┊ ♡ ﹒ as told through bad to dangerous eras 𖹭
┊ ♡ ﹒ summary : what do you do when the man you built your entire life around disappears without so much as a goodbye for another woman? do you love him enough to stay? or do you respect yourself?
┊ ♡ ﹒ byi : power imbalance (mentor and apprentice), age gap (reader is 20 / michael is 29), slow burn, mutual pining, celebrity romance (reader is a popstar), hurt/no comfort, cheating, marriage, divorce, addiction & substance abuse, rehab, depression, michael is in a lot of pain from his accident (reader helps him wash his hair at some point), anxiety, panic attacks, codependency, emotional neglect, themes of loss, abandonment, media harassment, public scrutiny, character study, ”right person wrong time.” extremely heavy angst, smut, intercourse, creampie, pregnancy. third person pov. use of petnames. no y/n, reader is (name).
┊ ♡ ﹒ disclaimer : this work contains depictions of addiction, substance abuse, deteriorating mental health and discussions the 1993 allegations (fictionalized within an alternate universe narrative). this piece is not an accurate depiction of any real-life individuals. 28k word count.
The studio had long since settled into the comfortable quiet that often accompanied afternoons spent in Michael’s company. It wasn’t ever completely silent because there was always music somewhere at Westlake, but he did like to keep it dark in the room mostly. A distant melody leaking beneath a door, muffled sound of a playback from another room, occasional burst of laughter from a hallway before fading away. Yet neither seemed particularly aware of any of it as hours had a tendency to disappear whenever they occupied the same space, each of them retreated into their respective work while somehow remaining deeply attuned to the other’s presence.
There was just something about the space they shared that neither of them ever learned how to explain. It was unlike the awkward silence that settled between strangers with nothing left to say, or lovers too consumed by one another to speak. This felt beyond either of those things because somewhere beneath language itself, beneath the music, even the friendship, they had stumbled into a frequency only the two of them seemed capable of hearing. They rarely interrupted one another, but every so often one of them would glance across the room to simply bear witness to the other’s existence. It felt spiritual.. it felt strangely.. devotional. As though the simple act of creating in each other’s presence had become its own form of intimacy. They each protected the other’s solitude with the same care another person might protect a confession. There was an unspoken understanding that whatever was happening inside the other’s mind, deserved to arrive in this world undisturbed.
The thing was, truly knowing another person is a remarkably rare experience. Most relationships are built upon performance initially, a person will unconsciously arrange themselves into someone easier to understand, to admire and love. But there are extraordinarily rare occasions people who seem to step past all of that. People who see you and understand you before you have a chance to disguise it. And there are very few things in life more sacred than finding another soul who your own can finally share company with.
Michael and (Name) were just that.
She sat on the floor between two couches in the corner, surrounded by the clutter of an artist’s mind. Open notebooks, loose sheets of paper and pens scattered across the flooring. One notebook housed lyrics and the other contained.. literally everything else from fleeting observations, fragments of conversations and questions she found herself unable to stop thinking about. The thoughts that were too insignificant to piece together in the moment but had too much potential to ignore. Every so often she would pause, chewing thoughtfully on the end of her pen as she stared down at a page, scribbling another line with furrowed brows. Across the room Michael worked through notes of his own, occasionally adjusting something on the mixing console or replaying a section of music.
Neither of them spoke or even seemed inclined to.
This could go on for hours upon hours and it was maybe the most unusual aspect of their friendship:
How easy it was.
Because most people approached Michael Jackson with some level of a mental obstacle he couldn’t look past to see them, even if it wasn’t conscious. Some people became nervous, others became overeager.. but many spent entire conversations attempting to impress him.
But somehow she had skipped every single stage of this discomfort and awkwardness entirely.
Their first meeting months earlier had been brief, a polite little exchange at a charity event attended by dozens of entertainers and industry figures. Neither had anticipated seeing the other again, and yet something about that initial conversation had really stuck. A second meeting followed. Then another. Phone calls became commonplace. Invitations to studio sessions no longer required formal asking. Somewhere along the way, what should have remained a casual acquaintance turned into one of the closest friendships either possessed.
Michael often attributed it to recognition, she felt less like someone new and more like someone he’d forgotten he already knew. He had met plenty of people in his life, but very few made him feel this way in particular and it was intriguing—intoxicating, even.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen that kind of ambition before. The way she carried her lyric books almost everywhere she went. The way she dissected her own work with such a relentless scrutiny. The frustration that overtook her whenever an idea failed to match the version she had envisioned in her head. He recognized it because he had spent his entire life battling the same instincts. While others saw a young entertainer on the verge of stardom, Michael saw pieces of himself reflected back at him with this startling clarity. The perfectionism. The sensitivity.
The inability to leave “good enough” alone.
For (Name), the friendship had begun from an entirely different place. Admiration, certainly. How could it not? Michael Jackson had occupied such a permanent space within popular culture that separating the man from the legend often felt impossible. He felt like a deity. But what surprised her most was how quickly the legend disappeared once they were alone. The Michael she encountered in studios, hallways, and late night phone conversations bore little resemblance to the larger than life figure the public imagined. He was thoughtful. Curious. Shy. Nosey. And far funnier than anyone ever gave him credit for. He asked questions and genuinely listened to the answers. He remembered details from conversations months earlier. More importantly, he understood the strange loneliness that came with building a career at a young age in an industry that did more harm than good. Few people in the world could comprehend that reality and fewer still had survived it unscathed.
Which was probably why he felt so protective of her. It wasn’t that he didn’t think she was incapable of protecting herself, but.. he knew exactly how cruel the industry could be. The media, too. At twenty, she was still vulnerable in ways she didn’t even recognize yet, still young enough to believe talent and hard work would shield her from the uglier parts of success. Michael remembered being twenty himself. Bright eyed, eager and convinced that if he gave enough of himself, people would give something back. He wished someone with good intentions had been there to guide him through it all, someone who wanted nothing from him except to see him make it through in one piece.
Granted, their youth had looked nothing alike. Michael had never really been afforded the luxury of a childhood. By the time he was her age, he’d already spent years belonging to the public in one way or another. She meanwhile, had stories. Endless stories. Sleepovers and school dances and family vacations and embarrassing teenage crushes. Entire chapters of ordinary life that Michael found himself fascinated by.
That more than anything, surprised him. He wasn’t a naturally curious man when it came to other people in general. Most conversations with industry stars and such felt like a chore.. But he could sit and listen to her talk for hours, chin propped in his hand, completely engrossed as she recounted some insignificant memory from when she was twelve. To anyone else, the stories would have sounded so pointless and boring. But to Michael, they were so captivating. Hearing someone describe a childhood that had actually belonged to them felt almost miraculous. He never seemed to tire of it, always asking another question, always wanting another detail, as though he could piece together an entire world he had never gotten the chance to know himself.
He’d always be a dreamer, dreaming his life away.
The longer (Name) stared at the notebook in her lap, the more hopeless the page had become. What had started a few hours ago as a verse she was genuinely excited about had since become a shit show of crossed out lyrics, scribbled replacements, and arrows leading to ideas she wasn’t even sure she liked anymore. Entire sections had been rewritten only to end up exactly as they’d been before. Others had been abandoned halfway through, casualties of a train of thought she’d lost somewhere along the way.
The frustrating part was that the song wasn’t bad.
If it had been bad, she could’ve walked away from it. Started over. Scrapped the whole thing without a second thought. But, unfortunately there was potential in it. Every time she read the verse back, she could feel it. The song was close to becoming what she wanted it to be, close enough to keep her chasing it but not close enough to cooperate with what she feels on the inside. Every attempt to improve a line only seemed to draw her attention to another one that suddenly wasn’t working. A word would feel wrong. Then the rhythm. Then an entire section she’d liked five minutes earlier.
Eventually, she stopped making changes altogether and she just sat there rereading the same few lines, hoping that if she stared at them long enough, the answer would appear on its own. It never did.
Without thinking, her fingers drifted toward the rubber band looped around her wrist. The sharp sting against her skin followed a second later. It was a habit she’d picked up years ago and never quite managed to abandon, a small physical interruption to break the endless cycle of thoughts whenever she became trapped inside her own head. Usually she barely noticed herself doing it. Another minute passed. She stared at the page. Read the same line again. Hated it for an entirely new reason.
The rubber band snapped once more, harder this time.
Across the room, Michael’s attention slowly drifted away from the notes spread across the mixing console. They had spent enough afternoons together by now for him to recognize the various stages of her creative frustration. There was the concentration that came with the beginning of an idea. The excited rush that followed whenever she felt something falling into place. Then came this stage. The stage where progress slowed to a crawl and every sentence had her itchy and uncomfortable to be in her own skin. He watched her stare down at the notebook, reading the same section repeatedly and the rubber band snapped against her wrist again. Michael found himself smiling despite himself. Some things about artists appeared to be universal.
“Should we take a break?”
Her head lifted immediately, brows furrowed. “Why?” The response came far too quickly.
The moment the word left her mouth, embarrassment followed close behind. Because what she heard in his question wasn’t an invitation—it was recognition that she was struggling. She was suddenly hyper aware that he saw how she’d spent the better part of an hour trapped on the same verse and hadn’t written anything in quite some time. The realization that he maybe noticed everything bothering her made heat creep into her face almost immediately. Creative frustration was difficult enough in private but being perceived in it felt infinitely worse.
For a brief moment, Michael simply looked at her. Then understanding settled across his features. He knew exactly where her mind had gone. Knew she thought he’d been commenting on the fact that she’d been losing patience with herself for the last forty five minutes.
His expression softened like she was being silly. “For lunch,” He clarified.
The relief came so quickly. “Oh.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Michael’s mouth. “Unless your plan was to be like Louie and eat your notebook..”
A small laugh escaped her before she could stop it and the tension that had wound itself so tightly around her shoulders throughout the afternoon loosened ever so slightly. Somehow he’d managed to offer her a way out without drawing attention to the song or pointed out her frustration. Michael didn’t like offering advice when she didn’t ask for it because he never cared for it himself. Instead, he’d simply given her an excuse to step away from the problem for a little while.
It was one of the things she appreciated most about him, though she rarely said so aloud. Michael understood creative obsession because he lived with it himself. He knew the difference between helping and making someone feel watched. Knew that sometimes.. the kindest thing you could do for another artist was pretend not to notice the battle they were fighting with their own work. As he gathered a few papers from the console and prepared to leave the studio, (Name) found herself looking down at the notebook once more. The lyrics still weren’t right and they probably wouldn’t be right when she returned. And yet they felt less daunting than they had a few moments earlier.
Sometimes all it took was being reminded there was a world beyond the page.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ ㅤㅤApril, 1987.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ American Music Awards - Manhattan, New York City.
“Oh my god, you were amazing!”
“Did you see the crowd out there? That pop was insane!”
“You did the damn thing, kiddo. Congratulations.”
The aftermath of her performance felt louder than the actual performance itself. The air backstage was bustling with movement, people calling her name from different directions and hands reaching out to touch her shoulders, squeeze her arms, telling her she had done it—she had really done it. Someone pressed a bouquet into her hands and more people were already talking about reviews they had overheard in the hallway. There were congratulations layered over congratulations until none of them sounded real anymore, just overlapping noise dressed up as celebration. (Name) stood in the middle of it all with the bouquet held tightly against her chest, nodding at the right moments, smiling when it was expected, saying thank you in a voice that felt detached from her own body.
She’s disassociating.
All she could think about was the note.
The one she had nearly missed.
It’s ridiculous, really. It wasn’t noticeable for anyone to catch or enough to interrupt the direction of the set, but she knew it happened. It wasn’t even her fault, it was due to technical slip making her slightly off beat before the problem fixed itself. She had handled it so well that no one even suspected anything, only a note alteration but that was very common during live performances. But she wanted perfection.
(Name) could feel it still sitting wrong in her throat, the memory of it stood out like a thorn more than anything else from the entire night. It replayed behind everything people were saying to her, the praise going in one ear and out the other. She nodded again on cue adjusting her grip on the flowers and tried to keep her face fixed into something that resembled gratitude instead of frustration.
She only noticed Michael when he appeared at the edge of the crowd by the doorway. Unlike everyone else, he didn’t immediately make his way over. He lingered near the back instead, allowing managers, producers, executives, and well wishers to reach her first. It was a habit she’d observed countless times before. Michael understood better than most how quickly a room could change around his presence. One appearance was often enough to redirect an entire conversation. Two steps into a crowd and suddenly every eye belonged to him whether he wanted them or not. Fame had taught him many things over the years. One of them was when to take up space. Another was when to surrender it.
Tonight wasn’t about him, nor did he want it to be. So he remained where he was but not out of indifference, quite the opposite. It was her night. Her performance. Her achievement. The last thing he wanted was for the attention she had earned to quietly shift elsewhere. Michael had spent enough of his life accidentally becoming the center of things to recognize when someone else deserved the spotlight. He knew what it had taken for her to get here. The years of work hidden beneath a handful of minutes onstage. The rehearsals nobody saw. The disappointments. The self doubt. The relentless pursuit of something just out of reach.
From a distance, he looked almost detached from the celebration, standing just beyond its center with his hands hidden in his pockets and sunglasses on while the crowd continued to orbit around her. Yet his attention never wandered very far. Every so often his gaze found her through the sea of people gathered around her, watching with the satisfaction of someone who had believed in her long before the rest of the room had caught up.
There was pride in his expression, yeah. But it wasn’t quite the same pride everyone else seemed intent on expressing. Theirs was loud and straight to the point, entirely built upon the performance they had witnessed.
Michael’s was quieter and more attentive. And perhaps because he knew her so well by now, there was something else beneath it. He knew.
While everyone else saw success, he found himself watching for her reaction to it. The smile that never quite reached her eyes. Watching the way her grip tightened around the bouquet each time another person congratulated her. Watching her nod at conversations she didn’t seem entirely present for.
And unfortunately, he knew exactly what this was.
When her eyes finally met his shades, something in her shoulders tightened without permission. She could feel his stare.
Of course he would have noticed.
Of course he would know.
(Name) looked away first, because looking at him felt like she was acknowledging something she didn’t want to yet. A producer pulled her into another conversation, someone else asked about upcoming plans and she answered on autopilot, the words coming out in trained fragments while her attention kept slipping back toward the same place in the room where he stood.
Eventually, she found herself drifting toward one of the side hallways, retreating from the crowd. The noise softened the moment she crossed the threshold, the cheers and conversations dissolving into something distant and more manageable. For the first time all evening, nobody was speaking to her. Nobody was congratulating her or asking questions. The sudden absence of attention settled around her and she let out a long overdue exhale, leaning against the wall and adjusting the bouquet in her arms before realizing she’d been gripping the stems so tightly that a part of her palm had begun to bleed from a throne that pricked her. Slowly she loosened her hold, watching a few crushed petals spring back into place as she drew in a deeper breath than any she’d managed all night.
“Tinker.” His voice came from behind her.
She didn’t turn right away. “Hi, Michael..”
He stepped closer, not looking at the flowers but he looked at her face instead. “It went well,” He said. “Please, stop.”
“Stop what?” She replied too quickly. “It went okay.”
The silence that followed made it worse because he had seen right through her bullshit. She adjusted the bouquet again and her fingers had started picking at the ribbon
“I messed up.” She said suddenly, like stating it out loud would keep it from growing.
Michael blinked once slowly, as if processing whether she was joking or not. Then he shook his head, removing his shades. “Do you think anyone in there noticed except you? Honestly?”
“I noticed it, Michael..” She says. “I did.”
“Mm.” That sound Michael liked to do. It wasn’t dismissive but he wasn’t really agreeing either. Just acknowledging that her mind had already made a decision and was now refusing to let it go.
She stared down the hallway instead of at him. “I shouldn’t be fucking up on things.”
“Language..”
“I’m sorry. I’m frustrated.”
“You’re allowed to be human,” He said, and there was something faintly amused in it. “Y’know that right?”
“Says you.” Her mouth tightened anyway. “Michael, I rehearsed for weeks..” Her voice had changed. Slightly smaller but tightly bound in a tone that wasn’t aimed at him, even if it sounded like it might be. “I rushed the transition. I came in late on the second verse and I felt it. I felt it and I still did it anyway.”
Michael watched her for a long moment without interrupting. When he spoke again his tone had shifted, less performer observing another performer. “I used to do that,” he said. “All the time. I would finish a show and all I could think about was the one thing I didn’t do perfectly. Not the rest of it. Not what people were screaming about. Just the thing I knew I could’ve done better.”
She finally looked at him then and he wasn’t smiling now.
“I would go over it in my head so many times I’d forget the rest of the performance happened at all,” He continued. “And nobody ever told me what I’m about to tell you now, so I’ll say it because someone should have said it to me when I was your age.”
He paused, just long enough for her to feel it. “People don’t come to see you be flawless,” He said quietly. “They come because of what it feels like when you’re up there. There’s a difference. You’re the only one who turns it into a test.”
Something in her expression shifted, but she didn’t speak yet. Michael tilted his head slightly, studying her like he was trying to make sure the words actually landed where they needed.
“One little thing doesn’t undo the fact that you just held the entire world in your hands,” He added. “But I can already tell you’re not going to believe that tonight.”
A faint, reluctant exhale left her.
The bouquet drooped slightly in her hands as her grip loosened again. The silence returned, but it felt different now, less like pressure and more like space she didn’t know what to do with yet.
Michael didn't push further. He just stayed beside her, letting the noise of the celebration belong to another version of the night, one neither of them was currently living.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ May, 1987.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ The (Surname) Residence - Los Angeles, California.
The phone call had long since outlived whatever purpose it may have originally possessed. Not.. that either of them could remember what that purpose had been to begin with. Hours earlier, one of them had called the other for a reason that had likely seemed important at the time. A question about a song. A conversation about an upcoming appearance. Some minor detail neither could recall now. Somewhere along the way, the original subject had disappeared entirely, replaced by the sort of aimless discussion that only seemed possible after midnight, when the rest of the world had gone quiet (Name) sat on her bed painting her toe nails, a mess of different colors of polished, acetone and cotton balls spread out on her silky comforter. Outside her bedroom window, the city stretched into darkness with a pretty skyline and the hallway beyond her bedroom remained still.
Across Los Angeles, Michael was awake too. That part hardly surprised her anymore. Artists seemed to exist on entirely different schedules than everyone else.
The conversation drifted lazily between subjects. Music. His upcoming tour. Childhood. Movies. Family. Stories neither had planned on telling when the call began. There was no urgency to any of it, or destination they appeared determined to reach, just the comfort of two people who genuinely enjoyed speaking to one another. The thing was, neither had expected this. Not the friendship and certainly not the ease of it. When they had first met nearly a year ago, both had assumed the interaction would be brief. Another industry introduction. Another polite conversation destined to disappear among countless others. Instead, somehow, they kept finding reasons to talk. Then reasons to call. Then reasons to stay on the phone long after they should have said goodnight.
Michael understood loneliness in ways most people didn’t. And it wasn’t because he lacked company—quite the opposite. His entire life existed beneath constant observation. Crowds. Interviews. Audiences. Fans. Managers. Family. There were always people nearby. Yet very few of them knew him. Really knew him. And the older he became, the more difficult that distinction seemed to grow.
“I think people have a strange idea about what this is like.” His voice arrived unexpectedly through the receiver.
(Name) glanced up from her polish. “What?”
A brief pause followed. “Everything.” The answer sounded almost sheepish, as though he was aware of how vague it was. “This stuff.”
She smiled despite herself. “Very specific.”
Michael laughed softly. “You know what I mean, Dumbo.”
She did. At least enough to answer. “The music thing?”
“The fame thing.”
Something in his voice had changed slightly. The difference was subtle, but she had spent enough time around him to notice it. Most people spoke about fame as though it were a reward, a finish line, something achieved. Michael always sounded as though he were describing weather. Something that simply existed. Something unavoidable.
“I think people imagine it’s.. exciting all the time,” He said. “They think you’re constantly doing something. They think you’re happy because you’re successful.”
(Name) looked down at her toes. For some reason, she found herself listening more carefully. “Are you not happy?”
The question slipped out before she could stop it and silence followed. A thoughtful silence.
Then Michael laughed quietly. “I didn’t say that.”
“No, but you didn’t answer either.” That earned another laugh, slightly louder this time. For a moment she wondered whether he’d change the subject. Instead, his voice returned softer than before.
“I think sometimes people get confused.”
“About what?”
“Being loved.”
The words settled heavily between them—they sounded like something he’d spent a very long time thinking about.
“They think being loved by millions of people means you never feel alone. But most of those people don’t know you.” A brief pause followed. “They know who they think you are.”
Something tightened unexpectedly in her chest because she understood exactly what he meant. Not entirely on his scale, but enough. Enough to know what it felt like when strangers decided things about you. Enough to know what it felt like to become a version of yourself people preferred over the real thing.
The line remained silent for several moments. Neither seemed in any hurry to fill it.
Eventually Michael spoke again. “You know what I mean?”
His voice carried something unusual now, hope. The kind people rarely admitted to.
“Yeah,” She answered quietly. “I do.”
When Michael spoke again, his voice had softened even further. “That’s why I like talking to you, girl.”
The confession arrived casually, absentmindedly and (Name) forgot how to respond. Her eyes shot immediately toward the window looking at the city, toward anything except the warmth suddenly spreading through her chest.
“Why?” She asked quietly.
A brief pause followed long enough for her to wonder whether he'd answer at all. “Because you talk to me like I’m Michael.”
His voice carried the faintest trace of amusement. The faintest trace of gratitude. “Just Michael.”
Neither of them realized it then or understood that something had shifted. A shift into something infinitely more dangerous than romance.
Trust.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ ㅤㅤAugust, 1987.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Motown Records Summer Party - Los Angeles.
The thing that unsettled (Name) most was not that Michael was speaking to Diana Ross. It was that she seemed incapable of treating the sight with the level of indifference it deserved. Rationally, there was nothing remarkable about it. If anything, the opposite was true. So why.. why is she feeling like this? Michael and Diana occupied such a permanent fixture in one another’s lives that seeing them together should have registered as background noise. Expected. The sort of thing a person acknowledged before moving on, like fork found in kitchen. Yet for reasons she could not seem to control, her attention continued returning to them. Like.. often enough for her to notice and often enough for the realization to become uncomfortable.
The problem was that the feeling refused to cooperate with any explanation she attempted to give it. Jealousy implied desire, and desire implied a level of honesty with herself she had no intention of entertaining. Besides, jealousy suggested competition. A rival. An obstacle. Something to overcome. Diana Ross was none of those things. Diana belonged to an entirely different category of person. She represented history. Foundation. Permanence. The part of Michael’s life that existed before (Name) and would almost certainly continue existing long after her.
There was something deeply humbling about the realization. Entire chapters of him remained inaccessible to her. Entire versions of him and his life she would never know. The young boy Diana had met. The young man she had enough influence on to shape at least some way in his thinking whether it be his music preferences or.. his type in women. The memories they shared had nothing to do with her at all. It shouldn’t have mattered. Yet standing there, watching them laugh together across the room, she found herself confronted by an uncomfortable awareness of just how thoroughly Michael existed outside of her.
Perhaps that was the true source of her discomfort. Not the conversation itself, but what it revealed. Somewhere over the past year, Michael had ceased being a person she knew and quietly become a point of orientation. The distinction was subtle enough that she had failed to notice it occurring. Yet now, under the harsh spotlight of self awareness, evidence of it seemed to surface everywhere. He had become the person she saved stories for. The person whose opinion she sought before fully trusting her own. The person she instinctively imagined beside her during moments of success, disappointment, boredom, excitement. And not because she was in love with him. At least.. she didn’t think that was the reason. The truth felt simultaneously smaller and more alarming. Michael had simply become woven into the architecture of her daily life. So gradually, so naturally, that she had mistaken his presence for part of herself.
And that was what made the feeling ugly. If this was romance, it would have been easy. Romance was flattering. Romance transformed emotional dependency into something poetic! and socially acceptable!
This felt.. less noble than that. More selfish. More childlike.
It was deeply embarrassing about realizing how accustomed she had become to occupying a certain place in another person’s world. More embarrassing still was discovering the small sense of entitlement that accompanied it. Not entitlement to Michael himself, she wasn’t foolish enough to believe she possessed any claim over him. Rather, entitlement to access. To attention. To significance. The assumption that she would always occupy the same space she occupied yesterday. The assumption that their friendship existed as a fixed point rather than a living thing capable of shifting beyond her control.
The realization left her feeling strangely exposed. As though she had stumbled upon a private truth about herself she had never intended to examine. Because if Michael had become this important to her without her noticing, what else had changed without her permission? How many decisions had begun orbiting him? How many thoughts ended with his name? How much of her emotional equilibrium depended upon a friendship she had spent months insisting was perfectly normal? The questions arrived one after another, unwelcome and impossible to dismiss. By the time she finally set her drink aside and decided to leave, it had very little to do with Diana Ross. Diana merely happened to be standing in the place where the realization occurred.
The truth was that (Name) no longer wanted to remain in the room because she had become increasingly uncomfortable with the person she was discovering herself to be within it.
She offered a few quick goodbyes to people near the exit, accepted a handful of distracted farewells in return, and disappeared into the Los Angeles night feeling vaguely irritated with herself.
The feeling followed her home.
That was perhaps the most frustrating part.
Because by the time she arrived home, kicked off her shoes, and changed into something more comfortable, she had fully expected the discomfort to dissolve beneath the practical demands of ordinary life. Instead it lingered stubbornly at the edges of her thoughts, refusing to loosen its grip no matter how thoroughly she attempted to dismiss it. She washed her face. Brushed her teeth. Wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water she didn’t particularly want. The entire time, some small part of her remained trapped inside that ballroom, replaying a feeling she had already decided was ridiculous.
The thing was, embarrassment has a way of prolonging emotions long after they’re deserved.
Had she been genuinely angry, she could have justified it.
Had she been hurt, she could have examined it.
Instead she found herself confronted by something far more difficult to defend: self awareness.
Because the longer she sat with the evening, the less interested she became in Diana Ross and the more interested she became in herself. Specifically, in the version of herself that had stood across a crowded room behaving in ways she would have found deeply embarrassing had she witnessed them in someone else. The version of herself who had lingered. Waited. Watched. The version who had discovered, quite accidentally, that Michael’s attention mattered more to her than she had previously understood.
By the time she settled onto the edge of her bed, she had almost convinced herself she was overreacting. That the entire thing had been inflated beyond reason. That she’d imagined it.
Almost.
Then the phone rang, and (Name) stared at it for half a second before reaching for the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hi, ladybug.”
Michael.
Immediately she smiled and the reaction was such an automatic response she nearly laughed at herself. Of course.
“Hi, apple.”
The conversation began the way it always did. Easily. Comfortably. They spoke about the event. About people they’d seen. Gossip. About nothing in particular. The familiarity of it settled around her almost immediately, smoothing over the sharpest pricklies of whatever had been bothering her. This was the version of their relationship she understood. This part was simple, it was safe. There was a reason she found herself reaching for the phone whenever something happened. A reason conversations with Michael never seemed to require effort in the way conversations with other people sometimes did. Being around him had become easy.
Then, after a brief pause, Michael spoke again. “You know..” Something in his tone caused her grip on the receiver to tighten slightly.
“Hm?”
“It’s not like you to leave without saying goodbye.”
The smile disappeared instantly and her pulse jumped. The thing was, she hadn’t considered the possibility that he would notice. The room had been crowded. The event had been busy. People had been coming and going all evening. In her mind, her departure had occupied the same category as every other insignificant thing she’d been trying to forget since arriving home.
Apparently not.
Apparently Michael had noticed.
“At least not saying goodbye to me,” He added gently. “..Is everything okay?”
Heat rushed into her face with alarming speed. Suddenly she became acutely aware of herself sitting alone in her bedroom, staring at the floor as though he might somehow see the expression she was making through the telephone line.
“Oh.” Brilliant. An excellent response. “I—”
She looked down at the blanket gathered around her legs, the embarrassment arrived all at once.
There was something uniquely humiliating about being known by someone observant enough to notice deviations in your behavior before you noticed them yourself. Most people would not have thought twice about an early exit. Most people would have assumed she was tired, distracted, busy. Michael, had noticed she hadn’t said goodbye.
Specifically to him.
“I’m sorry,” She said quickly. “I just.. wasn’t feeling well..”
The lie sounded flimsy even to her own ears but it wasn’t entirely false. She had felt unwell.. just not physically.
Silence settled briefly between them, the sort of silence that suggested Michael was considering the answer rather than accepting it.
Then: “Really?” One word.
Nothing else, yet somehow it managed to unravel every ounce of confidence she’d possessed in the explanation.
Because she couldn’t tell whether the question made her feel relieved or mortified. For the first time all evening, she found herself confronted by a realization every bit as unsettling as the one she’d fled from earlier.
Michael had become important enough to her that his attention could alter the course of an entire evening. And she had become familiar enough to him that he could hear dishonesty in a single sentence.
Neither realization felt particularly great.
ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤSeptember, 1987.
ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤD-1 Bad Tour - The (Surname) Residence, Los Angeles, California.
Michael wasn’t supposed to come. He wasn’t supposed to be there. She didn’t want to look at him or even say goodbye because she knew she’d cry! She had spent the entire day surviving on the fragile, pathetic agreement she made with herself that if she didn’t see it, it didn’t happen.
It would make it easier to cope, she thought.
But by the time she realized what was happening, the door was already open. It wasn’t knock she could prepare for.
It was him, standing there.
He was smiling. Shyly, the way he often did. It rested somewhere between hopeful and apologetic as his sunglasses hid his eyes, those oversized dark lenses he’d developed a habit of retreating behind, but somehow they only made him more unmistakably Michael. His curls fell carelessly across his forehead, disturbed by the breeze outside, and for one absurd, fleeting moment she found herself resenting how beautiful he looked standing there. It was unfair. Unfair that he could come here carrying something as painful as a goodbye and still somehow look so impossibly gentle, so effortlessly beautiful.
He had spent the drive rehearsing this visit in his head, wondering whether he should have listened to her when she’d insisted she didn’t want to say goodbye at all. In the end, he hadn’t been able to. The thought of boarding a plane the next morning without seeing her one last time had settled somewhere beneath his ribs and refused to leave. So he had come anyway, with only the softest version of himself to her doorstep, hoping that if he spoke sweet enough, smiled gently enough would grant him some level of mercy.
“I know you didn’t want to say goodbye,” He said, voice calm which only made it worse, “But I just couldn’t bring myself to not see you before I go.”
That was all it took.
Something in her face gave way the instant she heard his voice. It was imperceptible at first, the slightest tremor beneath the fake composure she spent the entire day constructing, but once the first crack appeared there was no gathering it back together. Her expression folded inward on itself with startling speed, her mouth pulling tight as if she could physically keep the emotion from escaping if she held it there long enough. She couldn’t. Her breathing hitched once, then again, each inhale shallower than the last until even that simple act seemed to betray her. She had been waiting for permission to stop pretending she was fine. He had unknowingly given it to her the moment he knocked on the door.
The sound that left her wasn’t graceful or even recognizable as a word. Just a small, fractured noise that seemed to tear itself free from somewhere deep inside her chest before she had the chance to swallow it back down. It embarrassed her almost immediately, but embarrassment had already become irrelevant. There are certain kinds of grief that strip dignity away before you have the opportunity to protect it.
“..Michael..!” His name left her in a trembling exhale. She hadn’t intended to say it like that. She hadn't intended to sound as though she’d been carrying those seven letters inside her all day, letting them grow heavier with every passing hour until speaking them became less of a choice than a release.
Then she moved.
The distance between them suddenly felt intolerable, something instinct refused to negotiate with any longer. She crossed it in two uneven steps, stumbling in her haste, and collided with him before either of them had time to think about what was happening. Her hands found the fabric of his plaid first, gripping it with desperate certainty, fingers twisting into the material as though she needed proof that he was solid, that he hadn’t already become another goodbye she was remembering instead of living.
The moment she felt his arms come around her, whatever fragile structure had been holding her together dissolved completely.
She collapsed into him.
Every ounce of resistance she’d spent days maintaining abandoned her all at once, her forehead finding the space beneath his chin, her weight settling against him with complete involuntary trust. Her shoulders shook violently against his chest, each breath catching so hard it bordered on painful, her fingers tightening almost helplessly against his back every time she tried and failed to steady herself.
It wasn’t only crying. It was relief—relief that she didn’t have to pretend for one more second. Relief that he had come despite her asking him not to. Relief that, for one impossibly brief moment before tomorrow morning arrived and an ocean separated them, she was exactly where she wanted to be all day.
With him.
Michael spoke softer, close to her hair, he said, “Hey now.. you’re gonna make me cry, silly girl.”
He had seen her cry before.
Artists cried. After bad performances. Long rehearsals. Brutal criticism. Creative exhaustion. She had cried in frustration over lyrics that refused to come, over mistakes she believed were unforgivable, over expectations she placed upon herself that no one else ever would. He knew those tears. He knew how to sit beside them, how to remind her that tomorrow would arrive and the music would still be there waiting. This wasn’t that.
This frightened him because whatever this was wasn’t coming from disappointment or failure or exhaustion.
It was coming from him, not something he had done to her—but something he represented as her mentor.
As she shook against him, the realization unfolded slowly. Somewhere over the last year, without either of them ever acknowledging it, he had become the place she returned to. The first person to hear a new melody. The one she called before bed because conversations with him never seemed to have endings. The familiar face waiting in the studio. Her mentor. He had mistaken it for routine. For a simple friendship. Because it had become routine for him too, don’t get him wrong.
But routines are dangerous things.
You don’t notice how necessary they’ve become until someone asks you to live without them.
His hand moved slowly across her back, trying to soothe something that suddenly felt much larger than either of them. She wasn’t simply crying because he was leaving. She was grieving the sudden absence of the person she’d learned to organize parts of herself around. The thought hollowed him. She never asked for that. He had never asked for it either. It had happened the way the most consequential things often do. Gradually.. one ordinary afternoon at a time.
And now he was leaving.
An ocean.
Sixteen months.
Different time zones. Concerts. Hotel rooms. Crowds so large they’d swallow him whole every night.
Michael had always imagined the tour would be difficult because he would miss home. He hadn’t considered that somewhere along the way he had become part of someone else’s.
A strange guilt settled over him.. because he couldn’t remember the moment he’d stopped making sure she would be all right without him. He had spent so long trying to protect her from the industry, from disappointment, from people who wanted too much of her, that he had never stopped to wonder whether she had begun depending on him in ways neither of them understood.
And if she had..
Then leaving no longer felt like boarding a plane.
It felt like walking away from something fragile he’d been trusted to keep safe.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ May, 1988.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ The Bad Tour - The World.
By the time Michael got to London, the tour didn’t really feel like traveling anymore. It just felt like doing the same thing in different buildings.
Wembley Stadium was huge, overwhelming in a way that never really stopped being overwhelming, even after soundcheck. Even after everything was set up perfectly. The lights, the sound, all of it technically correct. He moved through it on autopilot now. The same routine every day and every night. The same dressing rooms that blurred together no matter what country they were in. The same faces orbiting him with clipboards, headsets, schedules, questions. He was never physically alone, that had become impossible years ago. There was always someone opening a door for him before he reached it, someone asking what he needed before he’d decided whether he needed anything at all. And somehow that constant proximity had only made solitude he felt internally feel stranger. Conversation had become increasingly transactional, every interaction serving the machinery of the tour.
People spoke to Michael Jackson constantly. Very few spoke to Michael.
There was a show that night. Then more shows after that. Then another one after a short break that didn’t even feel like rest, just a pause before the next thing started again.
Everything started to blur together a bit.
Hotel. Stadium. Hotel. Repeat.
By the time he got back to the hotel, he could feel the tiredness sitting somewhere behind his eyes. Worn down. The kind that came after weeks of answering questions, making decisions, shaking hands, smiling for photographs, stepping onto stages where thousands of people wanted something from him all at once. He loved performing. He always would. But..
At some point in all of it, he reached for the telephone without really deciding to. The gesture felt so, so familiar, muscle memory from a life a year ago that had become increasingly difficult to return to. The receiver rested in his hand while he sat there for a moment, waiting for his thoughts to catch up with what his body had already done.
Then he stopped.
Because he realized there wasn’t really a correct time anymore. Either it was too late there or too early there, or she was probably doing something, or he was probably about to do something, or it just didn’t line up in any way that felt simple.
So he just didn’t call.
He put the phone back down and just kind of looked at it for a second like it was going to give him a better answer if he stared long enough. But it didn’t.
So Michael moved on with his days.
Because everything always kept moving anyway.
The thing about absence is that it rarely announces itself all at once. It reveals itself through instinct. Through the split second after something happens, before reason has time to intervene. He’d hear a melody and think, She’d like that. Someone would say something ridiculous and for one unconscious moment, he’d already be turning to tell her before remembering she was an ocean and a continent away. The feeling wasn’t that she had left his every day, she was still very much built into it. Every instinct still assumed she was only a phone call away.
Reality was simply taking longer and longer to catch up.
He went to more shows.
Hundreds of thousands people. Noise everywhere. Lights. Movement. Everything loud enough to fill his whole body. And somewhere in the middle of it he thought, kind of randomly, that he heard her laugh in his head. It felt like she was right there saying something to him during a conversation that didn’t actually happen.
It was so quick he almost missed it.
And then it was gone.
The weeks became months so gradually that neither of them could have pointed to the moment things changed. There wasn’t one. No falling out or misunderstanding. No conscious decision to stop calling. Life simply grew larger around them. The tour kept moving. London. Paris. Rome. Cologne. Every city arrived with another airport, another hotel room, another stadium large enough to swallow him whole before sending him somewhere else to do it all again. Days stopped existing as individual memories and became pieces of a routine so rehearsed he barely needed to think anymore.
Wake up. Rehearse. Interviews. Soundcheck. Perform. Sleep. Repeat. Sometimes he’d wake in the middle of the night and have to pull back the curtains just to remember what country he was in.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, her own life refused to slow down either. The album she’d spent months pouring herself into was finally becoming real. Recording sessions gave way to rehearsals. Rehearsals, wardrobe fittings, choreography meetings, photo shoots, interviews. Suddenly there were people everywhere, each responsible for a different need of her. Stylists discussing image. Executives discussing singles. Publicists deciding how the world would meet her before she’d fully figured it out herself.
Success had a strange way of convincing everyone they knew what came next. (Name) was simply trying to keep up.
The distance stopped feeling temporary when it became increasingly difficult to find a spot of the day that belonged only to them. He still thought about calling. She still thought about calling. But the thoughts always seemed to arrive at inconvenient hours. He’d reach for the telephone only to remember she was probably asleep. She’d hear something that reminded her of him, glance at the clock, and realize he was probably somewhere beneath stadium lights on the other side of the world. “Tomorrow” quietly became next week. Next week became another country. Months passed before either of them realized how long it had actually been.
And somehow, despite all of it, neither of them doubted the other was still there. That was almost the cruelest part. The closeness itself hadn’t disappeared in their hearts, it had only lost its place in the day. Every instinct remained like when she still found herself collecting little stories to tell him before remembering there was no guarantee she’d reach him that week and when he would pick up little trinkets that reminded him of her.
The pluse was still beating with no place to put it.
Then one afternoon in a random European city, she found him—not in person or through a phone call, if course.
But through a television.
Someone had left it playing in the dressing room while the crew reset equipment between rehearsals. Conversations drifted lazily through the room, a production assistant crossed in front of the screen carrying schedules while a few dancers watched the screen with excited smiles.
Michael wasn’t paying attention until he heard her name leave one of their mouths and his attention lifted almost involuntarily. The screen changed and there she was—he recognized her immediately, his heart skipping a beat as he crossed his arms over his chest.
It was her. Right there on the screen. And she looked so.. different since the last time he saw her. Granted, she was sobbing but in his memory she looked more girlish—childish and juvinile in a way. Always a pretty girl but.
Her eyes were the first thing that got him.
He’d always believed eyes were the only part of a person incapable of lying. Smiles could be mimicked and voices could soften. Hands learned where to rest. But eyes always surrendered something, whether their owner meant them to or not. They were the closest thing people had to a window into the soul, it’s why he enjoyed wearing sunglasses so much.
Hers had always been impossibly easy to read. Open in a way that almost nobody was anymore. Honest. Curious. Entirely without calculation. It had been one of the first things he’s noticed about her, and one of the reasons he’d trusted her long before he’d understood why.
But this..
This was different.
Goodness.. she was pretty—beautiful even.
Her eyes seemed to draw him in, leaving him strangely defenseless. He couldn’t have looked away if he’d wanted to. They were hypnotic now, a kind of beauty that didn’t demand attention so much as command it. Like standing too close to the ocean, knowing full well the tide was pulling at your ankles and realizing too late, that you weren’t interested in resisting.
Michael found himself staring longer than he meant to, then unexpectedly, something sharp twisted beneath the admiration.
Because he knew other people would see them too. Her eyes.
They’d look into those same eyes and find exactly what he had always found there: sincerity so complete it bordered on vulnerable, a warmth that invited trust before a single word was spoken. The thought settled uncomfortably in his chest. He had spent nearly two years selfishly treasuring that openness, foolishly imagining it belonged to the private spaces they shared. Seeing it framed beneath studio lights made him realize it had never belonged to him.
Anyone willing to look closely would have access to the same unguarded soul he’d been lucky enough to know. The realization left him with the peculiar ache of jealousy, irrational as it was. The rest of the world was finally being allowed to see what he’d been quietly protecting in his heart all along.
Then her smile came in and that was worse.
When she smiled, her face softened. Her mouth curved easily, warm and unguarded. It caught him instantly, sitting heavy in his throat. A stupid and immediate response. He didn’t even realize he was smiling until it was already happening.
And the way she moved—
It was just.
The way she shifted her weight, the way her hips carried the rhythm. The camera lingers on a small strip of bare skin peeking above her low slung jeans. The lighting is soft with golden halos from stage lights that catch on her skin just right, a thin silver chain glints around her hipbone as she moves
Close up shots follow every sway and tilt—the way fabric stretches tight over curves when she pivots sharply, then how a breathy laugh parts her lips mid dance before she rolls back into rhythm. Every frame shows movement: one second showing only fingertips brushing that exposed waistline as choreography demands; next frame zooming out to capture full body.
Michael couldn’t stop watching, and beneath the admiration sat something quieter. The realization that this hadn’t happened overnight. This version of her had been forming little by little through weeks, through choices and experiences and conversations he hadn’t been there to witness. Somewhere between hotel rooms and sold out stadiums, she’d continued growing without him.
Someone behind him smiled toward the television.
“She’s got a hit on her hands.”
Another voice agreed.
The room moved on but Michael didn’t. He watched until the video ended, until another artist replaced her on the screen. Only then did he quietly leave the area, thinking about her.
Hours later back in his hotel, he reached for the telephone before he’d fully realized he’d made the decision. His fingers rested around the receiver for a moment. Then he dialed her number. Once. Twice. Three times. The line rang.
“Hello?”
He closed his eyes. It was strange how familiar her voice still sounded after all this time. “..Hi, Tink.”
There was beat of silence, then he heard her smile before she spoke. “Michael?”
“Yes, it’s Michael..” He smiled himself a bit.
She laughed softly, almost disbelieving. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten my number.” She teased.
“I could never, my girl.” Another small silence settled between them, awkward only because it had been so long since they’d heard each other’s voices that they seemed to be readjusting to the reality of them.
It was surprisingly easy.
Within minutes, the months between them began collapsing under the weight of ordinary conversation. They spoke about nothing at first. The tour. Her recording schedule. London weather. Los Angeles heat. It felt strangely miraculous how quickly they found the old rhythm again, as though it had simply been waiting patiently for both of them to return.
Then Michael said, almost casually, “I saw your new video today.”
The other end of the line went unexpectedly quiet. “..You did?”
“Mhm.”
“What’d you think..?”
He smiled to himself. “I loved it a lot.”
When she spoke again, her voice had changed ever so slightly. Smaller and shyer. “I’m glad..”
“I mean it.” He could almost picture her looking down at the floor, suddenly unsure what to do with the compliment.
“You seem different,” He said carefully.
She laughed once through her nose. “Different?”
“Yeah,” He searched for the right word. “Confident, happier..”
She didn’t answer immediately, thinking about how to respond. It’s been hard without his guidance. “I’m trying to be.”
Something about that stayed with him. He leaned back against the headboard, looking absently out toward the London skyline beyond the window. Then, gently he spoke.
“Are they taking good care of you out there?”
The question hung between them. It wasn’t about the video. She knew that. “I think so,” She answered after a moment. “Everybody’s been nice.”
Michael nodded even though she couldn’t see him. “Good.”
He realized that the faint ache he couldn’t quite place wasn’t the video that had made him call after all. It was wanting to hear, beneath all the music and interviews and heavily managed appearances, that she was still there.
Just as herself, as his Tinkerbell.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ January 27, 1989.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Final Night, The Bad Tour - Los Angeles, California.
(Name)’s body gets ahead of her thoughts and at this point, refuses to wait for permission as she moves through people. She manages to cast a few polite but rushed smiles when she hears someone recognize her.
“Is that (Name)..?”
“Oh my god, I love her..”
Backstage is alive with the chao that usually comes after shows. People moving too fast, voices stacking over each other, the smell of sweat and heat and stage lights still clinging to everything. The energy manages to give her a second hand high as she’s walking through it. She doesn’t even fully register where she’s going, just that she’s checking faces as she passes them because she already knows the one she actually wants to see. But it feels like she’s already passed a thousand people, and she hasn’t found him yet. He couldn’t have left yet, she knows that much.
But then she sees him. And everything stops, she feels like she might just collapse because she feels weak in the knees.
He’s not even doing anything special, he’s just standing there in the middle of it all, still half caught in the post performance state where everything feels like an in between, where it feels like you’re coming down from a high. But it’s a high that only entertainers could get off on. His hair is damp with sweat, curls falling forward in soft and uneven pieces that stick slightly to his forehead and temples. A few strands are clinging near his cheekbone, darker from moisture and framing his face in a way that makes him look more masculine in nature. He takes a little sip of his orange juice, and she nearly giggles at him.
His skin still has that warm sheen from the lights, luminous under backstage fluorescents. There’s a faint flush at his cheeks, exhaustion sure, but there’s something alive in it like his body is still running a little faster than normal. His lips are slightly parted as he breathes, still regulating himself, still coming down from the energy of being in front of thousands of people. He looks.. he looks good.
Michael looks up, and sees her.
It hits him in a very visible shift, that small pause where recognition lands before anything else can follow. His expression changes subtly but immediately as soon as he drinks her in, and the entire room narrows down to just her and suddenly nothing else really matters anymore.
She doesn’t think before she’s moving to him. It’s fast and uncontained, the instinct inside her has been building pressure for too long and finally stops caring about control. The space between them disappears in seconds as she runs straight into him.
It isn’t graceful, it’s full on impact. Her body forgets how to be gentle about it. Her hands land on him first, gripping whatever she can reach, his jacket, his shirt, it doesn’t even matter. She needs something. Her mind hasn’t actually caught up to the fact that he’s here, in front of her. She can’t be sure if this isn’t some cruel dream she’s going to wake up from.
Michael catches her instantly with no hesitation at all.
His arms are around her in the same breath she hits him, pulling her in because that’s the most natural response in the world right now, there was never going to be any other outcome once she got close enough. One hand settles at the back of her neck, fingers spreading there and steadying her that same way he used to. Before work and fame so selfishly separated them sixteen months ago.
Up close, he still smells like the stage. Sweat, heat, fabric and his perfume warmed from movement. His shirt is slightly damp where she’s pressed into it, curls brushing lightly against her temple when she leans in. It’s still soft despite being flattened in places by sweat and movement.
She can feel him breathing, slightly uneven. His heart his pounding against his chest and she isn’t sure if it’s because he’s just gotten done working or if it’s because of her.
(Name) presses closer without thinking, her body trying to confirm he won’t disappear if she holds on hard enough and his hand at her neck tightens just slightly, anchoring her there without question.
And she doesn’t let go, not even a little.
“I missed you so much..”
“I missed you too..”
The cameras are waiting before the doors even open, a loose cluster gathered near the waiting vans, flashes already firing the second movement appears backstage. Security steps out first, then members of the crew, then managers talking over one another as they funnel everyone toward the vehicles.
The lens keeps searching.
Then it finds them.
They’re walking side by side through the middle of the entourage with their pinkies linked. He stays half a step behind, letting her weave through the narrow path security has made. Their fingers never separate. Every few feet someone calls his name, another voice shouts hers, cameras clicking relentlessly from behind the barricades.
When they reach the waiting van, Michael opens the sliding door himself and instinctively steps aside.
“You first.”
She ducks inside with a small smile, still holding his hand until the last possible second before climbing into the back seat. Only then does he let go, following her inside. The cameras don’t stop, the tinted windows are dark enough to hide most of the interior but the open doorway has already given them more than enough.
Michael drops back into the seat with the exhaustion of someone who’s just finished the final show of a world tour. His hair has mostly escaped the ponytail he’d started the night with, damp curls clinging to the back of his neck and temples. A faint line of eyeliner has smudged beneath both eyes, evidence of two hours beneath stage lights that had long since melted away any attempt at perfection.
He exhales through a tired little smile and reaches up automatically, trying to gather his hair back with one hand while fumbling for the elastic still hanging loosely around his wrist.
It catches almost immediately.
He makes a soft face of mild annoyance, trying again. The elastic twists into a knot somewhere in the curls near the nape of his neck.
She watches him for all of three seconds before smiling to herself. “Come here.”
Without a word, he turns slightly in his seat until his back is angled toward her, surrendering the problem without protest. Her fingers disappear gently into his hair.
“Hold still.” A quiet laugh slips out of her as she carefully works the tangled elastic free, taking her time so she doesn’t pull. Every now and then he winces ever so slightly when a curl catches, and she immediately softens her touch.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
The camera keeps rolling through the open door, the others around unable to hear more than muffled fragments through the glass. By the time she slips the elastic free, a few loose curls have fallen into his face again.
“There.”
He reaches up, gathering his hair into another ponytail while she smooths one stubborn curl behind his ear absentmindedly .
He looks toward the open door toward the camera, his tired eyes meet the lens. A warm smile spreads across his face despite the exhaustion still written across it.
He lifts his fingers in the smallest wave. “Hiii.” It’s quiet and sweet, a greeting that feels less like an acknowledgment of fame and more like someone politely noticing another person in the room.
Beside him, she catches the expression before turning toward the windshield herself. So cute!
She can’t help smiling. After months on the road, after the final show and the noise and the exhaustion, he still somehow had enough gentleness left to greet strangers with the same sweetness he greeted everyone else.
A second later the door closes and driver eases the van into motion and the entourage follows behind.
The footage ends there.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ March, 1989.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ The Children’s Arts Benefit - Manhatten, New York City.
It’s a charity event. Cameras everywhere, flashes going off in little bursts that aren’t really capturing anything interesting, just people standing in groups chatting about anything from business to personal life.
(Name) sees him across the room and her heels click against the marble as she moves to him, steady in rhythm and cutting through the softer noise of the room. One hand gathers her dress slightly, keeping it lifted just enough to move properly through the crowd without it catching as she walks. She’s not really listening to anything people say to her as she passes, only offering small nods and polite smiles when needed.
And Michael sees her before she gets there.
He’s mid conversation, still doing the polite thing and engaging enough so that anyone watching would think he’s fully engaged. But admittedly, his attention shifts the second he spots her coming through the room. And he does something simple.
He reaches out. Not fully stopping what he’s doing nor turning his whole body away from the conversation, he simply extends a hand slightly in her direction because he’s already expected she’ll end up there. This is just how it goes. ESP or something?
(Name) takes it immediately when she reaches him, her hand slipping into his. She’s done it too many times for it to ever feel like a question at this point. His fingers close around hers and squeeze for a quick second in a silent acknowledgement before his hand naturally moves to the small of her back, still half listening to the person he was speaking to like nothing.
That’s the part that would look normal if you weren’t paying attention. But there’s a camera nearby, drifting through the room and catching moments without any real intent. It lands on them right as it happens.
At first, it just looks like a greeting. Two close friends acknowledging each other in a crowded event, nothing unusual.
But the footage holds them longer than that.
It catches her as she leans in to say something to him over the noise. Without thinking her free hand goes up, brushing lightly against his arm and to his collar as she talks, just a small little touch. But she doesn’t fully settle until she’s physically anchored for a moment, her hand resting on the nape of his neck.
He tilts his head down to hear her better, still half in the conversation he was already in, but not really leaving her side either. His hand at her back doesn’t move, and then his expression changes slightly. A small smile caught on camera because of something that sat exactly right in his ear. A joke maybe?
She sees it and laughs a little, quick and soft, still standing close instead of stepping away like most people would after interrupting a conversation. They had the tendency to get caught up in their own world when they were together.
The camera keeps rolling, lingering on them.
The hand still there at her back is rubbing now, and they don’t fully separate even while he turns his attention back to the conversation beside him. (Name) finally walks away
And from the outside, it looks a bit intimate.
All hugged up on each other like that looks too comfortable to be accidental and too natural to question.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ ㅤㅤOctober, 1989.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Media Speculating.
By this point in his career, Michael has stopped functioning in the public eye as a person who is simply “famous.” Fame is too small a word for what he has become. He exists instead as a cultural constant—something closer to an event than an individual. Even people who have never seen him in person still recognize his presence through media alone. He's become a shared reference point across the globe.
Her fame doesn’t build in the same explosive, global rupture that defines his. It arrived gradually at first, through structure—an album cycle, organized, styled, and deliberately positioned to place her at the center of pop culture without ambiguity. But what happens after her latest release is what changes her entirely.
The record doesn’t just perform well. It defines her. It gives the public a version of her that feels fully formed, not developing. There is no “breakthrough artist” period that lingers in perception for long. Instead, there is a quick shift in language: she is no longer introduced as emerging but established. No longer “upcoming,” but “leading.”
And then the media assigns her a title.
“Princess of pop” becomes shorthand because it simplifies what people think they are seeing. Her image is polished enough to feel the intention and she's likable. Sweet, funny, humble, which makes her highly legible to the public in a way that spreads quickly across magazines, television segments, and early entertainment coverage culture. The public does not just consume her music; it feeds off her presence as well.
So, no one can quite agree on when it started. Hell, Michael and (Name) are still dancing around it themselves.
The first few times, it’s easy to dismiss. They’re musicians. Award shows are small worlds dressed up as enormous ones, the same artists orbiting the same ceremonies, after parties, and backstage hallways until everyone’s paths blur together. A photograph of them talking after an awards show earns a few inches in the entertainment pages before disappearing beneath the next week’s headlines. Then it happens again. Another ceremony. Another charity gala. Another industry party where someone swears they arrived separately but somehow spend most of the evening within sight of one another. Cameras keep finding them laughing during commercial breaks, leaning close enough to hear each other over the music, slipping into conversations that seem to shut the rest of the room out without either of them realizing it.
At first, reporters treat it like harmless fun. Two of the biggest young stars in music spending time together is easy copy, and the headlines stay playful.
“Music’s golden pair?”
“Just friends, or music’s newest power duo?”
“The King and Princess of Pop share another memorable evening.”
Neither of them acknowledges any of it. There’s nothing to deny and nothing to confirm. Their publicists call them friends, stating that they’ve always shared a close relationship before (Name) even blew up. A mentor and mentee type of relationship. Their managers smile politely through interviews, explaining that successful artists naturally cross paths. For a little while, people accept that answer. The stories begin growing longer than the events they’re supposedly covering, with journalists comparing guest lists before premieres have even happened, noticing that if one of them is expected somewhere, the other usually isn’t far behind.
Then the photographs change.
They stop coming from red carpets and heavily staged press lines. Someone catches them leaving the same recording studio long after midnight, her laughing at something he’s said while he holds the door open behind her. A week later another photographer spots them slipping through a hotel’s side entrance after an industry dinner, heads lowered more out of habit than secrecy. Neither notices the cameras until a flash suddenly lights the sidewalk. The pictures run everywhere the next morning, and nothing scandalous happened. It was just based off the simple fact that they’re together. Comfortable. As though neither of them considers sharing the same space remarkable enough to.. hide. That’s the thing, it didn’t seem like they were attempting to hide anything which made the story more interesting as it progressed.
Then comes the photograph everyone remembers.
It appears on the cover of three magazines before the week is over. (Name) steps out of his private residence just after sunrise wearing a wool coat hastily thrown over last night’s clothes, her hair only half pinned back with sunglasses pushed onto the top of her head despite the overcast morning. She looks like a time was had, no shade. Five seconds later, Michael follows, fastening the cuff of his shirt as he steps through the doorway, pausing only long enough to hold the door open before letting it swing shut behind him. There isn’t any visible attempt to create distance between them.
The captions practically write themselves.
“Breakfast together?”
“Early morning depature raises questions.”
“Friends don't usually leave the same house at dawn.”
Again, neither of them responds.
Their silence becomes part of the story.
A few weeks later a video replaces the photo. This one is grainy, taken beneath streetlights outside a restaurant after what had supposedly been a private dinner with friends. They’re stepping off the curb when someone suddenly shouts their names. Without thinking, she reaches toward him and his hand finds hers. The photographer catches the exact second their fingers intertwine. It isn’t posed or even particularly romantic. It’s the instinct. The unconscious movement of two people who have long since stopped wondering whether reaching for each other is appropriate. By the time either of them realizes cameras are there, the moment has already happened.
The video spreads faster than any interview ever could.
Television hosts spend entire segments analyzing it frame by frame. Magazine covers become bolder.
“Hollywood’s worst-kept secret?”
“More than friends?”
“Inside music's most talked-about relationship.”
Soon, columnists begin noticing details no one had paid attention to before. The way she instinctively looks toward him before answering questions on shared red carpets. The way he visibly relaxes whenever she walks into a crowded room. The fact that they no longer bother introducing one another because everyone around them already assumes they’ll arrive together. It becomes impossible to mention one without acknowledging the other, their names slowly merging into a single narrative that neither of them ever agreed to create.
The speculation eventually takes on a life of its own. They become fixtures in gossip columns because they keep appearing in spaces between public obligations. Leaving bookstores. Walking through airports without entourages separating them. Slipping into restaurants through side entrances. Visiting recording studios on days neither has publicly scheduled sessions. Always ordinary places. Always ordinary moments. Ironically, it’s the ordinariness that convinces people. If it were publicity, surely, they’d choose grander stages. Instead, every photograph feels stolen from a real life the public wasn't meant to witness.
The press develops its own language around them.
“Close friends.”
“Constant companions.”
“Frequent collaborators.”
“Reportedly inseparable.”
“Spotted together once again.”
Every headline performs uncertainty while quietly arriving at the same conclusion that there’s an elephant in the room. Award shows become dinners. Dinners become weekends. Weekends become early mornings leaving the same address. The explanations grow thinner while the photographs grow more intimate, yet neither of them offers the world anything concrete. No announcement. No exclusive interview. No carefully crafted statement. But no denial, either.
They simply continue living their lives, refusing to reshape something deeply personal into a story the public can neatly consume. Eventually people stop asking whether they're together and begin asking why they just won’t admit it. The truth, of course, is that whatever exists between them has never belonged to the headlines. The magazines can stitch together timelines from grainy photographs and whispered sightings, but the life they’re trying to explain is unfolding somewhere the cameras never quite reach, in the ordinary hours between performances, where love quietly becomes routine long before the world ever manages to give it a name.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ ㅤㅤNovember, 1989.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ BET Soul Music Awards - Los Angeles, California.
The BET Soul Music Awards had become one of the biggest nights of the year, but this one felt different before it had even begun.
For weeks it had dominated every entertainment headline. Television hosts spent entire segments speculating about surprise performances, fashion magazines ran prediction pieces on who would wear what, and columnists had somehow managed to turn the seating chart into front page news. The biggest names in music had all arrived beneath the same roof, filling the theater with enough talent, influence, and ego to power an entire city. Diamonds flashed beneath the chandeliers. Satin caught the light every time someone crossed the aisle. Velvet tuxedos, shimmering gowns, polished shoes, expensive perfume, camera flashes. Everywhere she looked was another familiar face, another legend she’d grown up watching, another artist she’d once only dreamed of meeting.
And somehow..
She was the one standing at the center of all of it.
Hosting.
At twenty-three years old, the woman who was declared by the public as the Princess of Pop.
The title still caught her off guard whenever someone else said it aloud. She’d never introduced herself that way and she never would. Yet tonight it seemed impossible to escape. It was printed across rehearsal schedules and cue cards, spoken proudly by producers introducing her to executives she’d already met three times that afternoon, repeated by reporters camped outside on the carpet as though saying it enough would somehow make it feel less surreal.
“Our host for the evening...”
“One of music’s brightest stars...”
“The Princess of Pop herself...”
Every introduction was met with another smile from her, gracious and practiced, even as a small part of her still wanted to turn around to see if they were talking about someone else.
Backstage was its own world entirely.
The polished glamour visible to millions at home dissolved into organized chaos the second someone stepped behind the curtain. Production assistants darted through narrow hallways carrying clipboards thick with revised schedules. Stage managers spoke rapid fire into headsets, pointing toward lighting rigs and camera operators without ever slowing their pace. Stylists hurried after artists armed with garment steamers, lint rollers, powder brushes, safety pins, and enough hairspray to survive a hurricane. Someone sprinted past carrying an entire rack of wardrobe changes. Somewhere farther down the corridor, someone was arguing over a missing microphone.
She barely had time to stand still.
A stylist appeared to smooth the fabric over her hips before disappearing just as quickly. Another adjusted the clasp of a diamond bracelet she’d somehow managed to twist backwards. Someone gently tucked a loose curl back into place before another production assistant slid fresh cue cards into her hands, apologizing because one category had been reordered less than sixty seconds ago.
Everything moved with the frantic precision of people who’d done this a hundred times before.
She inhaled carefully, then exhaled. Ignored the way her pulse refused to settle and then someone counted her down. They were back from commercial break.
Five.
The conversations around her immediately faded beneath the growing roar of the audience on the other side of the curtain.
Four.
The house lights dimmed until only thin strips of blue glowed backstage.
Three.
She rolled her shoulders once, flexing her fingers around the cue cards as the opening music swelled through the auditorium.
Two.
The stage manager pointed toward the entrance.
One.
The curtain lifted and the sound hit her before the light did.
The applause, cheers and screams rolled across the theater like a wave breaking against stone, thousands of people rising to their feet almost instantly. It was loud enough that she felt it vibrate through the floor beneath her heels. Cameras swung toward her from every angle, red recording lights blinking on one after another as she stepped into the spotlight wearing the kind of smile that almost convinced even herself she wasn’t nervous.
Her heart hammered against her ribs anyway.
(Name) welcomed everyone with effortless warmth, delivering the opening monologue exactly as rehearsed, though somehow better than rehearsal ever managed. Every joke landed cleaner once there was a real audience in front of her. Laughter rolled through the theater in waves, interrupted by applause so often she had to pause and let people finish before continuing. She improvised once when a teleprompter skipped a line, earning an even bigger laugh than the scripted joke had been meant to receive.
By the second hour she’d stopped thinking about where the cameras were.
She moved across the stage without thinking about tripping, transitioning seamlessly between presenters, teasing performers with affectionate humor, exchanging quick conversations with artists seated near the front rows that had the audience laughing as though everyone inside the building were old friends. Even backstage, producers were beginning to relax. She could hear snippets of relieved conversations every time she stepped behind the curtain between segments.
“She’s killing it.”
“Best decision we made.”
“She's carrying the whole show.”
Every time the camera found her, she seemed brighter. More comfortable. More confident. The audience adored her, and she returned every ounce of that energy effortlessly, making one of the biggest nights in music somehow feel intimate despite the thousands of people packed into the theater. It was getting closer to towards the end of the show, she had one last award to present.
She glanced down at the next cue card and smile on her face shifted almost imperceptibly. Not smaller, just softer.
Best Male R&B/Pop Artist.
Her french tip adorned fingers tightened slightly around the card.
Michael.
She swallowed before she could think too much about it.
Artists presented awards to other artists all the time. There was nothing unusual about that. It happened every awards season.
But nothing involving the two of them had felt ordinary in months.
Entertainment magazines had practically built an industry around trying to define whatever existed between them. Every charity gala became another cover story. Every award show became another excuse to analyze who looked at whom first. Every blurry photograph of them leaving the same venue within minutes of each other somehow turned into three weeks of speculation.
“Friends?”
“More than friends?”
“Hollywood's biggest couple?”
The headlines changed but the question never did.
(Name) drew one slow, careful breath, lifting her eyes back toward the camera as though there weren’t thousands of people watching and millions more at home. Her smile returned with a sweet ease.
“..And the Soul Music Award goes to..”
She slipped one finger beneath the envelope’s seal; the paper gave way with a quiet tear and the card was unfolded.
The moment she read the name, a grin escaped before professionalism could catch it.
“Michael Jackson.”
The reaction was instantaneous.
The theater exploded.
Applause thundered through the auditorium so loudly it nearly drowned out the orchestra beginning his walk up music. People were already pushing themselves to their feet before the cameras even found him, cheers echoing from every balcony as the entire room seemed to brighten with anticipation. It wasn’t simply applause for another winner.
It was for him.
She turned toward the aisle, the applause still surging through the theater in thick waves that didn’t seem interested in fading anytime soon. The entire room was on its feet, a standing ovation that felt physical force pressing through the air. Cameras tracked the movement instantly, lenses shifting in perfect sync as Michael stood from his seat.
He rose slowly, even with stadiums and decades of history behind him, there was still a flicker of shyness in the way he adjusted his jacket, a subtle dip of his head that softened the image of him. The smile that formed on his face arrived gently and then stayed, warm and unguarded, only growing the second his eyes found hers.
He began walking toward the stage and the crowd only got louder for him, but his attention didn’t shift. Not even once. He moved with his gentle rhythm and then just before he reached the steps, he caught his bottom lip lightly between his teeth, a nervous little habit that always betrayed him. It’s by far the most attractive tick anyone has seen. When he looked up again, his gaze was straight on her as she stood there standing so pretty in her hair, makeup and dress holding his award.
She felt it immediately. That pull in her expression she didn’t have to think about. The smile came before she could stop it, softer than anything she had given the cameras all night, and suddenly she wasn’t hosting anymore, not in any way that mattered.
He climbed the steps and reached her, stopping close enough that the air between them felt charged and uncomfortably aware. The audience was still roaring, but it was fading into something distant. They looked at each other for a moment that stretched just a fraction too long to be stage timing. They’re both blushing, terribly.
She lifted the trophy between them, hands steady in the way she had trained them to be, even though nothing else about her felt steady at all.
“Congratulations.” She smiles shyly.
His gaze softened as it dropped briefly to the award, then returned to her face. “Thank you.”
Their fingers met as he took it, and for a second neither of them let go properly. An unintentional pause where contact lingered longer than necessary and neither of them had decided who was supposed to move first.
Then he did.
Not backward.
Not toward the microphone.
Toward her.
It was small at first, just the shift of his shoulders and the way the trophy lowered slightly between them, but his eyes stayed locked on hers the entire time and whatever instinct normally governed distance simply didn’t show up to do its job.
She realized what was happening a second too late to stop it from mattering.
He leaned in.
Slow enough that it couldn’t be mistaken for anything else, intentional enough that her mind had time to register every stage of it before it actually happened. The space between them narrowed until there was almost none left, and her breath caught somewhere useless in her chest.
For a brief, suspended moment, he stopped just short, so close that she could feel the warmth of him and that the entire stadium might as well have disappeared if it weren’t for the fact that it absolutely hadn’t.
Then he closed the distance.
The kiss was gentle, certain, and startlingly soft as their lips moved against one another in a slow, intimate movement. She froze for the smallest fraction of a second out of sheer disbelief, and then instinct caught up, and she leaned into it before thought could interfere any further. Her hand covered their mouths from the camera as he smiled into the kiss.
Everything outside them dropped away completely. The audience, the lights, the cameras, all of it vanished into something irrelevant and far away. There was only the feeling of it, brief and unreal in the way moments like that tend to be when they shouldn’t be happening at all, especially not here, especially not like this.
Then it ended almost as soon as it fully registered, the two of them separating with the same stunned awareness, like neither of them had fully decided how they had gotten there or how they were supposed to return to reality afterward.
The theater was nuts.
The sound hit like a physical shockwave, screams and applause colliding into something deafening enough to shake the space itself. People were on their feet instantly, cameras flashing so rapidly the stage flickered in bursts of white light. It felt less like applause and more like chaos given permission to exist.
(Name) stared at him for a second too long, completely unfiltered, eyes wide with disbelief as the reality of what he had just done caught up with her all at once.
Then she laughed to herself, just pure shock breaking through and she lifted her hand and smacked his chest lightly, more out of instinct than anger.
“You—“ The word fell apart into laughter before she could finish it. Her cheeks were already burning, and she looked genuinely overwhelmed the way people only do when something insane happens in front of them and they’re expected to continue functioning anyway.
He immediately dropped his gaze for half a second, laughing under his breath, clearly just as thrown by his own decision as everyone else in the building.
The applause refused to settle. Even as he raised the award slightly and leaned toward the mic, “Thank you,” he said quietly, sheepish and grinning at the same time.
She shook her head, smiling too hard to pretend she was anything close to composed, and stepped back just enough to give him space. He took a breath, still grinning himself, then glanced down at the trophy for a second before speaking.
“I.. I wanna thank the creator above,” He began softly, and the room finally started to quiet in response, the energy shifting from chaos into attention. “My family.. everyone who believed in me, who continues to believe in me and everyone who’s supported me over the years.”
He paused, thumb brushing lightly over the edge of the award as if grounding himself, then looked up again. Straight at her.
(Name) was still standing just off to the side of the stage, trying very hard to look like she wasn’t still recovering from what had just happened. His smile returned, smaller now, more personal.
“And.. I’d like to thank the lady in my life.” A ripple of laughter moved through the audience instantly, followed by cheers that started building again like they were just waiting for permission.
“You all might know her.” That earned louder reactions, people already laughing as if the answer wasn’t obvious enough. “She’s been doing a wonderful job hosting tonight. Don’t you think?” His question is followed by cheers of agreement. Oh, she was going to kill him.
“You know, when she told me that BET had contacted her for the role, she said she was honored to even be considered but she was afraid that she was going to trip and fall.” He said, earning more laughs and endeared awes.
“She’s very special to me, and she takes good care of me.” He looks over at her and eyes never left hers, even as the noise swelled again around him. “And I can’t see myself without her.” He held the look for a beat longer than necessary, like he wasn’t speaking to the room anymore at all.
Then he softened into a final smile before raising the trophy to the lights and audience. “Thank you.”
The applause came crashing back harder than before, the kind that didn’t just fill space but swallowed it completely, while she stood there shaking her head like she still couldn’t decide whether to laugh or disappear.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ 1990.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
By 1990, they’d been boyfriend and girlfriend for a good bit of time. This year was a year of firsts for them, the start of a new and exciting relationship that that been growing from a seed that mad been planted nearly four years ago.
There wasn’t a formal conversation where they decided to spend every spare moment together. It just happened. She found herself leaving more clothes at Neverland because it became easier than packing another overnight bag. Her favorite skincare and hygiene products appeared in his master bathroom right beside his own. A drawer became her own walk-in closet. Her books started collecting on the bedside table, her records found their way onto shelves that hadn’t belonged to her a few months earlier, and somehow half the flowers in the gardens had been planted because she’d once mentioned liking them in passing. She still technically had her own place, but she spent so many nights at Neverland that the staff had stopped asking whether she’d be staying for dinner.
One evening, while they wandered through the house discussing furniture he absolutely didn’t need, Michael glanced at her almost absentmindedly.
“You know…” he said, slipping his hands into his pockets. “I think you should spend more time here.”
(Name) smiled without looking up from the lamp she’d been pretending to consider. “I practically live here already, silly.”
“I know.”
She laughed softly. “So what are you talking about?”
He looked at her then, wearing that shy and gentle smile that always seemed to appear whenever he was about to admit something. “I mean..” He shrugged one shoulder, suddenly fascinated by the hardwood floor. “..Move in.”
She blinked. “..What?”
He finally looked back up, the corners of his mouth lifting just enough to betray the fact that he’d been rehearsing those two words in his head for days. “Move in., with me. Your boyfriend.”
For a long moment, she simply stared at him. The thought had never occurred to her that he could ask so simply, as though sharing a home with her was the most obvious thing in the world.
A smile slowly found its way onto her face. “I think,” She murmured, taking the last few steps until she was standing directly in front of him, “I’d like that very much, boyfriend.”
Michael’s shoulders visibly relaxed, the quiet relief written all over his face before he leaned down to steal a quick kiss.
Things were good that year.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ January, 1991.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ ‘92 Grammys - Los Angeles, California.
“Michael, (Name). You’re both queued next.”
The event manager’s voice drifted in through the open limousine door, nearly drowned out by the wall of sound waiting outside. Camera flashes poured through the opening in uneven bursts, briefly illuminating the dark interior before fading again. Beyond the barricades, photographers were already calling their names, their voices overlapping into an indistinct chorus that rose and fell with each arriving guest.
She blinked.
The ring.
She’d been staring at it again.
Her hand rested in her lap, fingers lightly curled, the diamond catching every stray flash that reached inside the car. It scattered little pieces of light across the satin of her gown, dazzling one second and soft the next. She turned her wrist almost absentmindedly, watching it shimmer. It was beautiful, and expensive. She knows that much. Everything beyond that point dissolved into the background.
She still couldn’t quite believe it belonged there. On her finger.
She was someone’s fiancé? What in the world? She remembers being only twenty years old trying to break into this industry. Love was the last thing on her mind.
The proposal returned to her in fragments. Michael’s hands trembling so badly he nearly dropped the ring before he’d even asked. The way he’d stumbled over words he’d clearly spent days rehearsing until they both fell into nervous laughter. The tears she’d never managed to stop before she’d interrupted him with an answer he hadn’t even finished asking for. In retrospect, she probably should have suspected something was up when he brought out the entire Disney park for the day, even more so when her friends acted like it was so urgent to get their nails done the day before.
Sometimes she looked at the ring and remembered that night.
The soft click of the limousine door opening wider pulled her back.
Michael was already moving as he stepped out first, greeted immediately by another explosion of camera flashes and cheers from behind the barricades. For a moment, all she could see was his pretty silhouette against the sea of white light as he straightened his jacket beneath the photographers’ relentless attention.
Then he turned.
Without hesitation, he reached one hand back into the limousine.
Waiting.
She smiled to herself and her hand slipped into his.
The diamond caught the light the instant their fingers met, sparkling brilliantly beneath the flashes as he helped her toward the door with the same sweet care he’d always shown her when no one was looking. Only this time, everyone was looking.
She stepped carefully onto the pavement, her gown falling neatly into place as she straightened beside him. Their hands remained linked between them, the ring resting perfectly where the cameras couldn’t help but find it. Flash after flash reflected across the stone until it glittered almost as brightly as the lights pointed at them.
She looked around for a second then back up at him but he was already watching her. Not the photographers or the crowd.
Her.
That impossibly gentle smile spread across his face, softening everything about him. It was the same smile she’d seen across breakfast tables, in empty hotel hallways after concerts, during quiet evenings when the rest of the world had finally disappeared.
Without thinking, she smiled back and he leaned toward her just slightly, enough to silently ask for a kiss.
(Name) closed the remaining distance herself, brushing a quick, tender kiss against his lips. When they separated, he was still smiling, his forehead almost touching hers for the briefest second before he let out a quiet, breathy laugh that only she could hear beneath the chaos surrounding them.
His thumb brushed once across the back of her hand, and she gave his fingers the smallest squeeze in return before they turned toward the waiting carpet together.
The photographers erupted all over again, calling their names from every direction as flashes exploded like fireworks around them. Tomorrow’s headlines would talk about the kiss, the ring, the glamour, the fashion, every polished detail the cameras had managed to capture.
Neither of them seemed particularly concerned with any of it.
They simply smiled at one another one last time before facing forward, their joined hands swinging naturally between them as they took their first steps onto the red carpet.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤMay, 1991.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ A private estate - Temecula Valley, California.⠀ ⠀ ⠀
It was strange how quickly a wedding day disappeared.
They had spent months planning it, changing little details, choosing flowers, tasting cakes, arguing over songs, finalizing seating charts. Then the day arrived, and suddenly.. it was evening. A bittersweet feeling, really.
The ceremony had passed in a blur of music, sunlight, trembling hands, and promises neither of them had struggled to make. (Name) remembered seeing him at the end of the aisle, looking happier than she’d ever seen him—crying when he saw her. In that moment she remembered thinking, “you are the love of my life.” Everything after that had unfolded was exactly as it was meant to. A perfect day.
Now they were husband and wife. Mr. and Mrs. Jackson has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
The ceremony had been held on the grounds of a sprawling private estate tucked far enough away from the nearest road that the world might as well not have existed beyond its gates. White roses lined the aisle beneath towering oak trees, their branches stretching overhead as though they had grown there specifically to shelter the occasion. Hundreds of candles waited to be lit for the evening reception, and every path through the gardens had been woven with flowers that looked as though they’d bloomed there naturally.
It had been a large wedding by any measure. Family, lifelong friends, musicians, actors, producers, dancers, people who had watched them grow from children into artists, and others who had become part of the life they’d built together. Nearly every seat had been filled, yet somehow it had never felt crowded. The guest list had been expansive without becoming impersonal, each invitation sent to someone who mattered for reasons beyond status or headlines.
The press, for once, had been left outside.
Security had begun preparing weeks in advance, making sure every entrance to the estate remained private, every road carefully monitored, every helicopter route restricted as much as legally possible. The tabloids had guessed at locations, published fabricated schedules, and parked photographers miles away on the chance they might catch a glimpse of something through the trees.
They hadn’t.
The only cameras inside belonged to people Michael and she had chosen themselves. A handful of trusted professional photographers moved through the celebration, documenting the day without interrupting it, capturing laughter instead of spectacle and stolen glances instead of performances. They weren’t there to chase a headline. They were there to preserve memories. Every photograph would remain theirs before it belonged to anyone else.
And for the first time in years, they had been allowed something astonishingly rare. Privacy.
Not complete anonymity—that would never truly exist for either of them. But peace was achievable.
The vows had been spoken without the click of paparazzi shutters competing against every word. They had slipped rings onto one another’s fingers beneath birdsong instead of shouted questions from behind barricades. When the officiant had finally pronounced them husband and wife, the applause had come only from the people who loved them both, echoing warmly through the gardens before disappearing into the afternoon air.
It had been everything they’d hoped for.
Nothing extravagant for extravagance’s sake, despite how magnificent it all appeared. Every flower, every song, every place setting, every handwritten menu, every candle burning across the reception had been chosen because it meant something to one of them. The elegance wasn’t there to impress anyone. It simply reflected the life they had spent years building together, thoughtful in every detail and beautiful.
As daylight faded into evening, the celebration moved beneath a canopy of lights strung through the trees, casting a warm golden glow over the reception. Music drifted across the gardens while conversations blended into soft laughter, crystal glasses caught the candlelight with every toast, and somewhere beyond the estate walls the rest of the world continued searching for a wedding it would never witness.
Inside, hidden from every telephoto lens and gossip column, they were exactly where they wanted to be. Together and finally, husband and wife.
That same night of course they consummated their marriage.
Her hair is soft, slightly messy from the humidity of the suite as her veil fanned out beneath her like a halo against white silk pillowcases. They were tangled in missionary position: Michael braced above her on his forearms, moving with slow but deep thrusts that made every slide inside her feel endless. She held him close; one hand cradling the back of his neck while fingers threaded through sweat damp strands at his temples.
The wedding dress was long gone—discarded somewhere near their feet—but she still wore that delicate garter belt under sheer stockings, and it drove him wild knowing she’d kept something bridal on for this exact moment. Her heat clenched around him like a vise; the drag of his cock against slick walls made every withdrawal feel like torture before plunging back in even deeper than before.
He slowed, stopped entirely before he pressed their foreheads together instead as they caught breathless air between kisses. The space where their bodies joined glistened—an obscene, beautiful mess of frothy white clinging to the base of his cock like liquid pearls. Precum mixed with her arousal; a thin ring that stretched and snapped every time he pulled back just slightly before surging forward again in those slow, deep rolls. And each time he pushed deeper, that slick little ring got thicker. More abundant.
Then losing himself all over again when she arched up for another kiss mid thrust.
“Lovey—I wanna be a daddy..” A pause where he just stared into her eyes, pupils blown with pleasure as he whispered: “Can I give you my baby? Please?” A kiss. “Please, please, let me—lemme make you a mommy, give you a beautiful baby..” He’s babbling at this point, and she watches him above her with a dazed smile hidden behind a bitten bottom lip. She nods at him, lip popping back into place.
“Fill me up, Michael..” She whispered—soft but insistent, her fingers threading through his sweat damp hair as she coaxed him down against her chest. Her heartbeat pounded beneath his ear; a frantic drum of sound matching the stuttering rhythm of his hips now. Each thrust turned sharper, needier—chasing something neither could name anymore beyond more. She came rather suddenly, her body wasn’t cooperating with her plans of wanting to finish together but he just felt so good.
Then she felt it. A gush so sudden and deep inside that it punched a gasp from her throat—wonder.
“That’s it.. give me your baby,” She breathed out raggedly while cradling him closer like he might vanish if she let go even an inch. Her hands stroked over trembling muscles on back as aftershocks wracked through his body.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ August 1992.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
A lamp in the corner cast a warm honeyed glow across the living room, softening everything it seemed to touch. It was around 11 PM when she moved through the space, slowly and graciously as she picked up the mess from the day and straightened out things like pillows and throw blankets for the couch all barefoot on the polished floor. Her movement that had become second nature without her even noticing. She had long since had her baby, but her sense of urgency remained the same. There was a gentleness to everything she did now, motherhood had recalibrated her brain around something so small and precious that existed just a few feet away. She paused near the baby holder, lowering her gaze.
Aladdin was asleep inside it bundled neatly, his tiny face relaxed and completely unguarded the way babies only ever managed when they were fully gone into sleep. One hand had slipped free of the blanket and rested near his cheek. The sight made something in her expression soften even further. She reached down carefully, adjusting the edge of the blanket without disturbing him. Her fingers lingered for a second before she straightened again, exhaling quietly.
The estate still felt like Michael, even when he wasn’t there yet. That was the thing she hadn’t gotten used to and she doesn’t think she ever will, the way his absence didn’t feel empty so much as.. incomplete. He’s been coming home late these past few days, recording for a new album.
The front door clicked open and there was a pause, followed by the sound of him stepping inside and the faint shift of movement as he closed the door behind him. Then his voice, already softer than it probably needed to be, careful in the way it always was when he came home late and knew she’d notice.
“Tink? You were supposed to be in bed by now..” He set something down just out of sight before she finally looked at him.
“You’re late..” Her tone carried enough disappointment to make the point without raising her voice, not that she ever felt the need to even raise her voice at him.
Michael stepped further into the room, loosening his jacket as he looked at her. His expression shifted immediately, whatever exhaustion he had softened the second he saw her standing there in the cozy light, hair loose and her face calm but tired the usual way it was after she had a long day with the baby. His beautiful wife.
“I know, pretty mama. I’m sorry.” He crossed the space between them without hesitation and leaned in to press a gentle kiss against her cheek. “Forgive me.”
She tried to hold the expression for another second, the small pout still lingering like she wanted to stay mildly annoyed long enough for it to count but it didn’t last. Her shoulders relaxed, and she gave him a look that was half warning and half surrender before she leaned in and kissed him properly, soft and brief as her hand rested lightly against his chest.
When she pulled back, her gaze flicked past him for a second toward the baby holder, instinctively checking again.
Michael followed her eyes, then back to her, the smallest smile forming as if he already understood everything she wasn’t saying out loud.
He lowered his voice without thinking. “How’s he been?”
She lingered near Michael without moving away from him properly, the space between them had become something her body naturally refused to widen. Her fingers reached up first, adjusting his collar with an absent tenderness, smoothing the fabric where it sat slightly uneven against his neck. Her hand lingered there before sliding down over his chest in a slow, grounding motion.
“Good, but we missed you today..” Her voice came out soft, already slipping into that tired half sleepy tone that followed long days and late nights. There wasn’t accusation in it, just honesty that came from someone who had spent the day stretching herself between routines and small responsibilities and the demand of caring for a newborn.
Michael looked at her warm and apologetic as he leaned closer, the sound of her voice alone gave him a tingly feeling. His hand came up lightly, resting at her waist anchoring himself there. She had him wrapped around her finger, he hoped she knew.
“I missed you too—you both.”
She let out a small breath that almost turned into a sigh, her hand still resting against his chest for a moment before she finally let it fall, only to look up at him properly.
“Where were you today?” Tired curiosity.
For a brief second, something flickered across his expression. Not guilt exactly.. or anything that could be named easily for that matter. It was more like calculation, as if he was deciding how much of the day belonged in this conversation and how much should stay outside it. He shifted slightly, loosening his shoulders trying to make the answer sound simpler than it was.
“Just meetings. A few things came up—met a couple friends.”
It was vague enough that it didn’t invite more questions unless someone was looking for them. But she honestly wasn’t.
(Name) nodded a little, accepting it the way people accept small absences they assume will make sense later, then let her attention drift back to him instead of the explanation. Whatever part of her had briefly reached for curiosity dissolved quickly under the familiar pull of him being close again.
Michael exhaled quietly, tension easing from his posture as he stepped closer, his hand sliding up from her waist to her back. The conversation stopped being about answers and became softer and more physical. Something she desperately needed after the day she had.
“You look tired,” He murmured, brushing his thumb gently along her side as if checking for it himself.
“I am, baby..” She admitted quietly.
He smiled faintly at that, then he leaned in and kissed her forehead first, before letting his hand slide up to cradle the side of her face.
Her eyes softened almost immediately and whatever trace of curiosity she had, let go without resistance. She leaned into him slightly, her earlier concern dissolving into clinginess, folding back into his touch.
Behind them, the baby slept on, untouched by anything beyond his own small world of warmth and baby breath.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ September, 1992.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
Today had been a fun day for their little family! A cute day out that started with a shopping spree and ended with a nice dinner at their favorite restaurant. But all good things must come to an end.
The bathroom was quiet the way it usually was after a certain time. One of the vanity lights had been left on because she always forgets to do something before she leaves the house. The light reflected softly against the marble countertop and beyond the cracked door, the rest of the house had gone almost completely silent.
She stood at the sink, humming a little melody as she searched through the medicine cabinet for a small bottle of ibuprofen. Her shoulders ached from carrying the baby for most of the afternoon, and she promised herself she would take something before bed.
Michael was only a few feet away, standing in front of the mirror with his sleeves rolled to his forearms, carefully unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt after the long day. She moved a few things aside before her fingers settled around an orange prescription bottle.
Then another.
She frowned slightly and tilted her head. The first one was nearly empty and she picked up the second without thinking, turning it over to read the label.
Her eyes lingered on it for a second. “..Baby?”
Michael looked up from the mirror. “Hm?”
She glanced between the two bottles in her hands. “I thought you just refilled this prescription...” Her voice was gentle, more puzzled than anything else.
She held up the second bottle a little. “..You have another?” The room seemed to pause, and it was so brief she almost convinced herself she’d imagined it.
Michael’s eyes settled on the bottles before returning to her, his expression remaining calm, though something behind it had tightened ever so slightly. “My doctor wanted me to have another one.”
His answer came easily enough. “You know, just in case.”
She looked back down at the label, her thumb brushing across the plastic cap. “Oh.”
A small silence settled between them. “..Have you had them look at it recently?” She looked up again, concern softening her features. “The burns, I mean. Because baby, you shouldn’t be dealing with this kind of pain..”
He gave the smallest shrug, eyes drifting toward the sink instead of meeting hers immediately. “Yes, of course. But they give me the same answers every time.” There wasn’t any bitterness in his voice, just genuine fatigue.
She nodded slowly and accepted the answer without another thought.
She’d seen the scars; it was the very first thing he showed her before they got really serious about one another. She knew how severe the accident had been. Of course, there were days it still hurt but she just hates the idea that he suffers through this. For God’s sake it happened in ’84, it’s currently ’92 now.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Ignore me.”
He looked back at her then, offering a faint smile that was warm enough to ease the concern from her face. "It's okay."
She smiled back and without another word, she placed the second prescription bottle exactly where she found it, closed the cabinet, and crossed the room toward him. Her hands found the front of his shirt first, smoothing the fabric before they settled lightly against his chest.
“You work too hard.”
A quiet laugh escaped him. “So I’ve been told.”
She leaned up and pressed a gentle kiss beneath his jaw, lingering there for just a moment before resting her forehead against his shoulder. “You should let yourself rest more.”
His arms slipped naturally around her waist. “I know..”
Neither of them spoke again for a while.
The bathroom returned to its comfortable silence, broken only by the faint hum of the lights overhead and the distant creak of the house settling around them.
The prescription bottles remained tucked away inside the cabinet, unnoticed now.
By morning, she wouldn't think about them again. To her, they were simply another reminder that the man she loved still carried pain from injuries the world had long since forgotten.
A year later, she would remember the conversation with an unsettling clarity and wonder if that had been the first time something quietly slipped beyond her reach. At the time, though, it was nothing more than an ordinary night between a husband and wife, ending the same way most of their nights did, wrapped in each other’s arms while the rest of the house slept.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ October, 1992.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
Steam lingered in the bathroom, fogging the edges of the mirror until only blurred reflections remained. The room smelled faintly of eucalyptus and shampoo, warm from the shower that had been running for the last several minutes. The baby monitor rested on the counter, its tiny green light glowing steadily beside the sink, carrying nothing but the gentle sound of Aladdin’s giggles and Janet’s coos the hall.
Michael sat on the small stool in front of the tub; a towel draped around his shoulders while she stood behind him with one hand resting lightly against the back of his neck. He was 5’9 but she always sworn he was taller than that, he just looked so awkward and lanky especially in this position,
His hair was damp beneath her fingers as she worked the shampoo through it slowly, taking her time the way she always did. The soft curls slipped easily between her hands until she reached the patch of scar tissue hidden beneath the dark strands. Without thinking, her touch became even lighter, fingertips barely grazing his scalp as she carefully massaged around the area instead of directly over it.
Michael drew the smallest breath through his nose, it wasn’t quite a wince, but she did notice.
Her hands stopped immediately. “..Too much?”
He shook his head. “No.”
She wasn’t convinced. “You always say no.”
A tiny smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “’Cause you're always worried.”
“I am worried.” Her voice was quiet, matter of fact.
“It still hurts.” He was silent for a moment before giving the slightest nod. “But I promise, it’s not terrible right now.”
She sighed before she resumed, somehow managing to be even gentler than before. Her fingertips moved with careful patience, and every so often she’d pause just to brush damp curls away from his forehead before continuing.
“I hate that it still bothers you.”
He looked down at his hands resting loosely in his lap. “I’ve gotten used to it, mama.”
She frowned. “That doesn’t mean you should have to, Mi.”
Neither of them spoke after that. The only sounds were the slow trickle of water from the faucet and the quiet rhythm of her hands moving through his hair.
When she finished, she wrapped the towel around his shoulders more securely before leaning down to press a kiss against the top of his head, deliberately avoiding the sensitive places.
“There.”
He smiled to himself. “Thank you, pretty.”
She squeezed his shoulder once before turning toward the sink to rinse her hands. Behind her, she heard the medicine cabinet open.
It barely registered at first. She reached for a hand towel, drying her fingers absentmindedly and she glances up just as Michael tipped two pills into his palm.
He swallowed them with a sip of water and she watched him for a second.
Then her brow knit together ever so slightly.
(Name) crossed the room without another thought, slipping her arms loosely around his waist from behind and he relaxed into the embrace as she rested her cheek against his shoulder, listening to the slow rhythm of his breathing.
But the furrow between her brow never left, lost in thought as her gaze fell into nothing in particular.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ November, 1992.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
The afternoon had settled into one of those slow, sleepy hours where the whole house seemed to breathe a little quieter. Sunlight drifted through the living room windows, warming the hardwood floors in long, golden rectangles that shifted almost imperceptibly as the day wore on. Outside, the gardens were still, save for the occasional movement of leaves stirred by a light breeze.
Aladdin had fallen asleep nearly twenty minutes earlier, the occasional sleepy crackle drifting through the baby monitor on the side table. She’d rocked him until his little fingers finally loosened around hers, laid him carefully in his crib, then stood there for another five minutes anyway, just watching his chest rise and fall because some part of her still couldn’t quite believe someone so small was entirely their responsibility.
His stroller rested near the front door where they’d left it after returning from the pediatrician, a tiny knit blanket folded neatly over the handle instead of where it belonged. A bottle sat forgotten on the coffee table beside a stack of music magazines she hadn’t opened in weeks.
Now, she stood at the window, absently twisting the ring on her finger.
Outside, the gardens swayed gently beneath the breeze. Somewhere farther down the property, she could just make out the stable through the trees, the horses moving lazily in the afternoon sun.
It should have been enough.
But lately, she’d been wondering why it didn’t always feel like enough.
Behind her, Michael sat curled into one end of the sofa with a book open in his lap. Every now and then he’d glance toward the hallway without thinking, listening for any sign the baby had woken before returning to the same paragraph he’d already read twice.
He looked comfortable.
Content.
More at home than she’d ever seen him.
“Lovey, I got a call this morning.” Her voice was so quiet that for a moment he wasn’t sure she’d meant to speak aloud.
He lifted his eyes. “From who?”
“The label.” She didn't turn around. “They wanted to know when I'd be ready to come back.” The words settled into the room without either of them rushing to fill the silence that followed.
Michael lowered the book into his lap. “Oh.”
She watched a pair of birds disappear over the trees. “They’re thinkign about starting another album.”
Another pause. “They asked if I’d started writing anything.” Her thumb absently traced the diamond of her ring. “I told them I hadn’t.”
It wasn't entirely true.
There were notebooks tucked away upstairs with pages she’d filled while Aladdin napped. Half-finished melodies hummed into cassette recorders in the middle of the night. Lyrics scribbled onto grocery lists because inspiration had inconvenient timing.
She just hadn’t told anyone. “I miss it, Mi.” The admission was nearly swallowed by the quiet room. “I miss the studio.”
She then let out a slow breath. “I miss recording until two in the morning because I can’t get something right.” A small laugh escaped her. “I even miss arguing with producers.”
“But.. I feel guilty for missing it.” Michael watched her for a long moment before setting the book he’d been reading aside.
“You don’t have to go back.”
She looked over her shoulder. “I know.”
“You could stay home.” His voice remained gentle. “You don’t have to rush.” He stood, crossing the room until he stopped in front of her. “You’ve got everything right here.” His hand rested lightly against her arm.
“You’ve got him.” Then, quieter. “You’ve got me.”
She smiled faintly. “I know.”
“You could take another year.”
“I could.”
“You could take five.”
A tiny laugh escaped her. “I don’t think my record label would like that.”
“I don’t care what your record label likes.” Michael says, too quickly.
She looked down, smiling for only a second before it faded again. “..I do.”
Silence settled between them.
“I love being his mom.” Her voice caught ever so slightly. “I love it more than I ever imagined I would.” She looked toward the nursery down the hall. “But I love making music too.” She shook her head.
“I don’t know how to be both.”
Michael stepped closer and both of his hands rose slowly to her face, cupping her cheeks with familiar tenderness until she had little choice but to stop staring at the floor.
She couldn’t quite meet his eyes.
“My girl..” His thumbs brushed gently beneath her cheekbones. “You don’t have to figure it out today.”
She let out a slow breath. “I’m scared.” She looked down at her hands. “It feels like I’m supposed to be completely happy just staying home.”
“You are happy.” He starts. “Are you not..?” His brows pinch together.
“I am.” She answered so quickly it almost hurt that he would even question that. “I am, Michael.”
She swallowed and her voice softened. “I love waking up with him. I love feeding him. I love putting him to bed. I love every tiny little thing.”
She smiled to herself, remembering. “When he falls asleep on my shoulder..” Her expression melted for just a moment. “..I don’t think there's anywhere else I’d rather be.”
She looked back up. “But I still miss music.” The confession lingered between them. “I don’t know what that says about me.”
“We need you.” Michael says. The words came so naturally that he didn’t even realize what he was admitting until they’d already left him.
Because he did.
He needed this.
He needed mornings that began with sleepy kisses in the kitchen while a baby laughed from a high chair. He needed evenings that ended with all three of them asleep under the same roof. He needed coming home and finding her barefoot in the living room, humming to herself while folding impossibly tiny clothes.
He had spent his entire life being pulled away by schedules, contracts, rehearsals, flights, interviews, people who always needed another piece of him.
This.. this was the first thing that had ever felt entirely his.
Not fame.
Not success.
Home.
And somewhere beneath all the love he carried for her lived a quieter, more frightened truth.
If she went back.. the world would start asking for her again. The studio. The tours. The interviews. The months apart.
Michael knew that world and he hated what it took from people.
A selfish part of him wanted to keep this exactly as it was. To keep her close. To keep the three of them together inside this peaceful little bubble for as long as he possibly could.
“If it were me..” He hesitated as his thumbs slowed against her cheeks. “I think I’d stay.” The moment the words left him, he saw something shift in her face.
She looked away again and he realized quickly that he’d answered the question he wanted answered. Not the one she’d actually asked.
He knows he’s being selfish, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t care.
Michael stepped just a little closer, trying to catch her eyes again, his hands still cradling her face. “My girl..”
She finally looked back at him, and her eyes were glossy now. “I’m scared, Michael.” Her voice barely carried. “What if I go back.. and I miss all of this?” She glanced toward the nursery. “What if I blink and he’s suddenly five?”
A tear slipped free before she brushed it away herself. “But what if I don’t go back..” She laughed weakly through the tears. “..And one day I don’t recognize myself anymore?”
There wasn’t a real answer.
Michael searched her face for something he could fix.
Anything.
Instead, all he found was the woman he loved trying to hold two equally important parts of herself without dropping either. His hands slipped from her cheeks just enough to brush her hair back behind her ears.
His expression softened. “What can I do for you, baby?”
She closed her eyes for a moment.
Thinking.
Breathing.
When she opened them again, the tears hadn’t disappeared, but they weren’t falling anymore. Her gaze drifted toward the front door, where Aladdin’s stroller still waited from that morning.
“..Can we go for a walk?” She smiled faintly. “With the baby.”
He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, lingering there until she felt some of the tension leave her shoulders.
“Yes,” He whispered. “Of course.”
A few minutes later, they stepped outside together. Michael pushed the stroller with one hand and his other found hers.
The conversation remained unfinished.
It would stay unfinished for months.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤ August - December 1993.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
(Name) genuinely believes her husband died somewhere in 1993. Not in any literal sense, but his soul did. His essence. The spark and light in his eyes dimmed into something unrecognizable and broken by a cruel fucking world that never really let him breathe to begin with.
There’s no clean break to grieve or any one moment she can point to and say this is when I lost him. It’s a slow, nauseating realization that the version of him she fell in love within her early twenties stopped existing in a place she can still reach—a place where she could still kiss and hold. And the worst part is that he’s still here in the physical realm. Grieving a man who’s still alive made her feel.. sick in ways she couldn’t possibly explain in words. It feels like a hole is in her heart, a large gaping hole that only he could fill. He had been her other half in the way people don’t usually mean literally. But it started to feel like she was holding something inside her chest that had been torn into pieces and rearranged wrong. She could picture it so perfectly, her own bloody, beating heart held in her hands, not intact and wrong in shape, pieces pulled out of it and stolen. And somehow, she was still expected to keep living like this? It felt like there was no possible way, but she was living through this.
(Name) never left his side.
The days became measured by meetings instead of hours. Attorneys came and went through the front door carrying leather briefcases that never seemed any lighter when they left, heavier even. Conference tables disappeared beneath stacks of legal documents, newspaper clippings, witness statements, calendars marked over so many times the ink bled together. Telephones rang before breakfast and long after midnight. There were strategy sessions that lasted entire afternoons led by conversations spoken in careful, clinical language that managed to strip every ounce of humanity from the man they were talking about. Publicists discussed disgusting headlines. Security discussed routes before they left the house. Lawyers argued over words, dates, timelines, and statements until they all blurred into one endless conversation that never truly ended, only paused long enough to begin again the next morning. Somewhere in the middle of it all sat Michael, shoulders a little more slumped than the day before, listening as strangers dissected every corner of his life while she stayed beside him, her hand quietly finding his beneath the table.
She became his wife in every sense of the word she had promised on their wedding day. She never let go of his hand. She rubbed circles into the back of his neck during meetings that lasted hours longer than they should have. She smiled for him when he couldn’t find it in himself. She carried the pieces of him he no longer seemed strong enough to carry alone and never once let him feel ashamed for needing her to.
But no matter how tightly she held him together, she couldn’t stop watching him disappear. Never complaining once.
(Name) reminded him to eat when the day disappeared beneath paperwork. She coaxed him upstairs after nights spent sitting in the same chair until dawn, still wearing yesterday’s clothes because neither of them had realized another day had already begun. When sleep wouldn’t come, she stayed awake beside him. When he finally managed to drift off from pure exhaustion, she stayed awake anyway, afraid that if she looked away for too long, he’d wake up.
If the world insisted on putting him through it, then it would have to put her through it too.
And that had never felt like sacrifice.
It had only felt like marriage.
The allegations did something to him that she couldn’t fight with tenderness alone. They hollowed him out in places she hadn’t known could become empty. At first the changes were so small she convinced herself they belonged to stress. A missed laugh. A smile that disappeared a little too quickly. His attention drifting halfway through conversations before he gently asked her to repeat what she’d just said.
Then the spaces between those moments started growing.
His laughter became quieter until she realized one afternoon she couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard it. The brightness that had always lived behind his eyes gave way to a guarded wall, every waking moment for him had become an exercise in bracing for impact. He moved through the house weakly, carrying himself with an invisible weight that seemed to follow him from room to room. Even when nothing was happening, he looked as though he was waiting for something terrible to happen next.
There were days he barely spoke unless someone spoke to him first.
Sometimes she would catch him standing in the middle of a room with no clear reason for being there. One hand resting against the kitchen counter. Eyes fixed on nothing. So still she almost wondered if he’d forgotten why he’d walked in at all. When she’d quietly ask him what he needed, he’d blink once or twice like he’d only just remembered she was there.
“I don’t know,” He’d answer. It broke her every time.
Sleep abandoned him first. Then his appetite, though, he is the first to admit he’s never been a great eater but these past couple years she successfully managed to put a little more weight on him. All of which is gone by now.
There were days when she wasn’t sure he remembered how to take care of himself. Because everything else had become so unbearably heavy that the ordinary things were the first to disappear. Eating. Sleeping. Bathing. Changing into clean clothes. Things like that became things she gently coaxed him toward.
She would find him hours later exactly where she’d left him, a cup of coffee gone cold beside him because he’d never made it upstairs from the night before. She’d kneel in front of him without a word, unbutton his jacket while he watched her with tired eyes, and tell him softly, “Come on, baby.” Most of the time, he’d go.
Then the parts of himself that had always reached instinctively toward life. Music no longer drifted absentmindedly from beneath closed doors. The piano downstairs sat untouched for days at a time. He stopped humming while he wandered through the house. Stopped dancing absentmindedly when a song came on the radio. The little pieces of joy that had always escaped him without thinking seemed to retreat somewhere so deep inside him that even he couldn’t find them anymore.
There were mornings she’d find him awake before dawn, sitting in complete darkness with the television on mute because he hadn’t actually been watching it. He would simply sit there, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor while the blue light flickered across his face. She’d kneel in front of him and take his hands into hers because they were always cold lately, rubbing slow circles over his knuckles until he finally looked at her.
“Did you sleep?” She’d whisper.
“I’m okay.” He answered, and it quickly became the sentence she hated most. Because he wasn’t.
He wasn’t okay.
Michael started apologized for everything.
For forgetting what she had just told him. For staring into space when she was talking. For missing dinner because another meeting had run late. For waking her when another phone rang at two in the morning. For snapping at someone and immediately hating himself for it. For crying. For needing medication. For being tired. For existing and feeling like he no longer resembled the man he thought she deserved.
It was as though guilt had rooted itself somewhere deep inside him and started growing in every direction. No matter what she said, no matter how many times she cupped his face and told him she wasn’t going anywhere, he looked at her with the conviction of someone who believed he had already become too much to love.
And that frightened her more than anything else.
Because for the first time since she’d known him, she couldn’t love him out of his pain.
She could only sit beside it, hold his hand through it, and pray that somewhere underneath all that hurt, the man she’d married was still waiting to find his way home.
Elizabeth found her in the sunroom just after sunset.
The house had become strangely still for the first time all day. Most of the staff had retreated to other parts of the estate, the phones had stopped ringing for the moment, and the endless stream of meetings had finally come to an end. Outside, the sky was washed in soft shades of pink and gold, rainwater still clinging to the hedges from an afternoon shower.
(Name) sat curled into the corner of the sofa with a blanket gathered loosely over her legs, though she wasn’t cold. A cup of tea rested untouched on the table beside her, the steam long since gone. She stared through the floor to ceiling windows toward the gardens without really seeing them, her thoughts somewhere much farther away.
Elizabeth lingered in the doorway for a moment before approaching. “There you are, gorgeous girl.”
(Name) turned her head, offering a tired smile that barely reached her eyes. “Hi.”
Elizabeth smiled back, soft and maternal, before lowering herself onto the sofa beside her. She didn’t sit across from her, she sat shoulder to shoulder, close enough that their sleeves brushed. Without saying anything, she reached over and took one of (Name)’s hands into both of hers, warming it between her palms.
“My goodness” Elizabeth murmured, studying her face. “Sweetheart, you look exhausted.”
(Name) let out a quiet breath that almost sounded like a laugh. “I am.”
Elizabeth rubbed slow circles across the back of her hand. “I know.”
For a little while they simply sat together. It was one of the few things (Name) appreciated about the older woman. She understood why Michael was so close to her, how could you not?
Eventually, Elizabeth inhaled softly. “I need to ask you something.”
(Name) looked over at her. The change in Elizabeth’s voice was subtle, but enough that her stomach tightened instinctively. “What is it?”
Elizabeth’s expression remained kind, though there was a seriousness behind it now that hadn’t been there before.
“I think…” she began carefully, choosing each word with obvious care, “,,I think it’s time we talked about having an intervention.”
The room seemed to lose all of its sound and (Name) blinked once, then again.
“No.” The answer came so quickly it surprised even her.
Elizabeth didn’t react, he simply continued holding her hand.
(Name) shook her head, her brows knitting together. “No. Absolutely not.”
She looked away toward the windows again. “He’s exhausted.” Her voice was quiet now, almost pleading. “Everything that’s happened these last few months..” She swallowed. “Anyone would be exhausted.”
“I know,” Elizabeth said gently.
“He’s under more pressure than anybody should ever have to carry--He isn’t..” (Name) searched for the words, shaking her head again. “He isn’t one of those people.”
Elizabeth tilted her head slightly. “What people, sweetheart?”
(Name)’s fingers tightened unconsciously around Elizabeth’s.
“The people you see on television.” Her eyes stayed fixed on the rain-speckled glass. “The ones whose lives completely fall apart.” She laughed once under her breath, though there wasn’t any humor in it. She knew she probably sounded ignorant, but at this point she didn't care. Her husband didn’t.. he didn’t belong in rehab like some addict. That wasn’t a thing, that wasn’t real. Come on, this was her Michael they’re talking about.
Elizabeth waited.
“He has prescriptions,” (Name) said quickly, as though she’d finally found the argument that mattered. “Doctors gave them to him. He’s in pain, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth’s thumb continued its slow, absent circles over the back of her hand. “I know, my love. You don’t have to convince me.” Every answer was the same. Never argumentative or dismissive. Just heartbreakingly understanding.
(Name) felt tears beginning to sting behind her eyes.
“He just needs everything else to stop,” She whispered. “If these allegations had never happened.. if everyone would just leave him the fuck alone!” Her voice cracked. “He’d be okay!”
Elizabeth was quiet for several long seconds then she turned just enough to fully face her. “Sweetheart.”
(Name) looked up.
“Do you believe that?” The question settled between them.
(Name) opened her mouth but nothing came out. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to believe it with every part of herself. Instead, she looked back down at their joined hands.
Elizabeth spoke again, her voice scarcely above a whisper. “When was the last time he slept through the night?”
(Name)’s eyes closed. “..I don’t remember.”
“When was the last time he finished a meal without you reminding him to eat?”
Silence.
Elizabeth wasn’t interrogating her; she was grieving with her. “When was the last time you saw him smile because he felt happy..”
She paused. “..and not because he was trying to convince you he was?”
A tear quietly down (Name)’s cheek and Elizabeth reached up, brushing it away with the back of her fingers. “I’m not asking you to pass judgement on him.”
(Name)’s breathing had begun to shake. “I’m asking you to be honest with yourself.”
“I..” Her voice broke completely. “I don’t want him to think I’ve given up on him.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Elizabeth’s eyes glistened. “This isn’t giving up on him.”
(Name) finally looked at her. “It feels like it.”
“No.” Elizabeth gently squeezed both of her hands. “It feels like you’re admitting that loving him isn’t the same thing as being able to save him.”
Those words struck somewhere so deep that (Name) winced. For months she had convinced herself that if she stayed patient enough, gentle enough, attentive enough, eventually he’d find his way back to himself.
She had loved him harder every single day.. she had stayed awake through the nightmares.
Counted pills.
Run baths.
Held him while he cried.
Sat beside him through meetings.
Reminded him to eat.
Reminded him to sleep.
Reminded him that none of this changed who he was.
If love could have healed him.. he would have been healed months ago. The realization settled over her so quietly she almost didn’t notice herself beginning to cry.
Elizabeth wrapped an arm around her shoulders without another word and (Name) folded into her immediately, burying her face against Elizabeth’s shoulder as months of fear finally caught up with her.
“I just want my husband back,” She sobbed, hiccuping.
Elizabeth closed her eyes, holding her a little tighter.
“I know, sweetheart.” Her own voice trembled. “I want him back too.”
That conversation had been eight weeks ago.
Eight weeks since she’d watched him zip up a suitcase she wished had never needed packing.
Eight weeks since she’d stood in the driveway with one hand tucked into his coat, trying to memorize the feeling of him before he disappeared behind tinted windows and boarded a plane bound for Europe.
Eight weeks he’d been away from home.
Some days she counted them. Other days she tried very hard not to.
The house had settled into a strange quiet without him. His slippers still sat where he’d kicked them off weeks earlier because she couldn’t bring herself to move them. His favorite sweater remained folded over the arm of the sofa. His piano downstairs gathered a thin layer of dust no one dared wipe away. Every room still carried traces of him, little reminders that he belonged there, while the only place he actually was sat thousands of miles across an ocean she couldn’t simply cross whenever she missed him.
She kept herself busy because she had to.
There was still a little boy who needed breakfast every morning. Baths every evening. Stories before bed. Aladdin had begun asking for his daddy in the innocent way only toddlers could, toddling over to the front door some afternoons after hearing a car outside, convinced for one hopeful second that this time it would be him. He was a little over one years old now, she can’t believe how quickly time flies
Each time, she’d scoop him into her arms. “Daddy’s getting better, sweetheart.” The words never became easier to say but she hoped one day they’d become true.
Every afternoon, usually around the same time once Aladdin had gone down for his nap, she’d reach for the telephone. It became part of her routine as naturally as brushing her teeth. She knew the number by heart now.
Sometimes the phone rang long enough that she caught herself holding her breath but when the phone picked up it was never Michael.
The conversations had become painfully familiar.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jackson. He’s unavailable right now.”
Or..
“He’s resting.”
Another day..
“He’s with his doctors at the moment.”
Then..
“It’s not a good time.”
The reasons changed and none of them made much sense. If he was resting yesterday, surely, he’d be awake today. If he was with doctors this afternoon, why couldn’t he call her back that evening? Once, someone told her he’d stepped outside. She found herself staring at the receiver after the call ended, wondering how someone could step outside and somehow stay there for three days.
She never argued or demanded to be put through. Never raised her voice. She simply thanked whoever answered, hung up gently, and told herself she’d try again tomorrow.
Tomorrow always sounded more hopeful than today.
On the days they did manage to connect, she treasured every minute she was given, even when the conversations never lasted very long.
She’d ask if he was sleeping any better.
If he was eating.
If the doctors were kind to him.
If they were taking good care of him.
She’d tell him about Aladdin learning a new word, or how he’d nearly toppled over trying to chase one of the peacocks that wandered the grounds, smiling through tears Michael couldn’t see as she painted little pictures of home she hoped might make him feel less alone.
“I miss you,” She’d tell him softly. “So does your little boy.”
There would almost always be a pause that felt like listening for someone standing at the other end of a long tunnel.
Then his voice would come back, quieter than she remembered.
“I miss you too.”
Or…
“Give him a kiss for me.”
Sometimes that was all. Sometimes before she had the chance to tell him she loved him, another voice would gently explain that their time was up.
She’d thank them, set the receiver back into its cradle.
Then sit there for a little while longer anyway, her fingertips still resting against the telephone as though somehow it remained connected to him. She never once considered that the distance between them wasn’t only measured in miles. It never crossed her mind that the unanswered calls weren’t always because he was asleep, or in treatment, or meeting with doctors.
She believed every explanation they gave her because she wanted to.
Because the alternative was too painful to imagine.
She didn’t know that, somewhere in Europe, the sound of the telephone ringing had become something he sometimes asked not to hear at all.
The phone remained stubbornly silent for another four days.
By the fifth, (Name) had stopped pretending she wasn’t waiting for it.
She carried the cordless handset from room to room without realizing she was doing it, setting it beside her while she folded tiny pairs of Aladdin’s pajamas, balancing it on the bathroom counter while she washed her face, leaving it on the kitchen island while she picked absently at toast that had gone cold long before she’d taken a second bite. Every sound outside made her glance toward the front windows. Every time the phone rang, her heart launched itself into her throat before sinking again when another familiar voice greeted her instead.
By late afternoon, she felt wound so tightly she thought she might snap.
She stared at the telephone for nearly a full minute before finally dialing Elizabeth’s number.
It rang once.
“Hello?” Elizabeth’s warm, unmistakable voice filled the line. “Sweetheart?”
(Name) opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out except an uneven breath. She hadn’t even realized she’d started crying until she tasted salt on her lips. “..Hi.”
“Oh, honey,” Elizabeth said gently. “What’s happened?”
(Name) pressed trembling fingers against her forehead, closing her eyes as she slowly sank into one of the kitchen chairs. The room suddenly felt too bright. “I.. I’m sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for?”
“I shouldn’t be calling you like this.”
Elizabeth’s voice softened even further. “You can call me however you need to.” That kindness almost made everything worse.
(Name) laughed weakly through another shaky breath, wiping beneath her eyes with the heel of her hand. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
Elizabeth simply asked, “Tell me.”
(Name) looked toward the nursery down the hallway where she could hear the faint hiss of the baby monitor. “I can’t stop thinking about him. I keep telling myself he’s exactly where he needs to be.” She nodded to herself as though trying to make the words feel true. “I know they’re helping him. I know this is supposed to take time. I know all of that.”
Her breathing caught painfully in the middle of the sentence. “But…” She pressed a hand flat against the center of her chest. “I just…” Her voice dropped to almost nothing. “I have this terrible.. terrible feeling.”
Elizabeth remained quiet. “What kind of feeling, sweetheart?”
“I don’t know.” (Name) stood abruptly from the chair and began pacing across the kitchen, one arm wrapped tightly around her waist while the other held the phone against her ear. “That’s what’s scaring me.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what it is.”
Her breathing had become noticeably uneven now. “It feels like..” She searched helplessly for words. “Like something’s wrong.”
Elizabeth listened.
“I know he’s in treatment and I know this isn’t supposed to be easy. But every time I call..” (Name) stopped walking, staring blankly out the kitchen window. “..there’s another reason.”
Her voice trembled. “He’s resting.” She swallowed. “He’s with his doctors.” Another shaky breath. “They’ll let him know I called.”
She laughed once, though it sounded hollow. “It just.. it never makes any sense.”
Elizabeth’s brows furrow in confusion on the other end of the line. “So, you haven’t been able to speak with him much?”
(Name)’s shoulders slowly slumped. “No..”
“How often?”
“I don’t..” She frowned, trying to remember. “I don’t even know anymore.” She rubbed tiredly at one eye. “When I do get him..” She whispered, “It’s only for a few minutes.” Her throat tightened. “He sounds so far away.”
(Name) continued to speak. “I don’t even care if we don’t talk about anything important.” She laughed through another sob. “I’d listen to him tell me what he had for lunch if it meant hearing his voice for five more minutes.”
Elizabeth’s expression shifted and silence settled between them. Then absentmindedly, (Name) asked, “..When was the last time you talked to him?”
Elizabeth sounded genuinely puzzled by the question. “Honey, we’ve been talking fairly regularly.”
(Name) blinked. “What?”
“I’ve been checking in on him. I actually spoke to him today.. which is why I’m so confused to hear this..”
Everything inside (Name) seemed to stop. “…Today?”
“Yes.” Elizabeth nodded. “We had a lovely conversation.”
(Name) didn’t answer.
“It must’ve been..” Elizabeth thought aloud. “Nearly two hours, I suppose.”
Two hours.
The words echoed through her mind and her grip tightened around the receiver until her fingers ached.
Two hours.
She couldn’t remember the last time Michael had spoken to her for longer than ten minutes.
“…He…” Her lips barely moved. “He talked…” Her heartbeat became deafening. “…for two hours?”
Elizabeth’s heart drops a bit. “…(Name)? My love? Let me give him a call, okay? I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding...”
The kitchen blurred around her. The walls suddenly felt too close. Air refused to reach her lungs no matter how deeply she inhaled. Somewhere on the other end of the line, Elizabeth was still speaking, her voice growing increasingly concerned.
“Sweetheart?”
“(Name)?”
“Talk to me.. Please talk to me, I’m on my way.”
She couldn’t hear anything except the blood rushing through her ears. With trembling fingers, she lowered the receiver from her ear, and she stared at it for one long, disbelieving moment. Then she pressed the button.
The line went dead.
The silence that followed was suffocating as she remained standing in the middle of the kitchen, the disconnected phone hanging uselessly at her side while tears slipped silently down her face.
He had spent two hours talking to someone else.
And suddenly, for the first time since he’d left for Europe, a thought entered her mind that she had refused to entertain before.
Maybe the person he was avoiding…
…was her.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤ⋆ㅤㅤEarly 1994.
⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ㅤㅤㅤ╰ㅤ Neverland Ranch, Los Olivos, California.
When Michael was released from treatment, (Name) truly believed the hardest part was finally over. She held onto that belief with both hands because she had to. It was the only thing that had carried her through the endless weeks he’d spent in Europe, through the unanswered phone calls, the sleepless nights, the ache of watching Aladdin toddle around without his dad. She told herself that rehabilitation didn’t end the day someone walked out of the building. He would need time. Space. Patience. She could give him all of those things. God knew she’d already given him everything else. She washed the sheets on their bed before he was due to return. She asked the kitchen staff to stock the pantry with all the little things he’d missed while he was away. She even caught herself smiling one afternoon while folding one of his sweaters, thinking how nice it would feel to complain about finding his socks scattered across the bedroom floor again. For the first time in months, hope felt safe enough to exist. Things would go back to normal.
He never came home.
At first, nothing seemed particularly unusual. A day passed, then another. There were explanations, always reasonable enough that she never questioned them. He was resting. The doctors wanted him to ease back into daily life slowly. Travel would take some time. She accepted every answer with the same quiet understanding she’d carried throughout the last year because that was what loving Michael had often required, faith in circumstances she couldn’t control. Every morning she still called without fail and every evening she called again if she hadn’t heard from him. Nothing changed, it was the same few excuses. She was told he’d stepped out. Other times he’d already gone to bed.
Occasionally she managed to hear his voice, but even those conversations seemed to disappear before they’d properly begun. He sounded distant, exhausted, like every word cost him something to speak to her. She asked the usual, if he was eating. If he was sleeping. If he needed anything from home. She told him she loved him. She told him Aladdin had started stringing little sentences together now, that he’d learned to point at photographs and proudly say, “Daddy.” Michael answered kindly enough, but there was always something absent underneath it all, as though part of him had already drifted somewhere she couldn’t follow. She was afraid of bringing up her concerns about his communication, especially since learning he was present with other people. How could she? He.. he was kind enough to take her call, and besides, she missed him too much to potentially mess up her few chances to talk to him. So, she ignored it. Her time with him couldn't even settle into the comfort of simply hearing him breathe before another voice would gently interrupt, telling him someone needed him, that another appointment was beginning, or something. The line would click dead, and she’d sit there holding the receiver against her ear for another minute anyway, staring into nothing.
Days quietly became weeks. One week became two, then three, until she realized she’d stopped marking the calendar altogether because looking at the dates only made the silence feel heavier. The house had become unbearably still without him. His slippers remained tucked beneath their side of the bed because she couldn’t bear to move them. His piano sat untouched, gathering the thinnest layer of dust no one dared wipe away because wiping it meant they were wiping him away. Even Neverland itself seemed to notice his absence. The laughter that usually drifted across the grounds had disappeared, replaced by long stretches of quiet broken only by the distant carousel or the soft chatter of staff trying not to speak too loudly. Aladdin babbled for him constantly. Every answer she gave grew a little weaker than the last. “Soon,” she’d whisper, kissing the top of his head while silently begging God not to make a liar out of her.
By the fifth week, something inside her had begun to change. Hope unraveled slowly, thread by thread, each unanswered call loosening another piece until she found herself lying awake at three in the morning, staring at the empty space beside her where Michael should have been, unable to silence the dreadful feeling settling deeper into her chest. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t even resentment. It was fear. Quiet, instinctive fear. The kind that arrived without explanation and refused to leave. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something had shifted while he’d been away, that somehow, she’d lost him without realizing the exact moment it happened. She just didn’t know yet that the silence wasn’t accidental. It was a choice.
By the sixth week, she had stopped asking herself when he was coming home.
Instead, she found herself asking why he wasn’t.
The question followed her everywhere. It lingered while she stood at the kitchen sink washing dishes she hadn’t dirtied, while she folded laundry that still smelled faintly of his cologne, while she rocked Aladdin back to sleep in the middle of the night. She turned every conversation they’d had over and over inside her mind until she could practically recite them from memory, searching for something she’d missed. Had she said something wrong? Had she pushed too hard? Not enough? Had she spent so much time trying to keep him alive that she’d forgotten how to simply be his wife? Every answer only led to another question, each one crueler than the last.
Then, as though the silence itself hadn’t already hollowed her out, the news found her anyway. It wasn’t Michael who told her, not a phone call or even a conversation. It was another headline. Another photograph. Another piece of her life handed to the public before it had ever been offered to her.
Someone had seen him in Las Vegas.
Not alone.
With Lisa.
Eight days.
Eight days that stretched across newspapers and entertainment programs with the same relentless appetite that had consumed every other private moment of their lives. Restaurants. Casinos. Hotel entrances. Smiling. Talking. Walking side by side with their hands held as though the weight of the previous year had somehow become light enough to carry in someone else’s company.
(Name) stared at the photographs until they blurred together.
For eight weeks she’d been told, directly or indirectly, that he was too fragile. Too exhausted. Too unwell to hold a conversation with the woman who had stood beside him through allegations, investigations, lawyers, hospitals, intervention meetings, sleepless nights, withdrawal, and rehabilitation.
Ghosted her for six weeks after his release.
Yet somehow, he’d found eight days for another woman.
Something inside her finally gave way.
The first drink came almost absentmindedly. A glass of wine she poured while dinner sat untouched in front of her, thinking it might finally silence the noise in her head long enough to sleep. But of course, it didn’t.
The second night, she poured another.
By the end of the week, she had stopped bothering with glasses altogether and opted for drinking straight from the bottle. She discovered alcohol did one thing remarkably well. For a little while, it made her numb. It softened the endless loop of unanswered questions. It dulled the image of those photographs long enough that she could breathe without feeling like her chest was caving in. It hushed the instinct that still made her glance toward the front door every time she heard a car outside.
Morning always punished her for it. She’d wake with pounding headaches, swollen eyes, and the same emptiness waiting faithfully beside her the moment she opened them. Nothing had changed. Michael was still gone. The bed was still half empty. The phone still refused to ring.
So every evening, when the house finally grew quiet and Aladdin had fallen asleep upstairs, she’d wander into the kitchen almost without thinking. The bottle had become as much a part of her nightly routine as locking the doors or turning off the lights. She hated herself a little more each time she reached for it.
She drank because it was easier than feeling everything. She drank because the silence was louder sober. She drank because she couldn’t survive every night with the version of him she loved walking endlessly through her memories, while the man still alive somewhere in the world seemed to want nothing to do with her anymore.
It happened on an ordinary afternoon. The moment where she died. If her Michael left her in ’93, then she followed soon after in ’94.
There was no warning. No phone call asking if she was home. No request to meet. No conversation she could cling to afterward and tell herself at least they’d tried.
Just a knock at the front door.
She almost didn’t answer it herself. One of the house staff had been busy with Aladdin, so she crossed the foyer without thinking, smoothing the sleeves of her sweater as she reached for the handle.
The man standing outside wore an apologetic expression she didn’t understand until he asked her name. “Miss (Name)?”
“Yes?”
“I need you to sign for these.”
She accepted the large envelope automatically, thanked him then closed the door.
For several seconds, she simply stood there in the middle of the foyer, turning it over in her hands. Her name was typed neatly across the front in stark black letters. No handwriting. No familiarity. Nothing to suggest it had come from the man who had once traced that same name across birthday cards with hearts and little notes left beside her pillow.
Something deep inside her already knew. Her fingers trembled as she slid the papers free. The first page was enough. She didn’t make it past the title before the packet slipped from her hands, scattering crisp white pages across the polished floor like they weighed nothing at all.
Her knees nearly buckled. “No..”
The word escaped before she’d even realized she’d spoken. “No..”
She shook her head, staring at the papers, hoping they might rearrange themselves into something else if she looked long enough.
This couldn’t be how it happened. Not after everything that’s happened. Not after the allegations. After the meetings. The sleepless nights. Rehab. Not after standing beside him when the entire world had seemed determined to tear him apart.
Not like this.
Her breathing became shallow. Fast. And suddenly she stumbled backward before turning blindly toward the nearest bathroom, one hand clamped over her mouth as panic climbed so violently through her body it made her dizzy. She barely reached the sink.
The first wave came without warning.
A clammy gripped the porcelain so hard her knuckles burned as everything in her stomach came up in painful, emptying heaves. Tears blurred her vision until she couldn’t tell where the sink ended and the room began.
When there was nothing left, her body kept trying anyway.
Again. Again. Again.
She collapsed onto the cold tile floor, coughing so hard her chest hurt, one hand pressed against her sternum as though she could physically hold herself together.
Everything she’d known since twenty. Her mentor. Her protector. Her best friend. Her husband. Her fucking soul.
Her life was seemingly being severed over black and white.
Michael didn’t even give her the respect of a conversation or an explanation. Not even goodbye?
Just a case number.
She curled forward until her forehead rested against the edge of the bathtub, shaking so violently she could hardly catch her breath. Somewhere else in the house she could hear Aladdin laughing at something, blissfully unaware that only a few rooms away, their world had just been split cleanly down the middle.
(Name) had survived watching the world try to destroy her husband.
But she wasn’t sure she would survive discovering he had chosen to leave her himself.
Synopsis: This is an ask! A childhood friends-to-lovers story, starting in Gary, Indiana, and ending with one shared wish: to be back in each other's arms.
Content warning: Childhood grief, mentions of depression, emotional angst, separation, themes of loneliness.
Format: part 1 (5ksomethingish words) part 2 soon!
જ⁀➴ ♡⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹જ⁀➴‧♡︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊⊹
Confetti and streamers rained down around you as your parents celebrated your seventh birthday. The colorful confetti filled your vision for a moment, and your face lit up with happiness. Despite none of your friends showing up to the party, your parents and siblings made sure you still had fun.
Your pink plastic fork dug into the moist slice of birthday cake, frosting coating your mouth and cheeks as you ate, completely lost in your own little world.
Once the party was over and your siblings were quietly complaining under their breath while cleaning up the mess, you decided to go outside and play.
"Mama, I'm going outside to play!" you shouted while slipping on your shoes. You held the doorknob, glancing back into the house as you waited for her approval.
"Be back before it gets dark!" At the sound of her voice, you pushed the door open and ran onto the sidewalk. You didn't have many toys, but you had received a brand-new colorful set of chalk. You absentmindedly drew all over the sidewalk until a pair of small feet appeared in your line of vision. Looking up and squinting against the bright afternoon sun, you saw a boy who looked to be around your age. He rubbed the back of his neck while shyly mumbling something.
"Pardon... I didn't hear you," you said, standing up.
"Can I play with you?" he asked, his voice soft and filled with hesitation. You smiled and took his hand.
"Yeah! Do you want to draw with me?" The boy's face immediately lit up. He nodded eagerly before sitting beside you. Together, you covered the sidewalk with colorful chalk drawings.
He drew a map to Neverland and took you on an adventure. You climbed trees and played pretend, as though he were Peter Pan and you were his Tinker Bell.
You learned his name was Michael...the boy who lived next door.
Every afternoon, you would knock on his door and wait for him to come outside so the two of you could play. Adventures to Neverland became the norm. Climbing trees and sharing secrets were things only the two of you did.
One afternoon, while sitting together on a high tree branch, you admitted that you didn't have many friends, your voice growing quieter as the insecurities filled your voice. "I don't really have many friends..."
To your surprise, Michael looked down towards the grass before quietly admitting,
"Me neither."
You stared at him in disbelief. Your eyes going wide.
"How? You're so kind and you're so funny, and your hairstyle looks great on you!" His cheeks flushed pink as he rubbed the back of his neck.
"Yeah..." he mumbled, trying to hide a smile. "That's not what I meant..."
You tilted your head, confused. "Then what do you mean?" He kept looking away before finally meeting your eyes.
"Well... last night was actually my first show. I'm in The Jackson 5 now... on Motown 25..." His voice grew quieter as insecurity and fear settled in. He was afraid that once you found out he was becoming a star, you'd see him differently.
Your brows furrowed before it finally clicked.
"Oh..."
Silence stretched between the two of you. Michael's head filled with thoughts of doubt. "Now she knows...She's gonna think of me differently..."
Knots began to form in your stomach. One of your biggest insecurities, and one of the reasons you struggled to make friends, was that your parents weren't wealthy. Whenever you tried to join conversations at school, the other kids talked about cartoon channels your family couldn't afford. They thought you were strange because, instead of talking about television, you always talked about the books you read.
You felt tears sting the corners of your eyes as you looked down at your lap.
"I... don't have cable," you whispered. "We only have four channels... Motown 25 isn't one of them." You sniffled, unable to look at him.
You glanced up at him, convinced you were about to lose your best friend. "Well..." you asked bravely, "...does it matter? Can I still be your friend?"
Michael blinked, startled. Not only did you not care, but you still wanted to be his friend. His head nodded so quickly you thought it might fall off.
"Ye—yeah!" His voice cracked with excitement, and he immediately looked away, completely flustered. You tried to hold back your laughter but ended up giggling anyway, which only made him laugh too.
"Pinky promise, Mikey?" You held out your hand. "No matter how big of a star you become... we'll still be friends." Before you had even finished saying your promise, his pinky was already linked around yours.
"I pinky promise!"
Despite your hangouts becoming less frequent, you refused to let them disappear completely. Michael was always busy now. If he wasn't at school, he was practicing day and night for another show.
Desperately not wanting the friendship to fade. You began to rebel in your own way.
Once night had completely fallen and your house had grown quiet enough to hear a pin drop, you would carefully climb out of your bedroom window and tiptoe across the back of your house toward his before gently tapping on Michael's window.
Michael had been practicing his dance moves alone when he heard the rhythmic tapping. He froze. Slowly turning his head, his shoulders crept up toward his ears. For a split second, he believed it was one of the "night monsters" his brothers always teased him about.
Then he saw you and released the breathe he wasn't aware he was holding. Your wide eyes peeked through the glass, standing on your tiptoes in an attempt to see inside.
"W-What are you doing?" he squeaked, terrified of waking his father. Instead of answering, you simply pointed at the window, your toes beginning to ache from standing on them for so long. He hurried to slide the window open before reaching down and pulling you inside with all the strength he could manage.
The two of you tumbled onto the floor in a tangled heap. You couldn't help but grin.
"Michael!"
"Sshh!" he whispered frantically. "They're all asleep!" Your cheeks blushed with embarrassment, and you nodded, quickly pressing your lips together.
This became a ritual.
The night before a show or a gig, Michael would tell you to come over because it would be his only evening off. You would climb through his window, and the two of you would quietly play card games, trying your hardest not to laugh too loudly. Sometimes, you would hide beneath his blankets and read more Peter Pan stories together.
Some nights, Michael would be unusually quiet.
You learned, simply by paying attention, that he was often dealing with emotions far bigger than himself. Those nights were difficult seeing him so uncharacteristically quiet hurt you.
All you would do was hold him, and eventually, he would wrap his arms around you too. Neither of you needed to say anything. Holding each other was enough.
As time passed, it became harder and harder to meet.
Michael traveled farther away and returned days later. Sometimes, he couldn't even tell you where he was going. The distance between you grew, and so did your sadness. Some midnights, you would wake up and quietly cry into your hands, trying not to wake anyone.
One afternoon, you saw Michael and his family packing boxes into a moving truck. You ran toward them, hoping to catch him before they left, maybe even convince his parents to let the two of you spend one last afternoon together.
The look on his face made your heart sink. He already looked defeated before he spoke the words that made your whole world tilt.
"We're moving... to Encino."
You couldn't help but feel your world cave in. You had only just started believing he would be your best friend for the rest of your life, not for only six short years.
"...Why?" you whispered. "But... you'll come back to Indiana, right?" Michael stayed quiet.
He gave a small shake of his head, too afraid to see the look on your face. "I... don't think so."
For someone so young, you never expected to experience such a deep sadness. When he left, you didn't want to go outside anymore. You grew quieter, pushed food around your plate, and left your favorite books untouched. Your parents became more worried with each passing day. It was difficult for them too, watching their bright little girl grow so dim.
The loneliness was what stayed with you the longest. Although you had the phone number to Michael's new house, getting anyone to answer felt almost impossible. You left countless voice messages, only receiving one in return every month or so. As the years passed, even those stopped coming.
You hadn't seen Michael since the day he moved away.
By the time you reached high school, your parents had finally saved enough to buy you a radio for your sixteenth birthday. You were overjoyed. The moment you unwrapped it, you hugged your parents tightly before rushing to your room to switch it on.
Plugging the radio in, you immediately began searching for that unmistakably sweet voice, the one you would recognize anywhere. Then the dial clicked onto a station.
You heard him.
"One day in your life, you'll remember a place... Someone touching your face..."
You froze on the edge of your bed. Your fingers fell limp around the radio as your heart pounded in your chest.
"Is it ridiculous to think this is about me?"
"One Day in Your Life" became your comfort song. Whenever you missed Michael a little too much, you found yourself hoping it would come on the radio. You often wondered if he was still the same.
His voice certainly was just a little deeper now, more mature, more sure of itself. You only caught small glimpses of him through newspaper articles or the magazines your friends brought to school. Eventually, you began saving your lunch money so you could buy magazines about The Jacksons yourself.
Reading them became your way of feeling close to him again. The articles were filled with little stories about him and his brothers, what they liked, what they hated, their favorite foods, the kinds of girls they admired, what they did between rehearsals.
You already knew most of Michael's answers. As you turned each page, you couldn't help but smile. He was still that tree-climbing kid from your childhood.
Yet a quiet sadness continued to gnaw at your heart. Somehow, you had become just another fan reading about a celebrity...when you knew the boy behind the headlines.
You knew Michael's dreams. His fears. His insecurities.
It felt so incredibly unfair and frustrating that the world had swept your dearest friend so far away from you. Making you another face in the crowd.
The years passed, and Michael's career only continued to flourish.
He was loved by millions. You loved him too.
You were proud of him. More than anything, you were proud that the little boy who dreamed of making it big was finally living the life he had always wanted.
You tried to move on.
In private, you explored your sexuality. Your friends insisted on setting you up on blind dates, playing matchmaker and convinced you just hadn't met the right person yet. You gave them a chance.
You really did.
But every time you sat across from someone new, your thoughts wandered back to Michael.
Eventually, you convinced yourself that second best was all you would ever have.
So you started dating.
Life continued moving forward.
You graduated from high school and enrolled in college, majoring in accounting. It wasn't what you had dreamed of doing, but it was stable, and stability felt more realistic than chasing dreams.
During finals week, you sat at your desk with your head buried in your hands, exhausted from studying. Then an upbeat funky disco rhythm burst from your radio. Groaning, you stood to switch it off that was until you heard his voice.
"Don't stop 'til you get enough"
You stopped. Even after all those years, you would recognize Michael's voice anywhere. As adulthood settled in, the only pieces of him you had left came through magazines, interviews, and the occasional song on the radio.
Whenever you missed him too much, you found yourself replaying the old voice messages you had refused to erase.
You caved in. You decided to buy his album as closure. He was worlds away from your ordinary life.
Off the Wall.
You picked it up, staring at his face on the cover. You didn't feel sadness anymore. It was different and difficult to name. You paced around the music store, wandering through the aisles, touching the edges of a few records.
The sound of hurried footsteps and loud camera shutters caught your attention. You looked back at the forming crowd and wondered what all the commotion was about. As you made your way toward the bright flashes and loud voices, you saw him.
Your eyes widened as they landed on him. He was smiling, signing autographs for fans and posing for pictures, completely in his element. You suddenly felt shy, clutching his album in your hands.
Then his eyes landed on yours. His smile slowly faded as he recognized you immediately. He tried to walk toward you, holding out his hand, but the fans misunderstood. Thinking he was reaching out to them, they grabbed at his hands and arms instead. The crowd quickly became too hostile, and his security rushed in, pulling him away.
He kept looking back at you, never taking his eyes off yours as he tried to tell someone that he needed to get to you. Eventually, the crowd either followed after him or slowly dispersed, returning to the ordinary life you were used to.
Your heart hammered in your chest.
He was there.
You were so close to him.
You went back to your dorm completely dazed. You weren't sure what to make of the fact that you had just seen him... and that he had recognized you. You stared at the album in your hands, feeling a wave of shyness wash over you.
He remembered you.
That was more special than anything.
You tried to focus on your studies. You really did. But how could you when he had reached his hand out to you?
You ended up waking up late for your last final. You rushed to get to the exam hall, bumping into people and repeatedly smashing the elevator buttons. Growing impaitent, you gave up and ran up the stairs, almost tripping over your own feet. You stumbled into the exam hall out of breath, your heart pounding as you clutched your pen and tried to focus on the paper in front of you.
Unbeknownst to you, over the past few hours since your encounter with Michael, he had been trying to reach you this whole time.
He called your parents.
He called your college.
He called your residency.
And when his call was finally transferred to your dorm room.
You weren't there to receive it.
With a heavy heart, he left you a voice message, asking you to meet him somewhere private. He wanted to reconnect before he had to say goodbye.
Exhausted and completely spent, you went back to your dormitory and flopped onto your bed. You noticed the dormitory phone blinking, recognizing that a voice message was waiting for you.
Thinking it was just your parents asking when you would be coming home for summer break, you closed your eyes.
You'd listen to it tomorrow. Within minutes, sleep claimed you.
Meanwhile, Michael paced back and forth, wondering when you'd call him back.
He kept glancing at the clock.
Midnight.
1:00 a.m.
2:00 a.m.
When the clock finally struck two, he let out a quiet sigh. You weren't going to call. With a heavy heart, he grabbed his jacket and left for the studio.
The next morning came too quickly. Peeling your tired eyes open, you reached forward and clicked on the house phone, wanting to hear the voice message before you forgot. Once the static cleared and the tone clicked in, you heard a familiar, nervous laugh.
"It's Applehead! Um... I was wondering maybe if we could meet up somewhere? Possibly tomorrow night? We could see a movie. It would be really nice to catch up with you... so I can call you tomorrow and check in if you're free... y'know, before I have to say goodbye for the Victory Tour. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow... thank you, and goodnight."
You fucking idiot.
You shot upright the moment you heard his voice. You were completely startled that not only had he found you. He had called you.
And you went to sleep.
Tomorrow night.
Which meant.
Tonight.
Movie night.
You got up nervously and looked through your closet, still too afraid to call him back at the moment. You picked out an outfit and paced back and forth in your small dorm room.
Do I call him now? No... he's busy. He's literally a star. He's not just Applehead anymore... he's Michael Jackson. I can't just casually call him... can I?
You reached for the phone, trying to find his number, and called. The ringing felt agonizingly slow, making your stomach twist.
Please leave a message after the tone.
Of course. You knew he was busy. You sighed and kept it short.
"Hey... uh... yeah! I'd love to see a movie tonight. Just... call me back whenever you're free. Talk to you soon. Bye."
You gently put the phone down, sighing to yourself at yet another missed opportunity to reach him.
Once night had come, you waited by the phone manically, not wanting to miss his call again.
At the first ring, you picked it up so quickly you accidentally smashed the receiver against your ear.
"Hello?"
"Hi, sweetheart. When are you coming home to visit?"
You hated that you felt disappointed that it was your mother's voice.
"...Mom. Uh... I don't know. Can I call you back? I have something urgent."
"Is something wrong?"
"No, nothing. I... just... I'll call you back!"
"Dear, if you're in trouble—"
"Mom! Please!" You hung up on your mother.
Taking a deep breath to calm yourself, you nearly jumped when the phone rang again. You picked it up and held the receiver close, holding your breath, afraid it was your mother again.
"It's me... Michael."
"Michael... hi." You felt like you couldn't trust your own voice.
"Hi... it's been a while." You could hear the nervousness in his voice too which helped ease yours.
"Yeah... yeah, you could say that." You sat down on your bed feeling lightheaded as you couldnt believe you finally reached him.
"How's it been?"
"...Just... peachy." You shrugged not knowing what else to say. He laughed. "Haha... uh... I saw you at the store. I thought you were still in Gary, so I tried calling your house there..."
You spent hours on the phone unintentionally. Missing the movie and just talking like you two had never been separated.
"Michael! The movie! Shouldn't we go?"
"Yeah! Movie! I'll pick you up! Don't worry!" He hung up, and you stared at the phone in disbelief. You quickly snapped out of it, got dressed immediately, and ran out of your dormitory building. You waited on the sidewalk, wondering if you'd recognize his car. That's when you saw a Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit drive up and stop near you. Michael rolled the window down, leaning over to open the car door for you.
You climbed inside and sat next to him nervously. You both looked at each other, smiling brightly before embracing each other tightly. He was warm against you. It took you right back to when he would hug you on tree branches or help you up onto a higher one. Once you two let go, Michael signaled his chauffeur to drive to the theater.
You awkwardly glanced at each other, laughing a little before he decided to break the ice.
"Um... you look... pretty."
"Thank you... you too. Fancy car and chauffeur..." He laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah, yeah... all fancy." A silence came over the two of you. It was harder to speak face-to-face than it had been on the phone.
He spoke up.
"I never meant to break our promise. I really did try to keep in touch." You nodded, smiling a little.
"I know..."
You both reached for each other's hands, intertwining your fingers like before. Michael told you all about Thriller and the upcoming Victory Tour. You told him about college and what moving out had been like. You talked all the way to the theater. The only thing that silenced your nonstop chatter was the movie's opening music.
Michael kept sneaking glances at you throughout the movie. He then pretended to stretch his arms over his head and awkwardly placed one arm around your shoulders, gently pulling you closer to him. You smiled at his shy attempt to keep you close and rested your head against him.
After the movie ended and the lights came back on, Michael turned his head toward you. You both kept looking into each other's eyes, taking in your new, matured features. He glanced down at your lips for a brief moment before looking back into your eyes. He leaned in slowly, wanting to give you every opportunity to pull away if you wanted to. You were just about to close your eyes and accept his affection when guilt stabbed you hard in the stomach.
You quickly muttered,
"I'm dating someone."
જ⁀➴ ♡⊹₊˚‧︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊‿︵‧˚₊⊹જ⁀➴‧♡︵‿₊୨ᰔ୧₊⊹
I'm so nervous to post this. I hope it isn't too messy. I really enjoyed writing it!
This was a request, but I already had something similar sitting in my drafts, so I hope I did the idea justice. I really hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. <3
summary: you and michael have been seeing each other "casually" for years between your busy schedules. a little more than friends with benefits, but not fully in a relationship. now you're both in relationships you really don't want to be in, so you make some decisions.
themes: emotional affair, infidelity,cheating, fingering, oral sex (f!receiving), rough sex, creampie, praise kink, dom!michael, orgasm control, multiple orgasms, possessiveness, voyueristic implications, jealousy
author's note: reposted from my wattpad & ao3. i love stevie wonder and this song, so this is what my brain came up with hahahahaa, and it's honestly one of my most favorite imagines that i've written.
1995
neverland ranch
Soft morning light spilled through the ranch, soft pinks danced with orange as the sun announced the start of a new day. Warmth pooled between your thighs before you could fully register it. It felt like a dream, maybe you were still dreaming. The last remnants of sleep were still clinging to you when you felt your hips being shifted. The warm feeling intensified, pulling you more from the sleep that was still clinging to you.
A soft sigh escapes from between your lips when the familiar feeling of warm lips against your skin brushes against you. Your eyes softly flutter as his lips move inward, still pressed against your thighs, moving closer to your center of warmth, and you shift again, but he holds you in place, gently pushing your thighs further apart.
He smirks, seeing your glistening folds, knowing that even half-asleep, your body still reacts to him. Michael dips his head between your thighs, his lips coming into contact with your clit, making the last remnants of sleep completely fall away as your eyes flutter open. You blink to adjust your gaze, being met with the top of dark curls nestled between your thighs.
Michael's tongue pressed flat against your folds, a soft moan coming from his mouth as he licks up your slickness. Your hips instinctively buck, and then his eyes meet yours through his lashes as his lips are still connected to your clit. You see the smirk dancing in his eyes as he drinks you in like a man parched.
"Michael," your moan comes out soft, still laced with sleep as he moves. Michael gently lifts from you, spitting at your entrance before rubbing it around your folds, making your body shudder.
"Morning, mama," Michael mumbles, pressing another kiss to your thigh as his fingers continue to move against you. You feel a finger slip inside of you, curling and pressing against you as his lips reattach to your clit, kissing you with fervour, making your thighs tremble around his head.
A second finger slips inside of you as his tongue grazes across your folds, his fingers pumping quickly, moving with more speed every time he hears you whimper. He sucks on your sensitive clit, pulling your orgasm closer. Your back slightly arches off the bed as your eyes close again, Michael's name falling louder from your lips.
Wet sounds of Michael's lips moving against you fill the room, your cry following shortly as your orgasm crashes through you like a wave. Michael moans as he feels the warmth of your release coating his fingers as he brings you through it. Your chest heaves up and down as you try to steady your breathing. Michael slips his fingers out of you, covered in your release, and he trails his soaked fingers up your bare body, spreading your release over your skin.
His tongue follows his fingers, licking up what he's spreading against you. He reaches back down, his fingers finding your hole, spreading more of your cum against your folds and your clit, making you shudder. He dips his fingers in before bringing them up to your lips.
"Open, mama," Michael softly commands. Your lips part, and he slips his fingers inside. Your tongue swirls around them, tasting yourself on him, and your eyes flutter closed again as you moan against his fingers. Michael bites down on his lip as he watches you. He loves seeing you like this, flushed underneath him, and all his.
Michael groans when he feels your tongue swirling around his fingers, the sound warm and low in the back of his throat as he watches you with darkened eyes. His chest rises a little deeper, curls falling over his forehead while he slowly pulls his fingers from your mouth, clearly reluctant despite the teasing smile tugging at his lips. The loss immediately makes you pout, still hazy from sleep and the way he had just woken you up, your entire body warm beneath the weight of his attention.
"Don't be greedy," he says as he laughs.
The sound is soft, breathy, still rough around the edges from intimacy and sleep, and before you can answer, he leans down and kisses you. You immediately grab his shoulders, pulling him against you until his body is pressed completely flush to yours. Michael lets out a quiet sound into your mouth at the force of it, one of his hands instinctively sliding against your waist as though he can never help himself when it comes to you. Even after all these years, touching you still seems automatic for him. Necessary.
When you pull away, your lips lingering dangerously close to his, you run your fingers back through his curls and bite down softly on your lip while looking at him.
God. He's always so beautiful, and mornings with him were always so dangerous.
Not because of the secrecy anymore, you and Michael had perfected secrecy years ago, but because moments like this always made it far too easy to pretend this was real in a way neither of you was supposed to want. The soft morning light spilling across his bare skin, the lazy smile on his face, the way he looked at you like he still hadn't fully come down from touching you.
Like you were his favorite thing to wake up to, because you are.
"Morning, Michael," you say.
His expression softens instantly at the sound of your voice. There's something almost boyish about the smile that spreads across his face, stripped entirely of the performer the rest of the world knew. He sits up and pulls you with him effortlessly, keeping you tucked close against him as though he has no intention of letting you go anytime soon.
You lean over toward the nightstand, reaching for your pager, and your eyes immediately widen when you see the missed call from your manager, Amelia.
Reality crashes back in too quickly. You sigh quietly before reaching over and grabbing Michael's phone off the receiver, dialing Amelia's number from memory.
She answers after two rings.
"I swear if you're calling me from his house," Amelia says, and you cough out a laugh.
Michael looks at you immediately, brows lifting with quiet curiosity, and you shake your head at him while giving him a wink. His lips twitch as he fights a smile, one of his hands absentmindedly rubbing slow circles against your thigh while he listens.
"What's so wrong with that?" You ask.
"Maybe the fact that it's morning, and if you're caught sneaking out of there, you're in violation of your contract!" Amelia says, and you roll your eyes while taking a deep breath.
Of course, she brings up the contract immediately.
You had been hoping, foolishly, that for at least five minutes longer, you could stay wrapped up in this version of your life instead of the manufactured one waiting for you outside those doors. But Amelia was good at her job, and part of that job was keeping your career from imploding because of your relationship with Michael.
"Amelia... I've been under this contract for almost a year, and have I been caught once?" you ask, and she sighs, knowing the answer is no, because you're always very careful.
Careful had become second nature to you and Michael a long time ago.
Private entrances. Hidden elevators. Drivers paid well enough not to talk. Assistants who knew better than to ask questions. Phone calls at strange hours from hotel rooms across different continents. Entire years of loving each other in fragments and shadows, while the rest of the world remained oblivious.
"He's still married," Amelia says, and you laugh.
"Not happily," you say, and Amelia shakes her head, but you also know her well enough to know she's fighting the urge to smile.
Across from you, Michael drops his head slightly with a quiet laugh of his own, though something is fleeting in his expression afterward. Something heavier. Because no matter how much the two of you joked about it, the truth still sat there between you constantly.
He's married to someone else.
"I hope you two know what you're doing... you two have always been your most reckless with each other," Amelia says, and you pretend to be offended.
"I'll be home soon, Lia, and then I'll call you, okay?" you say, and she lets out another deep breath.
"Okay, because you have interviews lined up today for the movie, so it's time to fall. back into your contractual obligations," she teases, and you laugh. Michael visibly grimaces at the phrase, making you fight another smile.
"Yeah, I know... see you soon," you say as you reach back over and hang up the phone.
The room falls quiet again afterward, though it feels different now. The outside world had forced its way back in. You can feel it settling around both of you, replacing the softness from moments ago with the familiar reality that the two of you always eventually had to return to.
"Is everything alright?" Michael asks, and you nod.
"Yes, but I have to go. The press tour continues on," you say, and Michael frowns.
You hated that look on him.
Not the jealousy, though there was always a quiet undercurrent of that whenever your fake relationship was involved, but the disappointment he tried not to show. The tiny shift in his expression whenever reality reminded him he couldn't keep you here openly, couldn't walk out the front door with you, couldn't ask you to stay without consequences attached to it.
You had a big movie coming out this year that everyone was looking forward to, Before Sunrise, with you and Ethan Hawke as the romantic leads, and to further promote the movie, you and Ethan have been in a contracted PR relationship for the last 10 months.
The terms of the agreement were simple: the two of you would pretend to be a couple in public, your teams would set up your 'dates' to be seen, and during the press tour, which was now, you're to make everyone believe that you're together, using the story of, spending hours on set together, creating this romantic story and sharing so many intimate moments, how could the two of you not fall in love along the way?
Both of your teams first started leaking staged pictures of you two looking cozy when you were still filming to get the tabloids and press speculating and talking about the movie. It all worked, everyone was looking forward to this new movie, especially since you and Ethan are in it, both of you already renowned actors in your own right.
The contract had been carefully crafted down to the smallest detail. The public relationship needed to feel believable enough to sell the romance onscreen, and unfortunately, audiences loved the fantasy of two co-stars falling in love while making a movie together. Every staged dinner, every paparazzi photo, every flirtatious interview answer only fed the obsession more.
And it wasn't hard, you and Ethan were genuinely friends, and you joked all the time about how ridiculous it was to have to pretend to be in love with each other instead of just letting your natural friendship speak for itself onscreen.
The other rule in the contract was that if you two were going to see other people on your own time, you had to be discreet and not get caught publicly. The contract was set to end, and the two of you would 'break up' six months after the movie comes out, which would make the press believe that you two dated for exactly 18 months.
That meant you had to keep your relationship with Michael discreet. Well, that and the fact that he's married to Lisa Marie Presley.
It wasn't a marriage that he wanted to get into, but his team had convinced him that it would be good for his image. The King of Pop marrying the King of Rock n' Roll's daughter was the kind of headline publicists dreamed about. America loved symbolism, loved spectacle, loved turning celebrities into dynasties. On paper, it was perfect.
But Michael had never regarded Elvis as the King of Rock n' Roll the way the media did, and beneath all the carefully crafted headlines and public fascination, there was very little sincerity attached to the marriage itself.
He went along with it because it seemed easier than fighting everyone around him.
Lisa was pretty enough, and they had good conversations sometimes, but he didn't love her. Worse than that, the version of her the public adored felt very different from the woman he experienced privately. There was a sharpness to her that cameras never caught, a meanness hidden beneath charm and beauty that exhausted him more than he cared to admit.
None of it felt natural, none of it felt like you.
You and Michael had always existed in a strange gray area throughout the years, somewhere between lovers and soulmates, between casual and devastatingly serious: discreet, hidden, and undefined. That was why Amelia had said the two of you were reckless when it came to each other, because despite all the caution and secrecy, you always found your way back together, no matter what your lives looked like publicly.
You met him the night of the 1984 Grammys.
You had arrived that night as someone else's date, dressed in diamonds and silk with your career just beginning to explode beneath your feet. Meanwhile, Michael had walked into the ceremony carrying the weight of Thriller on his shoulders, already becoming something larger than human in the eyes of the world.
And somehow, by the end of the night, you ended up leaving with him.
Neither of you ever officially dated after that. There was never a grand conversation defining what this was supposed to become because there never seemed to be time for it. Michael's fame skyrocketed after Thriller, especially after the history he made that night at the Grammys, and your own career became equally consuming as studios fought over you for films. You were everywhere. Constantly filming. Constantly traveling. Constantly becoming more famous.
So the two of you settled into something else instead. Something hidden.
You saw each other whenever your schedules aligned, and most of those reunions ended the same way: tangled together between expensive hotel sheets somewhere in whatever city or country you had managed to secretly meet in. Paris. New York. Tokyo. London. Entire years of your relationship could be mapped through hotel suites and private dinners.
But the physical intimacy was never the thing that kept pulling you back to him. It was the emotional intimacy that became dangerous.
The late-night phone calls that stretched until sunrise. The conversations about music, movies, loneliness, childhoods, and dreams. The way Michael always called you when he couldn't sleep. The way he trusted you with the softer parts of himself, the rest of the world never got to touch. The comfortable rhythm the two of you developed over the years became so natural that sometimes it frightened you. It was effortless in a way nothing else in your life ever was.
Michael had once joked about the two of you being part-time lovers because your schedules only allowed you pieces of each other instead of the whole thing, and in a way, he wasn't wrong.
You belonged to each other in fragments: stolen weekends, late-night phone calls, secret dinners and dates, Michael spoiling you with having gifts sent to whichever set you're on, and quick kisses in the backs of cars before separate exits.
Never fully together, never publicly.
When he told you about Lisa, he had done it almost immediately. You still remembered the silence that settled over you while he explained it over the phone, his voice quieter than usual, almost hesitant.
But what you remembered most was him saying he didn't want to stop seeing you. He didn't want to lose what the two of you had.
At first, you hadn't known what to do with that information. Continuing the emotional side of things was one thing, but continuing the physical intimacy while he was preparing to marry another woman felt different. Dangerous in a way your relationship somehow never had before.
But Michael had been insistent. He didn't love her.
The marriage was for optics. For his image. For his team. For the rumors that followed him constantly, that he was weird, that he was incapable of love, that he was gay, that he wasn't a real man in the way the public expected him to be.
And somehow, despite every reason you should've walked away from him, you didn't. You couldn't. So, the two of you continued exactly as you always had. Even after he spoke vows to another woman, he still came back to you.
You both just became even more careful.
Always arriving separately. Always use back entrances and private elevators. Never lingering publicly. Never giving anyone a reason to question what existed between you. Years of precision and secrecy wrapped around something that felt far too emotionally intimate to still be considered casual.
"Ethan better keep his hands to himself," Michael says, and you laugh as you look at him.
The jealousy in his voice is light, teasing on the surface, but you know him well enough to hear the sincerity underneath it, too. Michael had never liked hearing about your fake relationship, even when he fully understood why it existed.
"And when will your wife be back?" You ask, and Michael rolls his eyes.
"She's on vacation with her ex-husband, I don't care when she'll be back," Michael says as he shrugs, and you laugh while shaking your head. Michael had told you about that situation already, sounding more annoyed than hurt by it. Their marriage often felt less like a relationship and more like two people performing one.
"Well, I will call you when my day is done. I can make us dinner?" you say.
Michael smiles instantly before leaning in to kiss you again, slower this time, deeper. His hand slides against your jaw as he pulls you closer, kissing you like he's trying to memorize the feeling before you leave again. You melt into him immediately, your fingers curling against his chest while his lips move softly against yours.
It always felt too easy to love him; that was the problem.
Even though the two of you never officially defined what existed between you, you knew exactly how you felt about him. Somewhere along the years, somewhere between the hotel rooms and phone calls and secret reunions, you had fallen completely in love with him.
And the worst part was knowing that part-time no longer felt like enough. You wanted mornings with him that you didn't have to rush and sneak away from. You wanted dinners that didn't require secrecy. You wanted to stop arriving and leaving separately.
But your lives had never aligned properly for something real. Every time it almost felt possible, fame, schedules, contracts, or public scrutiny got in the way.
Michael feels the same way.
He misses you constantly whenever you're apart, more than he ever admits aloud. He loves hearing your voice late at night when exhaustion makes you softer with him, loves the way your breathing changes when you're fighting sleep during your phone calls before eventually drifting off anyway while he stays on the line listening.
He's in love with you, completely, utterly, and hopelessly.
And somewhere deep down, he knows he would rather be married to you than the woman he's currently publicly tied to. But timing had never been kind to either of you.
Michael pulls away slowly before tucking some of your hair behind your ear, his fingers lingering against your skin. "You're gonna have a long day today... I'll make us dinner. Just let me know when you're done, and I can send a car," Michael says.
You bite down on your lip as you look at him, your chest tightening painfully at the domestic softness of the offer. Like this is normal. Like this is something the two of you are allowed to have.
You lean in and kiss him again, pulling back far too soon.
"I miss you, already," he says, and you laugh.
"Are you going soft on me?" You ask, and Michael smirks as he looks at you.
"Mama, I'm never soft with you," he says, and the slow smirk that spreads across his face makes warmth immediately crawl up your neck.
You laugh despite yourself, shaking your head as you catch the double meaning immediately. Michael only grins wider at your reaction, completely pleased with himself for getting you flustered.
His smirk is all smug satisfaction and teasing confidence, like he knows exactly what he's capable of doing to you. His eyes drag over you lazily, unashamed, still darkened from everything that had happened between you this morning, and suddenly you can practically still feel his mouth on you all over again.
You lean back in for one quick kiss before finally forcing yourself to get out of bed and throw your clothes back on. You can feel Michael watching you the entire time from the bed, his expression softer than he usually allows himself to be.
"See you later, Michael," you say, and he smiles, looking at you from where he remains sprawled against the sheets.
"Have a good day, baby."
────୨ৎ────
After a long day of interviews and pretending to be madly in love with your co-star, you're finally back at Neverland Ranch. You see, Michael, waiting for you at the door in soft clothes and bare feet, curls falling around his face, smelling faintly like cologne and the dinner he'd been cooking for you.
Home.
His warmth immediately wraps around you as you walk inside. The house smells rich and comforting, filled with the aroma of garlic, butter, herbs, and something savory simmering on the stove, and you inhale deeply because you suddenly realize just how hungry you are.
Not just physically, but emotionally too. Days like this always left you drained in a way sleep never really fixed. Too many cameras in your face, too many forced smiles, too many interviewers analyzing every glance and laugh between you and Ethan like they were dissecting a real love story instead of a manufactured one.
He greets you with a kiss before you can even properly say hello, and the moment his hands settle against you, tension immediately begins melting out of your body, and you can't help the quiet sigh that leaves you as you melt into him. Michael kisses you slowly and deliberately, like he's aware you've spent your entire day performing affection for cameras and wants to remind you what real affection feels like.
What his affection feels like.
Michael pulls away first, pressing another gentle kiss to your forehead before letting you go. The gesture is so instinctively affectionate that your chest tightens around it. There's something almost painfully intimate about the way he loves you in private, in all these tiny unconscious moments nobody else ever gets to witness.
You slip your heels off by the door with relief before following him into the kitchen, your stockinged feet padding softly against the floor. Michael hands you a glass of wine without another word, already knowing exactly what kind you like after all these years, before turning back toward the stove.
The domesticity of it nearly undoes you.
Not because it's extravagant, but because it isn't. Because this feels normal in a way your relationship never gets to be publicly. Michael cooking dinner while you stand barefoot in his kitchen drinking wine after work should not feel as emotionally significant as it does, and yet it makes your chest ache anyway.
"It smells amazing, Michael," you say, and he smiles over his shoulder.
That smile is softer than the ones he gives the world. Smaller. Realer. You've always loved the version of Michael that exists away from cameras, the one who hums quietly while cooking and worries whether you've eaten enough and kisses your forehead absentmindedly like he can't help himself.
"You have a good day?" he asks, and you shrug as you lean against the counter.
"Yeah... I'm really proud of this movie, and Ethan and I are good friends... You can't film a movie with someone as long as we did and do all these intimate and romantic scenes without becoming friends, but it's very exhausting pretending to be in love with him," you say as you laugh, and Michael lets out a soft chuckle.
But even after all this time, you can still hear the subtle tension underneath it immediately. "Does he feel the same?" he asks.
The question is carefully casual, but you know him too well not to notice the slight stiffness in his shoulders or the way he keeps his focus on the stove instead of directly on you. Michael has never been particularly good at hiding jealousy from you, no matter how much he tries to pretend otherwise.
You smirk as you lift your wine glass. "Are you jealous?" you tease.
Michael turns around immediately and shakes his head. "I don't get jealous," he says, and you smile because the lie is almost endearing at this point.
"Oh, yeah? I do. That kiss at the VMAs last year? Very convincing for someone who claims not to love her," you say. Michael chuckles as he turns fully toward you now, and this time he's the one smirking. The expression spreads slowly across his face, dark eyes warming with amusement as he watches you from across the kitchen.
There's something smug hidden beneath it, too, something deeply satisfied by the fact that you had been jealous of him. Even after eleven years, Michael still seemed secretly pleased anytime you showed possessiveness over him, because of how you always keep yourself and your emotions controlled, especially in public.
"Oh, really? That made you jealous?" he asks.
You nod without embarrassment. "It made me very jealous," you say.
The smirk on Michael's face deepens instantly, and you can practically see the memory replaying behind his eyes. "And that's why you made me watch as you played with yourself, and I wasn't allowed to touch you?" He asks, and your lips curl upward immediately.
The memory flashes hot through your mind without warning. Michael sitting at the edge of the bed, looking absolutely tortured, while you denied him the one thing he wanted most, just to punish him a little for that kiss. The way his jaw clenched every time you whimpered his name while refusing to let him touch you. The frustration in his eyes mixed with pure fascination because even when you were being cruel to him, Michael still looked at you like you were something sacred.
"You'd be correct," you say, and Michael laughs again while shaking his head.
There's so much history packed into moments like this now. Years of inside jokes, jealousy, longing, sex, affection, and emotional intimacy layered together until your relationship stopped resembling anything casual a long time ago. The two of you fit together too naturally for that. Sometimes it frightened you how easy loving him had become.
"I'm not sleeping with her, you know... well, not regularly, enough so she doesn't get suspicious, and I use protection with her. She doesn't want to have any more kids, so that kind of worked itself out," he says. Your stomach twists slightly at the mention of Lisa, though the only part your mind truly fixates on is the protection.
Because you and Michael had never used any.
You had been on birth control for years, and somewhere over the course of your relationship, the two of you had quietly settled into trusting only that, because neither of you wanted anything between you as your bodies came together most intimately.
The intimacy of that realization settles heavily into your chest now, because there's something deeply vulnerable about the fact that Michael has always touched you differently than anyone else.
"She's your wife, Michael, it's not my business," you say, and Michael sighs immediately.
"Baby, don't do that," he says. The softness in his voice catches you off guard because he says it like he can hear the distance you're trying to create between the two of you and hates it instantly.
You give him a look while taking another sip of wine. "I'm not doing anything," you respond, and he sighs again, quieter this time.
"You know I'm committed to you, right?" He asks.
The question hangs heavily between you because commitment had always been such a strange concept within whatever this relationship was. Michael wore another woman's wedding band on his hand, while you're spending an entire press tour pretending to belong to another man. The two of you had spent eleven years loving each other in hidden pieces, fitting yourselves into whatever cracks your schedules and public lives allowed.
You nod slowly anyway.
"Yes, as much as a part-time lover can be, right?" you say, and Michael immediately shakes his head.
Something changes in his expression then.
The teasing disappears completely, replaced by something more serious, more vulnerable than he usually allows himself to be. Michael turns back toward the stove, grabbing plates from the cabinet while taking a deep breath, and you suddenly realize he looks nervous.
The realization alone makes your pulse jump because very little unsettles Michael after everything he has experienced in his life and career, yet now his movements seem slightly too controlled, like he's steadying himself before saying something that could change everything between you.
"That's what I was hoping we could talk about tonight... I don't want to just keep doing this part-time, whenever we have time," Michael says.
Your eyes widen immediately because you hadn't been expecting this conversation tonight. Not after years of both of you carefully dancing around the deeper parts of this relationship instead of fully confronting them.
Michael plates the food while speaking, garlic butter fish and vegetables arranged carefully before he sets the table and grabs the wine he paired with dinner. The entire scene suddenly feels painfully intimate in a way it hadn't moments earlier. Candlelight flickers softly through the kitchen while Michael serves you dinner in his home and talks about wanting more from you, and the normalcy of it makes your chest tighten almost unbearably.
When the two of you finally sit down across from each other, you take a deep breath before looking at him.
"So... what do you want to do, then?" you ask.
Michael swallows before meeting your gaze, and for a moment, he looks stripped completely bare in front of you. Not the King of Pop. Not the global icon the entire world worshipped and dissected constantly. Just Michael. Just the man you've loved for over a decade, looking terrified that he might finally be asking for too much.
"I want to be with you... for real. We've been doing this song and dance for the last 11 years, and when I was busy in the studio and on tour, all the pent-up frustration and adrenaline needed a place to go, and the same for you, while on set all the time, it worked... but this doesn't work for me anymore, I don't want you part-time, baby... I want you all the time," Michael says, and your breath catches painfully in your chest at his confession.
Because you had been feeling the exact same way for longer than you wanted to admit to yourself.
Somewhere along the years, this had stopped being an arrangement built around convenience and stolen intimacy. It had become love so consuming that pretending otherwise now felt impossible. Hearing Michael finally say it out loud rearranges something inside you instantly, because suddenly every late-night phone call, every secret reunion, every painful goodbye, every moment of jealousy and longing over the last eleven years becomes impossible to dismiss as casual anymore.
Michael loves you completely, and somehow that truth feels both terrifying and inevitable all at once.
"What about Lisa?" you ask.
The question comes out quieter than you intended, weighed down by the reality still sitting between the two of you despite everything Michael had just confessed. Because no matter how desperately you wanted this, there was still another woman attached to his name publicly. Another woman standing beside him in photographs and interviews, while you existed hidden behind private entrances and late-night phone calls.
Michael doesn't hesitate. "I'll divorce her. I never wanted to marry her in the first place," Michael says, and you let out a deep breath before you can stop yourself.
The certainty in his voice catches you off guard more than the words themselves. There's no uncertainty there. No wavering. He says it like he's already made peace with the decision long before tonight.
"When is your contract up? I'll start the divorce process," Michael says.
You stare at him for a second because the conversation suddenly feels terrifyingly real now. Not hypothetical anymore. Not fantasy. Plans are being made now. Actual timelines. Actual decisions that could alter both of your lives permanently.
"Six months after the movie comes out... it'll put our 'relationship' at exactly 18 months," you say, and Michael nods slowly.
"Okay... I'll get it done, that way there's time between my divorce and your breakup. We can keep the fallout clean, or we don't have to tell the press anything like we've been doing for years, I don't care... I just want to be with you, fully," Michael says as he reaches across the table for your hand, which you immediately give to him.
His fingers curl around yours carefully, almost reverently, and your chest tightens painfully because suddenly all those years of secrecy feel heartbreakingly visible between you. Eleven years of loving each other quietly while the rest of the world remained completely oblivious.
"How long have you felt this way?" You ask.
Michael's thumb strokes slowly across your knuckles as he looks down at your joined hands for a moment before answering.
"I think I've probably always felt this way, since that night at the Grammys... but when I became aware of the feeling? The Dangerous Tour... I missed you so much it started to physically hurt, and I knew I didn't want to be away from you or only be with you part-time anymore," he says.
Your eyes immediately begin watering, emotion rising inside you faster than you can contain it. Because you remember that tour.
You remember the distance between you during that time. The exhausting time zones and missed phone calls and nights spent staring at hotel ceilings, wishing he were there beside you. You remember sitting in your trailer between takes, waiting for updates from him, counting the hours until he would finally call. You remember hearing exhaustion in his voice over the phone while crowds screamed for him in the background.
You remember missing him so badly that it made ordinary things feel dull.
"I missed you a lot, too, when you were gone. Filming was slow for me that year, and I swear I was sitting by my phone all the time waiting for you to call or call me back," you say, and Michael chuckles softly while shaking his head.
There's so much tenderness in the way he looks at you now that it almost undoes you completely. Like hearing that confession heals something inside him he'd been carrying around quietly for years.
"I love you... It's always been you," Michael says.
The tears finally spill over your lashes as you squeeze his hands tightly between yours, not because the words surprise you. Deep down, maybe you had both known for years.
But hearing him finally say it out loud after over a decade of secrecy and half-measures feels overwhelming in a way you weren't prepared for. It feels like finally breathing after holding your breath for eleven years.
"I love you too, Michael," you say.
The smile that spreads across his face afterward is unlike anything you've ever seen from him before. Not the dazzling public smile meant for audiences and cameras. This one is softer. Emotional. Almost disbelieving in its happiness, like some part of him still can't fully process that after all this time, you love him back just as deeply as he loves you.
Dinner passes contentedly after that; the atmosphere between you is completely transformed now that everything has finally been spoken aloud. The years of restraint and careful avoidance are gone, replaced with something softer and infinitely more dangerous because now there's honesty attached to it.
The two of you keep smiling at each other across the table like neither of you can quite believe this is real.
Michael's foot brushes yours beneath the table repeatedly. His hand finds yours whenever it can. The conversation drifts effortlessly between teasing jokes, laughter, future plans spoken half-seriously, and quiet moments where the two of you simply stare at each other in disbelief.
Every touch lingers longer now, every kiss feels fuller somehow, like the truth has changed the shape of them.
After dinner, Michael washes the dishes while you dry them beside him, the two of you bumping shoulders occasionally in the comfortable rhythm you've always shared. At one point, he splashes water at you playfully, grinning when you gasp in outrage, and the sound of your laughter fills the kitchen so warmly that Michael physically stops for a second just to look at you.
Like he's memorizing this version of happiness.
When the dishes are finally done, Michael suddenly grabs you around the waist before you can protest, lifting you effortlessly off your feet despite your startled laugh.
"Michael!" you squeal, laughing harder as he carries you toward the bedroom.
He only grins wider, clearly pleased with himself as your arms instinctively wrap around his shoulders. The entire walk down the hallway feels lighter somehow, both of you still glowing from the confessions shared over dinner.
By the time he reaches the bedroom, Michael practically tosses you onto the mattress, your giggling immediately filling the space as he climbs over you. Then his mouth is on yours again, hungry this time.
You pull him closer instantly until his body is pressed firmly against yours, your legs wrapping around his waist to keep him there. Michael kisses you deeply, like he still can't quite get enough of you even after all these years, and when his tongue brushes against your lips, you part for him immediately.
The kiss deepens slowly, unhurried but intense, the lingering taste of wine and dinner still fresh between you as your tongues slide together. Michael kisses you like he's trying to pour every unspoken feeling from the last eleven years into your mouth now that he finally has permission to.
You reach up and begin slowly unbuttoning his shirt, your fingers careful and deliberate as you work each button free one at a time. There's no rush to any of this tonight. Every movement feels intentional, soaked in intimacy and relief, and years of longing finally spilling over into something tangible.
Michael's mouth never fully leaves yours while you undress him. His kisses remain warm and steady, occasionally breaking only long enough for him to murmur your name softly against your lips before kissing you again.
You can feel everything in the way he touches you now. The depth of his love. The familiarity built over the years together. The overwhelming relief of finally being honest with each other. It's all there in every kiss, every touch, and every breath he exhales against your skin.
His fingers trail lightly along your throat, your jaw, your shoulders, touching you with a tenderness that makes desire coil low in your stomach almost painfully. Not just physical desire anymore, but emotional too. The kind born from feeling completely wanted by someone you've loved for years.
Michael finally pulls back from the kiss just enough to sit you up gently before turning you around so he can unzip your dress.
The moment the zipper begins sliding downward, Michael leans forward and presses slow kisses against the newly exposed skin of your shoulder and back. The sensation makes your eyes flutter shut immediately, warmth spreading through you as his lips continue moving lower while he carefully works the zipper down inch by inch.
You push the top of your dress off your shoulders once he finishes, letting the fabric slide down your body until it pools around your knees. Michael's hands smooth slowly along your thighs as you lift your legs slightly, allowing him to fully remove the dress before tossing it somewhere onto the floor without a second thought, his attention already completely back on you.
Michael turns you back around to face him, his hands gentle against you as he guides you carefully until you're looking at him again. His lips immediately find the bare skin of your shoulder, the contact soft and lingering enough to make warmth spread through your chest all over again. Every touch from him feels different tonight. More open. Less restrained. Finally confessing how deeply he loves you has stripped away the last barrier that used to exist between you.
You feel his hands slide over yours as he helps guide your fingers back to his shirt, both of you working together to slowly finish unbuttoning it. The movement feels intimate in a way that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with familiarity. Eleven years together had made moments like this effortless between you. Your fingers brush against his warm skin each time another button comes undone, and Michael's breathing grows heavier the more exposed he becomes beneath your hands.
Until finally the shirt is pushed from his shoulders completely, discarded somewhere onto the floor, leaving nothing between you except skin and lingering heat.
Michael pauses, then, really pauses.
His hands settle lightly against your waist while his eyes move slowly over you, taking you in properly now that your dress is gone and you're left standing there in the deep red lingerie you had worn beneath it all day. The look on his face immediately shifts into something softer than simple attraction, something almost overwhelmed.
His gaze drags over every inch of you carefully, lingering with open admiration and something far more emotional underneath it. Like, after all these years, he still can't fully believe you're real. Still can't believe someone like you comes back to him at the end of the night.
Michael bites lightly against his lip before looking back up at you. "You were doing your press tour in this?" he asks. His voice is quieter now, roughened by emotion and desire alike, while his eyes continue wandering over you almost helplessly.
You gently reach up, your fingers brushing along his jaw before tilting his head back upward so he's looking directly at you again instead of your body. "Because I knew I was coming home to you when it was over," you say quietly.
The words settle between you heavily. Home. To him. You physically see the moment they hit him.
Michael inhales sharply, his chest rising beneath your hands as emotion flashes openly across his face before he can hide it. Because suddenly he's imagining you spending the entire day smiling through interviews and fake romance while secretly wearing this underneath your clothes for him. Thinking about him while cameras flashed in your face. While another man sat beside you pretending to know you intimately.
All the while, you had been planning to come home to Michael.
"The things you do to me," he says.
His voice is so soft now that it almost sounds reverent, and the look in his eyes makes your stomach tighten painfully because no one has ever looked at you the way Michael does. Like loving you is both the easiest and most overwhelming thing he's ever done.
You move with him instinctively then, shifting until you're sitting directly in his lap, straddling him fully. Your legs settle on either side of his waist while his arms immediately wrap around you, pulling you tightly against him like he can't tolerate distance from you anymore.
Not after tonight, not after finally saying everything out loud.
"Hmm," you hum softly as you lean down and press your lips against his neck.
Your hands glide slowly down his bare chest while Michael closes his eyes beneath you, a faint shiver moving through his body at the feeling of your mouth against his skin. You kiss him slowly there, lingering and teasing, your lips moving against the sensitive skin beneath his jaw before gently sucking and biting just enough to leave marks behind. Your marks.
And the thought of Lisa seeing them later doesn't bother you in the slightest.
Not anymore, not after hearing Michael say he loved you.
"I need you, mama," Michael gasps out between your kisses against him. The sound of his voice saying it sends heat rushing through you instantly. Breathless and needy and completely undone beneath your touch in a way only you ever really get to witness.
You press another slow kiss against his neck right as he swallows, feeling the movement beneath your lips, and your body responds immediately when you feel his arousal growing harder underneath you. The pressure against you pulls a soft moan from your throat before you can stop it, the sound muffled against his skin.
Michael's hands slide upward along your back, warm and slightly trembling with urgency now, until his fingers reach the clasp of your bra. He undoes it quickly, impatiently, and the straps loosen instantly before he tosses the fabric aside somewhere onto the floor without even looking.
The moment your bare chest presses fully against his, Michael lets out a quiet sound that almost borders on overwhelmed before kissing you again.
This kiss feels different from the others. It's needier, hungrier, like all the restraint he'd been holding onto throughout dinner has finally snapped completely.
Michael kisses you deeply while tightening his arms around you, and within seconds, he's carefully guiding you backward onto the mattress beneath him without ever breaking contact. His mouth stays locked to yours the entire time, desperate and emotional all at once, like he's trying to communicate everything he still doesn't quite have words for through the way he touches you instead.
His hands roam down your body, stopping at your breasts as he palms them in his large hands. You moan into his mouth as he gives them a light squeeze.
You undo Michael's pants, and he kicks them off. You quickly discard his boxers as well. His length slaps against his torso as it springs free. At the same time, he reaches down and pulls your panties off your legs, being met with the same sight he saw that morning: your pussy glistening and ready for him.
He dips his fingers into your slickness until they're coated, and he uses it to rub over his tip, closing his eyes as a moan falls from his lips, and you bite down on your lip.
Michael turns you over, putting you on your hands and knees in front of him. He leans down, pressing a kiss to your backside as he looks at how you're already dripping over the sheets. You feel him tease your clit and your entrance with his tip, sliding it across your folds and through your slickness, but not entering you yet.
You move your hips, pressing back against him as you softly whine, needing him, and Michael chuckles as he continues to tease you. Grinding against you as you feel his length rub against your clit and against your folds, but not entering inside of you. Michael coats himself in your slickness, and you hear his moans filling your ear, making you more desperate for him.
"Michael," you say again, turning around to face him. He bites down on his lip when he sees how deep and dark with desire your eyes are. "Please, baby," you say, and Michael smiles, pressing his body against yours as he hovers over you.
"I love when you beg for me, mama," he whispers in your ear, gently sucking on your neck. You feel his tip line up with your entrance, and he buries his length deep into your soaking pussy in one sharp thrust. Your back arches, gripping the sheets as he fucks you hard and shallow, his hips snapping sharply, your body rocking forward on the bed, and you grip the sheets tighter. "You feel so good," Michael says as he pushes himself deeper until you're filled.
His chest presses up against your back, his lips attach to your neck, biting and sucking on your soft skin. He slightly nudges your legs further apart to be able to take you deeper, and your body shudders under him as you moan. Michael reaches forward, palming your breasts in his hands, while his lips trail kisses across your shoulders and back, his movements getting quicker, his thrusts moving into a relentless pace as he takes you.
You meet his thrusts, moving back into him, and the sounds of your skin slapping together fill the room. Michael's hand moves from your breasts down to between your legs, rubbing your clit as he fucks you deeper. Your grip on the sheets beneath you tightens as his name falls from your lips over and over again.
"You're so good," Michael groans in your ear before kissing the skin behind it. "You make me feel so good, mama," He says, gently biting down on your neck. You feel your orgasm building, and your legs start shaking. Michael feels you clenching and knows you're close, pushing his thrusts deeper, filling you completely as his fingers relentlessly rub your clit.
Just as you feel your orgasm coming, the loud shrill of the phone on the nightstand next to you breaks the trance. Michael's thrusts slow as he reaches over to grab it, and you immediately let out a frustrated whine. "Michael, seriously?" you ask, and he chuckles.
"Don't worry, Mama, I'm not stopping... but depending on who this is, you'll have to be quiet," he says as he picks the phone up from the receiver.
The teasing amusement in his voice makes heat rush through you despite your frustration. There's something almost unfair about how composed he sounds while you're completely falling apart beneath him.
Once the phone is balanced between his shoulder and his cheek, he grabs your hand and guides you to rub your clit before grabbing your hips in his hands and picking up the pace of his thrusts: controlled but relentless enough to make your breathing hitch sharply with every move.
"Hello?" he asks into the phone. You immediately bite down into the pillow beneath you as you feel a moan about to slip out, your fingers rubbing against your clit as Michael's rhythm stays measured, quieter now but no less intense, each movement deliberate enough to keep you trembling underneath him.
"Michael... you answered this time," Lisa's voice rings through the phone. You feel Michael pull out of you fully before slamming back into you; the squelching sound of his dick entering you echoes through the room, and you suppress a scream.
"Hi, Lisa," Michael says, and your eyes widen, knowing it's her on the other end of the line.
His voice remains impossibly controlled, smooth, and even, like he's simply having a casual conversation instead of what's actually happening. Years of performing had given him terrifying control over his breathing and composure.
You had watched him sing entire concerts while dancing himself breathless, and now that same discipline is being used here, his expression barely changing despite the intensity burning underneath it all.
"Is this a bad time?" she asks as Michael is still relentlessly pounding into you. A moan slips out before you shove your face into the pillow, and Michael lets out the faintest chuckle at your struggle as he continues to fuck you.
"Is it? You're the one on vacation with your ex. Aren't you doing stuff?" Michael asks, and Lisa sighs audibly through the receiver.
"I'm not on vacation with my ex... My children's father and I have taken our children on vacation," Lisa says for what feels like the millionth time.
Your fingers clutch helplessly against the sheets before you reach back, tapping Michael's arm with your hand, signaling that you're close to your orgasm, and Michael fully pulls out of you, leaving you aching from the loss of contact, juices dripping out of you and onto the bed. Michael uses one hand to cover the receiver.
"You don't cum until I say so," Michael says. The authority in his voice sends a violent shiver through you. You whimper when Michael slams back into you. The sudden intensity makes you whimper helplessly into the pillow as he uncovers the receiver again, as if nothing happened.
"Look... I don't want to argue about it again. I just wanted to let you know that we just landed back in California, and I'm headed back to the ranch. Danny has the kids, I figured we could use a night alone to talk about everything," Lisa says.
Tears begin pricking painfully at your eyes from the overwhelming combination of pleasure and denial. Your entire body feels unbearably sensitive now, every nerve ending burning from being held right at the edge without release. Another broken sound escapes you as Michael's movements grow rougher, and he visibly notices immediately.
You can feel the satisfaction in the way his hands tighten against your hips. The way he knows exactly what he's doing to you. Your vision blurs from the tears, another whimper escaping you as Michael fucks you harder.
"Yeah, I have some things I want to talk to you about, too," he says. Lisa exhales softly on the other end of the line, unaware that Michael is talking about ending their marriage entirely.
Meanwhile, another whimper leaves you; your body is trembling underneath him so badly you can barely hold yourself upright anymore. Michael can feel it too, can feel how desperately close you are and how hard you're trying to obey him despite it.
"Okay... I'll be home in 30 minutes," Lisa says.
"Okay, see you then," Michael says before tossing the phone carelessly back onto the nightstand without even checking whether she's hung up yet.
The second his attention fully returns to you, everything about him changes. The controlled composure disappears instantly. Michael leans down until his lips are right beside your ear, one arm wrapping tightly around your waist to pull you flush against him while his breathing finally turns uneven against your skin.
"You take me so good, mama. Look at you, coming apart around me like this. You're so beautiful," Michael says to you.
The praise in his voice nearly destroys you on its own.
"M–Michael, the phone," you say weakly, glancing toward the receiver sitting crookedly on the nightstand. The realization suddenly crashes over you both at once. Lisa could still be there.
And she is.
On the other end of the line, Lisa's eyes slowly widen as the reality of what she's hearing fully settles into place now that Michael is no longer masking it. The sound of skin slapping together, the unmistakable squelching sound of Michael's dick thrusting in and out of your dripping pussy. She knew he was having sex, she just didn't know who with.
"M–My contract, I can't get caught," you say quieter to him.
The words come out broken and breathless, barely held together through everything Michael is doing to you, but the panic underneath them is real. Even now, even in the middle of this, your career still hangs over both of you like a shadow. One wrong mistake, one rumor connected too directly back to Michael, and everything surrounding the movie and your public relationship could implode.
Michael slows his thrusts enough to lean over and grab the phone from the nightstand before placing it firmly back onto the receiver, finally cutting off Lisa's ability to hear as he fucks you.
Then his attention immediately returns to you.
"They can't know that it's me you're falling apart for every night and not him," Michael says. The possessiveness in his voice sends heat rushing through you instantly. There's something deeply intimate about the way he says it, like, despite all the secrecy and contracts and public lies, he still quietly claims you in every way that matters.
Michael hits you with another sharp thrust, making you whimper. "Come for me, mama. I want to feel you all around me," he says. The praise and softness in his voice completely undo you.
Your walls clench around him, a moan that sounds closer to a sob rips through your throat as your orgasm explodes through you from Michael making you hold it. Michael immediately wraps his arms around you tighter as your body shakes hard beneath him, holding you through every second of it while your name spills loudly from his lips over and over again like a prayer.
The intimacy of it nearly overwhelms you as much as the physical sensation itself.
Because Michael now isn't just touching you with the desire for you he's always felt, he's touching you with the overwhelming sensation of love he feels for you. Every movement between you means something deeper now that everything has finally been confessed aloud.
Your orgasm releases so much that it drips down Michael's balls and thighs, spilling down your thighs and onto the sheets. Michael hits you with another sharp and hard thrust before you feel his warmth filling you. Your name spills from his lips loudly as he fills you with his release. Your hole is spent, not able to hold everything, and as Michael pulls out, your combined release drips out of you and onto the bedsheets.
"I love when you make a mess, mama," Michael says, lightly slapping your pussy, making your body shake as you release another moan. You collapse forward, completely spent, and Michael immediately softens again, seeing it, brushing his hand gently up your back while your breathing slowly steadies.
"You okay, baby?" he asks quietly.
You nod against the sheets, far too boneless from Michael's intense lovemaking to form a proper response yet, and Michael smiles to himself before carefully slipping out of bed. A few moments later, you hear water running softly in the bathroom before he returns with a warm cloth in his hands.
The care he takes with you afterward always affects you more than he probably realizes.
Michael kneels beside you on the bed, gently cleaning your skin with slow, careful movements, his touch impossibly tender compared to the intensity from moments earlier. Every so often, he presses soft kisses against your shoulder, your cheek, your temple, telling you he loves you, soothing you quietly while he takes care of you.
The entire scene feels painfully domestic again, not hidden lovers stealing time together, not part-time. Just the two of you.
"What did Lisa want?" you ask sleepily as you move closer to him.
Your body still feels heavy and loose from everything the two of you had just shared, warmth lingering through your muscles while you instinctively curl yourself closer against Michael's side. The emotional exhaustion somehow feels even heavier than the physical exhaustion tonight. So much had changed in the span of a few hours that your mind still hadn't fully caught up to it.
Michael brushes his fingers gently through your hair as he looks down at you.
"She's on her way back... she'll probably be here in about 15 minutes... I'll draw you a bath, nice and warm to help you relax your muscles, and you stay up here while I deal with her, okay?" Michael says.
The tenderness in his voice makes your chest ache.
Not because he's trying to get rid of you, but because he's taking care of you so instinctively. Even now, with the weight of the conversation waiting downstairs, Michael's first concern is still your comfort. Your safety. Making sure you're relaxed while he handles the mess he's spent years avoiding.
You nod slowly before leaning up to kiss him again, and Michael immediately kisses you back just as deeply.
The kiss feels different now that everything has finally been spoken aloud between you. There's no uncertainty left inside it anymore. No careful restraint, pretending this relationship is temporary or casual. Michael kisses you like someone finally allowed to love openly, even if only privately for now.
"Okay... I love you, Michael," you say. The words are soft from exhaustion, but completely sincere, and the moment they leave your mouth, Michael's entire expression changes.
His smile spreads slowly, emotion visibly flickering across his face like he still can't fully believe he's hearing those words from you after all these years. You can practically see the confidence settling into him afterward, steadying him for what he's about to do downstairs. Because suddenly this isn't just about escaping an unhappy marriage anymore.
It's about you. About finally choosing the woman he's loved all along.
"I love you more, baby," he says.
His thumb brushes softly against your cheek before he leans down to press another lingering kiss against your forehead, holding it there for a moment longer than necessary, like he's grounding himself with you one last time before facing reality downstairs.
Then he disappears into the bathroom to draw you a bath.
You can hear the water running while you remain tangled in the sheets, your body still buzzing faintly from his touch while your mind replays everything that happened tonight. The confessions. The plans. The future the two of you had never truly allowed yourselves to imagine before now, suddenly became real enough to touch.
Michael returns a few minutes later and carefully helps you into the warm bath, his hands gentle against you as he settles you into the water. Steam curls softly around the room while tension slowly begins easing from your body, and Michael crouches beside the tub for a moment just watching you.
Like, he hates the idea of leaving your side even briefly.
He leans in and gives you another soft, lingering kiss before finally standing again and heading back into the bedroom. You hear drawers opening and closing while he changes into casual sweats and a t-shirt, trading intimacy for composure as he prepares himself for the conversation waiting downstairs.
Then, just as he reaches the hallway, the sound of the front door unlocking echoes faintly through the house.
Lisa was home, and now it was finally time for Michael to end the relationship he never truly wanted in order to be with the woman he had always wanted.
turnnoffyourmind
pixelskylines
