Just Needs a Little Nudge
(This is a Treasurebox 2.0 aka future FC and Charlie fic! Started as a drabble for fun, and finished with 2k words and art and fake texts because Someone requested this ship so I wanted to give it my all.)
~~
FC is going through a loop of writing then deleting then rewriting that last line when the phone is yanked from his paws, leaving the sentence unfinished and unsent. Startled, the fox turns and snarls at the young man lounging on the greenroom couch behind him; but there isn’t any true malice in it. They’d gotten that out of their systems years ago. Mostly. “Give it back!”
“‘You are much’…?” Andrew reads aloud, trailing off as he considers how to follow up. After a few moments, he clicks his tongue and starts to type. “Uglier,” he finishes. A spark of energy floods FC’s systems and he lunges for the phone, only for Andrew to snicker and lean out of the way, pushing the slightly larger animatronic back with just one hand on his face.
Andrew’s body, calibrated for someone nineteen years old, is stronger than FC’s seventeen year old body as long as he doesn’t use star power. It’s something FC is bitter about, but Andrew is older. And he greatly wants to bully his younger sister.
The gentle whoosh of a text being sent makes FC’s ears turn back in horror - and only a second passes before the “ding” of a reply pops up. His muzzle trapped in one of Andrew’s hands, unable to move further towards the teen, FC swings his arms uselessly in the direction of his phone.
“Give it back!” FC growls again. “I must apologize! She will think I said this!”
“Geez, calm down champ, she doesn’t,” Andrew mutters. “She knows we’re hanging out.” He, charitably, releases his grip on the fox and turns his phone to show him the response.
Andrew ignores FC’s sigh of relief, taking the opportunity to lean back with the phone and scroll through the message history while the younger teenager is distracted. The longer he scrolls, the more his brow furrows. Further and further back, weeks of messaging back and forth. Memes, jokes, check-ins, calls, a few long vent sessions that he won’t read. (Out of respect for privacy of course. That’s very important to him.) More scrolling shows more of the same, and Andrew scoffs loudly, tossing the phone back at the fox.
“Oh god, you like my sister.”
FC catches the device and glances over at him, confused. “Wha?”
“You like her. That’s so weird.”
“Yes, I like her,” FC says, head tilted in confusion. “Do you not?”
“No, you idiot, I mean—” Andrew drags his hand down his face. “Like her, you know, romantically?” He makes an exaggerated kissing noise for a few seconds before he stops, regretting that immediately.
FC is just as embarrassed, breaking eye contact to stare at his own lap. “That is… not true. I do not feel that way.”
“… Listen.” Andrew gives an exaggerated sigh, turning to face FC and clasping his hands together. “Champ, I know we never got to have the talk–”
Snapping his head up again FC snarls, baring his teeth. “Stop it. I hate it when you do that.” Acting like a parent. Poking fun at the relationship FC thought they’d have.
The human shrugs and leans back again, pulling his own phone out. “You do though. You don’t really visit this place for any of the rest of us, right? We do this,” he gestures vaguely to the two of them, to the Captain themed greenroom around them, “because our dads made us for ages. But you…” With a grin, Andrew finds what he needs and flashes his phone screen in FC’s direction. “You visit to hang with her.”
It’s Andrew’s texts with Charlie; her contact name is just a star emoji in his phone, but FC recognizes her typing style. She was rambling to her brother about a day out she and FC had… He remembers that day, but only because it was embarrassing - he’d gotten a horribly burnt hamburger stuck on his teeth and he couldn’t bite through.
But she’d completed the story with a selfie that FC didn’t know she’d taken. He grabs the phone from Andrew, who easily lets it go this time. In the photo, the fox animatronic looks like a mess, the burger dangling from his front teeth and his arms out in exasperation. But Charlie is looking at him and giggling, and she looks… really content. Happy.
FC stares at the picture. Charlie should be happy. She deserves the best. That’s just a fact he’s known since meeting her. But that picture… he’s the one who made her feel that way? Enough that she took a picture to remember the day and sent it to her brother. And… wait did she say he looked cute?
A warm fuzzy feeling starts up in his chest, and his tail starts wagging a little. He made her feel safe and happy that day. And that was one of his rare visits. What if they did date? They’d be together more. He could protect her, and make her laugh, and she’d look at him like that again.
He wants her to look at him like that again. Not on the sly, but looking him right in the eyes. He could make her smile like that all the time.
Oh god and he could ruin it all so easily.
He tosses the phone back at Andrew like it’s hot. His clawed fingers pick at the sleeve of his blouse, anxious. “I am not… good at this. I could upset her. I don’t want to upset her.”
“I mean, speaking as her big brother, she could definitely do better,” Andrew muses, FC’s face falls even more and he sighs. “But you’re not the worst option. I know you care about her. I was in your head when you guys met, remember?”
Now his claws tangle around the tiny braid in his hair. Charlie’d done that for him. “When I tried to kill her?” FC murmurs.
He gets a smack on the back of the head at that. “No, when we broke you out of mind control and you protected her, idiot,” Andrew corrects. He stands and stretches. “You’re thinking of excuses at this point. Just ask her out. You’re both getting weird about it and it’s annoying.”
“I–”
“In fact, stay here. I’m telling her you have something to ask her.” Andrew heads towards the door, rapidly typing on his phone. Without even a glance downward, he dodges out of the way of FC’s attempts to trip him up. “If you chicken out I’m not letting it go!” the human calls back as the door slides closed behind him.
~~
In the lobby of the Pizzaplex, sixteen year old Charlie is sitting on the golden fountain. After having to replace Glamrock Freddy with Lefty, and then Lefty dying, Fazbear never bothered to replace the statue with a character. Instead, Charlie is perched atop a big golden sphere, bouncing her leg nervously as she taps out the group of question marks.
Well… May as well go meet him. Hopefully it’s nothing bad. Charlie hops down from the statue, letting her magic guide her gently to the floor. She had hoped to catch FC on his way out anyway to plan their next playdate.
No, no, she corrects herself. You’re sixteen, not a little kid; you don’t do ‘playdates’. … What is it called for teens then? Just a ‘date’? Wait, no! …Yes? No. Their next hangout… session… thing.
She doesn’t bump into Andrew as she heads back towards Rockstar Row, which isn’t too much of a surprise. After his scheduled ‘bonding time’ with FC (formerly mandatory and supervised by their dads, now just a force of habit), he usually slinks off to Eclipse’s lab to work on some secret project. Charlie knows better than to ask about it by now, and even though she’s curious, she won’t invade his privacy with her powers.
Usually FC goes with him, but this time he’s waiting in the greenroom that used to belong to his father. After Foxy left, Fazbear stuck with the nautical theme since Captain Gibson took his place, but the colors were changed. When Charlie approaches the greenroom door, it slides open automatically, showing FC on the couch fidgeting with his hands - a speck of red lost in an ocean of blues.
“Are you okay?” Charlie blurts out the moment she crosses the threshold. She trusts Andrew (mostly), but she feels a need to ask for herself.
FC startles at her sudden appearance. “YES!” he barks, and laughs a little to himself, embarrassed as he realizes who asked. He grabs his tail and holds it still in his lap. “Yes, yes, I am fine.”
“You look worried.” Charlie plops down on the couch next to FC and frowns at him, reaching to put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. He avoids her gaze and shifts a little further away from her. Oh. Her heart stings, but she pulls back her hands to her lap, mirroring his body language. “Andrew… said you wanted to talk to me about something?” He’d said that FC would be ‘better than okay.’
Charlie is getting a sinking feeling that her brother got it wrong.
FC makes a little sound, almost like a real fox’s distressed whine. “I, um… I ‘unno,” he mumbles. Charlie recognizes that tic. FC’s used that since childhood - he knows what he wants to say, but he’s unsure how his answer will be received. That isn’t helping her own anxiety.
“You can… you can tell me whatever, FC, you know that right?” Charlie says. She clenches her fists in her lap, staring straight ahead at the door. Taking a moment to gather her courage, she puts her worries out in the open. “Even if— Even if the problem is me. You’re my best friend, so… if I did something to make you feel bad, I’d want to—“
Her sentence is cut off as her head is turned sharply, claws pricking the felt behind her mask. FC has whipped around, holding her face in his hands and making direct eye contact. His eyepatch is flipped up, ensuring she can see his full expression. Any trace of anxiety is gone - FC is fully serious, brow furrowed. “You could never,” he insists. There's a rare gravity in his words, like he believes them with his entire soul.
“…Oh,” Charlie says weakly. “O-Okay.” She hopes he doesn’t feel her cheeks heating up in a magic fueled blush. Her hands fidget in her lap, unsure what to do with herself in this position. FC hasn’t moved his hands. “Then, um, what did you…?”
Now released from his anxious grasp, FC’s tail starts twitching behind him. His expression softens, but he doesn’t break eye contact, riding that brief shock of confidence. “I… I wanted to ask you to go out.”
What? Charlie frowns. “We were already planning to,” she reminds him, “we just hadn’t picked a time.”
One hand drops from her face to clench a fist, and FC takes an artificial breath to gather his courage. “I mean, go out,” FC repeats. The hand still holding her head slides down to cradle her cheek. “With me.”
Charlie’s eyes widen and she stares at him. This is… not what she thought was happening. At all.
FC huffs in frustration at her silence and his cheeks, somehow, get redder. He breaks eye contact again, gesturing with his free hand. “You know! Like… like, uh,” he says, and starts making… mock kissing noises? He cuts himself off quickly with a growl. “No, that is stupid, stupid Andrew, why’d I–”
With a giggle, Charlie quickly presses her own hand against FC’s before he can pull it away. He startles, looking at her again. “No, no, hold on,” Charlie says, “I– I got it the second time, I just–” She stops with another snicker, too full of nebulous nameless happy feelings to explain herself. She opts for leaning her forehead against FC’s instead. “We can do that.”
“Yes?” FC sounds like he doesn’t believe it, but his eyes have a spark of hope in them.
“Yes,” Charlie echoes. She smiles, a warm feeling spreading in her chest. “I am… super okay with that, actually.”
“... With the dating or the kissing?”
“Wh-” Charlie pushes him away with her free hand, face flushing. “With the- I dunno! Yes! Both! Oh my god can we please just pick a day?"