Chapter Text
William Afton was not a threatening person.
By any means whatsoever.
When he was a child, he was the kind of kid that would get his cheeks pinched by his parents’ friends as they told him how cute he was, despite being ten years old at the time. He was the kind of kid who had the ability to get whatever he wanted just by uttering the smallest whine, the kind of kid to make puppy-dog eyes at the teachers and be able to get away with anything.
This was the kind of kid he looked like. This is the kind of kid he probably should have been. And to an extent, he was. His cheeks had been flushed red from how much his parents pinched him, and for the most part, he could make puppy-dog eyes to get what he wanted. Unfortunately, these characteristics weren’t exactly the most socially appealing.
Afton entered grade school with higher hopes than anyone else in his school. It took a little less than three years to beat him down to a shadow of the boy he was when he first walked through the doors. And it only got worse after those three years.
He was just simply too fun to pick on. He was easy to tower over, he was easy to spot walking through the hallway, and it was easy to get under his skin. For a year, the children were able to get him to cry easily with a few jabs at his weight and the occasional snide remark regarding the way he spoke to teachers. He had started to flinch at little things in class, and would hear the suppressed giggles in response behind his back. He grew ever so more resentful at every person he passed in this hell of his, until he snapped.
He had only punched him. It got him suspended for two weeks. When he came back, he had grown numb. The bullies met him in the hallway moments after he entered the school’s premises and pitched him up against the wall, expecting fear or at least anger to enter his expression. When nothing showed, they faked a punch. No response. Then there was a real punch.
Afton fell down against the wall, and this time they knew they had broken him back down to the pathetic little kid he had been before he left. They watched and waited for him to take his hand away from his face, but when his fingers uncovered his eyes, they were just as dull as before. His eyebrows were furrowed as he wiped blood from underneath his nose and got to his feet. Roughly, he placed his blood-covered hand on the bully’s shoulder, and glared up at him through his eyebrows, his mouth a thin line. Then he spoke in a shockingly cold voice, one that cut clean through the air like a knife.
“Go fuck youself,” is what he said. He then brushed past them and entered the building.
They stopped picking on him after that. Now they whispered about him, in hushed tones whenever he turned the corner. And when the next interesting thing happened, they moved on, and Afton became a nobody.
…
Henry could infer none of this when he looked into his dull gray eyes the first time they met. He looked ordinary— a white man, about six feet, with a larger, roundish build. He didn’t quite know what he was expecting, but it’s not like William disappointed him to any extent. Still, the bags under his eyes made him look a bit older than 23.
“William Afton, I assume?” Henry guesses, setting down his suitcase. He held out a hand which William took cautiously, like he was worried what he was getting into.
“Yes,” he affirms. “I feel like I should say that you look much more promising than my previous roommate.”
Henry is startled to hear an English accent seeping into his voice. He’s never quite liked the British—they always came across as pretentious to him—and now that he’s gotten a good look at him, William doesn’t seem too different. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try. Besides, the accent wasn’t unpleasant to listen to, once you got over the pretentiousness of it.
“That’s good, I guess,” Henry replies with a slight chuckle. He notices he’s still holding onto William’s hand, and he promptly lets go. They stand in silence for a moment. “I have a bit more stuff to get downstairs, if that’s alright.”
“Of course, of course,” he nods. “Your room is at the end of the hallway.” He gestures down a small hallway before slowly retreating back to the couch, where he picks up a sheet of paper and begins carefully examining it. Henry turns around and walks out of the apartment, closing the door behind him.
All things considered, that went well. It’s never been easy for Henry to meet new people, and it’s been a regular occurrence for him to trip over his words whenever he spoke to someone new. And William, despite being a few inches shorter than him, was strangely intimidating. His eyes almost sent a shudder up his back.
Strange, to say the least.
…
“So…you have an English accent,” Henry comments as he sits across from William, both eating fast food. William had picked it up on his way back from class for the both of them. “Are you from Britain?”
“Yes,” he says, taking a sip of Coke.
“When did you move here?”
“After high school. My father was looking for a new job the last year of my schooling. We decided to move here when he couldn’t find one. I got a scholarship here shortly after applying.” He says this all relatively quickly, like he doesn’t want to talk about it. “What about you?”
Henry blinks, and swallows his french fry. “I’m from this small town in Utah. You’ve probably never heard of it, it’s called Hurricane.”
William glances over at him. “My parents were looking at houses there.”
“Oh!” Henry chuckles. “Small world.”
There’s another short silence. “What are you majoring in?” Henry asks.
“Finance.” He sighs. “Minor in business administration and management.”
“But you’re 23. Did you not graduate in four years?”
“I’m getting an MBA,” he answers simply. Henry almost winces. He feels inferior. “What’s your major?”
“Uh…” he takes a deep breath. “Mechanical engineering. Minor in… robotics,” he adds as an afterthought, hoping William might not have heard it. He raises an eyebrow.
“Robotics and mechanical engineering?” He repeats. “You don’t… you think that it’s worth it?”
“Well, yeah.”
“You don’t think it’s a… waste of time and money?”
Henry almost glares at him, but thinks better of it. William senses his distaste anyway.
“No, no, it’s not like that—I was just curious. I—I probably would have majored in something like that if… if I hadn’t been told time and again that I would be wasting my time.”
The animosity Henry had harbored towards William in that moment had vanished, and was promptly replaced with a kind of elation. They had found common ground, and it wasn’t as if this was the common ground he found often between people, much less someone who he had low expectations for at first. After all, roommates never do turn out to work well, just as a principle. He had expected someone completely idiotic or painfully arrogant, and had only hoped that at least his roommate didn’t live in his own filth like a animal. It was the first thing he had looked at when he entered the apartment, and he had been pleasantly surprised.
He didn’t know what to say following William’s confession. He instead absentmindedly glanced around the room. He hadn’t spent a ton of time in the kitchen or the living room since he had been unpacking into his own (which had been spotless when he entered it), but he started to notice that there was very little out of place. The only thing that hadn’t been put away was a glass of water by the sink. William was staring at it as if he forgot to take care of it, and wanted nothing more than to put it away.
When he had used the bathroom earlier, he noticed very little sitting around. There was a bar of soap and a toothbrush by the sink, nothing else. At the time, it had made him slightly worried. Henry had hoped for someone clean, but the apartment was so clean that walking around it made him feel out of place.
He wondered if William had cleaned prior to his arrival. Why? He had no expectations to live up to. Henry would be living with him anyway, so any first impressions he wanted to leave will have evaporated by the end of the first week. He looked back at William, who was absentmindedly chewing on his straw. He looked a lot less intimidating than he had looked when Henry first walked into the apartment. Now the expression on his face could almost be described as unfocused or sheepish.
“I haven’t met many people who are interested in the kind of stuff I am,” Henry finally decides to say. “It’s rare in this… day and age.”
“It is,” is what he says. The room falls silent once again, and Henry is slightly irritated. William makes it so difficult to carry on a conversation.
“Um, when do you usually wake up? Just so, you know, we’re not in the tiny bathroom together at the same time,” Henry asks. William sets down his Coke and starts to gather up the trash on the table.
“Between six or seven,” he answers, getting up and holding the brown paper bag out for Henry to throw his napkin into. Henry does so, feeling almost guilty for not offering to clean up. “I’d prefer it to be closer to six.”
“That’ll be fine,” Henry agrees. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I like to get up later anyway.”
William nods and walks over to the trash, and throws the bag away. He then walks over to pour the glass of water down the drain, as Henry slowly taps his fingers together.
“Can I call you Will?” He asks suddenly. William stops what he’s doing to seemingly think this over.
“Sure,” he affirms after a moment. “I assume…you’re good with Henry?”
“Yeah.”
The sink’s running water saves them from another awkward silence.
“I’m going to unpack a little more,” Henry says, standing up. This was more of a way to avoid the ever thickening tension between the two. It was getting to him.
“Have fun,” William replies, his eyes on the glass in his hands.
Henry notices he’s not actually cleaning it.
…
The tension eased between the two of them in the following two weeks. Henry’s chest stopped tightening whenever William looked into his eyes, and William’s demeanor grew less stiff. Henry started to develop an idea of the kind of person he was— reserved, but charismatic. Intimidating, but oddly comforting. He didn’t smile a ton, but when he did, it was soft and warm. There were little things that Henry noticed as well, like the way he always seemed to have his pinky lifted out of habit. He noticed his eyes drift quite a bit as well, but what he found particularly unique about him was his affinity for the color purple. He never wore a shirt that wasn’t purple. Later on, Henry would notice that purple objects would occasionally appear around the apartment as decorations. All of the plastic cups in the kitchen were purple. He didn’t quite mind the color, he just wondered what Will’s obsession with it was.
Henry also learned that William hadn’t seen many movies either. Upon learning this, he proposed a bit of a movie marathon, which Will reluctantly agreed upon. For the most part, he seemed to enjoy it, although they had been a week into this marathon when he fell asleep during Ocean’s 11. Henry almost jumped when he looked to his left and saw that William’s head was resting on his shoulder. He felt the urge to lightly punch him awake and scold him for this, but he heard his level, calm breathing in his ear and decided not to. He didn’t know how long William had been up for; he probably needed sleep. Henry turned off the TV then and dozed off alongside him. The pattering rain put him to sleep.
…
Two months later, Henry, who had woken up late that day after William had already gone to work, noticed that William had left his bedroom door open a crack as he was walking back to his room to work on homework. He hadn’t really seen his bedroom before, since there was no reason to and the door was almost always closed. Still, he wondered if Will had anything in there that would interest him.
Henry was the last person whom one would expect to snoop around another person’s belongings, but even he was susceptible to his own curiosity. Plus, he still felt as if there was another layer to William that he wasn’t quite seeing. He wondered if there would be a clue in there. Besides, it’s not like he believed there was anything he could find that would change his opinion of him.
Henry pushed open the door and surveyed the room. His bed dawned a purple bed sheet, as expected, and it wasn’t made. There were more pillows than one person would probably need on the bed, which confused Henry slightly, and one of them had a dent in its side like it had been squeezed the night before.
He glanced over at his desk, and he almost did a double take. Compared to the rest of the apartment, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to anything on the desk. Papers were scattered everywhere, on the desk, pinned to the wall, or just sitting on the floor next to the desk. A cluster of pens were lying on top of the papers, and next to it sat a leather book with a ribbon sticking from one of the pages.
Besides the desk, though, the rest of the room was relatively clean. There were no clothes lying around, and everything seemed to have a proper place. The desk continued to draw him in though, and he eventually walked over towards it. Slowly, he picked up the leather book, being careful not to move anything. Without thinking, he turned to a random page, and read the first word.
“Henry—”
Henry automatically snapped the book shut, and found himself staring at the cover. Why was his name in this book? Against his own will, he pried open the book again and peeked at the first page, where he could see the words “June 2nd, 1964.”
It was a journal, that much was obvious. Henry’s curiosity had shot through the roof. Why was his name in it? What was William writing about him? He knew he ought not to look at it, he knew he ought to respect William’s privacy, but he was too curious. He opened the book to the first page again.
“June 2nd, 1964.
I’m buying a new apartment. I’m hoping to share the rent with someone from the school, preferably someone who isn’t an idiot. I put a notice on the bulletin board, just in case anyone reads that anymore. My parents have…”
Henry flips the page. A lot of the notes in the journal have a very professional quality to them, which was to be expected. Sometimes he jots down statistics, most notably his weight, which he appears to be slightly obsessed with. Henry flips through the notebook for a while until he sees his name.
“A boy by the name of Henry Emily has requested to share my rent. He’s a third year at the school. I took him up on the offer. At least the spelling and grammar on his letter wasn’t atrocious.”
He chuckles despite himself. He flips the page again.
“Mr. Emily arrived today. He’s about 6 foot 2 with curly red hair and glasses. He seems a bit awkward, but he’s not arrogant or idiotic. As a matter of fact, I quite like him. I have a feeling we’ll get along decently.”
There’s a break in the text.
“Henry is majoring in mechanical engineering and minoring in robotics. I admire that. I’d like to learn more about his studies.”
“Henry interests me. His studies are intriguing.”
“Henry wants me to do a movie marathon with him. I accepted. It can’t hurt.”
“I wonder what Henry thinks about me sometimes. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything for him to think wrongly of me.”
“I fell asleep while watching one of the movies that Henry picked out. I hope he’s not angry. I fell asleep on his shoulder. I hope he didn’t think anything of that.”
“Sometimes I get lost in his eyes. They are a stunning blue shade. He doesn’t seem to notice.”
“Henry is painfully unaware of all of the little things that I do when I’m around him. I’m infinitely grateful for that.”
Henry looks up from the pages. He’s aware that his cheeks are burning, but can’t do anything about it. He shouldn’t have read this. He really shouldn’t have read this. But he’s in too deep.
No, don’t do it. You’ve seen enough.
He looks back down at the page.
“I can’t stop thinking about him.”
“Something happened. I can’t write this down.”
A lump has formed in Henry’s throat. He forces himself to pry his eyes away from the book, but he doesn’t set it down. He works to steady his breathing for a moment, and thinks about whether or not to continue reading it.
It’s an invasion of his privacy, he keeps telling himself. But on the other hand, you already know. What’s just a little bit more information?
He opens the book again.
“I don’t even think I know much about him, but I know he’s brilliant.”
“I wish these feelings were platonic. It would be so much easier.”
“I considered for a bit that they were platonic. I thought that maybe they were just strong platonic feelings for a bit. That was before I started seeing him on my bed.”
“If my mind wanders it eventually finds its way back to Henry. If it continues to wander, I start imagining him naked, draped over the couch. By then, I—”
The next line is vigorously scribbled out. The next entry has a recording of his weight (in kilograms, might Henry mention), but after that there’s nothing. Slowly, Henry closes the book and places it back on the desk, where he arranges it so it’s just the way he left it. He then quietly leaves the room and goes into his own, where he sits on his bed and takes this in.
I start imagining him naked, draped over the couch.
Henry’s heart is beating a mile a minute.
Something happened. I can’t write this down.