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cutelittleexo · 9 hours ago

Note

For prompt

“Whatever this is - it’s over”

Sun & Moon centered / 7,686 Words

You’ve been fired.

There’s no Ifs, Ands, or Buts about it, if your (former) boss’ tone is anything to go by. You got the phone call bright and early a number of days ago, only an hour before you were scheduled to go in, yet you were still expected to continue on with your shift as usual. This was just a personal heads-up; a courtesy, they said. You’ll finish out the week before they kick you to the curb for real.

You don’t tell anyone. Not on the first day, or the second, or any time soon. There are forty-eight hours remaining when you decide it may be best to keep your mouth shut all together. Would it be easier, that way? Would it hurt any less?

It’s hard to imagine your coworkers don’t suspect something. You’ve been suspiciously dispirited these last few days, jumping between pretending not to care, and outright hysteria when you believe yourself to be alone. You’ve been careful. Whatever emotion has spilled from your voice is only a drop in a turbulent ocean, its waves threatening to crash and pull and swallow you whole. You lack the energy to keep your head above water, and have just about stopped swimming all together. The thought of letting yourself drown is easier. It chips away at the guilt.

They don’t intend to let you lose the fight that easily.

“Is everything okay?” Sun asks fifteen minutes into your shift, a rearranging of the same question he’s asked every day for three days. You struggle to keep yourself from snapping at him.

“Everything’s fine,” is what you answer him with instead, “just like I told you yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.” The blanket in your hands is folded with the ferocity of a cat wrangling prey, as though the very fibers wage a war against you. Evidently, everything is not fine. “Will you please just drop it?”

“Sorry, sorry,” he quickly raises himself from a slouch to avoid crowding you further, hands flying up in defense, “it’s just…you’ve been so quiet this week, sunshine, and you know how I worry–”

“Well don’t,” you snap – thinking better of it the moment you catch his flinch from the corner of your eye. Your hands slow against the fabric, then stop all together. You deflate with an exhausted sigh and do your best to regain some composure. “I’m just tired, Sun, that’s all,” you try to face him with a smile, “I didn’t mean to snap, I’m sorry,” it doesn’t reach your eyes, “can we just forget about it?”

He straightens further, stiffening in the joints (he gets the picture loud and clear), his hands wringing in circles, already. “Of course, star, all forgiven!” You don’t miss the choice of nickname. Moon will doubtlessly bring it upon himself to ask you the same damn question before the end of your shift if he’s already invading this conversation. “Forget about what?” Sun continues with a wink, “I can’t even remember what we were talking about!”

His effort softens your shoulders. You know he can’t help but worry, it’s in his nature, but it will only make these last two days all the more difficult. “Thanks, Sun. I promise to try and be a little less grumpy.” You produce a smile with genuine effort this time, and he appears to reciprocate by unwinding the joints that had been coiled tight.

“Any time, sunshine. Now then,” he gestures awkwardly toward the heap of blanket, “would you like some help with that? It appears to have gotten away from you. Nasty beasts, these things are. Always causing trouble!”

The fleeting relief of humor helps the waves recede, bit by bit. You let laughter wash over you instead of grief for as long as it’ll last and do your best to ignore the way an ocean of dread still laps at your ankles.

As expected, Moon is hot on your tail before you’re so much as halfway to the locker room when the lights go out. There’s ten minutes left to your shift and, if you’re lucky, you can spend them gathering your things and avoid him entirely. Unfortunately, your luck this week has apparently run dry.

“Leaving so soon?” He asks from the rafters, “What has you in such a hurry?”

If it wasn’t a hurry, it’d be a lingering. An insistence to stay for as long as your timecard would allow, regardless of task, dragging your feet like a child that wanted to stick around and play for only a few minutes longer. You’d look desperate – suspicious, if nothing else – and you couldn’t lead him on to what was happening.

“Got places to be, things to do,” you lie in perfect sing-song harmony, “I’ll be back tomorrow.” It’s one of the last days you can tell him so. “Don’t you have patrols to be doing?”

Your locker slams shut. Moon is behind it, his nails still dug into the cheap metal. He watches you like a shark circling its next meal. “Done for now,” he tells you. “Follow. I want to show you something.”

Do you really have a choice in the matter?

Moon leads you down a familiar path. Past the Daycare, into the theater, through the blue door. You know the route to their bedroom by the back of your hand. “Is this important?” You try not to sound impatient, but the longer you’re here, the harder it will be for you to leave. Moon doesn’t reply.

He holds the door open and ushers you inside with an expectant glare. Your hesitance to enter has his eyes narrowing further. If you didn’t know any better you would think he was angry with you, but you can’t think of what you might have done to piss him off this time.

You walk into the room if only through sheer force of will, each step a fight in and of itself, waged against the bile in your throat and the weight that’s made knots of your stomach. Just five minutes. If you can last that long, you’ll have a reasonable excuse to leave without him thinking any worse of you.

Moon continues to the wall and carefully frees a paper from its tape, pausing to stare at it between his hands if only for a moment before returning to your side. The fairy-lights you bought them are strewn along the ceiling corners and provide only enough light to see him offer you the paper. You still find yourself bringing it within an inch of your face and squinting to make out what it is he’s so intent on showing you.

“It’s from your first day here,” he supplies.

You look for answers in his voice. Motive, emotion, anything. Anything but the unreadable stare he serves you and the thin paper between your fingers. With no other options you draw your flashlight from its holster and bring it up to the page, careful to angle it away from him. Normally he would take a precautionary step back, but today, he remains where he’s at, eyes glued to you. The flashlight clicks in your hand.

“Oh,” a quick breath runs between your teeth, “this is…”

The three of you together. Sun on one side, Moon on the other, and you smack dab in the middle. Crudely drawn as all children’s art is.

You remember the day it was gifted; a regular at the daycare – black hair wrapped in a rainbow scrunchie, the first to arrive and the last to leave – she had come up to you in the moments before it was time for pick-up and tugged at your sleeve. You had spent the day stressed beyond belief and worried about your future at the company, and hardly even noticed her arrival until the art was shoved into your hand.

She disappeared up a slide before you could get a proper look at it, but her eyes found you through the bars of the playpen’s upper level only a minute after. You remember it melting away the stress in your shoulders upon finally turning it over, thinking to yourself that maybe things would work out after all.

Despair opens a hole beneath your feet as the ocean finally drags you under, starving your lungs of air and plunging you into an endless darkness. You fall, and fall, and fall—

“I know it can be…difficult,” Moon’s voice cuts through the pitch, “working here, I mean,” you force yourself to find his eyes, vibrant crimson in a sea of black, “but we can figure something out. Or– or change, maybe, if that’s the problem.”

“What?” Your body feels weightless suddenly, the plummet taking even the bile, even the knots, leaving you with nothing nothing nothing.

“You haven’t worn your daycare nametag all week,” he points out, voice straining as he nods toward the empty space on your chest, “I just – we just thought you would come to us first before transferring.”

The bottom of this great abyss arrives without warning and shatters you entirely. Here, you are no better than a whalefall, heavy bones on the ocean floor, what’s left of you will be picked apart and then swiftly abandoned.

Your knees hit the floor. Moon is quick to follow, eyes flashing wide in a fit of panic, he bends to reach your height and cups a hand over your shoulder. “Star?” The frequency in his voice-box is all wrong. It fizzles and pops with a merciful worry you’ve never been allowed to hear before. “Tell me what’s going on.”

If your world is an ocean then you are a tidal wave, crashing and breaking along the shore, and you risk taking him with you. The paper wrinkles between shaking fists as you finally collapse into a discordant sob, unable to hold it in any longer. The seafoam carries you far, far away, until his voice is nothing but wind in its current. But he’s owed an explanation, isn’t he?

“I’m not transferring to another position,” your every word is pulled like teeth and hurts twice as much, the effort it takes to continue plunging you ever deeper, buried within cold sand, “I was fired, Moon. I’m not coming back.”

His grip on your shoulder hardens until it’s almost painful, nails digging into flesh. You hardly feel it. Your mind sways on uneven waves, your body is numb, a distant part of you, heavy with grief. He releases you on realizing and hesitates only a moment before wrapping his hands around your own. His voice warbles with unspoken dread.

“Why?” He asks.

Why, indeed? You had asked the company a thousand times, and asked yourself a thousand more when their answer wasn’t enough to sate you. Maybe you weren’t working hard enough, fast enough, your efficiency lackluster in every way that counted. Maybe you spent too many hours shooting the breeze with Moon and not enough time sorting boxes of craft supplies or folding blankets. Maybe your coworkers had seen you bringing Sun flowers one too many times. Maybe the kids asked too many questions and you answered with too much, or not enough. Maybe it was a combination of these things, or none of them. Maybe it was as simple as management had made it out to be.

Budget cuts, is what they told you. Your presence was no longer a necessity. The daycare would manage fine on its own.

“I don’t know,” you end up telling him, “maybe I just wasn’t good enough.”

You don’t notice that one of his hands has untangled from yours until the back of his knuckles are brushing along your cheek. They catch a tear as it falls and let it bleed into a strand of hair, gently tucking it behind your ear. “No, no no no, Starlight, you’ve done nothing wrong,” his murmur keeps you from drifting further into the sea, a fragile tether around your waist, fraying at the seams, “I’m sure there’s a way to fix this. We can find a way.”

“I tried,” your sob rings through the empty space of their bedroom, causing him to freeze. “I did everything I could, offered what I could – I’d have worked less hours, accepted less pay, anything. It doesn’t matter!” The tether unravels fiber by fiber. “It’s too late, Moon.” This won’t last. “It’s over.”

“We can still–”

“No!” The tether snaps. You turn your cheek in the palm of his hand and flinch when it cups your jaw, angry tears pouring over his thumb. “I’m so tired of fighting this when it’s obvious that they’ve made up their minds,” you can’t look him in the eye, “Please don’t make this even harder than it already is.”

Your fingers pinch at the edges of the paper, then pull it taut, taking in the art for a final time as water-stains spill across its surface. Wordlessly, you return it to him.

He doesn’t immediately take it, staring back at you, instead, as if by some miracle you’ll change your mind. But you don’t. You get back to your feet when his hand leaves you to take it, a terrible, crackling whine spilling from his throat, the motion of your stand so abrupt his nail stings a thin line down your skin – but you don’t feel it. You don’t feel anything.

He catches you by the wrist as you turn to leave.

“Please,” he whispers, eyes wide, “let us try.”

The waves are cold and heartless. They brush against your skin with affections no less tender than this and numb you down to the marrow. “I’m sorry,” you shake him free of your wrist, “whatever this is, it’s over.”

The door shuts at your heel with a whisper, and Moon does not try to follow.

You don’t sleep that night. The look in his eyes haunts you like a ghost, there each time you close your eyes, you toss and turn restlessly from the time you get home to the time your alarm goes off the next morning. Though you expect the sound to be grating as always, today it is anything but. Sweet, like a lullaby. Familiar. You savor it for all of a minute before forcing your hand over the button. Tomorrow, you’ll hear it for the last time – until you can find yourself a new job somewhere else.

You go about your morning routine with a certain amount of listlessness. The waves aren’t turbulent, anymore. They’ve settled into a mindless current, the idle of driftwood on a calm ocean’s surface. You skip breakfast.

Key in the ignition, seatbelt on, you adjust your rearview mirror and swear that Sun smiles at you from the back seat. Here one minute and gone the next. You had often joked about breaking them out, one day. Showing them the world.

How foolish.

Your drive is interrupted by the lazy push of traffic, and you can’t help but feel like the universe itself is dragging its feet with you. The remnants of a nasty fender bender just ahead distracts you briefly. Your mind is drawn back to the many times Moon complained about you driving home each day in what they both considered a death machine. Bitter laughter chokes against your tongue as you pass it by, free hand rooting around for your phone so you can explain away any tardiness.

“It’s fine,” says your boss. Of course it is. You’re only here for a short while longer, anyway.

You’re half an hour past the beginning of your shift when you finally pull into the parking lot, the area busy with cars already. You do what you can to avoid your coworkers’ gaze upon entering and clock in with your head down, thoughts still distant.

There’s an abundance of noise coming from behind the daycare doors long before you reach them. Pushing forward, you find yourself between dozens of children playing in what can only be considered unmonitored chaos. Craft supplies have spilled from their drawers and made a river onto the play mats. Toys litter the walkway, forcing you to step over dolls and plastic rockets and stuffed animals alike just to get to the front desk. The chorus of unrestrained fun bleeds your eardrums.

And there stands Sun at the center of it all, covered head to toe in paint, glue, and stickers, hands shuffling with guilt behind him while your boss verbally chews him up and spits him out.

“What’s going on here?” You drop your bag behind the desk and sidestep through a sea of running toddlers before coming to a stop at your manager’s side. Sun’s head snaps upward with a vocal clickclick at the sound of your voice, the tiniest flicker of relief settling in his overheating frame.

“Finally,” answers your manager, “I don’t know what you’ve been teaching this thing, but it’s gotten far too lazy. These children need to be reigned in immediately,” he gestures wildly at the ensuing chaos, face so red and tight you think he might just pop. “Now that you’re here you better fix it. I expect everything to be taken care of when I return, or you can say goodbye to your last paycheck!”

“Oh, u-um,” you shoot a quizzical look in Sun’s direction, but his face is blank, save for the usual candid smile, “sure thing. They’ll be perfect little angels when you get back.”

Your answer is nothing more than a grunt, that of an angry and pouting dog. He nearly bodies a third grader on his way out.

Your neck cranes to shoot Sun a narrow-eyed look. “What was all that about?”

“I haven’t the slightest clue what you mean!” He chirps.

What happens next moves like clockwork. Sun turns on his heel and brings two fingers against his smile, and perfectly imitates the shrill of a whistle, seamlessly gathering the children’s attention with little more than that and a clap of his hands. “Anarchy time is over, children,” he sings, “time to clean up, up, up so we can watch our movie!”

He receives a divided wave of reactions, squeals of glee overshadowed by groans and whines of not being done with their games, just yet, but he’s quick to put a stop to that with the simple lift of a finger. “Remember, first one to clean up their area gets to help me pick out the movie,” his smile undeniably widens behind the mask, “and our snack!”

The resulting chaos is of a different variety. Children of all ages bustling around to do their part until every toy is in a pile and all the crafts have found their way back to the table. Not perfect, by any means, but it’s about as close to organization as the daycare gets until Sun has a proper crack at it himself.

He never needed your help. Not before your arrival, and certainly not now. Sure, having an extra pair of hands around makes his job exponentially easier, but he managed to uphold this business for years before you were hired. He knows just what to do.

And here, too, does he know exactly what he’s doing.

“You cheeky bastard–”

“Language!”

“–you did this on purpose.” You accusingly point a finger toward the smug expression he’s wearing, that plastered smile shining back at you like he is none-the-wiser to what you’re saying. He’s practically mocking the very implication of it. “What were you thinking!”

His head tilts thoughtfully to the side, pointer finger coming to sit atop the chin of his faceplate as if he’s actually thinking about it, “I’m not sure what you mean,” hums Sun. “Do you mean to say that I pulled every drawer from the shelves and placed every toy within reach first thing this morning? That I let the children run amuck, all willy-nilly? That I encouraged their ruckus? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

“Yes!”

He tuts, shaking his head in disbelief, “I would never do such a thing, sunshine! Why, I’ve just been doing my very best to keep these rowdy tots in line until you could get here. It was utter disarray without you here. Disarray, I tell you!”

You aren’t sure whether to be proud, or allow the feeling of your blood boiling to spill into something more tangible. “I know what you’re doing, Sun,” you decide on a halfhearted scold, instead, “this was risky. Too risky. What if you had been punished with more than a slap on the wrist?”

“I can hardly call that tantrum your manager pulls anything in the way of a slap,” he insists, “and besides, it all ended up just dandy. See?” He nods in the direction of a much cleaner daycare, the children already pouring over a basket of DVDs like vultures on old meat. His hand is heavy as it abruptly rests atop your head and rustles through your hair. “Everything went according to plan, petal. Stop your worrying.”

You slouch under the touch and gently bat his hand away, only half-smiling. “It’s not going to work, you know.”

“It might!”

“But—”

“I told you, didn’t I?” He turns fully now and cups your face between both of his hands, “Quit your worrying, little biter. You’re not allowed to stop trying until the rest of us have.”

You pout something fierce, a frustrated whine already building at the back of your throat. It eventually eases into the lows of a sigh. There’s no point in fighting either of them on this. Sun, especially, is aggravatingly stubborn when he’s set his mind on something. You can only imagine the plans they were making from the very second you left the night before.

Your eye catches on a subtle twitch in his fingers, and deeper still, in the depths of his chest, the whir of an overworked fan. The telltale signs of an anxiety attack that he’s barely restraining. He has every reason to be anxious, too. Sun can’t handle messes on a good day, so to go out of his way to intentionally create this much of it...

He really is trying.

“Thank you, Sun,” you take in a deep breath and hold it, relaxing with the exhale. “I’ll try and be a little less...grumpy, about all of this. Let you have a chance at trying at least.” You feel a pang of guilt at having to say it twice.

His right hand strays from your cheek while the other one stays. “Do you promise this time?” He asks, already knowing the answer.

When he taps his pointer finger against your bottom lip it tastes like sticky paint and glue. Your nose wrinkles, cheeks splitting with a smile even when all you want to do is cry. “I promise.”

It doesn’t work.

Why would it?

A single day of ruckus is nothing in the grand scheme of FazCo’s wallet. Sun is given a secondary scolding while being told to do better, and that’s that. There isn’t enough banking on your presence here to bother paying your checks any longer.

You still thank him for the attempt, knowing just how much he put himself through in the effort, and he remains convinced that something will change, even now. That a miracle will bring you back to them. When you say your goodbyes it’s with hope in his eyes, and acceptance in yours. You don’t notice how poorly he’s actually holding himself together.

Or the flicker of purple in his gaze as you leave the daycare behind.

That night is no better than the last. If this continues, you’re going to spend your final day with them sleep deprived out of your mind. It’s not like it can be helped, either way, seeing as each attempt at getting some rest violently reminds you of how little time is left. The memories you shared and the memories you had hoped to make, all taken from you in the time it will take for the sun to rise and set once more. It felt like a sick joke. Too cruel to be real.

It’s three in the morning when you receive a call.

You notice your phone vibrating on the bedside table within seconds of it, seeing as you’re still awake and watching old sit-com reruns to quell the anguish in your heart. You don’t hesitate to answer it the moment your eyes settle on the name.

It’s your manager. And he sounds – to put it lightly – like he’s going to piss himself.

“You better get your ass over here,” he half-quivers, half-snarls into the phone, “I mean it. Now.”

You’re already up and looking for your shoes when you hear a heavy thump from the receiver. “What was that?” You ask, eyes scanning the room for your other sneaker, “What’s going on?”

“I forgot something before closing and— does it matter? Just get over here!” Wood splinters around his voice. Behind that, the familiar sound of bells.

“I’ll be there as fast as I can,” you tell him, “try to find some place to hide.”

Forgetting your shoes entirely, you shove your feet into some slippers (it’ll match the rest of your attire, anyway), and throw yourself out the front door.

You really ought to have been pulled over sometime in the mad-dash between your house and the pizza-plex. Either the officers normally patrolling these streets are all at home sleeping like normal people, or your luck is finally turning around. Though, considering the circumstances bringing you to this point, you can’t say that’s entirely true.

The building is quiet as a ghost when you slip inside. “Moon?” Your voice spills over the empty halls and bounces back to meet you again, making the wide arching mouth of the pizzaplex feel that much more hollow. His voice does not answer you.

Instead what you hear is a rattling from the distance. The sound of metal on metal. You head for its direction in a full-body sprint while digging out the phone in your pocket, considering giving your manager another call, but ultimately thinking better of it. If he really was hiding (as he should be, if he cared whatsoever about your advice) the ring would only give his position away. You would just have to find them without it.

It doesn’t take long.

You round the corner to the sight of Moon making a meal out of your manager. Or trying to, at least. The metal bat your boss wields to ward off the normal type of intruder (already dented in to look grotesquely misshapen by now) is the one thing standing between him and a bed six feet under, and judging by the quivering in his arms, that method isn’t going to last much longer. His back presses against the floor with the entire weight of the animatronic atop him.

Moon spits and snarls, teeth gnashing behind the mask and nails carving slivers of metal from the bat that keeps his right hand from doing damage to anything else. The left hangs limply at his side with its elbow joint bent out of shape, wires exposed and barely keeping the limb pieces together. His chest is dented in a number of places, proving that the bat struck successfully more than once, though you can’t say your manager is looking any better.

Especially when you near them and get a proper look at the man who pays your checks; thick blood pools from his nose to chin, coating gritted teeth in red. The color stains his shirt and climbs the length of his body, thin gauges rivering down both arms. And his leg, fuck, the angle is all wrong–

His neck cranes to see you, face red with effort rather than anger for once. “Call your dog off!” He barks.

Ignoring the implications of that, you nod like your life depends on it (as it’s surely about to) and raise your hands into the air, daring a step closer. “Moon,” your chest feels tight, as though you aren’t getting in enough air, but you’ve done this song and dance plenty of times before. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. Can you look at me?”

And he does. Against all odds, he does. The ever briefest flicker in your direction, a long enough distraction to give your manager a chance at escape but not enough to prevent Moon from immediately trying to follow.

“Hey,” you find his wrist to stop him in place, mirroring his own gesture from only a night before. An unspoken plead.

His head does a one-eighty to look directly at you, the expression he regards you with being that of a total stranger. Icy dread sinks into the lengths of your stomach and takes your heart with it.

"Moon, it’s me," you try again, "I'm here, I’m here, can you–"

His good hand raises, fingers winding above your elbow, and for an ever fleeting moment you think that maybe he's already found his way back to you. Then your feet leave the floor.

And your body ragdolls across the tile.

It’s a fickle thing, human life. It was stupid to think you could go into this situation guns blazing and still make it out okay. But it’s here, your back against the floor and body aching like a fire ablaze, when your eyes crack open to the sight of your manager limping toward the exits – leaving you behind like table scraps – that you realize just how much trouble you’re in.

Moon’s sharpened nails tickle against the back of your throat as his fingers encircle and squeeze, the choked breath he draws forth beating against your already battered ribs.

“Moon–” His name becomes lodged in your throat, rasping violently as you feel yourself raised in one smooth motion. Your back connects with the wall with merciless force and any hopes you may have had about this, too, all being an act disappear in an instant.

Tears brim at the corner of your eyes, your vision already starting to dwindle, they burn down your cheeks for what feels like the hundredth time that week. Still, you refuse to allow this to be how it ends. You’ll get your final day here, even if it takes everything you have left. Even if you’re forced to wield the same ocean that dragged you under.

“Please,” you whisper. His grip tightens. Your lungs sting with the effort of each breath, mind racing for the right words to say when it all becomes clear to you. “We can find a way to fix this,” your eyes search for any remaining piece of him, desperate and pleading as he’d been the night before, ”just let me try.“

One finger pries away, then another.

You collapse to the floor in an instant.

Moon stares upon you with a look you can’t quite read. He recognizes the words, he has to, or you wouldn’t be swallowing mouthfuls of air right now. Even so, his level of clarity is uncertain.

“Have to–” his good hand twitches, fingers contorting indecisively, “have to keep you here,” he says. “Late. It’s late.” His hand balls into a fist, then relaxes. The black swallowing his eyes begins to recede, giving way to familiar crimson if only in small, slow increments. “Time for bed.”

The song and dance continues, even if he’s forgotten which direction to put his feet and the lyrics are all wrong. You know the meaning behind them; what he wants to say, what he’s trying to say.

So you offer him a nod, slow at first but building with your confidence. You can still save yourself. Save him. “Yeah, I was just getting ready to lie down,” you tell him around a cough, “S-See?” You point with a wary smile towards yourself, thanking your lucky stars that you decided to wear an actual pajama set to bed for once instead of just an old T-shirt and pants. There’s only one slipper remaining on your foot – the other sits abandoned a few feet from where you currently sit, having been lost in the scuffle. Moon follows your gaze to its location.

He gives you a sideways, narrow eyed expression, red slits among a field of black which blends seamlessly into the dark hallway. Then he’s lowering himself into a crouch and half stepping, half scuttling towards your slipper. It would be endearing if you weren’t skating on thin ice right now.

Bending further to pick it up, he eyes the slipper for a moment before looking over his shoulder for confirmation. You nod, once more, and bring yourself to yawn with enough dramatics that it has his eyes dilating in that special way, more red blooming and overtaking the black. The action is only half forced. You really are exhausted.

Like tiptoeing across the thinnest layer of a frozen lake, you wait until he’s finished placing the slipper back on your foot before continuing with the next part of this dance. “Will you help me get to sleep?”

He stares, eyes calculating, as if he knows it’s all a game. You’re tricking his code in the only way that still works – and it doesn’t always work – but it has to, this time, because your whole life relies on him playing along.

And he does, lending you only a nod before bending at the knees and scooping you into his arms, bridal style, at a pace that denies any chance for argument. You don’t fight him, anyway, and you don’t miss the wince that crosses his face as his wounded arm wraps weakly around your shoulders, either, barely able to keep you there.

You also don’t miss the irony of having spent two days waging war against your insomnia only to be taken in for a nap by the very person you wanted so desperately to avoid. They weren’t meant to see you in this state. Likewise, you know how much he hates you to see him like this, too. A fair trade, you suppose. Life is funny like that. And by funny, you mean unfair and horrible.

When you breach the Daycare doors, Moon makes a beeline for the nap area and sets you down on a nest of blankets and pillows. It’s normally their job to fold and sort these into their respective cubbies, so you can only imagine their displacement here was a culmination of built up stress. The image of Moon refolding each blanket again and again without gaining any proper satisfaction from it plagues your mind, reinforcing the guilt that has already begun to creep its slow fingers around your throat again.

He wordlessly settles a pillow beneath your head before thinking better of it and tossing it across the room, though the blanket he had tucked you in with remains where it’s at. Then, changing his mind again, he slumps into a heavy sit just behind you and draws you near, your back against his chest, both arms surrounding you in a hug despite the effort it takes for him to raise his left below the elbow. His faceplate bonks gently against the top of your head.

And he’s silent like this for a long, long while. Leaving you feeling tense and defenseless, never truly knowing if you’re out of the woods just yet. If he’s come back to himself. You don’t allow yourself to look back until a quiet tremor spreads through the arms holding you tight, extending to his hands, trembling fingers curling into your shirt, eventually traveling throughout his entire casing until it feels like his very exoskeleton will vibrate straight out of its frame.

A noise stirs from his voicebox that you don’t immediately recognize. Practically a whisper, at first, it strains against his mechanics like a high pitched whistle through steel pipes before the frequency snaps, becoming the whitenoise heard between television channels, loud, discordant, ugly and raw.

A sob wracks through him.

“You can’t leave,” he chokes between the static in his throat, tucking you ever closer, “please, please, please don’t leave us.”

The agony his voice wields threatens to pull you back under. You fight the sensation, forcing yourself to relax in his hold, instead, even as you suffocate within it. Tears well into your eyes for the umpteenth time and fall soundlessly from your chin to land against his arms.

After a decisive moment, you make up your mind, answering him first with a stern shake of your head. “I won’t,” you promise, “they’ll have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming.”

Your chin lifts with an effort to meet his eyes, and you smile, wry and shaky as it is, hoping that he’ll reciprocate. He doesn’t. Looking down on you with a black, oily sheen smudging his cheeks, instead. You can’t bring yourself to blame him for it. In the end there’s only so much you can do. A promise is nothing in the eyes of the organization behind their very existence.

“I’ll stay the night,” you tell him, as if it’s any comfort. He answers with nothing more than a nod, then rests his chin atop your head, again, not willing to meet your eyes any longer. More noise spills from his voicebox, weak and distant, none of it words.

It isn’t long after that he begins to sway. A subtle rock from side to side, joined a moment later by the familiar tune of his music box, its winds and clicks singing against your cheek when you turn to face his chest.

For the first time since receiving that dreadful phone call, you find yourself drifting with ease. Darkness curls around you like a warm blanket to the gentle, albeit shaky hum in Moon’s throat, soothing you ever further, despite your struggle to stay awake with him for just a little longer. Just one moment more, safe in his arms.

Sleep drags you under.

It’s morning when you next wake. The day is only getting started, judging by the position of the sun as it glares through the daycare windows and directly into your eyes. You are greeted by your other Sun, who smiles at the sight of your eyes fluttering open and has you wrapped up in his arms much in the same position as you had fallen asleep, though you take note of an additional blanket wrapped around you.

“Morning, sunshine,” he croaks – an odd and unfamiliar lack of excitement in his quiet tone – though you know it would be cruel to expect happiness from him after last night. “Did you sleep well?”

“Mm...actually, yes,” you admit around a yawn, “but I’m sure it was only a few hours.”

“Three, to be exact,” Sun answers you. His arms unwind, careful of the damage to his left, to finally return your freedom. He is visibly reluctant to do so. “It’s around seven, now. How do you feel?”

You shimmy out of his remaining grip and take the opportunity to stretch and turn yourself around, careful not to go very far. Sun’s fingers twitch in your absence like he’s waiting for an excuse to pull you back into his lap. “Seven already?” You dodge his second question, not wanting to get into how sore you are after being chucked like a stuffed toy across the room only hours before. Moon is doubtlessly feeling guilty about that enough as it is. “Shouldn’t you be getting the daycare ready for open?”

He reaches for you, but thinks better of it, and tucks the hand back into his lap with the other. “I just–” his voice strains, going silent. Every ray has disappeared into his faceplate to leave only the points. It isn’t until your own hand outstretches and rests against his that he rediscovers his voice. “I just wanted to spend more time with you, whatever time we had left.”

Your smile wavers, tears threatening to spill across your cheeks again right then and there. There is a telling layer of black oil coating the underside of Sun’s eyes, too, that you elect to ignore. “I understand,” you tell him, “but you’re only going to get yourself in more trouble if the daycare isn’t open on time. My boss might not let me finish out the day if that happens.”

A whine rings from his throat at the mere possibility of it, that of a guilty dog staring at the floor, tail tucked between its legs. He goes to say something, but you beat him to it.

“Come on, I’ll help you get set up, and we can talk some more in the meantime.” You look down at your clothes, remembering your impatience to get out of the house the night before, and grimace a bit. “We can just say I thought it was pajama day, or something. I’m sure the kids will love that. Let me just get some caffeine in me first and then we can–”

Cool fingers wind around your wrist while your knees are still bent, not even fully to your feet yet. His hold on you isn’t painful, but it is dangerously close to becoming so, and you don’t have to look far to see the panic in his eyes.

“I’ll come right back,” you promise, “Just a quick hop down to the coffee booth, that’s all. I’ll even bring some fizzy faz back for you.”

His whine sharpens, reverberating against his chest. “You aren’t supposed to be here in the first place, remember? What if you’re caught?”

“What are they going to do, fire me?”

It is evident by the harsh squeeze he gives your wrist that he does not, in fact, find your joke funny. Nevertheless, he begrudgingly releases his hold on you and takes to rhythmically tapping all ten fingers against his knees, instead, the metallic tink tink tink echoing even through the fabric of his pants. “Be quick, please?” He begs.

You give him a quick nod and take off in the direction of the booth with as much skip in your step as you can muster. Which, admittedly, isn’t a whole lot. Three hours is still three hours, even if it was spent in the arms of your favorite people, and you’re still feeling downright miserable on the emotional front.

The staff bot greets you by name as you shuffle up to the counter and order your usual, taking care not to burn yourself on the cheap styrofoam cup that gets handed back to you. When you turn back around, lethargic and gripping the cup too tight, you come face to face with your manager.

He looks…well, he’s looked better. There are bandages wrapped around both arms, a collection of them scattered across his face and jaw, none of it professionally administered. You imagine that even the management around here does their best to avoid a lawsuit. Though, judging by the crutches he’s using, you have to assume he went to someone with medical training after patching up what he could himself.

You expect him to be upset. Pissed off, really. Instead, he looks at you as though he’s seen a ghost. That, if nothing else, gets a laugh out of you.

“Hey, boss,” you hum, trying to act nonchalant, “having a nice morning?”

“I–” he gawks for a while longer, wetting his chapped lips. You think he looks almost normal without all the angry red and popping veins. “I wasn’t expecting you to be–”

“Alive?” You supply, cocking an eyebrow. Your smirk is definitively smothered, trying not to get too cocky with the asshole who left you to die the night before, but its presence can be heard in your tone nonetheless.

“Back at work, already,” he corrects with a strong grimace, evidently knowing he’s been seen through already. “Didn’t Moon…”

“I got him under control,” you say with an easy shrug. It isn’t the first time. Were the circumstances different, you’re sure it wouldn’t be the last, either. “Can I still keep the coffee? I know I’m not on the clock yet, but…”

“It’s–” he stills, breaking awkwardly into silence for a moment before deflating with a long and tortured sigh. “It’s fine,” he grumbles. “Doesn’t matter.”

He is silent as you pay the bot, sipping sagely on his own coffee while avoiding your eye and wearing a painfully constipated expression. It isn’t until you’re preparing to head back that he calls your name again, causing you to pause, dread rising in your gut. You force yourself to turn around.

He looks sour in the face, like the staff bot traded out his coffee’s sugar for a handful of lemons. You are preparing yourself for the scolding of a lifetime when his eyes roll, casting to the side. “You’re being demoted to minimum wage,” he tells you.

It takes a few seconds too long for the words to catch up to your brain. When at last the implications sink in, it takes real, actual effort to not smile like a kid on Christmas and jump around right there in front of him.

You settle for a wide – normal – smile, instead, but still laugh a little too loudly, nodding with enough enthusiasm to make him groan. “Sure thing,” you tell him, “I’ll be here bright and early tomorrow. O-Or whenever. Same schedule?”

“Sure,” he grunts, “just keep your dogs under control.”

And then he’s gone. Simple as that. He walks past you and into his office, shutting the door with a soundless click, and you are left in an empty hall too early in the morning, coffee going cold in your hand, a hundred thoughts racing through your mind and all of them sending you into a run back towards the daycare.

The drawing comes to mind again. Sun on one side, Moon on the other, and you in the middle – and it’s here where you can no longer stop the smile that blossoms across your face, the heat that warms your chest and sooths away every cold and aching wave that had threatened to drown you and take your heart with it.

Yeah… maybe it would all work out after all.

#read later

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