Set Up. || PURPLEPHONE

The Other Side of The Story.

Today Jeremy and Fritz were on opening-up duty, so Mike, Scott and Vincent decided to meet up together to walk to work. Scott and Vincent lived only a few streets away from each other, Mike a little further away but not by much.

Mike locked his front door behind him and jumped off the porch. It was cloudy today, the smell of rain was in the air and the clouds looked fit to burst. Glancing up at the sky, Mike wondered if they'd get to work before it started to rain.

He set off down the road, humming slightly to himself. It was a good part of the city, here. The neighbours were always kind, the place itself was, in a word, tidy. The pavements were neat, lawns perfectly mowed and the roads relatively new. Of course, there were parts of the neighbourhood that weren't so nice. The poorer parts were filled with cracked buildings and overgrown pathways. The people who lived there weren't necessary mean, but... they knew what they needed to survive, and they didn't depend on anybody else.

Everybody here had spent time in that place. There wasn't a single resident here who couldn't tell you about the time that they lived there for a week after running away from home as a little kid or broken into one of the houses as a teen, or stayed there while searching for a new house, or were too poor to afford housing. The worst were the people who had been born there. Whose entire family lived in the slums, because of drink, drugs or financial struggles. Everybody had a certain amount of respect for the people on the poorer side of town, but that doesn't mean that they socialised with them more than they had to - the exception being Vincent.

Mike looked up and saw that he had reached the intersection where he was to meet the aforementioned man and his co-worker. They weren't there yet.

Mike frowned and looked down at his watch. If they didn't hurry, he'd have to go on without them. He didn't want to be late.

In the next few minutes, however, Vincent and Scott came running up to him, both looking as if they'd been running for a while.

"...sorry..." Scott panted, doubling over slightly, his hands on his knees. "...I slept in..."

"...I had to go... wake him up..." Vincent panted back. "Sleeps... like a rock..."

"...had a late night..." Scott explained.

"It's alright," said Mike, "But I hope you're not too puffed, because we're going to have to walk pretty quickly to get to work on time."

"Yeah, okay..." Scott straightened up. It was pretty cold out, so they regained their breath quickly and started to walk towards Fazbear's.

At one point, Scott pulled out his phone and keyed in a song. He put his earphones in but, to Mike's great surprise, gave one of them to Vincent and kept the other. They walked along together, quite close together, in fact, though that could just be about the length of the headphones.

"What are you listening to?" Mike asked.

They both answered at the same time and without hesitation, as if they expected the question. "Grace Kelly."

Mike frowned slightly and looked between the two men. Scott, short, weedy, dark-haired and dark-eyed. Vincent, tall, thin but strong, pale-eyed and purple-haired. Complete opposites in every aspect. "I thought you hated each other?"

"We do."

Again, they answered in chorus as if they expected the question, as if their reply had been practised. But still, they walked in step with each other, listening to the same song and, as of yet, not a single insult had been thrown between them.

Mike blinked once, and then shrugged, "If you say so." He wasn't going to argue with them, after all, it was he who had wanted a friendship to form between them, and it looked like that was happening. A twisted version of friendship, perhaps, but a version of friendship nonetheless.

They reached Fazbear's a few minutes after it had officially opened. As they walked through the doors, as if waiting for that exact moment, the clouds broke open and it started to pour rain.

"That was good timing..." Mike commented, looking out of the window at the increasingly wet carpark.

"Yeah," Scott said. He had his earphones back now, but he was packing away his phone so that it wouldn't distract him from work. "Wouldn't have liked to be caught out there."

"Ooh, Scotty doesn't want to get his feet wet," Vincent said. It was a lame insult, and it came across more as a friendly tease than anything.

"Me not want to get my feet wet?" Scott replied, "But you're the scaredy-cat."

"Oooooooooh," Mike said. "Nice one, Scott."

Scott grinned and then, "Oh, but I better get to my post. Seeya at lunch-break, guys."

Vincent watched him go, shaking his head, and then turned around and walked off to the Office, where he was posted for the day.

Mike was on entrance duty anyway, so he just sat on the windowsill, thinking about Scott and Vincent's changed behaviour. It was all after they went out together that night. He wondered what had happened to so drastically change their opinions on each other. Maybe they got drunk together? Mike knew how much fun Scott was when he got drunk. Super giggly, absolutely stupid, and way too dirty-minded. It was hilarious. Scott wasn't a big drinker, he knew how he acted when he drank, but he was also a bit of a push-over if you insisted for long enough. It got to the point where Scott already knew what was going to happen if he hung out with Mike; now he needed hardly any convincing at all.

Well, then again... Scott wasn't always happy when he was drunk... There was this one time when Mike had hung out with Scott and they got drunk - drunker than usual. As in, fully, totally, you're-going-to-regret-this-in-the-morning wasted. Except this time Scott hadn't been his usual self. He'd skipped the giggly and pervy stages altogether, and now he was just sitting with his head in his hands, crying.

"Scott?" Mike asked. He was sobering up, the affect of the alcohol wearing off. But Scott didn't have such a high tolerance to alcohol; he got drunk quicker and didn't sober up for longer.

It was silent for a long time, and then, "Mike. I-I thhhink... I think I-I'm in love with him..."

Now, Mike had always had his suspicions. Scott had always acted awkwardly when they talked about girls; when asked who he found attractive, he'd merely shrug, occasionally point at random girls but give no explanation as to what he found attractive about them. But still, it was a shock for Scott to just come out to him like that. Mike never found out who 'him' was, and he didn't press for further information, because Scott seemed seriously messed up. He continued to cry into his arms, not saying anything else. Mike had done the best he could in his half-sober state, telling him it was alright, not to stress out about it, and to drink some more to clear his head. Scott drank and drank until he passed out, and in the morning the only memories he had of the night were a fuzzy blur.

Mike looked over at the Dining Hall, where Scott was pointing out the direction of Pirate's Cove to a little girl.

He didn't know Mike knew, and Mike didn't ask him about it. After all, it was entirely possible that he was only a little confused, that his drunk state had forced him to state his opinion even if it wasn't true. Still though, he hadn't told anyone, and Scott hadn't said anything about it to anyone. Whatever was going on in that guy's head, it was his own battle.