for worse. Mostly for worse. Maybe if he hadn't been so immune to human suffering Evan wouldn't be stuffed into a robot suit somewhere.
Somewhere he's about to see.
Dad chuckles. "A fair point. You're my son, through-and-through. A man of science. I shouldn't patronise you." His fingers stroke gently over Michael's knuckles. "I'm proud of you. For taking this step. For taking the initiative, and for confronting me. I sleep well knowing I leave the fate of Afton Robotics in your hands." He smiles. "As I hold them now, I'm thrilled to see how you've risen above our unfortunate circumstances. Such resilience from such a young age. Great things are in store for you, my love. Trust me, I've an eye for these things."
Trust me.
Trust me.
Like Michael could trust him any more than a lamb could lay itself placidly in the wolf's jaws. A base, animal instinct for self-preservation. You don't turn your back on a predator.
"You're giving me too much credit, Father," Michael says coquettishly. God, he might as well flutter his eyelashes while he's at it. Why does the compliment mean so much to him? Because they're so few and far between?
What does it say about him that the only compliments aimed his way fall from the lips of a monster?
Talent recognises talent. Like recognises like.
"I'm really not." Dad gives his hand a squeeze, then lets it go. "Come. We have a long road ahead of us."
His heart is in his throat for the whole car ride. It starts raining half-way through, in lashes, fat drops slamming into the windshield in loud thwacks. God's tears. Dad turns the radio on. Loud pop blasts through the speakers. Michael thinks it's Madonna. Dad wrinkles his nose and flips stations. He stops when the opening chords of A Strange Day filter in. "Hmmm, you like them, don't you?"
"Who? The Cure?" Michael blinks. He shouldn't be surprised. There's nothing Dad doesn't notice. "Yeah. They're one of my favourites."
"They're not bad," Dad concedes. "Strange to hear something so close to home so far from it."
"Yeah. Pretty exotic for Utah." Michael snorts. "They don't know what to make of us. We're great for gawking at like zoo animals, I suppose."
"Well, you do love to rattle the cage, my dear. You can hardly claim not to have spent most of your time making a deliberate spectacle of yourself."
A habit that's made a recent comeback, he's implying.
"Oh, tah."
"How many parent-teacher conferences was I dragged to? A thousand?"
"Yeah, yes, alright. Point taken." He chews his lip. "They made me feel like an outsider, so I acted like one."
"They can sense there's something different about us." Dad says it like it's something to be proud of. It's so smooth, so matter-of-fact. So self-assured. "Our ambition, perhaps. It intimidates them. The factor that separates the wheat from the chaff."
Dad has a god complex the size of the moon. It's how he justifies this shit to himself. The power to create and destroy at his fingertips, the vengeful deity of this shithole town in the middle of nowhere, hungry for blood on his altar. And Michael is down on his knees to pray.
O, Holy Father,
Please take me instead, if only to spare them.
I can't sate your lust for blood, but I can sate your lust for flesh.
As if life is that poetic. He's just a sick freak bending over for his Dad so he's too blissed out to murder kids.
Then again, the symbolism is glaring. Who is God but a mad scientist who worked miracles to resurrect His dead son after He was betrayed by His own creations?
Michael's punishment certainly feels like God's wrath.
"It didn't feel so special at the time," he says.
"It never does," Dad tells him. "But at the end of the day, they're working their fingers to the bone in a cramped cubicle somewhere, and we're here in this car, taking the road less traveled by."
Yeah, and it was once paved with good intentions, as all roads to Hell are.
"Speaking of, here we are. Careful not to slip on the way in."
Dad's warning proves, as ever, to be useful. There's mud up to the shins of his biker boots, which were, when thinking about it, not exactly the best choice of shoe. But he hadn't been thinking about it. He's been trying not to think.
There's no escaping it now, though. His hands shake along with the leaves in the wind as Dad jimmies the lock on the warehouse door. It creaks open with an ear-splitting screech that makes him wince, but Dad walks in with no hesitation.
It's cold, is the first thing he notices. Really bloody cold. His breath is a mist in the air, and he shoves his hands into his pockets on reflex. It doesn't help the trembling, but his wallet gives him something to do with his fingers. He watches as Dad makes his way to a run-down looking elevator and keys himself in. "The system still recognises me. I did most of the preliminary coding here, and Henry never thought to lock me out." Dad turns to him and grins. "He doesn't supervise the restaurants too closely these days. Not after Charlie."
You did that. You killed her. "Is Charlie here?"
Dad scowls. "She comes and goes. Bloody nuisance. She's-" And here, Dad's voice becomes choked, rough and harsh. It's the most distress Michael's heard out of him since- since Evan. His stomach churns. "She's the only one who always remembers who she is. Her consciousness remains perfectly stable, and no matter what I try with the others, I can't seem to replicate the results."
"She's the eldest-" victim, experiment, sufferer, tormented soul, "-subject you've worked on, right? That could be a factor."
The elevator groans in warning as it settles, and the rusty doors slide open. Dad steps in. "It's possible," he says. "But the others, their moments of lucidity have no pattern, no trigger. Believe me, I've tried to find both." Tried how? Tried how, William? What the hell did you do to them? Our family? "Their conscious awareness seems fractured, crystallising at random. Most of the time, the only baseline is pure instinct, the animalistic subconscious. They lash out like cornered dogs."
Like a cornered dog himself, Michael joins him in the elevator. "Maybe they're afraid of you."
Dad shrugs this off. In the cramped space, he nearly elbows Michael doing it. Michael can smell his aftershave, the cigarette smoke on his clothes, the leather of the briefcase. "Oh, the five others I understand," he says, with an undercurrent of smug satisfaction that makes Michael want to scream, jam his fingers in his ears to block out the sheer dripping tone of it. "But Elizabeth? Evan? Afraid of their own father?"
I'm afraid of you.
"Maybe just scared in general. They died- the way they-"
"Hmm, yes. That seems to be a key factor, actually." Dad unhooks some sort of ugly yellow device from the wall and pokes at the keypad. Michael blinks at it slowly. Does it- is it blinking back at him, smiling? "I can only transfer consciousness from organic to digital when the subject is in a state of heightened emotion. That primal fear seems to be what facilitates the change. Something to do with the frequency their neurons are firing, I expect."
The cruelty is the point, then. What a profoundly scientific and objective way to justify it. 'Why, no, officer, I'm not getting a thrill out of the fear on my victims' faces! It's necessary for the experiment!'
Is that how he sleeps at night? By pretending he does it because he has to, and not because he loves the feeling of exerting control over others? Surely he has to know… from the self-satisfaction in his voice when he talks about their suffering, surely he has to understand he's got some wires of his own crossed? Malfunctioning code. Faulty programming.
"Fascinating," is what Michael says instead, as bile stings the back of his throat.
"I knew you'd understand," Dad says happily. "Hopefully your insights will help us bridge that last gap, find that last key ingredient that makes Charlie's case a success and theirs such an ordeal."
After a few more presses on the keypad, the tablet's screen flickers, and then there's a burst of static. Michael whips around, startled. "What the-"
A voice crackles to life from above him. "Welcome back, Administrator Designation: RABBIT! As always, I am your personal guide to the facility, model two point three five, version three of the Handyman's Robotics and Unit Repair System. As per request, I answer to the name: HAND UNIT. All software up-to-date. System time: ten thirty PM. Awaiting further instruction."
"Ah, there he is." Dad chuckles. "It's more streamlined to have AI oversight on facility grounds. Henry gave me full control of the system design, so I made this cheery little fellow. Cute, isn't he?"
More like terrifying. "Wasn't expecting that." Michael places a hand over his heart, beating like a hummingbird's wings.
"Administrator access allows me to pull up all the surveillance and movement data I've missed, keep better track of their progress. They tend to roam around the facility when I'm not here."
"Nobody else comes in?"
"Not while Fazbear Entertainment is still bouncing from one board of directors to another. Despite being CEO, Henry doesn't have much to do with the company these days, for obvious reasons." Obvious reasons. The slaughter of his only child by your own hands, you mean. Say it out loud. Michael's hands sink deeper into his pockets. Guilt curdles like sour milk in his stomach, an empty, aching pit. "Beyond barring me from company grounds, I mean," Dad adds dryly.
"That doesn't seem to have stopped you."
A scoff. "Not much does." He pats the elevator walls lovingly. "One way or another, I always come back."
The elevator grinds to a halt. The doors open with a shuddering wail out onto a shadowy room. It's even colder than the last one, and Michael grits his teeth against the icy edge of it. There's some disgusting, unknowable black grit all over the floors and walls, contrasted with the bright, sickly yellow of the caution tape draped half-heartedly in front of the entrance to some sort of vent. Granted, the dim light is hard to see through, but Michael doesn't spot any doors. Just them, the dirt, and the claustrophobically small opening for the HVAC. "Don't tell me that's the only way in."
"To access the maintenance stations, yes. It's a straight crawl, only a few metres. Just follow-"
"No, no," Michael says, some fragile remnant of his wounded sense of masculinity reasserting itself. "I'm not a pussy. I'll go first."
"Fear is natural, Michael. Just a chemical response. Nothing to be ashamed of."
"I'm not afraid of the vent," Michael insists. "It's a vent."
Dad raises an eyebrow. "Very well. Go on, then."
Michael gets on his hands and knees, scrabbles halfway into the vent, humming Tears For Fears lyrics under his breath, before the position he's in registers. Bent over, arse presented to Dad in the gloomy light like a two dollar whore in a dingy motel room. Inches away from the sharp point of Dad's nose, the thin line of his mouth, and behind that the very faintly crooked line of his teeth... his infamously silver tongue. Shout abruptly ratchets half a key higher, and an uncomfortable flush creeps its way down his neck. He prays Dad doesn't notice, or at least chalks it up to fear. Fear is at least expected. Fear is a variable Dad is already accounting for.
God knows what he'd do if he caught wind of Michael's shitty attempts at seduction.
His knees scuff the cold metal as he crawls along. He can hear Dad's breathing behind him, the creak of the vents, the low whir of machinery. He doesn't hum any more songs, just sucks his lip into his mouth and bites down hard enough to taste blood. Adding any more to the false joviality -- the smiley face tablet and the cute kid's mascots nobody knows are stuffed with rot -- just feels sick.
Just as Dad said, the vent soon opens up to a run-down maintenance station. Faded labels on the buttons, grimy dashboards, a cloudy viewing window that looks on into the endless darkness. Michael clambers out and leans against the nearest workstation. His eyes skitter over the window and quickly down to the floor.
"Here we are," Dad says. He stretches to full height, all languid, leisurely movement, purple dress shirt riding up to reveal the line of his hips, the trail of hair at his stomach. Michael swallows. "Let's see if they're awake."
Dad presses one of the buttons, and a light on one of the stages flickers to life with a droning hum. Michael puts his face against the glass and squints.
There they are. Motionless as statues, eyes dark and empty and staring, staring.
He shivers.
They don't look much different than they did the last time he'd seen them. The last day the restaurant was open, Henry had let him back in to do some temp work. Because it hadn't been his fault how everything had happened (except that it had), and it would be fun for him to wait tables again like he did in freshman year when he was desperate for a few measly paychecks. A walk down memory lane. Dad's cutesy designs had stared him in the face, and he'd blinked a few times to shake the image of blood and gore in their teeth. It wasn't there anymore. Except for the part where it was.
Dad was following in his footsteps, after all, not the other way around.
They look the same now. A little dirtier, obviously, but the expected snuff film scene isn't there. No bits of bone and flesh sticking out, no trails of blood. But they're in there. Those kids. They're still in there.
Bonnie, Chica, Freddy, Foxy. The main cast. He doesn't know who's curled up inside, clawing at the polyester walls of their prison. Their coffin.
"Ah," Dad says. "They are awake."
"Is that- are any-"
"No, no." Dad waves a dismissive hand. God, he's so unbothered. "You can see your brother and sister in the next maintenance hatch. These are a few of the subsequent test subjects."
He feels clammy, feverish. Just looking into their dead eyes makes him want to tear out chunks of his own skin, bash his head against the wall until he can't think anymore, can't feel. "Which ones?"
"Jeremy Marks, Gabriel DeAngelo, Susan Glenn, and Fritz Roth." Perfectly rote.
"There's another," Michael says. He hasn't let himself forget a single name. He owes them that much, at least. It's his fault they're here. "Cassidy Fairchild."
"That's correct. Dearest Charlotte meddled with that one."
"W-what?" Charlie was a spirited kid, a stubborn defender. The type to stand up to bullies… bullies like him. She was kind, through-and-through. Even though she was Evan's best friend, she'd extended Michael her forgiveness. She wouldn't hurt these kids. "How?"
"She stole her corpse and put it in with your brother," Dad spits. "I'd meant to give her another suit, but yet again a member of the Emily family took it upon themselves to stick their nose into my affairs. She ruined the experimental condition entirely, and now there's a… a data partition, let's say, in Evan's suit, where Cassidy Fairchild's consciousness was shoehorned in."
Because Evan had been afraid of the dark, of being alone.
Even in death, Charlie's always looking out for her best friend. Because she'd have seen- seen the lonely, aching soul of him reaching out- nothing but the company of his own broken mind for years on end after Michael trapped him there- seen how much he needed company, a kindred spirit. Someone to soothe his pain away.
It's too much. It's too much. He can't- he can't breathe- his chest hurts-
He falls to his knees and heaves out a sob. "Ev- Charlie-"
Dad scoops him up into the warm circle of his arms, mutters sweet nothings in his ear. "Hush. Hush, now. I know it's a lot to take in, my darling, but you'll see them soon. They're still here. Shh." Dad presses a kiss to his forehead, buries his face in Michael's hair. "This is a gift, my love. I've done them a favour. Once we've managed to troubleshoot the errors in their code, they'll live forever. A digital mind never fades, never grows old or sick. An inorganic body can be replaced time and time again. They will never have to leave us, not ever again." He inhales, scenting Michael like an animal. In a way, he is. More beast than man. "The pain is worth all that. To ascend to a higher form of existence is worth any suffering. They'll see soon enough. The path to scientific progress is always hard, but it pays off in the end."
Michael's sobs turn to hiccuping wails. He feels like a child again, reduced to an incoherent wreck. This is all his fault. He made Dad into a monster. He killed his own brother and it drove Dad insane. He's gone mad- they've all gone mad. "Don't you see? She did it for Ev- so he wouldn't be alone- I left him all alone, Father, I- I abandoned him-"
Dad cups Michael's face in his hands. "You've been here all this time," he whispers. "You've studied for years, snuck out of the house to spend hours researching the machines even when it meant another sleepless night, impressed all your professors, impressed me, all of it for this very moment. The moment you're finally able to help him."
"It's been years! He's been scared and alone and in pain- they all have-"
"Did you know Turing killed himself?" Dad asks. "He gave everything for science, everything to win the War, and then gave everything once again. Once they'd achieved peace, they arrested him for sodomy. Instead of prison time, he chose to volunteer himself for scientific experimentation. Attempts to treat homosexuality at the time involved chemical castration. Diethylstilbestrol. It's a nonsteroidal estrogen. He began to develop female sex characteristics, and it broke him. He self-administered a lethal dose of cyanide. It's an agonising death. Seizure, cardiac arrest, hypoxia. All that pain, all that suffering, and he's the founder of modern computing. His legacy is our legacy." A long finger strokes down Michael's face, slow, careful. "He never lived to see the fruits of his labour. But they will, we will. Indefinitely. Pain brings results, and unlike Turing, none of us will die a miserable death too soon to realise this. You and I had to learn that the greatest achievements require the greatest pain. Now it's their turn."
Dad is fucking insane.
And, oh, oh, God, now is the worst time for the doubt to creep up on him, but the way Dad says ‘homosexuality’, in that same clinical tone he uses to describe code, to describe chemicals, like it’s something to be scientifically examined… Does he think it’s an aberration? That it needs to be corrected, made picture perfect, just like everything else he creates? What if this whole plan doesn’t work? What if the seduction doesn’t work? Michael’s already Dad’s science project in more ways than one, what if he’d rather take Michael in for observation, for- some kind of horrific experimentation, worse than Turing could ever have dreamed- what if he’s disgusted, disgusted that his pure, perfect son is secretly an abomination.
And it’s not like he’s wrong. Not just- not just that Michael is sick enough to entertain seducing his own father, or to pretend to find murder excusable, or to have let his brother die, but that he’s… never had any particular trouble being attracted to people of any gender. It’s clear Dad can excuse violence in service of the cause, but sex? Sex is a different story.
It’s not that Dad’s religious, has any Puritanical moral hangups. Dad’s mother’s side is Jewish, but Grandma’s been out of the picture for decades. Granddad Richard was Protestant, fanatically, maniacally, and that was enough to light the spark of Dad’s doubt and scorn. Science is Dad’s religion, discovery his God, creation his holy work. But the stains of his own father’s fanaticism might not have washed fully clean.
What is he supposed to do if this doesn’t work?
Call the police? Tell the truth and risk getting sent to the loony bin? To cold white walls in sterile padded cells, to straitjackets and obscene doses of antipsychotics? Tell the truth and be believed? Never see Dad again outside of a federal prison visitation room? Watch as those deft inventor’s hands are cuffed and chained, watch as that brilliant mind is put behind bars?
Or will he end up trapped under Dad’s thumb forever? The proverbial battered wife, watching himself, his whole family, get taken apart and put back together again over and over and over-
He feels like his heart is going to burst from his chest. It hurts, it hurts worse than any physical pain his body can possibly imagine, though it's trying its best. He wants Mum back. He wants Liz and Ev back. He wants Charlie back. They're right here in front of him and yet they couldn't be farther away. He wants to be cradled like a child by the father he thought he had, not the monster that exists in reality.
And yet he still loves him. He still loves Dad so, so much- why can't he just hate him- why can't he be normal- why can't anything be normal-
He knows why. Because he's sick, he's always been sick. It was only a matter of time before he infected everyone else. This is his fault, this is his divine punishment. He's dragged everyone down to Hell with him. His family, his friends, everything he touches, it all turns to ash.
He buries his head in Dad's chest. "Father, please- please-"
Hands rest on his trembling shoulders. "Please what, angel?"
"We can fix them, can't we? Please tell me we can fix them."
"Of course we can. There's nothing we can't do, Michael. Nothing. The digital realm is ours to mould as we wish. Together, we can solve any problem, patch any bug, refine every last line of code until we achieve perfection. Here, we are gods. Do you understand?"
Michael nods his head. It's terrifying just how much power Dad has here, just how much this entire spiral into madness has fed into his god complex. He's had unfettered access to the ability to destroy and create life for- for decades, and he's used it to create a legacy too unbearable, too unspeakable to contemplate. God, it's fucking pathological. But maybe, maybe, with Michael tempering him, they can bring Liz and Ev back, heal whatever horrific mess has been cobbled together like a computerised Frankenstein's monster out of who they used to be.
Maybe there's hope. Or maybe he's just delusional. But he has to try.
He doesn't have the father he thought he did, but he'll make do with the one he has, because he has no other choice. All his life, Dad's tried to control him. And, for the first time, Michael's own twisted nature works for the benefit of the greater good; he's picked up some tricks. It's time to return the favour. Dad is the blade of a scalpel, so Michael needs to be the hilt. His one final tether to sanity, to rationality. To mercy.
"Please, father… take me to them? Take me to Liz and Ev?"
He has to crawl through more vents to get to his family's- holding cell. Dad explains that Liz is often too violent for any maintenance, that she mostly just sits here, letting the original AI subroutines play over and over.
"There's a microphone here," Dad is saying. "The other side of the workstation controls the light and the mechanism that dispenses electric shocks."
Bile fills his mouth. He swallows it down before Dad can notice. "S-shocks?"
"Like I said, she gets violent. I wouldn't do it if it didn't prove necessary, I assure you. That's my daughter in there."
Yeah, like I'm the one who needs reminding! "But- it's Liz-!"
"Only some of the time. When she's not lucid, her subconscious melds with the original programming and forms some kind of alternate identity. It happens with the others, too. A side effect of the process, unfortunately. If I'd had a clean slate to transfer their consciousness to, they'd probably have less difficulty staying in the present moment. Alas, I had to make do with what I had, and I couldn't risk altering the experimental conditions from the initial instance of Remnant's creation."
"Remnant?"
"Every company needs a name for its products," Dad says dismissively. "It's necessary for the patent. After it's secured, Afton Robotics will officially begin to manufacture Remnant, digitised human consciousness. Our name, imprinted on the greatest scientific breakthrough of our time, forever. Immortality as a brand."
He's an egomaniac. He's unhinged. He's a- a force of nature.
He's the worst possible person to have created this kind of technological breakthrough.
Why couldn't it have been Henry? Kind-hearted, earnest, trustworthy, hard-working Henry? Why did Dad have to be the one to see it first?
…Because of him. God, Dad's not the Snake in the Garden of Eden, he is. He fed Dad the Apple when he got Evan killed. From the beginning, it was always going to end up here. Right here. You can't escape Original Sin.
William Afton is a cruel, wrathful god, and Michael is his fallen angel. His Lucifer, his Eve.
"You want to sell it?"
"I need to ensure our futures are safe, Michael. An insurance policy, if you will. Once all the kinks have been ironed out, of course." Michael nods mutely. "Go on. Try talking to her. She might respond to the sound of your voice."
With trepidation, Michael trails over to the console nearest the viewing window. He presses the button for the light and winces as it comes to life in a horrible buzzing whine, worse than any of the others. Torturous. There, in the centre stage, she stands. Circus Baby. Michael had seen the preliminary designs when he was a kid, of course. Even then, Dad had plans for Michael to take over the family business, so he got a walkthrough of all new locations and insider access to all new designs. Half-clown, half-ballerina, made to appeal to the female aged 4-11 demographic. From a purely detached business sense, it's a good idea. But of course, it never went anywhere, not after Liz- after Liz… Still, he remembers the design. And Circus Baby's eyes were most definitely blue, not green.
Green like Mum's eyes. Liz had been the only one to inherit them. Him and Ev have always had Dad's eyes, greyblue. A killer's eyes.
She's motionless, too. Just standing there. Liz was all restless movement, all whirlwind energy, never a calm moment. Seeing her like this… He keys into the intercom system hurriedly. "Hey. Hey, are you there?"
That blank face turns up at him and stares. Just the face, nothing else. Watching him, unblinking. "You're new here. I haven't had a new friend in a while."
The voice isn't quite Liz. He can hear an undercurrent of her there, the cute, proper, posh way she always spoke (thanks to Dad's influence, of course), the breathy melody of her voice, but it's overlaid with something else, something more robotic. And her accent, their accent, it's gone. He turns to Dad, horrified.
"She's in a dissociative state, Michael. She's using the default voice presets." Dad seems completely disinterested. Then again, perhaps it's better that he doesn't hear his own daughter's voice coming from that… machine. "I'm sorry if it's unsettling for you. Evan's voice is the same as it was before the accident, but he only seems to speak in a whisper. He always was a bit shy. You'd have to get quite close to hear him, and it's not safe enough to do that yet."
Michael swallows, steels himself. "Okay," he says, quiet. Then, into the microphone, "It's me. It's Michael. I- I love you."
The machine, Liz, blinks, tilts her head. "Hello, Michael. Would you like some ice cream?"
He fights back more tears. "How are you feeling?"
"Feeling?" she repeats. "Feeling?" There's an immediate burst of some sort of static, some kind of glitch in the vocal processor. "How am I… feeling?"
"Are you okay?"
"O-o-okay," she echoes. Her voice is stuttery, struggling like a piece of unresponsive code. "F-feeling."
"Yeah. Yeah, Lizzy. Are you feeling okay?"
The machine twitches. Michael can hear motors grind and whir and click. More static bursts from her speakers. "Feeling… okay…" Then, suddenly, the faceplates open, the plastic lacquer clown makeup disappearing to reveal the metal endoskeleton, the writhing mass of wires and circuits beneath. "Mikey! Mikey- Daddy- let me out, please- let me out, I'm scared. Please, it's cold, I'm so cold-"
Michael rears back, right into Dad's chest, making them both stumble. Dad's arms come to wrap around him, righting him. The world is spinning. His throat burns. "You managed to wake her up. Impressive."
Michael clambers back over to the console. His hands are shaking so hard he has to try to key into the mic multiple times. "Liz! Liz! It's okay, you'll be okay, everything's alright now, I- I'm gonna make you feel all better, Liz, I promise."
"Mikey." The speaker crackles again. Her voice sounds calmer, less desperate, now. Older. "I miss you. It's been so long, hasn't it? I don't remember how long it's been. I see Daddy, and Ev, but I never see you. How old are you now? How old am I?"
"I- it's been- it's been too long." His breath hitches. "I miss you, too. So much. And Ev, too. Tell him I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"
"He knows. Sometimes. When he's awake, he knows. We can't stay awake long, Mikey. I'm sorry." She extends one grasping hand. "I feel time pass. I know I'm getting older. I look down and I don't- I don't have a real body anymore, I'm just the toy Daddy made for me, and it's- I can't. I can't take it, none of us can. I have to hide, I have to put myself to sleep. It's quiet, then, and I don't have to think about it. I don't have to feel it. She can handle it, the toy. She grows as I grow."
"Keep her talking!" Dad hisses, directly in his ear. He shivers. He can feel goosebumps rising, his hair standing on end. "This is the first time I've gotten her to explain how the dissociation works. With enough data, I can work on isolating her consciousness, separate it from the Circus Baby subroutines."
His cheeks are wet. Distantly, he wipes at them. "Maybe it's better if we don't."
"Nonsense. I can't sell a defective product, Michael. The transfer has to be complete, we can't risk our clients getting saddled with alter egos," Dad says derisively. "Especially not those of children's toys." He shakes his head. "No, no. As fascinating as this is, I want my daughter back."
I don't… I don't think you're going to get her back, Dad. Not when she has to live like this every time she wakes up. "It's okay, Liz," he murmurs. "I understand."
"Maybe, if you come more, I can try. If you call me, maybe I'll hear you, and I'll wake up."
"I will. I'll come whenever I can, I swear. I- I love you so much."
"I love you, too. I hope it works… I'm sorry if it doesn't. She comes out whenever it's too much, whenever I'm hurting. She doesn't like people. People hurt us, so she keeps me away from them. Even Daddy. Especially Daddy."
What have you done, Dad? What the hell have you done?
Dad pushes past him and leans into the mic. "You know I'm just trying to make things better for you, darling. Build you a better body."
"It's taken years, and it hurts every time. I'm old enough to know I'm one of your projects now, Daddy. I know what you do. Stop pretending I'm still the seven-year-old that got trapped in here! It's better for both of us. You won't have to bother to sugarcoat things for me anymore." Her voice chokes off. The faceplates close, and the machine gives a violent shudder. "Sugar. Sugar. Sugar. Sugar. Ice cream. Hello there, Michael. Do you want a- a- scoop?"
Michael bites his fist hard enough to draw blood in an attempt to muffle his scream. It doesn't work.
The machine giggles. The overhead light drones on. He can't separate it from the ringing in his ears.
Dad takes him home after that. He stares out of the window in silence, fiddles with the seatbelt. It's still raining, even harder than before now. The windscreen wipers click back and forth.
Just like her body had clicked.
"Are you going to listen to her?"
"Hmm?"
"Stop sugarcoating things, I mean. She's an Afton, she's smart. She heard the same lectures about Turing I did, and she spends every day with them. She's clearly put two-and-two together."
"Yes. I'd held off on telling her about Remnant, I thought she wasn't old enough to understand. Evidently, she is now."
Evidently.
Yeah, evidently.
He grinds his teeth, swallows. He can't seem too surly, or Dad might regret extending his offer, but it's hard to fake a smile when you know your family is suffering. God, Liz. She'd been such a fiery, excitable girl, a bright beacon of light in the Aftons' suffocating darkness. And now she's been dragged down with them, and it's all because of him. She and Ev were forced into donating their bodies for the cause, and Michael's the one who planted the terrible seed of that idea in Dad's mind. It's only grown, and grown, and grown.
It's why he's donating his body to the cause, now, though it's in a different way. Retribution, reparation. Not that he could explain to Liz and Ev, despite them being older now, the fucked up reasoning behind why incest will be their saving grace. It's a leap of logic to anyone else, but Michael knows Dad. He knows him. He loves having his ego stroked, especially by those he loves.
And evidence does seem to show Dad loves Michael. In a warped, twisted way, for all the wrong reasons, but love all the same. It won't be hard to twist that even further, surely?
"When can we go back?" he asks.
"That eager already?" Dad returns smartly, but he's clearly pleased. Again, the words' unintentionally suggestive meaning settles wrongly in his stomach. "That was a lot for you to digest, Michael. You don't have to push yourself into things you're not ready for."
God, if only you knew just how much I do, actually. "I'm ready. I want to carry on our legacy, and I want to be a good brother to Ev and Liz. For once."
Dad shakes his head. "You already are a good brother." They're the words he's wanted to hear for years, but has always known he doesn't deserve. It's both ecstasy and agony to receive them from Dad. He knows it's a lie, but he's weak enough that a lie, if honeyed enough, is capable of soothing him. He hates it, but his hatred won't make it any less true. Hah, as with most things in his life, really. "Look at all you've achieved, all you've done to get here. You're not only worthy of inheriting the company, but earning your siblings' respect."
"After what I did to Ev…"
Dad brushes him off. His greatest sin, the one thing he thought Dad hated him for, and he dismisses it like nothing. Pain and pleasure keep mixing. He supposes that's just fate, for him. The masochistic martyr, enacting the Afton family sadism upon himself. "Evan's accident, while horrific, has proved to be good motivation for both of us. To do better, to be better. Think about where we'd be if you hadn't made that mistake. Failure is the key to success. Any good inventor, any good businessman realises this."
"You don't… despise me for it, Father? For getting our family killed?"
"No. I adore you, child. Science is paid for in blood; we all have to learn that lesson. Besides, I'm as culpable for Elizabeth's accident as you are for Evan's. Neither of us intended to see them hurt by the machines' hands, but both of us were powerless to stop it. That was our personal price for innovation." Dad takes one hand off the wheel to grip his shoulder. "You are my greatest creation. They say groundbreaking scientists stand on the shoulders of giants. Well, you my dear, are the shoulders I stand on. Without you, I would never have reached this level. And now- now you're sharing your own ideas, your own unique thought processes with me, and we're both ascending even higher. Frankly, Michael, you complete me."
It's so sick. It's so fundamentally, completely, unequivocally wrong. They say necessity is the mother of invention, and it's true, but necessity isn't always blood and death and cruelty. Plenty of breakthroughs have been made without a single life laid forcibly down on the line for it. It absolutely reeks of Dad's desperate justification, the self-delusion he needs to sleep at night, knowing what he's done. What his son has done. He's made his family lose touch with fucking reality.
Dad loves him for it.
It's like swallowing hot coals.
It's better than sex.
Jesus Christ, he's broken inside. Truly and irreparably. And the worst part is it isn't even a metaphor. Michael has had a few scattered relationships over the years; he knows he's considered reasonably attractive. Hell, with the right outfit, a solid 8/10. All thanks to his dad's looks. No wonder Dad had pulled a girl skirting the edge of barely legal like Mum had been, all eagerly jumping into his lap. No wonder Dad's even got his own kids all wrapped up in him…
Point is, he's had sex, and plenty of it. And it's nothing, nothing, compared to this. Guilt and rapture intertwine and spiral and curve into one another in one endless feedback loop. His hands curl into fists, gripping his knees like a lifeline.
He's -- oh, fuck, he is, he really is -- hard.
He nearly bites through his lip. Please don't let Dad notice. Not now, I haven't- it's not been long enough- he'll be disgusted.
I'm disgusted.
"Thank you, Father," he says, voice shaking with pleasure. Please let Dad mistake it for relief. Please. "I- I love you." It's far more of a confession than it should be.
I think I'm in love with you. I think I hate you more than anything else in the world, save for myself. I think I want to kill you. I think I want you to kill me.
Did I try to seduce you for their sake, or for mine?
"I love you, too, my angel." Michael bites his lip impossibly harder and tries not to shiver. "We're going to do great things, you and I."
If only that were true. It's too late for it to be true.
He holds the reins to Dad's monster, and part of him is warped enough to enjoy the ride.
He sleeps nearly a full sixteen hours once he gets home, and wakes with a weight like a sinking stone in his stomach.
He doesn't deserve to be the one who's trying to save these kids, but he's the only one left who can. He just hopes to God he can keep Dad placated, sated, long enough to free them from this torment somehow. Build them a real body, or… let them die like they should've years ago. He'll let them choose, he won't be selfish. He'll get them anything they need. Anything but this. Anything and everything for them but this.
He'll give them the thing he craves most, but cannot have. Freedom from living hell.
He's so tired. Tired in a way sleep can never remedy. He watches himself descend the stairs without really feeling it, like a ghost. Except ghosts are real and tangible these days. He could reach out and touch, if it wouldn't get him killed.
As much as that would be blessed relief, his work isn't done. There's no rest for the wicked, and he's wicked to his core.
Dad's in the kitchen, rifling through the fridge. He's bent over the lowest shelf, still in boxers, scratching at his five o'clock shadow. "Are we out of eggs?"
It's the perfect picture of domesticity. Except for how Michael's staring at the shape of his father's arse where it stretches his pants, the long, elegant curve of his fingers, the line of his jaw, imagining the scrape of his stubble against Michael's bared throat…
He's brought this sickness upon himself. Dad didn't have to lift a finger.
Maybe it's a coping mechanism. It's not rape if you like it, so he made himself like it.
Or maybe this whole plan was borne of some subconscious desire his rational mind had shied away from. Maybe he's been so desperate for Dad's approval, Dad's love, Dad's forgiveness, that it's pathologised into some twisted, deformed inky patch of darkness in his soul that craves and obsesses and yearns for everything Dad could possibly give.
He'll never know which came first. Functionally, it doesn't matter. He's here now. What is known cannot be unknown. There's no closing his eyes to this.
He's always been Dad's puppet. It was only a matter of time before he ended up dancing from this particular set of strings.
He made his bed. He's lying in it. The sheets are soft silk. Or maybe they just feel like they are. Either way, they're stained with blood.
"Top shelf," Michael says. "At the back."
Dad stands up, yawns around a smile, and pulls out the egg carton. His eyes crinkle up at the corners, filling with a warmth that seems genuine. Michael needs it to be genuine, even if it's the only thing about Dad that is. "Thank you, darling."
Just the pet name makes something in him draw tight as a bowstring and shudder. God knows what happens when the tension snaps. A taste of Dad's generous praise and he's helplessly addicted. One drop in his veins, pulsing and thick, is ecstasy. Blood and heroin.
Where did it all go wrong?
Mum should've miscarried. Eight people would still be alive if she had. Surely Dad's grief at the half-formed potential of his son wouldn't have driven him to the same lengths. A sacrifice for the greater good, just like Dad loves so much. No pain, no gain. The perfect answer to the Trolley Problem. Flip one switch and kill a worthless piece of shit who gets off to abuse or do nothing and let eight little kids get brutalised.
It's too late now. He's alive. They're not. When Dad hurt them, they were afraid. When Dad hurt him, he was hard. The butterfly perishes when its wings are plucked and the cockroach still thrives after the stomp of a boot. Unnatural selection.
He risks the boot again by opening his mouth to babble about something more substantial than eggs. Anything for the possibility of Dad handing out praise, and anything to fix this Hell. What's another intellectual exercise? It's good for the mind, after all.
"Have you talked to Charlie at all about her ability to maintain control of her consciousness?"
Dad gives him a look of appraisal. He seems pleased. Or at least, unbothered to talk about work this early. "She hasn't been particularly forthcoming," he says dryly. "She's not like the others, she doesn't attack indiscriminately. Just me. I'm no longer 'Uncle Will' in her eyes. She gives me nothing."
A muscle in Michael's jaw jumps. "Well, that's to be expected…"
Dad laughs, like Michael just made a funny joke instead of an accusation of traumatising and killing his once goddaughter. "Yes, it is, rather, isn't it? From what I can see, she seems to function the same as the others in every other aspect. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's a matter of willpower. Charlie's a very determined girl, when it suits her. She's made it her personal mission to thwart my research at every opportunity."
The implications hit. And then they sink, sink like cinder blocks tied to a corpse disposed in some nameless body of water, dragged inescapably into the depths. 'She comes out whenever it's too much.'
They'd rather waste away in a fugue state than to face his father, face what he's done -- and still does -- to them. Charlie's the only one whose drive for vengeance outweighs her fear.
A wrenched out, winded sound tries to claw its way up his throat. He swallows it down, but it starts to eat away at his chest, a crushing pressure that makes him feel like he might throw up one of his own ribs. Squeezing and squeezing until he pops.
They see William Afton as the monster under their beds, a demon given human form. Michael sees him as a Beast, yes…
But he sees himself as Beauty.
He's so fucked in the head it beggars belief. It all runs in the family. At least he's keeping it in that family, eh? He could almost laugh. He could almost cry.
What had they chanted at Ev? Crybaby freak, crybaby freak, crybaby freak-
And still, he continues, "I can work on finding out what will motivate them to stay lucid. Liz seemed to think my voice helped."
Dad nods, slow and satisfied. "Working smarter and harder," he says. "Such a good boy."
It hits like lightning. Just as electrifying, sizzling down his spine with all the racing heat of a spark. Dad's never praised him this much before, not once, not ever. His whole life, it's been sparsely given, though the judgement to withhold it is fair. He hasn't deserved any. When he was a child, he was thoughtless, like all children are. Nothing to praise there. And then Mum had given him Liz, and Ev, and his thoughtlessness was joined with cruelty. From there, it could only get worse. Tormenting, torturing, all until he delivered Evan to the wide open jaws of Dad's own invention. One creation destroying another, destroying another.
After the Accident (the Murder), Michael had lost whatever shred of sanity was left. Delinquency charges, truancy, loitering, underage drinking, driving over the speed limit, smoking whatever he could get his hands on, starting fights with anyone who thought they could talk shit. He'd press his fingers into the bruises on his skin and like it. The blessed relief, the hazy, addled memory of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and a whole heap of barfights. He'd played bass and backing vocals in a punk band and rubbed his fingers and his voice raw. Don't think about how you killed your brother, just scream. Scream, bitch, scream.
Just like he did. Scream, scream, crunch.
Of course it never worked. Nights where he couldn't sleep, where even drugs, booze, and nicotine couldn't knock out his buzzing, whirlwind mind, and he'd grab the keys to his beat up junker car and drive to the restaurant. The one where it happened. Boarded up and closed down, traded in for bigger and better things.
Bigger and better body counts.
He'd break in, look at the hollowed out hallways, go rifling through leftover papers. Records, blueprints, Dad and Henry's half-scribbled ideas that never went anywhere, all left to rot. He'd thought if he studied enough, he could join the company early, propose his own designs for the machines. Make them safer. Surely nobody would object to that.
Idealistic moron.
Turns out, Dad's decided the death trap inside the friendly face is a feature, not a bug. The flaw in the design Michael had unwittingly revealed was apparently a blessing in disguise for him.
God works in mysterious ways, alright.
Not that he believes. The world is too cruel for a god. The mother of invention is the deity Dad insists he pray to. Science and discovery, cold, hard evidence. Here, in the heart of Mormon fanaticism, it's hard to keep your faith regardless. Not in the face of religious oppression, of reclaiming words of mercy and forgiveness for wrath and punishment. Hate the sin and the sinner. No love or salvation for a deviant like him, just shouts of "killer" or "faggot" or "psycho" or "motherfucking freak". Not that they're all that wrong. He is the reason his brother is dead, and no amount of suffering or repenting will change that. It won't change him being queer, either. Looks like it just made him worse, actually. Not a motherfucking freak, actually.
That's the wrong parent.
He didn't just kill his family, he ruined them.
And some part of his brain still has the fucking audacity to like it. Just when he'd thought he'd managed to suffocate it out of himself, snuff dead the sadomasochistic streak that's poisoned him since first breath, and it comes crawling back.
I'd kill myself if it weren't for those kids. They're keeping me alive, after I kept them dead. What cosmic fucking irony.
I hope Dad breaks me into pieces. I hope he rips me apart. Just let it fucking end already. Please.
I'm so tired. God, I'm so, so tired.
"I'm not," he says. Dad tilts his head, animal. Not like a puppy, though. More like a bird of prey. "Good."
Dad frowns. If anything, he seems baffled. "There's no such thing as good and evil, dear. Haven't you learnt that by now? Man made up morality, it's just another arbitrarily assigned value that's only useful in metaphor. Good for the Church to keep you in line, but not good for progress."
Ah, there he goes again, waxing poetic, regurgitating some kind of patchwork philosophy. Michael sees where he himself got it from.
He trails a socked toe across the kitchen floor tiles, feeling the divots where they've been connected by cement filling. He doesn't meet Dad's eyes. Dad hates that. Eye contact is a sign of respect. "I've been a royal pain in your arse since Mum first had me."
"Having children is a learning experience. If you were a bland, unchanging child, how would either of us learn? How would we grow? No, we'd stay stagnant -- ignorant -- forever. I shudder at the thought."
"All I do is fuck up," he blurts. His mouth is a tap, a rusty faucet, and now there's a hole in the piping, he just can't staunch the flow of feelings rushing out. An unstitched wound.
"You know I've studied those designs you made." Michael freezes, toe still caught in the tile. "The ones you still make, the ones you've been making since you were thirteen. I didn't mean to pry, but random loose leaflets of sketchpaper were hardly as obviously marked as a diary." Dad waves a hand. "They're brilliant. You've grasped the minutiae of my creations so well I might accuse you of reading my mind." He grins, long and slow and twisted. It's pleasure, but not the right kind. Not the pure kind you'd expect from a proud father, more like the grin that stretches the jaws of a hunter going in for the kill. Awe at the beauty of his own final blow. "But of course, you are your father's son. Interesting that thought processes are heritable, hmm? Just another part of consciousness that needs to be analysed."
It is a blow. More pleasurepain sings through his blood. He feels winded. He'd almost consider this a violation, if it didn't bring him such sickly sweet validation. Dad's seen his notes. Dad's seen his notes, and he liked them.
Dad's recognised pieces of himself in Michael, and they're all the worst ones.
Same killer instincts, same ruthlessness, same drive to create, no matter the costs.
It's probably thanks to Mum Michael even has a sliver of a conscience left after all that. Almost enough to break the Afton family curse, but not quite. The affliction of cruelty that he suffers from, and his father before him, and his father's father before that. God knows it goes further back than Richard Afton. He doesn't ask about his grandfather. Dad gets a dark look.
It's the kind of look that makes your joints lock up, your heartbeat race, your skin crawl. Cold hatred. The sins of the father that disgust the son, and yet are passed on all the same. Time is just a flat circle. History is doomed to repeat.
"You- you read them? All of them?"
"Whatever you left lying around," Dad says. "Michael, of course you've been a good boy for your father. You're my prodigal son."
Tears prick in his eyes. His stomach lurches.
His cock twitches.
After that, his insomnia comes back to haunt him, just like every other ghost of his past. He can't sleep, because his mind can't stop replaying Dad's words over and over like a broken record. Every compliment, turned over and over and examined from every angle. It makes him feel feverish and unwell. It makes him feel hot and sticky and sensitive all over. He hears Dad's voice praising him, echoing in his head, and he starts to toss and turn in bed, squirming and fidgeting.
He barely gets more than a few hours each night. He's exhausted, and it's not showing any signs of letting up. Internally, he begs for sleep, but of course, there is no god to answer his pleas. He hears his father's words again.
'Good.' 'Perfect.' 'Brilliant.' 'Darling.' 'Dear.' 'Love.' 'Angel.'
A fallen one, perhaps.
His blood feels like it's on fire, like it's fizzing in his veins. He's restless. His mind is spinning. He turns over to bury his face in the pillow and scream or sob, the heat overwhelming him, consuming him, and his nipples brush against the fabric of the sheets. They're hard against the soft cotton, and it makes something clench low in his belly, an electric jolt. He gasps, his fists clench.
No, no. It's not real, it's not happening.
Every time he's ever told himself that, it's turned out to be a lie.
This is going to be another.
He still hears Dad's voice. Low and dark, gravel and whisky rough, but flowing over him like honey. He tries to burrow deeper into the pillows, inhaling the scent of his shampoo. Dad uses the same one. 'Prodigal son.'
'You complete me.'
His hips jerk against the mattress. Another shock of white-hot pleasure zaps through him. Though it's muffled by the pillow, he hears himself whimper.
He's your father. He's a killer. He's clinically insane. He's a monster.
I'm a monster.
He just wants to sleep. He wants relief.
God, Dad had sounded so affectionate. So pleased. So intimate, satisfied.
He grinds his hips down against the bed. He just needs to get a little more rest. It's not like he's jerking off. Touching himself to the thought of his father's voice.
Just grinding against his bed. An inanimate object, just like any toy someone could use to get off. It's not like he's imagining it's anything else, that he's anywhere else, like, say, splayed out in Dad's lap, with Dad's hands gripping his hips, pulling him forward again and again as he rides Dad's thigh, rubs himself against the line of Dad's cock.
He bites his lip, fails to stop the moan that slips out. His blood is thrumming. He can't stop panting. He knows he'd be tenting his boxers if he rolled over -- knows he'd be able to see, not just feel, the wet patch where he's leaking all over them. God, like he's still a teenager with no sense of stamina to speak of. Getting close after only a few strokes. This is pathetic. He's pathetic.
He can't stop.
"A-ah!" His back arches, hips thrusting down onto the mattress against his will. He imagines Dad finding him in the kitchen, cooking dinner in nothing but an apron, and bending him over the counter. He'd already have slicked himself up, hole wet and dripping so Dad could slide into him with one smooth movement. "Hnn-"
Dad would fuck him hard and fast, but the punishing rhythm wouldn't matter, because he'd hit the right spot every time. He'd find the precise angle without even looking and reduce Michael to a whining, sobbing wreck. He already does, in every other sense. He knows exactly how to take Michael apart.
He's Michael's undoing. He always has been.
And Michael would cry out and beg for more, and Dad would lean in and bite at the shell of his ear and say, "You're such a good boy, Michael. Such a good boy for me," in that same dark, breathy voice, and- fuck-
He wouldn't mind that Michael was aching and needy and desperate for him. He'd lick and suck at Michael's neck and when Michael asked if it was okay, he'd tell him, "You're doing so well, baby. Go ahead. Go ahead, sweetheart, and come for-"
"Daddy!" Michael mewls, cock throbbing, and spills into the sheets.
And as the pulses fade, and he's left, twitchy and overstimulated and in his own sticky mess, he thinks,
Oh, God. I'm so fucked.
He can barely look Dad in the face. Dad, the murderer, who’s never been guilty enough to falter in holding Michael’s gaze. But still, Michael struggles to do it.
Even though this had been the plan. Sort of. It’s spiralling out of his control, he’s caught himself in his own trap, the spider that forgets which threads of his web are safe to touch. He’s in too deep now to go back. He’s drowning. It’s what he wanted, and yet it sickens him. He likes this too much, more than he deserves. It’s not right. It’s a perversion. He hates it, but not because it’s sick. Because it feels too good.
He can’t even get his own punishment right.
It would be too easy to fall into this, to sink down into the dark abyss and get lost, never breathe in clarity again. Drip-fed poison, the frog boiling in the saucepan. A long, slow, agonisingly sweet descent where he pleads for more.
Dad’s going to notice. When doesn’t he? And what’s Michael going to say then? Sorry, Dad, I can’t meet your eyes because I came harder than I’ve ever come before thinking about you bending me over and fucking me?
He got himself into this mess. He’s not supposed to get himself out of it, but part of him thinks he should. Maybe this plan was a terrible idea. Maybe it’s better the Devil you know than the Devil you don’t.
Oh, how the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
He hates the part of him that enjoys the ride. But no amount of self-hatred is going to wash it away. He’s never been able to will away his feelings, not like everyone else. He feels them too damn hard. He wants to throw them away and let them rot like old bones in the desert, sunbleached and withering, a shadow of what they once were. He wishes he could. He wishes he didn’t love his father, especially not like this. But where everyone else can detach, disconnect their feelings one-by-one, Michael is stuck. No amount of distance soothes his mind. No amount of time heals his wounds. Maybe it was Evan that did it. Or maybe he’s always been like this, feelings tangled up and humming under his skin like the mess of wires that now make up his sister’s chest.
He can’t stop thinking about it. His fantasy. But he’s used to working when his mind is screaming at him, clawing at the walls of his skull like a rabid animal in a cage, so it’s easy to focus. He draws up more designs, this time aimed not at snotty school children with pizza-greasy hands, but at the future of tech. Something cutting edge. An android body for his dead-not-dead family. Something beautiful and streamlined like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. He thinks about Robocop, about Terminator, about the terror that comes with seeing something in the Uncanny Valley. Sarah Connor being hunted down by something that would never need to stop to breathe, to eat, to sleep. James Murphy waking up and seeing his flesh freshly-encased in metal. The unholy match made between man and machine. A matrimony always divorced by the keen evolutionary instinct that immediately hones in on anything even slightly unnatural. There were always those kids who were terrified of Dad’s machines.
They were right to be.
Is Liz ever going to be able to look herself in the mirror? Is Evan? Michael himself can’t, and he still has a human face.
Dad can. He does it often, in fact. He thinks he’s hot shit, always has. Knows his own attractiveness.
Now Michael knows it, too. Can’t unsee it, no matter how much he wants to. Maybe that’s a little narcissistic of him, given the only difference between his appearance and Dad’s is 30 years’ worth of ageing. And the look in his eyes. Dad’s are always cold, even when wide with that manic energy that infects him during the heights of his productivity. Even if it’s arrogant, it’s the truth. People fawn over Dad, and people fawn over him. All that fawning Dad’s charmed out of countless susceptible souls is what made the business so successful, despite all the shut downs and failures. He’s always been able to sell any pitch, no matter how flimsy the house of cards. It’s only once you look deeper that you start to see the cracks in the façade.
We all have our scars.
Dad’s the only one who seems to think this is a good thing. That the broken down shambles of the Afton family are really a colosseum of golden pillars. Dad thinks he sees everything so clearly, but when it comes to this, he’s delusional.
What do they say? There is no man more blind than the one who refuses to see? Something like that, anyway. Michael may be a piece of shit, but at least he knows it. Always has.
Maybe it doesn't make a difference either way. He'll find out soon enough.
The designs are tentative, but unmistakable. They’ll work, he knows it. Pretty and fluid rather than industrial and blocky, maybe a little too avant-garde, but whatever, it’s not like Dad’s gonna call him pretentious for it. Until technology progresses to the point of near-perfection, an android body will always look different from a human one. There’s nothing he can do to hide that, so he might as well make it look artistic. One day, he prays, one day, they’ll be indistinguishable from a flesh and blood person, but it’s not now, and he’s not going to pretend it is.
Can’t they be beautiful because of their differences, and not in spite of them?
Probably not in fundamentalist Utah. He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. He can feel a headache coming on. That’s what he gets for staring at the blinding white of his sketchpad for hours on end.
Might as well show Dad now, before he gets caught up in his own perfectionism and spends another five hours picking at minute details.
As he heads downstairs, he tells himself he's not doing this because he craves the validation. This is necessary feedback. Dad's been doing this a lot longer than he has, and he has a trained, keen eye for detail. Any flaws Michael's missed, any new angles to be explored with new eyes, Dad will find. It's a promise. A prayer to this town's god.
That's what he tells himself.
Of course, he doesn't believe a word. Self-delusion doesn't run in the family, apparently. Unlike everything else.
He would be that unlucky. Handed down craziness and not even given the decency of handing down blissful ignorance along with it. Still, it's probably the only reason he's here, trying to fix this Hell, right these wrongs. He's the only one self-aware enough to do it.
Dad's stretched out in his favourite armchair, thumbing through a well-worn copy of I, Robot. Asimov is another one of Dad's precious heroes. Michael wonders how horrified they'd be to hear that. Science is supposed to be something beautiful, he thinks. Dad has made it into something too abhorrent to bear. Cold and analytical, passion with no heart or soul. No step too far, no line too great to cross. Morality is a constraint, not a guideline.
"I made something for you."
Dad looks up from his book. His eyes are filled with that same manic eagerness they always are when his pet projects are waved under his nose like meat to a starving dog. Salivating. "So productive, Michael. Your work ethic really is a marvel. You always were a hard-working young boy, though, weren't you? One of your many strengths. I don't have the right to be surprised."
His knees want to buckle. He swallows compulsively, repeatedly, throat clicking and dry. Blood flushes his cheeks a hot, stinging pink. "Thank you. But you should probably see if the designs are any good, first."
Dad scoffs. "If they're anything like your previous works, they will be."
He shudders, just a thin tremble, barely noticeable. Stop. Don't stop. Thank God Dad's not looking, hands already grasping Michael's designs like a lifeline. His eyes rove the paper hungrily, and a smile twitches at his lips. He makes approving noises. The very picture of wholesome fatherly pride.
Michael is imagining Dad looking at his body with that same enthusiastic hunger. His breath comes shorter. His jeans feel tighter. He looks away, fighting down a crashing wave of shame. It nearly overwhelms him. He can't believe this is happening, he can't believe he ever thought this would work, it's all spiralling out of his control.
For the thousandth time, he's made a monster.
"Fantastic," Dad breathes. "Oh, these are just… exquisite, Michael, truly. You have a sense of artistry in your designs, like Da Vinci with his own inventions. It's the sign of a brilliant mind at work."
The words are thick and molten. He feels himself sinking into them like a warm bath, chasing them like the last desperate, collapsing images of a rapidly-fading dream, milky hazy and crumbling away at the first touch of his fingertips. It's like everything Dad says has physical weight, everything from a featherlight brush to a heavy pressure, blazing a trail through every nerve.
He could come untouched like this, he realises. With just the grip of Dad's words on his cock.
"Father, really, you flatter me, I don't- they're just preliminary sketches, not even refined yet…"
"Raw talent," Dad insists. "I'm so lucky to have a son like you, someone who can truly learn and adapt from my own work. The perfect successor to the Afton family empire."
How pathetic would it be if he came while standing here, just like this? Just when he thinks he can't go any lower, some sick part of him finds a way. "I don't know what to say," he says, only partially a lie. He doesn't know anything reasonable to say. Everything in his head right now is just pleas for more.
"Mmm. Hard work like this deserves a reward."
Michael's heart flies into his throat. He goes tense all over, hot and flushed and working up a sweat. "A reward?"
"Yes. Think of it as a token of my appreciation. It's the least I could do."
He's so hard it aches. This isn't what it sounds like. Stop it. He chews his lip, tries to take a deep breath. He's panting. "What kind of reward?" Stop being so fucking obvious.
"How about a nice dinner? There's a steakhouse downtown that comes highly recommended."
The expected disappointment doesn't come. Instead, his stomach flips over with a jittery, shaking kind of anticipation. It sounds like a date.
God, this is a new low.
"I'd love to. Thank you."
"Of course, my dear." Dad tucks a stray strand of hair behind Michael's ear. It's not romantic, he tells himself, clenching and desperate, but of course, his heart nearly bursts anyway.
He has butterflies. For… his own family. For William Afton, child serial killer and mad scientist. How far gone is past too far? How many metres below rock bottom are too many? When did he pass the point of no return? Did he even notice?
How could it possibly have gotten this bad?
If only someone could put him out of his misery. If only he didn't have the tiny speck of conscience left that's been stopping him from taking the coward's way out. Jiminy fucking Cricket. Crush that stupid voice in the back of his head like the bug it is.
He can't do it. It's the one thing that separates him from Dad. If he breaks this promise, there won't be anything left of him. His father will have subsumed him entirely, this vengeful spirit of genetic memory that's fated to haunt him until he dies.
He doesn't want to go out like that. He'll take any indignity, any humiliation, if it means he can die knowing he broke the cycle, if only for a second.
So… dinner. Keep working on the plan. Grin and bear it.
"When are we going?"
"Tomorrow night?" Dad surveys him with narrowed eyes and hums. "Wear something nice. Perhaps not as showy as a suit, but a dress shirt, at least. It won't look good to be underdressed, it's one of the higher end restaurants in the area."
Michael swallows. A drop of sweat drips down the line of his back. "Are you going to be wearing a suit?"
He hasn't seen Dad in a suit since- since- since he got all twisted up inside. And he'd thought Dad cleaned up well back then. Jesus. He feels clammy, wipes his palms on his trousers, starts to fidget. He doesn't know which answer would be worse: yes or no.
"Hmm," Dad says. "No, probably not. We don't want to be over-dressed, either."
At least he won't be swallowing his tongue all throughout dinner. "Hah. Delicate balance, isn't it?"
"Always." Dad squeezes his shoulder. "You'll learn in time."
Have I ever? he thinks, but doesn't say.
He's jittery all throughout the next twenty-four hours. He tries to tamp it down, but no amount of shame will quiet the eager, anticipatory squirming in his stomach. As always, he can't turn off his emotions quite as well as other people do. Blessedly, cursedly free from self-delusion.
He sleeps, fitfully, then works more on his designs and tries to pretend he can't still hear Dad's words of praise as they echo in an infinite loop around his skull. He wants to tear his hair out. He misses the blissed out haze of drugs and rock 'n' roll. If he turned the volume up on his record player any higher, his ears would start bleeding.
He keeps snapping the lead off his pencil by pressing too hard. But if he doesn't hold the damn thing in a death grip, it'll shake right out of his hands. He grits his teeth, sighs, and rubs his temple. Just take it one minute at a time…
Except each minute is more agonising than the last.
His blood is singing and buzzing and stomach churning until dinner time. As his trembling fingers fumble with the buttons on his dress shirt (purple, why is it always fucking purple, Dad's favourite colour pressed to his skin like a brand, enveloping him like a lover), he contemplates the state of his life. A mess of bizarre and surrealist scenes from a shitty sci-fi crime novel. The kind of drivel you can buy for pennies next to the magazine stand. He's trapped in a Hell of entirely his own making, watching his skin sizzle at the slow, encroaching heat of its inferno.
As he walks downstairs, a kind of odd, serene wave of bemused detachment washes over him. He's about to have dinner with a serial killer. He thinks it's a date. The serial killer is his father. He still thinks it's a date. The world is falling apart. It really, really feels like a date.
He needs it to be a date. He doesn't have any other plans than this one, as half-baked and flirting with danger and insanity as it is. What the fuck is he supposed to do other than try and take advantage of the feelings he's spent his whole life desperately wishing his father had for him? Ruin his wish come true, take advantage of it and warp it into something more fitting for the kind of news headlines this will no doubt drum up when everything comes out -- something disturbing, perverted, deviant, wrong. Everything he wishes his father wasn't, but everything he knows he needs him to stay in order to keep him under control. Dad only listens to people who can give him something. Michael will give him mind, body, and soul. Just… let him stop hurting kids.
Hurt me instead. I actually deserve it.
Let me seduce you. Please.
What a fucked up tragedy his life is. And most of it is his own damn fault.
He fiddles with the buttons on his shirt and swallows. Dad's at the door already, adjusting his cuffs and smoothing a hand over his hair, the thick mess of it gelled into a professional-looking side-parting. Michael's own hair is always long and shaggy and disheveled, as is appropriate for the punk rock, no-fucks-left-to-give vibe he aims for. Dad always looks so much suaver, classier than he does, and it's no different now. He looks… breath-taking. A deep purple dress shirt (God, they match, they match-) and black slacks which highlight the smooth, wiry frame of Dad's body in a way that's frankly sensual. Shining Oxford shoes, a tasteful watch on his wrist, a hint of the scent of his most expensive aftershave. He looks perfect. Tall, dark, and handsome. Michael feels himself flush.
That is your father. Like if he can think it hard enough it'll sink in. He dug this hole, and he's doomed to dig it deeper.
He looks down at his scuffed dress shoes and dark washed jeans and the flush turns from lust to shame. He looks like trash, like Dad is the wealthy businessman taking his cheap whore out for a conciliatory dinner. Not so far from the truth, he supposes. But Mum always used to dress up nice when she and Dad went out, before the ugly separation and subsequent divorce, before things went from bad to worse. Gorgeous backless dresses and elegant heels. Mum had a sharp mind and a sharp tongue, probably what drew her to Dad in the first place, and she'd spend most nights out socialising leaning in to whisper snide comments in her family's ears. He was only a kid then, but he could appreciate how ridiculous the pomp and circumstance of it all had been, even from the idealistic eyes of a grade schooler. He'd giggle and snort and Dad would hide his smirk, and the night would continue on as they were swept up in their own little world of running commentary.
Things were so good, then.
And here he is, comparing himself to his mother, not on morals or intelligence, but on how to be a good wife. He could almost laugh.
"Father, you look…" Sexy, unfairly attractive, hot as sin… "wonderful. Maybe I'm underdressed, I can go change-"
"No, no," Dad dismisses. "You look wonderful yourself." Michael tamps down on a shiver. "Come, are you ready? It's a short drive. The reservation's in half an hour, so we should have time, even with traffic."
"Yeah," he says. "I'm ready."
He's not. He never has been.
The restaurant seems a little out-of-place for their middle of nowhere shithole in Utah. Very swanky, with vines on trellises outside and waiters in bowties. The kind of place you hold a high class business dinner, or… celebrate an anniversary. The lighting inside is dim and moody, intimate, and the receptionist greets them in soft, pleasant tones. "Good evening. Do you have a reservation?"
"Yes," Dad says. "It should be under Afton."
The receptionist checks his clipboard, then nods. "Yes, I see. Party of two. Right this way, sirs."
Party of two. Michael chews his lip. Nobody's gonna assume it's a date. They probably think it's a business thing. There's a hotel a block down that hosts a lot of corporate moguls, they probably come here all the time.
And take their high class escorts out for a nice dinner while they're at it?
He chews his lip harder. Why can't his mind just shut up for a second?
The receptionist leads them to a cozy corner table, all pristine white cloth and shining silver cutlery. "Here you are. Shall I have a server come back in five or do you already have an order in mind?"
There are candles on the table. Candles. His face feels hot. Would it be too surreptitious to wipe his sweaty palms on the embroidered serviettes?
Dad gives him a slight elbow. "Want to see the menu, Michael?"
He blinks. "Oh, yeah, right, sorry- I, uh, I'll take whatever Fa- whatever he's having."
You fucking moron, a voice in the back of his head chides. Don't look like you can't decide what to call him. And especially don't go to call him Father and then fucking backtrack! Everyone will notice!
The receptionist doesn't. But Dad most certainly does. He tenses slightly, tilts his head just a fraction of an inch, eyes straying quickly between Michael's red face and the poor clueless employee caught in the middle of this shit. He recovers in an instant, a practiced hand at smoothing over slips of the tongue, and says, "We'll take two orders of the house special. I've heard it's… to die for."
"Excellent choice. Anything to drink while you wait?"
"A bottle of your best red wine."
"That'll be right with you. Enjoy your evening, sirs." The receptionist dips his head politely and walks away, waving over one of the servers hanging around on the sidelines, ready to wait on them hand-and-foot. Dad looks on in obvious approval.
"Wine?" Michael asks as he nervously slides into his seat. Just the scrape of the chair against the polished hardwood floor seems too loud in the low hush of voices and clinking silverware.
"We're celebrating," Dad says. "Besides, you're legal."
The words make his stomach flip. He gulps the complementary iced water like a parched man in the desert. "Yeah. Never understood why it's 21 over here."
"You know Americans," Dad says. "Very moralistic. It's all a carefully-constructed façade, of course. They're just as depraved as the rest of us."
If anyone knew just how depraved we all are, actually… "Especially in Utah."
Dad chuckles. "Especially in Utah."
God, is this line of conversation deliberate? Is Dad catching on? Fuck, it's too soon for that, he needs to tone it down and stop acting like a blushing schoolgirl. Lives are at stake, here.
The wine can't come soon enough. It's delivered with too much flourish, but luckily Michael can get a glass in hand within the minute. He chugs it back, stopping only briefly to enjoy the taste.
"Easy with that," Dad says. "This is the kind of wine you need to savour, not knock back like there's no tomorrow."
"Sorry," Michael says sheepishly. "Stressed."
Dad clicks his tongue. "You can take your time with your work, Michael. There's no hurry."
"I don't like feeling unproductive."
Dad won't give him something as undignified as a snort, but he does raise a sceptical eyebrow. "When have you ever been unproductive, darling?"
Thank God his cheeks are already flushed. Perhaps it's the wine that makes him say, more honest than he'd like, "I feel like if I'm not doing something every second of my life, I'm not making up for… for what I did."
In vino veritas.
Dad's the wrong person to go to for this, given his truly astronomical levels of delusional thinking. But he can't stop. He may be twisted enough to feel a burgeoning (desperate) sexual interest in his own father, but his psychological interest, his emotional needs, remain the way a son's should be. And have always been. When you're hurt, you go crying to Daddy. It's an old instinct, and it's hard to break.
"Evan would understand you need time to rest."
Michael takes another sip, sloshes it around his mouth a little and tries to taste it. It's good, but it's hard to appreciate the craftsmanship in this state. "Evan would hate me. Does hate me, when he's around to think about it."
"He forgave you long ago."
If he could, it's because he found someone new to hate. Someone else with the same face.
He looks away. "I don't want to be a bad brother anymore."
"You're designing your brother's new body. Is that what a bad brother does?"
"I'm the reason he even needs a new one."
"You didn't mean it," Dad dismisses.
Didn't I? I'm clearly as sick as you are. Maybe sicker, since I'm patient zero. The first dose is always the most potent, right? "I was cruel. I wasn't as horrified by his pain as I should've been. If I cared more, I wouldn't have done it."
"Of course you cared," Dad insists. "Often, we end up hurting those we care about. It doesn't mean we're irredeemable."
Is that what you tell yourself to sleep at night? "I'm not looking for redemption." It's too late for that now. "I want his forgiveness, but I don't expect to get it. What I'm doing… it's the least I could do."
"See? You have an inner sense of nobility. You're not without morals. It's very charming, actually, how strongly you hold your ideals."
Oh, no, I know the difference between right and wrong. I just don't seem to be able to do anything but that last one. "That doesn't seem naïve to you?"
Dad shakes his head. "More… hopeful. You have a wish for a better future, and you intend to do all you can to make that happen. You're passionate, driven. It's a good quality in a leader. You'd do well in politics. I'm just glad I managed to win you over to the idea of running the family business before someone else snatched you up."
He tries so hard not to read more into that wording than was intended. His fists clench with the effort, nails digging half-moon crescents into the warm flesh of his palm. He hopes he hasn’t drawn blood. "Thanks, but don't worry, I wouldn't have been persuaded any other way regardless. I think politics would suck my soul. I'd go grey by thirty."
"Mm, probably. And yet I could still see you as the righteous crusader, calling for the fall of the Berlin Wall."
If only his crusade was as marketable as the fight against an oppressive regime. While he's certainly trying to get justice for the innocent, he's not doing it with televised speeches. He's trying to control his maniac father with the promise of incestuous gay sex. There's nothing righteous about this living hell.
The food arrives before Michael has the chance to object to the admirable picture Dad's painting of him. Admittedly, his own train of self-deprecating thought halts at the sight and smell of it. Absolutely divine.
Far more than he deserves.
A beautifully grilled steak, beside creamy mashed potatoes, steaming gravy, and collard greens. His mouth starts to water before the plate's even set on the table. Dad wasn't lying when he said this place was high end.
"To your future endeavours," Dad says, and holds out his glass. "And our continued success."
"Cheers," Michael says, and toasts. They have very varying definitions of success.
To Ev and Liz. To those kids. I'm gonna get you out of there one day, I promise.
The first bite of steak is melt-in-your-mouth tender and juicy, a perfect medium rare. Just the right amount of seasoning, aromatic herbs and spices that enrich the flavour of the meat rather than detract from it. He groans with pleasure and chases another forkful. Dad eyes him carefully as he sits and enjoys it. Under his gaze, Michael feels split open. He shouldn't like it as much as he does. Familiar guilt creeps in, inky black tendrils of it crawling through his skin like venom from a bite wound. He shouldn't feel this good. He shouldn't want Dad's eyes on him like this. He shouldn't be here, while Evan and Liz are still there.
He shouldn't, he shouldn't, he shouldn't.
He still does.
Story of his life.
He drinks more than he should, too, and by the time he gets home he's a little past tipsy, stumbling and slurring just enough to be noticeable. Good thing Dad drove. Always the picture of composure, never a crack in his carefully constructed mask, that ever-professional veneer.
Can't let things slip when you have so much to hide.
Michael knows the feeling.
The house is chilly, and he runs his hands up and down his arms to stave off the cold. Dad toes off his shoes and fiddles with the radiator until it creaks to life. Satisfied, he stretches out on the couch, groaning as his back cracks and his muscles unwind. Michael tries to ignore the flash of heat the sound sends coursing through him.
He fails even harder than usual. The wine was a bad idea. This whole thing was a bad idea. His entire life is just a series of bad ideas, one after the other. Possessed by the cruel spirit of recklessness, of callousness, just like his father, only he can't hold it back quite as well.
Ah, the best-laid plans of mice and men. Does it even fucking matter in the end? Was there ever a universe where he was destined to escape this? He doesn't think so, really. Even in a sea of infinite possibilities, his own depravity seems a terrible constant. The worst possible anchor.
"Shall we watch something?" Dad asks, turning the TV remote over in his hands.
"Sure," Michael says. "If you move over and give me a little room, first."
Dad chuckles. "Can you fault me, truly? I'm older than you, my bones ache more than yours." He rolls up his sleeves to reveal his bare forearms. Between the dark dusting of hair, there are silvery scars, crisscrossing in too-neat lattices across the length of skin visible, and disappearing underneath the bunched up fabric of his shirt. The same faulty mechanism that killed-not-killed Evan, in a far less fatal location. Springlock failure. "And I've a patchwork of old injuries from working the floor those first few difficult years, before we could afford any trained performers. You're still young and spry." Dad looks up at him from narrowed eyes, almost sly. "Untouched."
Is that- is Dad mocking him? His gaze darts away from the piercing stare all the same. "Here," he says, settling into the space at the end of the sofa and pulling Dad's feet into his lap. "A massage should help."
He's drunk enough to mean it as a challenge, but not drunk enough to feel anything but shuddering apprehension. He tries to keep his movements slow, fluid, and relaxed, but he worries the look on his face will give him away. Dad yawns, light, and obliges Michael's offer by wiggling his toes. "You're such a good boy, aren't you, Michael?"
A small tremor starts up in his hands, and something quick and electric darts down Michael's spine. "I try to be, Father. You know I just want you to be happy."
Happy enough to spare everyone. Everyone but him.
"I am," Dad assures. "You make me happy."
Like a good son should? Like a good wife should? "I'm glad. You work so hard. Always have." He digs his fingers into a hard knot of muscle at the arch of Dad's foot. Dad hums his appreciation.
"So do you."
"Yeah," Michael finally admits. "A labour of love."
"My work is the same. I do this all out of love, my darling. I built this empire for you and because of you."
It sounds like a declaration. Michael's heart takes it as a proposal. Fuck. He's getting hard again. Like Pavlov's fucking dog, his father's praise gets him salivating. Anything for more. Anything. "It's so much," he says, nonsensically. But it's true. Everything is. He's overwhelmed by the sheer level of twisted devotion Dad has shown him. Murder in his family's name. It's sick, but it's Dad's love. It hurts as much as it gives him pleasure.
"I know. You take it so well."
Is the double meaning as intentional as Michael wishes it were? Have any of them been? Or is he just insane, reading too far into things that were never meant to be as fucked up and perverted as he is? "I love you," he breathes, softly, weakly. He removes Dad's feet from his lap, so he can't feel how much this has been turning Michael on. The noises he makes, that Michael's drawing out of him, the praise he's giving, and that's drawn out by Michael, too. It's all too much.
"I love you, too." Dad's eyes are thankfully closed. He can't see where Michael's straining in his pants.
Michael crosses his legs. "What do you wanna watch?"
"Hmm, actually," Dad says. "Perhaps not, after all. I'd much rather talk to you, love. What's on your mind?"
Bending over for your cock. "The steak was really damn good," he offers, instead. "Thanks for taking me out."
"Of course. It was good, wasn't it, darling?" Dad sighs a little. "Tender." It sounds positively sinful falling from his lips. "Juicy. Delectable." Michael feels his cheeks burning, far more from arousal than from alcohol. His eyes fall to Dad's dress slacks, to his crotch (like he's expecting to see anything, wishful thinking), then move quickly away. "Truthfully, I wanted more."
"Y-yeah." Michael curses the way his voice cracks. "It wasn't a very big portion, was it?"
"Not very generous of them," Dad agrees. "Really, you deserve more. Another reward, to make up for things."
His mind is nothing but a litany of curses. He feels stretched thin, a second away from coming apart at the seams. "Thank you, Father. You're too good to me."
"Oh, I have so much more in store for you," Dad promises, smooth as silk. God, Michael aches. He's ruining his fancy outfit by leaking into his pants. Shame chokes at him; he can barely breathe. "So, how about it? What kind of reward would you like?"
Michael squirms, starts to open his mouth to ask for something normal, something innocent, and comes up with nothing. He trails off, stutters, "Uh- I- I'm…"
"How can Daddy help you?"
He can't help it. Oh, God, he can't- "Hnn-" He bites his tongue on the moan.
Dad's eyes open, slight. There's no other reaction but a languid stare, lazy and catlike. "Yes?"
He always has to act without thinking, doesn't he? All his plans go to shit because he can't control himself. He has to get what he wants, when he wants it. Just like his father.
He clambers over Dad's long legs, shaky and desperate, and straddles his hips. He hisses at the pressure on his cock and tries not to rut like a mindless animal. "I need-"
Dad doesn't look disgusted. His hands come to frame Michael's waist and align them more comfortably. Michael can't tell if he's hard. He's almost too afraid to check. "What do you need, sweetheart?"
“You- please- please, Daddy-”
And Dad groans. Michael’s breath stutters in his chest. Heat floods every inch of his body and he grinds down helplessly against Dad’s crotch. Dad groans again, low and like it’s punched out of him. “You want me?” Dad asks. “You want me, do you, boy?”
Michael nods frantically. “Yeah- yes, please-”
“Look at you,” Dad says, reverent. “So ready for me. Only for me.”
It… it worked? It worked? It worked it worked it worked it worked it worked-
Relief hits him with all the force of a speeding car. Then, self-hatred. So, he managed to ruin the last innocent, pure thing between them, after all. Appealing to Dad’s possessiveness, his desire for flattery, for sycophantic fawning, it worked. Even this moral boundary wasn’t enough to stop him.
It hadn’t been enough to stop Michael, either. Some part of him must have known, even back then.
How much he wants this. Needs this.
Shame bubbles up like hot tar, threatening to choke him. Tears prick and sting at the corners of his eyes, and he blinks rapidly to clear his blurring vision. Yet, even with his cheeks wet and his stomach churning with an almost overwhelmingly nauseating feeling of disgust, his cock is throbbing.
“I love you,” Michael breathes.
“I love you,” Dad echoes. He strokes his thumb over Michael’s lips, which part obediently, tongue darting out to give little kitten licks. Dad sounds awed when he says, “You were made for me. I made you, my perfect soulmate, and I didn’t even know it.” Something like a growl rumbles in Dad’s throat, and he drags Michael closer, grip on his hips bruising, until Michael can feel his cock pressing insistently at the confines of his slacks. “You’re mine.”
Michael leans in and kisses him, wet and open-mouthed. Dad’s tongue slides into his mouth, and he moans, high and needy. The kiss is sloppy and uncoordinated until Dad squeezes his hips again, gentles him with a soft bite to his upper lip, and pulls away, panting. “Shh, there we go.” Michael chases after him with a whine. “Relax, I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere.”
Aren’t you? When all this is over, you won’t be a free man. And neither will I.
“I want-” Michael fumbles with Dad’s zipper, then his own. “I want to feel you.” He tugs his pants down hastily, squirming as he tries to shimmy them down his hips. Dad gasps against his ear, nips at the hinge of his jaw. “I want you to fuck me.”
He feels Dad shudder beneath him. “There’s lube in my back pocket.”
“Wha- why?”
“Leftover from the last time I wore this pair of slacks. It was my fifth anniversary dinner with Clara.” Dad licks a stripe up his neck until Michael’s breath is hitching on every inhale. “We fucked in the backseat of the car, after. She rode me, just like this.” Dad’s voice is syrupy, husky. “It wasn’t nearly as good.”
Michael whimpers. “Come on, come on, come on-” He gropes at Dad’s arse until he feels the packet of lube, pulls it out with shaking, over-eager fingers, and rips it open with his teeth. He frees Dad’s cock from his boxers, flushed red and dripping precum, and strokes him with a lube-slick hand.
"Ah," Dad moans. The cords in his arms are straining where he's grabbing Michael's hips in an effort not to buck. "That's it, just like that."
He keeps his strokes slow and firm, just on the edge of teasing, until Dad's cock is dripping and he's nearly chewed through his lip. Dad's breath is hot and wet on his neck. "I'm ready."
"Be careful," Dad says. "Don't take too much at once. I don't want to hurt you."
That would be a first. But he follows Dad's advice and positions himself carefully so he can press the head of Dad's cock against his hole, take him at his own pace. Dad lets out a hiss at the first tentative touch, and Michael licks back into his mouth. There's no pain, only a pleasant stretch as he slowly, cautiously sinks down until he's flush to Dad's hips. Dad's hands are shaking, but his restraint holds, and he doesn't start thrusting before Michael's adjusted. It's the kind of compassionate care he's been craving from his father his whole life. Another tear slips down his cheek.
He shifts, just slightly, and Dad's cock twitches inside of him. Jesus Christ. He pants against Dad's mouth, licks at his lips, moves his hips up, just an inch or two, and then down again. Dad's back arches to meet him, just the right angle to hit the spot that has him gasping and trying again. "F-fuck!" He speeds up his pace until he's riding Dad in earnest, letting out choked off little whines every time the tip of Dad's dick brushes against his prostate. "Mmmn-"
Dad's hands trail up from his hips to his nipples to rub them in gentle circles. His muscles clench at the sudden added stimulation, and Dad breaks off on another moan. It's good, too fucking good. At this rate, he's gonna come pathetically quickly. "You're doing so well, Michael," Dad says. "Taking my cock like you were made for it. God, you have no idea what you do to me."
"It's-" Michael gasps as Dad pistons his hips harder. "It's the same for me. You- you drive me fucking insane. All the things you tell me, looking like that, with that voice-"
"You like my voice, do you, darling?"
"Ah-! I- It gets me so fucking hard. All that praise, I thought I was gonna cream my pants just from listening to it. I was aching for it."
"I couldn't help it. You look so beautiful when you're flustered."
"Shit," Michael says, and grinds down harder. He's leaking precum all over Dad's stomach, he's so fucking close. "I- I thought about this. About you fucking me."
Dad's eyes go dark and hungry, his pupils blown wide enough that his irises are thin rings of blue and grey. "What did you think about?"
"Teasing you, driving you wild. You bending me over the kitchen counter. Fucking until we can't think."
Dad leans in, whispers directly in his ear, "Is that what you want, baby? You want to use my cock until you come?"
Michael cries out as Dad mouths over his nipples, already peaked and oversensitive from being played with. "Yes, Daddy, please-"
"You're so hungry for it, look at how wet you are." Dad curls his fingers over Michael's dick, rubs a thumb over the slit. "You're so close, aren't you?"
"Mmm!"
"That's right. You want to be a good boy and come for your daddy?"
Fuck, it's too much. "I'm-" He sobs. "I'm almost-"
"There you go," Dad croons. "I have you, just let go."
"I'm gonna- ah, fuck, William-!" Michael comes with a strangled yell, his dick twitching and spilling all over Dad's stomach.
The sound of his name from Michael's lips makes Dad's rhythm go desperate and jerky. "That's it, baby boy- nnn-"
"Yes, yes, please, I wanna feel it, Daddy, I wanna feel you come inside."
"God," Dad keens, face pressed to Michael's throat. "Michael." He can feel Dad's cock pulse as he's driven over the edge, hands on Michael's hips like a vice.
Michael collapses against his chest, panting and sticky with sweat. Cum drips down his thighs, warm and wet, as he pulls out with a shudder. Dad presses a kiss to his temple. "I love you," Michael says again. A shameful confession. The terrible truth.
"And I, you," Dad tells him. "My precious Michael."
He clings to the words. In the end, they're going to be all he has. The sacred promise that, somewhere deep down underneath all that rot, all that sickness, Dad loves him.
And Michael loves him just the same.
Maybe it was fate, this plan. Not its success, which is still hanging in a delicate balance, but the very seed of the idea itself. All this time, and the sickness inside was growing, seeping out, reaching for his father's sickness in turn. Like a plant turning its leaves to the sun, afraid to wither. Even when the sun will burn it all the same.
Dad hadn't needed any threats, any coercion. In the end, Michael had crawled into his lap willingly.
He hates himself for it. And yet, it's his only hope. For setting everyone free, for making things right.
This is the first step in his long, long journey that's been in the right direction, as dark and twisted as it is. When this is all over, when this all comes out, nobody will understand why he chose this, but they don't need to.
This is what he has a right to ask from them. Not the heroism and adulation given to a man who turns his serial killer father in to the police, but the scorn and revulsion for a boy who got his brother killed. The sleeper agent who seduced, corrupted, and destroyed his family from the inside out.
Sins of the father, sins of the son.
This is the only kind of redemption he deserves.