boyloser(-4)

Michael slips in through her window. It sets her curtains fluttering like restless ghosts, the night air sticky and warm with summer, and he brings in the scent of wet grass and pavement and, Vanessa can't help but notice when she sits up in bed and turns the lamp on, blood.

Michael stands at the foot of her bed, eyes bright and jacket stained, and says, "I took care of the journalist."

Vanessa's stomach does a funny little swoop, and the bone-deep wire trap that keeps her jaw shut is as certain and steady as any Afton animatronic. It's happened once or twice now; reporters and wannabe bestselling authors coming to try and dig to the bottom of what happened, hoping that they'll be the one to finally solve it and pin a face on the yellow rabbit's grinning mask. The last one got as far as breaking into Freddy's — Vanessa was mopping up blood from Parts & Service for what felt like days.

"Don't worry," Michael says, and he skirts around the bed to stand closer to her, the dark splotches on his jacket revealed to be the red that Vanessa knew they would be. "He can't hurt us. He won't get as close as the last one did."

Vanessa finally manages to open her mouth. "People will ask even more questions if journalists keep turning up dead."

"I made it look like an accident." Michael drops to his knees, almost reverent, and crosses his arms on Vanessa's bed to look up at her with wide, childish eyes. "Like you taught me. It was perfect. I haven't told Dad yet."

"You don't have to do it," Vanessa tells him, and then she's seized with a sudden desperation and turns so she's facing him, grabbing the edge of her bed and leaning down to look into his eyes. "Listen to me, Michael, you don't have to kill anyone for this. You shouldn't. You should stop. They'll never find anything—"

"But they might," Michael replies, sounding for all the world like a petulant preteen despite the fact that he's only three years younger than Vanessa. "What if you get sloppy? You might be Dad's favorite, but you're going to fuck up eventually, sis."

Vanessa wants to yell in his face that it's not about her being sloppy. Sometimes, she wishes she could be sloppy, wishes she could paint a big goddamn sign and stand on the fucking street corner with it. She holds up this Afton secret because if she doesn't, it's not just her and William that it'll come crashing down on, but Michael, too. Michael, the boy who got shy around Foxy because of how much he loved him. Michael, the boy who stood up for her when Freddy's closed down and she became social pariah overnight. Michael, the boy that Vanessa made sure never had to be the lure, the bait, the distraction, because it was always her instead. It's sunk-cost fallacy if nothing else, Vanessa thinks bleakly — if she cracks and spills it all, what good are those years she spent sacrificing her own childhood so Micheal didn't have to?

Michael isn't a child anymore, though. He's not the boy that cowered behind Vanessa as William ranted, nor is he the boy dogging at her heels and pouting about not being allowed into the saferoom when William worked like Vanessa was. Those years that Vanessa spent trying to protect him from William are gone, and the boy that she tried to save is dead, just like so many others. Now, the man that stares back at her has the same eyes as William: the deadly blue of an arcing wire.

"I did it for us." Michael's tone is cajoling this time, coaxing, as if he's got any right to lecture her on selflessness. "For you. I know you would hate it if everyone at the precinct knew who you were."

The threat is not lost on Vanessa, and she resents him for making it as much as she resents herself for being afraid of it. Her name change is public record, in all technicality — all it takes is a quick trip to the civic building to discover that Vanessa Afton and Vanessa Shelly are the same person. But it's not wide knowledge at her job, and for that she's thankful, because there are people she works with old enough to remember what happened and, more importantly, remember William Afton's daughter.

"Trust me, I... I did it so well, Vanny," Michael breathes, and he pushes himself a little further onto the bed like a needy cat and reaches out to pet her thigh, bare in her outfit of underwear and an oversized t-shirt from the academy. "As good as you would have. I can't wait to tell Dad."

Vanessa's throat is oddly tight. "You should clean yourself up and get some sleep."

"I will," Michael says, and pushes himself up even more until he can lay his head on Vanessa's thigh, laying awkward and only halfway on the bed. "But you should let me spend the night. So you don't forget why we have to do this."