Together in death @willimichael - Tumblr Blog

Apr 22

febuwhump 14; live broadcast — mike schmidt/michael afton, william afton & michael afton (3.5k words)

cw; abuse, graphic violence, torture, vomiting, manipulation, grooming, unreliable narration. and just for my own peace of mind -- there is absolutely nothing solid or graphic, but there are potential themes of sexual abuse and possible incestuous tones in how william speaks about and treats michael.

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Michael chokes on his inhale, and wakes up coughing.

His lungs are aching. His ribs are bruised and raw. There's a keen, familiar pain that rattles through him with each ragged sputter that's forced out of him, blow after blow like he's being beaten all over again, and by the time he manages to force himself to stop he is breathless and dazed. His mouth tastes of blood. His head is spinning, the dark room twisting and blurring around him like he's still being dragged, and it hurts. It hurts.

He can't remember what he did wrong. He can't remember the punishment. But it stands to reason that he did something — of course he did, he always does — and whatever his father did to him to punish him, he deserved.

It's such a familiar thought, ingrained in him so incredibly deeply, that it comes to him before the memory of Mike does. It makes infinitely more sense for him to be beaten black and blue by his father and left behind to lick his wounds than for him to be loved, to be cared about in any measure beyond how his father cares for him. Loves him. A brutal hand is all he has ever deserved, it's good for him, it puts him where he needs to be — but the ghost of something softer burns against his bruises, brushes against the blood dried sticky on his skin, tugs at the back of his hazy mind like a hand in his hair.

Guides his gaze to the flickering monitors piled before him.

He recognises them instantly, the vague shape of them, even as his bleary eyes struggle to focus on the images they contain in fluttering cathode rays. He's in the security office at Freddy's, sat upright in the chair there, and the answer for how he's upright when he's sure he shouldn't be able to be comes promptly when he tries to move.

He's bound in rope and wire, tied so tight he thinks perhaps it's the only thing holding him together. His wrists are bound behind him, his hands stiff and sticky and freezing cold, wrists raw and searing hot. He wonders if he's bleeding, or if it's plasma, the sticky wetness of worn-away skin like sap leaking slow from a tree. He hopes he's bleeding. Bleeding is better.

On the screens, a figure moves.

Michael's gaze darts there instantly — a type of muscle memory, he supposes. He has spent countless hours sat in this chair, watching these screens, and in many of those hours he was bloodied and bruised by his father's hands just like this. Working this job was always a punishment, a reminder that he is expendable, that it would not matter — to his father or to anyone — if he ended up a nameless corpse with all the others, torn apart by his father's restless victims and better creations.

It is a reminder that he is not his sister. He is not trusted like she is, not sharp and smart and capable. He must be kept on a leash where she is free.

"Wake up," Father's voice says, crackling. Michael jolts.

He tries to straighten his head, but it's swimming, sloshing like it's full of water — a vase toppling from a shelf, about to smash on the floor — and he sways with it, nauseous. Father is speaking, and Michael tries desperately to cling to his words, but they seem to wash over him. He watches the shape of his father travel from screen to screen, walking leisurely across the big party room, broad-shouldered and tall like a stretched shadow, until he reaches his destination, and stops — and Michael realises that his father is not speaking to him.

There is a second figure, so much smaller than Father, motionless and bound in a chair. He is slumped, knees apart but ankles and torso bound, arms behind him, and terror washes over Michael like being dropped in cold water. His fingertips go numb, chest squeezing like a foot is pressed there, because finally the memories come flooding to him, and it's Mike.

It's Mike. His Mike.

His head is hanging at an odd angle, Father stood towering over him, and Michael wishes desperately that he could somehow swap their places with just his will, with his frenzied want, which tangles in a dazed knot with his dizzy relief when Mike's head finally jolts up — he's alive, he's alive, he's alive. Michael tries to shout, to cry out some plea to his father through the walls — take me instead, I'm here, take me — but his breath only muffles hot and wet against cotton in his mouth. A gag, stuffed behind his teeth.

Father's handkerchief, Michael recognises. It's familiar. It tastes like him.

Michael sobs.

They're almost mirrored, him and Mike. Bound identically in identical chairs, in the same building only a hallway apart — but Mike is there, under Father's gaze, when he shouldn't be. It should be Michael. He can take it, he deserves it, it's all his fault anyway. His fault for letting Mike love him, letting anybody love him again after last time. Making the same mistakes again and again no matter how hard Father tries to correct him.

But Mike is there. And Michael is here. And Michael can only watch.

"Wake up," a voice says. Mike jolts.

His head is pounding, and his neck aches, throbbing in protest as he fights to raise it, like he'd fallen asleep sitting up at the table.

He realises quickly that it's worse.

For a long, dazed moment he had half thought the voice to be his father's. Thought he was going to wake up in a cold, lonely dining room he hasn't been in in years, teenaged and bitter — and he is sitting, propped up in a chair so uncomfortable it could pass for one of the old dining chairs, but he is surrounded by a landscape utterly unlike his childhood home. It's something dreamlike and twisted. Bright colours covered in grime and a hundred empty vinyl chairs at tables piled with trash. Smiling animals painted on the walls, cartoon posters ordering children not to run but demanding they play, big grinning faces frozen in time, the smell of dust and decay and stale air.

Freddy's.

Afton.

He is the one stood over Mike, impossibly tall and almost smiling. He should perhaps look human, look like any man in his shirt and tie and trousers rather than that stupid rabbit suit — Mike had met him like that, dressed like a man, and he had looked human then. He had looked some level of pathetic, like any grey-haired, hard-faced man Mike had ever glanced over, sat behind a desk and toying with the small amount of power he had. Desperate for any amount of control.

But this is a different man.

His silver eyes are bright, reflecting the lights of the room around them in such a way that they almost seem to glow. And though he is dressed largely the same as Steve Raglan had been, a shirt and tie and slacks, there is some great difference to it. His shirt is well-fitted, sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows, trousers pressed and expensive. No drab colours and polka-dots or faded pinstripes, but deep, rich purple. His hair is neatly combed, dress shoes polished and shining, leather belt not so much as creased.

William Afton. Not Steve Raglan.

"What the fuck," Mike croaks at him.

He tries to sit up, to move, and immediately finds that he can't — can't identify why until he looks down and slowly processes the ropes and wires binding him, black and red and white tangled around his arms and torso and legs.

"What the fuck."

"Language, Mike," Afton says mildly.

"Fuck you."

Not his best work, sure, but he can't allot much brain power to being witty when he sort of feels like he's been hit by a truck. Afton must've done something to him, obviously, but he doesn't know what. His mind is full of fog, full of silt and sand and clay, and all he can do for a minute is writhe uselessly in his bonds, unsure if the pain is stiffness from his restraints or injury or if he was dosed with something — until another thought hits him like a bat around the head.

"Michael," he chokes, suddenly breathless. "Michael. Where—"

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about him." William smiles warmly, his pale eyes crinkling at the corners, and Mike wants to tear his throat out with his teeth.

"What the fuck did you—"

Afton's hand wraps hard around Mike's jaw, cool palm pressing to his mouth, so brutal Mike tastes iron. Afton's fingertips are all callouses; all hard, rough skin against the scrape of Mike's facial hair. He is strong.

"He's my son," William says, very calmly, utterly coldly. "My son — he's mine. He has never been yours, Mike, not one inch, not in any way. And, right now, I'm doing what a good father does, and teaching him a lesson."

He draws back, and his knuckles collide hard with the side of Mike's cheek. So hard he feels the chair sway beneath him, one side of its legs leaving the ground, and Afton catches him hard by the arms.

"Oop," he says, face going lax with a performance of playful surprise, and he yanks Mike's chair back on the ground with a dull thud, grinning. His scarred forearms flex, and his teeth catch the light, shining — all except for the peek of blackness where his canine sits crooked, the same as Michael's.

"Is this it?" Mike grits out. "You're gonna rough me up for dating your son?"

Afton raises an eyebrow, amused. "Is that what you're doing?"

They have, admittedly, never used such a word. Mike certainly hasn't, has never been able to identify any words that felt appropriate for whatever he and Michael have got going on, but now does not seem like the time for semantics. The side of Mike's face is throbbing, a dull agony he knows well, and Afton shakes his knuckles out as he paces leisurely. He looks like he's in a meeting, Mike thinks. Like this is business that he's calmly leading, utterly in control.

"Do you think," Afton asks, "That you're the first of my employees that my son has let fuck him?"

And, despite himself, Mike freezes. The vulgarity on Afton's tongue feels somehow nauseating, particularly when it's about Michael, but even past all of that, the words stick like thorns. Mike hadn't spared much thought for it, but he'd believed, on some level, that he at the very least wasn't some part of a pattern. Michael is damaged and strange and unknowable. He fears people the way an abused stray dog might. Mike had been immensely patient to get past his defences — defences he was sure nobody had ever gotten past before.

Afton grins.

"I suppose it's not the sort of thing Michael would tell you," he says airily, full of sympathetic understanding, and crouches in front of Mike with his scarred forearms leaning on his thighs, hands hanging between them. "He always has been rather selective with the truth."

Mike swallows thickly. "I don't believe you."

"It doesn't matter if you believe me," Afton shrugs. "I've been here for all of them. Every man stupid enough to think my son is worth loving, or worth screwing. And I am here now to tell you," he looks directly into Mike's eyes, his gaze so utterly cold that Mike tenses against a shiver, "that you are nothing special."

Mike flexes his wrists against his bonds. Writhes to feel them press mercilessly into his ribs, feel his lungs sear. "Special enough for you to do all this," he forces out regardless.

"Not special in that respect either, I'm afraid." Afton's voice is so utterly casual, but something else is entering it now.

Mirth, Mike realises.

"The last one died here. It was a bitch to get his brains out of the carpets." Afton glances behind him as if reminiscing, and Mike can't help but follow his gaze. He wonders if he's imagining the stains on the colourful flooring, and hasn't come to a conclusion when Afton meets his eyes again, smiling. "Poor Jeremy."

Mike searches his mind, and hates himself for it — but Michael has never mentioned a Jeremy. Mike's never heard the name before, from anyone. And perhaps this is all a story, another web of lies strung together by a family full of them. Perhaps there never was a Jeremy at all. Perhaps Mike really is the only one. Or perhaps he isn't.

Another issue, at least, feels more pressing.

"You're gonna kill me?" Mike croaks.

"Well, we'll see where the night takes us."

"You killed Jeremy."

"I only said he died here. Plenty of people have, many without my hand. And Jeremy deserved exactly what he got, make no mistake — but you, Mike Schmidt. Well." Afton turns to him. "Maybe you are special. No man, certainly, has taken your approach. Trying to take my son away from me."

"If you wanted to keep him," Mike spits, "Maybe you should be a better fucking father—"

Afton doesn't catch him, this time, when the chair falls. He hits Mike right at the hinge of his jaw, a blinding force, and Mike's ears are ringing when he lands. His stomach lurches, mouth very dry but filling with saliva. He tastes copper. He watches Afton's shoes round the chair to face him again, and watches one raise until it settles hard on the height of his cheekbone, pressing him into the carpet.

"I fear you are in no place, Mr. Schmidt, to tell me how to raise my child. I've done a damn sight better than you have."

"Don't talk about Abby," Mike grits out.

"Oh, is that what gets you defensive?" Afton asks, leaning back so he can look at Mike, grinning too wide. "Not me telling you my son will run into the arms of anyone who asks or orders. Perhaps you already knew that. Perhaps you only thought the sex was worth it—"

"Don't talk about him either—"

"—or recognised the value in what I have already broken in. Is that it, Mike? You want him to be your property now? He's a wayward little thing, I'll tell you, he's a fucking burden, but he can be so good when he wants to be, can't he? He can be so sweet—"

"Don't fucking talk about—"

The crunch of his nose is deafening. Blood starts flowing so fast it feels almost cool, almost lukewarm, spurting like a faucet, and Mike retches, tasting it rolling down his throat. Afton goes staggering back to right himself, his shiny black shoe slick with blood, and he stares down at Mike like he's an insect. A spider stepped on but still alive. Mike feels like one.

"Is he worth it?" Afton asks. "Is Michael Afton a boy worth bleeding like this for?"

Mike opens his mouth, but all that comes out is a retch, saliva and blood and bile spilling stringy from his lips. His head is spinning. He wants Michael. All he gets is William, stepping closer again and kicking him this time in the ribs, in the stomach, catching the leg of the chair in a strong hand and turning it — effortless — so Mike is pinned beneath it, contorted to his bonds, until his consciousness falters and William tosses him back over, gasping.

He wonders, if this is what Afton is doing to him, what the fuck he's done to Michael. He has seen, in scars and stories, what Afton has done to him in the past, for infractions much lesser than trying to get away.

He thinks of Vanessa, the favourite child, near gutted on her father's knife for that same crime.

"Is he alive," Mike forces out, mouth wet and full, eyes unable to focus as he stares at the ceiling, blindingly bright. "Is he still alive?"

"What does it matter to you, Mike?" Afton asks. He is stood towering over Mike, a monolith of a man silhouetted into black shadow by the light haloing his head, until he kicks Mike hard enough to roll him back onto his side and he comes sharply back into focus. "Either way, you'll never see him again."

Mike's face is wet. He thinks of Michael, beaten and bloodied and cold and dead, curled up the way he'd curl in Mike's bed, all alone, and he sobs into the gaudy carpet scraping the skin from his cheek. He feels a hand curl in his hair, long cold fingers and the scrape of callouses, and he is lifted. Saliva dangles from his wet lips.

"Tell me he's nothing to you," Afton says lowly, so close Mike can smell the rich whiskey faint on his breath.

"Fuck you," Mike spits at him. The hand tightens, and his scalp sears.

"Tell me he's nothing," Afton says, almost whispering, "And he lives, Mike."

Slowly, Mike raises his bleary gaze to look into William's face. His expression is open and honest, something half-sad and paternal. Mike feels crazy. He wants to break Afton's nose. He wants to tell him he's sorry.

"He's nothing," Mike croaks.

"What was that?"

"He's nothing," Mike says, louder, crying. "He's nothing, he's nothing to me, I—fuck. Fuck. I swear. I don't want him. You can have him. He's yours. He's yours. He's fucking nothing to me."

The hand in his hair turns cradling, and Mike is lowered very gently to the floor, Afton's thumb brushing his cheek. He sees Afton smile, impossibly warm, and pride curdles like milk in his stomach.

"Very good," Afton says softly. And thumps Mike's head hard on the floor to knock him out.

William is still smiling when he enters the office.

Michael is sobbing. Awful, messy sobbing, his face splotchy and shining with tears and drool and snot, and William goes to him and wipes thoughtlessly at the mess with a rough, blood-stained thumb, tutting softly. He pulls the gag from Michael's mouth — his own handkerchief, embroidered at the corner with his initials — and wipes his bloodied hands with the damp, crumpled fabric. Michael does not try to speak, even when his gag is removed, and William makes a soft noise of approval, proud. He starts wiping at Michael's face with the handkerchief then, cleaning him gently, and Michael leans blindly into him, near wailing.

"Shh," William tells him. "It's alright. It's alright now."

It's hard to say what Michael is crying for. For another dead boyfriend — not that this one is dead, but Michael needn't know that — or for what Mike had said, or perhaps just that William had left him alone again, tied up here on his lonesome. It wouldn't be the first time. Michael has always hated to be left, more than any violent punishment William could ever inflict. He is so terrified of being nothing.

He is everything, like this. To William, at least. He was wasted on Schmidt.

William leans in and presses a kiss to Michael's temple, his free hand pulling at the knots binding the boy, and when Michael is freed he only wraps his bruised, bloodied arms around his father's neck and clings to him, desperate. William holds him, pulling him close.

"It's alright, Michael," he says, into his hair. "It's over now. I'm here. You're mine."

He wraps Michael in his suit jacket, left folded neatly on the table in the office, to take him home. Michael is silent and listless and weeping the whole way, even when they're home, shaking like a leaf, but William knows he'll settle again. Back at home, with his father, where he should be. Once again taught a lesson that needed to be learned.

That nobody else will love him like William. Perhaps nobody else can love him at all.

"I'm sorry," Michael whispers, hours later, curled against his father's shoulder. He is clean and bandaged and re-dressed, his hair clean and still slightly damp. His voice is raw, just a tiny little scratch, and though William gently hushes him he fights to continue, his eyes wet and desperate. "I'm really sorry, Dad. I love—I love you. I love you. I'm sorry."

William smiles at him, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He brushes his thumb back and forth where his hand is resting on Michael's shoulder, pressing where he knows a fresh wound sits.

"And you won't try to leave again," he says softly. "You won't think you know better than me. Or think that there is any place for you beyond this family."

Michael shakes his head, and sets it back down against William's shoulder.

"No, Sir," he whispers. "No, Dad."

William squeezes him.

"Good boy."

#willmike // writing #this is SO good read this rn

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