Archive of Our Own

Michael closed the door behind him and almost fell to the floor. The lights were out and the night was cold and his head was exploding and it was a miracle that he still had the keys in his pockets. 

For so long, the only thing he wanted to do was coming back home- to his worn out couch, his pajamas and his telenovela. 

But the moment he entered his house, all his motives vanished. It wasn't the warm welcome he expected, and how could it be? The photos of his family were still over the table and hanging in the walls- him taking baby Evan in his arms; his parents' wedding photo, young and smiling and genuinely happy; his mother and Elizabeth…

Elizabeth…

Ennard…

Michael couldn't move. 

Michael couldn't breathe. 

The happy people in the photos were mocking him, showing him a life that he once had, where all his problems could be summarized in babysitting Evan or being afraid about his parents finding out that he got into a fight. 

That Michael, teen Michael, seemed bored in some of the pictures. Probably because his mother made him stay at home to have a movie night. He had complained, he always complained. 

It wasn’t enough to have to take care of Evan all day, he also had to spend his Friday nights with his family? For a fifteen year old, that was the most unfair thing in the world. He was tired of watching The wizard of Oz and hear his mom and brother singing all the songs and his father and Elizabeth falling asleep halfway through the movie.

“I know you don’t want to look after Evan, and that we’re asking you to do more than you should,” his mom had told him once, after Michael had hid in Evan’s closet and scared him to death. “But your father and I are very busy with work, we barely have time to take care of Lizzie, and you’re helping us so much, my little warrior. I know it's difficult, and you may hate us for this, but please, instead of that, I’m going to ask you to love us with all you have, until we overcome the situation. Could you do that for me?”

His mother had a big heart, and every time they had a problem, she would do that: love them a little bit more. They really became a terrible family, for her to walk away.

Michael couldn’t blame his mother for leaving after Elizabeth’s death and not taking him with her. Everytime Michael got into a fight or messed with Evan or yelled at her, she would… well, she would honestly yell back, but she never stopped loving him, or looking after him with all the care in the world. 

Michael discovered the worst way possible that even people who always give second chances had their limit. 

Would his mother recognize him now? With his worn out skin and skinny figure and empty eyes? If he tried to find her, would she be happy to see that he was, somehow, still breathing? 

Michael put down the pictures. He didn’t want to see the life he wasn’t able to appreciate. Of all the things Ennard took, why couldn't they take away his memories? He would be happy if he didn’t remember the way back home, if he didn’t recognize the key in his pocket or have memories of another body that wasn’t covered in scratches. 

It would be easier to think that he had always been a walking corpse, instead of wondering what was still in his body and what wasn’t, why was he able to talk and see, why was he still alive.

Because somehow, he was walking. He had been walking for… God, Michael didn't even know for how long. He had tried to count the days- at first. Ennard hated closed spaces, so they walked all over the town, until his body collapsed because it needed some rest.

Ennard didn't like to rest. Ennard didn't like it when Michael's body didn't follow orders as it should have.  

Ennard didn't like lots of things. 

And Michael had to live through it. Every second, every hour, every step that monster took with his body while Michael was screaming. 

He had felt every. Damn. Thing. The metal trying to substitute his bones, the wires pressing against his organs, the blood- how his own body was drained from all life, slowly, until it was so useless that not even an animatronic would want it. 

Michael was so focused on locking the door behind him and trying to use the nearest table to block it, that he didn’t notice that he wasn’t alone until a figure appeared down the corridor. 

‘They found me’ , Michael thought, curling up on the floor and trying to hide in the shadows. 

Ennard was there. He didn’t know why, or how, but they had followed him. They were trying to take control over his body again. And why not? Michael was nothing more than a skin suit. Ennard came back to reclaim what was theirs, to use Michael until he finally died, to…

“He-hello?”

Michael stopped for a moment. That voice didn’t sound like Ennard. Ennard didn’t stutter. Ennard never asks. Ennard just lies and takes and takes and takes.

This voice sounded human. It wasn’t the voice of someone who was made of cables and circuits. It was warm.

Michael raised his head. The light was dim and came from the outside, but Michael was so used to dark places that his eyes got used to it quickly. 

And then, he could see him.

His hair was a bit longer, but curly as always, covering part of his blind eye. He was wearing pajamas- Michael’s pajamas, to be exact. He seemed scared, but determined, with Michael's old baseball bat between his hands, ready to kick whoever was stupid enough to break into the house.

Michael was already having problems processing the situation, but this, this , was too much.

Jeremy wasn't supposed to be here. Jeremy couldn't- Jeremy was- Jeremy had left, ripped Michael’s heart out of his chest before Ennard did. Even after all the agony, all the terrible days that took over him and made him feel frightened, wretched, petrified at the idea of facing something like Ennard ever again, he could remember how lonely he felt when Jeremy left, but also how relieved he was. 

Michael had nothing to offer him, at least nothing more than frights and scares and animatronics ready to jump to your head. If Jeremy walked away from him, that meant that he would be safe. 

That’s why he couldn’t be here. It must be an illusion, something, Michael didn’t know, but he preferred to think that he was going crazy. Michael would tear off his own eyes if that meant that Jeremy was safe and this was nothing more than the delirium of a dead man. 

“Is som-meone th-there?” Jeremy asked. He was obviously trying to adjust to the dark, and part of Michael wanted to reprimand him for his lack of instinct. 

Jeremy had always been like that; incapable of staying quiet and with a mouth too big for someone who never thought before talking. If there was a problem, Jeremy would face it right away, and Michael never knew if that was because he was too stupid to notice the danger he was in or too indifferent to the possibility of bad outcomes. 

“You’re the living proof that a creaking door hangs longest,” Michael had told him once, after Jeremy had been bit by Mangle and almost died .

And Jeremy, fresh out from the hospital and still recovering, had laughed in a way that Michael hadn’t seen him laugh in weeks. 

“It’s g-great to s-see t-that you’re as r-r-rude as always, lov-ve.”

Michael tried to stay still, hiding in the shadows and wishing that Jeremy would leave.

But Jeremy didn't think that he was an illusion. Jeremy always spotted him, no matter how much he wanted to disappear.

"Michael?"

Jeremy aimed for the light, and Michael's whole body went into panic mode.

"NO!" he yelled. His voice was scratchy, and he felt his throat bleed from the effort. Ennard didn't like to use his voice. The wires scratched his vocal cords every time they tried to make a noise. Ennard didn't like when Michael tried to talk. Ennard didn't like pain, even if Michael was the one feeling it. 

Jeremy stopped at the moment. Michael adjusted the hoodie over his head, trying to hide even more. 

"Michael? M-Michael, oh god…"

"Please don't," Michael pleaded. God, it hurt. Jeremy wasn't trying to turn on the lights, but he was trying to reach him, and Michael couldn't let him see what he had become. 

He didn’t care being rejected- he was used to it. His friends, because they couldn’t stand why they had done to Evan and blamed Michael for it; his mom, so jaunty and caring, who couldn’t stay by his side after what he did to his brother; his dad, who became a ghostly presence in his life to then become a curse… 

He shouldn’t be afraid of Jeremy seeing him, of Jeremy walking away, again, but oh, fuck, Michael was terrified. 

“D-don’t what?” Jeremy asked. He left the bat on the couch, but he didn’t move. “M-michael, is…is th-this really y-you?”
No, he wasn’t. 

He was dead. Michael was dead. He was all that was left, and it could barely pass as a human. 

“M-michael? P-please, s-say som-mething, or I’m g-going to think that this is a d-d-dream,” Jeremy pleaded.  

He was stuttering more than normal. 

After the bite of 87, Jeremy always stuttered when he talked. In the beginning, he barely could talk, it was like his mouth and his brain weren’t connected anymore. With time and the help of a speech therapist, Jeremy started to talk again, but the stutter stayed permanently. 

“Don’t come any closer.”
Michael gave him the recognition Jeremy wanted, and at the same time ordered him to stay away. 

“It is you,” Jeremy’s relief only lasted a few seconds. Then, he processed what Michael said, and he started to be concerned again. “Why are y-you h-hid-ding?”

He took a step closer, and Michael pressed his body against the wall, trying to maintain the space between them. There were a lot of questions in his head, but the leading thought was “not let Jeremy see me”. 

“M-Michael-”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Michael interrupted him. Why, why, why, of all people, it had to be Jeremy?

“I sh-shouldn’t…what?” Jeremy repeated. “W-what are you talking ab-b-bout? I…”

Jeremy stopped talking, and started to wave his arms. Sometimes, when the words wouldn’t come out and mouth wasn’t working as he wanted, he would show his emotion through gestures. 

Jeremy let out his frustration, then forced himself to stop and breathe. This was one of the exercises Michael had helped him to do millions of times: gain control of your respiration, try to coordinate that control with your muscles, and count until 10 or whatever number you needed. 

Michael tried to reach him- it was an instinct, he could not help when Jeremy was like this, every part of his body wanted to hold him and take his hand until Jeremy was better, but he stopped himself. He couldn’t take someone’s hands like this. 

“M-months!” Jeremy suddenly said. He was still furious, and kind of screamed, but he also seemed more in control. “F-fuck, you’v-ve been gon-ne for months! Where hav-ve you b-been!?”

“I…” Michael tried to answer, but the words weren’t coming. So, instead, he asked another question. “What are you doing here?”

If Jeremy noticed something off with his voice, he didn’t show it. 

“S-seriously? Fuck, Michael! What d-d-do you think I’m d-d-oing? Watering your p-p-plants!?” Jeremy said, pointing at the ficus over the table that was pretty much dead. If Jeremy was there to water the plants, he did a horrible job. “I’m waiting for you t-to come b-b-back!”

The answer struck Michael like lightning. He remembered the last days, the way Jeremy had confronted him about his job in Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental, how Jeremy had discovered that Michael was still taking jobs as a night guard.

When Jeremy had walked out of that door, Michael thought that it was the predictable outcome. He hadn’t told Jeremy the truth about so many things, and honestly, who in his right mind would stay by his side?
Hearing Jeremy yell this at him, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, was against everything Micahel knew. 

“Why? You…you broke up with me. It was over.”
“Call me an id-diot, b-but when someone you care ab-bout goes to a facility with killer rob-bots I tend to worry ab-bout them, even if we just broke up,” Jeremy pointed out. He pinched his nose. It was late, and he looked tired, but Michael was pretty sure that neither of them could sleep after this. “So, yeah. I called two d-days after I left. And you d-didn’t answer. Mayb-be you d-din’t want to talk to me, but I thought something was odd… There’s something always odd with those p-places… So I called again, but you still d-didn’t answer.”
At that time, he was already possessed. Michael had enough control over his body during his first hours to come back home, but once he looked in the mirror, he knew Ennard was the one making the decisions now. The keys and phone were still in his pockets, but his phone was in silent mode and died the next day. 

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, but he wasn’t sure about what he was apologizing for. Everything, maybe. 

For lying to Jeremy, for killing his brother, for not watching out for Elizabeth as he should have, for trusting Baby, for transforming his father into the monster he was now…

There was a flash from the outside, a car passing by at full speed, enough to lighten the living room for a brief moment. Michael wasn’t sure if Jeremy saw him- he was still curled up in a corner, but he definitely saw Jeremy’s face. 

Until that moment, he thought Jeremy was mad at him, yelling because Michael put himself in danger, again, and now wasn’t answering his questions. But it wasn’t that, it wasn’t that, and Michael thought that anger and fury would be ten times better than seeing Jeremy’s broken eyes. 

He was looking at Michael with the same expression as someone experiencing a miracle, afraid that if you touch it it will vanish and leave you empty. His eyes were tearing, his lips were trembling, and he looked so much as how Michael remembered him, with the same light, but with more cracks than before. 

Watching Jeremy there, in this house, was like seeing a living person in the land of death. Someone had watched this beautiful bright boy and decided to bring him to the underworld. 

Michael. Michael had been the one. 

The room stayed silent, for just a few seconds, until Jeremy couldn’t hold it any longer.

“Michael…” he said, and Michael wanted to cry, because no one had used a voice so soft to say his name in months. “Something…Something hap-p-pened, right? Something b-bad .”

Michael was going to say no. That everything was fine, that he was fine, that Jeremy should walk away from his house and never come back. It was the good thing to do, it was the right thing to do. Michael had already stolen so much from Jeremy, and didn’t want to drag him even more into the abyss. 

“I’m-”
“D-don’t lie,” Jeremy interrupted him. “Whatever it is, whatever is hap-p-pening, please don’t lie. Please. I’m not angry, I swear I’m not…I d-don’t want to fight, I d-don’t want to yell, I just want to know that you’re here. That you came b-back, and this is real, b-because if I wake up again to find the house empty, I- I d-don’t know! I’ll wait for you until m-my hair grows gray! So p-p-please, Michael, talk to me. Please.”
“I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to drag you with me. I’m not… I’m not the same. Something did happen, something bad, and I… Jeremy, please, you have to go.”

“I won’t.”

“You’re going to be scared of me.”
“Were you scared of m-me? After what hap-p-ened? After this?” Jeremy pointed at his left side, where an ugly scar covered part of his face. 

The hair hid some of it, but one couldn’t ignore the mark that the stitches and hours of operations had left on his face. He had had a hemorrhage in his left eye, one that made it look bloody and disgusting, and for half a year he had lost the mobility of the left side of his body. 

“It’s not the same.”

“Why? You saw me drool because I couldn’t control m-my m-mouth, you kissed my cheek even if my eye was bleed-ding, you saw me with my head half open-ned, and you didn’t b-back away.”
“You were still…You were still you.”
“And you are still y-you!” Jeremy yelled. At some point, he had started to cry. “No other person in this world could b-be so stubborn! A creaking door hangs longest, rem-member? And you’re the creakeast d-door I’ve ever m-met!”

Michael didn’t know if he wanted to cry or laugh. Maybe both. 

“Close your eyes.”
Jeremy obeyed. 

Michael took a step closer. Then another, until Jeremy was in front of him. He caressed his cheek. 

Jeremy didn’t jump at the contact- instead, he put his hand over Michael’s, not letting him go. He was crying, he was trembling, he was holding his hand with the terrifying feeling that Michael would disappear again.

But he didn’t want to disappear. Sorry. Sorry, but Michael couldn’t let go of him. 

When Jeremy opened his eyes, Michael could feel how his body tensed. 

Please, don’t be afraid , Michael pleaded in his mind, even if he knew it was in vain. Please stay, I didn’t want no one to stay as much as you. I love you. I shouldn’t have let you go. I should have stayed with you. 

He waited and waited for a reaction that never came. He was being observed under Jeremy’s confused eye. He let go of his hand, and Michael thought that that was it. That he was going to run away.

But then, Jeremy leaded his hand to Michael’s face. He brushed some of his hair away, cuddled his face, and with his other hand he set aside Michael’s shirt collar to see what was hiding behind it. A big scar that started in his chest, sewed in a way that it was amazing that it was holding together.

“What have they done to you, love?” he whispered, and his voice was so weak and concerned and startled as to how Michael felt. 

Jeremy didn’t back away. Jeremy never backed away from nothing.

He embraced Michael with so much love that it was the breaking point. 

Michael hugged him back- first with doubt, like he had forgotten how to do it, but the moment he leaned on Jeremy, he held onto it like nothing else mattered. Michael discovered with certain relief that he could, somehow, still cry, and he let Jeremy hide him from the rest of the world, if only for a few minutes. 

They ended up on the floor, their legs intertwined, and Michael was surprised to find comfort in another person’s physical touch, after what happened. He thought he would never want someone near him again, touching his skin, restraining his movements, but hugging Jeremy was nothing like having Ennard inside of him.

He could hear Jeremy’s heartbeat, feel his chest move because of his breath. No circuits, no cables. No Ennard. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, bringing Jeremy closer, if it was possible. “I’m sorry.” 

“This isn’t your fault. Whatever happened there, you’re not the one to blame.”

“I shouldn’t have gone back. I should have stayed with you.”

“I’m here. We’re both here.”

Jeremy intertwined his fingers with Michael’s and pressed his forehead against his. Somehow, he could still smile at him. 

“Are you sure you’re not afraid?” Michael asked.
“Why should I be?”

Michael wiped out his tears with the sleeve of his shirt.

“I’m purple.”

“You’re not. You’re mallow. That’s another color. For someone who likes to draw, you know shit about color theory.”
Michael let out a laugh. God, he was barely alive, and he was laughing .  

He hugged Jeremy again, and he didn’t complain. 

There were so many things to be said, but neither of them were able to talk at that moment. Jeremy was too relieved to find him again, and Michael too overwhelmed to explain something. 

Maybe tomorrow, they would explain, but today was for hiding from the rest of the world. They could wait until tomorrow.

After all, tomorrow is another day.