Virgos Rise @actuallyanebonymuse - Tumblr Blog

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⋮ ⌗ ┆ thriller era michael.

⋮ ⌗ ┆ summary: what happens when someone who has spent his whole life controlled finally has to choose who gets authority over his future?

⋮ ⌗ ┆ pregnancy / unplanned pregnancy, discussions of abortion and reproductive choices, emotional manipulation and intimidation, toxic family dynamics, reader is female. angst, angst, angst, angst, angst! and more angst! j*e jackson.

⋮ ⌗ ┆ part two here!

There are certain kinds of fear that don’t seemingly come out of the blue, as do most. Some are built under the radar, quietly like.. cracks! Cracks spreading beneath paint before anyone noticed the wall itself needed a bit more support.

That was what loving Michael Jackson often felt like during this period of his life.

Not unhappy, no—god, no. Not that. She were happy. It was just.. never really that simple. It was fragile, fragile in ways people outside of him didn't understand because the public version of Michael during Thriller was.. mythological, seemingly untouchable and so, so beautiful in an otherworldly way only fame occasionally sculpted people into if they were here to serve a purpose. Michael was one of the chosen ones. By then, the cameras adored him, crowds screamed before he even spoke and entire stadiums seemed emotionally dependent on whether he smiled or not—hundreds of people fainting. (Name)’s boyfriend was going to be one of the most famous people to have ever walked this Earth.

But privately, there was still something painfully boyish underneath all of it. Something eager to be loved correctly, to be seen and have an everlasting companionship despite being who he is.

And maybe that was why his father hated their relationship almost immediately when it started a few years prior.

His disdain for the relationship wasn’t loud or blatantly in the face, Joesph rarely needed volume to make people uneasy. But that was the mistake outsiders made about him, right? They imagined rage first because rage was easier to identify when they would catch wind of just how evil of that man he is.

Joe’s real “talent” had always been pressure. The ability to make people feel cornered without touching them at all.

At first his disapproval came in smaller ways. Long looks across rooms. Questions that sounded harmless until she sat with them afterward. Comments about distractions. Timing. Career trajectory. It was always framed around Michael’s future rather than her specifically, which somehow made it feel more insulting.

Back then, it had seemed so small.

But that was the dangerous thing about certain memories. They don’t announce themselves as important while they were happening only to hurt years later after enough other pieces finally clicked around them.

During the Off the Wall, Michael still carried softness that fame hadn’t fully punished out of him yet. There was something open about him then. Earnest. He reacted before he concealed the reaction and smiled before remembering people were watching him smile—he was such an angel faced prince.

She remembered sitting on the edge of his bed at Hayvenhurst trying not to cry while music played low from somewhere across the room. One of his records spun softly near the stereo with warm bass and static hum blending into the nighttime quiet of the house.

Michael had been teasing her only minutes earlier, dancing badly on purpose yrying to make her laugh until he noticed her expression.

“What’s the matter?” he asked softly, the playfulness vanished from his voice.

She shook her head once, embarrassed now that tears had already started slipping down her cheeks. “Nothing.”

“Tears ain’t nothin’, my girl..” He crossed the room toward her without hesitation, expression tightening with concern the closer he got. “Baby, what’s wrong?” He repeated again but softer this time.

She stared down at her hands instead.

The confession felt stupid now that it sat at the edge of her mouth. Childish. Too sensitive. But it had been eating at her the entire night, growing heavier every time his father looked through her instead of at her.

Finally she whispered, “I don’t think your dad likes me..”

Michael stopped moving and then almost immediately, before anything else: “Did he say somethin’ to you?” He’s worried.

His reaction is what made her stomach sink, because to her, it meant the possibility already existed naturally in his mind by the innate urgency of his question. There was no hesitation—almost like he had already filed this away just in case a long time ago. Which, spoke volumes.

Her eyes lifted to his face then, and he looked tense in a way he hadn’t a second ago. Shoulders tighter. Mouth pressed faintly together. It looked like he was already mentally retracing the evening trying to identify where something might’ve happened.

“No,” she said quietly. “No..”

Michael exhaled softly through his nose, but it wasn’t exactly relief either.

“He just…” She swallowed hard. “I don’t know. He looks at me like I’m bothering him.”

“That’s just how he is.”

The defense came automatically—dismissive, even. And Michael seemed to realize it himself because his expression shifted immediately afterward, softer now, guiltier somehow.

She laughed weakly through the tears gathering in her throat. “So, deal with it?”

“No, I mean..” He sat beside her quickly then, turning toward her fully. “He’s.. just a mean, ugly old man stuck in his ways.”

“Yeah..”

A small gap of silence.

Michael looked down briefly, rubbing his palms together once—a nervous habit he had whenever emotions started cornering him faster than he could organize them.

“He’s not..” He paused carefully. “He doesn’t trust people around me easy—around us I mean.” The wording stung.

Around me.

It sounded like she had become another person orbiting the phenomenon of Michael Jackson rather than someone simply.. loving him. She looked away before he could see fresh tears gathering and immediately his entire demeanor softened further.

“Hey,” he murmured, moving closer until their shoulders touched. “Don’t cry, please..”

“I’m not trying to.”

“I’m sure..” His voice turned gentler still. “But you do this silly thing where you try real hard not to cry and then you get even sadder.”

Despite herself, a tiny laugh escaped her. Michael’s face relaxed instantly at the sound, he physically couldn’t tolerate her being upset for too long without trying to fix it somehow.

He reached up then and brushed his thumb carefully beneath her eye.

“He didn’t say anything mean though?” he asked again quietly and the way he was looking at her, with so much concern..

Yhat’s when she started to understand something she hadn’t fully before: Michael already spent part of his life anticipating emotional trauma before it happened because he had to. Especially from his father. The vigilance sat inside him naturally now, woven so deeply into him he probably didn’t even recognize it anymore.

“No,” she whispered. “Not yet anyway..”

Michael nodded slowly, though something still lingered in his expression. Then after a moment he leaned his head lightly against hers and said, almost shyly:

“Well.. I like you enough for everybody anyway.”

The implication was clear enough from his father.

She was temporary.

Michael’s success was not.

And Michael, for all his fame and brilliance and talent, still had remnants of a timid son inside him whenever his father entered a room. She noticed it before she understood it. The way his posture subtly shifted around Joe. The way excitement became restraint almost instantly—some invisible hand reached inside him and tightened everything smaller.

Fear? Yes, but as Michael’s grown up and matured, it's more so turned out to be.. conditioning. Years of it.

That was the part (Name) never fully learned how to navigate. Because Michael loved gently, openly even, but he had been raised inside an environment where affection often arrived tangled up with expectation. Approval was earned, performance was survival and rest rarely existed without guilt attached to it.

And now there was a growing baby sitting silently in the middle of all of that. A baby Michael did not know about yet.

Sometimes she wondered if her body already knew before her mind did. Looking back, there had been signs. The nausea she blamed on stress. The exhaustion. The strange emotional sensitivity she kept trying to laugh off. But once the test sat positive in her hands, nothing felt funny anymore.

And somewhere beneath all the panic and beneath the timing and the fear, there had been a flicker of something you could call hope. A light at the end of the tunnel of emotion.

Because she could picture him as a father too easily, not the superstar version of him but the real one. The one who held small animals with so much care because he’d genuinely cry if he accidentally hurt it. The one who crouched to speak to children at eye level instead of towering over them. The one who carried loneliness around so heavily he made sure that no one felt the way he did ever.

A child would completely alter his brain chemistry so severely—nothing would be more important than being a good dad to Michael. Which was precisely why Joe could never allow it.

(Name) realized his father knew before he ever really confirmed it.

It happened at Hayvenhurst one afternoon, things were normal. Staff moving through hallways as phones rang somewhere throughout, voices spoke softly in other rooms. Michael was upstairs working on music loud enough that bass occasionally trembled faintly through the ceiling.

She had barely been able to eat all morning and Joe noticed.

It wasn’t surprising, he had spent decades studying people for weaknesses: monitoring moods and watching behavior shifts. So when she excused herself from the kitchen too quickly after nearly getting sick from the smell of food, she already knew he was watching her leave.

(Name) had been washing her hands in the downstairs bathroom when the door opened behind her—intruding, mind you. He stood there looking at her through the mirror as she looked at him with wide, startled eyes. He’s never quite crossed a boundary like this, ever. She was afraid and rightfully so.

“You pregnant?” He asked bluntly, leaving her stunned and taking the air right out of her lungs. Her body betrayed her before her face could.

For a second neither of them spoke as water continued running softly from the faucet while her heart slammed hard against her ribcage.

Then Joe sighed once through his nose and leaned slightly against the doorway, the confirmation had merely finalized something he already suspected.

“You can’t have that baby,” He said calmly, too calmly as if he were talking to her about a scheduling conflict almost.

“He finally got the world where it need to be,” Joe continued. “You think people wanna see diapers and a babymama right now? He’s bigger than he ever been.”

Her throat tightened instantly. “Michael would want—”

“Michael don’t know what he want.” The interruption came in quick. “He too emotional,” Joe said. “Too soft. That’s his problem.”

Something hot rose in her chest then because—because the softness Joe dismissed so easily was the exact thing she loved most about Michael. But fear sat heavier than anger right now.

Because she understood suddenly, that Joe was not asking. He was positioning the future in front of her like a controlled narrative with only two acceptable endings.

Leave.

Or get rid of it.

The calls with Michael usually happened late because nighttime was the only part of Michael’s life that still belonged even partially to him. Once the house quieted down and the constant movement around him finally slowed, he became easier to reach.

She could always tell what kind of day he’d had by the way he answered the phone.

Tonight he sounded tired immediately.

“You sleepy?” she asked quietly, laying back against her pillows with the cord of the phone twisted loosely around her fingers.

A soft laugh crackled through the line. “Maybe a little.”

“You sound a little.”

“I been in the studio all day.”

She smiled faintly despite herself. Of course he had. After the release of Thriller, Michael barely seemed to exist outside studios, rehearsals, interview and stages anymore. The world was beginning to swallow him whole in real time, each week demanding more than the last.

And still, somehow, he always called her.

“What’d you work on?” she asked.

Immediately he brightened a little, she heard it happen. His little sounds he makes when he’s excited to talk about something.

“Oh, wait till you hear it,” he said softly, excitement slipping into his exhaustion now. “Quincy think we finally got the bridge right.”

“You said that yesterday.”

“No, this time for real.”

She laughed quietly and Michael laughed too, lower and breathier through the receiver.

God.. she missed him terribly and that was the problem lately. Every time she heard his voice now, the pressure inside her chest worsened because the clock in her head never stopped ticking anymore.

Weeks.. only weeks left before the choice stopped being a choice. Meanwhile Michael kept talking to her, completely oblivious.

“You still comin’ over tomorrow?” he asked after a while.

Her stomach dropped a bit. She had been avoiding Hayvenhurst more and more these past couple weeks. Not enough for him to accuse her of disappearing but it was enough that he had definitely noticed.

“I don’t know yet,” she answered softly.

A small pause. “Oh.” That one syllable carried disappointment so nakedly it made guilt rush through her instantly.

“I’ll try,” she added quickly.

“Okay.” But he sounded quieter now.

She closed her eyes hard as the urge to tell him everything had become almost unbearable recently. Sometimes she imagined just blurting it out recklessly before fear could stop her. Your father knows. I’m pregnant. I don’t know what to do.

But then Joe’s voice would replay in her mind all over again.

You think he can handle this right now?

And the horrible part was she genuinely did not know. Michael already looked exhausted all the time lately. Fame sat on him strangely during Thriller. Beautiful from the outside but crushing up close.

“I miss you,” he said suddenly.

She pressed the phone closer to her ear instinctively. “I miss you too, angel face..”

Then softly, almost shyly, Michael murmured: “I love you.” He was handing over something so, so fragile whenever he told her. And tears burned unexpectedly behind her eyes.

“I love you too,” she whispered back.

A faint sighed smile entered his voice immediately afterward.

“Okay, well.. I know you’re sleepy. So I’ll let you go. Goodnight, baby.” She says.

“Goodnight, pretty mama..” The line shifted slightly, muffled movement crackling through the receiver as though he’d moved the phone away from his mouth for a second.

Michael smiled to himself for a second after the call ended.

He kept the phone in his hand a moment longer than necessary, staring vaguely at nothing while her voice still echoed warmly around the edges of his mind. She always left him softer after conversations like that. So much calmer, part of the noise surrounding his life lowered in volume for a little while afterward.

“Goodnight,” he’d whispered one last time before hanging up.

Then the line clicked dead and the room settled back into quiet. Or almost quiet.

“You still seein’ that girl?”

Michael’s shoulders tightened immediately as he turned toward the doorway slowly, already knowing who it was before he looked up. Joe stood there with one hand braced against the frame with the expression that Michael had spent most of his life trying to interpret correctly.

The knot in Michael’s stomach formed instantly.

“Yes, Joseph.” Michael answered after a second, setting the phone back into its cradle carefully.

Joe stepped fully into the room. “Thought that would’ve burned out by now.”

Michael stayed still, arms folding loosely across his chest—defensive without trying to look defensive.

“It didn’t.”

Joe hummed once through his nose like that answer irritated him more than he planned on admitting.

Michael hated when this happened. The strange shift that occurred whenever his father entered a conversation about his personal life.

Joe glanced toward the phone briefly before looking back at him. “You spend every free minute on that damn phone.”

Michael looked away first. “I work all day.”

“That ain’t my point.” Joe moved farther into the room slowly, eyes drifting across the scattered records and notebooks around Michael’s space before settling back onto him again.

“You too distracted lately.”

Michael’s jaw tightened slightly. “I’m workin’.”

“You workin’, but your head somewhere else.”

Michael rubbed his thumb absently against his own wrist, a nervous habit he didn’t even realize he still did around his father.

“She makes me happy,” he said quietly.

The second the words left his mouth, the atmosphere changed.

Joe’s face did not soften. If anything, he looked more annoyed.

“Happy,” he repeated flatly. “Boy, you think this business care whether you happy?”

Michael swallowed hard but kept his expression neutral. He had learned young that visible emotion around Joe usually made things worse, not better. “She ain’t got nothin’ to do with my work.”

Joe laughed once under his breath. “That’s what you think.”

Michael looked up at him then, frustration finally flickering through the exhaustion in his face. “Why you always do this?”

“Do what?”

“Act like every person around me has bad intentions.”

Joe’s eyes sharpened slightly at that. “Because most of ‘em do.”

“She doesn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that.” The firmness surprised even Michael a little.

Joe studied him for a long moment then, and suddenly Michael felt young in a way he hated. Emotionally. It felt like no matter how successful he became or how independent or how old he got, some part of him still reverted back into being a son standing in front of his father trying to defend pieces of himself.

“You get too attached,” Joe said finally. “That’s your problem,” he continued. “You start thinkin’ people love Michael instead of what come with Michael.”

Anger flared hot in Michael’s chest, sudden and sharp enough to surprise him. “She knew me before all this.”

“That don’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

Joe sighed heavily, already sounding tired of the conversation. “You right at the edge of somethin’ huge right now. Biggest thing this family ever seen. Last thing you need is some girl distractin’ you.”

Michael’s expression hardened slightly at that. “She’s not ‘some girl.’ She’s my other half—I can’t imagine a life without her.”

Joe stared at him for a second before shaking his head once like Michael had proven a point he didn’t want proven. “That right there? That’s exactly what I’m talkin’ about.”

Michael’s chest felt tight suddenly.

Not explosive anger. Something worse. The kind that had nowhere to go. Because the truth was he was frustrated. Deeply. But frustration around his father had always been dangerous territory. Growing up, anger was something you swallowed quickly in the Jackson house before it became weakness, disrespect, punishment. Even now, years older and world famous, Michael still felt that instinct crawl up his spine whenever conversations with Joe turned heated.

Don’t escalate.. don’t push. Don’t make it worse.

So instead of saying half the things burning at the back of his throat, he just stared at the floor hard enough for his jaw to ache.

“She already got you actin’ different,” he continued. “Sensitive.”

Michael inhaled slowly through his nose. “I’m not doin’ this tonight.”

Joe scoffed softly behind him. “That girl got you thinkin’ emotionally instead of professionally.”

That finally snapped something loose.

Michael looked up quickly then, hurt flashing across his face before he could hide it properly. “Why you keep talkin’ about her like she ain’t a person?”

Joe’s expression barely shifted. “Because she ain’t the priority.”

Michael could feel his pulse in his throat now, he hated this feeling. Hated how conversations with his father always made him feel eight years old again no matter how old he actually was. Hated that even defending someone he loved felt exhausting instead of empowering.

And worst of all, he hated the small voice in his head whispering that maybe Joe would never approve of anyone because approval had always been conditional in that house. Based on usefulness. Discipline. Results.

“She matters to me,” Michael said quietly.

Joe’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You too old to still be thinkin’ with your feelings.”

Michael had spent most of his life being punished for softness in one way or another..Too sensitive. Too emotional. Too quiet. Too strange. And now the one thing in his life that actually felt safe was being spoken about like a liability too.

Without another word, Michael turned and grabbed his jacket from the chair nearby.

Joe’s voice followed immediately. “Where you goin’?”

Michael shoved his arms into the sleeves too quickly, movements tense now. “Out.”

“It’s late.”

“I know.”

Joe’s tone sharpened slightly. “Boy.”

Michael stopped near the doorway for half a second, shoulders rigid beneath the leather jacket.

For one tiny moment it almost looked like he might finally say everything he actually felt. That he was tired. That he loved her. That he was sick of every vulnerable thing in his life being treated like weakness.

Instead, all he managed quietly was: “I can’t breathe in here right now.”

Then he walked out, quickly.

The house was mostly dark now as he moved through it. A few lights left on downstairs. Distant television noise from somewhere. Staff pretending not to notice the tension rolling off him as he headed toward the front entrance.

Outside, cool night air hit his face immediately.

It helped a little but not enough.

Bill looked up from near the car the second Michael appeared. One glance at him and his expression shifted subtly in recognition.

“You alright, son?” he asked carefully.

Michael rubbed a hand hard across his face before answering.

“Can you drive me somewhere?”

Bill nodded immediately. “Course.”

Michael hesitated only a second before giving her address quietly.

Then softer, almost to himself:

“I just wanna see her.”