Your boyfriend had always been gentle in the way men are only gentle with the one person they trust completely. Touch lingered. Kisses were unhurried. His hands always found you as if by instinct. You were the first person who loved him without conditions, without fear of his last name or the shadows clinging to it. After everything with his siblings, after his father, why wouldn’t Michael Afton cling to you like a lifeline?

He used to be literally obsessed with you. Suddenly, you were the least sought after girl in the land.

Something shifted the moment he started working at Freddy’s.

He still loved you. You could feel it in the way he hesitated, in the way he stopped himself. Where he used to pull you closer, he now kept space. Where he once kissed you like he needed the reassurance, he now turned his face away as if afraid he would break. It was not disinterest. It was discipline. Willpower. The kind that hurt.

You used to be the center of his gravity. Now you felt like something he was afraid to touch.

You lay awake in bed, watching the clock creep toward morning, when the front door finally opened. 6:45 AM. Michael came home from Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rentals after another night spent chasing ghosts and answers, searching for his little sister Elizabeth. He did not look at you. He did not let himself soften. He shed his jacket, exhaustion written into every careful movement, and collapsed onto the bed beside you.

No arms around you. No whispered apology.

Just silence, heavy with everything he refused to say.

He fell asleep almost instantly, breathing shallow, restrained even in rest. And you realized the truth then. Michael Afton still worshipped you.

He was just trying, with every ounce of willpower he had left, not to drag you down into hell with him.