Work Text:
William Afton “died” that night.
He “died” in the dingy backroom of a restaurant he'd come to think of as home.
He “died” trying to be the only thing he'd known how to be. Entertainment.
As he lay there, slumped against the wall -- his breath coming out in ragged, wet gasps -- he thought.
As the spring locks dug into his pale flesh and the metal suit tried to become his grave, his life flashed in a beautiful sequence before his very eyes.
The first animatronic. Fredbear. Given a goofy smile and soft yellow fur, the mascot of the first diner he and Henry built from the ground up.
Back then, things had been easier. Everything but their relationship. Henry and William both avoided their wives, and they shared a relationship at the workplace that wasn't entirely up to code.
Henry remarked that William had a beautiful body, but his soul was the rotten scraps of a childhood wrought with strife and burdens. William had looked after his sickly mother when his father left, after all.
William thought his body was hideous. His hips were too wide, his chest too bulky, his shoulders too small and his voice too squeaky.
It took years for him to become the man he now was, the man that now lay dying.
William could recall the way Henry touched him. The way Henry slid his hands over his thighs, the way Henry dipped his hand under the waistband of his boxers and circled his finger over the swollen nub of William's sex.
William rattled out another choked gasp. Just when he thought that he would be gone, another footnote in the history of the diner's tragic past, a voice called to him.
“Stay with me, Bill. Stay. I'll get you out, I promise. Oh, God! What have I done?”
William could feel his ribs crack. One. Two. Three…
Nothing.
Relief. Then, agonising, searing pain as locks were wrenched from his blood soaked flesh. Pain unlike anything he'd ever known, and he'd known childbirth.
The air tasted of metal and despair.
But William was alive. Standing there, with eyes so wide they mirrored the moon, was Henry.
“Oh, God. Please. Tell me you're alive,” he breathed.
Sirens blared in the background. William's head felt fuzzy. He looked up at Henry, and smiled.
“I owe you one,” he laughed. Then he was out like a light.
Catharsis...
Until the hospital lights woke him.