Friendly Affairs part 8

	“I’m glad you like it up here,” Chica leaned into Mike and tightened her hold around his waist; pressing her padded yellow chassis into his side as the two looked down on the restaurant’s main dining area. “I really like the view. Spring may have the stage, but being up here makes me feel like I own the whole cafe.”
	The fledgling guard followed his mechanical companion’s gaze across the rows of empty booths and dining-tables bellow. Their vantage point from the uppermost chamber of the tube-maze certainly would have been impressive had he been an adolescent scaling it for the first time, but through his adult eyes, the sight was hardly anything to gawk at.
	He did, however, appreciate the privacy the location brought, as well as the relative comfort of its plastic lined floors that were soft to the touch and easy to clean. Those two factors alone made the getaway an instant hit for those times when he was looking to indulge himself in some unsanctioned relations with the feistiest of the building’s three mascots; an act that had become all too common in the recent weeks.
	Mike wasn’t sure what he would do had the nearly perfect hideaway not been available to them, as he had no inkling to indulge Chica in her ridiculous insistence that it was perfectly fine to go at it in his office, or –god forbid- somewhere as open as the kitchen. It was bad enough that the other two bots were only ever a hallway away, or Chica herself seemed to hold little regard for the concept of privacy, but Mike was nonetheless happy that the uncannily frisky performer had indulged him thus far in his desire for seclusion; especially considering how willful she could be when it came to other matters. And while the view outside may not have impressed him, he was happy enough to share her company.
	“If you like this, you would have loved the view from the top of the Empire State building,” the guard mused as he stretched his arms and coolly wrapped one over her shoulder, “Just miles and miles of city in every direction. It’s one of those things that really give you a sense of just how tiny we are.”
	Mike immediately regretted the statement; finding it a tad cruel amidst Chica’s unique circumstances. After all, what was “miles and miles” to someone who spent their whole life cooped up somewhere measured entirely in feet.
	“Heh, I guess that probably would beat this by a few factors,” the bird chuckled causally; completely indifferent to the potential offense. “When did you go to New York? That’s a heck of a drive from here, isn’t it?”
	Mike breathed a silent sigh of relief that the subject had been dropped as quickly as it came.
	“Oh, this was years ago. I went with an old girlfriend of mine after graduating highschool,” he replied; only to tense at the realization that mentioning an old flame in front of a new one probably wasn’t a good idea either. Fumbling for yet another change in topic, he awkwardly tried to play it off. “But, uh, like I said, this was years ago. I don’t even know why I mentioned her.”
	Chica grinned impishly and tightened the grip around his waist; enough to make him feel like he was being held captive.
	“Oh no you don’t! You don’t wanna talk about it, which means I want to hear this now. What was she? Highschool sweetheart? Love of your life who got away?” the bird goaded.
	“Pfft, now there’s a good joke,” Mike scoffed back. “I’ve only ever dated two girls, and I would be extremely disappointed if either of them ended up qualifying as “the love of my life”.”
	He was hoping to end the conversation there, but Chica continued looking at him with visible curiosity. Eventually, deciding that the natural tension alone wasn’t enough, she began inching her head closer; keeping her eyes locked on his until her beak was jutting into the side of his cheek.
	“Oh, fine,” he groaned.
	“Yaaay, storytime!” the hen exclaimed triumphantly. “Start with the first one. I wanna hear about everything.”
	“Ugh, alright,” Mike groaned again and attempted to rekindle memories that -up until just now- he had been actively trying to forget. “I met my first girlfriend in my first year of highschool. I wasn’t exactly infatuated with her, but she was nice enough and I just sort of went with it at the time. It’s actually kind of hard to talk about her without coming off as overly negative. We got along alright, but she was sort of overweight and not exactly pretty, and I could never figure out what ethnicity she was supposed to be.” Chica raised an eyebrow at that last bit, and Mike decided to try and clarify a little further; not wanting to give off the wrong impression. “It’s not that it really mattered or anything, but we dated for like two years. I had met her parents a bunch of times too, and they were all just so… ambiguous. I even tried slipping little prompts into conversations just to get some kind of hint, but none of them ever took the bait.”
	“You should just be like me and not acknowledge race.”
	“Wow,” Mike scoffed. “Look at little miss enlightened here.”
	“No, I mean it. If there’s one thing you’ll never hear cross this beak, it’ll be that,” she paused. “Not after the lawsuit anyway.”
	Mike’s eyes went wide. “What? Okay, hold up. Let’s sideline my thing for a moment, because I need to hear this.”
	“Well…” Chica shifted in her seat uncomfortably. “See, we used to have this facial recognition scanner thing. We could look at a person’s face and see if they were wanted on any police databases. But then some people started complaining about discrimination and profiling, so it got disabled, and we were all mandated never to acknowledge things like ethnic traits ever again.” She looked down, and in a low, nearly inaudible voice, elaborated, “It uh, it turns out that despite making up only thirteen percent of Fazbear customers, a certain demographic of people were responsible for fifty percent of all the positive criminal matches in our scans.”
	The two stared at each other for several seconds as a suffocating silence descended upon the room; prompting Mike to eventually break the tension with a loud and forced, “Alright! Moving back from one awkward topic to another, I believe we were discussing my various failed relationships.”
	“Right!” Chica said with equal enthusiasm. “So um, was she your first?”
	“H-hey,” he was instantly on the defensive again. “We can go back to crime statistics if you really want to.”
	“Oh don’t be such a prude. Ten minutes ago you were wiggling your finger around inside of me without a hint of embarrassment,” she jeered; solidifying her point by leading his eyes over to the damp corner they had previously been sitting in.
	“Agh, yes, fine! She was my first,” Mike grumbled begrudgingly. “We only did it like twice, and I was pretty not into it both times.” He then sighed and began to slouch. “Like I said already, I wasn’t really thrilled about her. It was just sort of… convenient.”
	“Oh,” Chica seemed genuinely disappointed at hearing that. “So… was this the girl you took to New York?”
	“No,” the guard straightened back up a little. “No that was girl number two.”
	Mike took a moment to mull over how to begin describing the relationship. Most of his instincts told him to keep things simple and not bring up too much of the bad bits, but he was well aware that Chica could read him like a book whenever he tried hiding things from her. In the end, he concluded the best thing he could do was just start talking and see what words came out of his mouth; deciding that brutal honesty was better than a half-truth.
	“That bitch was the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
	Okay, that was clearly a little too brutal, as Chica was now staring at him like he had just run over her pet. Still, at least it was a starting point, and while his companion may not have appreciated his choice of words, it certainly felt cathartic to say out loud.
	“Mike!” the dumbfounded mascot collected herself enough to eventually exclaim.
	“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to hear it, remember?” Chica huffed but stayed silent, giving him the cue to keep going with his story; though he was sure to keep the language to a minimum from then on. “Don’t get me wrong, we had some pretty great times. Heck, for the first year, I genuinely thought I was in love with her.”
	“How long did this one last?” Chica asked; her disapproval giving way to curiosity.
	“We started sometime in senior year of highschool, and officially broke up for the last time on my twenty-first birthday.”
	“The last time?”
	“Uhg, look, she was pretty unstable. At first I thought it was just her outgoing, life-affirming attitude, but looking back, I’m pretty sure she was actually a sociopath.” Mike looked over to see Chica nodding uneasily. Maybe she shouldn’t have been hearing this stuff. After all she was only an animatronic at a children’s restaurant; most of her life experiences involved laughing kids and wholesome family memories. But Mike quickly concluded that he would be selling her short if he only ever treated her with kid gloves. Chica was more than capable of dealing with the hardships of life, and frankly, he wanted her to hear this stuff. Maybe it was a testament to their friendship, or maybe it was just nice to finally vent after all these years, but whatever the reason, he was happy to have met someone actually interested in all of his baggage.
	“She was really good at making me feel like I was the only guy in the world,” he continued. “And uh, if you wanna talk about sex, well, let’s just say that it was a real contrast to girl number one. God, the things we used to get up to…” A wistful smile formed on the edges of his lips.
	“So where did the bad come in?” Chica sounded almost reluctant to ask in light of his sudden good mood.
	“Ah, right, the bad. Okay, so perfect example,” Mike was practically giddy as he began to recount one of his sourer memories. “That trip to New York we were talking about? Well, it ended after I got arrested covering for her vandalizing a storefront. And then when I gave her access to my debit card so she could bail me out of jail, she spent it all on souvenirs before coming to the police station and telling me that there wasn’t enough money in the account.”
	“That… B-word!” Chica gasped. “Was that when you broke up?”
	“Hah! No,” Mike’s upbeat attitude prevailed in light of the dismal subject. If nothing else, he was enjoying the absurdity of it all. “That was only a few days after graduation. We stayed together long after that. You know how it is: People apologize and make a bunch of promises and then you go through the whole thing all over again next week.” He then shook his head and looked down at the floor in front of him. “She was so good at that: Making me think she cared. Even when it became obvious to everyone else that she was just using me for my car or whatever money I had at the time, I just didn’t want to see it.”
	Chica winced at that last bit, but found herself compelled to inquire further.
	“So… what was the thing that made you guys split up?” she asked; fully aware that a part of her didn’t want to know the answer. After all, it was obvious the story wasn’t going to have a happy ending.
	“Ehh, she cheated on me,” Mike responded nonchalantly; thought it was clear he only took the tone to hide whatever he was truly feeling. “A bunch of times, actually. But, this was on my birthday. She- Get this: She brought the guy she was cheating with, to my birthday party, and didn’t bother to tell him that we were dating.”
	“Nooo!” Chica exclaimed in disbelief. “Why? What was she thinking?”
	“I have no fu- er, fricking clue, but was pretty much the last straw after that. There was this whole thing: She spent the next few weeks trying to get me back, then threatening me, then threatening herself. It was… It was dumb.”
	The room went quiet again, while Chica mulled over how to possibly respond to such a tale.
	“Geez, I’ve seen some bad birthday parties in my time, but that story takes the cake,” she shook her head in disapproval. After a moment, though, another aspect of the story caught her attention, and with her curiosity still not sated, she decided to pose him one more time. “Wait, you said that was your twenty-first birthday?” Mike nodded in confirmation. “That was- Wait, how old are you now? Never mind. That was years ago!”
	“A few, yeah,” he replied contemplatively. If nothing else, the trip down memory lane provided him with a nice parallel to the relative stability he found himself enjoying now; and if there was anything positive he could take away from this conversation, it was that.
	“I’ve been enjoying this though: You and me,” Mike came back a little more upbeat. “For a while there I honestly didn’t think I had any more interest in the opposite sex.”
	“Because of one bad girlfriend?”
	He sighed. “I guess it does sound kind of silly when you put it that way, but there was a lot of stuff she did that ended up sticking with me long after we broke up.” Mike then moved his palm down along her arm until reaching her hand; wrapping his fingers around her massive rubbery wing and sliding them between her feather-like digits. Feeling her squeeze back just then, something about it made him both very happy, and a little sad; like he had been missing out on this simple feeling all his life, and had to endure some serious hardship just to be able to appreciate it as he did now.
	“I um, I wanted to ask you something, by the way: About you and me,” Mike spoke again; a hesitant warble undercutting his voice.
	“Wait,” Chica stopped him. “Me first.”
	Mike waited with bated breath as the tall mechanical bird looked toward him; her wide violet eyes shimmering dimly under the muted shadows of the building’s off-hours lighting. Her rubbery avian face seemed so strange when he had first met her, but studying it now, he felt like it was the prettiest thing in the world.
	“Mike,” his palms began to sweat as her grip shifted against his fingers, and he practically watched in slow motion as her beak contorted and began utter the words he had been longing to hear since they had first met. “I’ve been enjoying this too: You and me, I mean. I know I’m just a robot and all, so, I’ve been thinking, and I wanted to ask you-”
	“Yeah?” he could hardly wait for her to say it.
	“Do- Do you think we should stop seeing each other like this?”
	All at once, his welling emotions were snuffed out, and all he could respond with a single flat, "What?" accompanied by an equally lifeless blink.
	“You’ve had some tough breaks in the past, but I don’t think you should just give up on looking for that special someone,” Chica began to explain, to the guard’s piquing interest. “I mean, I know I can be grating sometimes, but you… You’ve just been great. To me- To everyone here, really. And, I mean, this has been fun- No, this has been amazing; and I’ll always cherish it. But I don’t want to be the one standing in the way of you finding something real- Of you finding someone real. I… I just want to see you to get the happy ending you deserve.”
	There was a sadness in her expression; an honest, uncompromising, genuine sorrow that she wore openly while speaking what she thought he needed to hear. It made him smile.
	“Chica,” Mike let go of his apprehension, and spoke with a kind of confidence he hadn’t felt in years.
	“Yeah?”
	“That’s stupid.”
	Chica looked shocked in the moments before he leaned over and kissed her.
	Pressing her head back into the wall, he shifted around so that his was crouching in front of her, before tugging at her shoulders to bring her body down onto the soft matted floor below. As soon as she was flat on her back, he pulled away to look down on her stunned face; enjoying the sight of her beak hanging open and her eyes slowly regaining their focus.
	“You are my happy ending, you dunce.”

	Mike remembered her gasping a little after that. He remembered how she seemed to freeze up for a moment before pulling him down next to her and holding him for what felt like hours. That was the night they made things official; though in a practical sense, nothing really changed. They still spoke to each other the same as before; still ran off and fooled around exactly the same too -though he did eventually become more flexible regarding acceptable locations- but everything about their relationship felt so much more valid since then.
	It didn’t matter that she was company property to a job that he could lose at any moment. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t tell his parents, or that there wasn’t a church in the world that would sanctify their union. Mike meant what he said about her being the one for him, and that was the only thing running through his mind as he once again traversed the narrow twisting tunnels of the restaurant’s tube maze. Spring had informed him pretty much the moment he showed up for his shift that Chica was waiting for him somewhere in there; and despite all of the twisting paths and dead-ends, the now veteran guard knew exactly where she would be.
	He didn’t know what to expect once he got there, but frankly, he didn’t care. All of the half-truths and lies of omission, all of the secrets and pranks; none of it mattered right now. He would have his say for all of the misdeeds committed against him, and by god there would be a reckoning to come, but Chica was still the love of his life; the best thing he had going for him; his happy ending.

	And so, after navigating the maze and climbing one final tunnel, Mike popped his head up into the top room –their room- and saw his curious yellow lover curled in the same corner they had confessed their feelings in all those months ago. He didn’t say anything as he crawled toward her; for the moment, there was nothing to be said. Mike simply took a seat next to her, and reached down; wrapping his fingers around her palm and feeling her squeeze him back. It wasn’t hardly the grandest gesture in the world, but to him, it was all he needed to know that things would be okay… eventually.